Peony in Love by Lisa See

Author:Lisa See [SEE, LISA]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781588366238
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-06-25T22:00:00+00:00

DURING THE WEDDING ceremony and the celebrations that followed, I tried to intervene in many ways. Always I was unsuccessful. I’d been so sure that Ren and I were meant to be together. How could fate be so cruel and so wrong?

After the banquet, Ren and his wife were escorted back to the bridal chamber. Red candles nearly a meter long burned, filling the room with a golden glow. If they burned all night, that would be seen as an auspicious sign. The trickling down of the wax was like the shedding of a bride’s tears on her first night alone with her husband. If one of the candles went out—even by accident—it would be an omen of a premature death for one or both parties. The band and the party were raucous and loud. Each crash of the cymbals terrified me. Each beat of the drum pounded fear into me. Bands played noisily at weddings and funerals to scare away bad spirits, but I wasn’t a bad spirit. I was a heartbroken girl, deprived of my destiny. I stayed at Ren’s side until the firecrackers were lit. The rattling pops tossed me from side to side. It was more than I could bear and I floated up and away from him.

From a safe distance, I saw my poet raise his hands to his wife’s headdress and veil, take out the pins that held them in place, and lift the covering from her head.

Tan Ze!

I was doubly incensed. On the first night of the opera all those years ago, she’d said she wanted her father to make inquiries about Ren. Now she’d gotten what she wanted. How I would make her suffer! My spirit would haunt her. I’d fill her worldly days with misery. I’d felt much pain and wretchedness these past years, but seeing Ze—her perfect white breasts now bared—filled me with excruciating agony and raging despair. How could Ren’s mother have chosen Tan Ze? I didn’t know why she’d done it, but the result was that out of all the women in Hangzhou, my home country of China, and the world, she’d arranged for her son to marry the one person who would hurt me the most. Was this why Ze had been so still when she was waiting in the bridal chamber? Had she put up hard defenses around herself, knowing I’d be there? The Book of Female Filial Piety calls jealousy the sickest of all the ancestral emotions, and I was sinking in it.

Ren untied the knots at Ze’s waist. Her silk skirt slipped through the fingers I’d so admired, that I’d so longed to touch me when we were alone in the garden. Tormented, I pulled at my hair. I tore at my clothes. I cried, terrified that I would miss this, ashamed that I had to see it. No mists formed over the lake and no rains fell. The musicians in the courtyard didn’t have to cover their instruments and run for cover. The guests didn’t stop laughing or telling jokes.

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