Peony in Love (2 page)

It was a romantic thought—and it coated us in warm feelings—but none of us would be alone under a grape arbor at that time of night, even if we were within the safety of this compound. And at least for me, it did little to still my quivering excitement about
The Peony Pavilion.
How much longer would I have to wait?

When it came time for dinner back in the Spring Pavilion, the women gathered in little groups—sisters with sisters, cousins with cousins—but Madame Tan and her daughter were strangers here. Ze plopped down beside me at the unmarried girls’ table as though she were soon to be married and not still a little girl. I knew it would make Mama happy if I gave my attention to our guest, but I was sorry I did.

“My father can buy me anything I want,” Ze crowed, telling me and everyone else who could hear that her family had more wealth than the Chen clan.

WE HAD BARELY
finished our meal when from outside came the sound of a drum and cymbals, calling us to the garden. I wanted to show my refinement and leave the room slowly, but I was first out the door. Lanterns flickered as I followed the corridor from the Spring Pavilion, along the edge of the central pond, to just past our Always-Pleasant Pavilion. I stepped through moon gates, which borrowed views of stands of bamboo, potted cymbidiums, and artfully trimmed branches on the other side. As the music grew louder, I forced myself to slow down. I needed to proceed cautiously, fully aware that men who were not family members stood within our walls tonight. If one of them should chance to see me, I would be blamed and a bad mark set against my character. But being careful and not rushing took more self-control than I thought possible. The opera would begin shortly, and I wanted to experience every second of it.

I reached the area that had been set aside for women and sat down on a cushion positioned near one of the screen’s folds so I could peek through the crack. I wouldn’t be able to see much of the opera, but it was more than I’d hoped for. The other women and girls came in behind me and took places on other cushions. I was so excited I didn’t even mind when Tan Ze sat beside me.

For weeks, my father—as director of the performance—had been tucked away in a side hall with the cast. He had hired a traveling all-male theatrical troupe of eight members, which had upset my mother terribly, because these were people of the lowest and basest class. He’d also coerced others from our household staff—including Willow and several other servants—into taking various roles.

“Your opera has fifty-five scenes and four hundred and three arias!” Willow had said to me in awe one day, as if I didn’t already know that. It would have taken more than twenty hours to perform the whole opera, but no matter how many times I asked, she wouldn’t tell me which scenes Baba had cut. “Your father wants it to be a surprise,” Willow said, enjoying the opportunity to disobey me. As the rehearsals became more demanding, consternation had rippled throughout the household when an uncle had called for a pipe and found no one to fill it, or an aunt had asked for hot water for her bath and no one had brought it. Even I had been inconvenienced, since Willow was busy now, having been given the important role of Spring Fragrance, the main character’s servant.

The music began. The narrator stepped out and gave a quick synopsis of the play, emphasizing how longing had lasted through three incarnations before Liu Mengmei and Du Liniang realized their love. Then we met the young hero, an impoverished scholar who had to leave his ancestral home to take the imperial exams. His family name was Liu, which means
willow.
He recalled how he dreamed of a beautiful maiden standing under a plum tree. When he woke up, he took the given name Mengmei, Dream of Plum. The plum tree, with its lush foliage and ripening fruit, brought to mind the forces of nature, so this name was suggestive even to me of Mengmei’s passionate nature. I listened attentively, but my heart had always been with Liniang and I could hardly wait to see her.

She arrived onstage for the scene called Admonishing the Daughter. She wore a robe of golden silk with red embroidery. From her headdress rose fluffy balls of spun silk, beaded butterflies, and flowers that quivered when she moved.

“We treasure our daughter like a pearl,”
Madame Du sang to her husband, but she chastised her daughter. “
You don’t want to be ignorant, do you?
”

And Prefect Du, Liniang’s father, added,
“No virtuous and eligible young lady should fail to be educated. Take time from your embroidery and read the books on the shelves.”

But admonitions alone couldn’t change Liniang’s behavior, so soon enough she and Spring Fragrance were being tutored by a strict teacher. The lessons were tedious, full of the kind of memorization of rules that I knew only too well.
“It is proper for a daughter at first cockcrow to wash her hands, to rinse her mouth, to dress her hair, to pin the same, and to pay respects to her mother and father.”

I heard things like this every day, along with Don’t show your teeth when you smile, Walk steadily and slowly, Look pure and pretty, Be respectful to your aunties, and Use scissors to trim any frayed or loose threads on your gowns.

Poor Spring Fragrance couldn’t stand the lessons and begged to be dismissed so she could pee. The men on the other side of the screen chortled when Willow bent over at the waist, squirmed, and held in her pee with both hands. It embarrassed me to see her behaving so, but she was only doing what my father had instructed (which shocked me, because how could he know about such things?).

In my discomfort, I let my eyes drift from the stage, and I saw men. Most of them had their backs to me, but some were angled so I could see their profiles. I was a maiden, but I
looked.
It was naughty, but I had lived fifteen years without having committed a single act that anyone in my family could call unfilial.

My eyes caught sight of a man as he turned his head to look at the gentleman sitting in the chair next to him. His cheekbones were high, his eyes wide and kind, and his hair black as a cave. He wore a long dark-blue gown of simple design. His forehead was shaved in deference to the Manchu emperor, and his long queue draped languidly over a shoulder. He brought his hand up to his mouth to make an aside, and I imagined in that simple gesture so much: gentleness, refinement, and a love of poetry. He smiled, revealing perfect white teeth and eyes that shone with merriment. His elegance and somnolence reminded me of a cat: long, slim, perfectly groomed, knowledgeable, and very contained. He was man-beautiful. When he turned his face back to the stage to watch the opera, I realized I’d been holding my breath. I let it out slowly and tried to concentrate as Spring Fragrance returned—relieved—with news of a garden she’d found.

When I read this part of the story, I felt great sympathy for Liniang, who was so cloistered she didn’t even know her family owned a garden. She had spent her entire life indoors. Now Spring Fragrance tempted her mistress to go outside to see the flowers, willows, and pavilions. Liniang was curious, but she artfully hid her interest from her maid.

The quiet and subtlety was broken by a great fanfare announcing the Speed the Plough scene. Prefect Du arrived in the countryside to exhort the farmers, herders, mulberry girls, and tea pickers to work hard in the coming season. Acrobats tumbled, clowns drank from flasks of wine, men in gaily decorated costumes tottered about the garden on stilts, and our maids and other servants performed country harvest songs and dances. It was such a
li
scene, filled with what I imagined the outside world of men to be: wild gestures, exaggerated facial expressions, and the dissonance of gongs, clackers, and drums. I closed my eyes against the cacophony and tried to draw more deeply into myself to find my interior reading quiet. My heart calmed. When I opened my eyes, I again saw through the slit in the screen the man I’d spotted earlier. His eyes were closed. Could he be feeling what I was feeling?

Someone pulled my sleeve. I glanced to my right and saw Tan Ze’s pinched little face looking up at me intently. “Are you staring at that boy out there?” she whispered.

I blinked a few times and tried to regain my composure by taking several shallow breaths.

“I was looking at him too,” she confided, acting much too bold for her years. “You must be betrothed already. But my father”—she brought her chin down while looking up at me with clever eyes—“has not yet arranged
my
marriage. He says that with so much turmoil still in the land, no one should agree to these things too early. You don’t know which family will go up and which will go down. My father says it’s terrible to marry a daughter to a mediocre man.”

Was there a way to make this girl close her mouth? I wondered, and not in a nice way.

Ze turned back to face the screen and squinted through the crack. “I will ask my father to make inquiries about that boy’s family.”

As though she would actually have a choice in her marriage! I don’t know how it could have happened so quickly, but I was jealous and angry that she would try to steal him for herself. Of course, there was no hope for the young man and me. As Ze said, I was already betrothed. But for these three nights of the opera I wanted to dream romantic thoughts and imagine that my life too might have a happy love-filled ending like Liniang’s.

I blocked Ze from my mind and let myself be transported back to the opera for The Interrupted Dream. At last Liniang ventured out into her—our—garden. Such a lovely moment when she sees it all for the first time. Liniang lamented that the beauty of the flowers was hidden in a place no one visited, but she also saw the garden as a version of herself: in full bloom but neglected. I understood how she felt. The emotions that stirred in her were stirred in me every time I read the lines.

Liniang returned to her room, changed into a robe embroidered with peony blossoms, and sat before a mirror, wondering at the fleeting nature of her beauty much as I had this morning.
“Pity one whose beauty is a bright flower, when life endures no longer than a leaf on a tree,”
she sang, expressing how disturbing spring’s splendor can be, and how temporary.
“I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn, only regret. Oh, will I ever see a man? How will love find me? Where can I reveal my true desires?”

Overcome by all she’d experienced, she fell asleep. In her dreams, she traveled to the Peony Pavilion, where the spirit of Liu Mengmei appeared, wearing a robe with a willow pattern and carrying a willow sprig. He touched Liniang gently with the leaves. They exchanged soft words, and he asked her to compose a poem about the willow. Then they danced together. Liniang was so delicate and touching in her movements that it was like watching a silkworm’s death—tender and subtle.

Mengmei led her into our garden’s rocky grotto. With the two of them gone from view, all I heard was Mengmei’s seductive voice.
“Open the fastening at your neck, untie the sash around your waist, and cover your eyes with your sleeve. You may need to bite the fabric….”

Alone in my bed I had tried in vain to imagine what might be going on in the rockery of the Peony Pavilion. I still couldn’t see what was happening and had to rely on the appearance of the Flower Spirit to explain their actions.
“Ah, how the male force surges and leaps….”
But this didn’t help me either. As an unmarried girl, I’d been told about clouds and rain, but no one had yet explained what it really was.

At consummation, a shower of peony petals came floating over the top of the rockery. Liniang sang of the joys she and her scholar had found.

When Liniang woke from her dream, she realized she’d found true love. Spring Fragrance, on orders from Madame Du, instructed Liniang to eat. But how could she? Three meals a day held no promise, no love. Liniang sneaked away from her servant and went back to the garden to pursue her dream. She saw the ground carpeted in petals. Hawthorn branches caught her skirt, pulling at her, keeping her in the garden. Memories of her dream came back to her:
“Against the withered rock he leaned my wilting body.”
She remembered how he laid her down and how she spread the folds of her skirt as
“a covering for earth for the fear of the eyes of Heaven,”
until eventually she’d experienced her sweet melting.

She lingered under a plum tree thick with clusters of fruit. But this was no ordinary plum tree. It represented Liniang’s mysterious dream lover, vital and procreative.
“I should count it a great good fortune to be buried here beside it when I die,”
Liniang sang.

My mother had trained me never to show my feelings, but when I read
The Peony Pavilion,
I felt certain things: love, sadness, happiness. Now, watching the story played out before me, imagining what happened in our rockery between the scholar and Liniang, and seeing a young man not of my own family for the first time brought out too many emotions in me. I had to get away for a few moments; Liniang’s restlessness was my own.

I slowly rose and gingerly stepped between the cushions. I walked along one of our garden paths, Liniang’s words filling my heart with longing. I tried to rest my mind by letting my eyes find quiet in the greenery. There were no flowers in our main garden. Everything was green to create a feeling of tranquility like a cup of tea—the taste light but remaining a long time. I crossed the zigzag bridge that spanned one of our lesser lily ponds and stepped into the Riding-the-Wind Pavilion, which had been designed so that gentle breezes on a sultry summer evening would cool a hot face or burning heart. I sat down and tried to calm myself in the way the pavilion intended. I had so wanted to experience every second of the opera, but I’d been unprepared for how overwhelmed I would feel.

Arias and music wafted to me through the night, carrying with them Madame Du’s concern over her daughter’s listlessness. Madame Du didn’t recognize it yet, but her daughter was lovesick. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and let that knowledge seep into me.