The Moon Opera (6 page)

No one dared come talk to her, no one dared even look at her. She forced herself to remain collected, but that too took its toll. People should never be too anxious to recover their dignity after a blunder; sometimes, the more they try, the greater the loss. Yanqiu swept her eyes over the people around her, but they seemed to have reached a tacit agreement to pretend that nothing had happened. This felt like a conspiracy, as cruel as an open accusation. She wanted to give it one more try, but her courage had left her. Bingzhang held up his glass and announced loudly, “Your teacher has a cold, so we’ll stop here. We’re done for the day.” Xiao Yanqiu looked at him with teary eyes, fully aware of his good intentions; but what she felt like doing was rushing up, grabbing him by the collar, and giving him a couple of resounding slaps.

The room emptied out quickly, leaving only Xiao Yanqiu and Chunlai. Not daring to look at her teacher, Chunlai bent down and pretended to gather up her things. As she fixed her eyes on her student, Xiao Yanqiu marveled at the lovely profile, and at the girl’s cheeks and chin, which held a luster normally seen only on fine china. She was lost in thought, as she silently repeated the question: Why don’t I have that kind of good fortune?

The girl straightened up, unnerved by her teacher’s gaze. “Come here, Chunlai,” Xiao Yanqiu said. The girl stood still, unsure of what to do. “Chunlai,” Yanqiu said, “I want you to sing that part for me.” The girl gulped. How could she dare do that at a moment like this? All she could do was quietly say, “Teacher.” Yanqiu moved a chair over and sat down. Though she was confused and anxious, Chunlai knew from her teacher’s attitude that there was no getting out of it. So she calmed herself as best she could, struck a pose, and began to sing.

Xiao Yanqiu sat there studying the girl intently and listening carefully. But after a few moments her mind began to wander, and she glanced up at the full-length mirror on the wall. It was like a stage, cruelly showcasing her and Chunlai. Unconsciously, she began to compare the two of them. The contrast made her look so much older, ugly even. Back then she’d looked like Chunlai did now. Where had she gone? The saying that you mustn’t compare yourself with others is so unkind. Yes, you mustn’t compare yourself with others, but you also mustn’t compare your present self with your former self. Mirrors will gradually reveal what is meant by “Green mountains cannot cover it up, and it will flow east with the river.” Xiao Yanqiu felt her confidence slip away like water seeking lower ground. She recalled the elation she’d felt at the beginning of her comeback, and realized that the happiness would, like a puff of smoke or a passing cloud, vanish without a trace. Her resolve wavered and she considered withdrawing; but she couldn’t. Chunlai, of course, had more to learn, but in broad terms it would not take the girl long to surpass her. Given her youth, there was no limit to what she could do one day, and this thought brought Xiao Yanqiu waves of sorrow and pain. She knew she was jealous.

Looking back, Xiao Yanqiu had suffered the consequences of jealousy for two decades, though she had not been jealous of Li Xuefen—never, not for a single day. Now, however, as she looked at her student, jealousy was unavoidable. It was the first time she’d experienced the lethal power of that emotion and it was as if she was seeing blood flow. She hated herself for being jealous, and could not permit herself to be this way; she decided to punish herself by digging her fingernails into her thigh. The harder she dug, the more she had to control herself, and the more she tried to control herself, the harder she dug. In the end, the sharp pains in her thigh brought an eerie sense of release.

Xiao Yanqiu stood up, determined to help Chunlai rehearse, vowing to give the girl all she had to offer, leaving out nothing. Standing in front of Chunlai and holding her by the hand, she explained things patiently and corrected what needed to be changed, from her gestures to the look in her eyes. She proceeded little by little, determined to transform the girl into the Xiao Yanqiu of twenty years before. A setting sun cast the giant shadow of a plane tree on the window, caressing the glass and murmuring encouragement. The rehearsal hall grew darker and quieter, but neither teacher nor student thought to turn on the lights. Each gesture, each movement was repeated over and over in the dim light. As Yanqiu tended to every detail, down to the last knuckle of each finger, her face was mere inches from Chunlai, whose sparkling eyes were extraordinarily bright in the dim hall, enchanting and gorgeous. Xiao Yanqiu suddenly felt as if it was she herself who was standing before her, the lovely, graceful Xiao Yanqiu of two decades earlier. She was mystified; it was like a dream, like gazing at the moon in the river. Everything in front of her was uncertain and illusory. She stopped and cocked her head to fix her unfocused, almost misty gaze on the girl. Not knowing what was happening to her teacher, Chunlai also cocked her head to study Xiao Yanqiu, who moved behind her, cupped the girl’s elbow with one hand and held the tip of her small finger with the other. She stared at Chunlai’s left ear, her chin nearly pressing against the girl’s cheek, so close that Chunlai could feel the warm, moist breath from her teacher’s nose. Xiao Yanqiu freed her hands and, without warning, caught Chunlai in an embrace. Her arms seemed to have a mind of their own. They held the girl tightly, crushing Yanqiu’s breasts against Chunlai’s back; Yanqiu then rested her face on the nape of her student’s neck. Stunned by what was happening, Chunlai did not dare move, not even to breathe. But a brief moment later, she was inhaling and exhaling great gulps of air and, with each one, her breasts brushed against the arms that held her. Yanqiu ran her fingers slowly over the girl’s body, like water splashed on a glass desktop, flowing in all directions. Chunlai came to her senses when the fingers reached her waist. Not daring to shout, she pleaded in a tiny voice, “Teacher, please stop.”

Xiao Yanqiu regained her composure. It was like waking from a dream, after which she was overcome with shame and dejection, although she wasn’t sure exactly what she had just done. Chunlai picked up her bag and ran out, leaving Xiao Yanqiu standing alone in the middle of the empty hall, the sound of her student’s frantic footsteps echoing in her ears. She wanted to call the girl back, but knew there was nothing she could say to her at a moment like this. She was mortified. It was getting dark outside, but night had not yet taken over. She stood with her arms hanging limp, feeling lost, not knowing where she was.

On the way home, Xiao Yanqiu was struck by a feeling that it had been a bizarre day. The streets felt strange, so did the colors of the streetlights, and the way people walked. She felt like crying, but had no idea what there was to cry about. It is hard to cry when you don’t know what for and that thought brought a lump to her throat; that lump, inexplicably, sent pangs of intense hunger through her body. It was an insane yearning, as if a dozen hands had risen inside her stomach and pulled at it in all directions. When she reached a small roadside eatery, she decided to stop. With an unfathomable sense of hostility, she walked in. Then, menu in hand, she chose only greasy, oily dishes, and when they came, she wolfed down three huge meatballs with a vengeance. And she didn’t stop there, but kept at it, chewing and swallowing until she could hardly breathe.

C
hunlai continued to rehearse as before, giving away nothing in front of Xiao Yanqiu, except that she wouldn’t look her in the eye. She listened to what Yanqiu said and did what she told her to do, but she refused to make eye contact. There was a tacit understanding between them, not the sort that exists between a mother and daughter, but the fatal, unspeakable kind that can exist between women.

Xiao Yanqiu had never imagined that such awkwardness could develop in their relationship, could become an issue between them. It was difficult to resolve because it was so elusive. She was eating again, but was tired all the time. Spreading through her body, fatigue was now everywhere, although she could not identity the source. The thought of quitting occurred to her several times, but she could not bring herself to do it. Twenty years earlier, something similar had happened, and she had considered suicide, but was unable to go through with it. Now she reproached herself for that weakness, for not having died back then. The abrupt end of one’s golden years cuts more deeply than death. She had neither lived up to her desires, nor carried out her wish to quit; and now there was nothing she could do—wanting to cry, she had no tears to shed.

Chunlai acted as if nothing had happened, was always composed and relaxed; no wind blew, no grass swayed. She merely kept a proper distance from Xiao Yanqiu, who had come to fear her student, although she would never admit it. If the girl kept up this aloofness, Yanqiu felt, her own life would end; there could be no middle ground. What had been the point of standing at the rostrum, teaching for two decades, if Chang’e could not be reborn through Chunlai?

In the end, Xiao Yanqiu slept with the factory manager, a decision that finally put her mind at ease. It had always been a matter of when, not if. She didn’t feel one way or the other about it; it wasn’t a good thing, it wasn’t a bad thing, just something people have done since time immemorial. What sort of man was the factory boss, anyway? Someone who had enjoyed power and become wealthy, and she would not have been upset if he’d been a disgusting man or if he’d forced her to do it. As it turned out, neither was the case. She wasn’t shy about such things; better to be straightforward and frank than to act coy. If the show was to go on, then the audience had to feel it was worth their while; otherwise, why bother?

On the other hand, she didn’t feel especially good about what she did, and that gnawed at her. From the hours of the banquet up to the moment she put her clothes back on, the factory boss had played the role of a great man, a savior even. But when she was standing there naked, it seemed to her that he had no interest at all in her body. What exactly is a boss? At the time, pretty girls were like goods on a shelf; if something struck a boss’s fancy, he had only to signal with a nod and the clerk would take it down for him. So she stripped, and at that moment, the look in his eyes changed. The effects of her diet were plain to see and, as she could sense, plainly displeasing. He didn’t even try to hide his disapproval. At that instant, she’d have preferred a greedy, lecherous man, a sex fiend even, for then she’d simply have been selling her body. But he wasn’t. He was even more a man of stature and power as he climbed into bed—he leisurely lay down on the Simmons mattress and gestured for her to get on top. Once there, she did all the work. At one point, he seemed pleased with her efforts, for he moaned a couple of times, and muttered, “Oh yeah … oh, yeah.” What does that mean? she wondered. A few days later, he put on a foreign porn flick before she serviced him, and it dawned on her that he was parroting the sound the porn stars made. Where sex was concerned, he had gone global.

What they did could hardly be called making love; it wasn’t even sex. She was just trying to please a man, servicing a man, and she felt so debased that she thought about stopping. But sex is so toxic it doesn’t let you quit just because you want to. She had never felt that way when making love with Miangua, so she just went through the motions, reproaching herself the whole time: this woman is a slut, pure and simple, she chided herself.

It was drizzling as she made her way home. The wet streets glistened, filling her eyes with reflections and refractions from the taillights of passing cars. The glittery reds seemed overheated and unreal, creating a deep sense of desolation. Surrounded by kaleidoscopic lights dancing on the surface of the street, she felt she’d been defiled that evening. Though she couldn’t say how, exactly, she knew it wasn’t physical. At the head of the lane she bent over and tried to throw up, but succeeded only in producing dry heaves, terrible-sounding and foul-smelling noises.

By the time she arrived home, her daughter was already in bed. Miangua was sunk down in the sofa with the TV on, waiting for her. She avoided his eyes, unable to bring herself to look at him. Instead, she went straight to the bathroom, head down, to shower. But the thought of how such unusual behavior might make him suspicious led her instead to the toilet, where she sat down, but with no results from either end. She examined her body, front and back, to make sure there were no telltale signs before she felt confident enough to leave the bathroom. Despite her fatigue, she put on an energetic show so her husband would not detect anything. But he did. Wondering why she was in such high spirits, he asked, “Have you been drinking? Your face is red.”

Xiao Yanqiu’s heart skipped a beat. “You’re seeing things,” she said as lightly as she could manage.

“No, it is red,” he insisted.

The conversation was heading somewhere she didn’t like, so she changed the subject: “Where’s the girl?”

“Went to bed a while ago.”

She still couldn’t face him, for his gaze would have been her undoing. “Go on to bed. I’m going to take a shower.” She avoided the word, “sleep” but “go to bed” said the same thing. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that he was rubbing his hands gleefully. For no apparent reason, she felt a stabbing pain in her chest.

Once in the shower, Xiao Yanqiu turned up the water until it nearly scalded her. That was what she wanted, to hurt herself. The pain, tangible and real, was mixed with a subtle pleasure, bordering on self-abuse. She let the water run as she rubbed herself vigorously, digging deep into her body with her fingers, as if wanting to extract something from it. Afterwards, she went into the living room to sit on the sofa, her skin bright red and tender. At around eleven o’clock Miangua walked in, wrapped in a towel. Obviously he hadn’t gone to bed. “You look preoccupied. Did you find a purse on the street?” he said, wearing a hopeful smile. No response. “Hey,” he said, incongruously, “it’s the weekend.”

Yanqiu shuddered and tensed, but did not move, so he sat down and snuggled up to her, his lips touching her earlobe. When he bit down gently and reached for the familiar place, she reacted, surprising even herself, by pushing him away so hard he fell off the sofa. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed. It was a sound that scratched the quiet night, abrupt and hysterical. Miangua was staggered, at first embarrassed, then angry; but he did not want to disturb the oppressive silence. Her chest rose and fell like a sail that has caught the wind. Tears welled in her eyes; staring at her husband, she cried out, “Miangua.”