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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.
Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publishers Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
THE CHINESE GINGER JARS
BY
MYRA SCOVEL
WITH
NELLE KEYS BELL
THE PROLOGUETHE GINGER JARS
We found them, quite by chance, this afternoon in the junk shop kept so carelessly by the old Sikh gentleman with the long white beardtwo Chinese ginger jars, sitting squat and proud among the empty bottles and the broken tins. The jars were not a perfect pair, although identical in size and both covered with the same rich, jade-like glaze.
We looked at them for a long moment; then my husband smiled and put his hand in his pocket, pulling out the necessary coins. He carried the jars carefully as we climbed the steep hill back to the cottage.
They are green, the color of quiet water. My husband crumples the newspaper wrapping from the second jar of the pair.
Look at it, he is saying, as he puts one of the jars into my hands. Do you remember...? I turn it slowly, contemplating the plaques embossed on its six sides. China, home to us for more than twenty years! There is a memory of that home in each designthe gourd, the grape, the chrysanthemum, the peach, the flowering plum, the bamboo.
The glaze feels like cold stone.
Let me see the other, I say, and I give him the one I have held.
This one has three scenes, once repeatedthe Jade Pagoda; the poem written in brush strokes in an ancient script; Lao Shou Hsing, the birthday fairy. Yes, the memories are all here.
We look at each other across the ginger jars, across the years.
ONETHE JADE PAGODA
Peking in 1930! It was a city straight from the pages of Marco Polo. The Temple of Heaven still retained its patina of age, unaware of the desecrating renovations that were to come. The whole city seemed steeped in the culture of its people, mellow as the smooth cream ivory of its curio shops, wise with a wisdom drawn from the deep pools of its clearest jade, relaxed as the curve of a temple roof against its sky. How did I, born and brought up in Mechanicville, New York, happen to be walking its streets?
Events had exploded one after another since that morning, a little more than two years before, when Miss Montgomery, the director of nurses, called me into her office in the Cortland County Hospital, in New York State. I was young, proud and confident in my new status as supervisor of the maternity ward, but I flinched at the summons. What had I done or what hadnt I done? I can still feel the panic beneath my starched white as I hurried through the corridors.
Miss Montgomery rose from her desk as I came in. This was worse than I had thought. Miss Scott, I understand you are seeing a lot of Dr. Andrews. (I am, but what is that to you? I thought, a little resentfully.) But the cool blue eyes were twinkling. Just dont give your heart away until youve met Frederick Scovel. Hes the new medical student up in the lab. Thats all.
Frederick Scovel indeed! If he had that effect on the director of nurses, he was probably handsomeand knew it. He was bound to be conceited, and pompous, andand icky! I seethed all the way back to the ward.
Naturally I found an errand to take me to the lab. I had to see this paragon. The first thing I noticed about him was his ears. They were slightly reminiscent of fauns ears. He was tall; I had to look way up to see the light brown hair, brown eyes, and a Roman nose. Unbelievably, he was shy. Of course, nothing about this man was of the slightest interest to me. I picked up my test tubes and went back to the ward.
Shy was hardly the right word.
A week later, after eight hours on the ward, I hurried off duty to keep my third date with him. I remember that, as we sat in the living room, he bent to remove my shoes and gently rubbed my tired feet. Then he smiled, amused at something.
Whats so funny I asked.
I was just wondering what that Dr. Andrews would say when he finds out that Im going to marry you, he replied.
Before I could think of anything else to say, hed risen and walked across the room. He sat down in the chair farthest away and said quietly, I shouldnt have said that. I cant ask you to share my life. Im going to be a missionary.
A what? This mild, disturbing man who had so quickly become the center of my existence did not look in the least like my mental picture of a missionary. And I couldnt, by the farthest stretch of the imagination, see myself in the role of what I supposed was the typical missionary wifehigh-topped shoes, umbrella firmly clutched in the middle, straw suitcase tied together with twine, hair snatched back in a bun. Me? Well, hardly! But hed probably change his mind.
It was natural for Fred to be drawn to such a calling. His father was a minister; his mother, the daughter of a minister. Both grandfathers had been ministers, for that matter. Missionaries had been in and out of Freds home for as long as he could remember.
I forgot all about missionaries in the whirl of happiness that followed.
It was a beautiful wedding with peonies everywhere. I wanted to wear a mantilla, because the comb would make me look taller. Well look silly standing in the front of the church, I had said, you six feet one and a half, and I five feet and half an inch.
If Id wanted a tall wife, I could have had one, he had answered conclusively.
There was a halo around life together, around our planning for the future. We talked of the day when we would go to China as missionaries, but that seemed like another age to come. I knew that Fred was in correspondence with what we always spoke of as the Board, meaning the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. But the joy at hand wrapped us in a cloak that shut out the winds of the world. We did not see each other often enough or long enough at a time to discuss anything at length. Fred was interning at Memorial Hospital in Syracuse, New York, and I was still working in Cortland, some forty miles away.
