For I am beginning to know that I shall never return to the house in Peking. It must cease to exist for me, though it stands as it has stood for centuries, a house encompassed by walls, and the gate in those walls is of heavy cedar, bound in solid brass. In and out of the gate the beloved comes and goes, but my place is empty, forever. My roots there must die. I have returned to the land of my fathers. I ask myself if I should read Gerald’s letter aloud to Baba, so that he may know what has happened to me and to Gerald, and then cannot bear the thought of sharing my secret, not today. For this is our wedding day, Gerald’s and mine, the fifteenth day of May, and I have spent it in the fields, seeding grass for permanent cover, leaving Matt to clean the barn and milk the cows. While I worked without ceasing I have been remembering.
Twenty years ago today Gerald and I were married quietly in the big living room, and no one was there except my mother and her brother and his wife. I do not know what has become of my uncle and aunt. When I went to China with Gerald, I was drawn into its vast slumberous life. I felt at home there as everyone does. I do not know why it is so. People came to visit Peking and stayed to live out their lives. In those days Gerald explained everything to me which I did not understand, he told me what people said on the streets as we passed. And because nothing was strange to him, nothing was strange to me.
I tell myself that now all is changed, even in that eternal city. The long slumber is over. A terrible new energy possesses the people. I tell myself that they do not want me there. Even though they love me, for I cannot believe that my friend and next door neighbor, Sumei, does not love me any more in her heart, not when I remember how we nursed our babies together and talked and laughed and told each other what we had paid at the markets that day for eggs and fish and fruits. I cannot believe that old Madame Li does not love me any more, she who often drew me down to sit beside her so that she could smooth my hands with hers. These were my friends, I love them still and surely they love me. They would say as Gerald says to me in the letter, “I love you and will always love you, but—”
How can there be buts if love continues? That is the question I cannot answer. And silence lies between us.
….When I came in to make supper Baba was enjoying the late sun on the kitchen terrace. He wears his Chinese gown every day, and he sits and reads his few old Chinese books and seldom speaks. I do not know what he thinks about. The doctor in our valley, Dr. Bruce Spaulden, tells me he has had a shock of some kind, a stroke, perhaps, when he was alone there in the shack in Little Springs.
“Can such a thing happen and no one know?” I asked.
Bruce Spaulden is a good man and a good doctor, very tall, an honest face, strong features. What else? I have not had time to know him well. Rennie and I are never ill, we have not been in need of him.
“Such things do happen,” he said. He is an earnest fellow. “There’s nothing to do,” he said. “Simply take care of him as you are doing.” He is never in a hurry, but not communicative. He had come to examine Baba at my request, because I do not understand this old man I have taken into my house. He is not the man I remember as Gerald’s father. In Peking Baba’s mind was keen, cultivated, witty, the mind of a scholar. I was afraid of him and charmed by him when I went to live in his house with Gerald. He knew everything and information flowed from him with pure naturalness, never with condescension. The subtle mellowing and maturing which China seems always to leave upon all who give themselves to her had reached perfection in him.
“Gerald, how can I ever please your father?” I cried on the first night we spent in the Peking house.
“My darling,” Gerald said, “you need not try to please him. He is already pleased. In the first place he likes everyone, in his own fashion. In the second place, he is delighted with you because you don’t pretend. Neither does he. You can take each other as you are.”
Baba has still that naturalness and he has his old-fashioned courtesy. Without one word to Rennie he teaches his grandson the manners he is losing since he became an American schoolboy. Baba will not sit down at the table until I am seated. He is careful to tell me when he goes for one of his short walks into the sugar bush and to find me and tell me again when he returns. He loves to walk slowly in the shade of the maples and among the ferns now unrolling their fronds beneath the trees. Matt and Rennie keep the bush cleaned of small stuff and the ferns come up in a carpet of jade green.
Baba reports to me each small beauty that he sees, and this makes our conversation, now that Rennie comes late because of baseball at school. Baba sits in the kitchen with me and we talk. Oh, but it is different talk now. He is not childish — no, not that — but something has gone from him. The old scintillating wit is silent, the mind rests. He is sweet and gentle and easy to live with, and he does not complain. He does not long for his old life. Somehow he knows it is no more. He simply accepts his daily bread. I am not sure he knows where he is. I think he forgets at times who I am. He looks at Rennie now and then with strange thoughtfulness, but he does not speak. I feel he is inquiring of himself whether this is Gerald or Gerald’s son, or even sometimes, whether he knows him….No, it would be cruel to show him Gerald’s letter. I could not explain it.
Tonight, when we had eaten our supper, Rennie was off again to go with his friends to a motion picture. It is Saturday and I allow the privilege, especially as school reports came in this week and Rennie’s is good.
So Baba and I were alone and I lit the lamp. I took up my knitting and sat down by the table and Baba remained in his armchair. And I, of course, while I knitted a red sweater for Rennie, could not but think of Gerald. Never before, in the years since we parted, had our anniversary passed without a letter from him. Somehow or other he has managed to get a letter through Hongkong to reach me in time for this night, and so to renew his love. I have the letters upstairs, in my sandalwood box. On other years I have read them all again, in full faith that some day our separation would end. I do not know whether I shall have the courage to read them tonight.
Baba does not speak unless I speak first. He sits quietly and watches me with patient eyes. Tonight I could not bear this and so I began to talk.
“Baba, tell me, can you remember when you married Gerald’s mother?”
He did not look startled. It was almost as if he had been thinking of her at that moment.
“I do remember her,” he said. “Her name was Ai-lan. Her surname was Han. She was a good woman and a good wife.”
“How did you come to marry her?”
He pondered this, his eyes vague. “I cannot remember,” he said. “I was advisor then to the Young Emperor. My friend, Han Yu-ren, suggested her to me. He thought I was lonely, and he had a sister younger than I. She was Ai-lan.”
“And were you lonely?” I asked.
He considered this. “I suppose so, or I would not have married.”
“Were you in love, Baba?” I asked.
Again the pause. I looked at him, and he made a picture as he sat there in my father’s old brown leather armchair, the light of the lamp falling upon his Chinese robe of crimson silk, his hands folded upon his lap, and his white hair and beard shining, his eyes dark and troubled. He was trying to think.
“Never mind, Baba,” I said. “It was all so long ago.”
“It is not that I do not wish to tell you,” he said. “I am trying to remember. I think I was in love. I feel that I was in love, but not with Ai-lan. I was in love with someone else. It is she I am trying to remember.”