Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters Read Online Free PDF Page A

her day because of her aching breasts. By midafternoon she must hasten back to the Wu house. There her nursling waited for her, shouting with rage and hunger.
    At the sight of him she forgot the thin yellow child. She opened her arms, laughing, and the big fat boy screamed for her from his mother’s knees. Then Lien ran to him, snatching open her coat as she ran. She knelt beside him at Meng’s side, and with both hands the child grasped her breast like a cup and drank in great gulps. Together Meng and Lien laughed, and each felt in her own body the child’s satisfaction.
    Now, to see the two women as they watched the child, it would have been hard to tell from the two faces which was the mother. Indeed, the child made no difference. He smiled radiantly on both. He was learning to walk, and he took the few steps from one to the other, laughing and falling upon each in turn.
    Meng was always happy, but she had been deeper in happiness the last few days than she had ever been. She had told no one except Liangmo of the coming of the second child. Servants, of course, knew it. Her own maid had first reminded her that her second moon cycle had passed without sign. In the servants’ rooms there was already secret rejoicing. But in a great house servants were like furniture, used without heeding.
    Lien knew, and knowing it was more gay than ever. A house with many young wet nurses was a lucky house. She had gradually ceased to love her own child. All her rich animal love was transferred to her nursling. Her own home was poor and hard, the food scanty. The mother-in-law had a bitter tongue and a hand greedy for the wages Lien brought home. Although Lien had loved her home once and had wept all day and all night when her husband’s mother had sent her to the Wu house, now she had come to love the good food, the ease, the idleness. Beyond nursing this healthy boy, nothing was asked of her. She was urged to eat, to drink, to sleep. Her young, pleasure-loving body responded quickly. This was now her home, and she loved her nursling more than her child.
    She longed, in the soft fullness of her content this morning, to tell her young mistress how rejoiced she was at the promise of a second birth, but she hesitated. These rich, idle, soft young women allowed anything, it seemed, and yet sometimes they flew into anger not expected and causeless. She continued only to laugh, therefore, and to praise the little boy.
    “A little godling,” she said fondly. “I never see one like him anywhere, Mistress.”
    Before Meng could do more than smile, they heard footsteps. The child ran to Lien, and from her arms stared at his grandmother and father. Meng rose.
    “Here you are, Meng,” Madame Wu said. “Sit down, child. Rest yourself, please. Come here to me, son of my son.”
    Lien pushed the little boy forward and inched herself along on her heels so that he was always in the shelter of her arms. Thus he stood at Madame Wu’s knee and stared at her with large black eyes whose corners were tucked in. He put his fingers in his mouth, and she took them gently away.
    “A lovely boy,” she murmured. “Have you raised a name for him yet?”
    “There is no haste,” Liangmo replied. “He does not need it until he goes to school.”
    She looked down at the little boy. He stood in their midst, the center of them all. And yet, she thought musingly, it was not he himself, not this simple creature, who so held their hopes in him. Were he to die, another would take his place. No, he was a symbol of continuing life. It was the symbol which held all their dreams.
    She turned her eyes from the charming little face and remembered why she had come.
    “Meng, Liangmo tells me you have added happiness,” she said. “I have come to thank you and to bring you a gift.”
    Meng blushed her ready peach bloom and turned her little head. The one defect in her beauty was her hair, which tended to curl in spite of the fragrant wood oil with which she