Peony in Love Page 5

  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 awa
y.

  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.”

  “Then I will wait for you there.”

  I longed for him to touch me, but I was afraid.

  “You will come to me,” he said.

  It took great willpower for me to turn away and head back to the opera. I was fully aware of his eyes on me as I crossed back and forth across the zigzag bridge.

  No girl—not even the spoiled Tan Ze—could meet her future husband like this, let alone a strange man, of her own volition, of her own choosing, with no watchful eyes, no condemnation. I had been carried away by the story of Liniang, but she was not a living girl who would suffer any consequences.

  Spring Sickness in Summer

  ALL GIRLS THINK ABOUT THEIR WEDDINGS. WE WORRY that our husbands will be cold, mean, indifferent, or neglectful, but mostly we imagine something wonderful and joyous. How can we not create a fantasy in our minds when the reality is so hard? So, during the darkness as the nightingales sang, I imagined my wedding, my husband waiting for me in his home, and everything leading up to the moment we would be united—only, in place of a faceless man, I envisioned my handsome stranger.

  I dreamed of the final bride-price gifts arriving. I imagined the sparkle and weight of the hairpins, earrings, rings, bracelets, and loose jewels. I thought of the Suzhou silks that would rival even what my father made in his factories. I dreamed of the last pig that would be part of the livestock my father would receive in exchange for me. I imagined the way my father would have the pig butchered and how I would wrap the head and tail to send back to the Wu family as a sign of respect. I thought of the gifts my father would send with the pieces of pig: sprigs of artemisia to expel evil influences before my arrival, pomegranates to symbolize my fertility, jujubes because the word sounded like having children quickly, and the seven grains, because the character for kernel was identical in writing and sound to offspring.

  I dreamed of what the palanquin would look like when it came to fetch me. I thought about meeting my mother-in-law for the first time and how she would hand me the confidential wedding book that would instruct me on what to do when the time came for clouds and rain. I imagined my first night alone in bed with my stranger. I conjured our future years together unhampered by worries about money or officialdom. We would enjoy the day, the night, a smile, a word, a kiss, a glance. All lovely thoughts. All pointless dreams.

  When morning came—my birthday and the Double Seven Festival—I had no appetite. My mind was dense with memories of the young man’s breath against my cheek and his whispered words. This was, I realized with great happiness, lovesickness.

  Today I wanted everything I did—from the moment I got up until I met him in the Moon-Viewing Pavilion—to be of my own choosing. I had Willow unwrap my bindings, letting her hold my right ankle in her palm and watching as her fingers unwound the cloth over, under, and around my foot in a hypnotic motion. She set my feet to soak in a bath of pomelo leaves, to keep my flesh soft and easy to bind, and then washed away the old skin. She used powder made from the root bark of the wolfberry to smooth away rough spots, sprinkled alum between my toes to ward off infection, and finished with a fine dusting of fragrant powder to entice.

  My bound feet were extremely beautiful—my best feature—and I took great pride in them. Ordinarily I paid strict attention to Willow’s ministrations, making sure that my deep crease was fully cleaned, calluses cut away, any fragments of broken bone that poked through my skin sanded down, and my nails kept as short as possible. This time, I relished the sensitivity of my skin to the warmth of the water and the cool of the air. A woman’s feet were her greatest mystery and gift. If some miracle happened and I married my stranger, I would care for them in secret, powdering them to accentuate their odor, and then rewrapping them tightly so they would appear as small and delicate as possible.

  I had Willow bring me a tray laden with several pairs of slippers. I gazed at them pensively. Which pair would he prefer, the magenta silk embroidered with butterflies or the pale green with the tiny dragonflies?

  I looked at the silks Willow brought out for me and wondered if he might like them. Willow put me into my clothes, combed my hair, washed my face, and applied powder and rouge to my cheeks.

  I was hopelessly lost in thoughts of love, but I still had to make offerings to my ancestors on Double Seven. I was not the first in my family to go to the ancestral hall this morning. We all wish for wealth, good harvests, and offspring, and already offerings of food had been made to encourage reciprocal gifts of fecundity from our ancestors. I saw whole taro roots—a symbol of fertility—and knew that my aunts and the concubines had been here to ask my ancestors to bring sons to our line. My grandfather’s concubines had left little piles of fresh loquats and lichee. They tended to be excessively extravagant, knowing that in the afterworld they would maintain their status as my grandfather’s property and hoping Grandmother was whispering good words about them in his ear. My uncles had brought rice to ensure peace and plenty, while my father had offered a warm platter of meats to encourage more wealth and a good crop of silkworms. Chopsticks and bowls had been provided for my ancestors as well, so they might dine with elegant ease.

  I had started toward the Spring Pavilion for breakfast when I heard Mama call me. I followed her voice to the room for little girls. When I entered, I was assailed by the unique scent of a special broth of frankincense, apricot kernel, and white mulberry that my old amah used for all the Chen daughters during the footbinding process. I saw Second Aunt holding Orchid, her youngest daughter, on her lap, my mother kneeling before the two of them, and all the other little girls who lived in this room—not one of them older than seven—clustered around them.

  “Peony,” Mama said when she saw me, “come here. I need your help.”

  I’d heard Mama complain that Orchid’s footbinding wasn’t going fast enough and that Second Aunt was too softhearted for the job. Mama held o
ne of the little girl’s feet lightly in her hand. All the required bones had broken, but no effort had been made to mold them into a better shape. What I saw looked like the body of an octopus filled with broken and jagged little sticks. In other words, a useless, ugly, purple-and-yellow mess.

  “You know the men in our household are weak,” Mama scolded Second Aunt. “They resigned their commissions and came home after the Cataclysm. They refuse to work for the new emperor, so they no longer wield any real power. They’ve been forced to shave their foreheads. They no longer ride horses, preferring the comfort of palanquins. In place of battle, the hunt, and argument, they collect delicate porcelains and paintings on silk. They have retreated and become more…feminine.” She paused before going on briskly. “Since this is so, we have to be more womanly than ever before.”

  With this she shook Orchid’s foot. The girl whimpered, and tears rolled down Second Aunt’s cheeks. Mama paid no attention.

  “We must follow the Four Virtues and the Three Obediences. Remember, when a daughter, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son. Your husband is Heaven,” she said, quoting the Classic of Filial Duty for Girls. “You know what I’m saying is true.”

  Second Aunt didn’t speak, but these words scared me. Since I was the eldest girl in our household, I remembered all too clearly each time one of my cousins had had her feet bound. Too often my aunts were merciful and Mama would rewrap the feet herself, making both the girl and her mother weep in pain and misery.