Profiles from China | Page 3

are folded under the cushioned instep. Only?the heel is untouched.?The thing is white and bloodless with the pallor of
dead flesh.
But my servant is quite contented.?She smiles toothlessly and shows me how small are her
feet, her "golden lilies."
Thump_, they go, and _thump!
Wusih
The Feast
So this is the wedding feast!?The room is not large, but it is heavily crowded, filled
with small tables, filled with many human bodies.?About the walls are paintings and banners in sharp
colors; above our heads hang innumerable gaudy?lanterns of wood and paper. We sit in furs,?shivering with the cold.?The food passes 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
plumèd 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 grass 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 pagoda, 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
shell 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 lustrous 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