“Narcissus?” Madame Wu, then eighteen, had suggested gently. “Orchids? Flowering shrubs? I am only anxious to please you, Mother.” But she had put orchids in the middle of the sentence. They were her preference. By putting them in the middle, Old Lady would think she did not care for them.
“Orchids,” Old Lady said. She was fond of her daughter-in-law, but she liked to show her own authority.
“Orchids,” Madame Wu had agreed. Within five years she had the finest orchid garden in the city. She spent a great deal of time in it. Now, in the early part of the sixth month of the year, the delicate silver-gray blossoms of the first orchids were beginning to bloom. By the eighth month the dark purple ones would be at their height, and by the ninth month the yellow ones.
She went from her own sitting room into this garden and plucked two of the scentless gray flowers and took them back with her into the room, where her breakfast was waiting. It was a slight meal, for she had never been able to eat much in the morning. Tea, rice congee in a small closed bucket of polished wood bound in silver, and two or three little dishes of dried salt meats stood on the square table in the middle of the room. She sat down and lifted her ivory chopsticks that at the upper end were held together by a thin silver chain.
A maidservant came in smiling. She carried in both hands a plate of long-life steamed rolls of bread, very hot. They were made in the shape of peaches, the symbol of immortality, and each one was sprayed with red dye.
“Long life, long life, Mistress!” the maidservant called in a coarse, hearty voice. “Mistress does not like sweet in the morning, I know, but we who are servants must bring these for good luck. The cook made them himself.”
“Thank you,” Madame Wu said mildly, “thank you all.”
Out of courtesy she took one of the steaming rolls and broke it open. A dark sweet filling was inside, made of crushed beans and red sugar, “It is delicious,” she said, and began to eat.
The woman was encouraged and leaned forward. “I ought not to tell you,” she said in a loud whisper, “but I do it because I think of the good of the house. That old head cook, he is charging our Mistress three times the price in the fuel grass. Yesterday at the market I heard the price — it is high now, true, because the new grass is not in yet — but eighty cash a catty will buy as good as can be found. Yet he charges two hundred cash! He thinks he can do anything because Ying is your maid.”
Madame Wu’s clear black eyes took on a look of distance. “When he brings in the accounts, I will remember,” she said. Her voice was cool. The woman remained an instant, then went away.
Madame Wu put down the roll at once and with her chopsticks picked up a bit of salt fish. She resumed her thoughts. She had no intention on this day of resigning her position to Meng, the wife of her eldest son. In the first place, she had four sons, two of whom already had wives. Old Lady had had only the one, and so there had been no question of jealousy between young wives. Her eldest son’s wife, moreover, was very young. Liangmo had been married according to old-fashioned ways. She had chosen his wife for him, and this wife had been the daughter of her oldest friend, Madame Kang. It had not been her intention to marry Liangmo so quickly, since he had been only nineteen; but her second son, Tsemo, who had gone to a school in Shanghai, had loved a girl two years older than himself, and had insisted upon marriage at eighteen. This meant that Rulan was older than her sister-in-law, who was nevertheless her superior in the house. Out of this embarrassment, for which Madame Wu blamed herself in not having kept better watch over Tsemo, her only refuge now was to keep her own place for another few years, during which time anything might happen.
She would therefore announce no changes in the house today. She would accept their gifts and the great feast which was planned. She would be kind to the grandchildren, whom she warmly loved, and in all that was done she would defer to Old Lady, who was getting out of bed at noon especially to be at the feast.
For Madame Wu herself this was a day to which she had long looked forward with a strange mingling of relief and quiet sadness. The first part of her life was over and the second part about to begin. She did not fear age, for age had its honors for her. She would with each year gain in dignity and in the respect of her family and her friends. Nor was she afraid of losing her beauty, for she had allowed it to change with the years so subtly that it was still more apparent than her years. She no longer wore the flowering colors of her youth, but the delicacy of her face and skin were as clear now as ever against the soft silver blues and gray greens of her costumes. The whole effect of age upon her was one of refining and exalting rather than loss. Because she knew herself still beautiful, she was ready to do today what she had planned to do. A woman who had lost her looks might have hesitated through feelings of defeat or even jealousy. But she had no need to be jealous and what she was about to do was of her own clear, calm will.
She finished her breakfast. Everyone else in the family was still sleeping except the grandchildren, whom the amahs would be amusing in some corner of the vast compound until the parents awoke. But the children were never brought to her except when she called them. She was a little surprised, therefore, when in a few moments she perceived something like a commotion in the court just beyond her own. Then she heard a voice.
“It is not every day that my best friend is forty years old! Does it matter if I am too early?”
She recognized at once the voice of Madame Kang, the mother of Meng, her elder daughter-in-law, and she made haste to the door of the court.
“Come, please,” she exclaimed, and held out both her hands, in one of them the two silver-gray orchids which she had taken again from the table.
Madame Kang lumbered across the court toward her friend. She had grown fat in the same years during which Madame Wu had remained exquisite, but she was too generous not to love her friend in spite of this.
“Ailien,” she exclaimed, “am I the first to wish you long life and immortality?”
“The first,” Madame Wu said, smiling. Servants, of course, did not count.
“Then I am not too early,” Madame Kang said and looked reproachfully at Ying, who had tried to delay her. It was a rule in the house that no one should disturb Madame Wu while she took her breakfast because at a disturbance she would eat no more. Ying was not abashed. No one was afraid of Madame Kang, and Ying would have defied even the magistrate to gain an hour of peace for her mistress in the morning.
“I had rather see you than anyone,” Madame Wu said. She linked her slender fingers into her friend’s plump ones and drew her into the orchid garden with her. Under a drooping willow tree two bamboo chairs stood, and toward these the ladies moved. A small oval pool lay at their feet. At its bottom a clump of water lilies was rooted. Two blue lilies floated on the surface. Madame Wu did not care for lotus. The flowers were too coarse and the scent was heavy. Very minute goldfish darted in and out among the blue lilies, and paused, their noses quivering at the surface. When they found no crumbs there, they snatched themselves away and sprang apart, their misty tails waving behind them in long white shadows.
“How is your eldest son’s son?” Madame Wu asked her friend. In the years when Madame Wu had borne her four living sons, and three children, who had died, of whom only one was a girl, Madame Kang had borne eleven children, six of whom were girls. There was none of the peace in Madame Kang’s house that was here in this court. Around her fat, good-natured person was a continuous uproar of children and bondmaids and servants. Nevertheless, in spite of everything, Madame Wu loved her friend. Their mothers had been friends, and when one went to visit the other, each had taken her small daughter along. While the mothers had gambled all day and late into the night, the two little girls had come to be as close as sisters.