Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min [83]
I come to adjust my mood. I come to dream, and to feel what it is like to be the empress dowager and to have true power. I don't need a troupe to play for me. I see myself as the protagonist in an imagined opera. The scenes are vivid as I leaf through the empress's opera manual. They are the classic pieces I grew up with, the ones I learned from my grandfather. The Diary of the Imperial Existence. I can hear the tunes and arias. It was said that the empress didn't sit on the throne to watch the performances but reclined in bed in her wing and observed from the window. She had seen the opera so many times that she had memorized every detail.
I get on that bed too. I imagine her watching Emperor Guangxu sitting on the front porch to the left of the entrance accompanied by princes, dukes, ministers and other high officials, who sat along the east and west verandahs. What kind of mood was she in? A woman born to a terrible time, who lost her territories each day to foreign and domestic enemies. Was the opera her only escape?
I find it soothing when facing the Great Stage, which was constructed in 1891. The largest stage of the Ching dynasty, it is a three-story structure, twenty-one meters high and seventeen meters wide on the lowest floor. There are chambers above and below it, with trapdoors for angels to descend from the sky and devils to rise up from the earth. There is also a deep well and five square pools under the stage for water scenes. In connection with the stage is the Makeup Tower, a magnificent two-story backstage building.
I miss my role. I miss my stage.
For a while the beauty of the place occupies her. Then she becomes bored. She retreats. Visits less. Soon she stops coming. She shuts herself in the Garden of Stillness and grows depressed. She is desperate for an audience. She talks to whoever is around. The servants, the chef, the new pet—a monkey she was recently presented as a gift from the National Zoo, or the mirror, the wall, sink, chair and toilet. Gradually, it becomes an act in which she takes pleasure. It is to deal with herself, to find things to do, to forget the pressing unhappiness.
It is not that I am an expert, but Mao is definitely a science illiterate. I respect doctors, especially dentists. But Mao doesn't. He hates them. Poor Mr. Lin-po. Every time he came to clean the Chairman's teeth he would tremble. It's like he was asked to peel the skin off a dragon. The Chairman can be frightening to an ordinary person. The dentist was shaking so hard that the Chairman thought his jaw was going to fall apart. So the Chairman asked him to fix his own jaw first.
The man couldn't take the Chairman's jokes. So he was fired. The next one was recommended by Premier Zhou. He came and behaved the same way. His jaw was all right but his facial muscles twisted as if his nerves were wired with an electric cord. And there was the hairdresser too, Mr. Wei. The Chairman cracked some jokes with him and commented that his shaver was sharp. The man dropped his tool and fainted on his knees.
The Chairman calls me "Miss Bourgeois" because I refuse to eat pork. He believes that he is immortal. He believes he possesses supernatural power. No bug will attack him and no fat will clog his arteries. Well, I'd like to bet on his teeth. His periodontal disease is so severe that his teeth are green and his breath stinks. I bet he will wake up one morning and find all his teeth gone.
She forgets that her listeners are not supposed to respond, not to mention offering comments or opinions. She forgets that they are on duty. Soon she loses interest in her monologue and finds herself developing a habit of peeping and spying.
I have been following the Chairman's footprints. I want to find out what he does as the head of state. I find that he basically does two things: travel and entertain. At the beginning