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to write, I could exercise my intellect and imagination. I considered him my best teacher.
    “I have no lessons today,” I reminded him shyly.
    Had he forgotten my birthday was tomorrow? Usually birthdays were not celebrated until someone reached the age of fifty, but hadn’t he mounted the opera for me because he loved me and I was precious to him?
    He smiled indulgently. “Of course, of course.” Then he turned serious. “Too much female gossip in the women’s chambers?”
    I shook my head.
    “Then you have come to tell me that you won one of those contests your mother has organized.”
    “Oh, Ba.” I sighed in resignation. He knew I didn’t excel at those things.
    “You are so old now I can’t even tease you anymore.” He slapped his thigh and laughed. “Sixteen tomorrow. Have you failed to remember this special day?”
    I smiled back at him. “You’ve given me the best present.”
    He cocked his head in question. He had to be teasing me again and I played along.
    “I suppose you staged the opera for someone else,” I suggested.
    Baba had encouraged my impertinence over the years, but today he didn’t respond with something swift and clever. Instead, he said, “Yes, yes,
yes,
” as if with each word he considered his answer anew. “Of course. That was it.”
    He pulled himself up and threw his legs over the side of the bed. After he stood, he took a moment to adjust his clothes, which were modeled on Manchu riding gear—trousers and a fitted tunic that buttoned at the neck. “But I have another present for you. One I think you’ll like even more.”
    He went to a camphor-wood chest, opened it, and pulled out something wrapped in purple silk woven in a pattern of willows. When he handed it to me, I knew it was a book. I hoped it was the volume of
The Peony Pavilion
that the great author Tang Xianzu had published himself. I slowly untied and then unfolded the silk. It was an edition of
The Peony Pavilion
I did not yet have, but not the one I wished for. Still, I clutched it to my chest, relishing how special it was. Without my father’s help, I would not have been able to pursue my passion, no matter how resourceful I was.
    “Ba, you’re too good to me.”
    “Open it,” he urged.
    I loved books. I loved the weight of them in my hands. I loved the smell of the ink and the feel of the rice paper.
    “Don’t fold over the edges of the page to mark your place,” my father reminded me. “Don’t scratch at the written characters with your fingernails. Don’t wet your finger with your tongue before turning the pages. And never use a book as a pillow.”
    How many times had he warned me of these things?
    “I won’t, Baba,” I promised.
    My eyes rested on the narrator’s opening lines. Last night I had heard the actor who played him speak of how three incarnations had led Liniang and Mengmei to the Peony Pavilion.
    I took the volume to my father, pointed to the passage, and asked, “Baba, where does this come from? Was it something Tang Xianzu invented or is it one of the things he borrowed from another poem or story?”
    My father smiled, pleased as usual with my curiosity. “Look on the third shelf on that wall. Find the oldest book and you’ll get your answer.”
    I put my new copy of
The Peony Pavilion
on the daybed and did as my father suggested. I took the book back to the bed and leafed through the pages until I found the original source for the three incarnations. It seemed that in the Tang dynasty a girl loved a monk. It took three separate lifetimes for them to attain perfect circumstances and perfect love. I pondered that. Could love be strong enough to outlast death not once but three times?
    I picked up
The Peony Pavilion
again and slowly turned the pages. I wanted to find Mengmei and relive meeting my stranger last night. I came to Mengmei’s entrance:

    I have inherited fragrance of classic books. Drilling the wall for light, hair tied to a beam in fear of drowsing, I wrest