Peony: A Novel of China (36 page)

Who could tire of such fare? And yet there were the vegetarian inns where devout Buddhists could feast, those who gave up eating meat for the sake of their souls. At those inns vegetables were shaped and flavored until the feasters could have sworn them meat, except they had no flesh of any animal in them. The eyes of the devout were satisfied and their palates tasted the semblance of the meats they had denied themselves, while their souls were saved.

“How clever are these people!” David exclaimed each day when he discovered such new things. Indeed, the pleasures he had enjoyed in his youth seemed small in comparison to the variety that he now found in Peking. The finest theaters were here, the best shows of juggling and magic, and the most famous singers and musicians and scholars.

While he waited for audience with the two empresses, David released his soul and he enjoyed every pleasure that the city had. Nor was he selfish and solitary. Each morning he spent on business for his father and Kung Chen, and he visited every rich merchant in the city and he made many new contracts for the delivery of goods and he took orders for fabulous articles from Europe and from India. For the merchants here knew of machines and cloths and lamps and toys made abroad and they craved these things for themselves and for sale. Especially did they want clocks. The great gilt clock that years ago Kao Lien had brought as a gift for the Emperor was now matched by many others in the palace. In one room, so David heard, there were more than a hundred clocks. What had been a royal gift for one now became a thing coveted by common men, and David wrote to his father:

“Clocks can be sold here by the many thousand, I think, especially those not too high in price, yet ornate with gilt and figures. But all foreign goods are valued. These people have the best of everything, the finest silks and satins and embroideries, the richest jewelry and furniture, and yet their love of novelty is such that they will buy any trickery of foreign stuff.”

When the morning’s business was over David spent his afternoon with his family, unless the day was raining or, worse than rainy, clouded with dust, which the high winds blew over the city from distant deserts. Holding his sons’ hands, David walked in temple forests and sat in theaters and visited every bazaar and fakirs’ show place, and with him often was his wife, shy at being seen abroad and yet made bold by curiosity. Whether Kueilan went or not, and sometimes she complained that her feet hurt her and she could not walk, Peony went always with the children, and now she too knew the happiest times of her whole life. With David and his sons she laughed and watched and was amazed at many sights. She was never tired, and she was always amiable, and as the weeks passed easily, more and more it was she who went and not her mistress.

For Kueilan had made friends with some of the ladies of the merchants, and she grew fond of gambling with them. From one house to another these ladies went, one day here and one day there, traveling in their curtained sedans, and they spent the whole afternoon and evening at mah-jongg, until it became their passion. In this the serving maids encouraged them, since before each lady said good night to the others she must for courtesy’s sake put silver in a bowl upon the table, and this the maids divided between them. Peony took no share, for she considered herself above such money, but careful always to wound no feelings, she excused herself to the others saying, “Since I must stay with the little lords and their father and I cannot help you who serve our mistress, it would not be just for me to share the serving money.”

There was no talk of quick return to their old home. For one thing, the presentation of the gifts David had brought to the empresses was delayed until they were ready to receive him, and the delay stretched into months because they were busy with the repairs needed for the palace. While the court had been in exile there had been much ruin, and this must all be mended. But far beyond this were the vast plans the Western Empress had for a new palace and for added courts and pools and bridges and rockeries and gardens. The Imperial Treasury was impoverished by wars with the white men and by the rebellion of the southern Christians. The Western Empress demanded therefore new taxes and tributes, especially for the building of the Summer Palace and for the beautifying of the lake there. She dreamed of a marble boat set in the lake that would be large enough for all her ladies to dine in and then to see a play whose actors might number into hundreds. Her ministers groaned to think of such expense, and rumors went out over the city of her ambitions and her willfulness. The ministers besought her to remember that the wars with the white men had been lost for lack of a good army, and that swords were not enough these days when outer nations had gunpowder. But the Western Empress answered arrogantly thus: “When the Imperial Court is glorious, the nation shares its glory,” and the rumor of this went over the city, too.

Yet the people laughed when they heard of the pride and strength of the young empress and they took it as a good sign. Weakness and languor in the ruler were feared, and there was neither in the Western Empress. Even rumors of her quarrels with the Eastern Empress were made the stuff for jokes and songs, and hardihood and willfulness entered into the spirit of the people because it was in the young empress.

Early in the summer David received at last the summons to the court and he made ready to appear. The hour was soon after dawn, when the audience with the ministers was over, and the empresses were ready to receive proposals of new revenue and gifts.

Peony rose early indeed and she helped David to dress himself and saw to it that he had food and that all was in readiness. She went with him to the gate and behind her stood the servants, awed to know their master was to be received at court. They all gazed at David, very fine in new garments of blue silk and black velvet, his tasseled hat upon his head and jade rings on his thumbs, as he stepped into his great sedan chair.

Peony watched until the chair disappeared and then she went back to bed. She could not sleep—that was beyond her—and in an hour or two she must rise and see that the children were fed, cared for, and happy, and later than that the feast was prepared for her mistress that night, for the ladies were to play mah-jongg here. When David would return she did not know, but the house must be ready for that, too, and her mistress up and dressed and waiting to hear the story he would have to tell. For Peony was always careful to prepare her mistress to be all that she should be as a wife. She did not allow Kueilan to appear before her husband with her hair uncombed or her dress wrinkled. Kueilan grumbled often, saying, “I am an old married woman now, Peony, and shall I have no peace? First it is my feet I unbound to please you and now it is my hair to be a trouble to me and then it is my eyebrows to be plucked and my fingernails painted and you have me perfumed like a flower girl. When am I to have some peace?”

To this Peony only smiled and said, “It gives your lord pleasure, does it not, my lady?”

One day when Peony had so answered Kueilan threw her a shrewd look and she said, “It is only to please him, then? You do not care for me.”

Peony felt her heart stop. Then she said smoothly, “I take it that what gives him pleasure gives you the most pleasure, too, but if I am wrong, Lady, please instruct me.”

This put Kueilan in a difficulty, for how could she say she did not wish to give her husband pleasure? She was silent, but after that Peony took care never to mention David to her again. She learned more wisdom, and her soul grew deep as life itself.

When David came back at midmorning, looking weary but triumphant, the whole house was waiting to receive him, his wife dressed and pretty, the children clean and eager, and the servants respectful and yet curious.

Peony met him at the gate. “Is it too much to ask that you tell us what has happened? We wait to know, and with one telling it will be told to all.”

“First let me eat and drink, for I am faint,” David replied. “We were not allowed to sit down and I had to bow myself on my knees until they are sore.”

She followed him into the house and to his own rooms and took the heavy hat from his head, and the stiff brocaded robe he next laid aside, and the high velvet boots. Then she fetched his easy robe of summer silk and his low satin shoes and he ate and drank food that she ordered brought to him and he slept an hour and then he was ready.

In the great hall of the house Peony assembled all, and David sat down in the highest seat and looked about at his family and servants. The day was fine and the summer sunshine fell into the court and shone through the wide-open doors and he thought to himself that what he had was well enough to make a man proud. His wife sat across the table from him, and she wore a soft green satin robe, and jade was in her ears and in the knot of her hair and gold and jade were upon her hands and wrists. She was as pretty as the girl he had first seen in Kung Chen’s hall. Near her stood his two handsome sons, dressed like little men in long silk robes, their hair braided in queues and corded with red silk. The third son was now beginning to walk, and his nurse held him by a broad silk girdle and followed him as he staggered everywhere. Peony sat near the door, and he knew her quiet beautiful face. The servants stood together clean and waiting. He took up his tea bowl, sipped and set it down, and then began:

“You must understand that it is no easy matter to appear before the empresses. I waited for more than two hours in an anteroom with others who had been granted audience today, and we were given no seats or tea. A eunuch led us there and bade us wait, and it was the Chief Steward himself who was to call us. But when he came he had first to teach us what to expect and how to behave. The Eastern Empress, he told us, was ill today and only the Western Empress would receive us. We were not to look at the Imperial Screen behind which we sat—”

At this point David’s elder son cried out, “Dieh-dieh, did you not see her?”

David shook his head. “No one is allowed to see her, my first son. She is empress but she is also a woman—a beautiful one, and a widow. Her behavior is correct.

“Well, we all went in, and I was given the third place—”

“Why the third place, Dieh-dieh?” his son asked again.

At this David looked impatient and Peony rose softly and led the little boy to her side and held him in her arm. Then David went on: “That I am third is because I have no official rank and there were two before me who had. I was the first of those without rank, and this is because Kung Chen has special favor in our province and has been mentioned at the court by our provincial governor.”

So David went on, and he told how he came in and how he bowed his head to the floor and how he must stay in that position until his name was called, and how then he stood with bowed head and presented his gifts, which had been taken from him at the door when he entered. He explained that the gifts were from Europe, not as good as anything already here, but still he hoped that Her Majesty would find a moment’s idle pleasure in their curiosity. Then he spoke of the House of Ezra and its contracts with the House of Kung, and he thanked the Empress because although his ancestors came from foreign lands, yet they had lived here in peace.

At this point David stopped and looked at them with some pride. “When I said this, the Western Empress spoke to me.”

“What did she say?” Kueilan asked.

“She asked me if you were foreign too, but I said no. Then she asked me if I had children and I said yes, three sons. Now hear me—she commanded me to bring my sons and let her see them, because she has never seen children of foreign blood!”

What consternation, pride, and excitement now fell on David’s family!

“Did she set a day?” his wife exclaimed.

“Tomorrow, at four in the afternoon, we are all to go. I am to wait in the anteroom, but you and the children and their nurses must go to the garden where the ladies of the court will be gathering flowers. The Chief Steward will take you there and you are to stay only as long as he says and then come back.”

“Peony must come with me,” Kueilan said immediately.

“Oh, no!” Peony exclaimed.

“Yes, you must go,” David said with authority. “It is only you who can stop a child from crying.”

So it was decided, and for once Kueilan was too distraught to play her mah-jongg well and that night she was peevish when Peony came to put her to bed because she had lost so much money.

“Your lord is rich and generous,” Peony reminded her. “He will not reproach you, Lady.”

But Kueilan did not want to be comforted and she continued peevish until Peony left her in bed and went to tell David that she was ready to go to sleep.

She found him very meditative in his garden, sitting under a twisted pine tree in a bamboo chair. He heard her message and inclined his head but he did not rise for a moment. Peony waited, perceiving that he had been thinking and might want to tell her what he thought. When he did not speak she asked a question to excuse her lingering.

“How did the voice of the Western Empress sound in your ears?”

“Strong and fresh, but without sweetness,” he answered.

Then he said what was in his mind. “Peony, I never felt so clearly before the imperial clemency that has been shown to my people. She knew me foreign, she heard me give her thanks—and all she wished was to see my children.”

“Woman’s curiosity in an empress,” Peony said smiling.

“But no dislike!” he exclaimed.

“Why should there be dislike when your people have never made a war here or taken what was not yours of land or goods?” Peony asked warmly. “You have been good people—and you and your father are good men.”

David looked at her strangely. “Our goodness has not saved us elsewhere in the world,” he said.

“Those other foreign peoples are unreasonable,” Peony retorted. “We have been taught reason with our mothers’ milk.”

Upon this she went away, and the more she pondered what David had said, the more she was not certain whether it had been well to have him grateful to the Empress or whether it were a good sign that she had made him feel foreign again. Peony sighed and for the first time wished that a day had been set for their return to their own city.