Peony in Love Read Free

would begin shortly, and I wanted to experience every second of it.
    I reached the area that had been set aside for women and sat down on a cushion positioned near one of the screen’s folds so I could peek through the crack. I wouldn’t be able to see much of the opera, but it was more than I’d hoped for. The other women and girls came in behind me and took places on other cushions. I was so excited I didn’t even mind when Tan Ze sat beside me.
    For weeks, my father—as director of the performance—had been tucked away in a side hall with the cast. He had hired a traveling all-male theatrical troupe of eight members, which had upset my mother terribly, because these were people of the lowest and basest class. He’d also coerced others from our household staff—including Willow and several other servants—into taking various roles.
    “Your opera has fifty-five scenes and four hundred and three arias!” Willow had said to me in awe one day, as if I didn’t already know that. It would have taken more than twenty hours to perform the whole opera, but no matter how many times I asked, she wouldn’t tell me which scenes Baba had cut. “Your father wants it to be a surprise,” Willow said, enjoying the opportunity to disobey me. As the rehearsals became more demanding, consternation had rippled throughout the household when an uncle had called for a pipe and found no one to fill it, or an aunt had asked for hot water for her bath and no one had brought it. Even I had been inconvenienced, since Willow was busy now, having been given the important role of Spring Fragrance, the main character’s servant.
    The music began. The narrator stepped out and gave a quick synopsis of the play, emphasizing how longing had lasted through three incarnations before Liu Mengmei and Du Liniang realized their love. Then we met the young hero, an impoverished scholar who had to leave his ancestral home to take the imperial exams. His family name was Liu, which means
willow.
He recalled how he dreamed of a beautiful maiden standing under a plum tree. When he woke up, he took the given name Mengmei, Dream of Plum. The plum tree, with its lush foliage and ripening fruit, brought to mind the forces of nature, so this name was suggestive even to me of Mengmei’s passionate nature. I listened attentively, but my heart had always been with Liniang and I could hardly wait to see her.
    She arrived onstage for the scene called Admonishing the Daughter. She wore a robe of golden silk with red embroidery. From her headdress rose fluffy balls of spun silk, beaded butterflies, and flowers that quivered when she moved.
    “We treasure our daughter like a pearl,”
Madame Du sang to her husband, but she chastised her daughter. “
You don’t want to be ignorant, do you?
”
    And Prefect Du, Liniang’s father, added,
“No virtuous and eligible young lady should fail to be educated. Take time from your embroidery and read the books on the shelves.”
    But admonitions alone couldn’t change Liniang’s behavior, so soon enough she and Spring Fragrance were being tutored by a strict teacher. The lessons were tedious, full of the kind of memorization of rules that I knew only too well.
“It is proper for a daughter at first cockcrow to wash her hands, to rinse her mouth, to dress her hair, to pin the same, and to pay respects to her mother and father.”
    I heard things like this every day, along with Don’t show your teeth when you smile, Walk steadily and slowly, Look pure and pretty, Be respectful to your aunties, and Use scissors to trim any frayed or loose threads on your gowns.
    Poor Spring Fragrance couldn’t stand the lessons and begged to be dismissed so she could pee. The men on the other side of the screen chortled when Willow bent over at the waist, squirmed, and held in her pee with both hands. It embarrassed me to see her behaving so, but she was only doing what my father had instructed (which shocked me, because how could he know