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of the seventh month was a festival
to celebrate two heavenly lovers—the cowherd and the weaving maid. Amah told me
this tale when I was small. A long time ago, there was a cowherd with nothing
but an old ox to keep him company. One day, the ox suddenly spoke and told him
that he might win himself a wife if he hid beside a pool and waited for the
heavenly weaving maidens. As they bathed, the cowherd hid one set of clothes and
when one of the maidens was left behind searching for her garments, he accosted
her and asked her to be his wife. Eventually, the magic ox died. At this point,
I always burst in with questions. Amah would brush aside my protests, continuing
her well-worn tale. She was a pedantic storyteller who repeated her stories in
exactly the same words each time.
    When the magic ox died, it told the cowherd to keep
its skin for a time of great need. And soon enough, the Queen of Heaven was
angered that one of her best weavers had married a mortal and commanded that she
be brought back to heaven. In despair, the cowherd followed his wife on the
magic ox skin, bearing their two children in baskets at the end of a pole. To
prevent him from catching up, the Queen of Heaven took her hairpin and drew a
river, the Milky Way, between them in the heavens. On one day each year,
however, the magpies of the earth took pity on the lovers and made a bridge so
they could cross to see each other. This was the conjunction of the two stars
Altair and Vega on the seventh day of the seventh month.
    When Amah told me this story, I couldn’t understand
why such a tragedy was considered a festival for lovers. There was no happy
ending, only endless waiting on each side of a river. It seemed like a miserable
way to spend eternity. Instead, I was most interested in the ox. How did the ox
know that the heavenly maidens were coming? Why could it speak? And most of all,
why did the ox have to die? Amah never gave me very satisfactory answers to
these questions. “The point of the story is the lovers, you silly child,” she
said, and, indeed, the festival was particularly suited for young girls who took
part in competitions to thread a needle by moonlight, bathed their faces with
flower water, and sang songs to celebrate needlework. I had never had a chance
to take part in these maidenly activities, however, because the other thing that
was celebrated on the Double Seventh Festival was the sunning of the books.
    The seventh day of the seventh month was also
considered a particularly fortuitous time to air old books and scrolls; and as
my father had vast quantities of both, this was our major activity during the
festival. Tables were placed in the courtyard and his collection was laid out in
the sun, papers turned to ensure even drying. A careful watch must be kept to
ensure the ink would not fade. I still remembered the smooth, hot feeling of the
paper beneath my palms, and the brilliance of the colors intensified by the sun.
Our climate was hot and damp, an adverse environment for libraries. Many times I
would find that silverfish or bookworms had begun to consume the paper, and I
would be set to tracing the wormholes to get rid of the pests. That was why my
memories of the Double Seventh Festival were inextricably linked to the smell of
moldy paper. This year would be different, though. I suspected that the Lims
would celebrate in a far grander fashion.
    T he
performance was in the afternoon, to be followed by a dinner afterward. I spent
the morning laying out what few pieces of good jewelry I had. Amah pressed the
new dress with a heavy charcoal iron until it was smooth and crisp. I rarely
wore a kebaya , but I wished I did so more often
because it was very flattering. The baju , or shirt,
was fitted at the waist and made of sheer white cotton with cutwork embroidery
down the front and edges. The front of the baju was
fastened with three gold brooches shaped like flowers and attached to one
another by fine gold chains, while the