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Andrea Mullaney

The Ghost Marriage

I did not meet my husband until six years after he died. He comes to me now after dark, speaking only in the poetry he loved when alive:

The beauty of night

The scent of jasmine flowers

Your long hair, unbound.

I have often wondered how those six years might have changed him, whether Chonglin was always the gentle, kind lover that he is now or whether death has smoothed out the imperfections in his character, just as it has left his beautiful face forever unwrinkled. But I do not question him. I sense there are things he cannot say.

He did not come to me on our wedding night; it was almost three months afterwards that he first appeared in my room. Perhaps he felt shy, or was not able to until then — I do not know how he is able to come at all. And, because I cannot ask, I do not know if this is normal with marriages like ours. Perhaps there are many women in Shanghai who are visited at night by their dead husbands. I think, though, that I am the only Englishwoman.

Such knowledge of Chonglin’s life that I have comes from Gao Bohai, my husband’s brother and the one who arranged our ghost marriage. When he speaks of his brother, which is rare, Bohai’s face becomes softer, less fixed and serious than when we talk of business, which we must discuss every day.

He will mention, perhaps, a village the silk boats must pass through and say: “Ah, my brother would often go there to fish. He said the waters were very good, very pure.” Or, perhaps, there will be a letter from a certain merchant, complaining of the quality of our latest shipment, and he will say: “Chonglin never liked this man. He said he was like a cormorant who drops the food already in his mouth to pick up more.”

I snatch up his words, eager for the simplest detail to remind me that my husband was once alive. Sometimes I feel that my morning conversations with Bohai are all that keep me from madness.