This was monstrous talk for a young woman, and Madame Wu was amazed by it. Even André had not said these things.
“Where did you get all this knowledge?” Madame Wu asked.
“Tsemo writes me every week,” Rulan said.
Madame Wu felt her heart loosen with relief. She smiled. “You two,” she said, “are you good friends again?”
Rulan’s cheeks grew red. By nature she was pale, except for her crimson lips, and the flush was plain enough, but she did not turn her head away.
“We agree wonderfully when we are not together,” she said. “As soon as he comes we will quarrel again — I know it. I have told him so. We both know it.”
“But if you know it,” Madame Wu said with laughter, “can you not guard against it? Which of you begins it first — you or he?” In spite of her amusement she was pleased that the girl did not try to hide anything.
“Neither of us knows,” Rulan said. “We have sworn to each other this time, in our letters, that whoever begins, the other will speak to stop it. But I have no faith in our ability. I know Tsemo’s temper. It comes up like thunder in the summer. Without reason it is there, and when he is angry, then I am angry.” She paused and frowned. She searched herself, and Madame Wu gave her time. She went on, “There is something in me which he hates. Now that is true. He says there is nothing, but there is. When we are parted he does not feel it. When we come together it is there. If I knew what it was I would take a knife and cut it out of myself.”
“Perhaps it is not something which is there, but something which is not there,” Madame Wu said gently.
Rulan lifted her head. Her eyes, which were her beauty, looked startled. “That I never thought of,” she said. Then she was downcast again. “But that will make it very hard. It would be easier to take something out of myself that I have than to put something in which I have not.”
“This need not be true,” Madame Wu told her. “It depends altogether on your love for Tsemo. If you think of your marriage as something only for your two selves, well, then you must always quarrel unless you can determine to stay apart from each other.”
“You mean—” Rulan said and could not finish. In the female part of her being she was very shy.
“I do mean that,” Madame Wu said. She went on speaking out of a wisdom which she knew came to her from her own knowledge of love. Now she knew that between men and women there is no duty. There is only love — or no love.
She reached for her silver pipe and began to fill it slowly. She did not look at her daughter-in-law for a while. Instead she gazed into her court, where the orchids were yellow at this season. The bamboos fluttered their leaves like tassels in the slight wind. It was the sort of day that she and André had loved best because of its peace.
“In the first place, you must know that neither of you owes anything to the other,” she began at last.
Rulan interrupted her with surprise. “Mother, this is the strangest thing I ever did hear said from a mother-in-law to her son’s wife.”
“I have learned it only recently,” Madame Wu said. She smiled with secret mischief. “Credit me, child, that I am still learning!”
She was pulling Rulan by the heart. The girl had come prepared for her mother-in-law’s anger and humbled to receive it. Now hope moved in her. It was not anger that she was to receive, but wisdom. She leaned forward like a tall lily waiting for rain.
“Trouble between men and women always arises from the belief that there is some duty between them,” Madame Wu went on. “But once having given up that belief, the way becomes clear. Each has a duty only to himself. And how to himself? Only to fulfill himself. If one is wholly fulfilled, the other is fulfilled also.”
She paused, lit her pipe, smoked two puffs, and blew out the ash. Then she went on, “And why is this true? Because, in the words of sages, ‘The husband is not dear for the husband’s sake but for the self’s sake, and the wife is not dear to him for her sake, but for his own sake.’ It is when the one is happy that the other is happy, and it is the only happiness possible for both.”
Rulan sat motionless, listening.
Madame Wu went on, “As for procreation, it is a duty not to him nor to you. It is your common duty to our kind. Where you have made your mistake is that you have confused the bearing of children with your love for Tsemo. And by your confusion you have confused Tsemo. That is why he is so easily angry with you.”
“Mother,” Rulan begged her, “speak on to me. You are coming into the heart.”
“You and Tsemo departed from the usual tradition,” Madame Wu said plainly. “You chose each other because you loved each other. This is dangerous because the chances of what may be called happiness are much lessened thereby. You and Tsemo thought only of yourselves, not of your children, not of your family, not of your duty to carry on your kind. You thought only of yourselves, as two beings separate from all others. But you are not separate, except in a small part of yourselves. Now you are trying to force all your lives into that small part of yourselves. The begetting, conceiving, and bearing of your children, the living together in all ways of eating and sleeping and dressing and coming in and going out — all you are trying to force into that small separate place. But it will not contain so much. It is crowded, and you are choking each other at your sources. You are too close. You will hate each other because that part of you which is you, yourselves — your residue, your soul — has no space left in which to breathe and to grow.”
Now she looked at Rulan. The girl’s whole being was listening.
“Separate yourself, my child,” she said. “Let him separate himself. Accept as a matter of course, as a duty to our kind, that you will bear children. They are not his children nor yours. They are the children of the race. Bear them as naturally as you breathe and eat and sleep and perform all your other functions as a physical creature. Begetting and conceiving have nothing to do with your souls. Do not test the measure of his love for you by the way in which he expresses his body’s heat. He is not thinking of you at those times. He is thinking of himself. Think you also of yourself. Does one man’s passion differ from another’s? It does not. And no more does one woman bear children differently from another. In such things we are all alike. Do not imagine that in this he or you is different from the commonest man and woman.” She paused, and a strange feeling of exhaustion came over her.
“You make me feel that marriage is nothing,” Rulan said in a low voice. “I might as well have been married to anyone as to Tsemo.”
Energy returned to Madame Wu. “I have not finished,” she said. “In one sense, you are right. Any healthy young woman can marry any healthy young man and both can fulfill their duty to life. For this reason it is well that our old traditions be maintained. Older persons can certainly choose better for the race than the young ones can for themselves. Consider Liangmo and Meng — they are happy. But certainly they have not absolute happiness, as you and Tsemo demand. They accept the bearing of children as their whole life. Liangmo has no other ambition than to be a good husband and father. Neither of them asks more. For this it is best that the elders choose the two who are to marry, if the two are like Liangmo, and Meng.”