Peony in Love (5 page)

Baba gazed out the window to Solitary Island, his eyes glassy and filled with…pity? desire? longing?

Into the heavy silence, I said, “Not everything was lost, Baba. Before Xiaoqing died, she wrapped some jewelry in discarded paper and gave it to her maid’s daughter. When the girl opened the package, she found eleven poems on those abandoned sheets.”

“Recite one of them for me, will you, Peony?”

My father hadn’t helped me understand what I was feeling, but he did give me a glimmer of the romantic thoughts my stranger might be experiencing as he waited for me to come to him. I took a breath and began to recite.

“The sound of cold rain hitting the forlorn window is not bearable—”

“Please close your mouth!” Mama ordered. She never came here, and her appearance was startling and unsettling. How long had she been listening? To my father, she said, “You tell our daughter about Xiaoqing, but you know perfectly well she was not the only one to die upon reading
The Peony Pavilion.
”

“Stories tell us how we should live,” my father responded easily, covering the surprise he must have felt at my mother’s presence and her accusatory tone.

“The story of Xiaoqing has a lesson for our daughter?” Mama asked. “Peony was born into one of the finest families in Hangzhou. That other girl was a thin horse, bought and sold like property. One girl is pure. The other was a—”

“I’m aware of Xiaoqing’s profession,” my father cut in. “You don’t need to remind me. But when I speak to our daughter about Xiaoqing, I’m thinking more of the lessons that can be learned from the opera that inspired her. Surely you see no harm in that.”

“No harm? Are you suggesting our daughter’s fate will be like that of Du Liniang?”

I glanced furtively at the servant standing by the door. How long before he reported this—gleefully, probably—to another servant and it spread throughout the compound?

“Peony could learn from her, yes,” Baba answered evenly. “Liniang is fair, her heart kind and pure, her vision farsighted, and her will steadfast and true.”

“Waaa!”
Mama responded. “That girl was stubborn in love! How many girls need to die from this story before you see the perils?”

My cousins and I whispered about these unfortunates late at night when we thought no one was listening. We spoke of Yu Niang, who became enamored of the opera at the age of thirteen and died by seventeen, with the text at her side. The great Tang Xianzu, heartbroken at the news, wrote poems eulogizing her. But soon came many many more girls, who read the story, became lovesick like Liniang, wasted away, and died, hoping that true love would find them and bring them back to life.

“Our daughter is a phoenix,” Baba said. “I will see her married to a dragon, not a crow.”

This answer did not satisfy my mother. When she was happy, she could change ice crystals into flowers. When she was sad or angry—as she was now—she could turn dark clouds into swarms of biting insects.

“An overeducated daughter is a dead daughter,” my mother announced. “Talent is not a gift we should wish on Peony. All this reading, where do you think it will end—in nuptial bliss or in disappointment, consumption, and death?”

“I’ve told you before, Peony will not die from words.”

Mama and Baba seemed to have forgotten I was in the room, and I didn’t move for fear they would notice me. Just yesterday I’d heard them argue about this subject. I rarely saw my parents together. When I did, it was for festivals or religious rites in the ancestral hall, where every word and action was set in advance. Now I wondered if they were like this all the time.

“How will she learn to be a good wife and mother if she keeps coming here?” Mama demanded.

“How will she not?” Baba asked, no concern in his voice. To my great surprise and my mother’s disgust, he loosely quoted Prefect Du speaking about his daughter. “A young lady needs an understanding of letters, so that when she marries she will not be deficient in conversation with her husband. And Peony’s role is to be a moral guardian, is it not? You should be happy that she cares little for pretty dresses, new hairpins, or painting her face. While she is lovely, we need to remember that her face is not what distinguishes her. Her beauty is a reflection of the virtue and talent she keeps inside. One day she will offer comfort and solace to her husband through reading to him, but ultimately we are training our daughter to be a good mother—no more, no less. Her role is to teach her daughters to write poetry and perfect their womanly skills. Most of all, she will help our grandson in his studies, until he is old enough to leave the women’s chambers. When he completes his studies, she will have her day of glory and honor. Only then will she shine. Only then will she be recognized.”

My mother could not argue this point; she acquiesced. “Just so long as her reading doesn’t cause her to cross any boundaries. You wouldn’t want her to become unruly. And if you must tell our daughter stories, can’t you tell her of the gods and goddesses?”

When my father wouldn’t agree, Mama’s eyes came to rest on me. She said to my father, “How much longer will you keep her?”

“Just a little while.”

As quietly as she’d come, my mother disappeared. My father had won the argument, I think. At least he didn’t seem particularly perturbed as he made a notation in an account book and then set down his calligraphy brush, got up, and walked to the window to look out to Solitary Island.

A servant came in, bowed to my father, and handed him a sealed letter with an official red chop. My father fingered it thoughtfully, as though he might already know what was written inside. Since he didn’t seem to want to open it with me sitting there, I rose, thanked him again for giving me the edition of
The Peony Pavilion,
and left the library.

Desire

ANOTHER LUSH AND WARM NIGHT. IN OUR WOMEN’S
chambers we enjoyed a banquet that included beans dried in spring sunshine and then steamed with dried tangerine peel, and red seventh-month crabs, which were the size of hen’s eggs and available from our local waters only at this time of year. Special ingredients were added to the married women’s dishes to help them get pregnant, while others were left out for those who were or might be with child: rabbit meat, because everyone knows it can cause a hare lip, and lamb, because it can cause a baby to be born ill. But I wasn’t hungry. My mind was already in the Riding-the-Wind Pavilion.

When the cymbals and drums called us to the garden, I lagged behind, doing my best to be gracious and make small talk with my aunts, the concubines, and the wives of my father’s guests. I joined the last group to leave our chambers. Only cushions on the outer edge of the women’s area remained. I took one and looked around to make sure I’d made the right decision. Yes, my mother, as the hostess, sat in the middle of the group. Tonight all the unmarried girls but me had been clustered together. Tan Ze—whether of her own accord or because my mother had insisted on it—had been relegated to the section with girls her own age.

Once again my father had chosen highlights for this evening’s performance, which began three years after Du Liniang’s death with the scholar Liu Mengmei falling ill on his long journey to take the imperial exams. Liniang’s old tutor gives Mengmei shelter at her shrine near the plum tree. As soon as the next piece of music started, I could tell that we’d gone with Liniang to the afterworld for Infernal Judgment. Since tonight I couldn’t see the performers, I had to imagine the judge, fearful in his aspect, as he talked about reincarnation and how souls scatter like sparks from a firecracker. They’re sent to any of 48,000 fates in the realms of desire, of form, and of the formless, or to one of the 242 levels of Hell. Liniang pleaded with the judge, telling him a terrible mistake had been made, for she was too young to be there, had neither married nor drunk wine, but had fallen into longing and then lost her life.

“When in the world did anyone die from a dream?”
The judge’s voice tore into me as he demanded an explanation from the Flower Spirit, who had brought about Liniang’s lovesickness and death. Then, after checking the Register of Marriages, he determined that indeed Liniang had been destined to be with Mengmei, and—since her ancestor tablet hadn’t been dotted—granted her permission to wander the world as a ghost in search of the husband she’d been fated to marry. After this, he charged the Flower Spirit with keeping Liniang’s physical body from decaying. As a ghost, Liniang returned to the earthly realm to live near her tomb under the plum tree. When Sister Stone, the old nun charged with caring for the tomb, made offerings on a table under the tree, Liniang was so grateful that she scattered plum blossoms into which she infused her loving thoughts.

As Mengmei recovered at the shrine, he grew restless and strolled through the gardens. Quite by accident—except that it had to be fate interfering—he found the box with Liniang’s rolled-up self-portrait scroll. He believed he’d found a painting of the goddess Guanyin. He took the scroll back to his room and burned incense before it. He delighted in Guanyin’s soft mist of hair, her tiny mouth shaped like a rosebud, and the way love’s longing seemed to be locked between her brows, but the closer he looked, the more convinced he became that the woman on the silk couldn’t be the goddess. Guanyin should be floating, but he saw tiny lily feet poking out from beneath the woman’s skirts. Then he saw the poem that had been written on the silk and realized that this was a self-portrait painted by a mortal girl.

As he read the lines, he recognized himself as Liu, the willow; the girl in the painting also held a sprig of plum in her hand, as though she were embracing Mengmei—Dream of Plum. He wrote a poem in reply and then called upon her to step down from the painting and join him.

Quiet expectancy settled over the women on our side of the screen as Liniang’s dark ghostly side emerged from her garden tomb to tempt, woo, and seduce her scholar.

I waited until she began tapping at Mengmei’s window and he started asking her questions about who she was, and then I rose and swiftly left. My feelings mirrored Liniang’s as she glided around her scholar, calling to him, teasing him with her words.
“I am a flower you brought to bloom in the dark of night,”
I heard Liniang sing.
“This body, a thousand pieces of gold, I offer to you without hesitation.”
I was an unmarried girl, but I understood her wish. Mengmei accepted her offer. Again and again, he asked Liniang’s name, but she refused to give it. It was easier for her to give her body than reveal her identity.

I slowed as I neared the zigzag bridge that led to the Riding-the-Wind Pavilion. I envisioned my lily feet—hidden under my flowing skirt—blooming with each step. I smoothed the silk, let my fingers play across my hair to make sure that all my pins were in place, and then for a few moments I held my palms over my heart, trying to still its desperate, anxious beating. I had to remember who and what I was. I was the only daughter in a family that had produced imperial scholars of the highest rank for nine generations. I was betrothed. I had bound feet. If anything untoward happened, I would not be able to run away as a big-footed girl might, nor would I be able to float away on a ghostly cloud as Liniang could have done. If I was caught, my betrothal would be broken. A girl couldn’t do anything worse than bring embarrassment and disgrace on her family in this way, but I was foolish and stupid and my mind was dulled by desire.

I pressed my fingers hard against my eyes and brought my mother into that pain. If I had any reason left, I would have seen her disappointment in me. If I had any sense, I would have known how severe her anger would be. Instead, I tried to bring into my mind her dignity, her beauty, her stature. This was my home, my garden, my pavilion, my night, my moon, my life.

I stepped across the zigzag bridge and into the Riding-the-Wind Pavilion, where he waited for me. At first we didn’t exchange words. Perhaps he was surprised that I had come; it didn’t say much about my character, after all. Perhaps he was as afraid as I was that we’d be caught. Or perhaps he was breathing me in just as I was letting him come into my lungs, my eyes, my heart.

He spoke first. “The portrait doesn’t just represent Liniang,” he said, using formality as a way to keep us both from making a terrible mistake. “It holds the key to Mengmei’s destiny with her—the plum blossom in her hand, the words of invitation to someone named Willow in her poem. He sees his future wife in that fragile piece of silk.”

These were hardly the romantic words I longed for, but I was a girl and I followed his lead.

“I love the plum blossoms,” I responded. “They appear again and again. Did you stay to see the scene where Liniang scatters the petals on the altar under the plum tree?” When he nodded, I went on. “Would the blossoms sprinkled by Liniang’s ghost appear different from those brought there by the wind?”

He didn’t answer my question. Instead he said, his voice thick, “Let us look at the moon together.”

I let Liniang’s courage come into my heart and then I took small steps across the pavilion until I reached his side. Tomorrow would be the quarter moon, so it was little more than a sliver hanging low in the sky. A sudden breeze came off the lake, cooling my burning face. Tendrils of hair came loose, caressing my skin and sending shivers along my spine.

“Are you cold?” he asked, moving behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders.

I wanted to turn and face him, look into his eyes, and…? Liniang had seduced her scholar, but I didn’t know what to do.

Behind me, he dropped his hands. I felt slightly adrift. The only thing keeping me from running or fainting was the warmth emanating from his body, that’s how close we stood. And I didn’t move.

From the distance came the opera. Mengmei and Liniang continued to meet. Always he asked her name; always she refused to give it. Always he asked:
“How can your footfall be so soundless?”
And always Liniang admitted that it was true she left no footprints in the dust. Finally, one night, the poor ghost girl arrived, fearful and trembling, because at last she was going to tell him who and what she was.

In the Riding-the-Wind Pavilion two people stood paralyzed, too afraid to move, too afraid to speak, too afraid to flee. I felt my young man’s breath on my neck.

From the garden, Mengmei sang in question,
“Are you betrothed?”

Even before I could hear Liniang’s answer, a whispered voice came into my ear. “Are you betrothed?”

“I’ve been betrothed since infancy.” I barely recognized my voice, because all I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears.

He sighed behind me. “A wife has been chosen for me too.”

“Then we shouldn’t be meeting.”

“I could say good night,” he said. “Is that what you want?”

From the stage, I heard Liniang confide to her scholar her worries that now that they had done clouds and rain together he would only want her as a concubine and not as a wife. Hearing this, indignation suddenly bubbled up inside me. I wasn’t the only one doing something wrong here. I turned to face him.

“Is this what your wife can expect in her marriage, that you would meet strange women?”

He smiled guilelessly, but I thought about how he had prowled through our garden when he should have been watching the opera with my father, my uncles, Commissioner Tan, and the other male guests.

“Although men and women are different, in love and desire they are the same,”
he recited the popular saying. Then he added, “I’m hoping not only for a companion in the home but in the bedchamber as well.”

“So you’re looking for concubines even before you’re married,” I responded tartly.

Since marriages were arranged and neither the bride nor the groom had any say in the match, concubines were every wife’s fear. Husbands fell in love with concubines. They came together by choice, had no responsibilities, and could delight in each other’s company, while marriages were a matter of duty and a way to provide sons who, in time, would perform rites in the ancestral hall.

“If you were my wife,” he said, “I would never have need of concubines.”

I lowered my eyes, oddly happy.

Some might say all this is too ridiculous. Some might say it could never have happened this way. Some might say this was in my imagination—a fevered imagination that would eventually lead to my obsessed writings and no-good end. Some might even say, if everything happened the way I’ve recounted, that I deserved my no-good end and had earned
worse
than death, which in truth is what I got. But at the time I was joyous.

“I think we were destined to meet,” he said. “I didn’t know you would be here last night, but you were. We can’t fight fate. Instead, we must accept that fate has given us a special opportunity.”

I blushed deeply and looked away.

All the while, the opera played in our garden. I knew it so well that even though I was distracted by what was happening with my stranger, a part of me was letting the story seep into my consciousness. Now at last I heard Liniang admit who she was: a spectral image locked between life and the afterworld. Mengmei’s terrified screams echoed through the Riding-the-Wind Pavilion. I shivered again.

My young man cleared his throat. “I think you know this opera very well.”

“I’m just a girl and my thoughts are of no importance,” I answered, trying to be modest, which was foolish given our circumstances.

He looked at me quizzically. “You are beautiful, which pleases me, but it is what is inside here”—without touching me, he reached out and brought the tip of his finger to a spot over my heart, the seat of all consciousness—“that I’d like to know.”

The place on my chest where he’d almost touched me burned. We were both bold and reckless, but where Liniang’s enticing words and her scholar’s equally suggestive actions eventually ended in consummation, I was a living girl who could never give herself away so easily without paying a severe price.

In the garden, Mengmei overcame his fear of the ghost, proclaimed his love, and agreed to marry Liniang. He painted the dot on Liniang’s ancestor tablet, something her father had been too hurried with his promotion to do. Mengmei opened the grave and removed the jade funeral stone that had been placed in Liniang’s mouth. With that, her body once again breathed the air of the living.

“I must go,” I said.

“Will you meet me again tomorrow?”

“I can’t,” I said. “They’ll miss me.”

I considered it a miracle that no one had come after me on either night. How could I take one more chance?

“Tomorrow, but not here,” he went on as though I hadn’t just refused him. “Is there another place? Perhaps somewhere farther from the garden?”

“Our Moon-Viewing Pavilion is by the shore.” I knew where it was, but I’d never been there. I wasn’t even allowed to go there with my father. “It is the farthest from the halls and the garden.”