The Moon Opera

2

Who could have predicted that The Moon Opera would find a patron, its own bodhisattva?

The costume money finally arrived.

Qiao Bingzhang had been weighted down with worries, waiting for days. Without the tobacco factory money, The Moon Opera would be nothing more than the moon in the water. Truth is, he had only been waiting eleven days, but to him it seemed like an eternity. As he was waiting, he discovered that while the amount of money was important, so too was how long it took to get there. These days that thing called money was getting stranger all the time.

At the preliminary troupe meeting Bingzhang was surprised by the extent of opposition to Xiao Yanqiu returning to the stage; they had reached an impasse, unable to move beyond this single issue. He spun his ballpoint pen as he listened to the people around the table. Finally, he flipped the pen onto the table, leaned back in his chair, and, with a smile, said, “Ease off a bit, can’t we? The man asked for her by name. There’s nothing shameful in letting money call the shots these days.” A heavy silence settled over the conference room. No one spoke, and while that could have been interpreted as a sign of opposition, at least it left room for compromise. Li Xuefen had left the troupe to open a hotel, which was fortunate, as her singing style was something Bingzhang could not have borne. The others held their tongue; they didn’t say yes, they didn’t say no. Sometimes, of course, silence means consent, so Bingzhang decided to test the waters: “I guess that’s settled then,” he mumbled vaguely.

But then the problematic issue of who would be the understudy surfaced. Being an understudy to a star was never considered desirable, but especially if that star was Xiao Yanqiu. It was left to old Gao to come up with a workable solution, which was to let Xiao Yanqiu choose her understudy from among her own students. No matter how jealous, how fixated she was on fame and fortune, she surely wouldn’t fight over a role with her own students. On this point there was agreement. But what old Gao said next threw Bingzhang into a state of anxiety. “I think we’re wasting our breath,” he said. “It’s been twenty years, and Yanqiu is a forty-year-old woman. Could she still have the voice it takes? I, for one, doubt it.”

Why didn’t I think of that? Bingzhang reproached himself silently. Twenty years, that is how long it had been. Twenty years, and in that time even the best steel will rust through. Bingzhang muffled a sigh. The meeting had been going on for nearly two hours, all tied up with Xiao Yanqiu, and nothing had been resolved. A preparatory meeting. Anything but! More like a look back at the past. When they didn’t have the money, money was all they thought about. Now that the money had arrived, no one knew how to spend it. There was more to this money than the length of time it had taken to get there, for it was inextricably linked to the past. Indeed, that thing called money was getting very strange.

Bingzhang needed to hear Xiao Yanqiu sing; otherwise, he might as well use the factory money to make firecrackers and at least get a few loud bangs out of it.

She came to the conference room at the appointed time and sat down, and he immediately realized he’d made a miscalculation; with just the two of them in an otherwise empty conference room, him at one end of a long, oval table and her at the other, it felt much too formal. She had put on weight, but was as frosty and aloof as ever, emitting coldness like an air conditioner. He’d intended to talk first about The Moon Opera, which for her, he belatedly recalled, was and always had been an open wound; now he had no idea what to say.

To some degree, Bingzhang was afraid of Xiao Yanqiu, although in point of fact he was a generation older than she. But her temper was justifiably famous. She could seem as formless as water, giving the impression that she would meekly submit to oppression and abuse. But if you were careless enough to actually come up against her, she would turn frosty in the proverbial blink of an eye, and was capable of bringing things to a shattering conclusion through sudden and reckless actions. That is why the dining hall workers at the drama school all said, “We chefs use salad oil whenever we cook, and we avoid Xiao Yanqiu by hook or by crook.”

Not knowing how to broach the subject at hand, Bingzhang beat around the bush, one moment asking how things were going for her and the next asking about her teaching and students. He even brought up the weather. All of it meaningless chatter. After a few minutes, she spoke up. “What exactly did you want to talk to me about?”

Her bluntness so unnerved Bingzhang that he replied without thinking: “Let’s hear a line or two.”

Yanqiu gazed at him and rested her arms on the table to form a half-circle, giving no hint of what was going through her mind at that moment. Then, with a stare devoid of expression, she asked him: “What do you want to hear? The Xipi tune of ‘Flying to Heaven’ or the Erhuang aria ‘The Vast Cold Palace’?”

By offering the two most famous pieces in The Moon Opera, which had brought her two decades of misery, Yanqiu was being openly provocative, slamming a bullet into the chamber. Instinctively, Bingzhang straightened up and prepared for the verbal assault that was sure to come. Yet he wasn’t too concerned. He also had a card to play. “Sing a bit of the Erhuang.”

Yanqiu stood up, moved away from her chair, tugged at the front of her jacket and smoothed the back; then she turned to look out the window, taking a moment to compose herself before her hands and eyes began to move and she drifted into the role. Her singing had the same depth of roots and breadth of canopy as ever, and Bingzhang was deprived of even a moment to be surprised, as unexpected joy flooded his heart and a greedy yet remorseful Chang’e materialized before him. With his eyes shut, he thrust his right hand into his pants pocket and curled his fingers to drum the beat: hard soft-soft-soft, hard soft-soft-soft.

Yanqiu sang straight through for fifteen minutes. When she finished, Bingzhang opened his eyes and squinted to size up the woman before him. The Erhuang piece she’d just sung had gone from slow and meandering to a lyrical rhythm, and then to a strong beat, leading to a crescendo, a complex and demanding melody that required a broad vocal range. She had been away from the stage for twenty years, yet sang it beautifully, without missing a note; clearly, she had never stopped practicing. Bingzhang sat sprawled in his chair, not moving yet deeply moved. Twenty years, he sighed to himself, it’s been twenty years. A tangle of emotions filled his heart. “How did you manage to keep at it?”

“Keep at what?” she asked him. “What is it I’m supposed to have kept at?”

“It’s been twenty years. It couldn’t have been easy.”

“I didn’t keep at anything.” Finally grasping what he was getting at, she looked up and said, “I am Chang’e.”

Xiao Yanqiu emerged from Qiao Bingzhang’s office in a daze. It was October, a windy but sunny day more like spring than autumn. The sunshine and the wind were bright and breezy, alluring and undulating, but it felt unreal, almost dreamlike, as they lingered by her side. She roamed the streets aimlessly, stepping on her own shadow. But then she stopped, looked around, distracted, and glanced down absent-mindedly at her shadow, short and squat in the early afternoon sun, almost dwarf-like. It was virtually shapeless, like a puddle of water. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. When she stepped forward, her shadow crawled ahead like a giant toad. Suddenly focused and clear-headed, Xiao Yanqiu was convinced that the shadow on the ground was her true self, while the upright body was merely an appendage to it. And so it is: people often achieve true awareness of who they really are in the midst of one lonely moment. Her eyes glazed over again; sorrow and despair had turned into an October wind coming at her from one indefinite location before drifting off to yet another.

She decided to go on a diet, starting now.

When fate unexpectedly smiles on her, a woman will often begin a new phase in her life by dieting. Xiao Yanqiu hailed a cab and went straight to People’s Hospital, a place that still held heartbreaking memories for her. In all those years, she’d refused to see a doctor there even when her kidneys were causing her discomfort. People’s Hospital had been the scene of a life-changing event; it was where her heart had been broken. On the second day of Li Xuefen’s hospitalization, Xiao Yanqiu had been forced by the old troupe leader to go to the hospital, where Xuefen had made it clear that she would consider letting Xiao Yanqiu off the hook only if she was satisfied with her rival’s attitude during her self-criticism. Everyone in the troupe knew that the old leader would do whatever was necessary to protect Xiao Yanqiu. He personally wrote a self-criticism for her to read at the hospital, telling her in no uncertain terms that she must perform well in front of Li Xuefen before anything else could be said or done. Yanqiu folded up the self-criticism after reading it, anxiety clouding her judgment. “I wasn’t jealous,” she defended herself, “and I never intended to ruin her looks.” The old troupe leader felt like slapping her, as his eyes turned red from anger at her obstinacy, especially at a moment like this. But he could not bring himself to hit this childish woman. With a sweep of his arm, he said, raising his voice, “I spent seven years in prison, and I have no desire to visit you there.” As she stared at his receding back, she saw that a terrible future lay waiting for her somewhere up ahead.

In the end, she did go to People’s Hospital, where Li Xuefen lay in a hospital bed, her face swathed in gauze. All the troupe’s important people, including the creator of The Moon Opera, had crowded into the room. With her hands clasped low in front, Xiao Yanqiu walked up to Li Xuefen’s bed, eyes downcast. Staring at her feet, she began by swearing, cursing everyone in her family, back some eight generations, reviling them as worse than shit. The room was deathly quiet when she’d finished; no one spoke a word or made a sound, except for Li Xuefen, who coughed dryly behind the gauze. The air in the room turned oppressive. What could anyone say? Xiao Yanqiu had to consider herself lucky that Li Xuefen had not filed a complaint at the Public Security station.

Unable to bear the stifling atmosphere, Yanqiu looked around with tear-filled eyes for someone to come to her aid. The old troupe leader stood in the doorway, glaring at her. Knowing she had no way out, she slowly removed the self-criticism from her pocket, unfolded it, one sheet at a time, and began to read. Like a typewriter key hitting the paper, she spat out one word after another. When she was done, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, for the contents of the self-criticism confirmed the offender’s positive attitude. Li Xuefen pulled the gauze away from her face, exposing reddish-purple splotches of skin shining under a coat of greasy ointment. She accepted the self-criticism and reached for Xiao Yanqiu’s hands. “Yanqiu,” she said with a smile, “you’re still young, you must try to be more broad-minded. You have to change.” Yanqiu managed to get a glimpse of her expression before Xuefen rewrapped her face. That smile was a glass filled with hot but not quite scalding water that splashed onto her heart; with a sizzle, it doused an inner flame.

Xiao Yanqiu emerged from the room into bright sunlight. She walked to the top of the stairs, stopped beside the handrail, and turned back in time to see the old troupe leader heave a sigh of relief. He nodded, and she responded with a smile that turned into a laugh. Then she lost it completely, letting out loud belly-laughs, her shoulders rising and falling like a bearded clown laughing wildly on the opera stage. Everyone nearby heard this unusual racket and stuck their heads out of the wards to gape at Xiao Yanqiu. But she kept laughing, uncontrollably, until her knees buckled and she fell headlong to the landing between the fourth and third floors. People rushed to her side, where she lay on the concrete floor within earshot of the troupe leader, who explained to anyone who would listen, “Her attitude isn’t bad. She still has a good attitude.”

That was twenty years ago. Now, Xiao Yanqiu registered to see a doctor in the urology department. Once she had her prescription filled, she walked out behind the hospital. Twenty years. From a distance, she could see people entering and leaving the in-patient building. It had changed, with mosaic tiles on the exterior walls, but the roof, the windows, and the corridors still looked the same, so maybe it wasn’t that different. Standing there, she realized that, contrary to what people say, life does not reach into the future; rather, it points to the past, at least in terms of its framework and structure.

She arrived home an hour later than usual and saw that her daughter was slouching over the dining room table doing her homework. Her husband was slumped on the sofa, watching TV with the sound off. She leaned against the door frame, grasping her prescription bag from People’s Hospital as she observed her husband with a sense of fatigue. He could tell that something was wrong, so he got up and walked over to her. She handed him the prescription, went to the bedroom, and shut the door behind her. He turned his gaze from her to the bag, from which he took out a box and examined it, filled with uncertainty. The printing was in a foreign language, indecipherable to him, which only worsened the situation.

With a sense of impending doom, he followed her into the bedroom. No sooner had he stepped through the door than she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him to her until their bodies were crushed together, tighter and tighter. He knew at once that she was struggling to bear up under an assault of crippling sadness. The prescription fell from his hand. He stepped backward and banged the door, slamming it shut, and as he held her in his arms, destructive thoughts raced through his mind. Finally she cried out, “Miangua, I’m going back on the stage.”

As if not comprehending what she had just said, he lifted her head to look more closely, a mixture of relief and doubt in his eyes. “I can be on the stage again,” she said. Shoving her away, in a state of shock, he blurted out, “That’s it? That’s what this is all about?”

She stole an embarrassed look at him and smiled. “I feel sad, that’s all,” she muttered through an onset of tears.

He turned and opened the door to go warm up her dinner, only to discover their daughter standing there timidly. Even his bones felt lighter, now that he had escaped the possibility of calamity, but he frowned and said roughly, “Go do your homework!”

Xiao Yanqiu pulled her husband back into the room and waved to her daughter to come in and sit beside her so she could get a good look at her. Born with a large frame and a square face, she did not take after her mother; she was, in fact, a carbon copy of her father. But on this night, to Xiao Yanqiu her daughter seemed prettier than ever, and a more detailed examination revealed that the girl looked like her, after all, just one size bigger. Miangua turned to go into the kitchen, but Yanqiu said, “No need. I’m on a diet.”

He stopped and stood in the doorway, puzzled. “What for? Have I complained that you’re getting fat?”

Laying her hand on her daughter’s head, Yanqiu said, “You may not care if I’m overweight, but no audience would ever accept a fat Chang’e.”

Now when good fortune has smiled on a couple, the first order of business is to put the children to bed. Once the youngsters are asleep, the adults can head to their bed for the celebration ceremony. In this way a happy night is as quiet as water yet lights up like fireworks. The promise of unanticipated delights had Miangua running around the flat, busying himself in one room and another, not quite knowing what to do.

A traffic policeman who had served in the army, he was rough around the edges, insensitive, and devoid of tact. Where marriage was concerned, the best he had hoped for was to find a worker in a government-run factory. Never, not in his wildest dreams, had the possibility entered his head that a famed beauty, that Chang’e herself, would become his wife. That’s what it had felt like, a dream.

The process had been old-fashioned, nothing new. A matchmaker had introduced them beside a willow tree in the park, and they had begun dating. After doing this for a while, they hurried into the “bridal chamber.”

Back in those days, Xiao Yanqiu had been an ice queen. On the cobblestone path in the park, she looked more like a sleepwalker, a zombie who had lost her soul, than an ordinary pedestrian. Yet rather than diminish a woman’s beauty, that sort of look often makes her more alluring. For it enriches her with an ephemeral grace that makes a man’s heart skip a beat and in turn instills in him a desire to love and protect her. When Miangua first laid eyes upon Yanqiu, his hands went cold, and the chill reached down to the pit of his stomach. She was shrouded in a frigid air, like a glass sculpture, and his immediate reaction was to feel unworthy. He silently cursed the matchmaker, for no matter how you looked at it, such a sparkling beauty was way out of his league. He walked gingerly down the cobblestone path with her, not daring to speak because she was so quiet. For him the early days of their relationship were not so much dating as unimaginable torture. But the torment was mixed with an indescribable sweetness. She remained cold and stern, her eyes unfocused, as if her soul had truly left her. At first he thought she didn’t care for him, but she always arrived on time, though looking unwell, when he asked her to go for a walk. Clearly, he had known nothing of her state of mind, for in fact she was possessed by the desire to marry herself off, the sooner the better. As inept at dating as he was, she walked with him, never saying a word. In her presence, Miangua’s self-esteem was in tatters, and he hadn’t an ounce of imagination. The park’s path was where they had met, so that was invariably where their dates could and, in fact, must take place. Focused on her singular goal, she never asked him anything, and was a shadow that went where he went, which was the same place day after day; he didn’t know where else to go. They walked down the same path, headed in the same direction, turned and rested at the same spots. Then they parted at the same place, where he would say the same thing, settling on a day and time for their next meeting.

But one day everything changed—by accident, of course. That day she tripped and fell. She had been gazing at the moon and the heel of her shoe caught in a crack between cobblestones, turning her ankle and sending her tumbling to the ground. Miangua was so horrified his face turned whiter than the moon. Slow by nature, he was a man who could saunter along even if his head were on fire. But not this time; this time he was scared witless, so flustered he didn’t know what to do. Finally, he picked her up and carried her to the hospital; then, in the same flustered state, he took her home. Her ankle was swollen, black and blue, and she had skinned her elbow.

Unlike Miangua, Xiao Yanqiu was unconcerned about her injuries, almost as if she’d seen someone else fall and get hurt. That lack of concern gave the impression that if someone were to cut off her head and place it on a table, she’d still be composed, calmly blinking her eyes.

Miangua was the one who felt the pain. It hurt him to see her like that, and he stared at her ankle, not daring to look her in the eye. Eventually, he glanced at her, but quickly looked away. “Does it still hurt?” he asked in a tiny voice barely loud enough for her to hear. At that moment, she was not so much a glass sculpture, but a block of ice. Her glacial demeanor remained unchanged, as if she had become petrified. What she could not tolerate, not now, not here, was warmth. Even the lingering warmth from someone’s hand would be enough to crumble her exterior and make her melt away.

Rather woodenly, he said in a pained voice, “Let’s not go out again. See how it made you fall and hurt yourself.” She stared at him, while he reproached himself foolishly. If chiding himself in that jumbled, clumsy way of his wasn’t a sign of concern and tenderness, what was it? Yanqiu felt a surge of emotion, and all past hurts and injuries came rushing back to her. Drop by drop, the ice began to melt, dripping away faster and faster. It was too late to stop the process; she was losing control and could not recapture her coldness. She clasped Miangua’s hands and wanted to say his name, but couldn’t, for she had begun to wail. She howled at the top of her lungs, shamefully loud, but didn’t care. Miangua, on the other hand, was so perplexed he felt like bolting; but he couldn’t, for she was holding on to him for dear life. He could not and did not get away.

Neither Yanqiu nor Miangua realized the significance of her momentous wails. There are times when a woman seems to have been born to belong to the person for whom she cries.

So Xiao Yanqiu, a teacher at the drama academy, hastily married herself off. She was adrift in a vast ocean, and Miangua was her lifeboat. For her, this union was her only chance; there would be no future prospects. What pleased her about Miangua was that he was a man with whom one could live a normal life; he cared about family and was steady, considerate, hardworking, even a tiny bit selfish. What else could she ask for? Hadn’t she wanted a man with whom she could spend the rest of her life? He had one flaw though: he was greedy in bed, like a ravenous child who refuses to leave the table until he can no longer straighten up from all the food. But was that really a flaw? What she found puzzling was how a man could derive so much enjoyment from the same few jerky motions every time. He wore himself out, as if engaged in hard work. But he loved her, and one night, after he had finished, he said absurdly, “If we never have a daughter, you’ll be my daughter.” She pondered his preposterous comment for a week. While she wasn’t particularly fond of lovemaking, she could still recall times when she actually enjoyed it.

Yanqiu was the one who ordered their daughter to bed that night, and from the way she let her lashes droop, Miangua could guess that the night would end with a splendid finale. In all their years of marriage, he had always had to beg for sex. This was a new experience. She stood by their daughter’s bedroom and called out softly. Hearing no response, Miangua, who had stayed in the living room, rubbed his hands expectantly. Yanqiu went into the bedroom, undressed in silence before slipping under the covers, then reached out an arm and laid it on top of the bedding.

“Miangua,” she said, “come here.”

Xiao Yanqiu was a wanton woman that night, determined to please him, catering to his every whim. Like a leaf in a summer windstorm, she opened up and laid herself out, rolling and rocking in wild abandon. She talked the whole time, and some of what she said was quite racy; she had to keep her voice low, but every word sizzled. Panting hard, she pleaded with him, her lips touching his ear. “I feel like screaming, Miangua,” she said in a pained voice. “I feel like screaming!” She was a different person, a total stranger, and to him this augured the beginning of the good life. He could not have been happier; lost in pleasure, he forgot everything else. That night, he went crazy; she went even crazier.