I smiled again at her. I see how it is that she has drawn my brother’s heart out of him and holds it fast!
Now has their child come to us, My Sister! I have received him in my arms from the hands of Wang Da Ma. Murmuring and laughing with pride she gave him to me. I gazed upon him with eagerness.
He is a man child, a child of strength and vigor. It is true that he is not beautiful as my son is beautiful. A son like my husband’s and mine could not be born a second time. But the son of my brother and of my sister is not like any other. He has the great bones and the lusty vigor of the West. But his hair and his eyes are black like ours, and his skin, though clear as jade, is dark. I can see already that in his eyes and about his lips is a look of my own mother. With what a mingling of pain and gladness do I see it!
Yet to my sister I did not speak of the likeness. I bore her child to her laughing. I said,
“See what thou hast done, my sister! Into this tiny knot hast thou tied two worlds!”
She lay back faint, exhausted, smiling.
“Place him here beside me,” she whispered, and I did it.
He lay against her milk-white breast, dark and black-eyed. His mother rested her eyes on him. She touched his black hair with her white fingers.
“He must wear the red coat,” I said, smiling at the sight. “He is far too dark for the white.”
“He is like his father and I am satisfied,” she said simply.
Then her husband came in and I withdrew myself.
Last night after the child’s birth I stood beside my husband in our son’s room. Together we looked out of the open window into the moonlit night. The air was very clear, and our little garden was like a painting, brushed in black and white. The trees stood pointed against the sky, ebony tipped with the silver of the moon.
Behind us our son lay sleeping in his bamboo bed. He is growing too big for it now, and as he slept he flung out his arms, and his hands struck softly against the sides. He is a man altogether these days! We looked at each other in pride, my husband and I, as we heard his strong, sturdy breathing.
And then I thought of the little new-born child, and how already he looked like my mother, whose life went out as his began. I said softly with a faint sadness,
“With what pain of separation has the child of our brother and our sister taken on his life! The separation of his mother from her land and her race; the pain of his father’s mother, giving up her only son; the pain of his father, giving up his home and his ancestors and the sacred past!”
But my husband only smiled. He put his arm about my shoulders. Then he said gravely,
“Think only of this — with what joy of union he came into the world! He has tied together the two hearts of his parents into one. Those two hearts, with all their difference in birth and rearing — differences existing centuries ago! What union!”
Thus he comforted me when I remembered past sadness. He will not allow me to cling to anything because it is old. He keeps my face set to the future. He says,
“We must let all that go, my Love! We do not want our son fettered by old, useless things!”
And thinking of these two, of my son and his cousin-brother, I know that my husband is right — always right!