This was my way back to Ren and our life together.
I wouldn’t make Ze write much, just a little:
What is amazing about the opera is not Liniang but the scholar. There are many love-crazed women in the world like Liniang, who dream of love and die, but they do not return to life. They do not have Mengmei, who laid out Liniang’s portrait, called out to her, and worshipped her; who made love to her ghost and believed that it was flesh and blood; who con-spired with Sister Stone to open her coffin and carried her corpse without fear; who traveled far to beg his father-in-law and suffered at his hands. The dream was so real to him that opening her grave did not frighten him. He cried for her without shame. All this he did with no regrets.
I smiled, pleased with my accomplishment. Then I let Ze return to the comfort and warmth of her husband’s arms. I slithered back up the wall ( 1 7 2 )
and resumed my perch in the rafters. I had to keep Ren satisfied with his wife or I wouldn’t be able to keep using her to write; if I couldn’t use her, Ren wouldn’t hear me. All through the night as I watched the two of them sleep, I searched my memory for the things that Mama and my aunts had said about being wives. “Every morning get up a half hour earlier than your husband,” Mama used to say. So the next morning I made Ze get up before Ren wakened.
“Losing a half hour of sleep doesn’t harm your health or beauty,” I whispered to Ze when she sat down at her dressing table. “Do you think your husband likes to see you sleeping soundly? No. Take fifteen minutes to wash your face, brush your hair, and dress.” I drew on the pampered ways of the women’s chamber to help her mix her powder, put on rouge, coil her hair, and set it with feather adornments. I made sure she dressed in pink. “Take the other fifteen minutes to prepare your husband’s clothes and lay them beside his pillow. Be ready when he wakes with fresh water, a towel, and a comb.”
After Ren left the room, I reminded Ze, “Never stop improving your taste and style as a woman. Don’t bring into our home your toughness, your stubbornness, or your jealousy. He can see that on the street. Instead, keep learning. Reading will enrich your conversation, the art of pouring tea will warm him, and playing music and flower arranging will deepen your powers of emotion and enliven him at the same time.” Then, remembering my mother on the day I helped her bind Orchid’s feet, I added, “Your husband is Heaven. How could you not serve him?”
Today, for the first time, I pushed her out the door and guided her to the kitchen. Needless to say, Ze had never been there before. When she squinted at a servant in disapproval, I pulled on her lashes to keep her eyes open and carefree. She may have been a spoiled girl and an absentminded wife, but surely her mother had taught her to make something. I kept Ze there until the simplest of all recipes came to her mind. The servants watched nervously as Ze set a pot of water to boil, poured in a handful of rice, and stirred constantly until it turned into creamy congee. She looked through baskets and cupboards until she found fresh greens and raw peanuts, which she chopped and put into condiment bowls. She poured the congee into a serving dish, put it and the side dishes, bowls, and soup-spoons on a tray, and carried it to the breakfast hall. Madame Wu and her son sat speechless as Ze served them, her head bowed, her face prettily pink from the steam and the reflected color from her tunic. Later, Ze followed her mother-in-law to the women’s chamber, where the two of ( 1 7 3 )
them sat together to embroider and make conversation. I did not allow sniping words to come out of either of their mouths. And Ren did not feel the need to call for the doctor.
I insisted Ze follow these rituals to appease her husband’s anxiety and earn her mother-in-law’s respect. When Ze cooked, she made sure that all the flavors were compatible and that the food was fragrant. She brought to the dinner table fish from West Lake and watched quietly to make sure the others enjoyed the taste. She poured tea when her mother-in-law’s or husband’s cup was low. Once these obligations were fulfilled, I drew her back to the bedchamber and we’d get back to work.
By now I’d learned a lot about married life and sexual love. It was not the sordid thing that Sister Stone joked about or that the Flower Spirit liked to make bawdy innuendo about in The Peony Pavilion. I now understood it to be about spiritual connection through physical touch. I made Ze write: Liniang says, “Ghosts can be careless about passion, but humans must affect propriety.” Liniang cannot and should not be considered ruined for having made clouds and rain with Mengmei in her dream. She could not become pregnant in a dream nor could she become pregnant as a ghost.
Clouds and rain in a dream is without consequence, demands no responsibility, and should bring no shame. All girls have dreams of this sort.
This does not soil them, far from it. A girl who dreams of clouds and rain is preparing herself for the fulfillment of qing. As Liniang says, “Betrothal makes a wife, elopement only a concubine.” Between a husband and wife, what some consider lascivious becomes elegant.
But qing couldn’t just be limited to husbands and wives. What about mother love? I still missed my mother and longed for her. Across the lake, she had to be missing me too. Wasn’t that qing also? I had Ze turn to the scene of Mother and Daughter Reunited, when Liniang—once again alive—meets her mother by accident in the Hangzhou guesthouse. Years ago, I’d considered this scene merely a respite from all the battles and political intrigue that riddled the last third of the opera. Now, when I read it, I was drawn into the world of qing—feminine, lyrical, and very emotional.
Madame Du and Spring Fragrance are horrified when Liniang emerges from the shadows, believing they’re seeing a ghost. Liniang weeps, while the other two women shrink back in fear and disgust. Sister Stone steps into the room with a lamp. Quickly assessing the situation, she takes Madame Du’s arm. Let the lamplight aid the moon to show your daughter’s fea-
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tures. From the darkness of misunderstanding. Madame Du sees that the girl before her truly is her daughter and not just a ghost. She recalls the desperate sadness she felt at Liniang’s death; now she must overcome her fear of an otherworldly creature. That’s how deep her mother love is, but it was even more than that.
I held Ze’s hand as she wrote:
In believing that the creature before her is human, Madame Du not only acknowledges Liniang as human but also gives her back her place in the human world.
To me, this was the purest definition of mother love. For all the pain, for all the suffering, for all the disagreements between the generations, a mother gives the child her place in the world, as a daughter and as a future wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, and friend.
Ze and I wrote and wrote and wrote. By spring, after six obsessed months, I was finally worn out. I thought I’d written everything I could about love. I looked at my sister-wife. Her eyes were swollen with fatigue.
Her hair hung limp and stringy. Her skin had gone very pale from our work, the sleepless nights, and keeping her husband and mother-in-law happy. I had to acknowledge her role in my project. I gently blew at her.