Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min [35]
Cut! Junli calls as he would on the set. The actors exhale. The group heads back to Shanghai the same night. Three days later they all attend a big reception. As expected, it catches the media's attention.
Tang Nah and Lan Ping are back home. But the marriage seems to be dead. They pretend that it is not bothering them. Both try to bury themselves in work. Yet there are no calls, no offers of roles for her. No business for Tang Nah either. Bills pile up. Money demons keep visiting from hell. But he still smiles, says that she is the biggest prize he has ever won. The rest he couldn't care less about. Broke or jobless, it doesn't bother me. I am a complete man as long as I have love.
She is in despair. You are not keeping your promises, she yells at Tang Nah. They are out of each other's bed. Can't be together yet can't be apart either. The bad pattern repeats.
***
Then they go out again to seek air and comfort in friends. They end up sleeping in other people's beds. He goes to the girl who wrote the letter, and she to Zhang Min, who is now working on a new play, The Storm, by the Russian playwright Ostrovsky. They deny their acts. It is becoming her new role in life. With Tang Nah it is a perfect scene.
In this scene she develops her own plot. When there is tension she makes the protagonist leave. She pulls out, disappears from the stage. Yet she is not able to turn her table around. Like her country she keeps falling apart. The Japanese troops enter in full force. The studios downsize. The box offices close. 1936. Absolutely no sign of luck.
Make up your mind and do it, I tell myself. I am packing and will be gone tonight. I will stay in a friend's place and will keep my address a secret. When I write the letter I imagine how Tang Nah will receive it. I give the letter to Junli. I ask Junli to pass the letter to Tang Nah when they are alone together. It is not that I trust Junli, or his wife Cheng. It is just that they will be the ones to sustain Tang Nah's anger. Junli will be the one to stop him from killing himself right on the spot—making me a true criminal. I will not be manipulated this time. I won't give Tang Nah another chance to control me.
I am sure you have been waiting for this letter. Well, this is the last time you will hear from me. I believe that you understand perfectly what kind of pain I must undertake in order to write this way. You have no idea how I suffered in order to save both of us. I need to leave in order to live. That is what I am telling myself. Banging my head, for I am numb, deaf, blind, and dead inside.
I'm trying to explain the contradiction of my feelings. How hard it is to tear myself away from this relationship. Our love operates in a very strange way. The darkness that didn't end until I met him. I explain what the departure means to me. Moments during which my nerves almost break down. Moments in which it is clear to me that life was not worth living.
You know how I tried. I lived to please you. I can't believe that this is the way I am supposed to feel happiness. To please you. I can't forget how we fought. The nastiness of it. Our selfishness. The moment that comes to me as an ending.
I break down every time I recall how you used to love me. The words you said when we walked along Nan-yang Boulevard in the evenings. It pulls me back, tells me to go on, to stick with you until the end of time. It tells me not to allow this pain to spoil my future. The pain is like a fish bone stuck in my throat—can't take it out yet can't swallow it. This is where I am. A fish bone stuck in the throat.
She feels the passion. The passion of speaking in a familiar voice, Nora's voice. The sensation of being on a real-life stage keeps her going. She is her role again. Like Nora she is struggling to break away. She tells Tang Nah-Torvald that she must depart.
I live to be recognized, to leave a trace, to be someone, mean something. I had expected to see the same effort from you, for you are a talented man. You ought not to waste your life. You ought to perform to your highest capacity.