Years ago I fell in love with a young woman named Peony—a name at once distinctive, beautiful and poetic, and one I refused to question despite never having met another person so named. 

            I probably would have loved her had her name been somewhat more conventional, for Romeo’s point about a rose by any other name will eternally ring true. I suppose having a special name simply made my passion for this young woman all the more, well, passionate. I spent several days with Peony forty years ago when I first met her, not quite knowing if my love was genuine or merely the fleeting infatuation of a schoolboy. What I was sure about was that it was unrequited. There was nothing I could do about that. So I tried not to care.

            Not long ago I was reintroduced to Peony. The intervening years gave me a greater appreciation for her story as well as a greater appreciation for the implications of our crossed paths. But what hasn’t changed at all is that both the original encounter and the more recent one have all the gravity of a serious infatuation: sweet, stubbornly persistent, and secretive.

            I am a Jewish man who has always had an abiding and respectful yet sometimes troubled and quizzical relationship with faith (not just mine, but all faiths). I have written a number of books and articles that in one way or another have Judaism at their core. Peony lived with a Jewish family for the first few decades of her life and had a similarly respectful and quizzical relationship. And while that may not have been what initially drew me to her, once I made that slender connection it gave me a sense of hope—as if Peony wouldn’t mind living with me, too, had fate allowed.

            One may wonder what it was about her that compelled me to fantasize living and building a life with Peony by my side. I suppose it’s because she’s at once exquisite, artistic, and wise, as well as mischievous, decisive, and strong. Those are traits that turn me on. It is no wonder, at least to me, that I fell in love with her.

            How I would have enjoyed arising each morning to see her waking up in the same house (or dare I say the same room). After all, as someone once wrote about her, “The many joys of her life grew bright again with the morning. She enjoyed comfort, she loved beauty, and of both this house had much.”

            Of course, that wasn’t my house. When I first met Peony my house was on Long Island, and when we were reacquainted it was in Connecticut. Hers was in China. Here, too, is where I initially felt, and still feel, a certain connection, unconfirmed (and probably untrue) though it may be. I recall hearing when I was a boy that there may have been some Asian blood mixed in with my family’s Russian/Polish blood somewhere along the ancestral line. For that reason, and others, I’ve always felt some kind of kinship with the Asian world. In fact, the same person who introduced me to Peony—a woman named Pearl—is most likely the one who helped that kinship blossom because of the many stories she told and the way she told them.

            It was Pearl who provided me with the opportunity to observe what made Peony Peony. Not just her appearance—the silken long black hair, the dark piercing eyes, the warm ivory skin, the full red lips—but the things Peony did and the thoughts she had in that Jewish home. How, for example, she would tell white lies in order to protect people who erred or stumbled for obstinate yet well-intentioned reasons. And how she would tell brutal truths when only brutal truths could make people face the importance of reality. And how she adored the seasons. On one wall of her room she hung a scroll she had painted herself that displayed spring and summer flowers, autumn leaves, and winter pines, and underneath the images she placed a poem she composed on her own:

                   “The peach flowers bloom upon the trees,

                        Not knowing whether the frosts will kill them.”

            She could be complicated and mysterious, but always thoughtful and captivating.

            Peony eventually left the Jewish family with which she lived, and because of various high emotions and changing relationships she went somewhere completely different and became a completely different person. It was almost painful for me to learn about that. But maybe it’s not fair to assume that she changed at all; maybe the essence of a person never really changes. Despite the fact that she lived elsewhere, dressed differently, and assumed a lifestyle quite distinct from the one she had before, maybe she remained Peony in the most important ways. At least that’s what I’d like to believe.

            Yet, even if that were true, I still would have appreciated the chance to intercept her just before she left, to talk some sense into her (at least as I saw it), to beg her to stay. But I couldn’t. She was incapable of hearing me. Characters in novels aren’t real. They can neither hear nor see anything outside the pages of a book. “Peony,” written in 1948 by Pearl S. Buck, is about a Chinese bondmaid to the house of Ezra in the northern Chinese province of Honan. It takes place in the mid-1800s. Peony never really existed. Except on paper. And in my heart and mind, I suppose. I first met her when I was a teenager, thanks to a high school English teacher named Mrs. Newman, in whose class I was required to read “The Good Earth.” That book, in turn, prompted me to devour everything else written by Pearl Buck. I read “Peony” a year or two later. I picked it off my bookshelf a few weeks ago and read it once again. My reaction was the same, only better.

            But with age also comes wisdom—or at least a lot of questions you never thought of asking before. And the most important question I have today is this: Just who is it I really love? Is it Peony? Pearl Buck? Or Mrs. Newman?