Peony in Love by Lisa See Read Free Book Online

had since last night when I had always told myself that he and my mother were distant with each other and that he received no real joy from his concubines.
    “Just like Liniang, Xiaoqing wanted to leave behind a portrait of herself,” Baba went on, oblivious to my unease. “It took the artist three attempts to get it right. Xiaoqing grew more pathetic with each passing day, but she never forgot her duty to be beautiful. Each morning she dressed her hair and clothed herself in her finest silks. She died sitting up, looking so perfect that those who came to see her believed her still to be alive. Then her owner’s terrible wife burned Xiaoqing’s poems and all but one of the portraits.”
    Baba gazed out the window to Solitary Island, his eyes glassy and filled with…pity? desire? longing?
    Into the heavy silence, I said, “Not everything was lost, Baba. Before Xiaoqing died, she wrapped some jewelry in discarded paper and gave it to her maid’s daughter. When the girl opened the package, she found eleven poems on those abandoned sheets.”
    “Recite one of them for me, will you, Peony?”
    My father hadn’t helped me understand what I was feeling, but he did give me a glimmer of the romantic thoughts my stranger might be experiencing as he waited for me to come to him. I took a breath and began to recite.
    “The sound of cold rain hitting the forlorn window is not bearable—”
    “Please close your mouth!” Mama ordered. She never came here, and her appearance was startling and unsettling. How long had she been listening? To my father, she said, “You tell our daughter about Xiaoqing, but you know perfectly well she was not the only one to die upon reading
The Peony Pavilion.
”
    “Stories tell us how we should live,” my father responded easily, covering the surprise he must have felt at my mother’s presence and her accusatory tone.
    “The story of Xiaoqing has a lesson for our daughter?” Mama asked. “Peony was born into one of the finest families in Hangzhou. That other girl was a thin horse, bought and sold like property. One girl is pure. The other was a—”
    “I’m aware of Xiaoqing’s profession,” my father cut in. “You don’t need to remind me. But when I speak to our daughter about Xiaoqing, I’m thinking more of the lessons that can be learned from the opera that inspired her. Surely you see no harm in that.”
    “No harm? Are you suggesting our daughter’s fate will be like that of Du Liniang?”
    I glanced furtively at the servant standing by the door. How long before he reported this—gleefully, probably—to another servant and it spread throughout the compound?
    “Peony could learn from her, yes,” Baba answered evenly. “Liniang is fair, her heart kind and pure, her vision farsighted, and her will steadfast and true.”
    “Waaa!”
Mama responded. “That girl was stubborn in love! How many girls need to die from this story before you see the perils?”
    My cousins and I whispered about these unfortunates late at night when we thought no one was listening. We spoke of Yu Niang, who became enamored of the opera at the age of thirteen and died by seventeen, with the text at her side. The great Tang Xianzu, heartbroken at the news, wrote poems eulogizing her. But soon came many many more girls, who read the story, became lovesick like Liniang, wasted away, and died, hoping that true love would find them and bring them back to life.
    “Our daughter is a phoenix,” Baba said. “I will see her married to a dragon, not a crow.”
    This answer did not satisfy my mother. When she was happy, she could change ice crystals into flowers. When she was sad or angry—as she was now—she could turn dark clouds into swarms of biting insects.
    “An overeducated daughter is a dead daughter,” my mother announced. “Talent is not a gift we should wish on Peony. All this reading, where do you think it will end—in nuptial bliss or in disappointment, consumption, and