“There was in the city where I lived over there a laundry man of our own race,” Fengmo told her. “I took my clothes to him every few days to be washed.”
Madame Wu looked surprised. “Did he wash clothes for others?” she asked.
“For many,” Fengmo replied. “It was his trade.”
“Do you tell me he even washed the clothes of the foreigners?” Madame Wu inquired next with some indignation.
Fengmo laughed. “Somebody has to wash clothes,” he said.
But Madame Wu did not laugh. “Certainly our people ought not to wash the soiled garments of foreigners,” she said. She was displeased and forgot what Fengmo was about to say.
He tried to soothe her. “Well, well—” he said. Then he went on, “The man was not from our province but from the south. One day when I went to fetch my clothes—”
“You fetched your own clothes!” Madame Wu repeated. “Had you no servant?”
“No, Mother, over there none of us had servants.”
She restrained her curiosity again. “I see it is a very strange country and you must tell me more of it later. Go on, my son,” she commanded him.
“I went to fetch my clothes, and the man brought me a letter from his home,” Fengmo went on. “Mother, he had been away from his home for twenty years, and he could not read the letters that came to him. Nor could he write. So I read and wrote his letters for him, and he told me that in his village none read or wrote, and they had to go to the city to find a scholar. I had never understood the pity of this until I came to know him. He was a good man, Mother, not stupid but very intelligent. ‘If I could only read and write for myself,’ he would say, ‘but I am like one blind.’ I went back to my room and I looked out of the window and saw the great buildings of the college and the thousands of students coming and going, learning many things, and the one poor old man could not read his letter from home. Then I remembered that this is true in our villages, too. None of our own people can read and write, who live on our land.”
“Why should they?” Madame Wu inquired. “They do not come and go. They only till the fields.”
“But Mother, Mother,” Fengmo exclaimed, “to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe.”
The words fell upon Madame Wu’s ears and lashed her heart. “Ah,” she said, “those are the words of him who taught you.”
“I have not forgotten them,” Fengmo said.
How could she forbid Fengmo after this, and how could she tell him why he must not live outside his own house?
“Rulan will be just the one to help me,” he said eagerly. “I had not thought of her before. And Linyi shall help me too, and we will forget ourselves.”
He was on his feet again. “You know, Mother, if I succeed here, in our own villages, it might be a thing that would spread everywhere. How great a good that would be—”
She saw his thin young face light with something of the light that had burned eternally in André’s eyes. She would not put it out.
“My son, do what seems good to you.” So she answered him.
Madame Wu lay awake in her bed as now she did very often. This neither displeased nor alarmed her. The young must sleep, for they have work to do and long life ahead. But the old need not sleep. The body, knowing that eternal rest is not far off, may lie awake while it can.
It seemed to her, as she lay awake, that the house was alive in the night as it was not in the day. She let her mind’s vision roam over the many courts. Elderly cousins lived in the distant and outer courts, and younger second and third cousins, here not to stay, but only because for the moment they had no other shelter, and these wide roofs could cover them, too, for a while. From the courts where Jasmine lived with Mr. Wu she turned her eyes quickly. Well, she knew what life it was. She had no judgment for it, only weariness. The old man’s body lived on, fed and solaced, and the young woman grew fat and lazy and was ready for sleep, day as well as night. Jasmine was no trouble in the courts. She was barren. No child was conceived, and Madame Wu was content to have it so. Jasmine’s was wild blood, and it was well to keep it in her own veins. She did her duty by Mr. Wu and, having had her pleasure in years before, she was glad to please the old man who now gave her jewels and silks and dainties of every kind to eat, and laughed at her and fondled her. All her life Jasmine had been a wayside flower and subject to any wind that passed. Now her happiness was to know that behind these high walls no wind could touch her. Even though the old man were to die, she would live on, her place secure in his house. There was nothing more for her to fear as long as she lived.
As for Mr. Wu, what his mother had begun in his youth, his young concubine now finished. Whatever Madame Wu had fostered in him had faded away, like a light dimmed because it fed on no fuel. He grew gross and heavy, eating too much and drinking often but always with Jasmine. He went no more to flower houses, for Jasmine gave him all her arts. Even his old need for the companionship of his friends left him, and seldom did he go to teahouses to hear the news and discuss the town’s gossip. Jasmine gave him both, and she had all from the servants. There in the court where they lived so closely together that almost they lived alone, they were ribald and gay and drunken and happy, two pieces of meat and bone, and content so to be. The name of Mr. Wu was seldom heard now even in his own house. In malice a servant whispered it to another, and that was all.
With her divining mind Madame Wu knew all of this, and she went no more to the court that had once been her home. Never once did Jasmine come to her court. The two lived as far apart as ever they had lived before Jasmine had come.
Pondering upon this, Madame Wu asked herself, as she lay between her silken quilts, if she had failed in her marriage. Was there anything she should have done that she had not? She put the question to André, but for once there was no answer ready in her memory. Instead she saw the face of Old Gentleman against the velvet black of her brain. It was as clear as it had ever been, neither older nor younger. His face had always been thin, the golden skin drawn smooth over the fine bones beneath. His skull must even now be a thing of beauty as he lay in his grave, its lines cleaned and polished by time.
“I fear I have not done well by your son, my father,” she said sadly, within her own self.
She felt, as she gazed at the kind good old face, that perhaps if she had not separated herself from Mr. Wu on her fortieth birthday, he might not have sunk to what he was now. But out of her youthful memories Old Gentleman spoke to her.
She remembered well the day. They had been reading together, for he had sent for her, and she found him with his finger in a book. He had pointed to the lines when she came in and she had read:
“To lift a soul above its natural level is a dangerous act. Souls, like springs, have their natural sources, and to force them beyond is against nature and therefore a dangerous act. For when the soul is forced, it seeks its own level again and disintegrates, being torn between upper and lower levels, and this is also dangerous. True wisdom it is to weigh and judge the measure of a soul and let it live where it belongs.”
Her eyes and Old Gentleman’s had met as they met now across the many years since he had been in this house.
“Had I not separated myself,” she mused — and could imagine no further. What she had done was inevitable. Her being she had subdued to duty for how many years, and for how many years had her soul waited, growing slowly, it is true through the performance of duty, but growing in bondage and waiting to be freed.
Strange that now in the middle of the night while the house lay silent, she thought with anxiety of Liangmo, her eldest son. Why should she be anxious for him, who of all her sons was the most content? Him, too, she must discover when she could.