Ze shivered, closed the book, and blew out the candle. She covered her face with her hands and began to weep. The poor girl was frightened, unintelligent, and uninformed about what she could do to bring gratification to her husband and herself. Given time—and that was all I had—I would be even bolder than I’d been with her today.
Clouds and Rain
THE BOOK OF RITES TELLS US THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT duty in marriage is to have a son who will feed and care for his parents once they go to the afterworld, since only he can do this. Beyond that, marriage is for the joining of two surnames, thereby bringing prosperity to both families through the exchange of bride-price gifts, dowries, and mutually beneficial connections. But The Peony Pavilion was about something completely different: sexual attraction and physical passion. Liniang began as a shy girl, but she flowered through love, becoming more openly sensuous as a ghost. Having died a virgin, she took her unfulfilled desires with her to the grave. During the worst of my lovesickness, Doctor Zhao had said I needed clouds and rain. He’d been right about that. If I’d lived long enough, my wedding night would have cured me. Now my yearnings—long kept hidden on the Viewing Terrace—were as ravenous and greedy as my stomach. I wasn’t a frightening, malignant, or predatory creature; I was merely in need of my husband’s sympathy, protection, and touch. My longing for Ren was as great as on the first night we’d met. It was as strong as the moon, reaching through the clouds, over the waters, clear to the man who should have been my husband. But of course I had nothing of the moon’s powers. Since I couldn’t connect to Ren directly anymore, I used Ze to reach him. She resisted at first, but how can a living girl win against someone from the afterworld?
Ghosts, like women, are creatures of yin—cold, dark, earthy, and feminine. For months I made things easy on myself by staying in Ren’s bed-chamber, where I didn’t have to worry about the suddenness of sunrises or strategize as to how to navigate an impossibly tight corner. I was a nocturnal creature. I spent my days nesting in the rafters or curled in a corner of the room. When the sun set, I became more brazen, lounging like a concubine on my husband’s bed, waiting for him and his second wife to come to me.
Refusing to leave the room also permitted me less time with Ze. Her dowry had greatly increased the Wu family’s riches—which is why Ren’s widowed mother had agreed to the arrangement—but it barely made up for Ze’s disagreeable personality. As I’d suspected all those years ago, she’d grown up to be mean-spirited and petty. During the day, I would hear her in the courtyard, complaining about this or that. “My tea has no flavor,” she scolded a servant. “Did you use the tea of this household? Do not do that again. My father sent tea of the highest grade for me to drink. No, you may not use it for my mother-in-law. Wait! I haven’t dismissed you! I want my tea hot this time. I don’t want to say this again!”
After lunch, she and Madame Wu retired to the women’s quarters, where they were supposed to read, paint, and write poetry together. Ze wouldn’t participate in these activities, nor would she play the zither, although she was reputed to be quite adept. She was too impatient for embroidery and more than once threw her project against the wall. Madame Wu tried scolding, but that only made matters worse.
“I don’t belong to you!” Ze screamed at her mother-in-law one day. “You can’t tell me what to do! My father is the Commissioner of Imperial Rites!”
Under ordinary circumstances, Ren would have had the authority to return Ze to her natal home, sell her to another family, or even beat her to death for being unfilial to his mother, but she was correct. Her father was important and the dowry had been plentiful. Madame Wu did not reprimand Ze, nor did she report the girl to her husband. The silences that visited the women’s chambers were rare, but they were heavy with bitterness and reproach.
I heard Ze in the late afternoons, her voice so shrill and loud that it carried all the way from Ren’s library to the bedchamber. “I’ve been waiting for you all day,” she carped. “What are you doing in here? Why do you always keep to yourself? I don’t want your words and poems. I need money. A silk merchant is bringing samples from Suzhou today. I do not ask for gowns for myself, but surely you agree that the hangings in the main hall are shabby. If you worked harder, we wouldn’t have to rely so much on my dowry.”
When the servants brought dinner to the table, criticism poured from her mouth. “I don’t eat fish from West Lake. The waters there are too shallow and the fish tastes like earth.” She picked at the pan-fried goose with lemons and ignored the double-boiled chicken with lotus seeds. Ren ate the seeds, which were a well-known aphrodisiac, and put a lot of them in Ze’s bowl, which she pointedly ignored. I was the only one who knew that she was secretly burning lotus leaves and eating the ashes to prevent pregnancy. Same plant, different purposes. I was happy for her choice. A son would solidify her position in the household.
Every marriage encompasses six emotions: love, affection, hatred, bitterness, disappointment, and jealousy. But where were Ze’s love and affection? Everything she said and did was insulting to her mother-in-law and her husband, but Ze seemed impervious. Neither of them dared protest, because daughters of powerful men were allowed to nag their husbands and make their families feel inconsequential. But this was not marriage.
Ze’s parents came to visit. The bride threw herself at their feet and begged to be taken home.
“This was a mistake,” she cried. “This house and the people in it are too low. I was a phoenix. Why did you marry me to a crow?”
Was this how she saw my poet? Was this why she pecked at him all the time?
“You turned down all offers,” the commissioner answered coldly. “I was deep into negotiations with the son of Suzhou’s magistrate. They had a beautiful garden compound, but you wouldn’t consider it. It is a father’s duty to find the right husband for his daughter, but you decided whom you wanted to marry when you were nine years old. What girl chooses her husband by peeking through a screen? Well, you wanted—no, demanded—a mediocre man who lived in a mediocre house. Why? I have no idea, but I gave you what you wanted.”
“But you’re my baba! And I don’t love Ren. Buy me back. Arrange a different marriage.”
Commissioner Tan was unyielding. “You have always been selfish, spoiled, and strong-minded. I blame your mother for that.”
This hardly seemed fair. A mother can spoil her daughter with too much affection, but only a father has the money and power to give a girl the things she wants.
“You’ve been nothing but a blight on our family from the moment you were born,” he went on, and pushed her away with his shoe. “The day you married out was a happy one for your mother and me.”
Madame Tan didn’t deny this or try to intervene on her daughter’s behalf. “Stand up and stop acting so foolish,” she said in disgust. “You wanted this marriage, and now you have it. You’ve made your fate. Start acting like a wife. Obedience is the only way for a wife. Yang is on top; yin is on the bottom.”
When pleading and tears didn’t work, Ze turned vicious. Her face grew red and horrible words spewed from her mouth. She was like a first-born son—absolutely sure of her position and her right to demand—but Commissioner Tan remained unmoved.
“I won’t lose face for you. We did our best to raise you for your husband’s family. You belong to them now.”
The commissioner and his wife instructed their daughter to behave, gave Madame Wu gifts as compensation for having to accept the company of their unruly daughter, and left. Ze’s disposition did not improve; if anything it got worse. During the day, when she treated the fingers in the household with utter disdain, I didn’t interfere. The nights, however, belonged to me.
At first I didn’t know what to do and Ze often fought against me. But I was so much stronger she had no choice but to obey me. Pleasing Ren was another matter altogether. I learned by trying and failing, by trying and succeeding. I began to follow his cues and react to his sighs, his internal trembling, and the subtle shi
fting of his body to give me better access. I directed Ze’s fingers along his muscles. I urged her to use her breasts to caress his skin, his lips, his tongue. I made her use the wetness of her mouth to tantalize his nipples, his belly, and that part lower down. I finally understood what Tang Xianzu meant when he wrote about Liniang “playing the flute.” As for that dark moist part of Ze that Ren desired most of all, I made sure it was open and available to him at any moment he chose.
All the while I whispered in her ear the things I’d learned about marriage from The Peony Pavilion and how a wife had to be “agreeable, accommodating, and compliant.” When I was a girl, listening to my mother’s and aunts’ endless drills and recitations about marriage, I’d thought I’d never be like them. I’d planned to reject the past, those lessons, and the rigidity of custom and tradition. I’d wanted to be modern in my thinking, but like all girls who’ve just moved sight unseen to their husbands’ homes, I imitated my mother and aunts, calling on all those things I’d so resisted. If I’d been alive, I was sure that eventually I would have come to carry locks in my pockets and insist that my daughters follow the Three Obediences and the Four Virtues. I would have become my mother. Instead, my mother’s voice came out of my mouth and entered Ze’s ears.
“Don’t track your husband’s activities all the time,” I instructed. “No man likes to feel his wife watching over him. Don’t eat too much. No man wants to see a wife putting too much food in her mouth. Show respect for the money he earns. Generosity in spending is very different from wasting money. Only a concubine likes to regard a man as a money printer.”
Ze gradually succumbed to my lessons, while I grew out of the girlish romanticism that had made me lovesick. I came to believe that true love meant physical love. I enjoyed making my husband suffer the pain of desire. I spent hours thinking of new ways to prolong that agony. I used Ze’s body freely and without regret, remorse, or guilt. I made her do what she was supposed to do as a wife, and then I watched—smiling, laughing, loving with my entire spirit—as my husband found release in her hands, mouth, and hidden crevice. By now I knew my husband’s greatest desire was to hold Ze’s bound feet dressed in embroidered red silk slippers in his hands, where he could fully appreciate their delicacy, their fragrance, and the pain she had gone through to give him this pleasure. When I saw Ren could do even more with them, I prevented her from pushing him away. With Ze as my emissary, I experienced sexual love.
That she didn’t feel anything didn’t bother me. That I didn’t know what she was thinking didn’t disturb me either. Even when she was tired, even when she was afraid, even when she was embarrassed, I pushed and used her. Ze’s flesh was there for Ren to taste, fondle, tease, pinch, nuzzle, and penetrate. But over time I saw that her look of indifference and her lack of response disturbed my husband. Whenever he asked what would please her, she shut her eyes and turned her face away from him. For all my efforts, she was less present in the bed with him than she’d been on her marriage night.
Ren began to stay in his library to read until Ze fell asleep. When he came to the room and got in bed, he did not wrap his arms around her to seek warmth, comfort, and companionship for his sleeping hours. He stayed on his side of the bed; she stayed on hers. At first, this satisfied me greatly, because it allowed me to drape my ghostly form around his body like a shroud. I’d stay that way all night, moving as he moved, letting his warmth seep into my coldness. But when he called for the windows to be shut and extra quilts to be brought, I retreated back up to the rafter above him.
He started visiting the teahouses on the shore of West Lake. I accompanied him, staying with him when he gambled, when he drank too much, and when—eventually—he started amusing himself with the women whose specialty was men’s delight and satisfaction. I watched, fascinated, entranced. I learned a lot. Mostly I learned that Ze was as selfish and self-centered as ever. How could she not do what she was supposed to do, as a woman and as a wife? Did she have no feelings, emotional or physical? And putting aside Ren’s pleasure, had she forgotten that he might fall in love with one of those women and bring her home as a concubine?
After she’d done clouds and rain with my husband, I journeyed with Ze in her dreams. Since her wedding night, she no longer visited pretty spots. Rather, her dreams took place in fog and shadows. She concealed the moon. She refused to light candles or lanterns. This suited me well. From my hiding place behind trees or pillars or from the darkness of caves or corners, I haunted her, bullied her, lectured her. The next evening, she would stay awake in bed, pale and shivering, until our husband came to her. She did everything I told her to do, but the look on her face still did not please him.
Finally, one night as she ventured in a dream garden, I stepped out of the black shadows and met her face-to-face. Naturally, she screamed and ran away, but how far could she go? Even in her dream, she tired. I never tired. I couldn’t tire.
She sank to her knees and rubbed her scalp, trying to produce sparks, hoping those bursts of illumination would scare me. But this was a dream and I had no fear of friction static here.
“Leave me alone!” Ze cried, and then bit the tip of her middle finger, doing her hardest to bring blood. “Go away!” She pointed her finger at me, trying to place blame but also knowing that gore in any form was terrifying to ghosts. But again, this was a dream and her teeth hadn’t the strength to tear her skin. Her powers of conjuration, as harmful to me as they could be in the earthly realm, had no power over me in a dream.
“I’m sorry,” I said amiably, “but I’ll never leave you.”
She covered her mouth with her hands to smother her petrified screams. No, petrified is the wrong word. It was as though all the fears she’d refused to acknowledge were true.
I was a ghost, so I was aware of what was happening to her in the earthly realm. There she whimpered and struggled against the covers.
In the dream, I took several steps back. “I’m not here to hurt you,” I said. I extended my hand and sent in her direction a shower of petals. I smiled and flowers bloomed around us. I gently twirled toward her, sending away the shadows and darkness until we were two pretty girls in a garden on a pleasant spring day.
In her bed, Ze’s breathing calmed and her features settled. Here, in her dreams, her hair shone in the sunlight. Her lips were full with promise. Her hands were slim and pale. Her lily feet were delicate, an enticement even to me. I saw no reason why she couldn’t bring this hidden self back to the earthly realm.
I lowered myself before her.
“People say you are selfish,” I said. She closed her eyes against the truth of this and her face began to pinch again. “I want you to be selfish. I want you to be selfish here.” I used the tip of my index finger to touch the seat of consciousness that lay embedded in her chest. Under my finger, I felt something open. I drew my finger away and thought about the women I’d spied in the pleasure houses. Emboldened, I reached out with both hands and grazed her nipples hidden under her gown. I felt sudden hardness beneath my fingertips; in the earthly realm, Ze stirred. I remembered the deepest source of sensation I had when Ren had caressed me with the peony blossom. This was a dream and Ze couldn’t get away from me, so I trailed a finger down, down, down until I touched the spot that I knew was the source of pleasure. Through the silk I felt warmth begin to radiate until Ze shuddered and sighed. In her bed, she trembled too. “Be selfish about this,” I whispered in her ear. Remembering what my mother used to say about clouds and rain, I added, “Women should have pleasure too.”
Before I let her waken, she had to promise me something. “Don’t mention our talk or that you saw me,” I said. She had to remain silent about our visits for my connection to her to continue. “No one, especially your husband, wants to hear about your dreams. Ren will think you superstitious and ignorant if you talk nonsense about his first wife.”
“But he’s my husband! I can’t keep secrets from him.”
“All women keep secrets from their husbands,??
? I said. “Men keep secrets from their wives too.”
Was this true? Fortunately, Ze had as little experience as I had and didn’t question me. Still, she resisted.
“My husband wants a new kind of wife,” Ze said. “He’s looking for a companion.”
At those words—which were so close to what Ren had told me—rage, deep and inhuman, roared out of me. For a moment, I became fearful in my aspect: hideous, repulsive, and frightening. After that, I had no more trouble from Ze. Night after night I visited her in her dreams until she no longer fought against me.
This is how Tan Ze became my sister-wife. Every night I waited for her, coiled in the rafters, when she came to the bedchamber. Every night I slipped down from my perch to the marital bed to guide her hips, arch her back, and help her open to our husband. I relished each moan that escaped her lips. I enjoyed tormenting her as much as I did him. When she resisted, all I had to do was reach out and touch this or that exposed piece of flesh to make desperate warmth seep into her body until she was nothing more than raw sensation, until her hair became disarrayed and her combs and ornaments littered the bed, until she reached her moment of sweet melting and the rains came.
Ze’s sudden fervor brought our husband back home from the pleasure houses. He grew to love his earthly wife. For every moment of enchantment she brought him—and there were many, as I thought of new and varied ways to please him—he challenged her right back with his ingenuity. There were many places on Ze’s body to explore and he found them all. She did not resist, because I wouldn’t let her. Now when she left the room, I did not hear complaints, criticisms, or angry words fly about the compound. She began to take tea to Ren’s library. His interests became her interests. She started treating the servants kindly and fairly.