Dao of Language

Zhou Tie has been treading the stage for almost thirty years, but lately he has learned that the worst enemy of an actor is not the difficult audience, nor even that thick silence of a hall that resists giving itself over.

The worst enemy of an actor, as the current atmosphere has demonstrated, is the heat.

And tonight, in the suffocating heart of the summer that the fire Qi surge has turned into a punishment without respite, the heat reigns without opposition in the narrow corridors that extend behind the stage of the Imperial Theater.

Zhou Tie knows it well, because he knows that out there, in the great hall where the audience settles in, the Temperature, Regulation Formation keeps the temperature at a half, coolness that suffices for the nobles not to complain too much. But back here, in this labyrinth of narrow passages crammed with folding screens, trunks, clothes racks and frames, no formation is of any use, and the swelter accumulates between the walls as inside a teapot forgotten over the embers.

Between his fingers, Zhou Tie holds his mask, and he holds it with the same reverent care with which he has held it every night since the company decided to bring to the stage that novel which now devours half the Empire. It is a piece of light wood, carved and lacquered by the best hands of the imperial workshop, with the golden fur finely furrowed by knife, the eyebrows arched in a gesture at once fierce and mocking, and eyes that, depending on how the light strikes them, seem to laugh at whoever looks at them or to be about to leap for their throat.

Because the company to which Zhou Tie belongs descends, in direct line, from the old officiants of the Nuo theater, and from that ritual root the company still preserves the essential, such as the masks, of course, the drum that marks each entrance like a heartbeat and that way of moving halfway between dance and ritual. But the masters who preceded Zhou Tie long ago abandoned the ancient solemnity and gradually brought it closer to something more narrated and sung, with their songs and their versified dialogues.

And tonight, that theater is going to perform the story of the Monkey King.

It is one more night, Zhou Tie tells himself as he passes his thumb along the edge of the mask. One more of the many in which the hall will fill, the drum will sound and he will become, for a few hours, that insolent monkey capable of standing up to the very Heavens. The play has spent weeks selling out the tickets, and it is no mystery why, since the novel on which it is based has become little less than a fever ever since those new machines, the ones that print books at a speed that before would have seemed a thing of cultivators, put it within reach of anyone who knew how to read and of many who had it read to them. It is no wonder, therefore, that the company decided to bring to the stage the story that half the Empire already had in its head.

But what none of them would have imagined even in their most feverish deliriums, is what Master Bai is about to come and tell them.

Because the curtain that separates the little room of the principal actors from the corridor is drawn back all at once, without the least consideration, and through it bursts Master Bai with a face that Zhou Tie has not seen on him in the many years they have been working together.

Master Bai is the soul of the company, the man who has directed, cut, stitched together and fought over every scene of this play until leaving it as it is, and he is also a man whom Zhou Tie considers incapable of losing his composure even if the roof caved in on top of him.

But right now Master Bai is pale, truly pale, with that paleness that has nothing to do with the swelter, and he has his forehead beaded with a sweat that does not seem to be only from the heat either.

“Listen to me, all of you”, says Master Bai with a voice that comes out higher than he intends. “And listen to me well, because I am only going to say it once and I need no one to lose their head.”

In the little room, the actors lift their gaze from whatever they were doing. Hu Pan, who was stuffing himself into the voluminous padded costume of the pig, is left with one arm halfway into the sleeve. Young Shen Lin, who was going over in a whisper the verses of the young cultivator whom the Monkey King protects throughout the journey, closes his mouth mid, sentence. Even old Geng, who was tuning the great drum in a corner, leaves the mallet suspended in the air.

Master Bai swallows his saliva, sweeps his gaze over all of them and, at last, lets it loose.

“She is here”, he says. “The Zhāohuán is here, in the theater, this very night.”

For an instant, in the little room nothing is heard save the muffled murmur of the audience on the other side of the walls. And then, as if all of them had needed that instant to truly comprehend what they have just heard, the entire little room comes apart.

“What do you mean she’s here?” blurts out Hu Pan, forgetting completely about the sleeve. “The Zhāohuán? The real one?”

“Is there another one?” Master Bai replies to him with a sarcasm that cracks halfway through.

Young Shen Lin, on the other hand, says nothing. He has gone white as paper and looks at Master Bai as if the latter had just announced his own execution.

And it is that, for all those who earn their living upon a stage in this Empire, few pieces of news could shake the foundations more than that one, because the Zhāohuán is not just any spectator.

To begin with, because she is the author of the story they are about to perform, the woman, or, to be more exact, the girl, who took who knows what materials and stitched them together into that epic of the Monkey King that today even the last water, carrier of the market knows by heart. But she is not, above all, for all the rest.

Because of the Zhāohuán everyone has heard tell, but almost no one has ever seen her. Her name runs through the entire Empire, repeated in the little circles of the court and in the stalls of the markets, but the person to whom that name belongs almost never lets herself be seen, since she does not attend the great events except on very rare occasions, does not exhibit herself at ceremonies and does not lean out from balconies to be acclaimed.

For the immense majority of people, the Zhāohuán is neither a face nor a voice, but little more than a legend in the form of a girl, one of those stories one repeats without being entirely sure how much there is of truth in them.

And, nevertheless, that almost invisible girl has changed the lives of more people than many generals, ministers and princes will ever be able to change them.

Zhou Tie thinks, unable to help it, of the mop his wife keeps at home as if it were a treasure and that has turned the task of scrubbing the floors, formerly a penance, into something that is done standing up and in half the time. And not only the mop in his house, but those of half the Empire, because from one day to the next everyone wanted one, and now it is a rare home, however humble, that does not have its own tucked away beside the door.

Not to mention the games, those games so simple that a child understands them at the first try and so devilish that an elder can spend his life trying to perfect them, games that today are played alike in the salons of the nobles, in the back rooms of the merchants and in the courtyards of the poorest houses.

And above all, as Master Bai reminds them in a low voice, there is the printing press. That machine of hers that spits out books by the dozen and that has made stories that before only the rich could afford now reach the hands of anyone. The same machine, Zhou Tie suddenly realizes with a shiver, to which they owe being here tonight, because if the novel of the Monkey King has reached so many people, if the company even thought of performing it, if this hall is full to the brim, it is because she, first, invented the printing press.

It is no wonder, thinks Zhou, that people murmur under their breath that the Zhāohuán is one Blessed by the Heavens. That a girl of so few years, a girl who besides, as is told, cannot make use of her legs and goes everywhere in a chair, should have brought forth so many things capable of changing the world for so many people, is something that reason alone does not quite explain. And people, when reason does not suffice them, reach for the Heavens.

And that is, precisely, the person who tonight is seated at some point of the hall, disposed to see with her own eyes what they have done with her work.

Young Shen Lin finds his voice at last, and when he does, it trembles.

“Master”, he says. “The scenes we cut. The verses we changed. The end of the second act, the one you yourself said that…”

“I know”, Master Bai cuts him off, passing a hand over his face. “I know perfectly well everything we changed. I’ve spent the whole afternoon turning it over and have managed nothing other than to make myself ill.”

Because one thing is to cut and adapt the work of an author who will never sit down to watch it, and quite another is to do it knowing that the authoress in person, the only one who knows down to the last comma of what she wrote, is out there to check, scene by scene, everything they have taken away from it and everything they have dared to add.

Hu Pan, faithful to his custom of frightening off fear on the basis of bravado, lets out a guffaw that does not come out entirely convincing.

“Well”, he says, finishing stuffing himself at last into the padded costume. “If she’s going to order our heads cut off, let it be at least after a good performance. I do not intend to die having done a bad job.”

Some laugh at his words, but more to discharge the tension than because the matter has any humor in it.

Master Bai lets out a long sigh and, when he speaks again, has recovered a part of his customary composure.

“Listen to me”, he says, this time with a firmer voice. “We can do nothing about what we changed, because it is already changed and there is no time to go back. The only thing within our hands is to go out there and do the best performance of our lives. If she really is as extraordinary as they say, she will know how to distinguish between what is done with love and what is done with neglect. And this play we have done with love.”

He sweeps his gaze once more over all of them, and this time there is no panic in his eyes, but something much more like determination.

“So go to your places”, he concludes. “And give it your all. For her, if it serves you as an incentive, but above all for yourselves.”

Zhou Tie rises slowly, with the mask of the Monkey King still between his hands. And then, as he has done thousands of times, he brings it to his face and ties it behind his head. And, as each time he does it, something changes. The heat, the fear, the nerves, the girl with power to spare to put an end to his life, all that stays outside, on the other side of the lacquered wood. Inside the mask there is only the Monkey King, and the Monkey King fears nothing, not even the Heavens.

Old Geng’s drum breaks into sound, deep and cavernous, and its heartbeat slips through the walls until it silences the entire hall. And the performance begins.

Onto the scene comes the stone that, after centuries absorbing Qi, cracks at last to bring forth the monkey who will change everything. Comes the old and eccentric Elder of the sect lost in the mountain range, who teaches the Monkey King his seventy, two transformations between scoldings and riddles. Come, one after another, the traveling companions, with their masks, their character types and their quirks, and there begins that long pilgrimage toward the Celestial Fragment where the sealed techniques await, a journey studded with spirit beasts and with cultivators who took the dark path, each with their own demon mask entering and leaving the light of the stage.

At a given moment, in one of the pauses the choreography grants him, Zhou Tie lifts his gaze barely toward the top floor, toward the private box that opens at the highest point of the hall. He doesn’t manage to make out much from the stage, only silhouettes outlined against the dimness of the box, but he knows, with a certainty that makes his skin prickle beneath the costume, that in one of those silhouettes there is a girl seated in a chair, looking at him, looking at him turned into her Monkey King, and for an instant, the weight of that gaze is about to make him falter.

But then Zhou Tie does something he had not planned. Instead of insisting on forgetting that she is there, he decides to do just the opposite, and tells himself that he is going to portray that monkey not for the entire hall, but for a single person, for the only person in the whole theater who knows exactly how it should be. And, who knows why, that idea, which should have paralyzed him, frees him. Each leap comes out higher, each insolence of the Monkey King more insolent, each gesture cleaner and more exact, as if he had spent his whole life rehearsing precisely for the eyes that observe him from on high.

And it is not only him. It is as if the news, which at first had terrified them all alike, had gradually transformed throughout the performance into a current that pushes them all to give more than they believed themselves capable of. Young Shen Lin sings the verses of the young cultivator with an emotion that draws a murmur from the hall. Hu Pan provokes true guffaws with his lazy and gluttonous pig. The demon masks enter and leave, the combats interweave, the songs rise and old Geng’s drum sustains it all from below like the pulse of a heart.

And, against all forecast, the performance not only comes out well, but is the best performance they have done in their lives, and when the last scene arrives, the entire company knows, without need to look at one another, that tonight something has happened that does not happen every day.

And as the curtain falls, the hall bursts into an applause that resounds among the columns and that takes much longer to die down than any of them expected.

Backstage, the actors collapse wherever they can, sweaty, exhausted and with that dizzying euphoria that only a good performance leaves. They have barely had time to recover their breath when the curtain is drawn back again and there appears one of the members of the Imperial Theater’s staff, who sweeps the little room with his gaze until he finds the director.

“The Zhāohuán wishes to receive some of the performers before withdrawing”, the man announces with a formality that makes everyone’s breath catch.

The little room goes mute. Because for the Zhāohuán to have come to see them was already in itself extraordinary, but for her to ask to receive them, to want to see them up close, to speak with them, that has not happened to the company in all its history.

Master Bai takes an entire second to react. Then, with a thread of voice, he goes pointing.

“Zhou Tie”, he says. “Shen Lin. Hu Pan. Come with me.”

The three follow him like sleepwalkers, finishing taking off their masks and smoothing their costumes in a hurry along the way.

The man guides them through the corridors and then up the stairs, to a little room adjoining the box, cool thanks to the formation and discreetly lit where, upon crossing the threshold, the four of them finally see her.

And the first thing Zhou thinks, the first thing that crosses his mind before anything else, is how small she is. Because he has always heard the Zhāohuán spoken of as a force, as a legend, as a mind capable of changing the world, and what he has before him is a slight girl of very few years, seated in a wheelchair, with her legs covered by the light skirt of a strange, cool and unknown attire that resembles nothing of what is worn at court.

Behind the chair, standing and serene, waits a woman of imposing presence whose stillness makes Zhou’s hair stand on end, without quite knowing why. To one side of the Zhāohuán there is another girl who observes them with an open and shameless curiosity. And, distributed throughout the room, several motionless Nei Wei whose mere presence recalls, in case anyone had forgotten, who exactly is the person they have come to see.

And, nevertheless, it suffices for the girl in the chair to lift her gaze and look at them for all that childhood to evaporate all at once. Because in those eyes there is something that doesn’t fit with the rest, something serene, ancient and too awake, an attention that runs over them one by one and that makes them feel, helplessly, that that gaze sees much more than it says.

The four of them hasten to bow, as protocol dictates before someone of her rank, with Master Bai marking the deepest reverence and the actors following him.

“Zhāohuán”, says Master Bai with all the solemnity of which his tired voice is capable. “It is an honor that this humble company does not deserve.”

Zhou, Shen Lin and Hu Pan murmur their own greetings, inclining their heads, not quite daring to look her in the face.

And then she speaks, and her voice, Zhou Tie discovers with surprise, is the voice of a girl, clear and not yet finished forming, but there is in it a tranquil certainty that is not that of a girl at all.

“Rise, please”, she tells them. “I have not made you come so that you would bow before me, but to thank you.”

The four of them straighten up slowly, and she continues.

“I have seen your performance and I wanted to tell you, before leaving, that I liked it”, she says. “The masks and the wardrobe struck me as magnificent, made with a care for detail that, truthfully, I did not expect to find. And the songs you drew out of the dialogues are very well achieved, there were even some that genuinely surprised me.”

She makes a small pause, and for an instant Zhou Tie’s blood freezes, because he is convinced that now will come the reproach, the list of everything they have cut and changed. But what comes is something else.

“I know you had to make decisions”, she says, and there is in her tone something very much like understanding. “That you cut scenes, that you changed others. I, in your place, might have chosen differently at more than one moment. But that I would have done it differently does not mean that you did it badly, it means, simply, that it is a matter of taste. And one can tell you did it with love, which is what truly matters to me.”

And here, to Zhou’s astonishment, her eyes turn toward him, toward the actor who still has the mask of the Monkey King hanging from one hand.

“And your Monkey King was almost exactly as I imagined him when I wrote him”, she tells him. “Insolent, brave and a bit of a rascal. Thank you for that.”

Zhou Tie opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. In thirty years upon the boards he has been told everything, he has been applauded by nobles of high lineage and booed by drunks in equal measure, and never, never, had a few words left him so speechless as those of this girl who has just told him that his Monkey King was hers.

When he finally manages to articulate something, the only thing that comes out is a clumsy thanks so hoarse that he is ashamed of it the moment he hears it come out of his own mouth. But she smiles, a brief and sincere smile, as if she had understood everything perfectly.

The other girl, the one who waits at her side, chooses that moment to let loose, without the least reservation, whatever it is she has been wanting to say for a good while.

“The pig was my favorite part”, she blurts out, looking Hu Pan straight on. “When he falls into the mud I laughed a whole lot.”

Hu Pan, the old comedian who has made half the court laugh, turns so red with pride beneath the sweat that for a moment it seems he is going to start crying, and bows before the kid with a most comical solemnity.

“For me it has been a most lofty honor to make you laugh, my little lady”, he tells her, and the girl lets out a little laugh. The Zhāohuán contemplates the scene with an indulgent smile and does not correct her.

Afterward, the Zhāohuán inclines her head barely, in a gesture that closes the encounter without need of words.

“I won’t rob you of any more time”, she tells them. “I know well how tiring a performance like that is. Rest, since you have earned it. And thank you again, truly.”

The imposing woman who waits behind the chair moves then, rests her hands on the grips and, with a softness that contrasts with her earlier stillness, begins to push her toward the exit.

The four of them bow again and watch her leave, the girl in her chair, the woman pushing her, the other kid trotting at her side and the guards closing the procession, until they disappear down the corridor and take with them something that Zhou Tie finds hard to name.

He stays looking at the empty hallway with the mask hanging from his hand. All night he has been afraid of that girl, of the owner of the story he dares to inhabit each night, of the only person in the world with the right to tell him that that Monkey King was not his.

And, in the end, she has come, she has seen him, and instead of claiming what belongs to her, she has told him that his monkey was hers, gifting it to him with a single sentence.

And while around him Master Bai at last lets out the air he had been holding all night, Shen Lin lets himself slide down against the wall with a weak laugh of pure relief and Hu Pan swears to whoever will hear it that that kid has an exquisite taste for theater, Zhou Tie comprehends something he will no longer forget for what remains of his trade.

That tonight, for a few short hours, an almost invisible girl who has changed the world from a chair has come out of her seclusion to go see some actors, and that she has let them, them, keep her Monkey King for a while.

It is no bad memory, he thinks, to carry with him to the grave when his hour finally comes.

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