Profiles from China Part 2

The food pa.s.ses endlessly, droll combinations in brown gravies--roses, sugar, and lard--duck and bamboo--lotus, chestnuts, and fish-eggs--an "eight-precious pudding."

They tempt curiosity; my chop-sticks are busy. The warm rice-wine trickles sparingly.

The groom is invisible somewhere, but the bride martyrs among us. She is clad in scarlet satin, heavily embroidered with gold. On her head is an edifice of scarlet and pearls.

For weeks, I know, she has wept in protest.

The feast-mother leads her in to us with sacrificial rites. Her eyes are closed, hidden behind her curtain of strung beads; for three days she will not open them. She has never seen the bridegroom.

At the feast she sits like her own effigy. She neither eats nor speaks.

Opposite her, across the narrow table, is a wall of curious faces, lookers-on--children and half-grown boys, beggars and what-not--the gleanings of the streets.

They are quiet but they watch hungrily.

To-night, when the bridegroom draws the scarlet curtains of the bed, they will still be watching hungrily....

Strange, formless memories out of books struggle upward in my consciousness. This is the marriage at Cana.... I am feasting with the Caliph at Bagdad.... I am the wedding guest who beat his breast....

My heart is troubled.

What shall be said of blood-brotherhood between man and man?

Wusih

The Beggar

_Christ! What is that--that--Thing?

Only a beggar, professionally maimed, I think._

Across the narrow street it lies, the street where little children are.

It is rocking its body back and forth, back and forth, ingratiatingly, in the noisome filth.

Beside the body are stretched two naked stumps of flesh, on one the remnant of a foot. The wounds are not new wounds, but they are open and they fester. There are flies on them.

The Thing is whining, shrilly, hideously.

_Professionally maimed, I think._ Christ!

Hwai Yuen

Interlude

It is going to be hot here.

Already the sun is treacherous and a dull mugginess is in the air. I note that winter clothes are shedding one by one.

In the market-place sits a coolie, expanding in the warmth.

He has opened his ragged upper garments and his bronze body is naked to the belt.

He is examining it minutely, occasionally picking at something with the dainty hand of the Orient.

If he had ever seen a zoological garden I should say he was imitating the monkeys there.

As he has not, I dare say the taste is ingrained.

At all events it is going to be hot here.

The Village of the Mud Idols

The City Wall

About the city where I dwell, guarding it close, runs an embattled wall.

It was not new I think when Arthur was a king, and plumed knights before a British wall made brave clangor of trumpets, that Launcelot came forth.

It was not new I think, and now not it but chivalry is old.

Without, the wall is brick, with slots for firing, and it drops straightway into the evil moat, where offal floats and nameless things are thrown.

Within, the wall is earth; it slants more gently down, covered with gra.s.s and stubbly with cut weeds.

Below it in straw lairs the beggars herd, patiently whining, stretching out their sores.

And on the top a path runs.

As I walk, lifted above the squalor and the dirt, the timeless miracle of sunset mantles in the west, The blue dusk gathers close And beauty moves immortal through the land.

And I walk quickly, praying in my heart that beauty will defend me, will heal up the too great wounds of China.

I will not look--to-night I will not look--where at my feet the little coffins are, The boxes where the beggar children lie, unburied and unwatched.

I will not look again, for once I saw how one was broken, torn by the sharp teeth of dogs. A little tattered dress was there, and some crunched bones....

I need not look. What can it help to look?

Ah, I am past!

And still the sunset glows.

The tall paG.o.da, like a velvet flower, blossoms against the sky; the Sacred Mountain fades, and in the town a child laughs suddenly.

I will hold fast to beauty! Who am I, that I should die for these?

I will go down. I am too sorely hurt, here on the city wall.

Wusih

Woman

Strangely the sight of you moves me.

I have no standard by which to appraise you; the outer sh.e.l.l of you is all I know.

Yet irresistibly you draw me.

Your small plump body is closely clad in blue brocaded satin. The fit is scrupulous, yet no woman's figure is revealed. You are decorously shapeless.

Your satin trousers even are lined with fur.

Your hair is stiff and l.u.s.trous as polished ebony, bound at the neck in an adamantine knot, in which dull pearls are encrusted.

Your face is young and round and inscrutably alien.

Your complexion is exquisite, matte gold over-lying blush pink, textured like ripe fruit.

Your nose is flat, the perfect nose of China.

Your eyes--your eyes are witchery!

The blank curtain of your upper lid droops sharply on the iris, and when you smile the corners twinkle upward.

It is your eyes, I think, that move me.

They are so bright, so black!

They are alert and full of curiosity as the eyes of a squirrel, and like the eyes of a squirrel they have no depth behind them.

They are windows opening on a world as small as your bound feet, a world of ignorances, and vacuities, and kitchen-G.o.ds.

And yet your eyes are witchery. When you smile you are the woman-spirit, adorable.