Peony in Love by Lisa See Read Free Book Online Page B

girls her own age.
    Once again my father had chosen highlights for this evening’s performance, which began three years after Du Liniang’s death with the scholar Liu Mengmei falling ill on his long journey to take the imperial exams. Liniang’s old tutor gives Mengmei shelter at her shrine near the plum tree. As soon as the next piece of music started, I could tell that we’d gone with Liniang to the afterworld for Infernal Judgment. Since tonight I couldn’t see the performers, I had to imagine the judge, fearful in his aspect, as he talked about reincarnation and how souls scatter like sparks from a firecracker. They’re sent to any of 48,000 fates in the realms of desire, of form, and of the formless, or to one of the 242 levels of Hell. Liniang pleaded with the judge, telling him a terrible mistake had been made, for she was too young to be there, had neither married nor drunk wine, but had fallen into longing and then lost her life.
    “When in the world did anyone die from a dream?”
The judge’s voice tore into me as he demanded an explanation from the Flower Spirit, who had brought about Liniang’s lovesickness and death. Then, after checking the Register of Marriages, he determined that indeed Liniang had been destined to be with Mengmei, and—since her ancestor tablet hadn’t been dotted—granted her permission to wander the world as a ghost in search of the husband she’d been fated to marry. After this, he charged the Flower Spirit with keeping Liniang’s physical body from decaying. As a ghost, Liniang returned to the earthly realm to live near her tomb under the plum tree. When Sister Stone, the old nun charged with caring for the tomb, made offerings on a table under the tree, Liniang was so grateful that she scattered plum blossoms into which she infused her loving thoughts.
    As Mengmei recovered at the shrine, he grew restless and strolled through the gardens. Quite by accident—except that it had to be fate interfering—he found the box with Liniang’s rolled-up self-portrait scroll. He believed he’d found a painting of the goddess Guanyin. He took the scroll back to his room and burned incense before it. He delighted in Guanyin’s soft mist of hair, her tiny mouth shaped like a rosebud, and the way love’s longing seemed to be locked between her brows, but the closer he looked, the more convinced he became that the woman on the silk couldn’t be the goddess. Guanyin should be floating, but he saw tiny lily feet poking out from beneath the woman’s skirts. Then he saw the poem that had been written on the silk and realized that this was a self-portrait painted by a mortal girl.
    As he read the lines, he recognized himself as Liu, the willow; the girl in the painting also held a sprig of plum in her hand, as though she were embracing Mengmei—Dream of Plum. He wrote a poem in reply and then called upon her to step down from the painting and join him.
    Quiet expectancy settled over the women on our side of the screen as Liniang’s dark ghostly side emerged from her garden tomb to tempt, woo, and seduce her scholar.
    I waited until she began tapping at Mengmei’s window and he started asking her questions about who she was, and then I rose and swiftly left. My feelings mirrored Liniang’s as she glided around her scholar, calling to him, teasing him with her words.
“I am a flower you brought to bloom in the dark of night,”
I heard Liniang sing.
“This body, a thousand pieces of gold, I offer to you without hesitation.”
I was an unmarried girl, but I understood her wish. Mengmei accepted her offer. Again and again, he asked Liniang’s name, but she refused to give it. It was easier for her to give her body than reveal her identity.
    I slowed as I neared the zigzag bridge that led to the Riding-the-Wind Pavilion. I envisioned my lily feet—hidden under my flowing skirt—blooming with each step. I smoothed the silk, let my fingers play across my hair to make sure that all my