Peony: A Novel of China (30 page)

“I want to go and see where Leah is buried,” he said.

She laid the cloth down upon her knees and looked at him, exasperated with love. “And why on this day do you want to go?” she inquired. “It is ill fortune to link death with life.”

“If I go and see her grave, I shall know she is dead,” he said strangely.

Peony looked at him with concern. “But you know Leah is dead,” she reasoned.

“I keep seeing her,” he replied.

They sat in the room where Leah had died, and Peony remembered this, but she did not wish to recall it to his mind. She had thought many times that David’s rooms should be moved elsewhere in the house, but first he had been too ill to be moved and then when she spoke of it he refused, saying that these had been his rooms since his childhood and he liked them best. Now in the secret place of her thought Peony made up her mind that she would tell Madame Ezra that indeed he must have his married life in other rooms, in larger courts, and these rooms should be sealed or given to visitors.

She folded the cloth and put it into a box inlaid with ivory where she kept her sewing things. “If you wish to go and see that grave I will go with you,” she said.

“Now?” he asked.

“Now,” she agreed.

So it happened that on this day, a mild still day in the autumn, David rode in his mule cart outside the city wall to the place where Leah was buried. It was a quiet place not far from the riverbank, and not far too from the synagogue. He knew it well, for here his grandparents and his ancestors were buried among many others of the Jews who had died during the centuries of their sojourn here. The graves were tall, like Chinese graves, and the marking stones were small.

To Leah’s grave Peony led him, for she knew where it was. She had not come here to the funeral, since she had stayed behind with David, but Wang Ma had told her that Leah’s grave lay to the east, away from the river and beside her mother’s grave.

There they went and David sat down upon the coat that Peony folded on the grass. The place was still, the air damp and cool under a gray sky. Around them the tall tombs stood, but David gazed at Leah’s grave. The earth was fresh beneath the sod that had been placed over it, and the sod had taken good root. A few wild asters of a pale purple were blooming in the grass.

“I cannot feel she is there,” David said at last.

“She is there,” Peony said firmly.

“Do you believe in the spirit?” David asked her.

“I do not think about spirits,” Peony replied. She stood beside him but now she stooped and pressed her palm against his cheek. “Are you chill?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Leave me alone a while,” he commanded.

“I will not,” Peony replied. “It is my duty to stay with you, or I shall be blamed for any ill you have.”

So she stood there beside him, a small straight figure, her face to the grave. But her eyes went beyond it. Over the low wall she saw fields and villages, and beyond them the flat bright surface of the river, and the sail of a boat hanging against a mast. What was in David’s mind she did not know, but she would not yield him up to Leah’s spirit. She did believe deeply in spirits, and she knew that the spirit of the dead clings always to the living. With all the strength of her inner being she now opposed Leah’s spirit.

Stay in your grave, she said silently, and she opposed her will to Leah’s will. You have lost him and you shall not harm him any more.

So she held herself hard against every memory of Leah and all that Leah had meant, and at last David sighed and rose to his feet.

“She is dead,” he said sadly.

“Let me put this coat on you,” Peony said. “Your flesh is cold.”

He shivered. “I am cold—let us go home quickly.”

“Yes—yes,” she agreed, and she hastened him to the mule cart, and when they were driven over the rough cobblestone road to the gate she hurried him out of the cart and into his rooms and she made him go to bed and she fetched a hot stone for his feet and hot broth for him to drink and she sat beside him until he slept. Then she went to Madame Ezra and told her faithfully what had happened. Madame Ezra listened, her dark and tragic eyes fixed on Peony’s face, and Peony braced herself, prepared herself for temper. But Madame Ezra was not angry. She heard, she sighed, and then she said quietly, “Now that he has seen the grave, we will forget the past and prepare for the future.”

It was the first time in all her life that Peony had heard such words from Madame Ezra, to whom the past had always been most dear, and she pitied this older woman and felt a new love for her. “My dear mistress,” she said gently, “I promise you that the future will be happy for you, too.”

Madame Ezra shook her head and two tears fell out of her eyes. “If God wills,” she murmured.

Peony bowed and did not answer this, but as she went away to her own bed she thought to herself that gods had little indeed to do with mortal happiness.

The day of David’s wedding dawned clear and cold. The day stood alone in the calendar of early winter. It was near no feast day, and there were no memories about it. It was simply a day chosen by the geomancer under Kung Chen’s direction, a lucky day when the horoscopes of the man and woman met under a fortunate star.

Since David was young, since his strength and health had returned to him fully, since his heart was restless and eager to live again, he rose with some excitement and even with joy. He had allowed himself to become possessed gradually with the thought of the pretty girl coming now to be his wife. It was inevitable, he told himself. Even had his mother wished to put another daughter of their people in Leah’s place, there was no other. Among their people the poor were more than the rich, and there was no family to match the House of Ezra. With all her zeal, he knew his mother was too prudent to bring into the house a daughter-in-law with many poor and greedy kinsfolk. If not a Leah, then why not the pretty girl he had seen and knew he could love?

Thus thinking, David loosed the cords that had bound his heart and he welcomed his marriage day.

Never had Peony found him so fanciful and so willful. He rose early and he washed himself in three baths, the last perfumed, and he was dissatisfied with the way his hair curled, and she must brush it as straight as she could with scented oils. He had wanted every garment new, and these new garments had been made of a clear yellow silk, and now he wished them pale green. The yellow, he said, made him look too dark.

Peony lost her patience at last. “But you yourself ordered the yellow!” she cried.

“You should have advised me against it,” he said in great discontent.

“Be still,” she urged. “There is no time to make others.”

So he put on the yellow, and then he was pleased with it after all, for his Chinese robes were of bright blue, and the yellow under-linings were pleasant enough. Over the brocaded blue satin he wore a black velvet jacket buttoned down the front with jade buttons. That his little bride be not frightened, David had chosen to wear Chinese garments altogether for this day, and upon his head he put a round black satin cap and on its top was a round red button.

When all was finished he stood up before Peony for her inspection, and when she saw him there, tall and smiling, his head high, his feet together, the tears swam up into her eyes.

He stepped forward quickly and put his arm around her. “Peony!” he cried softly. “Why do you weep?”

She leaned her cheek for one moment against him. Then she laughed and slipped out of his arm. “You are too beautiful!” she declared. She made herself very busy. “Let me put your collar straight. Have you rubbed musk on your palms as I bade you? David, you will be very happy—I know it—I feel it in my heart!”

“But are you happy?” he insisted.

She turned grave then and she took his hand and put it to her cheek. “I am happy,” she said softly. “Now I know that I shall live in this house—forever and forever, until I die.”

With these words she fled as swiftly as a swallow. But he took her words and considered them. Did she indeed so love him? He was most tender, thinking of her. Peony would demand nothing of him. She could live quite happily here, content with what her life gave her and asking for no stretch of heart or spirit, or for anything that was beyond right and proportion to what she was. He would look after her welfare and keep her with him so long as they lived, not quite his sister, but something more than servant. He would be good to her.

And now his father and mother were coming. He saw them enter the gate, side by side, dressed in their wedding garments. Each had bought new robes, and Ezra’s was of brown satin and Madame Ezra’s was the deep color of purple grapes edged with gold. Ezra had left off his small cap, and Madame Ezra’s gray hair was bare. They came with measured steps, in silence, and he went to meet them and bowed before them. He saw his mother had been weeping, for her eyes were swollen and her lips still quivered, but she did not speak. It was Ezra who said what must be said.

“Are you content, my son?” Ezra asked.

“Well content,” David replied steadily.

He bowed and they bowed to him and then he went with them to the great hall, and there they waited.

Now in another room Wang Ma and Peony waited, too, for the bride. Whispering and peeping at every corner and window were the women servants and the undermaids, and all were expectant and excited. Was the new bride pretty and would she be good to them? Rumors were that she was the prettiest girl in the city, but these were usual rumors before a bride was seen.

At noon, exactly, the bride’s sedan, covered with red satin curtains, arrived at the great gate and a small sedan for Chu Ma and with them panoplied mule carts bringing the bride’s family and their attendants. The sedan was carried into the courts and thence into the place where Peony and Wang Ma waited. Chu Ma came out of her sedan first. But Peony herself, with a begging word, opened the curtains of the bride’s sedan and offered her arm to the bride.

From all around the court sighs and exclamations rose into the air.

“Ah, she is very pretty!”

“Ah, it is all true!”

“Look at her great eyes!”

“Her little feet—”

If the bride heard, she made no sign. She stepped daintily into the doorway, one hand on Peony’s arm and the other on Chu Ma’s.

“Carefully, my mistress!” Chu Ma said in a loud voice. She considered it beneath her to notice any other servants, and she went ahead to smooth the cushion on the chair set for the bride and to feel if it were soft enough and she called imperiously, “Where is the tea? Is it the best? My mistress drinks only what is brewed from the leaves plucked before the rains!”

But Peony had all prepared, and after the little bride had sat a while she grew curious, and since only women were there she put aside her veil. She looked about the room with her big black eyes. “Is this to be my room?” she inquired in her high sweet voice.

“Hush!” Chu Ma said. She pursed her lips. “Brides are not to speak—I told you, you naughty child!”

“I will speak,” the little bride said willfully. “Besides, you said only if there was a man in the room.”

Everyone laughed at this and she laughed, too. Then she saw Peony standing near. “I am glad you are in this house!” she exclaimed. “You are no older than I, are you?”

“I am eighteen, my lady,” Peony said.

“So am I,” the bride said, and clapped her hands, and everybody laughed again. Then she leaned forward to Peony. “Tell me—is his mother very strange?”

Peony shook her head and put her hand over her mouth to hide her smiles.

“But she is foreign?” Kueilan insisted.

“Yes—but not as much as she was,” Peony said.

Madame Ezra had indeed changed very much. She had grown silent and she did not always put her will first. When Leah died, something died in her, too. This all had perceived, without understanding what it was. But Peony knew.

Now there were footsteps in the court. They looked up and there stood David. At once there was confusion, for this was not the time for him to appear.

Chu Ma cried out in alarm, “Your veil, little one!”

But Kueilan did not put up her hand to her veil. Instead she looked at David and he at her. All in the room were astounded at what they saw was happening and they took it to be a foreign custom.

“I know I do what may be considered wrong,” David said to Kueilan very gently. He looked at her without shame, and indeed with the greatest pleasure. She did not reply but she gazed back at him as though she forgot that she should drop her eyes. They looked at each other, and then she said in a small breathless voice, “I think it is not wrong!”

“Then we agree,” David answered, and after a long look more, he bowed and went away. When he was gone Kueilan sat smiling like a little goddess and heard not one word of Chu Ma’s scolding or the smothered laughter from the walls. She let Chu Ma drop her veil and she sat behind it, her eyes bright and her mouth demure.

But Chu Ma continued to scold and she said in distraction, “It is not well for the man to see the woman too early—it brings ill luck to the marriage.”

No one gave her heed, for Peony now hastened the wedding. “Let me lead you to the great hall,” she said to the bride, and the little figure in the stiff embroidered robes of scarlet satin rose and leaned on her arm and Chu Ma went on the other side, and all followed. In the great hall Kung Chen waited with his wife and his sons by his side. Across the room Ezra and Madame Ezra and Kao Lien stood alone. There had been some talk of the Rabbi’s being present, but this morning when Ezra went to see the old man in the rooms where he lived in this house, he found him so dazed and befuddled that he feared to bring him out before guests, and he had left him there under the care of Old Eli, who had been brought here as his servant. As for that Aaron, none had heard of him yet.

The family of Kung missed neither the Rabbi nor his son. They watched the entrance of their child with feelings various and natural to them. The sons were dubious for their sister, but the younger son especially so. The eldest son shared with his father the prudence of business and unity within the nation. Through this little sister the House of Ezra ceased by so much to be foreign, and since Ezra was known as a kind good man, and very rich besides, it was enough. Madame Kung was serene, never exerting herself to worry or overmuch thought, and she saw that the child looked as she should and thought that the marriage was good enough for a third daughter, although she was secretly pleased that the two elder girls were well married to wealthy Chinese families. She held back a yawn, stared at Madame Ezra, and pitied her for being so tall and having so high a nose.