Peony: A Novel of China (43 page)

So she consoled Kueilan, and Kueilan, feeling warm toward Peony, coaxed her thus: “Come and visit us again—why not? The maids do not listen to me as well as they did to you, Peony. My eldest son is lazy at his books and his father beat him for it yesterday and I cried and then he was angry with me. If you come, they will all listen to you, Peony, as they always did.”

But Peony, still smiling, shook her head and gave the baby back to his nurse.

“You are the same Peony, even if your head is shaven,” Kueilan coaxed.

Peony was startled. Did these words uncover her heart? Was it because she was shaven and a nun that she did not want David to see her? She grew grave, and by her silence Kueilan thought she had won her way. When she went home that day she told David that she had persuaded Peony to come and visit them for a day, and then he turned grave, too, and silent.

In her cell again, Peony cruelly examined her heart. It is true, she thought. I dread his eyes upon me.

There was no mirror in any nun’s room, but she filled her basin with clear water and she bent over it in the faint sunlight at the end of that day and she saw herself dimly. For the first time she saw her hair gone, and she thought herself ugly. Nothing else could she see, not her dark quiet eyes or her red lips or the smooth outlines of her young face. Her whole beauty, it seemed to her now, had been in her hair, in the braid she used to knot over one ear, in the flowers she had loved to wear in it. For one long moment she looked at herself. Then she lifted the basin and poured the water out of the open window upon a bed of lilies that grew beside the wall.

It is my punishment to let him see me, she told herself.

Yet she did not go for two full years more to the house of David. Kueilan bore her fifth child, this time a daughter, and had conceived her sixth, when one day a servant came in haste to the nunnery to beg Peony to come, because the eldest son of the house lay dying. She gave Peony a folded paper, and Peony opened it, and there David had written a few words.

“For my son’s sake, come.”

“I will come,” she told the maidservant, and she hastened to the Mother Abbess for permission. The Abbess had grown old and frail in the last few years and she never left her cell. To all she was kind, but Peony she loved exceedingly, as the daughter she had never had. Now she clasped Peony’s hand and held it a moment.

“The fire in you is quenched?” she asked.

“Yes, Mother,” Peony said.

“Then go, my child,” the Abbess replied, “and while you are away, I will pray for the boy’s life.”

So Peony went out that day from the refuge that was now her home, and as she walked along the street she quieted her beating heart with steady prayers, her rosary of brown satinwood twisted in her fingers. When she entered the familiar gate David was there waiting for her, and her heart quickened until her will commanded stillness. She looked at him fearlessly, determined that their eyes should not speak anything but cool friendship.

“Peony!” David cried, and she felt his eyes searching out the change in her.

“My name is Clear Peace,” she told him, smiling. No, she would not be afraid to smile.

“I think of you always as Peony,” David replied.

She did not answer this. “Where is your son?” she asked.

They were walking side by side now, she quieting her heart, her fingers busy with her rosary. She had forgotten how tall he was, how strong. The air of youth was gone, and he was a man powerful and grave. She took pride in him without feeling sin, and she looked up at him and met his eyes again. “You have not changed so much,” he said abruptly. “Well—except for your hair.”

“I have changed very much,” she said cheerfully. “Now take me to the child.”

“Ah, my son,” he sighed.

So they quickened their steps and went into the rooms where David and his two elder sons now lived. Each boy when he had reached the age of seven had left his mother’s courts and come to live with his father, and David led Peony into his room and there in his own bed lay the sick boy. He was no longer a child—that Peony saw at once. His tall slender frame lay outstretched on the bed. He was breathing but choking at every breath, and his face was flushed and his eyes were closed.

Peony took his wrist between her fingers and felt the pulse too swift to count. “We have no time to waste!” she exclaimed. “There is poisoned mucus in his throat.”

Now Peony, as all the nuns must, had been much with the sick, and she knew a disease had fallen upon the city this year, borne hither upon evil winds from the north. So she ordered a servant to bring a lamp with a strong wick, and another to cut a length of soft new bamboo and bring it to her. While she waited she dipped cloths in hot water and bound them about the boy’s throat to warm his muscles. As soon as she had the thin bamboo tube in her fingers, she bade David hold the boy hard, and set a manservant to hold his feet. Then delicately pressing the thumb and finger of her left hand to his jaw, she forced open his mouth and she put down the tube and sucked on it slowly. The boy choked and struggled but she persevered until a clot came up into the tube and he fell back with a great gasp.

“Burn this tube in fire,” she told the servant. “It is full of poison. And bring me wine to give him.”

She stood watching and motionless until the wine was brought and she poured some of it into the boy’s throat, and then she washed her own mouth with the wine, too, and spat it out into a silver cuspidor that stood by the bed.

“He is better!” David exclaimed with joy.

“He will live,” Peony said.

Nevertheless she did not leave the bedside until near dark, when the laws of the nunnery said she must return. The next day she came back, and every day indeed until the lad was well again.

By that time she knew that she must come often. David needed her sorely, for he was perplexed by growing children and impetuous sons and too many servants who were lazy and disobedient, and harassed because his own prosperous business took him much away. Peony saw clearly the years ahead when sons and daughters must be betrothed and weddings planned and all the life of a great and busy house be carried on to other generations. And she could come safely, for David loved his wife. This Peony saw with lingering pain. Indeed, she asked herself, why should there be any pain? Had she not brought Kueilan into this house? It was not Kueilan who had sent her out of it. The marriage she had fostered had flowered and borne seed. Between David and Kueilan now there was the close fleshly bond of house and home and children and prosperity, and all their life was entwined together. Was this not what she had hoped would be?

The restlessness in David was gone. He had forgotten, or so it seemed to her, that there had ever been a life in this house different from his own. Even the vestiges of his mother had been taken away. The scroll above the table in the great hall was gone and instead a painting hung there of crags and clouds and pines. By whose command this was done Peony did not ask, but there it was, and it signified the change in the house—yes, and in David, too. He was content.

So Peony came and went through many years, and she met David and Kueilan as equals, and as time went on as something more than equal. They came to lean on her and to wait for her advice, and she spoke with authority in their house.

When Peony had been for ten years the nun named Clear Peace, the Mother Abbess died. During those years Peony had grown to such a place of reverence that when the old abbess had been buried, she was chosen by the nuns to take her place as mother abbess. She had less time then to visit David’s house, for she had her own house of women to govern, and she did it wisely, without casting down the spirit or wounding the heart of any creature, even to the lowliest kitchen nun.

Now followed the years when Peony and David came to perfect understanding. She, being Mother Abbess, was free to go out as she liked, and none could breathe against her name. Neither was she any longer young. David’s two elder sons were married and their wives and children lived in his house, and the next one was betrothed. His eldest daughter married young into a Chinese house, and his sons’ wives were all Chinese.

It might have been forgotten that this house was anything but Chinese except that David’s fourth son grew up so different from the others that he reminded his father now and then of what his ancestors had been. Hothearted, impetuous, excitable, strong, this fourth son kept the household in turmoil. Peony laughed at him and loved him best of all, and in some strange fashion he became the son of her childless heart.

“Leave him to me,” she told David one day when the father and son had quarreled again, as they did so often. “I understand him better than you do—because he is more like you than you know.”

“I was never like this young fool!” David protested.

To this Peony only smiled.

So the years passed, and as the three, Peony, David, and Kueilan, grew old, each year was better than the last. Between the two wiser ones Kueilan was treated as a dear and older child, and they made much of her and laughed a little over her head. She allowed herself to be spoiled and she used her tongue to berate them sometimes and she pouted when they laughed at her, but she leaned upon their love.

It was a prosperous house, and David was one of the city’s honored elders and Peony was its wise woman. Their age fell gently upon them all.

In the city, the synagogue was now a heap of dust. Brick by brick the poor of the city had taken the last ruin of the synagogue away. The carvings were gone, too, and there remained at last only three great stone tablets, and of these three, then only two. These two stood stark under the sky for a long time, and then a Christian, a foreigner, bought them.

This made an uproar in the city. The son of David’s fourth son, surnamed Chao, had sold the stones. Upon his head the wrath of the city’s governor fell. “How is it you, unfilial son, have sold the stones of your ancestors to a Christian foreigner?” the governor demanded. “He must return them, lest he take them away from our country to his own and the dead of your house rise up to reproach us.” And he ordered his guards to throw this Chao into jail.

But Chao had the blood of Madame Ezra still strong in him and he shouted through the bars, “Though you heap a fortune on me, I will not ask this Christian to give back the stones! They belonged to our religion, which has come to an end in this land, but his religion sprang from ours and let him keep the stones.”

Now this Chao was supported by all that family of Chao which had sprung from the loins of David ben Ezra, and they pointed out to the governor of the city that for scores of years the stones had stood under snow and rain and sun until they were cracked, and none had protected them. Why then should there be complaint if they were sold?

There was no one to make compromise until it was remembered in the city that the Mother Abbess had known the family well, and so the governor sent his messengers to her and she received them at the gate of the nunnery, since it was the law that no man could step beyond the threshold.

Peony was very old now, but her mind was clear and cool and she heard the messengers. Then still standing she gave out wisdom, and these were her words:

“This one surnamed Chao was a lively child and he grew into the man you know. It is his nature to spend his life in the jail unless a way is found for him to come out without leaving his pride behind him. I knew his father before him and his father before that. I will tell you the way: The foreigner shall keep these sacred stones he has bought but he shall not take them from our city. Let him set them before his own temple, and let him build a pavilion over them to preserve them for the generations to come.”

The men looked at one another and scratched their jaws and acknowledged that the Mother Abbess was wise indeed, and they thanked her and went away.

Even as Peony had said it was done. There in the new temple the stones stand to this day, under the shelter of the pavilion. Upon them are carved the ancient words “The Temple of Purity and Truth,” and beneath the words are carved the history of the Jews and their Way, and it is there said, “The Way has no form or figure, but is made in the image of the Way of Heaven, which is above.”

When Peony had returned to her cell she pondered long. Her memory brought back to life all the story of the House of Ezra, in which her own life had been entwined by some chance, for some purpose she did not understand, except that she knew that whatever happened was Heaven’s will. That strong and powerful family, the seed of Israel and Ezra and David, were they one day to be no more, even as the synagogue was gone, which their ancestors had made for a temple of their God? Had she done evil when she had enticed David away from Leah to marry Kueilan?

Long she pondered, and as often happened to her in her great age, the answer came to her. She had not done wrong, for nothing was lost. “Nothing is lost,” she repeated. “He lives again and again, among our people,” she mused. “Where there is a bolder brow, a brighter eye, there is one like him; where a voice sings most clearly, there is one; where a line is drawn most cleverly to make a picture clear, a carving strong, there is one; where a statesman stands most honorable, a judge most just, there is one; where a scholar is most learned, there is one; where a woman is both beautiful and wise, there is one. Their blood is lively in whatever frame it flows, and when the frame is gone, its very dust enriches the still kindly soil. Their spirit is born anew in every generation. They are no more and yet they live forever.”

T
HE CHINESE JEWS OF
Kaifeng represent one of the most obscure, and one of the most fascinating chapters in the annals of the Jewish diaspora. Throughout
Peony,
interwoven within the fictional events surrounding the House of Ezra, Pearl S. Buck has managed to convey with historical accuracy the Jews at the twilight of their existence in Kaifeng—a people at once assimilated and yet set apart from their neighbors.

That the daughter of Protestant missionaries could so effectively impart the depth of feeling and concern behind a Jewish family aware of its imminent spiritual demise, yet deeply cognizant of its obligation to carry on the traditions of its forefathers in a foreign land—all the while exhibiting authentic Chinese sensibilities—is a testimony to the greatness of the writer herself.