Lisa See - Peony in Love

Once he reached home, he would put my shoes on a chair, along with the incense. If he burned incense for two years and remembered me every ( 1 0 2 )

day, he would be able to honor me as his wife. But he didn’t do these things.

Since it is against nature for even the dead to be without a spouse, I began to dream about a ghost wedding. It wasn’t as easy or romantic as an Asking-for-the-Shoes ceremony, but I didn’t care, as long as it brought me quickly into marriage with Ren. After our ghost wedding was held—with my ancestor tablet sitting in for me—I would pass forever out of the Chen family and into my husband’s clan, where I belonged.

When I didn’t hear talk about this happening either, the third of my soul that was not with my body or traveling to the afterworld decided to visit Ren. My whole life had been about going in. As I died, I felt myself going in, in, in, until there was nothing left. Now I was free from my family and the Chen Family Villa. I could go anywhere, but I didn’t know the city or how to find my way, and I found it difficult to walk on my lily feet.

I could go no more than ten steps without swaying in the breeze. But for all my pain and confusion, I had to find Ren.

The outside world was both far more beautiful and uglier than I’d imagined. Colorful fruit stands were sandwiched between stalls that sold pig carcasses and plough parts. Beggars with dripping sores and amputated limbs entreated passersby for food and money. I saw women—from noble families!—walking on the street as though it were nothing, laughing on their way to restaurants and teahouses.

I was lost, curious, and excited. The world was in constant movement, with carts and horses rolling through the streets, salt wagons drawn by lumbering water buffaloes, flags and pennants flapping from buildings, and too many people pushing and shoving in great eddies of humanity.

Hawkers sold fish, needles, and baskets in piercing voices. Construction sites battered my ears with their hammering and shouting. Men argued about politics, gold prices, and gambling debts. I covered my ears, but the wisps of vapor that were my hands could not keep out the raucous, tortur-ous sounds. I tried to get off the street, but as a spirit I couldn’t navigate around corners.

I went back to my family home and tried a different street. This brought me to a shopping area, where they sold fans, silks, paper umbrellas, scissors, carved soapstone, prayer beads, and tea. Signboards and trappings of one kind and another blocked the sunlight. I continued on, passing temples, factories for making cotton, and mints where the sound from the stamping machines pounded at my ears until tears poured from ( 1 0 3 )

my eyes. The streets of Hangzhou were paved with cobblestones, and my lily feet bruised and tore until spirit blood oozed through my silk slippers.

They say that ghosts feel no physical pain, but this is not true. Why else would dogs in the afterworld tear the evil limb from limb or demons spend eternity eating the heart of a miscreant again and again and again?

After another long straight line that led nowhere, I returned to my family home. I set off in a new direction, walking along the edge of the ex-terior wall until I came to the crystal waters of West Lake. I saw the cause-way, lagoons with shimmering ripples, and verdant hillsides. I listened to doves croon for rain and magpies bicker. I glimpsed Solitary Island and remembered how Ren had pointed out his house on Wushan Mountain, but I couldn’t figure out how to get from here to there. I sat on a rock. The skirts from my longevity clothes draped about me on the shore, but I was now of the spirit world and they didn’t get wet or muddy. I no longer had to worry about soiled shoes or anything like that. I left no shadow or footprints. Did this make me feel free or uncontrollably lonely? Both.

The sun set over the hills, turning the sky crimson and the lake deep lavender. My spirit trembled as a reed in the breeze. Night draped itself over Hangzhou. I was alone on the bank, separated from everyone and everything I knew, sinking deeper and deeper into despair. If Ren wouldn’t come to my family’s home for any of my funeral activities and I couldn’t go to his since I was hampered by corners and noises, how would I find him?

In the houses and business establishments around the lake, lanterns were turned down and candles blown out. The living slept, but the shore shimmered with activity. Spirits of trees and bamboo breathed and quivered. Poisoned dogs came to the lake desperate for a final drink of water before death shudders took them. Hungry ghosts—those who’d drowned in the lake or had resisted the Manchus, refused to shave their foreheads, and lost their heads as punishment—dragged themselves through the un-derbrush. I also saw others like myself: those just dead and still roaming before the three parts of their souls found their proper resting places.

There would be no peaceful nights filled with beautiful dreams for us ever again.

Dreams! I leaped to my feet. Ren knew The Peony Pavilion nearly as well as I did. Liniang and Mengmei first met in a dream. Surely since I’d died Ren had tried to reach me in his dreams, only I hadn’t known where or how to meet him. Now I knew exactly where to go, but I’d have to turn right to get there. I tried several times to go around the corner of the com-

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pound, each time widening my turn until finally I arced out wide enough to make it. I crept along the water’s edge, stepping on rocks, not worrying about puddles, pushing aside the rock roses and other bits of shrubbery that impeded my way until I reached my family’s Moon-Viewing Pavilion.

Just as the tiniest sliver of sun peeked over the mountain, I spotted Ren, waiting for me.

“I’ve been coming here, hoping to see you,” he said.

“Ren.”

When he reached for me, I didn’t shy away. He held me for a long time without speaking, and then he asked, “How could you die and leave me?”

His anguish was palpable. “We were so happy. Did you decide you didn’t care for me?”

“I didn’t know who you were. How could I know?”

“At first, I didn’t know it was you either,” he answered. “I knew my future wife was Master Chen’s daughter and that her name was Peony. I didn’t want an arranged marriage, but like you I had accepted my fate.

When we met, I thought you might be one of the cousins in the household or one of the guests. My heart changed, and I thought, Let me have these three nights, believing they were as close as I’d ever get to what I wanted from marriage.”

“I felt the same way too.” I was filled with regret as I added, “If only I had said my name.”

“I didn’t say my name either,” he said ruefully. “But what about the peony? Did you get it? I gave it to your father. You had to know it was me then.”

“He gave it to me when it was too late to save me.”

He sighed. “Peony.”

“But I still don’t understand how you knew it was me.”

“I didn’t until your father made the announcement about our marriage. To me, the girl I was going to marry had no face and no voice. But when your father spoke your name that night I heard it in a whole new way. Then when he said your name had to change because it was the same as my mother’s, somehow I felt—understood—he was talking about you .

You don’t look like my mother, but the two of you share the same sensi-bility. I hoped when he made the announcement and pointed to me that you would see me.”

“I had my eyes shut. After meeting you, I was afraid to see the man who would be my husband.”

Then I remembered opening my eyes and seeing Tan Ze with her ( 1 0 5 )

mouth pulled into a taut oh. She had seen exactly who it was. She had told me on the first night of the opera that she had set her heart on the poet.