Lisa See - Peony in Love

“Your father has sent word from the capital,” Mama said, in her melodious voice. “He’s going back into service for the emperor as soon as you are married.”

“Have the Manchus left?” I asked. Had I missed a dynastic change during my confinement?

“No, your father will be serving the Qing emperor.”

“But Baba is a loyalist. How can he—”

“You should eat.” Mama cut me off. “Wash your hair, put on powder, and be prepared to greet him when he returns, as a proper daughter should. He has brought great honor to our family. You need to show him respect. Now get up!”

But I didn’t.

My mother left the room, but my aunts stayed. They tried to get me out of bed and make me stand, but I was as slippery and formless as an eel in their hands. My thoughts were just as elusive. How could my father serve the emperor when he was a loyalist? Would my mother leave the compound and follow him to the capital, as she once had to Yangzhou?

( 8 2 )

The next day, Mama brought the family diviner to discuss how to bring more color to my cheeks before my wedding.

“Do you have spring tea from Longjing?” he asked. “Brew it with ginger to improve her stomach and build her strength.”

I tried the tea, but it didn’t help. A light wind would have kept me from walking. Even my bed dress seemed heavy on me.

He gave me ten sour apricots—the common prescription for young women whose thoughts are considered a little overripe—but my mind did not go in the prescribed direction. Instead, I thought about being married to my poet and the salted plums I would eat when I got pregnant with our first son, knowing they would help me with morning sickness.

The diviner returned to sprinkle pig’s blood on my bed in an attempt to exorcise the spirits he was convinced hovered there. When he was done, he said, “If you start eating again, on your wedding day your skin and hair will exceed all earthly models of beauty.”

But I wasn’t interested in marrying Wu Ren and I certainly didn’t care to eat as a way to make him happier on our wedding day. It barely mattered anyway. My future was set and I had already done everything I needed to do to prepare for my wedding. I had perfected my embroidery. I could now play the zither. Every day Shao dressed me in tunics embroidered with flowers and butterflies or two birds in flight as an outward expression of the love and happiness I was supposedly feeling for my coming life in my husband’s home. I just didn’t eat, not even fruit; rarely anything beyond a few sips of juice. I fed myself by ingesting mystic breath, by thinking of love, by remembering my adventure with my poet outside the garden walls.

The diviner left instructions to keep the door to the hall closed at all times, to prevent any malevolent spirits from entering, and to readjust the stove in the kitchen and shift the direction of my bed to take advantage of more favorable aspects of feng shui. Mama and the servants made sure these things were done, but I didn’t feel any different. The moment they left the room, I went back to my writing. You cannot cure a longing heart by changing the direction of the bed.

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?

( 8 3 )

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.”

( 8 4 )

“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?”