“That caravan!” Madame Ezra exclaimed. “It is made an excuse for everything.”
“We all long for its coming, Mistress,” Wang Ma said, laughing. “It is like a second New Year, bringing all these toys from foreign lands.”
The caravan of which she spoke was one that Ezra sent every year under his trusted partner, Kao Lien. Although the route by sea from Africa and Europe was quicker than the land route to the north, yet for the bringing of goods the land route by camel was less expensive and more sure. This year the caravan had been delayed for reasons that, Kao Lien had said in his letter, he could not explain until he arrived, and he had wintered abroad. As soon as the turn of the year came and the days began to lengthen, he had set out. Now for a month Ezra had no message from him, and this led him to believe that Kao Lien must be near, and with him the longest caravan and the richest goods that Ezra had yet received. To distribute these goods to the best advantage was the anxiety of his life, and he had been long in negotiation with the Chinese merchant Kung Chen, whose shops were in every large city in the province and who talked now of opening a shop in the northern capital itself, under the very eyes of the ladies of the palace.
Madame Ezra did not hear Wang Ma. She lifted her head and sniffed the air searchingly. “Do I smell — yes, I do.” She turned with determination. “Wang Ma, open the sweet box!”
But Wang Ma lifted the whole box and handed it to Peony, who stepped forward to receive it. “Now, Old Mistress,” Wang Ma said firmly, “I had only this moment told Peony that there was a mistake about these cakes. We tasted them — she and I.”
“Pigs’ fat!” Madame Ezra exclaimed.
“It was that old man of mine,” Wang Ma urged. “Lazy — too lazy to walk across another street to the Buddhist shop! But Mistress, you married me to him yourself with all his faults. What I’ve put up with all these years!”
“But to put them in the sweet box,” Madame Ezra said reproachfully. “Take them away.”
Peony took up the box and slipped silently toward a doorway, retreating gracefully and almost imperceptibly. With a sweet quick smile she disappeared altogether. Outside the door in the wide corridor she paused and looked behind the curtain and met Old Wang, a small gray-haired man, flattened against the wall. He put his finger to his lips and tiptoed after her down the passage and into the library. There she handed him the box of cakes.
“You heard?” she asked.
He nodded. “I was about to enter and say that Old Master is on his way when I heard her blaming me, and so I waited.”
“You see what trouble you bring on your old woman and me,” Peony went on gently, but her great eyes were dancing and her red lips quivering with a smile.
He answered this mischief, wagging his head from side to side. “Someone always eats the cakes. Before Heaven, does it matter who, so long as it is a human being?” He held out the box to her and she pushed back her satin sleeve and delicately took a cake.
“Eat one, Old Wang,” Peony commanded him. “You too are a human being.”
They ate the cakes with a sort of solemnity, in common communion, and when she had finished she drew her silk kerchief from her sleeve and wiped her fingers. “After all, there is no sin among our people in eating cakes made with pigs’ fat,” she remarked. “Why do these foreigners refuse good meat and good fat from a pig?”
“How do I know?” Old Wang replied. “Believing in gods always causes confusion.”
A door opened and they turned their heads.
“Old Master!” Old Wang cried.
Peony bent her head gracefully and Ezra came in. He looked handsome this morning even in his middle age, and as Peony discerned from under her smiling lashes, he was cheerful. She understood this very well. As each feast day approached he grew short-tempered and gloomy, and went half sulkily through all the rites upon which Madame Ezra insisted. The day after the feast was over, he was buoyant again, eager to be about his prospering business.
“Ah, Peony,” Ezra said pleasantly. He stroked his beard. “You’re looking very pretty, my child. Have you cut fresh peach blossoms this morning?”
“They are there in the vases, Old Master,” Peony replied in a docile voice. “The forced ones faded after the feast.”
“And where is my son?” Ezra went on.
“I have not seen him, Old Master,” she replied.
“If you do, keep him away — there’s a good child,” Ezra said. He tightened the silk girdle about his substantial waist, fixed his turban on his head as though preparing himself for something to come. “I don’t want David to overhear us this morning,” he said to Peony in a low voice. “His mother wants me to agree to the marriage. David doesn’t want to get married, does he?”
“I don’t know, Old Master,” Peony said faintly.
“Ha, no — why should you? How long has it been since he has seen Leah — until yesterday?”
Peony lifted fringed eyelids. “He sees her in the synagogue, Old Master.”
“They don’t talk together alone?”
“Not since she was sixteen.”
“That’s — ah—”
“Over two years, Old Master,” Peony reminded him.
“Does he ever speak of her?”
“Not to me, Old Master.”
“There is no letter writing?”
“No, Old Master.”
Ezra’s rolling eyes fell on the box of cakes Old Wang held as he stood, listening to all that was said. “What’s this, eh? Cakes?”
Peony explained. “Old Wang is taking them away — they have pigs’ fat in them.”
“It’s a pity,” Ezra said absently. “Pigs’ fat, eh? Of course I’m not orthodox — hmm—” He took a cake and ate it quickly. “Very good, too. Pity! Well, yes, it won’t do in this house.”
He hastened on and Peony and Old Wang looked at each other and broke into laughter. They parted, Old Wang to go to the kitchen and Peony to return to the great hall. She followed just behind Ezra and her entrance was not noticed.
“I have been waiting for you, Ezra,” Madame Ezra said somewhat irritably.
“So have I been waiting for you, my dear,” Ezra replied calmly. He sat down in the large chair opposite her and sipped the tea that Wang Ma offered him and then allowed her to light his pipe. She took a brown paper spill from a holder, blew the smoldering end into flame, and held it to the tobacco. A water pipe was a great resource in such a conversation as he knew waited for him now. It was necessary to fill and refill the tiny bowl of the pipe, to light the tobacco, to take two puffs or so, and then to blow out the ash and begin all over again. There was plenty of excuse for delay in answers, for pauses and repetitions.
“When I say I will be here midway between morning and noon meals, I am here,” Madame Ezra said. “Even after a feast day,” she added.
“No one doubts it,” Ezra replied tranquilly.
He was an ample man, black-bearded and olive-skinned, and he filled the wide Chinese chair. This morning a long Chinese robe fell to his feet. It was of dark wine-colored satin, brocaded in a design of circles, and over it he wore a sleeveless jacket of black velvet. On his head he had wound a vivid turban of silk, and the fringed ends spread above his right ear, where he wore a heavy gold earring. The other ear was bare. His feet too were bare, and he wore leather sandals studded with gold. Feet and hands were large, to match his heavy frame and his big-featured face. With his size he moved in a slumberous fashion, yet he was not languid so much as indomitable.
Madame Ezra gazed at him with mounting impatience. They were a well-matched pair and she knew it. She loved him heartily, but he could make her more angry than anyone else.