by Lisa See
A few days later, Mama arrived with Doctor Zhao, who listened to the various pulses in my wrist and announced, “The heart is the seat of consciousness, and your daughter’s is congested with too much yearning.”
I was happy to be officially diagnosed as lovesick. A fanciful thought entered my mind. What if I died from my lovesickness as Liniang did? Would my poet find me and bring me back to life? The idea pleased me, but my mother had a very different reaction to the doctor’s news. She buried her face in her hands and wept.
The doctor led her away from my bed and lowered his voice. “This kind of melancholy syndrome is also associated with spleen dysfunction. It can cause someone to stop eating. What I’m telling you, Lady Chen, is that your daughter could die from her congested qi.”
Aiya! Doctors always try to scare mothers. This is how they make money.
“You must force her to eat,” he said.
And that’s exactly what they did. Shao and Mama held down my arms, while the doctor pushed clumps of cooked rice into my mouth and held my jaw shut. A servant brought in stewed plums and apricots. The doctor shoved the soggy pieces into my mouth until I vomited out everything.
He looked at me in disgust, but to my mother he said, “Do not worry. This stasis is related to the passions. If she were a wife already, I would say that a night of clouds and rain would cure her. Since she is not yet married, she must silence her desires. Good Mother, on her wedding night she will be cured. But you may not have enough time to wait for that. I’m going to recommend that you try something different.” He took her elbow again, pulled her close, and whispered in her ear. When he let her go, a mask of grim determination covered her fear. “Anger is often enough to release the stasis,” he added reassuringly.
Mama escorted the doctor out of the room. I laid my head back on the pillow, my books spread out about me on the bedclothes. I picked up Volume One of The Peony Pavilion, closed my eyes, and let my mind drift across the lake to my poet’s home. Was he thinking of me as I was thinking of him?
The door opened. Mama entered with Shao and a couple of other servants.
“Start with those over there,” Mama said, pointing to the stack of books I had on a table. “And you, get those on the floor.”
Mama and Shao approached my bed and gathered up the books nestled near my feet.
“We’re removing the books,” Mama announced. “The doctor has instructed me to burn them.”
“No!” Instinctively I tightened my arms around the book I was holding. “Why?”
“Doctor Zhao says it will cure you. On this he has been very clear.”
“You can’t do this!” I cried. “They belong to Baba!”
“Then you won’t mind,” Mama replied calmly.
I dropped the book I was holding and frantically scrambled free of my silk quilt. I tried to stop Mama and the others, but I was too weak. The servants left with their first piles of books. I screamed, my arms stretched out to them as though I were a beggar instead of the privileged daughter in a family of nine generations of imperial scholars. These were our books! Precious with learning! Divine with love and art!
On the bed I had my editions of The Peony Pavilion. Mama and Shao started to take those too. The horror of what they were about to do sent me into a frenzied panic.
“You can’t! They’re mine!” I screamed, gathering together as many of the volumes as I could reach, but Mama and Shao were suprisingly strong. They ignored me, slapping away my efforts to save my books as easily as they might a pesky gnat.
“My project, please, Mama,” I cried. “I’ve worked so hard.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You have only one project: to get married,” she said, as she swooped up the edition of The Peony Pavilion that Baba had given me for my birthday.
Outside, in the courtyard below my room, I heard voices.
Mama said, “You need to see what your selfishness has created.”
She nodded to Shao and the two of them pulled me from the bed and dragged me to the window. Below, the servants had lit a fire in a brazier. One by one they dropped Baba’s books into the flames. The lines of the Tang dynasty poets he loved disappeared into the air as smoke. I saw a volume of women’s writings burn and curl into nothing. My chest heaved with sobs. Shao released me and went back to the bed to gather up the rest of the books.
When she left the room, Mama asked, “Are you angry?”
I was not that. I felt nothing but despair. Books and poems can’t keep away hunger, but without them I didn’t have a life.
“Please tell me you are angry,” Mama pleaded. “The doctor said you’d get angry.”
When I didn’t answer, she spun away from me and sank to her knees.
Below, I watched as Shao dropped the editions of The Peony Pavilion I’d collected into the flames. As each one was eaten by the fire, I shriveled inside. Those were my most treasured possessions. Now they’d been reduced to tiny feathers of ash that drifted up on the wind and out and away from our compound. My project and all my hopes for it disappeared. I was numb with despair. How could I go to my husband’s home now? How would I survive my loneliness?
Next to me, Mama cried. Her body bent forward until her forehead was on the ground, and then she shuffled to me, as submissive as a servant. She gathered the hem of my skirt into her fingers and buried her face in the silk.
“Please be angry with me.” Her voice was so soft I could barely hear her. “Please, daughter, please.”
I let my hand rest lightly on the back of her neck, but I didn’t say a word. I just stared at the fire.
A few minutes later, Shao came and took Mama away.
I stayed by the window, my arms resting on the sill. The garden was bleak in winter. Storms and frost had stripped the trees bare. The shadows lengthened and the light dimmed. I didn’t have the strength to move. Everything I’d been working on had been destroyed. At last, I pulled myself up. My head spun. My legs trembled. I thought my lily feet wouldn’t be able to bear my weight. Slowly I made my way across the room to the bed. The silk quilt was twisted and rumpled from my futile attempts to save my books. I pulled back the quilt and climbed back in the bed. As my legs slipped down under the cool silk I felt them bump into something. I reached under the fabric and pulled out Volume One of the copy of The Peony Pavilion that my future sister-in-law had sent me. In the madness of the purge, this one book with all the writing in the margins had been saved. I sobbed in gratitude and grief.
SOMETIMES LATE AT night after that horrible day I’d leave my bed, step over Shao’s sleeping form, and go to the window, where I’d pull aside the heavy curtains that kept out the winter cold. The snows had come and the thought of once-fragrant blossoms being crushed by the bitter whiteness troubled me. I stared at the moon and watched its slow trek across the sky. Night after night, dew dampened my gown, weighted my hair, chilled my fingers.
I could no longer bear the endlessness of the frigid days. I thought of Xiaoqing and how she had dressed every day, smoothing her skirts about her. She had sat up in bed so as not to muss her hair, she had tried to remain beautiful, but the bleak gloom I felt about my future life paralyzed me and I did none of these things. I even stopped caring for my feet. Shao washed and wrapped them with great tenderness. I was grateful but wary too. I kept my saved volume of The Peony Pavilion hidden in the silks around me, afraid that she would find it and tell Mama, and it would be taken away to be burned.
Doctor Zhao came again. He examined me, frowned, but then said, “You took the correct action, Lady Chen. You exorcised the curse of literacy from your daughter. Burning those inauspicious books has helped ward off the evil spirits that surround her.”
He listened to my pulses, watched me breathe in and out, asked me a few meaningless questions, and then announced, “Maidens, particularly at the moment of marriage, are susceptible to the evil attention of malevolent spirits. Young girls often lose their minds to these apparitions. The more beautiful the g
irl, the more she will suffer from chills and fever. She’ll stop eating, much as your daughter has stopped eating, until she dies.” He squeezed his chin thoughtfully before going on. “This, as you might expect, is not something a future husband wants to hear. And I can say from experience that many girls in our city have used this claim to keep from having conjugal relations upon marrying into their husbands’ homes. But, Lady Chen, you should be grateful. Your daughter is clear of such debauchery. She claims no improper relations with any gods or spirits. She is still pure and ready for marriage.”
These words did not cheer my mother, and I felt even worse. I saw no way out of my wedding night or the unhappy years that would come afterward.
“Tea brewed from fresh snow will cause her cheeks to bloom in time for the ceremony,” Doctor Zhao said as he left.
Every day Mama came to stand by my bed, her face wan with dread. She begged me to get up, visit my aunts and cousins, or eat a little. I tried to laugh lightly at her concern.
“I’m fine here, Mama. Don’t worry. Don’t worry.”
But my words gave her no comfort. She brought back the diviner. This time he slashed the air around my bed with a sword, trying to scare away the evil spirits he claimed lurked there. He hung an amulet of stone around my neck to prevent my soul from being stolen by a hungry ghost. He asked my mother for one of my skirts into which he tied bundles of peanuts, telling her that each peanut would serve as a prison for predatory spirits. He shouted out incantations. I pulled the bedclothes up over my face so he wouldn’t see my tears.
FOR DAUGHTERS, MARRYING out is a little like dying. We say goodbye to our parents, our aunts and uncles, our cousins, and the servants who cared for us, and go into an entirely new life, where we live with our true families, where our names will be listed in our in-laws’ ancestral hall. In this way, marriage is like experiencing death and rebirth without having to travel to the afterworld. These are morbid thoughts for any bride, I know, but mine were compounded by my unhappy situation. That morbidity sent my mind into darker and darker places. Sometimes I even believed—hoped—I might be dying like Xiaoqing or the other lovesick maidens. I let my mind dwell in theirs. I used my tears to mix the ink, and then I took up my brush. Lines of poetry flowed from the tip:
I have learned to use the pattern of butterflies and flowers in my embroidery.
I have been doing this for years, because I’m expecting my wedding day.
Do people know that once I go to the afterworld
The flowers will not be fragrant, nor the butterflies fly for me?
For days my mind burned with words and emotions. I wrote and wrote. When I felt too tired and weary to lift my brush I had Shao write down my poems for me. She did as she was told. Over the next few days, I dictated another eight. My words floated out one by one, like peach flowers floating on a grotto stream.
We reached the twelfth month. Charcoal burned all day and night in the brazier, but I was never warm. I was to be married in ten days.
My silk slippers are only seven centimeters long.
My waistband is loose even though I fold it in half.
Since my fragile being does not allow me to walk to the afterworld,
I have to lean on the wind to go there.
I worried that someone would find them and laugh at my melodrama or say my words had as much importance and permanence as the songs of insects. I folded the pieces of paper and looked around the room for a place to hide them, but all my furniture would eventually be taken to my husband’s home.
I was adamant that my poems not be found, but I didn’t have the strength of will to set fire to them. Too many women burn their words in a fit of thinking them not worthy, only to regret it later. I wanted to keep these, imagining that one day, after I was a married lady with children of my own, I might forget my poet. I would come to visit my family, find my poems, read them again, and remember my lovesick girlhood. Wouldn’t that be for the best?
But I would never forget what had happened. This made me even more determined to find a safe place for my poems. No matter what the future held, I would always be able to come here and relive my sentiments. I forced myself out of bed and went into the corridor. It was early evening and everyone was at dinner. I made my way—and it seemed to take forever to get there as I steadied myself by holding on to the walls, grasping pillars, or clinging to the balustrades—to my father’s library. I pulled out a book no one would ever look at, on the history of dam building in the southern provinces, and tucked my poems between its pages. I put the book back and stared at it to remember the title and its place on the shelf.
When I returned to my room, I picked up my brush for the last time before my marriage. On the outside of my volume of The Peony Pavilion, I painted my interpretation of The Interrupted Dream, the scene where Mengmei and Liniang first meet. My painting showed the two of them before the rockery, just moments before they would disappear into the grotto for clouds and rain. I waited until my ink dried, and then I opened the book and wrote:
When people are alive, they love. When they die, they keep loving. If love ends when a person dies, that is not real love.
I closed the book and called for Shao.
“You saw me when I came into the world,” I said. “Now you see me as I leave for my new home. I can trust no one else.”
Tears ran down Shao’s stern face. “What do you want me to do?”
“You must promise to obey, no matter what Mama or Baba say. They have taken away so much from me, but I have things that must go with me to my new home. Promise you will bring them three days after my marriage.”
I saw hesitation in her eyes. She shivered once, and said, “I promise.”
“Please bring me the shoes I made for Madame Wu.”
Shao left the room. I lay very still, staring at the ceiling, listening to the honking of orphaned geese as they crossed the sky. They made me think of Xiaoqing’s poems and the way she’d invoked that sorrowful sound. Then I remembered the nameless woman who’d written her despair on a wall in Yangzhou. She too had heard the calling of geese. I sighed as I remembered her line, If only my tears of blood could dye red the blossoms of the plum tree. But I will never make it to spring….
A few minutes later, Shao returned with the shoes, still in the silk I’d wrapped them in.
“Put them in a safe place. Don’t let Mama know you have them.”
“Of course, Peony.”
I had not been called by my milk name since my father changed it on the final night of the opera.
“There is one more thing,” I said. I reached under my bedclothes and pulled out my saved copy of The Peony Pavilion.
Shao drew back in alarm.
“This is the most important item in my dowry. Mama and Baba don’t know about it and you must never tell them. Promise!”
“I promise,” she mumbled.
“Keep it safe. Only you can bring it to me. Three days after my marriage. Don’t forget.”
BABA RETURNED FROM his trip to the capital. For the first time in my life he came to visit me in my room. He hesitated by the door, too nervous to approach.
“Daughter,” he said, “your marriage is only five days away. Your mother tells me you refuse to rise and perform your toilette, but you must get up. You don’t want to miss your wedding.”
When I hung my head in resignation, he crossed the room, sat on the bed, and took my hand.
“I pointed your husband out to you on the last night of the opera,” he said. “Were you unhappy with what you saw?”
“I didn’t look,” I answered.
“Oh, Peony, I wish now I’d told you more about him, but you know how your mother is.”
“That’s all right, Baba. I promise to do what’s expected of me. I won’t embarrass you or Mama. I’ll make Wu Ren happy.”
“Wu Ren is a good man,” Baba went on, ignoring what I’d said. “I’ve known him since he was a boy and I have never seen him do anything improper.” He smil
ed lightly. “Except for one time. That night after the opera he approached me. He gave me something to give you.” Baba shook his head. “I may be master of the Chen family, but your mother has her rules and already she was angry with me about the performance. I didn’t give it to you then. Even I knew it was improper. So I saved what he gave me in a book of poetry. Knowing both of you, I thought that was the right place.”
A gift five months ago or now wouldn’t change how I viewed my future husband or my marriage. I saw duty and responsibility, nothing more.
“And now here we are, just a few days before…” Baba shook his head as though he was driving out an unpleasant thought. “I don’t think your mother will mind if I give it to you now.”
He let go of my hand, reached into his tunic, and pulled out something small folded in rice paper. I didn’t have the strength to lift my head off the pillow, but I watched as he unfolded the paper. Inside was a dried peony, which he set in my palm. I stared at it in disbelief.
“Ren is just two years older than you,” Baba said, “but he’s done so much already. He’s a poet.”
“A poet?” I echoed. My mind was having a hard time accepting what I held in my hand, while my ears seemed to be hearing Baba’s words from the bottom of a cave.
“A successful one,” Baba added. “His work has already been published, even though he’s so young. He lives on Wushan Mountain just across the lake. If I hadn’t left for the capital, I would have shown you his home from my library window. But I was gone, and now you are—”
He was talking about my stranger, my poet. The dried flower I held in my hand was the one he’d caressed me with in the Moon-Viewing Pavilion. Everything I had been dreading was wrong. I was going to marry the man I loved. Fate had brought us together. We truly were like two mandarin ducks mated for life.
My body began to shake uncontrollably, and tears streamed from my eyes. Baba lifted me up as though I weighed no more than a leaf and held me in his arms.