Opening the Armhole Again

Gu Ming's new blue-green robe was finished on the second day of the fourth month. Before holding it up for anyone to see, A-Zhao laid it flat and felt the collar, side seams, and joins between the lining and outer cloth one by one. She made sure there were no movement pleats she had closed on her own as she had last time. She had also sewn the little bronze ornaments Gu Ming had picked onto the front. She had weighed them in her hand but never tried taking them off on the move. She had lost sleep for two nights over this robe and hurried through even her meals. When it was finally ready for someone to put on, her palms were damp.

Gu Ming slipped it on, looked down at the front, then took a couple of steps and said he liked the color. A-Zhao asked him to raise his arms, and he did. She asked him to gather his sleeves and turn his shoulder, and he did that too, but his feet never left that dry patch. She was about to have him go through everything he'd do onstage when Lu Heniang called from beyond the curtain for him to run lines. He said the fit was good enough and he'd come back that afternoon. A-Zhao lowered her head to tighten a tie at his collar. Their faces were close, and the rest of what she'd meant to say never followed.

She’d measured his shoulders and remembered to leave room to move. The robe certainly didn’t bind while he stood still. But she’d added a thin lining to give it a crisp shape and tucked the side ties deep inside so it would lie smooth with no obvious knots. Gu Ming made a half turn before the mirror and said Liu the scholar finally looked like someone who could do more than owe boat fares. A-Zhao was so pleased to hear it that she didn’t ask how exactly he moved through the latter half of that act.

Gao Man came to collect the leftover material, laying the long cut-off edges in order in the old bag. She asked whether the costume could be worn the day after tomorrow. Azhao said yes, then added that it would be safer to try it once more that afternoon. Gao Man nodded and went to fetch Gu Ming, but he'd already gone to the front courtyard with some of the other actors to practice swordplay. Azhao followed and saw only the wooden sword rising and falling, his old blue robe sweeping open as he moved. Someone in the crowd called out in approval. It was hardly the moment to hold up her needle case and shout for him to undress.

She waited all afternoon in vain. At dusk a customer asked for an extra short scene at the last minute, throwing the courtyard into a bustle. Xiaoman asked how the new costume was coming along. A-Zhao said they had tried it on and stopped short of making it clear that they hadn't run through the whole sequence. She was afraid that if she told her, the costume would be shelved again and people would still remember her only as someone who could unpick seams and wash clothes. She smoothed out that collar tie again. If he could do the moves in the old costume and the new one was made to the same measurements, with at most a little more width at the hem, surely it would work.

Just before going onstage on the fourth, Gu Ming finally said he was adding three sword turns to the end of the scene, then changing into the old costume for the later scene so the audience wouldn't be kept waiting. A-Zhao's hands stopped on the tie. She asked why he was only telling her now. He said everyone had seen him two days ago. He hadn't been practicing in secret. She had seen him, but watching the sword and knowing he would do the moves in this new robe, then have to take it off as soon as it was soaked with sweat, were two different things. All she said was that he should take his time undoing the tie and leave off yanking at it.

Gu Ming laughed and asked how he was supposed to slow down onstage, then reached up and tied the collar tie himself. A-Zhao saw that he had buried the knot even deeper than she had and wanted to redo it, but the drumbeat was already coming from out front. He pushed aside the curtain, and the blue-green cloth flashed in the light at the front of the stage. It seemed as if everyone in the hall had seen it. For an instant she forgot to be afraid and even wondered whether the people beyond the curtain might ask who had made the costume.

The first two turns of the sword dance were lovely, the hem of the robe chasing Gu Ming round. On the third he came down in a hurry and took a wider step than he had at the fitting. The side flap caught on the ornament at the end of the wooden sword. He freed it in the course of the movement without letting a serious mistake show, and someone in the audience called out in approval. A-Zhao couldn’t see clearly from backstage. She heard the shout and let out another half breath. By the time he came through the curtain, the thin lining, wet with sweat at the chest, was clinging to him. Gu Ming grabbed the tie with one hand and tried to undo it with the other. The more he hurried, the harder it was to find the knot.

They were calling him for the latter scene, and Lu Heniang had already reached the line where she was supposed to wait for the scholar Liu. He swore under his breath and raised his elbow to get the robe off, but the damp lining held the sleeve back. A-Zhao rushed to help. Her hands were slippery too. The collar tie finally came loose, but the side panel was still caught on the sword's end ornament. Gu Ming gave a hard tug, and she heard the rip right by her ear. More than a few stitches had come loose. A narrow tear had opened in the new fabric beside the seam.

He pulled on the old costume and rushed out, two beats late. Cai Heng covered for him with a drum flourish, and Lu Heniang improvised another question about why her good sir was late again. The audience even laughed. A-Zhao stood by the costume trunk, pinching the tear with one hand and still holding the tie she hadn't been able to undo in time with the other. The performance hadn't stopped, but it was as though someone had stripped away every bit of beauty she'd meant to show and left only damage that couldn't be passed off as a trick of the light.

After the show, Gao Shoucheng's first question was who'd let the new costume go onstage without a full run-through. Gu Ming said he'd tried it on, then looked at Azhao. At those words, indignation rose in her. She almost spilled out the whole story of how she'd waited for him the two afternoons before. Xiaoman had already taken the robe and turned it inside out. She asked whether he'd told the costume workers before changing the sword dance and the quick change. Gu Ming said everybody had seen, but halfway through his answer his voice dropped.

Xiaoman let Azhao answer for her own part in it. She asked how the ties on the new robe differed from the old one's and why the lining that would get soaked with sweat had to fit so close. Azhao answered each question and heard herself admit that some choices had been made just to keep things from showing. She knew she couldn't go solely by the old garment, yet she'd been so afraid of losing her chance to take the lead on this one that she'd filled in everything left unclear with an it-ought-to-work.

Gao Man was the first to crouch and measure the tear. She said it couldn't be joined as it had been. The light from the front would show it up. They would have to take the robe apart and use it for something else. She neither asked A-Zhao how upset she was nor scolded her aloud. She just left the line where she had entered the wages for the new costume blank for now. The sight of the blank suddenly frightened A-Zhao more than a scolding, and she asked if she could still finish it herself. Xiaoman said she would take over for this round, A-Zhao would help unpick it, and they could talk about what came next later.

A-Zhao didn't cry there and then. She put her needle case back in the chest, but her fingers were shaking and it took her two tries to fasten the lid. When lunch was handed out, she didn't eat a bite. The longer she went without eating, the more she felt everyone could see she hadn't touched it. Finally she carried it back to her room. Closing the door, she knocked against the empty frame under the bed and heard that familiar clank again. Suddenly she wanted badly to go back to Liuwan, where at least she could see the water coming in through the stern.

She opened the chest halfway and found that the two changes of clothes she'd brought were still inside. There was practically nothing to pack. If she left now, she'd still have paid for the bed and rented out the boat. Nobody would undo those things for her over one failure. What made it worse was that she really did like it here. She simply couldn't bear admitting in front of everyone that she still couldn't make the thing she wanted to make.

In the afternoon, Xiao Man came in to fetch the songbook. Seeing the food still there, she asked whether A-Zhao wanted it reheated. A-Zhao shook her head. After holding back for a while, she finally said that if Gu Ming had told her about the new passage earlier, things would not have come to this. Xiao Man agreed, then asked why she had not told Gao Man that she had not tested it all. It was as though someone had pressed on the very place A-Zhao least wanted anyone to see. She looked up and said, would you have been willing to wait for me if I had told you? Xiao Man did not answer at once. After a while she said, perhaps not; this was not something A-Zhao alone should have to bear either.

That didn’t make her feel any better. If everyone had got something wrong, how was it that the only thing torn in her hands was her own costume? Xiaoman told her to leave the new material alone for tonight. Once the costume was taken apart, Xiaoman would go through the movements she needed to ask about with her from the beginning. A-Zhao heard that taking it apart still came first and felt another surge of indignation, but Xiaoman had already taken the script and gone. She hadn’t stayed by the bed trying to soothe her with talk of how things would get better.

At dusk Gu Ming brought her some cakes and said they were dry this time. A-Zhao looked at the packet and thought of the inn at Sangqiao, where he'd made a joke out of owning up to a mistake and the awkwardness had melted away. She'd always been happy to laugh along. This time she didn't take the packet. She asked first if he could sit down and help her remove the heavy ornaments from the robe. A little surprised, he glanced outside, where they were still calling people to rehearse the later act. He hesitated, then put down the cakes, pulled up a stool, and sat beside her.

He didn't know how to pick out stitches and bore down so hard on the needle he nearly stretched the little hole wider. Azhao took it back and told him to leave the unpicking to her. He could count and put away these copper ornaments for her first, keeping them separate from Lu Heniang's. Gu Ming nodded and laid them out one by one. When he got to the last, he asked if she was very angry with him. She meant to say no, but at the last moment changed it to a little. He was taken aback. Then, without laughing again, he said he'd take the blame for that much.

After a while, though, he still had to go out front to rehearse. He couldn't sit with her the whole time she put things away. A-Zhao knew he had a scene of his own, but seeing him rise made her angry again, as though if he were truly sorry, he ought to stay with her a little longer. She didn't say it aloud. When he left, she unwrapped the cakes and took a bite. Only then did she realize she was so hungry that even the roots of her teeth ached.

That night she and Xiaoman took the costume apart, one on either side, and neither said much. They folded up two usable pieces of the new fabric. The wet lining would have to be washed separately. They could not force the costume back into its old shape just to prove it was still partly good. A-Zhao slowly saw that her stitches were as even as ever. What had gone wrong had nothing to do with that. Which way the side flap had to move when the costume came off, whether a hand in a hurry could find the knot, these were things she had scarcely thought of at the worktable.

Xiaoman told her to watch one whole costume change tomorrow, taking notes from the moment the performer went behind the curtain until she came out again, instead of fixing her eyes on the prettiest turn onstage. A-Zhao nodded, then asked whether she would still be paid for the time she'd set aside for this job. Xiaoman said the whole garment hadn't been delivered, so she couldn't charge the lead maker's rate. The unpicking and mending already done that could be kept would be reckoned separately, and she'd sort it out with Gao Man tomorrow. The answer didn't come easily to her either. Clearly it took more than a generous word from one person to settle it.

A-Zhao kept that in mind and stopped asking for the full amount up front. On her scrap paper, after the notes on the gray-blue costume, she added a few points about how it behaved after sweating, how it came off during a change, and asking about the movements first. Her handwriting was messier than before. A scrap of blue cloth from the tear lay by the lamp. She spread it out by the paper and reached out to feel how stiff the inside had become once the sweat dried. Another drum rhythm started up outside. This time she didn’t look up to listen for the beat that pleased her most.