Shanghai (38 page)

—

At the end of the song there was not a dry eye in the audience. The Heavenly King, Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, shouted “
Hoa!
” which was echoed throughout the courtyard. The actress waited, collected herself, and when the cheering crested she once again stepped forward.

—

As imperious as the Manchu Dowager Empress, the Princess demands to know how she is going to be escorted to her new husband, two thousand miles away.

A cymbal crashes, then horns sound in discord, and the small Serving Man at the back of the stage steps forward. He doesn't dance, or glide, or juggle, or tumble—he simply steps forward, and bows low.

The Princess shoots a look at her father and throws her sleeves out toward him. But the Lord of the East is unmoved. “Trust him, daughter. For I trust him, with your life.”

The stage erupts in motion as the entire court moves in a scatter pattern about the stage. Forty bodies in seemingly random patterns, which are anything but random, producing the effect of a whirlwind, blowing the beloved daughter away from her father.

—

Maxi held his breath. He'd watched the History Teller work on this section for hour after hour. Rehearsing,
changing, retrying—searching for the pattern of bodily motion that was random but exquisite, like the woman herself. And Maxi saw the beauty and stood to holler “
Hoa!
” Every eye in the audience turned to him. Stunned. Few had ever heard him speak a single word of the Common Tongue in public. They shouted “
Hoa!
” back at him, this time cheering his use of Mandarin as well as the performance. But Maxi didn't care. He saw the beauty of the History Teller's work and hollered “
Hoa!
” again—for both her art and her person.

—

The next scene is a tearful goodbye with the nurse, whose attendants are all there to strew the way with rose petals for the departing Princess.

The journey of the Princess and the Serving Man does not begin well. She is not pleased to be going, not pleased to be virtually unescorted, and furious that her only companion is a peasant. Silence, so rare in Peking Opera, dominates the opening dance between the two—and indeed it is both a physical and emotional dance that ends with the Princess pointing toward the floor and the Serving Man kowtowing to her.

Then the journey begins in earnest. By taking a small bamboo shoot with cornsilk attached to it in her right hand, she indicates that she is riding—while the Serving Man walks. They venture across rivers, over mountains, through open plains and blistering deserts—all without the use of scenery, just the adjustment of the body position of the actors and the music—and the dance and the juggling and the tumbling—and the magic of Peking Opera. They encounter rogue soldiers that they fight off, merchants with whom they bargain for water and food,
other nobles who refuse to meet their eyes, Taoist monks who bless their travels, mad-eyed mullahs who attack the travellers, and other pilgrims who join them on their march to the West. The companions change, the dangers increase—the closeness between the Princess and the Serving Man grows.

Finally, in crossing a swift stream, the Princess is saved from falling by the Serving Man, who in turn is hurled down the river where he smashes into a large rock. It breaks his leg cleanly between hip and knee. The Princess dismounts and insists that he ride. When he is unable to bear the pain any more they make camp and the Princess nurses him. That night (in a scene that brought the entire audience to its feet) the Serving Man cries out in pain in his sleep and the Princess crosses over and lies beside him while she sings to the haunting strains of the arhu.

Then the action returns to the court of the Lord of the East, who misses his daughter and needs help dealing with the new intrigues of the court.

—

The History Teller hated it. It was so obvious that the only reason the scene was there was to allow time for the audience to believe that the Serving Man had recuperated from his injury enough to continue the journey. She watched and tried to contain her irritation. She knew the audience needed a break from the story of the Serving Man and the Princess, but she wasn't sure about returning to the Lord of the East. She knew that the reason she chose it was that the audience already knew the Lord of the East so he didn't have to be reintroduced. She wondered, though, if she could jump ahead in the
story and bring on the Lord of the West. She had never seen a story jump ahead in its time sequence. She wondered how that would work. How would she get back to the chronological story after she did that? For a moment she was outside the event, looking down on it, as one would at a raw piece of ivory that awaited the sculptor's chisel.

—

The performance was now in its fifth hour but was only reaching the climax of its fourth of seven acts, in which the family who has joined the Princess and the Serving Man in their travels is threatened by the Monkey King in the high mountain passes. The Serving Man must choose between his duty to defend the Princess and his duty as a fellow human being to confront the Monkey King to save the helpless family. The interior conflict of the Serving Man is explored in a most extraordinary feat of juggling with throwing clubs that the actor performs while he sings his dilemma.

—

The next scene once again brought the audience to its feet, but this time not to cheer or cry—but in fear. Loa Wei Fen had arrived.

This audience had never seen the likes of Loa Wei Fen's performance as the Monkey King; no audience in the Middle Kingdom had ever seen its like. From his leaping entrance, to his tumbling run across the stage to grab the child, to his race with the wife up to the highest point of the mountain—it was completely unique. At the exact place where reality and art meet.

The History Teller watched in awe. Loa Wei Fen had made the leap from form to feeling, but what he was doing was not really acting. There was no distance between performer and performance. The danger seemed real because it was real. For the hundredth time, the History Teller wished she had demanded more information about the strange boy-man when her mother had insisted she take him into her troupe. The performance was startling, grotesque but beautiful. To add to the shock of it, the History Teller had removed all the dialogue. Loa Wei Fen as the Monkey King never made a sound, but the music and the physical reality of his performance lifted the entirety of the event to another plane. A dangerous plane that both tantalized and appalled the History Teller.

The History Teller leaned back against the post to watch the climactic ending of the scene. Not only was the violence unexpected, but it came on what the History Teller thought of as the “offbeat,” so that just as the audience relaxed, the Monkey King made a sudden, fatal lunge.

The Heavenly King clambered back up onto his raised throne, amazed that he, in response to the Monkey King, had actually leapt out of his seat. His feet had landed on the mud ground! The young girl in charge of the lower half of his body quickly knelt and swept up any part of the dirt that may have touched her lord's foot. The moon was now high overhead and the stars were in their early summer brilliance. The “brother of Jesus” readjusted his robes and returned his attention to the stage performance.

The final days of walking in the scorching desert challenge the Princess's and the Serving Man's endurance. Twice they come upon oases that are dry. In the intense cold of the desert night they huddle together for warmth—but also because they have now become lovers.

—

The History Teller was most pleased with this sequence. She had layered in physical clues throughout the play to lead up to their joining—and it was done simply, almost casually, as if their coming together was no more unusual than a man holding a door open for a lady.

—

As they approach the end of the act they begin to stagger, thinking they cannot go farther. They think of simply lying down side by side in the sand and allowing the carrion birds to find them, but the Princess's sense of duty to her father forces them back to their feet.

Shortly thereafter the clamour of horns and cymbals announces the arrival of the Lord of the West's cavalry. All forty of the actors, dressed as soldiers with the small bamboo switches in their hands to indicate they are riding horses, enter the stage, and once again an intricate dance of seeming randomness ensues that ends with the reveal of the interior of the court of the Lord of the West.

The Princess bows. “My Lord and husband, may I introduce the man who guided me all the way from the court of my father?”

“Enough!” shouts the Lord of the West. He is unconcerned with her and orders her brought to the house of
his concubines. But as she is hurried out, she tries to get one final look at the Serving Man.

In the last scene the entire stage goes into tableau, forty actors perfectly still—a single note of the arhu sounds and the Princess floats out from upstage. She stands behind the Serving Man and reaches up. She grabs the feathers from her headdress and pulls them down into her mouth, arches her back, and lets out a cry that is a perfect third above the note of the arhu. The arhu moves up to her note and she pitches her cry up to the fifth. The arhu moves to the fifth and she moves to the tonic. The arhu moves to the tonic and she to the third, and on and on for what seems like a suspended moment in time. As if her broken heart has torn through the fabric of time itself—and they fall—and the audience falls with them.

—

The crowd rose as one and howled its approval.

—

Then the cymbals sound and the Princess steps in front of the Serving Man. “What will you do now?” she sings. He doesn't look at her as he responds, “I will walk back to the lands of the East. Alone.” The tableau breaks and the Princess is swept away into the anonymity of the house of concubines, no more important to the Lord of the West than a new horse for his stables, while the Serving Man takes his initial step on his two-thousand-mile journey back to the East—with only the memory of the Princess who loved him as company.

* * *

LATER THAT NIGHT Nanking was thrown open—a true oddity for the Taipingers—to celebrate the first complete performance of
Journey to the West.
But it was a strange kind of celebration. Men and women on the whole were kept apart, and there was no alcohol, as it was against one of the Heavenly King's God-inspired edicts. But, nonetheless, the city celebrated. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the city “released.” There was something that approached dancing in the streets, music where there had been little before, and people chanced offending the authorities by shouting their joy to the night skies.

After the acting troupe had been introduced to the Heavenly King and his consorts they were allowed to join the revels—such as they were.

That evening the History Teller wandered the streets of this alien city—a city strewn with banners. Some exhorted the people to work harder for the good of Jesus' brother, the Heavenly King; others warned the people of dire consequences should they break the laws of the Heavenly Kingdom, especially the laws segregating men from women; other large banners spoke of the requirement of prayer and the rules against breaking the Sabbath; but the largest banners were devoted to the prohibition against the use of alcohol and opium—special emphasis was put upon this final prohibition.

Yet the people seemed to be happy. There was evidently enough money to go around. Unlike in Shanghai, there were no beggars on the streets of Nanking. Nor were there women with bound feet. Women also didn't seem to be subservient to the men, and many of them led both military and work units.
All dressed modestly and were covered from the neck down, despite the warmth of the evening. All businesses inside the city walls were run by the Taiping government, although there were several private businesses outside the walls, often using the city wall as the back wall of the shop.

It was in one of these private businesses, a restaurant, that the History Teller looked up from her excellent noodles and found herself staring, across the room, into the deep pools of Maxi Hordoon's eyes.

The red-haired
Fan Kuei
nodded.

The History Teller pointed to the empty seat across from her.

Maxi walked across the restaurant. At her table she pointed to the empty chair again and smiled. He sat. A young
Fan Kuei
soldier stepped forward and offered to translate for Maxi. Maxi knew the man as one of the mercenaries hired by the Taiping Kings. Maxi found the idea of being paid to fight distasteful but was grateful for the man's service.

“You have found a fine restaurant, History Teller,” Maxi said through the translator.

“By accident, I assure you.”

“I doubt that. The food inside the city walls is not very good.”

“True.” The History Teller smiled. “I left two government restaurants whose food was literally hard to swallow.”

Maxi smiled, then asked, “Do you have a name?”

“I used to, Mr. Hordoon, but now people call me the History Teller.”

“And that's what you want me to call you?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I don't know yet, but I'll let you know, when I know.”

* * *

LOA WEI FEN WATCHED the History Teller leave the small restaurant with the red-haired
Fan Kuei
. The actors in the troupe didn't feel comfortable in his presence, and that was okay with him. He didn't feel all that comfortable with them, and when one suggested that there had to be “some real fun in this town” he left their company and began to wander the streets of the ancient capital.

Once he left the wealth and beauty of the compound of the Heavenly King things changed quickly. The old city was drab and grey; the people seemed drab and grey too. There were no bright lights here, no bustle, no outward joy of being alive, and very, very few
Fan Kuei.
He quickly realized that he was being followed, and it almost made him laugh, although Loa Wei Fen seldom laughed. He made a sharp turn down an alley and in a single step was running at full speed. A wall scaled, a window climbed up to—and his followers were gone.