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 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.