id="id00078">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 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-gods.

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

I cannot appraise you, yet strangely the sight of you
    moves me.
I believe that I shall dream of you.

Pa-tze-kiao

Our Chinese Acquaintance

We met him in the runway called a street, between the
    warrens known as houses.
He looked still the same, but his French-cut tweeds,
    his continental hat, and small round glasses were
    alien here.
About him we felt a troubled uncertainty.

He greeted us gladly. "It is good," he said in his
    soft French, "to see my foreign friends again.
You find our city dirty I am sure. On every stone
    dirt grows in China.
How the people crowd! The street is choked. No
    jee ba! Go away, curious ones! The ladies
    cannot breathe….
No, my people are not clean. They do not understand,
    I think. In Belgium where I studied—
    … Yes, I was studying in Bruges, studying
    Christianity, when the great war came.
We, you know, love peace. I could not see….

"So I came home.

"But China is very dirty…. Our priests are rascals,
    and the people … I do not know.

"Is there, perhaps, a true religion somewhere? The
    Greeks died too—and they were clean."
Behind his glasses his slant eyes were troubled.
"I do not know," he said.

Wusih

The Spirit Wall

It stands before my neighbor's door, between him and
    the vegetable garden and the open toilet pots and
    the dirty canal.
Not that he wishes to hide these things.
On the contrary, he misses the view.
But China, you must understand, is full of evil spirits,
    demons of the earth and air, foxes and