Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [100]
Ah-Fat had only seen it performed with an all-male cast but tonight there would be male and female actors. In fact, they would cross-dress and play a role of the opposite gender, with the Fairy Wife played by a man, and Tung Wan by a woman. Ah-Fat had seen a man play the part of the Fairy Wife but never a woman cast as her earthly husband. He was eagerly looking forward to it.
He flung a few coins down on the ticket table, and found himself a seat right in the middle at the front. The old man on the door came after him: “This is fifty cents. It’s enough for four to five tickets. I’ll get you the change.” “Use it to buy cups of tea for the troupe,” said Ah-Fat.
The fiddler struck up a tune to call the audience to their seats. The gamblers duly threw down their dominoes and dice and began to stream into the “auditorium.”
When the fiddler saw all the seats filled and people gathered in the aisle and around the door, he winked at the flute player, who blew his first note and the performance began.
It was a new production and had obviously been put together in a hurry. The singing, supported as it was by the fiddle and the flute, was smooth. But during the dialogue, the players kept making mistakes. Apart from Tung Wan, the other roles were new and unfamiliar to the players. The attention of the audience wandered and bursts of laughter disrupted the performance.
Ah-Fat had been told that the members of the troupe were of the same family. The man playing the Jade Emperor was the father. The fairy, Tung Wan, and the umbrella maid were played by his children. The musicians and the acrobat were his nephews. They had all originally been in other troupes, playing bit parts on tour in Gold Mountain and South-East Asia. Cloud was the eldest daughter. She had a broad and dignified face and a velvety voice. She had started by playing minor female roles, to no great acclaim. Then it occurred to her to try the male lead role and, quite unexpectedly, she began to make a name for herself. She changed her name to Gold Mountain Cloud, formed her own troupe entirely from family members, and began to tour from town to town all over Gold Mountain.
It was only when the Seventh Fairy was abducted by the Jade Emperor and taken back to his palace—with her husband, Tung Wan, in hot pursuit—that everyone sat up and listened.
Oh, my wife, your departure will kill us both with pain unspeakable
While you, like snowflakes blown by wind,
Fly to your celestial destination unreachable
I pine hopelessly for your return, like pining to recover the lost moon in ocean unfathomable
At this point Gold Mountain Cloud switched to singing in her natural voice. Ah-Fat had never before heard such tone. Chinese opera was characterized by a falsetto style, but Gold Mountain Cloud’s voice was sonorous, as if emanating from a bell fissured with cracks, each one permeated with sadness. Ah-Fat’s eyes were riveted. She seemed to him not wholly masculine but not wholly feminine either. Gold Mountain Cloud had smoothed the rough edges of a man’s body like a whetstone yet she had also brushed away the powdery softness of the female body as if with a feather duster. When she stood onstage, she was more gently refined than a man, yet more heroic than a woman. She positioned herself somewhere between the male and female, and he found the effect disturbing.
When the performance was over, the stools were cleared away and the floor was swept clean of pumpkin seed shells, cigarette ends and olive pits, raising clouds of dust. The acrobat shinnied up the columns to take the gas lamps down, one by one, and the room gradually darkened. Ah-Fat stood rooted to the spot in front of the stage. Suddenly he heard a voice behind him: “It’s late. Shouldn’t you be off home?” He looked round, to see youth standing in the shadows. The youth wore a deep blue soft brocade coat with a gown of navy blue silk underneath and a Chinese round cap. Beneath it were thick