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