All of this Peony perfectly comprehended, and she stood with patient grace, silent until Madame Ezra might choose to speak. When a gold hairpin slipped from Wang Ma’s fingers she sprang forward as lithely as a kitten, picked it up, and herself put it into Madame Ezra’s hair. In so doing she caught her mistress’s eye in the mirror and smiled. Madame Ezra gazed severely into the wide black eyes of the little bondmaid, and then after a second or two she yielded her own smile.
“You are a naughty child,” she said. “I am very angry with you.”
“Ah, why, Mistress?” Peony asked sadly. Then with her quick frankness she went on, “No, do not tell me — I know! But you are quite wrong, Old Mistress. I know my place in this house. I want only to serve you, my lady. What you bid me do, I will do. What home have I except this house? Can I dare to disobey you?”
She was so pretty, so pleading, so yielding, that Madame Ezra could not but be mollified. It was true that Peony was entirely dependent upon her, and though she knew as well as ever that underneath all the gentleness and sweetness there was something hard and prudent, yet, she reasoned, Peony could scarcely destroy her own welfare. If indeed there were a youthful attachment between the bondmaid and David, Peony would not yield to it if it meant the loss of everything else — as it would, Madame Ezra said firmly to herself. If ever she saw proof that there was more between David and Peony than there should be between a young man and a serving maid, that day she would marry Peony to a farmer.
As well as though she had spoken, Peony knew the thoughts inside Madame Ezra’s handsome head. She had learned so thoroughly the habit of such discovery that she had only to be still, to empty her own mind, to wait, and to receive, and soon into her brain would come on little creeping mouse feet the thoughts of others. To be married to a farmer was the common fate of bondmaids who went beyond their station. She had even less hope in this house than in a Chinese home. The Jews did not take concubines, Madame Ezra had often declared — not the good Jews, at least. Their god, Jehovah, forbade it.
When Madame Ezra did not answer her, she slipped back quickly, and then followed her mistress to the gate. A few minutes later she was in her plain sedan, riding along the street behind Madame Ezra’s own satin-curtained one. She looked through the little pane set into the front curtain and saw a small square block of the street straight ahead. The street was as it had always been, through her life and through the centuries before she was born. It was a wide street, but however wide it might be, it was always crowded with people. On both sides low buildings of brick and stone stood open. They were shops of many kinds, but behind them were homes where men and women and their children lived together, happily or not, but in security. The street was shadowy and cool, for the shopkeepers had stretched mats over their thresholds woven of slit reeds over a framework of bamboo. Water carriers had slopped their wooden buckets as they went, and the wet stones of the cobbled street threw off coolness. Children ran and crawled everywhere, weaving between the people. Housewives bargained with vendors of fresh vegetables and lifted live fish from great tubs, and men went their way to teashops and business. Everywhere there was life, good common life, but she had no part in it, Peony thought sadly.
While her eyes watched the scene she knew so well, her thoughts were busy with herself. The years had passed too quickly, even for her. They had been happy years and good ones, and she had dreaded womanhood and change. She had felt almost a daughter in the house, but not quite, and in the last few days, during the strange foreign feast, she had realized she was alien to this family that had bought her. Compel her mind as she might, she could not remember her own mother’s face or her father’s voice. A castaway child, stolen perhaps from her home, or sold, she had been sold again.
“Who sold me to you, Lady?” she had once asked Madame Ezra.
“A dealer in children,” Madame Ezra had replied.
“Had he many like me?” she had asked next.
“He had twenty little girls, and two boys,” Wang Ma had put in. “I wonder, Lady, that you did not get a boy for our young master.”
“My son’s father wanted the girl,” Madame Ezra had replied. “I believe he took a fancy to Peony because she had such big eyes. You were very thin, child. I remember you ate until we were frightened.”
Riding along in the crowded street, high on men’s shoulders, Peony considered her fate. Outside the house of Ezra she knew no one, she had not a friend. All were strangers to her as were these passers on the street. Tears brimmed her eyes. Where could she ever go to find friends or family? Therefore must she stay where she was and cling to the only house she knew.
I have no one, she thought plaintively.
And then she denied this with the hard truthfulness that was her secret heart. She was lying to herself. She wanted to stay in the house of Ezra because she could never bear to leave David. “David” she called him in her heart and would always so call him, however she taught her lips to say “Master.”
I love him, she thought. I would not go, no matter what was given me in exchange for him.
Thus she declared herself to her own heart. With truth, a clear peace descended upon her. She knew now what she wanted and would have. There remained only the matter of how to get it and keep it.
The house of the Rabbi was next to the synagogue on the Street of the Plucked Sinew. Long ago the street had been so named because of the mysterious Jewish rite of plucking the sinew from flesh before it could be eaten. The Chinese called the synagogue The Temple of the Foreign God. But the Jews called it The Temple of God. Once passers-by had wondered at the sounds of weeping that came from within. The weeping had almost ceased as the years went on, and then the only sounds that came from the synagogue were the long, slow, wailing chants one day in seven. Even the sound of the chanting had grown weaker as more years passed, and now those who passed by had to stop and listen, if they were to hear the voices within the heavy closed doors. The very building was falling into slow ruin. The typhoons of each summer tore at the cornices and the eaves, and when stones fell they were not replaced.
The same decay was creeping into the house of the Rabbi, which was near the synagogue. Moss grew between the flagstones of the court through which Madame Ezra and Peony walked while their sedans waited at the gate. Old Wang had been sent ahead to announce Madame Ezra’s visit, and now he met them at the door of the guest hall.
“The Teacher was asleep, Mistress,” he explained. “The young lady, his daughter, was in the kitchen alone, and she ran to comb her hair and change her garments. She begged me to ask you to seat yourself. She will come quickly with her father.”
Madame Ezra inclined her head and stepped over the rotting doorsill and into the guest hall. It was called a hall, although actually it was only a small room set with common furniture. But it was clean and Leah had put some white scented lilies into a brown jar on the table. No tea was served in this house, for it was a Chinese fashion. Madame Ezra sat down and motioned Peony to a stool.
“Sit down, child,” she said. “You need not stand while we are alone. And you, Old Wang, may return home to your work.”
Old Wang bowed and went away, and Madame Ezra waited in the silent little room. Since she did not speak, Peony did not either. The young girl sat gracefully erect upon the wooden stool, her small hands clasped in her lap. She knew perfectly how to sit at ease, waiting, her look pleasant and yielding. There was no impatience or urgency in her bearing. When in a few minutes they heard shuffling footsteps, she rose and took her place behind the chair on which Madame Ezra sat.