Peony: A Novel of China (17 page)

It was Rachel’s husband, whose duty it was to keep the synagogue clean.

“You should not sleep here,” the Rabbi said. “The worship is long over.”

“It is so quiet here,” Old Eli said in apology. “Except on holy days there is no one here but you, Teacher, and this is not your hour.”

“Come here,” the Rabbi commanded him suddenly. He waited until he heard the man’s shambling footsteps come near. Then he said, “Tell me—what of the silver vessels?”

Old Eli coughed the tinny cough of the aged. “Those vessels,” he muttered. “Well—”

“Tell me!” the Rabbi said sharply.

“They’re pewter now,” Eli said.

“I felt the difference,” the Rabbi muttered. “I knew it when I held them this morning.” He lifted his head and upon his face there was inexpressible pain.

“Why do you trouble yourself, Teacher?” Eli asked in pity. “Young priests are always—” he broke off.

The Rabbi began to tremble. “Tell me what my son has done,” he commanded.

Old Eli coughed and delayed and wiped his head and face with his sleeve but he could not disobey. He laughed painfully to show nothing was sorrowful and then he said comfortingly, “The pewter vessels are silver-washed and they look just as the old ones did. You know the Chinese pewter workers are clever and when the young teacher told them—”

“My son has sold the silver vessels from the synagogue!” the Rabbi muttered.

“But do not let him know I told you,” Old Eli said in a small voice.

“And only I knew the difference!” the old Rabbi muttered. “Those who came to worship—”

“Not many come now, Teacher,” Old Eli said to comfort him.

The Rabbi wavered and Eli tottered forward and put his hands under the Rabbi’s elbows. “Come with me, Teacher,” he said. “Come and rest. You are too old to grieve. Old people should be happy, like children. Now is your time to sleep and sit in the sun and eat good food and let all serve you.”

“You talk like a Chinese,” the Rabbi said.

He spoke bitterly but Old Eli laughed. “Eh, yes—but of my seven parts six parts are Chinese! Outside the synagogue they call me Old Li. I answer to the name.”

As he spoke he guided the Rabbi tenderly out of the synagogue and into his house again, and there he sat him down and busied himself with everything to make him comfortable. He went to the kitchen and bade Rachel bring a bowl of broth, and the Rabbi let him do what he would. He sat like one stunned by a stone fallen upon his head. Only once he spoke while he supped his broth, and it was to say in the voice of a broken heart, “You are kinder to me than my own son is.”

“Now, now,” Old Eli said, “young priests—it’s hard for them.”

After Eli had gone, the Rabbi took these words and turned them over in his mind. “Yes,” he murmured after a long time, “yes, it is hard for my son. O Jehovah! If another is to take his place, Thy will be done. I will go to the house of Ezra.”

Thus it was the Rabbi found the will of God. The next day after this Sabbath, taking with him Aaron, he went to the house of Ezra. But he bade Rachel stay in his house and keep it ready for their return. To Aaron, his son, the Rabbi said nothing, either in reproof or in sorrow.

For three days Peony kept in her table drawer the poem that Kueilan had bade her give David, awaiting a proper time to give it to him. Such a time did not come. For after the Sabbath he withdrew himself, spending much time with his father in the counting-house. He was little at home, indeed, and when he came late in the evening, he avoided all women and sat alone in his rooms, reading. Peony waited for this mood to pass, knowing it useless to force his heart out of its hermitage. Then before she could find the moment she sought, the Rabbi came with his son, Aaron, and they were put into the court next to Ezra’s.

Now David was cut off from her indeed. She served him in her usual ways, but more quietly than she had before, and her eyes were pensive. He did not seem to see her. He spent his mornings with the Rabbi and the old man commanded Aaron to sit with them too. Aaron, somewhat afraid in this great house where everything was under the eyes of Madame Ezra, did not rebel. Peony took care to be the one sometimes to bring hot tea to the room that she might see how it went with David, and she saw him poring over the books unrolled and open upon the table before him, and Aaron fidgeting and always ready to look up and out the door. This Aaron had learned to be silent whatever he did, so that his blind father could not know how his eyes roved and how he yawned. Then after a few days Leah came, too, to read the books. This was because David had told his mother how troublesome was Aaron and Madame Ezra grew alarmed lest Aaron anger David, and so she bade Leah be present, and if Aaron were disobedient, Madame Ezra declared, she herself would come. This Leah was to tell Aaron to frighten him, and she did.

When Peony saw that every day Leah was to be there at David’s side she knew that she could not wait for an opportune time. One night when she took the last pot of hot tea to David’s sitting room as she used to do until this change had come into the house, she paused and coughed. He was in his bedroom, and some new delicacy now forbade her to go in as freely as she had.

He came to the door at once to inquire what she wanted. He had taken off his outer robe and he stood in his white silk inner coat and trousers, his eyes clear, his cheeks red, and seeing him, Peony’s ready heart melted with love.

“I bring you tea,” she said softly.

“Why do you tell me?” he asked in surprise. “Why do you not bring it in as you always did?”

Then she came in, and after she had set down the tea she put her hand into her pocket and drew out the folded paper and held it toward him. “I have waited to give you this,” she said, “but no good time seems to come because you are so busy now.”

He took it and sat down and she stood while he read the poem, and he looked up and saw her standing. “Sit down,” he commanded her. So she sat down and he read the poem over again. Then he lifted his eyes to hers. “It is very pretty,” he said. “Did she write it?”

“With her own brush I saw her write it,” Peony replied. Then she confessed to him, “I took her your poem—the unfinished one.”

“You saw her?” he repeated, not seeming to care what Peony had done.

She nodded.

He leaned upon the table. “How did she look?” he asked.

Peony shook her head. “It is better not to speak of her.”

“And why?” he asked. His eyes were inscrutable, and he continued to hold the poem.

Peony looked sorrowful. “She is gentle, young, pretty—so soft—she must not be crushed.”

David flushed somewhat. “I do not know what you mean,” he argued.

Peony looked steadily grave. “Ah, yes, you know,” she retorted. “Having seen you, she is ready to love you, poor little beauty, and when she knows—” She paused.

“Knows what?” David prompted her.

She shook her head and was silent and he grew angry. He threw the poem on the table. “Now, Peony, I command you to tell me what you mean. If there is one thing I hate above another it is a woman who hints in and out and around something that she has in her mind and will not speak it out.”

At this Peony grew angry too, and she put her eyes full upon him and spoke passionately. “You must not see her—that is what I mean! She is beginning to think about you, and she must not!”

“This is not for you to say,” he retorted. “Why do you want to part me from her?”

Secretly David was amazed at his own guile. Had he not allowed Leah to think he loved her? The memory of that moment in the peach garden when Leah had stood in his arms came back to him, as it had many times in these few days. It was welcome and unwelcome. Sometimes his blood ran swifter at the thought of her. When he saw her face, earnest and lovely, bent above the Torah, or lifted to look with devotion at her father, he was moved. And yet David was coming to understand that his marriage was no ordinary one. When he chose, it would be for more than himself. However he might wish he were like other men, he knew he was not.

“I am not thinking of you,” Peony said, “I am thinking of Kueilan.”

He felt suddenly angry with Peony. “You used to think of me!” he cried.

“Why should I any more?” Peony asked.

Her voice rang with a harshness he had never heard before and her face was smooth and cold. He was shocked. “Peony!” he said. “What has happened to you?”

She bent her head. “Nothing has happened to me,” she said. “It is you—”

“But I am just the same,” he insisted.

She shook her head. “Not now.”

He put out his hand across the table and caught hers. She tried to pull hers away.

“Let me go!” she cried.

“No!” he cried back. “Not until you have told me how she looked!” This he said to cover his confusion.

There was a long pause. He held her hand, locking his fingers into hers, and she could scarcely keep hers from trembling. She wanted to pull her hand from his and she wanted him to hold it. She was about to weep and her heart beat hard against her breast. Then she began in a small voice, not looking at him:

“She—she wore a—a fern-green—”

“Her face,” he commanded.

“But you know she is very pretty,” she said.

“Tell me how pretty,” he commanded.

So she began again. “Well—well—her mouth is small, the lower lip a little more full than the upper, red as pomegranate—such small white teeth—a small tongue—when she wrote the poem I could see her tongue like a kitten’s, touching her lip.” She paused.

“What else?” he demanded.

“Her eyes—very black—and shaped like apricots—eyebrows like willow leaves, you know—and her face more long than round, perhaps—tiny pale ears—she had a rose in her hair.”

“Go on,” David commanded.

“I leaned over her while she wrote—her breath was as sweet as a flower—and her little hand—it is even smaller than mine.”

He opened her hand upon his. “You have a small hand,” he said.

She looked at him. “Do not make her love you,” she said pleadingly.

Now he dropped her hand and she let it lie there, lonely on the table. “How do you know she thinks of me?” he asked.

Peony withdrew her hand, and folded both hands into her wide sleeves. “I know,” she said in a low voice, and drooped her head.

“Tell me!”

“That I cannot. I only feel it.”

Now silence fell between them and David rose and went to his shelves of books and stood looking at them. He was not thinking of them, she knew.

“I wish to see her again for myself,” he said, not turning.

She hid her smile behind her sleeves. “No,” she said.

He strode to the table and struck it with the palm of his hand. “Yes!” he cried.

“You are very wicked,” she declared.

“How do I know what I must do unless I see her again?” he asked.

She considered. “If I arrange it, will you promise me that you will not write her any more or ask to see her any more or do anything to break her heart any more?”

His eyelids wavered and he smiled. “I promise you this: After I have seen her I will make up my mind whether I want to write her or see her any more.”

Their eyes met, full and long. Then she rose in her graceful fashion.

“Let it be a promise between us,” she said firmly. She put her hand to the teapot, and feeling it still hot, she bade him sleep and went away, well pleased with herself.

In the midst of all that went on in his house Ezra remained in unwonted silence. He had been too shaken by Kao Lien’s story to become indifferent to it, even though his bustling cheerful days dulled the edge of memory. In a strange way his wife was his conscience, and however he rebelled, he always feared lest she might be right in some fashion that he could not discern. Where business was concerned, all was clear to him. Where God was concerned, he was in waters deeper than his soul. Naomi made him remember his Jewish father, whom he loved and feared, a sad man, gentle in all things, but incurably sorrowful, for what reason Ezra never knew. When he was a child his father’s sadness had made Ezra feel guilty, and yet somehow it was not his own guilt, but his Chinese mother’s, which he shared. Yet he heard no word of blame, and certainly his mother felt neither sin nor sadness, nor, when he was with her, did Ezra.

After his mother died, however, the old sense of guilt rested on him alone, and partly because of this he had been willing to marry the young Naomi at his father’s wish. He went very gravely for a while after his marriage, anxious to please his handsome bride; then, feeling that whatever he did he could not please her enough, he began to live as he had before, and he grew cheerful again. Cheerful he was, that is, unless the dark pool of old unexplained guilt in his soul was stirred, and Kao Lien had stirred it when he told of the massacred Jews.

Part of what went on now in his household Ezra saw, the rest his Chinese servants told him. He kept silent, comprehending everything because he was divided in himself. Thus he knew through Wang Ma’s shrewd eyes that the Rabbi was dreaming a great dream and it was that if his own son, Aaron, should fail as the leader of the Jews, David might take his place. This indeed was true. The old man could not see David, but after he had taught him for many days, he said one day, “Come here, my son, let me know your face.”

So David came near.

“My son, kneel as before the Lord,” the Rabbi commanded him.

So David knelt, and the Rabbi touched his young face with the tips of his ten fingers, each finger so knowing, so conveying, that David felt as if a light played upon him. Then the Rabbi felt his strong shoulders and his broad chest and his slender waist and narrow thighs and, bidding the young man stand, he felt the straight-ness of his knees and his firm ankles and well-knit feet. He took one of David’s hands and then the other, and felt its shape and grasp. Then he stood up and felt the top of David’s head.

“You stand higher than I do, my son,” he said wondering.

While this was going on Aaron sat sullenly looking on.

“Ah, that you were my true son!” the Rabbi murmured to David. “Then would I praise the Lord.”

At this David felt pity for the pale ugly boy who glowered at them and he said, “It is not how a man looks, I think—or so my Confucian tutor has taught me.”