Shanghai (115 page)

Quickly the ominous sound of tinkling glass filled the night as bonfires of foreign books and clothes and
newspapers and banners sent plumes of rank smoke into the darkness to mingle with the growing reek of change.

* * *

THE NEXT SCENE is serene—and solo. The Princess dances her way out of the confines of the Prince of the West—the whole thing is accompanied only by the unearthly cries of peacocks.

The History Teller's mastery is not lost, even on those who have never seen Peking Opera. His Princess is a gift of the gods—an elegance in human form—a whisper of hope.

The evening proceeds. Some scenes are better than others. All are completely original.

Finally, at the beginning of the fourth hour, the Princess finds herself approaching the mountains where the Serving Man saved her from the Monkey King. She begins a lament.

The audience quiets in a way that Chinese audiences seldom do. The History Teller's pure tenor voice floats effortlessly through the air. When he finishes, there is a silence even more profound than before. So simple, so intimate, that the audience know they are in the presence of something most unCommunist, something overpoweringly personal.

* * *

DESPITE THE STORM the dragon was greeted with howls of delight as it ended the Lantern Festival parade. As it danced down Bubbling Spring Road, red packets containing tiny amounts of money were at first thrown
at it, but when the dragon turned on those throwing money and a deep growl came from its mouth, the old custom ended.

Taoist horns sounded in the distance, and the dragon turned toward the Old City—and the History Teller's theatre.

* * *

SILAS'S WALLS RESISTED the bulldozers, so the Confucian called in artillery. Shells roared through the night, ripping great holes in the walls, which the bulldozers quickly enlarged. Then more fire, as the twenty homes and buildings were put to the torch. The walls tumbled, and the bulldozers pushed the rubble evenly across the vast gardens. Shortly, all that remained alive in the Garden was a single, startlingly red hydrangea bloom that stood out against the destroyed landscape to mark the place of Milo's final fall. The Confucian stared at the thing and thought it an insult to nature. He was going to yank it from the ground but was momentarily distracted by a fork of lightning striking a tall building two blocks away. When he turned back to the flower—it was gone. He kicked at the dirt and swore to himself. Then he announced, “The people have reclaimed their city. This obscenity of
Fan Kuei
power is now declared Renmin Park—People's Park—and it will belong to the people at the Bend in the River forever.”

The workers and the soldiers did their best to cheer, but in their hearts they knew that they had destroyed something special and replaced it with something banal.

The Confucian yelled to his driver, “Get me to the theatre.”

* * *

THE MUSIC CHANGES to bells and percussion. Maximilian does one final check of his harness, then enters with his son. Instantly the audience laughs. There is something so ludicrous about Maximilian's awkward attempt to be a Chinese peasant that laughter rolls from the audience to the stage. Maximilian catches the History Teller's eye in the wings. He mouths, “You knew this was funny!”

The History Teller nods and mouths back, “
Fan Kuei
are always funny trying to be Chinese.”

A snapping snarl comes from the musicians—the Monkey King leaps to the high platform.

In the wings, Fong gasps and grabs the hand of the actor beside him.

The audience leans toward the stage.

Loa Wei Fen moves forward on his rafter beam and stares down at the stage—at the Monkey King. Somehow he knows every move, gesture, and sound the man is going to make.

The Monkey King rounds the stage in more and more aggressive and tight circles and finally traps the Peasant and his son.

Then the Princess enters.

The Monkey King leaps back up on the platform, entranced by the Princess.

The Peasant turns to run, but his son convinces him to save the Princess.

The Princess comes out from beneath the upstage platform with bloody clothing in her hand—her Serving Man's clothing.

Again, only the arhu accompanies her song—more a memory than a song. A voice of things lost—irredeemably lost—tears in an ocean.

The Confucian enters the theatre just as the song ends and the audience rises to applaud. As the applause crests, the Monkey King leaps down to attack the Princess. The Peasant and his son bound forward. Maximilian grabs the guide wire and attaches it to his harness. He picks up his son in one arm while he pulls on the rope end with the other—and they rise as one extraordinary thing. The Monkey King stares at them, his mouth open. He howls, then begins his slow retreat to the place of nightmares. The audience erupts in applause. Maximilian can feel his son's pleasure, but when he looks down to the stage he is shocked that by mid-applause the History Teller has not acknowledged the audience. He just stands, his shoulders heaving, looking at Maximilian and his grandson eight feet above him.

Something is very wrong.

The Assassin sees it right away. Jiang shrugs her daughter from her lap and stands.

The History Teller's makeup is running—tears are flooding from him.

The stage goes to dark—and holds.

Fong steps forward.

The musicians don't play. The audience begins to stir, and then a light comes from the stage, all the way downstage, only three feet from the first row of seats. A single, tall flame. A real fire from the floor of the stage.

The audience stirs uncomfortably. Shanghai has known its share of fires.

“Stop this outrage,” Mao hisses. The Confucian signals his lieutenant.

The History Teller takes a deep breath and steps up to the fire. He nods to the technician and the man lowers the second of the Carver's set pieces. It descends slowly, finally filling almost the entirety of the upstage area.

The audience struggles to make out its features with only the downstage firelight.

The History Teller glances into the wings. The soldiers are gathering there. He looks up at Maximilian and Chiao Ming's son.

Maximilian sees the soldiers in the wings unholstering their weapons.

Under his breath the History Teller says, “It's time to fly.”

“That's why …?”

“It is time to fly,” the History Teller says a second time.

Maximilian reaches for the loose end of the silk cord and pulls hard. He and his son rise another four feet, then another four.

“Say goodbye to me,” the History Teller calls.

“Goodbye,” Maximilian says.

“Goodbye, Grandpa.”

The History Teller reaches up and puts a hand on his headdress. He signals to the stage manager.

Lights slam on, bringing the Carver's creation to life—a floor-to-ceiling face of Mao Tze-tung in translucent silk.

The History Teller steps behind the flame, and now the audience can see him and his huge silhouette on the image of Mao.

“Yes, but the tyranny of the many is no more just than the tyranny of the few!” he screams, then he reaches up and pulls off his headdress. With a single
swipe of his sleeve he removes most of the stage paint from around his eyes. Then he takes the beads from around his neck. “But from death, rebirth—and change will come, no matter how long or hard you resist it!” he shouts.

“Stop him!” Mao roars.

“Too late!” the History Teller screams back. He turns to Maximilian and shouts, “Go. Now!”

And to the amazement of the audience, Maximilian and his son rise above the proscenium as the first shots from the soldiers ping off the bricks of the old theatre. Forty feet off the ground they hold, momentarily—then gunfire erupts all around them.

“Hold tight,” Maximilian says to his son as he yanks hard on the silk rope. As he does, he looks down.

The History Teller lights a taper and runs to the side of the stage. He flips open a panel and shoves the taper into the gap. For a breath, nothing happens … then a ring of fire ten feet high springs up on either side of the stage. The soldiers retreat, and their gunfire momentarily ceases.

“Go!” he yells at Maximilian.

Maximilian pulls hard again and he and his son ascend toward the trap door in the ceiling.

The History Teller grabs the beads of the necklace and shouts, “Behold the past that will inevitably lead us to a future that no man or government can control! A future that belongs to all the Black-Haired people.”

He puts the beads, one at a time, in front of the flame.

They cast hard-edged shadows of History Tellers of the past in full costume. Seventy peacock-feather–topped images parade on the flat surface of Mao's image in the wavering light of the ring of fire.

They hold for a moment.

Maximilian pushes open the trap door and hauls himself and his son onto the roof just as the western sky explodes with a massive curtain of sheet lightning.

On stage a shaft of brilliant lightning from the trap door pierces the darkness upstage, bounces, and thrusts intense beams of light through the glass baubles from the other side—the upstage side … and the images all change.

No longer are there images of seventy History Tellers projected on the face of Mao—now there are the silhouettes of seventy buildings etched on the very walls of the auditorium.

The audience rises as one great thing and slowly turns to take in the miracle all around them.

Jiang holds her daughter up as high as she can and asks, “What do you see?”

“Pagodas, Momma.”

“Yes. Seventy Pagodas, and the end of a great task.”

Building after building—seventy of them. Seventy buildings as if on the far side of a river. A skyline unlike any that has ever been seen in the history of the world. Tall, elegant buildings, each unique, each fighting for attention as they assault the sky.

On his rafter beam, the Assassin kneels and drinks in the vision of the Seventy Pagodas. And something within him releases. Years of tension drain from him and he slumps against a crossbeam. A smile comes from deep within him.

Fong feels a strong hand on his shoulder. He does not know it, but this is the Carver, whose smile matches that of Loa Wei Fen. Then tears come.

“Why are you crying?” Fong asks. The Carver's tears continue, but he manages to say, “Because the Compact is successful. See the Seventy Pagodas?”

When the Confucian sees the Seventy Pagodas on the walls all around him his mouth opens wide but no sound comes. An ancient wind seems to turn his face first to his left, where Jiang, seemingly generating light of her own, stands transfixed, and then up to the rafters, where Loa Wei Fen meets his gaze, the smile luminous on his handsome face.

The silence in the building is complete.

Then Jiang sees something bloom in the fury of the Confucian's face—the Confucian in power, and great suffering. Executions of thousands—famine—great famine, to rival the death toll of the Taiping Revolt—a slaughter in a huge public space.

The doors of the old theatre swing open and, to the amazement of the audience and the History Teller, the huge silk, bamboo, and paper dragon dances down the centre aisle. About twenty feet from the stage it stops. Silence.

The First Emperor stares at the vision of Seventy Pagodas through the eyeholes of the dragon and turns the dragon's head upward. He sees Loa Wei Fen on his rafter beam, then the Confucian standing beside Mao, and then Jiang with a beautiful Japanese girl in her arms. He nods, and the head of the great dragon does the same. Then he says softly, “Not yet. Soon, but not yet.”

And the dragon charges the stage.

The History Teller steps back.

The dragon passes over the single downstage flame and in one loud
whoosh
is afire. It makes one large circle of the stage, then runs right at, and through, the image of Mao.

The History Teller feels intense heat. He looks down. The flames from the dragon have ignited the hem of his costume.

His stage is a world of dancing flames. He looks up. Maximilian and his grandson are at the open trap door in the roof. He sees Loa Wei Fen standing on his rafter beam. He senses Jiang in the back of the auditorium with her Japanese daughter. He sees the night-soil boy with the Carver in the wings—and the dragon, fully aflame, leaping wildly upstage.

Then he feels something hot on his face and realizes that his stage paint has caught fire. The smell of his burning flesh surrounds him, but he doesn't care. He continues to hold the beads to the light. The images of the Seventy Pagodas are now imprinted across the massive silk visage of Mao Tze-tung. Then, through the flames, he sees figures approaching—the first History Teller, a gentle fisherman, a red-haired
Fan Kuei
—and more, many more. They hold out their arms to him—and he steps toward them.

Then Mao's image catches fire. One outer band burns clockwise while an inner band burns counterclockwise, and the Seventy Pagodas disappear, like Li Tian's blood-tears in a darkening sky. Like dreams in the dawn.

* * *

MAXIMILIAN AND HIS SON got to the Bund docks just in time to be rowed out to the great Indiaman sailing ship. He held his son in his arms as the topgallants took the wind and heeled slowly to port—and the buildings of the Bund slid slowly by.

“Is Grandfather …?”

“Yes,” Maximilian said, “he is with the Ancients now.”

“And us?”

“We're going home,” Maximilian said.

“But Shanghai is my home, Father.”

“Yes, it is,” Maximilian said. “Your home, son.”

“I will be coming back here, Father,” the boy said.

Maximilian looked at his son. A new hardness had entered the boy's face. His eyes were obsidian. Then he repeated, “I will be coming back.”

Maximilian could not meet his son's eyes. He felt the truth of the boy's words and sensed a wave of pain approaching. “You will do great things here, of that I'm sure.” Looking to the buildings on the Bund he continued, “But I and my kind will not. My family's time in the Middle Kingdom has come to an end. I am the last Hordoon who will live in this great city.”