Lisa See - Peony in Love

conf uc i u s w rote : R E S P E C T T H E G H O S T S A N D S P I R I T S

but keep them at a distance. On Double Seven, people forgot about ghosts and ancestors. Everyone just wanted to enjoy the celebration—from our special games to the opera performance. I changed into a silk gauze tunic embroidered with a pair of birds flying above summer flowers to evoke the happiness I felt when my stranger and I were together. Under this I wore a skirt of silk brocade with a band of snow-crabapple blossoms embroidered around the hem, which attracted the eye to my fuchsia-colored silk bound-foot shoes. Gold earrings dangled from my ears, and my wrists were heavy with gold and jade bangles that had been given to me over the years by my family. I was not in the least over-dressed. Everywhere I looked I saw lovely women and girls who tinkled and jangled as they swayed across the room to greet one another in their rhythmic lily gaits.

On the altar table, set up for the occasion in the Lotus-Blooming Hall, sticks of incense burned in bronze tripods, filling the room with a deli-ciously pungent odor. Piles of fruit—oranges, melons, bananas, carambo-las, and dragon eyes—sat in cloisonné dishes. On one end of the table stood a white porcelain bowl filled with water and pomelo leaves to symbolize the ritual bath given to brides. In the middle of the table lay a circu-lar tray—nearly one meter across—with a round center surrounded by six sections. The middle depicted the Weaving Maid and the Cowherd, with his buffalo wading nearby in the stream to remind us of the place the god-

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dess had hidden her nakedness. The surrounding sections showed the Weaving Maid’s other sisters. One by one, Mama invited the unmarried girls to place an offering for each sister in the corresponding section.

After the ceremony, we sat down to an extravagant banquet. Each dish had a special meaning, so we ate “dragon hoof that sends child”—pig leg with ten kinds of patrimonial seasonings braised over a slow fire—which was reputed to bring sons. The servants brought in a beggar’s chicken for each table. With a strong thwack, the baked clay crust for each chicken was broken and an aroma of ginger, wine, and mushrooms escaped into the room. Course after course arrived, each flavored to satisfy one of the tastes: good, bad, fragrant, stinky, sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. For dessert, our servants presented us with malt cakes made with sticky rice, red beans, walnuts, and riverbank grass, to help us digest, reduce fat, and prolong life.

It was a sumptuous meal, but I was too nervous to eat.

The banquet was followed by one last contest. The lanterns were turned down and each of the unmarried girls had a chance to thread a needle by the light from the tip of a single stick of incense. A needle successfully threaded meant that the girl would give birth to a son upon marriage.

There had been much drinking of Shaoxing wine, so considerable laughter accompanied each failed attempt.

I joined in the laughter as best I could, but I was already plotting how I was going to meet my stranger without getting caught. I would have to use the scheming ways of the inner realm and make up what I thought might serve me well from the outside realm. I could only guess and hope and think about each move, as I did when I played chess with my father.

Unlike the first night, I didn’t want to sit in the front row where I’d be closest to the opera but would also be in the one place where all the women could see me. I also couldn’t linger behind as I had last night. If I did that again, my mother would suspect something. She knew I loved the opera too much to be late again. I had to appear as though I were trying to please her, especially after what had happened this afternoon. As my mind searched for the possibilities, my eyes fell on Tan Ze. I began to play out my moves. Yes, I could use the child to cloak myself in innocence.

As Lotus successfully threaded the needle and everyone applauded, I moved across the room to Ze, who perched on the edge of a chair, hoping my mother would choose her to take a turn at the game. That was never going to happen. Ze wasn’t waiting for her wedding ceremonies to take place; she was a little girl who had yet to be matched.

I tapped her on the shoulder.

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“Come with me,” I said. “I want to show you something.”

She slipped off the chair and I took her hand, making sure my mother saw what I was doing.

“You know I’ve already been betrothed,” I said, as we walked to my room.

The little girl nodded, her face serious.

“Would you like to see my bride-price gifts?”

Ze squealed. Inside, I did practically the same thing but for a very different reason.

I opened pigskin chests and showed her the bolts of airy gauzes, lustrous satins, and heavy brocades that had already been sent.

When the crash of cymbals and the bang of drums began calling us to the garden, Ze got to her feet. Outside my room, women gathered in the corridor.

“You have to see my wedding costume,” I rushed on. “You’ll love the headdress.”

The girl sat back down, eagerly wiggling her bottom into my bedding.

I brought out my embroidered red silk wedding skirt, which had dozens of tiny pleats. The women my father had hired to make it had adjusted their stitches so that the pattern of flowers, clouds, and interlocking good-luck symbols were perfectly aligned. On my wedding day the design would break apart only if I took too large a step. The tunic was equally exquisite. Instead of just four frogs to hold it shut—at my neck, across my breast, and under my arm—the seamstresses had made dozens of tiny braided frogs to confound my husband and prolong the wedding night.

The headdress was simple and elegant: a garden of thin gold leaves that would quiver as I moved and shimmer in the light, with a red veil to cover my face so I wouldn’t see my husband until he removed it. I had always loved my wedding costume, but the emotions it now stirred in me were very dark. What was the purpose of being wrapped like a present if you had no feelings for the person you were being given to?

“It’s beautiful, but my father has promised I will have pearls and jade in my headdress,” Ze boasted.

I barely heard her, because I was listening so hard to what was happening outside my room. The drums and cymbals still called the audience, but the corridor was quiet. I put my wedding costume away. Then I took Ze’s hand and we left my room.

We wandered together to the garden. I saw my cousins grouped together behind the screen. Unbelievably, they’d saved a place for me. Lotus ( 5 4 )

waved to me to join them. I smiled back and then bent to whisper in Ze’s ear.

“Look, the unmarried girls want you to sit with them.”

“They do?”

She didn’t even wait for me to give her more encouragement but threaded her way through the cushions to the other girls, sat down, and immediately began talking nonstop to my cousins. They had shown me a little kindness and this was how I repaid them.

I made a great show of looking around for an available cushion near the front or in the middle, but of course by now there were none. I feigned a look of disappointment and then delicately sank to a cushion on the edge at the back of the women’s section.

Tonight’s opening scene was one I would have liked to have seen but could only hear from my spot at the back of the audience. Liniang and Mengmei eloped—something completely unheard of in our culture. As soon as they were married, Liniang confessed that she was a virgin—this despite her ghostly nocturnal unions with Mengmei. As a ghost, the maiden status of her body in its grave had been preserved. The scene ended with Liniang and Mengmei departing for Hangzhou, where he would complete his studies for the imperial exams.