Fragrance opens the scene with a slight resuscitation of what has happened to Bridal Du. The first line already disposes us to Bridal Du’s heartbroken sickness:
Nightlong the harshness of wind and rain
and she so frail,
so wasted in her sorrow. (p 97)
The season has changed from spring to autumn, and Bridal Du’s health is crumbling. The birth that spring offered Bridal Du is slowly being sapped from her life. Time, medicine and religion are of no help to her. Even her visage refuses emotion. Bridal Du is dying. Fragrance likens the chilling weather to a foreboding impulse, and the world is illustrating more power than passion for this gentle girl.
Bridal Du stirs and relates that her young body is worn by melancholy and seasons. She questions Fragrance as to the date. Her maidservant’s reply informs her of the onset of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Although Bridal Du is still mortally lovesick, she yearns for her parents well-being. She requests that Fragrance open the window and then releases:
What western wind has “scattered all trace of dreams”?
Once gone, hard to find him again,
[...]
“Vanishing from the brow
a new pain enters in the heart below.” (p 99)
Of course she speaks of Liu Mengmei. She despairs a false hope that her nocturnal romance could be composed of nothing more than the wishes of banshees and demons. Fragrance hopes the rising moon will allow Bridal Du’s illness to capitulate even if just for the moment. This is merely a setup for Bridal Du to tell us tonight she will die.
No light of new orphan moon
shall touch my life (p 99)
Fragrance, alarmed, calls for Madame Du. Bridal Du again professes her undying, tumbling gratitude for her mother and father. Her mother here, racked with sadness, laments that her husband and her shall “remain at the rim of sky” (p 101) I did not fully understand this phrase. Her daughter is dying, and she wants to complain about not having a son. I know that this is my US American bias tickling my intellect. I know that. But that really broke the moment for me.
Bridal Du wishes upon her mother to not be buried in her native place, but rather beneath the apricot tree in the garden. Here her mother is something more familiar to me. Madame Du wishes to offer her life for that of her daughter’s life. Madame Du then exits to prepare for the festival. I think I might be misinterpreting this bit, but that seems to fly in the face of the family first attitude we learned of in From the Soil and many other sources of Chinese culture.
But amidst of all of this we are given a glimmer of hope. Bridal Du asks a question, that although fantastical, gives the possibility of an alternative ending. “[...] do you think a time can come when I may return to life?” (p 102) Finally, amid this culling of existence I see a brief moment of possibility. I am glad that scenes 20 and 22 were added to the reading. I believe it makes the realization of Bridal Du’s eventual reconstitution a bit more palatable.
Prefect Du’s entrance into Bridal Du’s death scene echos of the “basement” Dr. Rose mentioned we need to pull from.
Drum’s triple boom,
ten thousand echoes of sorrow, [...] (p 103)
I can hear the deep bellowing of his voice in the text itself. The combination of Fragrance, Madame Du and Prefect Du briefly resuscitate Bridal Du. But here are her first last moments. Her father holds her. She begs for assistance or a lead into this final (or not) resting hall. This bit is really quite touching:
Ah, how can
the moon, once set, rise again
or the burnt-out lamp glow red? (p 104)
Which one of us with any frame of reference, with any experience with life and love and loss can refute this question?
How are we supposed to pick ourselves up? I am trampled and bloodied. My clothes are dirty and clotted and teeth stained and chipped. But my heartbreak’s face still is clear to me. I fell so far and hit the ground moving with such great velocity that I thought myself unrecoverable.
But Bridal Du is leading us again. Though the story is romantic and fantasy it does not need to be interpretted just as a story. Morality plays hide in the strangest of places.
Por supuesto, habrá el subida de la luna, y las lamparas solamente necesitan mas de combustible y fuego estar rojos una otra vez.
Sources:
Tang, Xianzu, and Tang Xianzu. The Peony Pavilion: Mudan ting, Second Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.