Peony in Love (8 page)

But this was how it was supposed to be! A man today—one who was loyal to the Ming—would always choose an interior life over one of civil service in the new regime. Why had he said that? Did he think I was old-fashioned or just plain stupid? Did he think I wished him to be in business? Making money as a merchant was vulgar and low.

“I’m a poet,” he said.

I grinned. I had intuited it the first moment I saw him through the screen. “The greatest calling of all is to have a literary life.”

“I want a marriage of companions—one of shared lives and shared poems,” he murmured. “If we were husband and wife, we would collect books, read, and drink tea together. As I told you before, I’d want you for what’s in here.”

Again he pointed to my heart, but I felt it in a place far lower in my body.

“So tell me about the opera,” he said after a long moment. “Are you sad not to see Liniang reunite with her mother? I understand that girls love that scene.”

It was true. I did love that scene. As the battles wage on between the brigand and the empire’s forces, Madame Du and Spring Fragrance seek shelter at an inn in Hangzhou. Madame Du is amazed—frightened—to see what she believes is her daughter’s ghost. But of course, by now the three parts of Liniang’s soul have been brought back together and she is a girl once again, of flesh and blood.

“Every girl hopes her mother would recognize her and love her, even if she were dead, even if she were a ghost, even if she eloped,” I said.

“Yes, it is a good
qing
scene,” my poet agreed. “It shows us mother love. The other scenes tonight…” He jutted his chin indifferently. “Politics don’t interest me. Too much
li,
don’t you agree? I much prefer the scenes in the garden.”

Was he mocking me?

“Mengmei brought Liniang back to life through passion,” he went on. “He
believed
her back into existence.”

His understanding of the opera was so close to my own that I was emboldened to ask, “Would you do that for me?”

“Of course I would!”

Then he brought his face close to mine. His breath was redolent of orchids and musk. The desire we both felt warmed the air between us. I thought he might kiss me and I waited to feel his lips on mine. My body flooded with blood and emotion. I didn’t move, because I didn’t know what to do or what he expected me to do. That’s not quite true. I was not expected to be doing
any
of this, but when he stepped away and regarded me with his deep black eyes, I trembled with longing.

He didn’t seem much older than me, but he was a man and lived in the outside world. For all I knew, he had much experience with the teahouse women whose voices I sometimes heard floating across the lake. To him, I must have seemed like a child, and in some ways he dealt with me that way, by retreating just far enough to give me a chance to steady myself.

“I can never decide if the opera has a happy ending or not,” he said.

His sentence startled me. Had that much time passed since I’d come here? He must have sensed my alarm, because he added, “Don’t worry. There are several more scenes.” He picked up the peony that he’d brought with him with one hand and laid its blossom in his other. “Mengmei wins the top honors in the imperial exams.”

My mind and body were far, far away from the opera and I had to force myself to concentrate, which I suppose is what he wanted.

“But when he presents himself to Prefect Du as his new son-in-law, he’s arrested,” I said. When he smiled, I understood I was doing the exact right thing.

“The Prefect orders Mengmei’s baggage searched, and—”

“The guards find Liniang’s self-portrait,” I finished for him. “Prefect Du has Mengmei beaten and tortured, believing the scholar has defiled his daughter’s tomb.”

“Mengmei insists he brought Liniang back from the spirit world and that the two of them have married,” he said. “Outraged, Prefect Du orders Mengmei’s decapitation.”

The fragrance from the peony in his palm filled my head. I remembered all the things I wished I’d done last night. I picked up the willow sprig from the balustrade. Slowly I began to walk around him, speaking softly all the while, caressing him with my words.

“Will the story end sorrowfully?” I asked. “Everyone is brought to the imperial court to present their problems to the emperor.” I came full circle, stopped to glance up to his eyes, and then glided around him again, this time letting the willow leaves brush against his torso.

“Liniang is presented to her father,” he said gruffly, “but he can’t accept that she’s alive, not even when he’s looking at her.”

“In this way, the great Tang Xianzu illustrated how men can be limited by
li.
” I kept my voice low, knowing my poet would have to work hard to hear me. “When something so miraculous happens, people can’t be rational anymore.” He sighed and I smiled. “The Prefect insists that Liniang pass many tests—”

“She casts a shadow and leaves footprints when she walks under blossoming trees.”

“That’s right,” I whispered. “And she also answers questions about the Seven Emotions—joy, anger, grief, fear, love, hate, and desire.”

“Have you experienced these emotions yourself?”

I stopped before him. “Not all of them,” I admitted.

“Joy?” He brought the peony he’d been holding in his hand to my cheek.

“Just today when I woke up.”

“Anger?”

“I told you I’m not perfect,” I answered as he brought the petals along my jaw.

“Grief?”

“Every year on the anniversary of my grandmother’s death.”

“But you have not truly experienced it yourself,” he said, taking the blossom away from my face and letting it trail down my arm. “Fear?”

I thought of the fear I felt coming here, but I said, “Never.”

“Good.” He kept the peony against the inside of my wrist. “Love?” I didn’t answer, but the feel of the flower on my skin caused me to shiver, and he smiled. “Hate?”

I shook my head. We both knew I hadn’t lived long enough or seen enough to hate anyone.

“Only one left,” he said. He brought the peony back up along my arm and then pulled it away, to drop again to a spot just below my ear. Then he slowly let the blossom glide down across my neck to the top of my collar and forward to my throat. “Desire?”

I had stopped breathing.

“I see your answer in your face,” he said.

He brought his lips to my ear.

“If we married,” he whispered, “we would not have to waste time drinking tea and making conversation.” He stepped back and looked out across the lake. “I wish…” His voice quavered, which I saw embarrassed him. He felt this moment as deeply as I did. He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. When he next spoke, it was as though nothing had happened between us. I was loose again, on my own.

“I wish you could see my home. It’s just across the lake on Wushan Mountain.”

“Isn’t that it right there?” I asked, pointing to the hill on the other side of the lake.

“That is the hill, yes, but Solitary Island—as beautiful as it is—obstructs the view of the house. My home is just behind the tip of the island. I wish you could see it, so that you could look across the water and think of me.”

“Perhaps I’ll be able to see it from my father’s library.”

“You’re right! Your father and I have talked politics there many times. I can see my home from the windows. But even if you can see the mountain, how will you know which house is mine?”

My mind, in such a turbulent state, could not think clearly enough to come up with a possible solution.

“I’m going to show you the house, so you can find it. I promise to look out from there every day to find you, if you will look for me.”

I agreed. He led me to the right side of the pavilion near the shore. He took the willow sprig from my hand and put it together with the peony blossom on the balustrade. When he sat down next to them and swung his legs over the edge, I understood that he intended me to do the same. He jumped down, stood on a rock, and reached his arms up to me.

“Give me your hands.”

“I can’t.” And I truly couldn’t. I had done a lot of improper things this evening, but I wasn’t going to follow him. I’d never been outside the Chen Family Villa. On this one thing my mother and father were adamant.

“It’s not far.”

“I’ve never been beyond my garden. My mother says—”

“Mothers are important, but—”

“I can’t do this.”

“What about the promise you just made?”

My will wavered. I was as weak as my cousin Broom when presented with a plate of dumplings.

“You will not be the only girl—woman—outside a garden wall tonight. I know many women who are boating on the lake this evening.”

“Teahouse women.” I sniffed.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m referring to women poets and writers who have joined poetry and writing clubs. Like you, they want to experience more of life than what is available inside their gardens. By leaving their inner chambers they’ve become artists of worth. It is this outside world that I would show you if you were my wife.”

He left unsaid that tonight was as far as that dream would go.

This time when he extended his arms, I sat down on the balustrade and, as delicately as possible, drew my legs across the stonework and let myself be pulled from the safety of the villa. He led me to the right along the rocks that lined the shore. What I was doing was beyond bad. Amazingly, nothing terrible happened. We weren’t caught, and no ghosts leaped from behind a bush or tree to scare or kill us for this infraction.

He held my elbow, since some of the rocks were slick with moss. I felt the heat of his hand through the silk of my sleeve. Warm air lifted my skirt as though it were a cicada’s wing carried by the wind. I was
out.
I was seeing things I’d never seen before. Here and there, bits of vines and branches draped over our compound wall, hinting at what was hidden inside. Weeping willows hung over the lake, their tendrils teasing the water’s surface. I brushed against wild roses blooming on the bank and their scent infused the air, my clothes, my hair, the skin on my hands. The feelings that rushed through my body were nearly overwhelming: fear that I would be caught, exhilaration that I was out, and love for the man who had brought me here.

We stopped. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been walking.

“My house is there,” he said, pointing across the lake, past the newly built pavilion on Solitary Island that I could see from my father’s library. “There’s a temple on the hill. It’s lit by torches this evening. Do you see it? The monks open their doors for all festivals. Just a little up and to the left is the house.”

“I see it.”

The moon was just a sliver, but it was enough to cast a path across the lake from my toes to his doorstep. It felt as though the heavens had agreed that we were meant to have this time together.

In this most extraordinary circumstance, I was distracted by a peculiar sensation. My lily shoes were thoroughly soaked and I could feel water being drawn up into the hem of my skirt. I took a tiny step back from the water’s edge, which sent ripples out across the peaceful surface. I thought about those ripples hitting the hulls of boats that carried other lovers on the lake and lapping at the edges of moon-viewing pavilions where young husbands and wives had sought refuge from the watchful eyes of the household.

“You’d like my home,” he said. “We have a nice garden—not as large as yours—with a small rockery, a moon-viewing pavilion, a pond, and a plum tree whose blossoms in spring fill the entire compound with an enticing fragrance. Whenever I see it, I’ll think of you.”

I wished we would have a wedding night. I wished it would happen right now. I blushed and looked down. When I looked up, he stared into my eyes. I knew he longed for the same thing I did. And then the moment was over.

“We must return,” he said.

He tried to hurry us, but my shoes were now slippery and I was slow. As we got closer to the villa, the sounds of the opera came more fully into my consciousness. Mengmei’s pained cries as he was tortured and beaten by Prefect Du’s guards told me we were close to the end.

He lifted me up and back into the Moon-Viewing Pavilion. This was it. Tomorrow, I would go back to preparing for my marriage, and he would go back to whatever young men do to get ready to greet their wives.

“I liked talking to you about the opera,” he said.

They may not seem like the most romantic words a man could have spoken, but to me they were, for they showed that he cared for literature, the concerns of the inner chambers, and that he truly did want to know what I thought.

He picked up the willow sprig and handed it to me. “Keep this,” he said, “to remind you of me.”

“And the peony?”

“I’ll keep it forever.”

I smiled inwardly, knowing that the flower and I shared the same name.

He brought his lips close to mine, and when he spoke his voice trembled with emotion. “We had three nights of happiness. That’s more than most married couples have in a lifetime. I will remember them forever.”

As my eyes filled with tears, he said, “You must go back. I won’t leave here until there’s a safe distance between us.”

I bit my lip to keep from crying and turned away. I walked alone toward the main garden, stopping by the pond to tuck the willow sprig inside my tunic. Only when I heard Prefect Du accuse his daughter, who’d been brought before him, of being a disgusting creature of the dead did I remember how sullied my shoes, leggings, and the bottom of my skirt had become. I needed to get back to my room and change without being seen.

“Here you are,” Broom said, stepping out of the shadows. “Your mother sent me to look for you.”

“I was…I had to…” I thought of Willow that first night as she played the role of Spring Fragrance. “I had to use the chamber pot.”

My cousin smiled knowingly.

“I’ve been to your room. You weren’t there.”

Having caught me in a lie, Broom regarded me suspiciously. I watched her smile broaden as her eyes traveled from my face down across my torso to my skirt, my dirty hem, and my soiled shoes. She pasted a bright mask on her face, looped her arm affectionately through mine, and said in a pretty tone, “The opera is nearly finished. I don’t want you to miss the end.”