Wusih


The Feast

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