A LETTER HAS COME from my brother! He has written a letter to me and to my husband, pleading for our help. He beseeches me to intercede with our parents for him. And then he speaks of her—of the foreigner! He uses lightning words to tell of her beauty. He says she is like a pine tree covered with snow for great beauty.
And then, O My Sister, then he says that he is already married to her according to the law of her country! He is bringing her home, now that he has received our mother’s letter demanding his presence. He pleads as for his very life that we will help them—because they love each other!
I am undone. Because of what lives between my husband and me I am undone utterly. I cannot hear my mother speak now. I do not remember her sadness. I do not remember that my brother has disobeyed her. By nothing else than this could my brother have persuaded me; if she loves him as I love my lord, how can I refuse them anything?
I will go to my mother.
Three days have now passed, My Sister, since I approached my mother. I prepared myself to enter her presence with humbleness. I chose my words previously as a bridegroom chooses jewels for his bride. I went into her room alone, and I stood before her. I spoke delicately, beseeching her.
She understood nothing—nothing, My Sister! We are estranged, my mother and I. She accuses me silently of befriending the foreigner and of taking my brother’s part against his mother. Although she does not say this, I know in her heart she speaks thus to herself. She will hear nothing of my explanations.
This, though I had planned my speech with all care! I said in my heart,
“I will awaken in her memories of her own marriage and of those first days of my father’s love, when she was at the time of her own great beauty and youth.”
But how can such stiff and formal molds as words contain the spirit-essence of love? It is as if one tried to imprison a rosy cloud within an iron vessel. It is like painting butterflies with a harsh brush of bamboo. When I spoke, hesitating because of its delicacy, of this spell of love between the young, of that secret harmony binding one heart unexpectedly to another, she grew scornful.
“There is no such thing as this between man and woman,” she said haughtily. “It is only desire. Do not use poetical expressions in regard to it. It is only desire—the man’s desire for the woman, the woman’s desire for a son. When that desire is satisfied, there is nothing left.”
I tried afresh.
“Do you remember, my mother, when you and my father were wed, how your spirits spoke?”
But she struck her thin hot fingers against my lips.
“Do not speak of him. In his heart there have been a hundred women. To which one does his spirit speak?”
“And your heart, my mother?” I asked softly, taking her hand. It lay in my hand, quivering, and then she withdrew it.
“It is empty,” she said. “It awaits my grandson, the son of my son. When he shall have been taken before the tablets of his ancestors, I may die in peace.”
She turned away from me and refused to speak further.
I came away sad. What has separated me so far from my mother? We cry aloud, but we do not hear each other. We speak, but we do not understand each other. I feel I am changed, and I know I am changed by love.
I am like a frail bridge, spanning the infinity between past and present. I clasp my mother’s hand; I cannot let it go, for without me she is alone. But my husband’s hand holds mine; his hand holds mine fast. I can never let love go!
What of the future then, My Sister?
I pass my days in waiting. I seem to dream, and the dream is always of blue water and upon it a white ship. It is speeding like a great bird for the shore. If I could, I would stretch out my hand to mid-ocean and seize that ship and hold it there that it might never come. How else can my brother be happy in what he has done? There is no place for him now in his home under his father’s roof.
But my feeble hands can stop nothing. I only dream, and I can think of nothing clearly. Nothing can make the ship seem remote except my son, smiling and babbling his first words. I keep him beside me all day. But at night I wake up, and I hear the thunder of the waves about me. Hour by hour the ship rushes on, and nothing can stay it from coming nearer.
What will it be like when my brother comes, bringing her? I fear such strangeness. I am dumb in this time of waiting. I know neither good nor ill, only waiting.
Seven days, my husband says, and the white ship will reach the harbor at the mouth of the river, the great Son of the Sea, which flows past the North gate of the city. My husband cannot understand why I cling to the hours to stretch them longer and put further into the future the eighth day. I cannot put into words for him my fear of this strangeness to come.
He is a man. How can he understand the heart of my mother? I cannot forget how she dreads my brother’s coming. I have not been to see her again. We have nothing now to say to each other. Only I cannot forget her and that she is alone.
Yet I cannot forget either my brother and that one whom he loves. I am torn hither and thither like a frail plum-tree in a wind too passionate for its resistance.