Their soft voices carried refinement, education, and a love of poetry. They sat with Madame Wu and talked about their excursions during the holiday.
They’d visited monasteries in the hills, they’d walked in the Bamboo Forest, and they’d visited Longjing to see tea leaves harvested and cured. They made me long for the life I’d missed.
Ze entered. During the last seven months as I lay under the corridor, I hadn’t heard much from her. I expected to see thin lips, a set jaw, and ( 1 7 9 )
scornful eyes. I wanted her to look that way and she did, but when she opened her mouth, only charming words came out.
“Shen,” Ze said, addressing Ren’s niece, “you must make your husband proud with your entertaining. It’s good for a wife to display her elegant taste and style of manners. I understand you’re a wonderful hostess and that you make the literati feel comfortable.”
“Poets often come to our home,” Shen conceded. “I’d love for you and Uncle to visit one day.”
“When I was a girl, my mother took me on excursions,” Ze replied.
“These days I prefer to stay home and make meals for my husband and mother-in-law.”
“I agree, Auntie Ze, but—”
“A wife needs to be extra careful,” Ze went on. “Would I try to walk across the lake after the first winter freeze? Under the full sun, there are those who will report on you. I don’t want to humiliate myself or bring shame on my husband. The only safe place is within our inner chambers.”
“The men who visit my husband are important,” young Shen replied calmly, ignoring everything Ze had said. “It would be good for Uncle Ren to meet them.”
“I have nothing against excursions,” Madame Wu cut in, “if my son will benefit from new connections.”
Even after two years of marriage she refused to openly criticize her daughter-in-law, but in every gesture and look she made it plain that this wife was not a “same” in any way.
Ze sighed. “If Mother agrees, we shall come. I’ll do anything to make my husband and mother-in-law happy.”
What was this? When I’d been in hiding, had the lessons I’d drilled into Ze somehow taken hold?
During the weeklong visit, the four women spent their mornings together in the women’s quarters. Madame Wu, inspired by her daughter-in-law and granddaughter, invited other relatives and friends to visit. Li Shu, Ren’s cousin, arrived with Lin Yining, whose family had been tied to the Wus for generations. Both women were poets and writers; Lin Yining was a member of the famous Banana Garden Five Poetry Club, which had been founded by the woman writer Gu Ruopu. The members of the club, seeing no conflict between the writing brush and the embroidery needle, had taken the idea of the Four Virtues in a new direction. They believed the best exemplar of “womanly speech” was women’s writing, so Li Shu and Lin Yining’s visit was a time of strong incense, open windows, and ( 1 8 0 )
active calligraphy brushes. Ze played the zither for everyone’s entertainment. Ren and his brother performed all the rites to appease, feed, and clothe the Wu ancestors. Ren was affectionate with his wife in front of the others. I was not the merest glimmer of a thought for any of them. I could only watch and bear it.
And then my fortunes changed. I call it fortune, but maybe it was fate.
Shen picked up The Peony Pavilion and began to read my words, the ones Ze had transcribed onto the pages. Shen opened her heart to the sentiments and touched on all seven ancestral emotions. She reflected on her own life and the moments of love and longing she’d experienced. She imagined herself growing old and harboring feelings of loss, pain, and regret.
“Auntie Ze, may I borrow this?” Shen asked innocently. How could my sister-wife deny her?
And so The Peony Pavilion left the Wu family compound and traveled to another part of Hangzhou. I didn’t follow Shen, believing my project was safer in her hands than in Ze’s.
an i nv i tat i on arrive d for Ren, Ze, Li Shu, and Lin Yining to visit Shen and her husband. When the palanquins came to pick them up, I held on to Ze’s shoulders as she walked through the compound. When we reached her palanquin, she stepped inside and I climbed up to the roof. We were carried down Wushan Mountain, past the temple, and around the lake to Shen’s home. This wasn’t the haphazard roaming of a dead girl on her way to the afterworld or the frantic search for food and scraps during the Festival of Hungry Ghosts. At last I was doing the very thing that Ren had promised would happen once we were married: I was on an excursion.
We arrived at Shen’s house, and for the first time I stepped over a threshold that did not belong to my father or my husband. Shen met us in a pavilion covered by a wisteria vine that she said was two hundred years old. Huge clusters of the violet flowers hung down and swelled the air with the freshness of their scent. As promised, Shen had also invited established members of the literati. Her tutor, who had a long thin beard to show his age and wisdom, was given the chair of honor. The poet Hong Sheng and his pregnant wife arrived with gifts of wine and nuts. Several married women, some of them poets, congratulated Li Shu on the recent publication of her new drama. I was most impressed by the appearance of ( 1 8 1 )
Xu Shijun, who’d written Reflection on the Spring Wave about Xiaoqing. He was known for supporting the publication of women’s writings. Today he’d been invited to discuss the Buddhist sutras. My mother-in-law was right; Ren would make some interesting connections here today. He and Ze sat side by side, looking like the handsome young married couple they were.
The Book of Rites says that men and women should never use the same hangers, towels, or combs, let alone sit together. But here men and women—strangers—commingled with no regard to the old ways of thinking. Tea was poured. Sweetmeats were passed. I sat on the balustrade and got drunk on the vivid fragrance of the wisteria and the lines of poetry that flew back and forth across the pavilion like birds soaring in the clouds.
But when Shen’s tutor cleared his throat, everyone in the pavilion fell silent.
“We can recite and compose all afternoon,” he said, “but I’m curious about what Shen has let us read these past few weeks.” A few of the guests nodded in agreement. “Tell us”—the tutor addressed Ren—“about your commentary on The Peony Pavilion. ”
Surprised, I slipped from my perch. A gust of wind blew through the pavilion, causing the wives to pull the silk of their gowns closer to their bodies and the men to hunch their shoulders. I had little control over the effect my actions had on the natural world, but I tried to be quiescent.
When the air stilled, Shen looked at Ren, smiled, and asked, “How did you come to write the commentary?”
“Modesty doesn’t allow me to admit the depth of my feelings for the opera,” Ren answered, “but I haven’t written about it.”
“You are being modest,” the tutor said. “We know you’re an accomplished critic. You’ve written a lot about theater—”
“But never about The Peony Pavilion, ” Ren finished.
“How can this be?” the tutor asked. “My student returned from your home with a copy of The Peony Pavilion. Surely it is you who wrote your thoughts in the margins.”
“I haven’t written a thing,” Ren swore. He glanced questioningly at his wife, but she said nothing.