( 5 9 )
“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.
( 6 0 )
“That is the hill, yes, but Solitary Island—as beautiful as it is—ob-structs 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 ( 6 1 )
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 ( 6 2 )
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.