Peony

VI

IN THE HOUSE OF Ezra the Rabbi lived in blind ecstasy. Never would he have acknowledged it, yet it was true that the quiet comfort of the house, the ample food, the space and stillness of the courts comforted him and gave him the surroundings of pleasure.

Because he was there, Madame Ezra was careful that every rite of Sabbath and feast day was performed. She took care, too, to come in when David was with the Rabbi and inquire whether each rite was performed according to the Torah. For through so many years and generations in this heathen land she declared that even she had grown ignorant. Thus the rites of Passover and of Purim had mingled with the Chinese Festival of Spring, and the Feast of First Fruits with the Feast of the Summer Moon, and the sacred ten days of penitence before Yom Kippur came often at the Feast of the New Moon Year, so that even David escaped too easily from the penitence to pleasure.

The Rabbi answered her every question with zeal and care. Shut off from the sight of human beings, he perceived them only through the mist of his own feelings and longings. Thus it seemed to him as day followed day that David was living with him in his ecstasy, walking with him near to God, as he expounded the meaning of the Torah. True, he felt about him the atmosphere of something burning and strong, the presence of a spirit that he himself scarcely understood. What could it be except the brooding spirit of the Lord? He could not know that the conflict that he felt in the air about him when he taught the Torah to David. Leah, and Aaron was their conflict. The Rabbi, accustomed to the blindness of his eyes, had other ways of perception. Thus he knew that when these three were not near him, the room in which he sat was empty with peace, but when they came in, whether quietly or with laughter, peace was gone.

He told himself that of Jehovah and His words he did not expect peace. “Before Jehovah our God there can be neither slumber nor sleep,” he told David. “We are a restless people, O my son! It is our destiny to keep the world restless until all know who is Jehovah, the One True God. We are sojourners, transient between earth and heaven.” He paused and then lifted his head high and held up his clenched hands above his head. “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One!”

The sonorous familiar words of the Shema rolling from the lips of the blind old man haunted David’s soul. He himself was often divided between heaven and earth, and his soul was rent in two. It was impossible to answer the Rabbi. He could only listen, and listening receive into himself the meaning of the faith of his people. He was beginning to understand it now. What his mother expressed in her own practical way in her careful observance of feast days and worship days, in rites and rituals, in her refusal to accept the Chinese name of Chao even in this community where nearly all the Jews were known also by Chinese names — all this was the outward manifestation of the burning spirit of the Rabbi. These two believed that their people were a special people, set apart by God, to fulfill a destiny in the world. To their people, his mother and the Rabbi believed, God had entrusted a mission, the sacred mission of persecuting the souls of human beings until they turned to God.

Now the conflict among the three, David, Leah, and Aaron, came about thus. As the Rabbi perceived that David grew in understanding, unwittingly he put aside Aaron, his own son. At first he had asked each morning if Aaron were in the room, but now he asked no more. When David entered he turned only to him, and he put out his hands, restless and trembling, until he felt for himself the clasp of David’s hands and until he felt his head and cheeks and brow. He must always have David sit near enough for him to touch. Aaron grew sullen as he perceived himself forgotten, and since he dared not complain to his father, he vented his temper on Leah.

“You are plotting against me,” he declared when they were alone. “It is your plan to put up David as the rabbi instead of me, when our father dies, and he will be the head of our people. But you will be the true head, for you will rule David as that old she-Ezra rules Ezra.”

Leah was so soft at heart, so purely good, that she could not answer this wickedness from her brother. When even as their father taught them the Torah Aaron silently mouthed his charges at her, her great eyes filled with tears, and still she did not speak. Aaron took care, or thought he did, to hide his persecution, but David was too shrewd not to see it. He loathed Aaron and paid no more heed to him than he would to a cur in the house. When Aaron came fawning on him and wheedling to go with him among his friends and share his pleasures, David pretended not to hear him or know his meaning. Aaron shrank back rebuffed, and with all the strength of his human nature he hated David for his pride and for the air of freedom in which David walked.

When David saw, now, that Aaron was oppressing his sister in some secret way, he stopped Leah one morning as they met near the threshold, and he said, “When Aaron makes his silly faces at you, why do you weep?”

“Because I know what he is thinking,” Leah replied.

They stood in the sunlight, and David saw how smooth was her rich-colored skin, and how her dark hair gleamed. He had never renewed the signs of love since the day in the peach garden, for his soul had been more confused every day since. Her warm and loving eyes now upon him increased his confusion, and he could only stammer, “What is Aaron thinking?”

“I am ashamed to tell you,” Leah said honestly.

Now had David been clear in his soul he would have demanded her meaning, but he was afraid to press her lest she tell him that Aaron was teasing her about love.

“Aaron is a fool,” he said abruptly.

At this moment Aaron lounged through the gate, and David went in, and Leah followed.

Even Leah the Rabbi forgot. Every morning she came in quietly, and if the Rabbi did not hear her she gave greeting to him, and he answered as if he scarcely heard. Indeed, the Rabbi thought only of David. He spent the hours of the night in prayer and he woke from brief sleep feverish with eagerness. He told himself that he could not sleep until David declared himself for the Lord. He longed and yet he did not dare put to David the direct question. Yet after the two and three hours of expounding the Torah the question hung on his very beard: “David, will you be rabbi after me? Hear the word of the Lord, O my son David!” He could hear himself bidding his own son and daughter leave him in order that he might speak to David, and yet he determined that he would not speak until he heard the command of God ringing in his ears.

There came a day in late summer when it seemed to the Rabbi that until this command came he could not go on. It was in the eighth month, the month of storms, and the morning was still and hot. The air was heavy and it weighed upon the blind man with the wet heaviness of a fog. He was exceedingly restless. His old bones quivered and his blood ran through his veins with such speed that he felt giddy.

David came early that morning and alone. Leah had sent word that she was ill and Aaron sent no message but he did not come. The Rabbi, alone with David, felt his heart tremble. Was not this the day? He began to expound the book with care and tenderness, pressing near the young man in his zeal. David too was restless with the heat, and he could not bear the smell of age and decay that clung to the old man. As the lesson went on the Rabbi heard him rise and move about and sigh, and he grew frightened. Why did the Lord not speak? He lifted his head to listen, but the very air was silent. In his fear he made a mighty effort for calm.

“My son,” the Rabbi said, when he felt David did not hear him, “let us go into the house of the Lord. The day is strangely hot, but in the shadows of the synagogue the air will be cool.”

“As you wish, Father,” David replied.

“Let me put my hand upon your arm,” the Rabbi said. “We will go on foot.”

The synagogue was not far. The houses of the Jews were clustered about it, and they had only to walk along a few streets to come to the narrow one that the Chinese called the Street of the Plucked Sinew. The path was familiar enough to David, and so was the synagogue, and yet he felt strangely that this was the first time he had ever entered it. Until now it had been a temple that he had often entered reluctantly, torn from play at the command of his mother. Now he came of his own free will — yes, it was his will today to meet God face to face. He had been putting off decision, but it must be no longer delayed. Slowly he paced his step to match the long slow step of the Rabbi. If he felt today the call of Jehovah, choosing him, commanding him to restore the remnant of his people, he would answer firmly yea or nay, out of what his heart said when he heard the Voice.

“You have put on your cap?” the Rabbi murmured.

“Yes,” David replied. “I put it on when I come to you each morning.”

“I know,” the Rabbi said. “Why did I ask? You are faithful to the commands of the Lord.”

Nevertheless he reached up his hand and touched the blue cap on David’s head.

“You doubt me?” David asked, smiling.

“No, no,” the Rabbi said quickly.

They entered now the gate to the outer courts of the synagogue. When the Rabbi came here alone, he went at once into the inner courts at the back of the compound, near which his own small house stood, but today he wanted to lead David through the wide front gate, which was opened to them by an old man who belonged to the Jewish clan of Ai. The gate faced the east, and immediately inside was a great and beautiful archway. Beyond it was still another gateway and beyond this another archway. On either side stood two stone tablets, each upon a stone base carved in lotus leaves, and upon the tablets were cut in ancient letters the story of the Jews and how they had been driven from their land. Beyond the tablet was the immense platform upon which the great tent was raised at the Feast of Tabernacles, and still beyond was the Ark Bethel in the most sacred and inner part of the synagogue.

All of this David knew, and yet this day he looked with eyes that saw for the first time the meaning of this place, set for a palace of God in the crowded heathen city and its many temples to other gods. The air was cooler here than elsewhere, and he felt it cool upon his flesh. Olive trees lined the courts, and the silence was sweet. The place was empty of man but it was filled with the high spirit of Heaven. Upon a tablet over the main arch were carved these words, “The Temple of Purity and Peace.” Such indeed it was.

So they went slowly step by step, the Rabbi murmuring the Scriptures until David paused before a great stone tablet.

“How is it that the letters I see carved upon many of these stone tablets are Chinese letters and not Hebrew?” David asked suddenly.

The Rabbi sighed. “Alas, our people have forgotten the language of our fathers! When I die, there will not be one left who can read the word of the Lord.”

He paused, waiting for David to speak, to offer himself. The Rabbi had hoped each day that David would ask to learn the Hebrew language, but he had not asked and he did not now.

“Yet the story of our people is very plain upon this stone,” David said instead. And he began to read aloud the Chinese letters:

“

Abraham, the patriarch who founded the religion of Israel, was of the nineteenth generation from P’anku Adam

.”

“You see,” the Rabbi broke in. “P’anku is the Chinese first man. Yet even those who carved these tablets put his name with Adam.” David smiled and read on:

“

From the creation of Heaven and earth the patriarchs handed down the tradition that they received. They made no image, flattered no spirits and ghosts, and believed in no superstitions. Instead they believed that spirits and ghosts cannot help men, that idols cannot protect them, and that superstitions are useless. So Abraham meditated only upon Heaven

.”

David’s strong young voice fell silent. But to meditate upon Heaven was what his Chinese tutor also taught him! For some weeks now he had not gone to the Confucian, but the last time he had gone was on the midsummer feast night. The sky had been full of stars, and the old man had lifted his face to them.

“We can meditate upon Heaven,” he had murmured, “but we cannot know it.”

“The synagogue has twice been swept away by flood from the Yellow River,” the old rabbi said, not knowing David’s thoughts. “Yet these great stones have been preserved. Our God does not allow the name of His people to perish.”

They walked on slowly. The sky had darkened, and looking up, David saw hovering above the walls black clouds edged with silver.

“It will rain and then the air will be cooler everywhere,” he answered.

The Rabbi paid no heed. “Come with me into the Holy of Holies,” he said with solemn excitement. “I want to put the Torah into your hands, my son.”

They stepped over the high threshold and into the dim innermost chamber of the synagogue, and crossing the smooth tiles of the floors, they went toward the Ark. Before it stood a table, and above it was an archway, made in three parts, upon which was written:

Blessed be the Lord,

The God of Gods, the Lord of Lords,

The Great, the Mighty and Terrible God.

These words the Rabbi spoke aloud in a deep voice, and suddenly, like an echo from heaven, thunder rolled through the synagogue. The Rabbi stood still, lifting his face until his beard was thrust high. Then in the silence after the thunder he parted the curtains, and David saw the cases that held the Torah. They were gilt-lacquered, and the hinges were gilded, and there was a flame-shaped knob on each cover.

“These are the sacred books of Moses,” the Rabbi said in his grave voice, “and there are twelve, one for each of the tribes of our people, and the thirteenth is for Moses.”

So saying, he opened the thirteenth box, which like the others was in the shape of a long cylinder, and he set it upon a high carved chair, which was the Chair of Moses. Then he opened the cylinder and he took out the book.

“Put out your hands,” he commanded David.

David put them out and the Rabbi placed upon them the ancient book, shaped like a roll of thick paper.

“Open it,” he commanded, and David opened it.

“Can you read it?” the Rabbi asked.

“No,” David said. “You know the letters are Hebrew.”

“I will teach them to you,” the Rabbi declared. “To you, my true son, I will teach the mysteries of the tongue in which God gave the law to Moses, our ancestor, who carried the law down from the mountain to our people, who waited in the valley.”

The thunder was rolling again around the synagogue and the Rabbi bowed his head. When there was silence he spoke on. “It is you who will speak to our people in the words of the law, a second Moses, O my son.”

Then lifting his head and raising his hands high above it, the Rabbi cried out words that were used by the people when they worshiped in the synagogue.

“Hear ye, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One!”

His great voice drew out the solemn word One into a long wail, and again the thunder roared.

Who can say how this thunder, echoing the Rabbi’s voice, might have sealed the soul of David, the son of Ezra? But even as his soul trembled, even as he waited for the still small voice of God to come out of the storm, his eyes fell upon an inscription carved into a little tablet. There were many such inscriptions set into tablets, the gifts of Jews who had wished through hundreds of years to leave something of themselves in the synagogue. This tablet was less than any other, a dusty bit of marble without ornament. But upon its face a Jew, now forgotten and dead, had put this part of himself into these words that now fell under David’s eyes:

Worship is to honor Heaven, and righteousness is to follow the ancestors. But the human mind has always existed before worship and righteousness.

The wickedness in these last words shook the soul of David as though he had heard laughter in this sacred place. Some old Jew whose blood was mixed too strongly with ribald Chinese blood had written those words and had commanded them to be carved upon stone and set even into the synagogue! David laughed aloud, and he was not able to keep back his laughter.

The Rabbi heard it and was shocked. “Why do you laugh?” he demanded, and his voice was very sharp.

“Father,” David said honestly, “I see something that makes me laugh.”

“Give me back the Torah!” the Rabbi said angrily.

“Forgive me,” David said.

“May the Lord forgive you!” the Rabbi retorted. He took the Torah from David’s hand and fastened it into the case and put it into its place in the Ark. He felt confused and wounded. All his ecstasy was stopped, giddiness seized him, and he leaned upon the chair.

“Leave me,” he said shortly to David. “I will pray for a while.”

“Shall I not wait for you?” David asked, ashamed but still smiling.

“I will find the way alone,” the Rabbi said, and so stern was his voice and look that David left him.

A clear cool wind swept through the synagogue as David walked away, and he breathed it in. He was dazed by the sudden change in the air, in himself, and he scarcely knew what had happened. The human mind has always existed before worship and righteousness—the human mind, his mind! He stood at the gate of the synagogue, at the top of the steps, and his spirit, held taut and high for so many days, was suddenly loosed like a stone from a sling. The storm had passed over the city and the air was cool and bright, the sun was shining down on the wet roofs and upon the wet stones of the streets, and the people looked gay and cheerful and busy.

At this moment as the sun poured into the streets after the storm he chanced to see Kung Chen. The merchant had been held in the teashop by the rain beyond his usual hour for drinking his mid-morning tea, and now he was choosing his path over the wet cobblestones toward his countinghouse. He was his usual calm and satisfied self, and in the new cool air his summer robe of cream-colored silk was bright and his black silk shoes were spotless. In the collar of his robe he carried his folded black fan, and his dark hair was combed smoothly back from his shaven forehead and braided in a queue with a black silk tasseled cord. A handsomer man of his age could not have been found in the city, or one more pleasant to look upon. His all-seeing eyes fell upon David and he paused to call his name.

“How is my elder brother, your father?” Kung Chen inquired.

“Sir, I have not seen my father this morning,” David replied. He ran down the steps, drawn to Kung Chen as inevitably as a child is drawn to a smiling and cheerful adult. Indeed, it was comforting to allow himself to feel young and even childish before this powerful and yet kindly man. In these days when he had been so closely with the Rabbi he had been stretched and lifted beyond himself.

“Have you been worshiping your god?” Kung Chen asked in the same voice that he might have used in asking if David had been to a theater.

“The Rabbi has been teaching me,” David replied.

Kung Chen hesitated. Then he said in a voice of curiosity, “I have always wanted to see inside your temple, but I suppose it would not be allowed.”

“Why not?” David replied. “If it is your wish, please come in now.”

He had no desire to return to the synagogue, and yet he was glad of a reason to stay with Kung Chen, and so half proudly he led the way up the steps again, and the old gateman, looking doubtful, opened the wide doors and let them pass in.

How different did the synagogue now look! The sun was pouring down upon it out of a bright sky, and Kung Chen did not feel fear or reverence but only courtesy. He looked at everything with lively eyes and he read the inscriptions in a loud cheerful voice, approving all.

Thus he read aloud from the vertical tablets such lines as these:

Acknowledging Heaven, Earth, Prince, Parent, and Teacher, you are not far from the correct road of Reason and Virtue.

When looking up in contemplation of what Heaven has created, I dare not withhold my reverence and my awe.

When looking down, in worship of our ever-living Lord, I ought to be pure in mind and body.

These sayings were hung on the pillars of the central door of the Front Great Hall, and Kung Chen admired them very much. He turned to David and said with surprise and pleasure, “Why, young sir, your people and mine believe in the same doctrines! What is there different between us?”

And before David could answer he read aloud another that said this:

From the time of Abram, when our faith was established, and ever after, we the Jews of China have spread the knowledge of God and in return we have received the knowledge of Confucius and Buddha and Tao.

Kung Chen wagged his big smooth head in approval, and so he went from one tablet to another, increasing his approval of each. But the one that he liked best was one that said:

Before the Great Void, we burn the fragrant incense, entirely forgetting its name or form.

Side by side David and the great Chinese walked through the synagogue, and the heart of each pondered its own desires. Kung Chen said to himself that he need not fear to give his daughter to a house where the wisdom was so nearly that of the Sages, and David felt that the weight that had descended upon him in the days since Kao Lien came back from the West was somehow gone. The very presence of Kung Chen was cheering and enlightening, and the bands about David’s spirit loosened. Surely this good man could not be altogether wrong, and perhaps the Rabbi was not altogether right. Small glints of hope and comfort began to creep into the crevices of David’s being, and after these many days without pleasure he longed for it again. He longed suddenly to go out into the sunlit streets, where the dust was laid by the rain, and wander about in his old idle fashion. He felt as if he had been away on a journey into a dark land and that he was home again. And he knew that it was Kung Chen who made him feel so, this ample, slow-moving, kindly figure at his side.

Now as they walked, Kung Chen admired all he saw, stone monuments and memorial archways, the big lotus-shaped stone bowls placed in the courtyards, the bathing house, and the slaughterhouse. Of these last two he inquired of David, wondering that in a temple these should be found. When he heard that the Jews believed the body must be clean before the rites were observed, he nodded his head, approving, but he wondered when David said that their faith demanded that the sinews be plucked from an animal killed for sacrifice, and he asked why this was. When he heard the story of one called Jacob who wrestled with an angel, he smiled his unbelieving smile. “For myself,” he said, “I am inclined against taking life even for worship.” Then he laughed aloud. “So I say, and yet when a dainty dish of pork is set before me, I eat it as eagerly as the next man does! We are all human.”

By this time David was beginning to be troubled lest the Rabbi had not left the inner chamber. What if he were there, and what if he were angry that David returned bringing a Chinese with him? He walked slowly and delayed at every possible place, but he was compelled at last to come to the door of the Holy of Holies, and there indeed he saw the Rabbi before the Ark, in prayer. To his shame he was glad for this moment that the old man was blind, so that if he lifted his head he could not see. Kung Chen stopped on the threshold and looked at David.

“The old teacher!” he whispered.

“He is praying,” David whispered back.

They were about to withdraw, but the Rabbi lifted his head. His hearing was very acute and he had heard both footsteps and whispering voices.

“David, my son,” he called in a loud voice, “you have come back!”

The Rabbi had regretted his anger and he had stood before the Lord, praying that David come, and he thought now that his prayer was answered. He went toward the door, his hands outstretched. David would have drawn back, but Kung Chen’s ready mercy overflowed and he stepped forward.

“Old Teacher, please be careful,” he said.

The Rabbi stopped and his hands dropped. “Who is here?” he demanded.

Kung Chen felt no wrong, and so he answered at once. “It is I, Kung Chen the merchant. I saw my friend Ezra’s son at the gate, and being curious, I asked him to bring me inside your temple.”

At this the Rabbi was suddenly overcome with rage. He cried out to David, “How is it that you bring a stranger into this place?”

Kung Chen might have let this go as the superstition of an old priest, but he felt it only just to defend David, and so he said in an amiable voice, “Calm yourself, Old Teacher. It was not he who asked me to come. Blame me.”

“You are a son of Adam,” the Rabbi said with sternness, “but he is a son of God. The blame is on him.”

Kung Chen was much surprised. “I am no son of Adam,” he declared. “Indeed, there is no such name among my ancestors.”

“The heathen people are all the sons of Adam,” the old Rabbi declared.

Now Kung Chen felt his own wrath rising. “I do not wish to be called the son of a man of whom I have never heard,” he declared. His voice was mild, for he would have considered it beneath him as a superior man to show his anger, especially to an old man. But it boiled in him, and he had much trouble to hide it as he went on. “Moreover, I do not like to hear any man call only himself and his people the sons of God. Let it be that you are the sons of your god if you please, but there are many gods.”

“There is only one true God, and Jehovah is His name,” the Rabbi declared, trembling all over as he spoke.

“So the followers of Mohammed in our city declare,” Kung Chen said gravely, “but they call his name Allah. Is he the same as your Jehovah?”

“There is no god beside our God,” the Rabbi said in a loud high voice. “He is the One True God!”

Kung Chen stared at him. Then he turned to David. “This old teacher is mad,” he observed. “We must pity him. So it often happens when men think too much about gods and fairies and ghosts and all such imaginary beings. Beyond this earth we cannot know.”

But the Rabbi would not have his pity. “Beyond this earth we can know!” he cried in a loud firm voice. “It is for this that God has chosen my people, that we may eternally remind mankind of Him, Who alone rules. We are gadfly to man’s soul. We may not rest until mankind believes in the true God.”

All the anger faded from Kung Chen’s heart and he said in the kindest voice, “God — if there is a God — would not choose one man above another or one people above another. Under Heaven we are all one family.”

When the Rabbi heard this he could not bear it. He lifted up his head and he prayed thus to his God: “O God, hear the blasphemy of this heathen man!”

David had stood with bent head and clasped hands while the two elders argued, and he said nothing. His soul hung between these two men.

Now Kung Chen turned to him. “Let the Old Teacher pray thus, if it eases him. I believe in no gods and so none can hurt me or mine … I bid you both farewell.”

He moved with great dignity to the door and then eastward toward the gate. David was torn between pity and shame, and he ran after Kung Chen and caught him at the gate.

“I beg your forgiveness,” he said.

Kung Chen turned his benign face to the young man. There was no trace of anger left in him. He spoke very gravely. “I feel no wrong and so there is no need to forgive. Yet for your sake I will say something. None on earth can love those who declare that they alone are the sons of God.”

With these words Kung Chen went his way. David hesitated on the threshold, and the words burned themselves into his brain. He could not to save himself return to the Rabbi. Yet the desire for careless pleasure was gone from him, too. The weight of his people fell on him again with the heaviness of all the ages.

He felt a sob come into his throat, and turning back into the synagogue he hid himself inside an archway and wept most bitterly.

On that sultry summer morning Peony saw David go away with the Rabbi, and she ran to peer through a window and see if Leah was with them. But Leah sat working upon her embroidery, and so Peony went away again unseen. Late in the day David came home again, and she went to him to ask if he wished anything, but he sent her away, wanting to be alone.

Everybody in this house wants to be alone, she thought half angrily. She felt a strange impatience fall upon her. Since she had given him the poem, David had said no more to her. He had not sent for her once, nor had he written any poem. All that Peony knew was this: The poem he thought Kueilan had written was in the drawer of his desk. Each day when he was gone, she opened the drawer and saw it there, under a jade paperweight. She could only wait until the day was over.

Now Peony had clever skill in her fingers to smooth away an ache in heart or muscle. Wang Ma had taught her this, and she taught her the centers of pain in the body and the long lines of nerves and veins. Sometimes Peony smoothed out a pain for Madame Ezra and sometimes for David. To her surprise Ezra, on this hot day, although the storm had cooled the air, sent for her to press his temples and soothe his feet. Never before had she known this stout hearty master of hers to have pain anywhere. But this night when she entered his room he sat in his chair, and when she stepped behind him to begin her work she felt the fullness of blood in his temples and the hard knot of pain at the base of his skull.

“Your spirit is distressed, Master,” she murmured. She could discern the kinds of pain there were in a human body, some the pains of flesh and some the pains of spirit and still others those of the mind.

“I am distressed,” Ezra answered. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and allowed her to do her work.

She did not speak again, nor for a while did he, and she stroked the nerves and pressed the veins in his head and persuaded the blood to recede.

Then he said suddenly, “What soft power there is in your hands! Who taught you this wisdom?”

“Wang Ma taught me some, but some I know of myself,” she replied.

“How do you know?” he asked. His eyes were still closed, but his lips smiled slightly.

“I am sometimes sorrowful, too,” she said in her cheerful little voice.

“Now, now,” he said playfully. “You, here in this house where we all are kind to you?”

“You are kind,” she said, “but well I know I do not belong in this house. I am not born here, nor am I of your blood.”

“But I bought you, Peony,” Ezra said gently.

“Yes, you paid money for me,” she answered, “but that does not make me yours. A human creature cannot be bought whole.”

He seemed to muse on this while she stroked the strong muscles of his neck. Then stooping she took off his shoes and began to heal his feet. He sat up refreshed while she did this and he said, “Yet you are like my own daughter. See, if I did what was right, I would not let you heal my feet. Your people would think it strange. But in the country of my people a daughter may do what you do. Yes, and in India too. When I once went with the caravan through India, I saw this healing for the feet.”

“The feet bear the burden of the body, the head the burden of the mind, and the heart the burden of the spirit,” Peony answered sweetly. “And it does not matter what my people say. What would they say? Only that it is a foreign custom. You know how kind my people are. They allow all.”

“I know,” Ezra said. “They are the kindest people in the world, and to us the best.”

He sighed so deeply that Peony knew his thoughts. Nevertheless, she asked, “Why do you sigh, Master?”

“Because I do not know what is right,” Ezra replied.

She laughed softly at this. “You are always talking of right and wrong,” she said. Now she was pressing the soles of his feet. They were hard and broad, but supple. She went on in her cheerful way. “Yet what is right except that which makes happiness and what is wrong except that which makes sorrow?”

“You speak so because you are not confused between Heaven and earth,” he said.

“I know I belong to earth,” she said simply.

“Ah, but we belong to Heaven,” he rejoined.

Now she had finished her task and she put his shoes on his feet again. “You and I speak of Heaven and earth,” she said, “but we are thinking of something else.”

“Of what?” he asked. But he knew.

She sat back on her heels and looked up at him. “We are thinking of David,” she said softly.

“You think of him, too,” Ezra said.

“I am always thinking of him,” Peony replied. Then kneeling and looking at him she decided that she would tell him everything. “I know that it is foolish of me, Master, but I love him,” she said simply.

“Of course you love him,” Ezra said, in his usual hearty voice. “You have grown up as brother and sister.”

“Yes, but we are not brother and sister,” she said. “It is not thus that I love him.”

Ezra looked uncomfortable indeed. Had he taken thought he must have known that a young, soft, pretty girl could not live and serve David without love. He remembered his own youth, when he had felt a fancy for Wang Ma. It made him blush to think of it now, for so long had she been no more than a serving woman. But he could remember very well himself about sixteen and she the same age, when she had been beautiful enough to make him tell his father that he would have no other woman. Flower of Jade had been her name. Flower of Jade! When he remembered this name something long dead stirred again. She had been prettier than Peony, her skin more fair, her frame taller, her nose straighter, and her lips more delicate.

His father had roared with laughter. “But the girl is a bondmaid!” he had shouted. “My son cannot marry a servant!”

“She will not be a servant if I make her my wife,” young Ezra had said hotly.

His father had suddenly stopped laughing. “Do not be a fool,” he had commanded his son. “What you do with a bondmaid is not my business if I do not hear of it. But your wife will be Naomi, the daughter of Judah ben Isaac.”

He had been startled. Naomi was known then among the young men of their community as the most beautiful Jewess in the city. He had been susceptible enough, vain enough, to imagine the envy of his friends when he told them. And Judah ben Isaac belonged to a family so rich that its wealth had rebuilt the synagogue after the flood in the last century. True, they had taken a Chinese surname, Shih. But Judah said it was only for business.

Ezra said to Peony, still on her knees and looking up at him, “Keep your love to yourself, my child, let there be no confusion in the house. One thing at a time, I pray.”

Thus in his own way he repeated what his father had said in his youth. To Peony it would have been folly to use the word “concubine,” for Madame Ezra would never allow her son a concubine. But Peony understood all his meaning and she remained as still as a small image, looking at him with her clear eyes, which could be so gay and which now were sad.

“David will be very unhappy if he marries Leah,” she said in a small voice.

Ezra shrugged his heavy shoulders and spread out his hands. “You will bring on my headache again,” he complained. “Go away, good child, and leave me alone.”

She saw that he would say no more. Although he would be always generous and indulgent as a master, he would refuse to remember that she was more than a bondmaid, a pretty comfort in his house. Her heart grew hard in her. She rose and bowed and was about to go, when Ezra’s kind heart smote him. He lifted his hand. “Stay, child. I have a little gift the caravan brought for you. The house has been in such turmoil that I have forgotten to give it to you. Open that box and see what is in it.”

He nodded toward a lacquered box on the table and Peony went to it and lifted the lid of the box. Within it lay a gold comb.

“For me?” she asked, opening her eyes prettily.

“For you,” Ezra said, smiling. “Put it in your hair.”

“Without the mirror?” Peony exclaimed, pretending to dismay.

Ezra laughed. “Well, well, take it and be happy.”

“Thank you, Old Master,” Peony said. “Thank you many times.”

“There, do not thank me,” Ezra replied, but she saw he was comforted. He loved to give gifts and he wanted everyone happy. It pleased him to see Peony’s smiles, and she took care to show delight. It was a pretty comb indeed, and well she liked every pretty thing. But she was no longer a child, and a toy could not content her. She went away and her heart continued hard.

After she had gone Ezra sat in most uncomfortable thought. He sighed many times, heavily and restlessly. He had already been so foolish as to make one or two meaningful jests with Kung Chen about his third daughter and David. Without being so discourteous as to mention her name he had said, “Your house and my house, eh, Elder Brother? What is a business contract compared to children and grandchildren growing from double roots?”

Kung Chen had smiled and had nodded his head without speaking. Now everything was confused, Ezra told himself. He often wondered why, when he was a man inclined only toward happiness for everyone, including himself, he should be so often in circumstances that could not bring happiness for anyone, least of all for himself. Thus he found it very uncomfortable to have the Rabbi living in his house — a good man, of course, but thinking of nothing except the old ways of the Torah. The Torah was a rabbi’s business, but it brought confusion into a house. Nobody could be comfortable if he was always being reminded of the past. Thus even he, here in his own house, was uncomfortable when he met the blind old man feeling his way along the corridors. He wanted to escape him, and if he met the Rabbi alone, he descended to standing still and not speaking, thus taking advantage of the old man’s blindness.

Then Ezra thought of Leah for a while. She was more beautiful and more modest than his Naomi had been. He scarcely ever spoke to Leah, but sometimes in the evening she was in the peach-tree garden. He saw her pacing back and forth under the trees, and sometimes she put up her hand and plucked a fruit. The peaches were fine this year. She did not announce herself by her very presence as Naomi had done even as a young girl. Perhaps David could be happy with her. David was stronger than he himself had been as a young man, and more able to cope with headstrong women. Ezra remembered next that he saw very little of David lately. While the Rabbi had been teaching his son, he had allowed days to pass with no more than a greeting at mealtime. He got to his feet in his impetuous fashion and determined now to go to his son’s room, late as it was.

Then he thought of Peony. Did David know Peony’s heart? In his own youth it had been different. He was the one who had declared his love to the father. Now it was the girl Peony who spoke first. It mattered even less. He went briskly on bare feet through the cool moonlit corridors to David’s room.

Peony had gone straight to the peach garden. It was impossible to sleep after what her master had said. Was it decided that David was to marry Leah? Was this why David was sad? If the father had accepted it, then there was no one left to be convinced. Madame Ezra had won.

She felt panic at her heart. Would Leah allow her to stay in the house when she was the young mistress? Madame Ezra might rule for her lifetime but Leah would be the real queen. She would declare to David, and David would command his mother. Yes, Madame Ezra would allow her son everything if he yielded in her one great command upon him, that he marry the one she had chosen for him.

“Oh,” Peony moaned softly, “oh, pity me, my mother.”

So she cried to the mother she could not remember. Then it came to her that this same mother had sold her, and could she hear, living or dead?

I have no one but myself, Peony thought. I will cry to myself. So she cried softly to herself, half laughing, half in heartbreak, Help me, Peony — help your poor self! Pity yourself, little one — do everything you can for me.

Then she went out into the peach-tree garden, and there she saw Leah sitting on a bench under the trees. She wore a long white gown, girdled at the waist with gold, and her dark unbound hair was held back with a band of gold. The moonlight shone down on her, and Peony saw in all humility that she had no prettiness to equal Leah’s beauty.

“Are you here, Lady?” Peony said in her most childish voice.

“I cannot sleep,” Leah replied.

“The moon woke me, too,” Peony replied. She came near to Leah and looked through the trees at the full moon. Then she pointed her little forefinger. “See Old Chang up there in the moon?”

“Old Chang?” Leah repeated, looking up.

“He lives in the moon and he gives sweet dreams,” Peony went on in the same gay voice. “What dreams will you ask of him, Lady?”

Leah stood tall above her, and Peony looked up to her pure and exquisite face with a sad pleasure. She was too generous a little creature to hate Leah for her beauty, but it made her want to cry again.

“Only God can grant me my dream,” Leah said. Her voice was deep and soft.

Peony laughed. “Then we will see who is stronger, Old Chang or your god!”

And in mischief she dropped to her knees and bent her forehead to the earth and then lifted her head and she cried to the moon, “Give me my dream, Old Chang!”

When she rose Leah stood watching her gravely.

“Shall we tell each other our dreams?” Peony inquired saucily.

Leah shook her head. “No,” she replied. “I cannot tell mine — to anyone. But when it is given me, I will tell you.”

Still they looked at one another. Peony longed to cry out, “But I know your dream — it is to be David’s wife!”

To have this spoken between them, to tell Leah that she too loved David and in her fashion she would work to win him away, even for his own sake — ah, what an ease for her heart! But she kept silent. To know a thing and not to tell it was to make it a weapon.

“Good night, Lady,” she said after a moment.

“Good night,” Leah replied.

They parted, and looking back from the door, Peony saw Leah pacing to and fro under the peach trees.

Now when David had left the synagogue that morning without the Rabbi, he had wept for a few minutes. Then he looked about. No one was near and no one had seen him weeping. The brief yielding had done him good. He was still sad, but he felt relieved. He was committed to no new thing — God had not spoken to him. He was as he had been. He was himself and this seemed good to him. He wanted to see neither the Chinese nor the Rabbi, but only to be alone, and he folded his cap and thrust it inside the bosom of his robe, and alone he went into the streets and wandered about, seeing everything and caring for nothing, and yet aware that his soul was being slowly restored. Thus he went to the court of the Confucian temple, where every strange and curious sight was to be found, the magicians and the jugglers and the dancing bears and the talking blackbirds; but all these things, which usually gave him joy, now gave him none. He looked and he did not laugh. He saw delicate food hot in the vendors’ stalls and he bought and tasted and was not hungry and gave what he had bought to beggars. He wanted no friends and he was lonely. Yet in this quiet sadness and loneliness he felt healing.

Thus thinking of everyone he knew and not wanting to see anyone, in the middle of the afternoon he suddenly thought of Kao Lien with some longing to see him and talk with him. Kao Lien would be at his father’s shop, but his father would in likelihood not be there, for it was Ezra’s habit to go early to the shop in the morning and leave early, whereas Kao Lien did not like to rise until noon, and so he stayed late. To him, therefore, David went.

His father’s shop was a very large one. It opened full upon the street, and above the doors long silken banners waved in the wind. Upon these were Chinese letters announcing that foreign goods of all sorts were sold within, both retail and wholesale. When Kung Chen and Ezra made the contract for which Ezra hoped, then these banners would announce both their names. But now there was only the name of “Ezra and Son.”

When David came in the clerks all knew him and bowed, and he asked for Kao Lien, and immediately one led him into the back of the shop, and there Kao Lien sat in a large cool room of his own, behind a high desk, brushing Chinese characters upon a ledger. He rose when he saw David, and since David had never come here alone before, he could not hide surprise and some fear. “Is your father not well?” he inquired. “I saw him only an hour ago.”

“I have not seen him today,” David answered. “I must talk with you, if you please, Uncle.”

“Sit down,” Kao Lien said gravely. So they sat down and Kao Lien looked at David and waited in such kind silence that everything came out of David at once.

“Ever since you told me about our people being killed I have been wretched,” David declared. “I feel I ought to do something — to be some sort of man that I am not. I feel I have no right merely to be happy here, to enjoy myself and my life.”

“You feel you should be miserable?” Kao Lien inquired with a wry smile.

“I know that would be useless,” David said honestly. “But I think it is wrong for me to live as though our people were not dying as you told us they were.”

“The Rabbi has been teaching you, too,” Kao Lien said quietly, “and your mother has been telling you that you must marry Leah.”

“Then you came and told us that evil news,” David said, “and it has made me feel that I must obey the Rabbi and my mother.”

“And can you atone by such obedience for the death of our people?” Kao Lien inquired.

“No, no,” David answered. Then he beat his breast with clenched fists. “But I can ease myself here!”

“Ah,” Kao Lien observed, “then it is for yourself that you would obey the Rabbi and marry Leah. Why not, then?”

“Because I am not sure I want to do that, either!” David cried. “I want to be as I was before — when I did not know about our people.”

David sat upon a low cushioned stool, lower than the chair where Kao Lien sat, and when Kao Lien looked down upon his young face, his heart was troubled. “Ah, but you do know,” he said, “and you must know. Who of us can escape knowing the truth?”

“What is the truth?” David asked.

Now Kao Lien knew very well the house in which this young man had been reared. He knew the warm, hothearted, pleasure-loving father that Ezra was, in whose blood a strain of Chinese blood mingled, as it did in his own veins. He knew the mother, Madame Ezra, proud of her pure blood, preserving in herself all the ancient traditions of a free people once powerful, once having their own nation, but now no longer free and subject to every nation where they were scattered without home or land of their own. Into her son Madame Ezra poured all her pride, and she was jealous of his very soul.

“The truth is this,” Kao Lien said. “You yourself must understand what you are and you yourself must decide what you will be. Your mother looks at the whole world from the center of herself.”

“But she only wants me to learn the Torah from the Rabbi,” David broke in.

Kao Lien went on, “Then you will look at all the world and all humanity through its narrow window.”

David moved restlessly. “Kao Lien, you too are a Jew!”

“Mixed,” Kao Lien said dryly. There was a look of humor in his long face. Then he was grave again. “It is true that I felt my marrow cold when I saw the bodies of the dead in the streets of those western cities. But it was because they were dead, not only because they were Jews. I said to myself, Why should these or any men die this death? Why are they so hated?”

“Yes — why?” David repeated. “That is what I keep asking. If I knew, I feel I would know everything.”

Kao Lien’s small eyes grew sharp. “I will tell you what I dare not tell another soul,” he declared. “But you are young — you have the right to know. They were hated because they separated themselves from the rest of mankind. They called themselves chosen of God. Do I not know? I come of a large family, and there was one among us, my third brother, who declared himself the favorite of my parents. He boasted of it to the rest of us—‘I am the chosen one,’ he boasted. And we hated him.” Kao Lien’s thin lips grew more thin. “I hate him to this day. I would gladly see him dead. No, I would not kill him. I am civilized — I kill nothing. But if he died I would not mourn.”

In the big, silent, shadowy room David stared at Kao Lien with horror. “Are we not the chosen of God?” he faltered.

“Who says so, except ourselves?” Kao Lien retorted.

“But the Torah—” David faltered.

“Written by Jews, bitter with defeat,” Kao Lien said. He went on, “Here is the truth — I give it to you whole. We were a proud people. We lost our country. Our only hope for return was to keep ourselves a people. The only hope to keep ourselves a people was to keep our common faith in one God, a God of our own. That God has been our country and our nation. In sorrow and wailing and woe for all that we have lost has been our union. And our rabbis have so taught us, generation after generation.”

“Nothing — except that?” David asked. His voice was strange and still.

“For that many are willing to die,” Kao Lien said firmly.

“Are you?” David demanded.

“No,” Kao Lien said.

David did not speak. His childhood was falling about him like a ruin, echoing through his memory in fragments of sacred days, his mother lighting the candles on Sabbath Eve; the sweet festival of lights, Hanukah, the beautiful Menorah, holding its eight candles at the window, reminding them of the great day when, conquered though they were, the Jews had won their fight to keep their own religion under the Syrian conquerors; Purim, the day when Jews remembered how they had fought against Haman, the ancient tyrant. And most of all he remembered his own special day, when he became a Son of the Commandment.

“Are we to forget all that we are?” he asked Kao Lien at last, solemnly.

“No,” Kao Lien said. “But we are to forget the past and separate ourselves no more. We are to live now, wherever we are, and we are to pour the strength of our souls into the peoples of the world.”

He shaded his eyes with his long, narrow, thin hand, as though he prayed. They sat silent for a while and then he motioned to David to leave him. So David rose and went to the door. There Kao Lien’s voice stopped him. “I do not know whether I have done wrong,” he said, “yet what truth have I to speak except what is truth to me? Tell your father and mother what I have said, if you wish. I do not ask that it be kept secret.”

“I asked you for the truth,” David replied, “and I thank you.”

With these words he went home.

When Peony left Leah in the garden, she saw David come in through the first court and she followed him to his rooms to find out if he had eaten and if there was anything he lacked. This was her duty and she did not go beyond it.

“I have eaten,” he told her. Then he took his cap from his bosom. “Put that away for me,” he said.

When she had obeyed him she came back again into the room where he was, and there he sat by the table, his arms folded upon it, staring at nothing.

“Can I do nothing more for you?” she asked tenderly.

“Nothing — except to leave me until I call,” he replied.

He looked so stern, so grave, that she did not dare press him. There he sat, surrounded by books, opened on the table and fallen on the floor. When she stooped to pick them up he said sharply, “Leave them — I threw them there.”

So she could only leave him, but now she was in great distress. Never had he refused to tell her what his trouble was. Yet what could she do except continue to love him? She stood a moment, uncertain whether to go or stay. Then, delicately perceiving, she felt the air cold about him. Some struggle went on in him that she did not yet understand.

I must understand, she told herself. Yet nothing could be forced. Events alone could she use.

“Until tomorrow,” she said softly, and when he did not answer, she went away to her own room and made ready for the night.

At least one roof covers him and me, she thought when she lay in her little bed. Old Chang, give me my dreams! she prayed the moon. She closed her eyes, and ready to receive her dreams, she drifted into sleep.

As Ezra came near to his son’s room he saw that a single candle burned, and without letting David see him, he peered through the lattice. He was appalled by what he saw. David sat in thought and his young face looked so pale, so sad, that Ezra was frightened. This was what came of letting old men and women have their way! What if he lost this darling only child, his one son, his heart’s core, the hope of his life and his business?

He burst into David’s room like a bear. Peony had not smoothed his hair after she had healed his head, and he had forgotten to put on his little cap. His curly hair stood out in a circle and he had pulled at his beard while he meditated until it was like a broom. He was barefoot and his garments awry because he had a habit of scratching himself here and there while he pondered and ruminated, and David looked at him in astonishment.

But Ezra had already made up his mind what to do. “On such a night, with such a moon, I cannot sleep,” he declared. “I shall send Old Wang to see if Kung Chen is awake and if he too is sleepless. Let us invite him and his sons to meet us on the lake. I owe him a feast and tonight I will pay my debt. Old Wang shall hire a boat and we will order wine, supper, and musicians. Come — come — you and I—”

He pulled at David’s hand, beaming at him through his beard and flying hair and thick eyebrows. When he saw David hesitate and waver he wrapped his arms about him. “Come, my dear son,” he muttered. “You are young — you are young — time enough for grief when you are old.”

His father’s warm breath, his rich loving voice, his strong hot embrace, moved David’s heart. He flung himself into his father’s arms and burst into sobs, and now he was not ashamed. This kind father would know how he felt. Ezra held his son tightly against his breast. Tears came into his own eyes but they were tears of anger, and he gnashed his teeth and muttered through them.

“Torture — that’s it — they torture themselves and everybody else. But now it’s the children. I won’t have you tortured — what’s it for? To be young is not a sin. Besides, how do we know God? These old rabbis—”

Hearing this angry roar in his father’s lungs, David laughed suddenly in the midst of his sobs. Ezra held him off and looked at him. “That’s right, my son — you laugh! Why not? Who knows? Perhaps God likes laughter, eh? Now get on your best clothes and let’s go. Softly, so nobody wakes! I will wake only Old Wang. We will meet at the gate.” He went away, heaving sighs of relief.

David went into his bedroom. He wondered now at the strange release of his heart. The sad quiet of the day had suddenly lightened to joy. No sin was in him, only a vast relief that his father had loosed him somehow from sorrow. He washed himself and brushed back his hair and left his head uncovered. He put on a long robe of bright blue Chinese silk and girdled it with a wide piece of soft red silk. On his feet he put white socks and black velvet Chinese shoes. In a very few minutes he was ready and he went to the gate, where Ezra was.

Ezra looked at his son with overwhelming love. He felt ready to defy anyone to protect his life — yes, even God Himself. His son was his own and he would not yield him up.

“I am not Abraham,” he said suddenly. “I will not sacrifice you, O my son!”

He put his arm around David’s shoulders and together they went out into the moonlit courts, through the gates, and into the street. On foot they went together toward the lake. The hour was late, but not too late for merrymaking. All sober souls were in bed and asleep, but the young and the old who were lovers of life were making the most of the moon. Summer was nearly gone, the autumn was near, and the lotus flowers floating upon the water would die, the pods be split, and the seed scattered. It was the hour to seize joy with both hands.

Thus Ezra walked with David through the streets, quiet except for a few women still sitting on doorsteps and reluctant to go into their houses. They sat suckling their children and dreaming in the moonlight. So they came to the lake, two men, father and son, and there Kung Chen met them with his own two eldest sons, debonair young men eager for pleasure. The older son looked like his father. He had the same broad face and small kindly eyes and smooth lips. The younger son was slight and pretty, and he reminded David of his sister Kueilan. That little one! Her face rose in his memory, and his blood quickened. The two brothers shouted with lively pleasure to David and clasped his hands and argued with boatmen, while the two elder men stood on the bank waiting.

“We are men of the same mind,” Kung Chen told Ezra. “I was about to send a manservant to you to ask you if you would enjoy the moon with us, and he met your man on the threshold.”

“My son has been studying too much of late,” Ezra said with some reserve. “He needs to forget his books.”

Kung Chen was altogether aware of what Ezra meant, but he left further talk until later in the night when they would be mellow with wine. He made no sign even to David that earlier in the day they had met. Each hour unto its own.

By now the young men had the boat they thought best and the boatman held it to the bank with his hooked pole and they all stepped upon its broad flat deck and took their seats. Ezra and Kung Chen sat under the silken canopy but the young men stretched themselves on the deck under the sky. At the stern the boatman’s elderly wife fanned the coals in a small earthen brazier and heated water for tea.

“Where will you lords go for your feast?” the boatman inquired.

“Why not have the feast brought on the boat?” Kung Chen suggested. Thus it was decided, and the boatman rowed toward the restaurant called The House of the Golden Bird.

Never had the night seemed so sweet to David, or companionship more pleasant. At first he was quiet. He lay on his back, looking up at the clear and glowing sky. Beneath him he heard the soft sound of the great lotus leaves brushing the sides of the boat. He turned and leaned over the side and plucked a pod and tore it open. Inside the pith was white and dry and embedded in it were the seed pods in orderly rows. He took them out one by one and peeled the green skin from them and ate them, and the cream-white kernels were sweet to his tongue.

The boatman stooped and took the empty pod and thrust it carefully under the lotus leaves. “That son of a turtle Old Liu has bought the lotus this year in advance,” he explained. “He commands that the lake police are to fine everyone who picks a pod. But eat what you like, Young Master — the more you eat the less Old Liu will have! Only I beg you to give me a little silver to put into the palms of the police.”

Everyone laughed and no one reproved. And David lay on his back and gazed at the moon. He wanted to think no more, to puzzle and doubt and struggle no more with his soul. Let him only live and enjoy his life.

By now the boat was approaching the lower bank where the restaurant stood, and the two young Kungs were arguing over the foods to be chosen.

“Crabs, of course,” Kung the First said.

“Fried in oil, not steamed,” Kung the Second amended.

“Be sure you young lords order a very potent wine to eat with our crabs,” the boatman advised. “They are hearty food, our crabs, for they feed on the refuse that the feasters throw from the boats. Rich fare makes rich meat.”

“Let the crabs be steamed,” Kung Chen said from under the canopy. “The flavor of the meat is then clear.”

So after more argument and talk, crabs were ordered and then roasted duck and vegetables to suit, and hot millet with dates and red sugar for a sweet. This order Kung the First gave to the keeper of the restaurant, who ran down the steps to the water’s edge when the boatman shouted, and he stood there, his fat face shining in the moonlight, all smiles and good humor and shouting, “Yes, yes” to every dish. Then he said, “Sirs, will you not have music, too? To eat crabs, as I cook them, with my wine, under such a moon, and all without music, is to marry a wife without a dowry.”

They laughed and Kung the Second said boldly, “Send us three singing girls with the food.” He turned his head to look at his father slyly. “Will three be enough, Father?”

“Plenty — plenty,” Kung Chen said with his slow smile. “We will look at your girls and listen to them sing and that is enough for us old ones, eh, Elder Brother?”

“Plenty,” Ezra agreed. He leaned back and sighed with pleasure. “Life is good,” he said suddenly.

“For people such as we are,” Kung Chen amended. “We who are rich, we who have plenty, why should we be unhappy? There is no suffering necessary for us.”

Outside on the wide flat deck the young men lolled on the silk cushions that the boatman had put down for them. The moonlight, flowing about them and over them, gilded them until they were like gods at ease. On the shore the restaurant was bright with lanterns and the mellow light glowed at every window. Voices mingled with singing and the sound of flutes and the beat of drums.

Ezra had looked at the scene scores of times, but tonight its meaning penetrated him. Happiness was waiting to be chosen. In this city there was such happiness, and yet here too was the eternal sorrow of the Rabbi, reminding his people of woe. It was within a man’s power to choose happiness and to reject woe. True, it was not within the Rabbi’s power. He had chosen sorrow, the endless sorrow of a man haunted by God. He had even transmuted such sorrow into strange dark joy. He was most happy when he suffered most deeply, like the moth that flutters near the flame of the candle. Yes, the likeness was true. Man scorched his very soul in that ecstasy of God. But must all men find happiness in the same way? Let the Rabbi find his own pleasure where he would, but he should not compel the young men — and above all not the one who was his son.

“You are meditating deeply,” Kung Chen said suddenly. “I feel a fever in you.”

“I am meditating upon happiness,” Ezra said frankly. “Can it be for all?”

Kung Chen pursed his full smooth lips. “For the poor, happiness is difficult,” he replied. “For the one, too, who fastens his happiness wholly upon another being. Poverty is the external hazard and love the internal. But if one can surmount poverty and can love in moderation, there is no obstacle to happiness for anyone.”

“When you say ‘being,’ ” Ezra said, “do you mean human or God?”

“Any being,” Kung Chen replied. “Some love a human being too well and are made subject by that love; others love their gods too well and are subject to that love. Man should be subject to none. Then we are free.”

This talk was interrupted by a flutter at the door of the restaurant. Three pretty girls came down the stone steps, carrying lute and cymbals and a small hand drum. They were like flowers in the wind, their pink and blue and green robes flowing, and they held their little dark heads high. Behind them waiters brought baskets of food and the boatwoman set up tables. There was a bustle everywhere but in a little while all was ready and the boatman pushed the boat away into the middle of the lake again. The brightly lit shore lay in the distance and soon the voices were only echoes.

Now Kung Chen invited everyone to eat, and the waiter and the cook did their part. The three girls sat down at the bow, their backs to the moon and facing the feasters, and each with her instrument began to play, and they sang in unison a melody so tangled among them and so bewitching that the young men could not keep from laughing. The girls seemed part of the night and the moon, fey and exquisite. Their high sweet voices wandered in and out of the melody, but always in unison, and the young men listened and looked at them, seeing them together, their white pretty faces alike, their wide dark eyes passionless. The exceeding beauty of the night, the delicacy of the music and of the singers, the fine food, each dish seasoned to its capacity and none heavy with oil or sugar, the pleasure of all these stole into David’s heart. Grossness would have offended him after the long days with the Rabbi. His soul had been tuned too high and he could not move too suddenly from Heaven to earth. But tonight earth spoke enchantment and Heaven was still.