The banquet was followed by one last contest. The lanterns were turned down and each of the unmarried girls had a chance to thread a needle by the light from the tip of a single stick of incense. A needle successfully threaded meant that the girl would give birth to a son upon marriage.
There had been much drinking of Shaoxing wine, so considerable laughter accompanied each failed attempt.
I joined in the laughter as best I could, but I was already plotting how I was going to meet my stranger without getting caught. I would have to use the scheming ways of the inner realm and make up what I thought might serve me well from the outside realm. I could only guess and hope and think about each move, as I did when I played chess with my father.
Unlike the first night, I didn’t want to sit in the front row where I’d be closest to the opera but would also be in the one place where all the women could see me. I also couldn’t linger behind as I had last night. If I did that again, my mother would suspect something. She knew I loved the opera too much to be late again. I had to appear as though I were trying to please her, especially after what had happened this afternoon. As my mind searched for the possibilities, my eyes fell on Tan Ze. I began to play out my moves. Yes, I could use the child to cloak myself in innocence.
As Lotus successfully threaded the needle and everyone applauded, I moved across the room to Ze, who perched on the edge of a chair, hoping my mother would choose her to take a turn at the game. That was never going to happen. Ze wasn’t waiting for her wedding ceremonies to take place; she was a little girl who had yet to be matched.
I tapped her on the shoulder.
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“Come with me,” I said. “I want to show you something.”
She slipped off the chair and I took her hand, making sure my mother saw what I was doing.
“You know I’ve already been betrothed,” I said, as we walked to my room.
The little girl nodded, her face serious.
“Would you like to see my bride-price gifts?”
Ze squealed. Inside, I did practically the same thing but for a very different reason.
I opened pigskin chests and showed her the bolts of airy gauzes, lustrous satins, and heavy brocades that had already been sent.
When the crash of cymbals and the bang of drums began calling us to the garden, Ze got to her feet. Outside my room, women gathered in the corridor.
“You have to see my wedding costume,” I rushed on. “You’ll love the headdress.”
The girl sat back down, eagerly wiggling her bottom into my bedding.
I brought out my embroidered red silk wedding skirt, which had dozens of tiny pleats. The women my father had hired to make it had adjusted their stitches so that the pattern of flowers, clouds, and interlocking good-luck symbols were perfectly aligned. On my wedding day the design would break apart only if I took too large a step. The tunic was equally exquisite. Instead of just four frogs to hold it shut—at my neck, across my breast, and under my arm—the seamstresses had made dozens of tiny braided frogs to confound my husband and prolong the wedding night.
The headdress was simple and elegant: a garden of thin gold leaves that would quiver as I moved and shimmer in the light, with a red veil to cover my face so I wouldn’t see my husband until he removed it. I had always loved my wedding costume, but the emotions it now stirred in me were very dark. What was the purpose of being wrapped like a present if you had no feelings for the person you were being given to?
“It’s beautiful, but my father has promised I will have pearls and jade in my headdress,” Ze boasted.
I barely heard her, because I was listening so hard to what was happening outside my room. The drums and cymbals still called the audience, but the corridor was quiet. I put my wedding costume away. Then I took Ze’s hand and we left my room.
We wandered together to the garden. I saw my cousins grouped together behind the screen. Unbelievably, they’d saved a place for me. Lotus ( 5 4 )
waved to me to join them. I smiled back and then bent to whisper in Ze’s ear.
“Look, the unmarried girls want you to sit with them.”
“They do?”
She didn’t even wait for me to give her more encouragement but threaded her way through the cushions to the other girls, sat down, and immediately began talking nonstop to my cousins. They had shown me a little kindness and this was how I repaid them.
I made a great show of looking around for an available cushion near the front or in the middle, but of course by now there were none. I feigned a look of disappointment and then delicately sank to a cushion on the edge at the back of the women’s section.
Tonight’s opening scene was one I would have liked to have seen but could only hear from my spot at the back of the audience. Liniang and Mengmei eloped—something completely unheard of in our culture. As soon as they were married, Liniang confessed that she was a virgin—this despite her ghostly nocturnal unions with Mengmei. As a ghost, the maiden status of her body in its grave had been preserved. The scene ended with Liniang and Mengmei departing for Hangzhou, where he would complete his studies for the imperial exams.
There was very little in the final third of the opera that I liked. It was mostly about the world beyond Liniang’s garden—with great battle scenes, where everyone was on the move—but it completely captivated the audience on my side of the screen. Around me the women sank deeper into the story. I waited until I couldn’t stand it any longer; then, with my heart pounding, I slowly rose, smoothed my skirts, and walked back as casually as possible toward the women’s chambers.
But I didn’t go to the Unmarried Girls’ Hall. I turned off the main path and then hurried along the south wall of our property, past small ponds and viewing pavilions, until I reached the trail by the lakeshore. I had never been on this path before and was unsure how to proceed. Then I saw the Moon-Viewing Pavilion and sensed my stranger there already.
Only the quarter moon illuminated the night, and I searched the darkness until I found him. He perched on the balustrade that lined the farthest edge of the pavilion, looking not out at the water but at me. My chest constricted with that knowledge. The path had been inlaid with pebbles in designs that created bats for happiness, tortoise backs for longevity, and cash for prosperity. Each step thus brought joy, a long life, and more wealth.
My ancestors had also constructed these pathways for health reasons. As ( 5 5 )
they aged, the pebbles massaged their feet as they walked. This must have been in long-ago days when women weren’t allowed in the garden, because I found the surface hard to walk on with my bound feet. I focused on making each foot find purchase on a pebble, balancing just so before committing myself to moving forward, knowing that this accentuated the delicacy of my lily walk.
I hesitated before stepping into the Moon-Viewing Pavilion. My courage faded. This place had always been forbidden to me because three sides were surrounded by water. Technically, it was outside our garden walls. Then I remembered Liniang’s determination. I took a breath, walked into the middle of the pavilion, and stopped. He wore a long gown of midnight-blue silk. Next to him on the balustrade were a peony and a sprig of willow. He didn’t stand. He just stared at me. I tried to keep perfectly still.
“I see you have a three-ways viewing pavilion,” he said. “I have the same in my home, only ours is on our pond and not the lake.”
He must have seen my confusion, so he explained. “From here you can see the moon three ways: in the sky, reflected in the water, and refracted from the lake into the mirror.” He lifted his hand and languorously pointed to a mirror that hung above the only piece of furniture in the pavilion: a carved wooden bed.
“Oh!” slipped from my mouth. Until this instant I had never considered a bed in a pavilion as anything other than a place for the lazy to rest, but now I trembled at the thought of the bed, the mirror, and the languid nights I wished I could have in his moon-viewing pavilion.