“Indeed, I am quite willing for her to remain,” Mr. Wu said kindly. “She is very good, and where would she now go if you send her away?”
“I shall not send her away,” Madame Wu replied. “When I return I will decide her life. For the present, let her move into my own court.” She turned to Ying. “You hear what I say, Ying. Let it be so.”
Ying by now was standing flat against the wall, clinging with her nails to the bricks. “Is the whore to stay?” she wailed.
“She is now not that,” Madame Wu replied with sternness. “She is the choice of my lord.”
With these words she made haste away and within a very few minutes she was seated in her sedan chair, lifted upon the shoulders of the bearers, and carried through the streets.
“We borrow your light — we borrow your light—” the bearers chanted while they strode along and the crowd parted before the urgency of their cry.
XII
THE HOUSE OF KANG was all in turmoil. This Madame Wu heard and saw the moment her sedan was lowered in the outer court. The young slave girls and the bondmaids were running everywhere, crying and reproving one another, and men servants stood silent and distraught. When the head steward saw Madame Wu he ran forward and, bowing, he begged her to come at once to the inner court. She followed him, and at the sight of her the confusion grew quiet. All eyes were fixed on her with fresh hope. Her wisdom was known, and her deep affection for the mistress of the house was trusted.
“She reads many books,” one woman whispered to another. Out of these books, they hoped, she might know what to do.
In the main room of the inner court Mr. Kang sat weeping. Madame Wu had seen him often through many years, but never had she spoken a word to him nor heard his voice directed to her. They had bowed across rooms to each other, and at the weddings of Meng and Linyi they had bowed as outer relatives do. But she knew him only through her friend, his wife.
Yet this meant she knew him very well. She knew what he liked to eat, how he liked duck seasoned with wine and garlic, and that he did not like limed eggs, and that he could eat seven pork-stuffed rolls at a meal, and that it took two catties of wine to make him drunk, and that when he was drunk he only went to sleep and was never fierce. She knew that he was proud of the number of his children, but that if any of them cried in his presence he sent it away. She knew that he left his slippers at his wife’s bedside every night, and when he did not it meant he was at a flower house and so his wife cried half the night through, and this made him angry. She knew that he had a black mole over his heart, which was a sign of long life, and she knew he suffered from wind in his bowels, and she knew that when storms blew from the north bringing sand from the deserts, his eyelids itched, and she knew that his cheeks broke into a red rash when he ate crabs but still he ate crabs. That is, Madame Wu knew everything about this man who sat with his fat hands on his knees weeping because his wife was dying. But of her he knew nothing except what all the town knew, that she had chosen a concubine for her husband when she was forty years old.
He rose when he saw her come in, and the yellow tears ran down his round cheeks. “She is — is—” he began.
“I know,” Madame Wu said, looking away from him. Again she would have marveled at her friend, that she could love this man, except now she knew how strange love could be. She moved quickly to the satin curtains that hung between this room and the bedroom. “I will go in at once, if you will allow me,” she said.
“Go in — go in — save her life,” he blubbered.
She went in quickly to Madame Kang’s bedroom. The smell of wasted blood was hot in the air. A lighted oil lamp flickered in the cavern of the great bed where she lay, and over her body an old woman bent. Two servant women hovered near, one at her foot and one at her head. Madame Wu brushed away the one at her head and looked down into the deathlike face of her friend.
“Meichen,” she said softly.
Slowly Madame Kang opened her eyes. “You,” she whispered, “you’ve come—” Her face wrinkled piteously. “I’m dying—”
Madame Wu had her friend’s wrist between her fingers. The pulse was very faint indeed, and she did not answer this.
“Stop pulling at the child,” she commanded the midwife.
The old woman looked up. “But it is a boy!” she cried.
“Leave us alone,” Madame Wu commanded. “Go out, all of you.” She straightened her slender figure.
All the women stared at her. “Do you take responsibility?” the old midwife cried, and pursed her lips.
“I take responsibility,” Madame Wu said.
She stood waiting while they went out. Then in the stillness she leaned again over her friend. “Meichen, do you hear me?” she asked clearly.
Madame Kang’s eyes had closed, but now with great effort she opened them. She did not speak, but Madame Wu saw consciousness in their depths.
She went on: “You will lie here quietly while I go and fetch some broth for you to drink. You will drink it and you will rest. Then you will feel strong again. When you are strong I will help you give birth to the child. Between us it will be easy.”
The eyelids flickered and closed. The faintest of smiles touched Madame Kang’s lips. Madame Wu covered her warmly and went into the other room. The midwife had gone away angry, but the servant women were there, pouring tea for Mr. Kang, fanning him, begging him to rest himself. They turned as she came in, but she did not speak to them. She spoke to Mr. Kang.
“I need your help,” she told him.
“Will she live?” he cried at her.
“If you help me,” she replied.
“Anything, anything!”
“Hush.” She stopped his babbling.
Then she commanded a servant, “Bring me a bowl of the best soup you have ready.”
“Cow’s-flesh broth we have ready and chicken broth and special fish soup.”
“The fish soup,” she decided, “and put into it two spoonfuls of red sugar. Have it hot.”
She turned again to Mr. Kang.
“You are to bring it in — not one of the maids.”
“But I—” he sputtered, “I assure you I am clumsy.”
“You will bring it in,” she repeated.
She went back again into the shadowy room, and once more she took Madame Kang’s wrist between her fingers. The pulse was as it had been, but not weaker. She stood waiting, and soon she heard Mr. Kang’s heavy footsteps tiptoeing into the room. In his two hands he held the jar of hot soup.
“We will put the soup into the teapot,” she decided. Swiftly she emptied the tea into a brass spittoon and, taking the jar from him, she poured the soup into the teapot.
Then she turned again to the bed.
“Meichen,” she said, “you have only to swallow.” She tested the heat of the soup in her own mouth, and then she put the spout of the teapot to Madame Kang’s lips and allowed the soup to trickle into her mouth. Madame Kang did not open her eyes, but she swallowed again and again as many as five or six times.
“Now rest,” Madame Wu commanded.
She did not speak to Mr. Kang. No, she kept him there standing, watching. She set the teapot on the table, and she turned back her satin sleeves and tied around her waist a towel that was hanging on a chair. He watched her, his eyes staring in horror.
“I ought not to be present,” he whispered.
But she motioned to him to come nearer, and in deep horror he obeyed her. He had begotten many children, but never had he seen what his begetting did. In carelessness and pleasure had he begotten.