Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (40 page)

She mused on. “And how do I know that I am not evil? How do I know that what I consider good is truly good?”

As was her habit she put this question to her memory of André.

One day, she remembered very well, they had been sitting here in the library where she now sat, he on one side of the great carved table and she on the other, not opposite so that they had to look into each other’s faces, but with the table between and both facing the open doors into the court. It was a day as fine as this, the air exceedingly clear and the sunshine so strong that the colors in the stones that floored the court, usually gray, showed tints of blue and rose and veins of silver. Her orchids were blooming a dark purple. In the pool the goldfish darted and flung themselves against the sunbeams slanting into the water.

André had been telling her an ancient legend of the fall of man into evil. It came about, he said, by the hand of a woman, Eve, who gave man forbidden fruit.

“And how was this woman to know that the fruit was forbidden?” Madame Wu had inquired.

“An evil spirit, in the shape of a serpent, whispered it to her,” André had said.

“Why to her instead of to the man?” she had next inquired.

“Because he knew that her mind and her heart were fixed not upon the man, but upon the pursuance of life,” he had replied. “The man’s mind and heart were fixed upon himself. He was happy enough, dreaming that he possessed the woman and the garden. Why should he be tempted further? He had all. But the woman could always be tempted by the thought of a better garden, a larger space, more to possess, because she knew that out of her body would come many more beings, and for them she plotted and planned. The woman thought not of herself, but of the many whom she would create. For their sake she was tempted. For their sake she will always be tempted.”

She had looked at him. How well she remembered the profound and sad wisdom in his dark eyes! “How is it you know women so well?” she had asked.

“Because I live alone,” he had replied. “Early I freed myself.”

“And why did you free yourself?” she asked. “Why did you remove yourself from the stream of life? Do we not all belong in it? Can it be right for any to free himself from it?”

For the only time in the months she had known him she had seen him in doubt. “You have put the one question which I have never been able to answer,” he had replied. “I freed myself first out of vanity. Yes, that I know and acknowledge. When I was like other men, about to marry and beget children, I thought myself loved by a woman. But God gave me a sight into human beings too quick for my own happiness. I saw her like Eve, planning for other human beings whom she was to create—with some small help from me, of course, but which nevertheless she would make in her own body. And I saw my small part, so brief a satisfaction of the flesh, and all my life then spent in digging and delving, like Adam, in order that our garden might be bigger and the fruits more rich. So I asked myself if it was I she loved, and the answer was, perhaps—but only for the moment, because she needed to be served. So I said to myself, ‘Shall I not rather serve God, who asks nothing of me except that I do justly and walk humbly before him?’ On that day I became a priest.”

“And have you been happy?” she had asked him with a little malice.

“I have possessed myself,” he had replied. …

Now, alone in the library where nowadays she always sat because his presence was there, too, she pondered upon the man and the woman. The woman Eve, she considered, must not be blamed because into her had been put the endless desire to carry on life. The man left to himself would never go further than himself. He had made the woman a part of himself, for his own use and pleasure. But she, in all her ignorance and innocence, used him in her endless creation of more life. Both were tools, but only the woman knew she was a tool and gave herself up to life.

“Here,” she told André, “is the difference between man and woman, even between you and me.”

The air came in mild and soft as she sat alone, and no wind blew. A small blue-tailed lizard came out from the crevice between the brick wall and the stone floor, and lay basking in a bar of sunlight. She sat so still it thought her part of the room, and in its meager way it made merry, turning its flat head this way and that and frisking its bright tail. Its eyes were shining and empty. She did not move. It was good luck to have small harmless animals about a house. They felt the house eternal and made their home in it.

She mused on, motionless while the lizard played. Such, then, was the unhappiness that lay between men and women. Man believed in his own individual meaning, but woman knew that she meant nothing for herself, except as she fulfilled her place in creating more life. And because men loved women as part of themselves, and women never loved men except as part of what must be created, this was the struggle that made man forever dissatisfied. He could not possess the woman because she was already possessed by a force larger than his own desire.

Had she not created even him? Perhaps for that he never forgave her, but hated her and fought her secretly, and dominated her and oppressed her and kept her locked in houses and her feet bound and her waist tied, and forbade her wages and skills and learning, and widowed her when he was dead, and burned her sometimes to ashes, pretending that it was her faithfulness that did it.

Madame Wu laughed aloud at man and the lizard rushed into hiding.

Once, when André had sat in the chair across from hers, she had said to him, “Is man all man and is woman all woman? If so, they can never come together, since he lives for his own being and she lives for universal life, and these are opposite.”

André had answered gravely enough, “God gave us each a residue for our own; that is, a part simply human, and neither male nor female. It is called the soul. It is unchanging and unchangeable. It can comprehend also the brain and its functions.”

“But a woman’s brain is not the same as a man’s?” she had asked.

“It is the same only when it is freed from the needs of the flesh,” André had replied. “Thus a woman may use her brain only for her female duties, and a man may use his only in pursuing women for himself. But the brain is a tool, and it may be put to any use that the creature wishes. That I cut cabbages with a fine knife is not to say that I cannot use that knife to carve an image of the Son of Man. If the Son of Man is in my heart, and within the vision of my soul’s sight, then I will use my tool, the brain, to make him clear.”

“The soul, then, is a residue neither male nor female,” she had repeated.

“It is so,” André had replied.

“And what is the soul in its stuff?” she had pressed him on.

“It is that which we “do not inherit from any other creature,” he had said. “It is that which gave me my own self, which shapes me a little different from all those who came before me, however like to them I am. It is that which is given to me for my own, a gift from God.”

“And if I do not believe in God?” she had inquired.

“It does not matter whether you believe or not,” he had answered. “You can see for yourself that you are like no other in this world, and not only you, but the humblest and the least beautiful creature also has this precious residue. If you have it, you know it exists. It is enough to know that. Belief in its giver can wait. God is not unreasonable. He knows that for belief we like to see with the eyes and hear with the ears, that we like to hold within our hands. So does the child also know only what its five senses can tell it. But other senses there are, and these develop as the being grows, and when they are fully developed we trust them as once we trusted only our senses.”

Remembering these words of his, she looked across the table. The chair was empty, and she heard no voice. But his face was as clear to her with its grave smile, his voice as deep as ever she had seen or heard.

“I only begin to understand,” she murmured. “But I do begin. And with my soul I thee love.”

Was it not possible that there could be love and friendship between souls ?

“It is possible,” she told him.

Now, Madame Wu was a practical woman, and what she learned she put to use. Within this house, which was her world, there were two disordered beings—that is, two who were not in right relation to the house and therefore to the universe. These, two were Rulan and Linyi.

Without haste, and allowing many days to pass, she nevertheless approached the day when she chose in her mind to speak with them, and first she would speak with Rulan, who was the elder.

It had been many months since Tsemo and Fengmo had left the home. Letters came to Madame Wu regularly, for the two were good sons. These letters were addressed to their father and to her, and after she had read them first and pondered over them, she sent them to Mr. Wu. After he had read them, he sent them to Liangmo, who more and more was taking over all the duties of the lands and shops, in preparation for the day when he would be the head of the family, and he read them and then put them in the family records.

From these letters Madame Wu had discerned clearly that her two sons were growing in opposite ways. Fengmo had wished to go abroad to study. She had given her permission and had sent the money which he required. There was some haste, he said, for the ocean roads were closing because of approaching war, and were he not to be caught, he must set sail without taking the long inland journey back to his home.

Had he been an only son Madame Wu would never have allowed this, but since she had so many sons, she did not press him to return before he went. He had set sail on a late winter day, he had crossed the seas in safety, and his letters now bore a strange postmark and stamp. These were American, but for this Madame Wu cared nothing. All outer countries were equally interesting and even alike to her, if they lay beyond the four seas. Fengmo pursued the studies which André had begun. Madame Wu was relieved to see that they had nothing to do with priesthood and religions. They had nothing to do with gods, and everything to do with men.

But Tsemo had not asked to cross the waters. Instead, he had gone to the capital and there had found a good place through his family’s wealth and influence. This did not amaze either Mr. Wu or Madame Wu herself, for however large her mind was, still it seemed only natural to her that everywhere the family should be known. Then Tsemo wrote the real reason why he had been so fortunate. Were there to come the war which threatened, the government would retreat inland, and there it would depend very much on the highest citizens and their families, of whom in their province the Wu family was the greatest and most ancient. Tsemo was given much preference, therefore, and had to endure jealousy and envy and some malice from others who were put aside. But he was young and hard and drove his own way for himself.

Madame Wu could not discover from his letters what he was. Fengmo she understood better. In his own way he was opening his mind and heart even as she had done. He was growing into a man and, more than that, his own residue, as André had called it, was growing also. But Tsemo seemed possessed. What possessed him she did not know.

The matter of Tsemo was hastened by the sudden news of attack by the East Ocean people that year on the coast. Madame Wu heard this, and she sent for newspapers, which she never read usually, to discover what had taken place. What she read was common enough in the history of the country. So other attacks had been made in many previous centuries by other peoples, and the nation had always stood. It would stand now, and she was not troubled. It was not likely that enemies would pierce the hundreds of miles inland to this province where the house of Wu had stood so long. But she was grateful to the past generations in the family that they had not yielded, as so many had, to new times, and so had not pressed toward the sea to build new houses on the coast. The Wu family had built upon its ancestral lands and had remained there. Today they were safe. True, this enemy attacked also from the air. Yet there were no great cities near here, and it was not likely that the ignorant East Ocean people would know the name of one family above another. Madame Wu felt safe in her own house.

But the attack forced a swift change, nevertheless. The government was moved inland, and Tsemo came with it. He wrote one day in the next early autumn that he would come home for ten or twelve days.

With this letter, Madame Wu knew she must not delay the matter of Rulan. She sent for the young woman by Ying as messenger.

Now, it is not to be supposed that in all these months Madame Wu had not seen her daughter-in-law. She had seen Rulan often. At the table she had seen her among the others, and at the usual festivals of spring and winter Rulan was there, always quiet and sober in her dress. There were also times when Madame Wu had wished some writing done for the records of the family and for the harvests, and she had called upon Rulan for this, because of them all Rulan brushed the clearest letters. She had been kind to her young daughter-in-law at all times, and once she had even said, “It is well enough to have one daughter-in-law who is learned.”

To this Rulan had replied with only a few necessary words of thanks.

But at no time had Madame Wu drawn the girl out of her place in the family. Now, with Tsemo’s last letter in her hands, she knew the time had come.

Rulan walked quietly through the courts. She no longer wore the hard leather shoes which she had brought with her from Shanghai. Instead she wore velvet ones, cloth-soled. Madame Wu did not hear her footsteps, and when the tall shadow fell across the floor she looked up in surprise.

“Daughter, how softly you walk,” she exclaimed after greetings.

“I put aside my leather shoes, Mother,” Rulan replied. She sat down, not sidewise, but squarely on her chair, which was against a sidewall and so was lower than the one Madame Wu used. They sat in the sitting room, not in the library.

Madame Wu did not at once approach what was in her mind to say. Instead she said courteously, “It has been in my thoughts these several weeks to ask about your family in Shanghai. When the enemy attacked, did they escape?”