THE LAST RITE

Lee Yu-Hwa

CHOU nan-an reached home before sunset. In the first courtyard he did not meet
anyone. At the threshold of the second court his heart beat faster. The place looked
unusually empty without his grandmother sitting in the low bamboo chair on the broad
veranda. A pungent sensation crept up his nose. As long as he could remember she had
been sitting there, rain or shine, ready to greet anyone who walked into the court. In his
childhood this was the heart of the house. He was always sure that his grandmother
would be there to receive him, and inside the wide folds of her sleeves, he would find
cookies, candies or fruits of the season.
He ran through the stone-paved courtyard and up the few steps to the raised
veranda. He was met by his mother who had just come out of the room to the right of the
center altar room.
“Is she…” he asked.
She nodded and held him for a moment to look at him; she had not seen him in
three years.
His grandmother’s bedroom seemed full of silent women, her kinfolk, there to sit
with her, according to custom, taking turns at night, until she either recovered or passed
away in their loving care. The women all looked up when he entered. He followed his
mother on tiptoe to the big built-in by an oil lamp on a nearby table. His grandmother
was resting with her eyes closed. Her brown face was furrowed and her features sunken.
It seemed a long time before his grandmother stirred and asked for tea. Someone
quickly handed his mother a bowl of the pale clear reddish broth of dried dates, believed
to have the power of fortifying a weakened life. His mother kneeled on the low bench in
front of the bed to feed the broth to the old woman. The old woman drank the broth with
her eyes closed. After a few spoonfuls she asked, “Has my son come home yet?”
“Not yet. Shio-An-Erh is here. He has come home to see you, grandma.”
The old woman opened her eyes slowly. Chou’s mother got up quickly and
stepping back, pushed her son to the foreground. He knelt on the low bench and took his
grandmother’s hand.
“I am home, grandma.”
“Shio-An-Erh, I did not think I would see you again. You took a long time to
come home.” She spoke slowly and with great effort, then she nodded agreeably and
closed her eyes, her hand clasping his.
His grandmother fell asleep with his hand in hers. He patiently kept his kneeling
pose so as not to disturb her sleep. He loved his grandmother more dearly than he did his
parents. In his childhood his mother was always too busy with housework to play with
him, and his father had always treated him in the traditional way, serving as his strict
disciplinarian. His grandmother had for him all the leisure and the unrestrained affection
privileged to grandparents. It was to his grandmother he had made his childish vows to
love her always. The memories of these vows brought him back home to her bedside.
Watching the old woman sleeping with a sweet smile on her face, he was glad that he had
come home.
 In her sleep his grandmother frowned, made a little frightened sound and grasped
his hand hard as if she had had a bad dream. Chou patted her hand with his free hand.
She opened her eyes with a far-away look and when she finally focused them on him, she
smiled. “I knew you would come home, I told them so,” she said, pleased and somewhat
boastfully.

In the evening his father walked in, still in his street robe, and kneeled on the low
bench to have a look at his grandmother who was now asleep. When his father got up,
his eyes swept about the room for Chou. He nodded to Chou and went out.
Chou delayed as long as possible leaving his grandmother to go to his father as
requested by that look. He had hoped that his grandmother would wake up in time to
furnish an excuse for him to postpone seeing his father alone. But since his grandmother
went on sleeping peacefully and his mother kept casting worried glances at him, he got
up and left.
As he came down the steps of the raised veranda and drew close to his father’s
room, Chou became panicky. He was seized by that old familiar fear that he was not
going to be able to speak clearly. Words would get stuck in his throat as in the old days
whenever his father shouted at him. And his conversation with his father had never failed
to produce thunder.
Yet in the years he had been away he had come to see his father in a different
light. His father was not, as he had thought, his tormentor, nor was his father so staunch
a believer in the old system. He did not oppose the new ways and the new people for
what they were. He had not really had a taste of the good old days under the rule of the
emperor. Just under twenty when the revolution of 1911 broke out, he had never had the
chance to take the Imperial Civil Service Examinations and be appointed to an office, the
first proof of a man’s ability in his times and the first reward for his years of diligent
study. The overthrow of the emperor nipped his budding dream of a useful successful
life. If the revolutionists had made Sun Yat-Sen an emperor, things would have been
fine, his father had often said. When Chou had been away from home, away from his
father, he read a deeper meaning into this comment of his father’s. His father did not
really care that the emperor had been overthrown or that the revolution had taken place.
All he wanted was that there should be another emperor to hold the world together which
he was born to and educated for. The personal disappointment made him hostile to the
new world and the new people of whom Chou was one. It was a very tragic thing that
happened to his father; the revolution had reduced him from a young man with as big a
future as he could make it to a man who spent his life taking care of the family land. “A
housekeeper,” his father often called himself. When he understood this, Chou was sorry
for his father and forgave him for the unfair treatment he had suffered at his hand.
During the last two days on the boat trip home Chou often thought that with this
new understanding of his father he would have known how to handle him. In a way his
father was like a disturbed youth who had not yet out-grown his young manhood’s
disappointment. Chou even went further towards this dream of reconciliation with his
father. He had imagined many dialogues to convert his father, keyed to the various
philosophical views of his father’s that were familiar to him. Now in the grips of his fear
to meet his father alone, he hoped only to summon enough courage to lift up the door
drape and step over the threshold, let alone engage in conversation.
 His father was in the study, actually the bookkeeping room where he went over
the domestic accounts with the servants and kept no books worth reading. He had
removed his street robe, rolled the sleeves of his white silk undergarment above the
elbows, and was washing his face and hands in a porcelain basin. He dried his face with
a plain cotton cloth. His eyes were bloodshot and his square jaw jutted out under the two
strokes of a black mustache. He studied his son attentively.
Dinner was set in the center of a long table, at one end of which were a blue cloth-
bound ledger, abacus, brushes and an inkstone. His father sat at the table and rolled
down his sleeves. At a slight motion of his hand, Chou hurried forward to pour tea,
holding the cup respectfully in both hands and at chest-level while his father took his
time fastening the top button of his under-jacket and gave his collar a few pulls to make it
stand upright. When he took the cup his head bent a trifle to acknowledge the courtesy
his son had shown him.
“Sit down,” his father said as he picked up his chopsticks.
In the silent room the clinking of chinaware was exaggeratedly and
uncomfortably loud. Chou sat straight on the edge of his chair. He wanted to lean back
but could not move. His body seemed to be better disciplined than his mind; in the
presence of his father, it behaved independently from his will, in compliance with his
childhood training. He remained sitting respectfully on the edge of his chair.
His father did not seem to enjoy his dinner. He ate absentmindedly, absorbed in
his own thoughts. Occasionally his eyes would rest on his son, but gave no indication of
recognition. When he finished his dinner, Chou, again according to custom, got up and
poured him fresh tea. His father’s intent stare made him tremble and spill some tea in the
saucer.
“What did they teach you in the last three years?” his father asked, sipping his tea.
“English, chemistry, physics…”
Before he could finish recounting the curriculum, his father waved for him to
stop. He was not impressed by the titles of these strange foreign studies.
“I mean what have you learned? What knowledge is taught in the modern
school?”
“It is complicated to explain…” The frown on his father’s face cut Chou short.
He paused and thought for a second. “In the modern school knowledge is much broader.
The students are taught a general understanding of the cultures of various peoples and a
fundamental knowledge of science – studies made on the natural aspects of the universe.
And then the student proceeds to specialize in a branch of study chosen according to his
interests and ability.”
“Complicated and broader! Hern!” His father sneered. “What can be more
complicated than to live the life of a man? Incidentally, in case they did not tell you this
at school, let me tell you that the old-fashioned Chinese education teaches one to be a
man.”
Chou did not retort; again he had to face up to the impossibility of discussing
anything with his father.
“We were taught our duties, duties to the emperor and duties to our parents. And
we live by them.” His father waited and then impatiently shouted, “What do you have to
say for yourself?”
“Things are changing…” Chou faltered.
 “What is changing and who does the changing? The same things go on? Spring
planting, fall harvest, rent collecting, paying taxes, feeding the family and going to the
post office to send you money. Nothing is changing here.”
Chou withdrew to greater depths of silence.
“You have been gone three years and you come home without learning a thing. If
good money was wasted to buy you common sense, I will teach you myself. The first
duty you owe to me and to the old woman who is lying there dying, waiting for you, is to
get yourself married. I do not want to remind you of the agony and humiliation you have
inflicted upon your fiancee and her family because you do not understand – you never
had any understanding.”
“I cannot…” Chou’s voice failed him in the middle of the sentence.
“I know. You never could do a good thing.” His father snorted. “But you do not
have to trouble yourself. I have taken care of everything, and I have checked the
calendar, too. The day after tomorrow is a fair day and I only hope your grandmother can
last that long to see you married.” His father dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
Next morning after breakfast his sister came to see him. She filled in the details
of the wedding arrangements. The family had been waiting for him to come home after
the alarming telegram about their grandmother’s illness had been sent to him. They had
prepared everything, since it was also the grandmother’s wish for him to get married on
the first propitious day after his arrival. There would be no celebration or wedding party.
These would follow either when his grandmother got well or on the hundredth day after
her funeral. The east wing chambers were decorated as a bridal suite. From his room he
could see that the windows were done up in red paper.
“Why are your so excited?” he said.
“I shall have someone to talk to and to sew with. She is so very nice, she really
is.”
“What do you know about her? You hardly ever had a chance to see her.” Chou
was surprised, since according to tradition his fiancee should not have come in contact
with any member of his family until the wedding.
“But I do know her well,” his sister said. “Since last year we have been going to
the same school.”
“School! What for?”
“What does anyone go to school for?” Her voice came quick and angry.
He ignored her anger, since they both knew his fiancee’s purpose in obtaining an
education was to raise his estimation of her.
“She wants me to give you this.” His sister pointed to the package which she had
put on his desk when she came in.
Shooting a glance at the tissue-wrapped package he said, “I cannot marry her.
Doesn’t anyone understand that is why I have not come home in three years?”
“What should she do?”
“It is not my concern!”
“She is your fiancee.”
“You, too! Have you forgotten what we used to talk about before I went away?”
“I remember. But I have grown up and understand things better. She is your
fiancee, you have responsibilities towards her.”
 “Responsibilities and duties! That is all I have been hearing. And false
responsibilities and duties at that! Of course, I have a great sense of responsibility and
duty; but only to myself, as an individual, and to a better future for mankind. My
outmost responsibility and duty are to destroy your type of responsibility and duty.”
“But why destroy her?”
“She must fight her own way out!”
“How?”
“First and foremost, by freeing herself from this feudalistic culture, rejecting the
teachings and patterns of living formed and arranged for her before she was born and
then by finally insisting on her individual rights.”
“Do not make speeches! You are not on a platform,” his sister said. “Just tell me
how is she going to accomplish all this? She cannot set foot outside her house without
her parents’ permission.”
“They have done a lot of harm to you. You have learned to yield and to
compromise,” Chou said regretfully. “I will take you with me this time when I leave. I
shall introduce you to new friends who will help you to consolidate your thinking.”
For reply, his sister looked at her bound feet. “Their feet are not like mine.”
An awkward moment lapsed as Chou was reminded of this overlooked
impediment to his sister’s emancipation.
“Mind is more important that physical appearance. You must not let this small
hindrance prevent you from living a full life.”
“Without this small hindrance, your fiancee would stand more of a chance to
please you.”
“Your mind is poisoned. I do not wish to marry her because she is not the type of
woman I would choose.” His voice was raised to the pitch of impatience and temper,
characteristics of student debates. “I do not care for women who consider uppermost the
task of pleasing their husbands.”
“But you can teach her new ways and new ideas. She is just as bright and willing
to learn as I am.”
“I t is not a question of my willingness to help her. I would like to help her if at
the same time I can preserve my independence, my freedom and my integrity.”
“I used to think new ways and people with new ideas were better. But now I am
grateful that my fiance does not mind my bound feet and wants to marry me.” She burst
into tears and ran out of the room.
His talk with his sister was not what he had expected. He had counted on her as a
mediator between him and his parents. And if that were to fail, he had taken it for
granted that she would help him run away.
His father had taken, as expected, the precaution of posting a servant near him.
On the pretext of being waited upon, he founded that he was not left alone. While he was
in his room the servant stayed in the room next to his, and when he walked about the
house, he was followed.
A servant brought him a silk robe and said that his father wished him to wear it.
He removed his student’s cotton suit. He came out to the courtyard, went up to the broad
veranda and lingered a moment near his grandmother’s chair, his early refuge.
Thousands of times he had run here to enlist her power against unpleasant orders from his
parents. He touched the worn arm of the low chair and wished that once more his
grandmother would exercise that authority on his behalf.
He sat down in her chair, the big square courtyard bare before his eyes. He saw
every open and shut window and door and anyone who came in or went out of the gate.
He realized that this was how the feeble old woman had participated in the activities of
her household and knew so much about them.
His eyes dwelt upon the suite of three rooms at the upper end of the east
chambers. How many hours, he asked himself, had his grandmother spent looking at the
lattice windows and hoped to see them papered red.
His mother came out to the veranda and took the low roomy cushioned chair of
the grandmother which he vacated for the stool that used to be his mother’s.
“Grandmother’s is taking a nap. You have done her good. The doctor said this
morning that her pulse is stronger.”
“Good! Then we do not have to rush into this thing.”
“It will be tomorrow. Your grandmother and father agreed,” his mother said
gravely. “it is not rushing. Your fiancee’s getting to be an old maid. Eighteen years old
and still she stays at home and braids her hair. Besides, there is your sister. You are
holding up her wedding, too. Her fiance’s family is anxious to have a daughter-in-law.”
His mother looked at him curiously and warily.
“No one wants to listen to me. I cannot marry this girl because I am already
married. Now, do you understand?”
“Married,” his mother repeated dubiously and then corrected him, “you mean you
have taken a woman.”
“I said I am married, married to a girl who goes to the same college with me.”
“Ah, a modern girl,” his mother said. She looked thoughtful. He waited
impatiently for the serious nature of his marriage to penetrate her mind. “Do not tell your
father,” she said finally, “till this is over.” She jutted her chin towards the red-papered
lattice windows.
He walked angrily away from his mother. He had been away too long and had
forgotten the paradoxical aspects of their morality. Laxity and indulgence loop-holed a
rigid code of behavior. His mother’s attitude represented that of his family. To divulge
his marriage to them would not matter in the least so far as their preparations to celebrate
his wedding were concerned. A marriage which was not arranged by the family was not
a marriage. And a girl, despite her upbringing and the prestige of her family, was not
respectable if she entered into marriage unauthorized and unrecognized by the families of
both sides. The most his wife could hope for was to come and beg humbly for
recognition as his second wife.
His talk with his mother ended all hope of understanding from his family. Were
he to tell his father of his marital status, his father would ignore him and send him
tomorrow anyhow, on schedule, in a green sedan to bring home his childhood betrothed.
He had not written his family earlier of his marriage because he had thought it
was the only way to avoid a break in relations – his father would instantly have cabled
back cutting off his allowance and threatening to disown him. But as he now realized, it
was a dimly felt distrust of his family that had prevented him from announcing the
marriage. The repercussions of this great offense and disobedience, he must have
subconsciously felt, would be more than disinheritance. His marriage could not alter the
fact, in his parents’ eyes, that he, their son, was meant to fit in their scheme of things and
should be brought around to marry the girl they had engaged him to in his childhood.
And his father was capable and unscrupulous. He had not been able to score an easy
victory over him.
In the evening Chou had dinner with his cousins. One of them brought along a
jug of wine. The excuse for their merry-making was that their grandmother rejoiced in it,
too. After dinner, they all crowded into the grandmother’s room. The old woman looked
over the Chou descendants and signaled Chou to come forward. He knelt on the low
bench, but his grandmother gestured for him to sit on the edge of her bed.
“They say I have spoiled you, but I know you will make up for everything. I will
hang on –“ she pointed in mid-air as if her life were being dispersed there, “till
tomorrow.”
“Do not talk like that! You will live for many, many years yet.”
Tears rushed down Chou’s cheeks.
“Not many years but…” The old woman paused to gather strength and smiled
sweetly at her last wish. “The last banquet and all the friends and relatives to celebrate
it.”
Chou nodded; he had lost his voice.
He was sent to sleep in his own room and did not stay up to care for the sick
woman. The lingering effects of the dinner wine made him sleep soundly.
In the morning when he woke up he noticed the package on the desk. He picked
it up and opened it. It was an embroidered writing brush-holder, a pet souvenir women
gave to men. Inside the brush-holder he found a letter from his fiancee. She
acknowledged her awareness of his reluctance to marry her, begged for tolerance and
thanked him for being merciful to allow her to assume his name. “I know only,” she
wrote, “of the traditional way of living. I shall be obedient to you as I am obedient to my
parents. And I shall not question the propriety of anything you do since I cannot question
what I do not understand.”
He put the letter aside and concluded that she was a cunning woman. She pleaded
for his sympathy and affection and at the same time hinted that he was free; she would
not hold him to the conventional responsibility of a husband.
There was much activity in the suite with the red-papered lattice windows. The
door was open and the windows propped up. The servants kept going in and out.
After his visit to his grandmother he was sent to bathe and dress in formal gowns.
At the propitious hour he was carried in a green sedan to his bride’s house and came
home followed by her red sedan. They held a simple ceremony without music.
Afterwards, when they went to the grandmother’s room, the sick old woman was propped
up on pillows to receive them. Chou’s parents stood by the bed and behind them stood
the uncles, aunts, and cousins. The crowded room was hushed; only the sound of the
dangling pearls of the bride’s headdress and the rustling of her stiff brocade were heard
when they kowtowed to the grandmother.
During dinner he drank rounds of drinks with his cousins. Tottering, he was
helped into the bridal chamber. He sat down in a red-lacquered armchair by a long red-
lacquered table on which two thick red columnar candles were burning. The candles
were to last out the night. So was the oil lamp under the bed. They were symbols of their
long life together. Placed around the oil lamp were five kinds of nuts, symbolic of their
prosperity. A red silk quilt was spread on the bed. His bride, still in her wedding gown,
sat on the edge of the bed, her head bowed a little. A servant brought in strong tea, good
for sobering up, and fastened the door on the outside. Chou drank two cups of tea.
“Go to sleep.” He said to the girl who sat so still amidst the blazing red of the
room. This was the one thing they could not force him to do, he said to himself. Yung-
Chu, his wife by choice, might understand, he persuaded himself, if he held out at the last
step and proved that he gave in to his family only on superficial grounds. He fulfilled his
obligation to them as their son to take this woman into their house to be their daughter-in-
law. She was as much his wife as he was their son, by circumstances and not by affection
or choice.
Besides there was no other way for him to leave home and to go back to the city
except through this compromise. But compromise was one word that Yung-Chu was
afraid of. One compromise led to another, she had often warned him. She, too, was a
student from a distant country who had come to the city to study. Like many young
people around her, she lived as though she had no family and no awareness of the society
around her. She cared for her approval of herself and for the approval of those who
shared similar rebellious thoughts with her. When he first knew her, he was awed and, in
turn, admired her for her advanced views and her resolution and courage to act upon
them. When she found herself responding to his love, she came to live with him. There
was no fuss and no bother about the significance of their union in relation to society. She
did not tell him whether she had written her family about her marriage nor did she inquire
about what he had done concerning his. The Chinese family, to her, was the remnant of a
bankrupt society and the last restraint to young Chinese attempting to find a new life for
themselves. When he showed her the telegram about this grandmother’s illness, she
merely looked at him, offended, and said in a challenging tone, “You must deal with it
yourself. It is your own affair.”
Chou understood and approved of his wife’s attitude but at the same time he could
not pretend that he was not hurt by it nor could he pretend that it was easy to live with a
woman who constantly imposed upon themselves such unprecedented views. With her
he had had some of the grandest moments of his life. Their visions of live conveyed him
to a state in which he believed that life as it ought to be was within their reach, were the
ones to live this good life, although in reality his life with Yung-Chu vas very painful.
When they were not talking about ideas, they seemed to be lost. They did not know how
to do the least little thing without getting into a serious argument with each other. She
refused to be addressed as Mrs. Chou, using only her own name, Lu Yung-Chu, if she
had to assume a family name, and as a result involved themselves in needless and endless
explanations to the conventional. She did the cooking and cleaning one week and he did
it the next. The judicious distribution of housework afforded a good source of friction
and Yung-Chu fought vigorous and valiant battles against the opposite sex in her own
home. But all in all, she was the woman he loved and valued and he had admitted that
this conventional male prerogatives were much at fault for the difficulties in his life with
a woman like Yung-Chu. There was no doubt in his mind that she was the woman he
wanted to go back to and the life with her was what he had chosen through his own free
will.
Turning his chair away from the woman dressed in red who sat on the bed spread
with red silk, he cushioned his head with his folded arms on the table and calculated the
earliest possible date when he could leave. His grandmother was expected to die within a
few days—the family had prepared for his wedding in the first and second main courts
while in the third court preparations for the funeral went on steadily. In that case he had
no choice but to wait till she died. But if the doctor gave a contrary prediction, then he
would leave as soon as he could persuade his parents of his urgent desire to go back to
school. He expected them to be lenient since he had compromised in marrying this
woman, even though his father had hinted that he needed someone to help him manage
the family estate and that his son had had enough education. Chou took this as another
outburst of his father’s hostility towards the new world; without the emperor there was no
career worthwhile for a man to work at.
The sooner he could get back to the city, the better chance Chou had to explain to
Yung-Chu what had happened. It would not be an easy task. He did not see how he
could manage to convey to her his intricate relationship with his family, no more that he
could explain to his family how he and Yung-Chu were just as dogmatic as his father.
She would judge him harshly and call his sympathy and love for his family cowardice. If
she should condemn him as a coward and a renegade to their ideas, she would leave him.
She and the friends they both had were, so he often wore blinders in order to pursue
without distraction their single minded purpose of finding a new pattern of living for
China. They would have wanted him to ignore, to destroy and to deny his feelings for
everybody in this house where an old woman lay dying and a young girl waited to be
made into a woman. But he did have feelings for them all, even for this girl whom he
had just turned his back on. He was responsible for her, as his sister had said. If he did
not go to take her home in the red sedan today he would have abandoned her to the sad
life of an old maid. She would never be able to marry again and would be disgraced all
her life through no fault of her own.
He turned around and saw that his bride had not moved. She sat in exactly the
same pose, almost a part of the red decorations of the room, as though she were going to
sit there guarding the edge of the bed throughout the night.
The red candles flickered and he had an impulse to blow them out. But this
would have given alarm if someone were watching his windows.
“Go to sleep,” he said.
The girl in red did not move.
Fine obedience! Chou was getting angry at her. It was not only his name she
wanted, she was waiting for him to lift her headdress, to exercise his right as her husband.
“I said go to sleep!”
She trembled but made no move. The pearl curtain of her jeweled headdress was
shaking. He went to her and parted the strings of pearls hanging down from her
headdress. She was weeping quietly. Her eyes were downcast and tears were streaming
down her powdered and rouged cheeks. She looked exceedingly beautiful in the candle
light.
He let fall the strings of pears and walked away from her. He knew that she was
worrying about the next morning’s questioning by her mother-in-law of the evidence of
premarital chastity. He went back to her and took off her jeweled headdress. She had not
raised her eyes but her tears had stopped, her lips were parted slightly and the rouge on
her cheeks had deepened in color. His hand touched her black silky hair, which, for the
first time in her life, was combed back and knotted into chignon, and he felt for the
essential gold pin that held the chignon in place. When he pulled the gold pin her hair
fell loose and hung down her back, scattering the rest of the ornamental jeweled pins on
the embroidered red silk quilt.