“After Shen read it, she passed it to me,” Hong Sheng’s wife commented lightly. “I don’t think a man could have had such sentiments.
Those words were written by a woman. I imagined a young one like me,”
she added, blushing.
The tutor waved away the idea as though it were a bad smell. “What I ( 1 8 2 )
read couldn’t have been written by a girl—or a woman, for that matter,”
he said. “Shen allowed me to show the commentary to others here in Hangzhou. To a man, to a woman”—and here he gestured to the others sitting in the pavilion—“we’ve been touched by the words. We’ve asked ourselves, Who could have had such amazing insights about tenderness, devotion, and love? Shen invited you here to answer that question for us.”
Ren touched Ze’s hand. “Is this your copy of The Peony Pavilion? The one you worked on for so long? The one started by . . . ?”
Ze stared into the middle distance as though he were speaking to someone else.
“Who wrote these beautiful words?” Hong Sheng asked.
Even he had read my commentary? I forced myself not to move or cry out from happiness. Ren’s niece had done something extraordinary. She’d taken my thoughts not just to her home and to her tutor but to one of the country’s most popular writers.
Ze, meanwhile, had put a look of utter confusion on her face, as though she’d somehow forgotten who’d written in the margins.
“Was it your husband?” the tutor prompted.
“My husband?” Ze inclined her head in the way of all humble wives.
“My husband?” she repeated sweetly. Then after a long pause, she said,
“Yes, my husband.”
Was there no end to this woman’s torture of me? She had once been docile and easy to control, but she’d learned my lessons too well. She’d become too much of a good wife.
“But, Ze, I’ve written nothing about the opera,” Ren insisted. He looked at the others and added, “I know of the commentary, and I did not write it. Please,” he said to Shen. “May I see it?”
Shen nodded to a servant to get the book. Everyone waited, feeling awkward that husband and wife were in disagreement. Me? I balanced on my lily feet, trying to remain as still as possible, while inside my emotions were in a storm of fear, astonishment, and hopefulness.
The servant returned with the book and placed it in Ren’s hands. The guests watched as he turned the pages. I wanted to run to him, kneel before him, and stare into his eyes as he read my words. Do you hear me? But I kept myself in a grip of serenity. To interfere in any way—willfully or negligently—would have destroyed the moment. He flipped the pages, stopping here and there, and then he looked up with a curious expression of longing and loss.
“I didn’t write this. This commentary was begun by a woman who was ( 1 8 3 )
to be my wife.” He turned to Lin Yining and Li Shu, the two women to whom he was related. “You remember that I was to marry Chen Tong. She started this. My wife picked up the project and added her comments in the second half. Surely you who are of my blood know I speak the truth.”
“If what you say is true,” the tutor cut in before the women could respond, “why is Ze’s style so similar to Chen Tong’s that we cannot tell them apart?”
“Perhaps only a husband—a man who has known both women well—
would hear the two voices.”
“Love grows only when a couple is intimate,” Hong Sheng agreed.
“When the moon shines on West Lake, you do not see a husband alone in his room. When a jade hairpin falls onto the pillow, you do not see a wife alone. But please explain to us how an unmarried girl could know so much about love. And how is it you would know her voice if you were never married?”
“I think Master Wu speaks the truth,” one of the wives interrupted shyly, saving Ren from answering the awkward questions. “I found Chen Tong’s words to be romantic. Her sister-wife has also done a good job adding her thoughts about qing. ”
A few of the other wives nodded in agreement; Ze remained oblivious.
“I’d be happy to read these thoughts even without the opera,” Shen proclaimed.
Yes! This was exactly what I wanted to hear.
Then Xu Shijun snorted his skepticism. “What wife would want her name to be known outside the bedchamber? Women have no reason to get caught up in the degrading quest for fame.”
This, coming from a man who was known as an educator of women, who’d shown such sympathy for Xiaoqing’s plight, who’d been known to support the publication of women’s writings?
“No woman—let alone two wives—would want to exhibit her private thoughts in such a public way,” one of the husbands added, picking up on Xu’s surprising stance. “Women have the inner chambers for that. Liber-alism, women venturing out, men encouraging women to write and paint for profit, all these things led to the Cataclysm. We can be grateful that some women are returning to old traditions.”
I felt sick. What had happened to the loyalists? Why didn’t Li Shu and Lin Yining, both professional women writers, correct him?
“Wives need to be literate,” Shen’s tutor said, and for a moment I felt better. “They need to understand the highest principles so they can teach ( 1 8 4 )
them to their sons. But, sadly, it doesn’t always turn out that way.” He shook his head despairingly. “We let women read and then what happens?
Do they aspire to noble thoughts? No. They read plays, operas, novels, and poetry. They read for entertainment, which can only impair contemplation.”
I was paralyzed by the brutality of these words. How could things have changed so dramatically in the nine years since I died? My father may not have let me venture outside the villa and my mother may not have liked me reading The Peony Pavilion, but these ideas were far more strident than what I’d grown up with.
“Then we can agree the mystery is solved,” Shen’s tutor concluded.
“Wu Ren has accomplished something truly unique. He has opened a window for us on the meaning of and reasons for love. He is a great artist.”
“So sensitive,” one of the men said.
“Too sensitive,” Lin Yining added, with an audible touch of bitterness.
Through it all Ze said nothing. She acted polite and sincere. She kept her eyes cast down and her hands hidden in her sleeves. No one could have accused her of being anything less than a perfect wife.
Xu Shijun took the commentary away with him and published it. He included a preface he wrote about Ren, praising him for his insights about love, marriage, and longing. And then he promoted the commentary, traveling around the country and endorsing Ren as the author of this great work. In this way, my words, thoughts, and emotions became extremely popular among members of the literati, not only in Hangzhou but across China.
Ren refused to accept any accolades.
“I did nothing,” he said. “I owe everything to my wife and the girl who would have been my wife.”
Always he got the same response: “You are too modest, Master Wu.”
Despite his denials—perhaps because of his denials—he gained a solid reputation for what Ze and I had written. Editors sought him out to publish his poems. He was invited to gatherings of the literati. He traveled for weeks at a time as his name grew. He earned money, which made his mother and wife very happy. Eventually he learned to accept the compli-ments. When men said, “No woman could ever write anything this in-sightful,” he bowed his head and said nothing. And not one of the women who’d been at Shen’s home that day came to my defense. Clearly it was easier in these changing times not to speak out or celebrate another woman’s accomplishment.
( 1 8 5 )
I should have been proud of my poet’s success. In life, I might have done exactly the same as Ze, for a wife’s duty is to bring honor to her husband in every way possible. But I was not of the living world, and I felt the anger, disappointment, and disillusionment of a woman whose voice has been taken away from her. For all my efforts, I felt Ren hadn’t heard me at all. I was crushed.