Peony: A Novel of China (20 page)

“I am very forward, I know,” Kung Chen said smiling, “but I prefer to find out from my daughters themselves how they feel.”

So he went on. “Tell me, child, what sort of husband I shall find you. There is a fine young man in the house of Wei, just a year older than you. I hear good things of him.”

“No,” Kueilan said faintly.

“No?” Kung Chen asked in seeming surprise. “Well, then, I hear the youngest son of the Hu family is handsome.”

“No, no!” she said more strongly.

“This young lady is hard to please!” Kung Chen exclaimed to Chu Ma. He went on somewhat gravely, “I hope you have done your duty. I hope you have not allowed her to see any young man.”

Kueilan began suddenly to sob and Chu Ma looked terrified.

“Ha—what is this?” Kung Chen demanded, pretending to be angry.

Chu Ma fell on her knees before him and knocked her head on the floor and began to babble. “How could I help it? The young man saw her here in this house. She was going to the temple with our lady, her mother, and she sent me to fetch her a handkerchief.”

“It was my fan, stupid!” Kueilan wailed.

“Her fan,” Chu Ma babbled. “And while I was gone the son of the foreigner Ezra came into the hall.”

“But I didn’t stay!” Kueilan cried.

“I swear to my ancestors that she did not stay,” Chu Ma said.

“Get up,” Kung Chen said very sternly to Chu Ma. She got up and stood wiping her eyes. “How much has happened?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” Chu Ma said. Then his eyes frightened the truth out of her. “Well, only a poem or two.”

He turned to his daughter. “How dare you think of a young man?” he demanded.

Now Kueilan had a nice lively temper of her own, and it was her way to weep first and then be angry. So she stamped her foot and said, “I dare anything!”

“I will not have you marry a foreigner,” Kung Chen said.

“I will marry him!” Kueilan cried.

“Oh, hush, hush,” Chu Ma wailed. Kung Chen lit his pipe. “You say that because you are angry,” he told his daughter. “But when you have considered what it means, you will not want to marry into that house. They are a strange people, not like ours. They are a sorrowful people, and they worship a cruel god.”

Kueilan pouted. “I am not afraid,” she declared.

Kung Chen did not answer his willful child. He had found out what he wanted to know.

“I command you to obey me in this one thing,” he said after a long silence. During this silence Kueilan’s anger had been cooled by fear and Chu Ma was frightened pale.

“You are to wait until I have seen for myself this young man,” he told his daughter. “When I am ready, I will tell you what my will is.” He turned to Chu Ma. “And you, woman, if you allow her to disobey me, I will send you out of this house and you shall not come back to it as long as you live.”

Chu Ma trembled. “I will stay with her day and night,” she promised. And she took Kueilan’s hand and led her away.

I
N THE HOUSE OF
Ezra the Rabbi lived in blind ecstasy. Never would he have acknowledged it, yet it was true that the quiet comfort of the house, the ample food, the space and stillness of the courts comforted him and gave him the surroundings of pleasure.

Because he was there, Madame Ezra was careful that every rite of Sabbath and feast day was performed. She took care, too, to come in when David was with the Rabbi and inquire whether each rite was performed according to the Torah. For through so many years and generations in this heathen land she declared that even she had grown ignorant. Thus the rites of Passover and of Purim had mingled with the Chinese Festival of Spring, and the Feast of First Fruits with the Feast of the Summer Moon, and the sacred ten days of penitence before Yom Kippur came often at the Feast of the New Moon Year, so that even David escaped too easily from the penitence to pleasure.

The Rabbi answered her every question with zeal and care. Shut off from the sight of human beings, he perceived them only through the mist of his own feelings and longings. Thus it seemed to him as day followed day that David was living with him in his ecstasy, walking with him near to God, as he expounded the meaning of the Torah. True, he felt about him the atmosphere of something burning and strong, the presence of a spirit that he himself scarcely understood. What could it be except the brooding spirit of the Lord? He could not know that the conflict that he felt in the air about him when he taught the Torah to David. Leah, and Aaron was their conflict. The Rabbi, accustomed to the blindness of his eyes, had other ways of perception. Thus he knew that when these three were not near him, the room in which he sat was empty with peace, but when they came in, whether quietly or with laughter, peace was gone.

He told himself that of Jehovah and His words he did not expect peace. “Before Jehovah our God there can be neither slumber nor sleep,” he told David. “We are a restless people, O my son! It is our destiny to keep the world restless until all know who is Jehovah, the One True God. We are sojourners, transient between earth and heaven.” He paused and then lifted his head high and held up his clenched hands above his head. “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One!”

The sonorous familiar words of the Shema rolling from the lips of the blind old man haunted David’s soul. He himself was often divided between heaven and earth, and his soul was rent in two. It was impossible to answer the Rabbi. He could only listen, and listening receive into himself the meaning of the faith of his people. He was beginning to understand it now. What his mother expressed in her own practical way in her careful observance of feast days and worship days, in rites and rituals, in her refusal to accept the Chinese name of Chao even in this community where nearly all the Jews were known also by Chinese names—all this was the outward manifestation of the burning spirit of the Rabbi. These two believed that their people were a special people, set apart by God, to fulfill a destiny in the world. To their people, his mother and the Rabbi believed, God had entrusted a mission, the sacred mission of persecuting the souls of human beings until they turned to God.

Now the conflict among the three, David, Leah, and Aaron, came about thus. As the Rabbi perceived that David grew in understanding, unwittingly he put aside Aaron, his own son. At first he had asked each morning if Aaron were in the room, but now he asked no more. When David entered he turned only to him, and he put out his hands, restless and trembling, until he felt for himself the clasp of David’s hands and until he felt his head and cheeks and brow. He must always have David sit near enough for him to touch. Aaron grew sullen as he perceived himself forgotten, and since he dared not complain to his father, he vented his temper on Leah.

“You are plotting against me,” he declared when they were alone. “It is your plan to put up David as the rabbi instead of me, when our father dies, and he will be the head of our people. But you will be the true head, for you will rule David as that old she-Ezra rules Ezra.”

Leah was so soft at heart, so purely good, that she could not answer this wickedness from her brother. When even as their father taught them the Torah Aaron silently mouthed his charges at her, her great eyes filled with tears, and still she did not speak. Aaron took care, or thought he did, to hide his persecution, but David was too shrewd not to see it. He loathed Aaron and paid no more heed to him than he would to a cur in the house. When Aaron came fawning on him and wheedling to go with him among his friends and share his pleasures, David pretended not to hear him or know his meaning. Aaron shrank back rebuffed, and with all the strength of his human nature he hated David for his pride and for the air of freedom in which David walked.

When David saw, now, that Aaron was oppressing his sister in some secret way, he stopped Leah one morning as they met near the threshold, and he said, “When Aaron makes his silly faces at you, why do you weep?”

“Because I know what he is thinking,” Leah replied.

They stood in the sunlight, and David saw how smooth was her rich-colored skin, and how her dark hair gleamed. He had never renewed the signs of love since the day in the peach garden, for his soul had been more confused every day since. Her warm and loving eyes now upon him increased his confusion, and he could only stammer, “What is Aaron thinking?”

“I am ashamed to tell you,” Leah said honestly.

Now had David been clear in his soul he would have demanded her meaning, but he was afraid to press her lest she tell him that Aaron was teasing her about love.

“Aaron is a fool,” he said abruptly.

At this moment Aaron lounged through the gate, and David went in, and Leah followed.

Even Leah the Rabbi forgot. Every morning she came in quietly, and if the Rabbi did not hear her she gave greeting to him, and he answered as if he scarcely heard. Indeed, the Rabbi thought only of David. He spent the hours of the night in prayer and he woke from brief sleep feverish with eagerness. He told himself that he could not sleep until David declared himself for the Lord. He longed and yet he did not dare put to David the direct question. Yet after the two and three hours of expounding the Torah the question hung on his very beard: “David, will you be rabbi after me? Hear the word of the Lord, O my son David!” He could hear himself bidding his own son and daughter leave him in order that he might speak to David, and yet he determined that he would not speak until he heard the command of God ringing in his ears.

There came a day in late summer when it seemed to the Rabbi that until this command came he could not go on. It was in the eighth month, the month of storms, and the morning was still and hot. The air was heavy and it weighed upon the blind man with the wet heaviness of a fog. He was exceedingly restless. His old bones quivered and his blood ran through his veins with such speed that he felt giddy.

David came early that morning and alone. Leah had sent word that she was ill and Aaron sent no message but he did not come. The Rabbi, alone with David, felt his heart tremble. Was not this the day? He began to expound the book with care and tenderness, pressing near the young man in his zeal. David too was restless with the heat, and he could not bear the smell of age and decay that clung to the old man. As the lesson went on the Rabbi heard him rise and move about and sigh, and he grew frightened. Why did the Lord not speak? He lifted his head to listen, but the very air was silent. In his fear he made a mighty effort for calm.

“My son,” the Rabbi said, when he felt David did not hear him, “let us go into the house of the Lord. The day is strangely hot, but in the shadows of the synagogue the air will be cool.”

“As you wish, Father,” David replied.

“Let me put my hand upon your arm,” the Rabbi said. “We will go on foot.”

The synagogue was not far. The houses of the Jews were clustered about it, and they had only to walk along a few streets to come to the narrow one that the Chinese called the Street of the Plucked Sinew. The path was familiar enough to David, and so was the synagogue, and yet he felt strangely that this was the first time he had ever entered it. Until now it had been a temple that he had often entered reluctantly, torn from play at the command of his mother. Now he came of his own free will—yes, it was his will today to meet God face to face. He had been putting off decision, but it must be no longer delayed. Slowly he paced his step to match the long slow step of the Rabbi. If he felt today the call of Jehovah, choosing him, commanding him to restore the remnant of his people, he would answer firmly yea or nay, out of what his heart said when he heard the Voice.

“You have put on your cap?” the Rabbi murmured.

“Yes,” David replied. “I put it on when I come to you each morning.”

“I know,” the Rabbi said. “Why did I ask? You are faithful to the commands of the Lord.”

Nevertheless he reached up his hand and touched the blue cap on David’s head.

“You doubt me?” David asked, smiling.

“No, no,” the Rabbi said quickly.

They entered now the gate to the outer courts of the synagogue. When the Rabbi came here alone, he went at once into the inner courts at the back of the compound, near which his own small house stood, but today he wanted to lead David through the wide front gate, which was opened to them by an old man who belonged to the Jewish clan of Ai. The gate faced the east, and immediately inside was a great and beautiful archway. Beyond it was still another gateway and beyond this another archway. On either side stood two stone tablets, each upon a stone base carved in lotus leaves, and upon the tablets were cut in ancient letters the story of the Jews and how they had been driven from their land. Beyond the tablet was the immense platform upon which the great tent was raised at the Feast of Tabernacles, and still beyond was the Ark Bethel in the most sacred and inner part of the synagogue.

All of this David knew, and yet this day he looked with eyes that saw for the first time the meaning of this place, set for a palace of God in the crowded heathen city and its many temples to other gods. The air was cooler here than elsewhere, and he felt it cool upon his flesh. Olive trees lined the courts, and the silence was sweet. The place was empty of man but it was filled with the high spirit of Heaven. Upon a tablet over the main arch were carved these words, “The Temple of Purity and Peace.” Such indeed it was.

So they went slowly step by step, the Rabbi murmuring the Scriptures until David paused before a great stone tablet.

“How is it that the letters I see carved upon many of these stone tablets are Chinese letters and not Hebrew?” David asked suddenly.

The Rabbi sighed. “Alas, our people have forgotten the language of our fathers! When I die, there will not be one left who can read the word of the Lord.”

He paused, waiting for David to speak, to offer himself. The Rabbi had hoped each day that David would ask to learn the Hebrew language, but he had not asked and he did not now.

“Yet the story of our people is very plain upon this stone,” David said instead. And he began to read aloud the Chinese letters: