Putting the Costume in Someone’s Hands

The day Han Rong came, he pulled Gu Ming's robe over his head first and got half his face caught in the collar. He wouldn't wait for someone to free him and squatted down, like a creature that couldn't get out of its burrow. Lu Heniang laughed and pulled the collar open for him. As soon as his forehead appeared, he said, “This scholar can't have studied till he was forty. How'd he read his neck that thin?” Azhao hurried to get her measuring tape. Gu Ming stood laughing outside the door, for once spared the need to defend a cuff of his own that was an inch too small.

Han Rong was forty-two, broad in the shoulders and thick across the back. He had sung scholar roles in his youth, though in recent years he had mostly played wealthy gentlemen. Money for this run was only part of why he wanted to take over Scholar Liu. A-Zhao asked which foot he usually led with. He said he was used to both and promptly made a circuit of the stage. On the turn his right knee visibly caught for a moment. Lu Heniang told him straight out that he was going onstage, not trying to make a match, so there was no point hiding it. Only then did he put his hand on his knee and laugh. It ached before rain, he said. He could still walk on it.

A-Zhao did not alter the garment according to Gu Ming’s old sheet. The two men differed in the slope of their shoulders and the bend of their elbows. Even let out, the old blue-green robe would not be large enough, though fortunately the old fabric at the hem could still patch the lining. She measured Han Rong with his arm raised and asked how he stepped aboard a boat. Han Rong lifted his leg high in imitation of Gu Ming, smiling, though the back of his neck tightened. She asked him to use his usual stride. When she finished measuring, she clipped Gu Ming’s sheet to an earlier page, neither crossing it out nor continuing to impose it on Han Rong.

Gu Ming ran through the scene with him the last few times. At one turn Han Rong was supposed to step lightly over the rope, but instead he handed the book bag onto the boat first, then caught hold of the pole Lu Heniang held out to him. When she let go, he pitched backward and nearly pulled her off the bank with him. Gu Ming steadied the plank and blurted out that that wasn't his step. Han Rong stiffened a little, then said, in that case, don't call it the same step. The young fellow might look handsome making the crossing, but the old scholar had to get across too.

Xiaoman tried giving him a line to answer and asked what was so heavy in his book bag. He said it was the old essays he'd failed the examinations with. If he'd known, he'd have brought two bags of millet instead. Lu Heniang came back with the line that millet would cost him extra on the ferry, while the essays were fit only to plug a leak. Cai Heng gave a single drumbeat from the side, and they all laughed. There had been no laugh in that passage before. The old scholar's fear of losing face made Aheng's later kindness in shielding his book bag feel all the more real.

When the laughter died down, Han Rong took Gao Shoucheng aside and asked if they could keep Gu Ming's turn after all. He thought it wouldn't look like Scholar Liu without that grace. The troupe leader didn't want people saying Chunhe had gone stodgy with the change of actor either, so he asked Azhao if the costume could help. She tried raising the back hem. It looked better, but the hitch at the knee was still there. She wouldn't pretend her sewing could smooth away his years. She snipped the basting and asked them to settle first on the movements he could manage.

Before he left Lanting, Gu Ming had a look at the new collar for her. He said suddenly that he hadn't altogether liked turning that way before, either. Once he'd heard people cheer, though, he kept wanting to jump a little higher. Azhao wanted to ask what he'd do if someone in the bigger troupe could jump higher still, but she kept it to herself. He had his own place to compete for. To picture him falling back before he'd even left would have made things a little too easy for her.

On the twenty-sixth day of the eighth month, Gu Ming returned the Chunhe Troupe's wooden sword beside the passenger boat. Gao Shoucheng found the red tassel that had been scraped off and tied it back on. With the same formality as when handing over troupe property, he told Gu Ming to visit when he had time. Gu Ming said he would, then explained that he couldn't simply call a halt whenever he liked in the new troupe. Lu Heniang urged him aboard so he wouldn't keep anyone waiting on his first day. As soon as he turned away, she wiped the corner of her eye and cursed the heat for making sweat run straight into her eyes.

A-Zhao took twelve cash for the last alteration to his collar, her fingers brushing his hand as she took the money. Gu Ming said the costume was looser now, so it turned out he hadn’t been eating too much after all. She knew he wanted to make her laugh, so she laughed for him, without swallowing all of what she felt at seeing him go. As the boat pulled away, he stood among his new companions and waved to the people on shore too. He looked like a man leaving of his own accord, with every right to be happy about it.

They then agreed on one hundred and forty cash to alter Han Rong’s whole costume, with materials issued separately from the troupe’s stock. A-Zhao left extra room across the back in an inside pleat and drew back the hem a little on the right, letting it become Han Rong’s costume in its own right. She and Xiaoman worked out the order of the change between scenes, leaving a different feel to each tie’s loose ends so they could find them by touch in the dark. Cai Heng tried helping once and undid the wrong tie, so A-Zhao made the system simpler still. The first tie to loosen was the only one with a single long tail.

For two days running, Lu Heniang's voice failed to ring out. She said her throat felt lined with ash. She could still joke about it the first time, but the second time she stopped halfway through and turned aside to drink water. At first the troupe leader said she'd be fine once the heat let up. When she tried again and still sounded hoarse, he sent her to a physician and had her rest her voice as instructed. A-Zhao knew nothing about treating it. As she helped her change, she only asked where the costume pinched her neck. Sewing a tie didn't mean she could mend a voice.

During the two days she did not sing, Xiaoman filled in by reciting the lines. Listening, Gao Shoucheng suddenly said that perhaps Xiaoman could take over A Heng's role. The script in Xiaoman's hands went still. Of course she wanted to; in that instant she had even remembered how she used to step when she was young. But when she tried a short passage, her breathing points differed from Lu Heniang's, and the old costume was narrow across the shoulders. It was nothing like a bowl of food ready to be served.

Lu Heniang sat beside them, looking grim, and asked whether she was resting for two days or giving up even her costume once the two days were over. The troupe leader hastened to say that was hardly what he meant, but Xiaoman shut the script and admitted that just then she really had wanted to sing. They looked at each other for a while. Lu Heniang gave a little laugh first, with no sweetness in it. “At least you're honest.” Xiaoman said honesty wouldn't rest her voice for her. She still had to talk less tonight and stop arguing with Xiaoman.

They had to be careful how much they took on for the autumn show. A tavern had already offered to pay them to sing an act on the eve of the main performance. Gao Shoucheng had counted that money toward meals, so giving it up meant more than saying a few words. He tried shortening the act, then thought of having Lu Heniang stand onstage without singing. Only after hearing her cough for a while behind the curtain did he sit down to schedule two nights of the full play with a day off in between and no tavern show squeezed in.

Lu Heniang knew one less show meant a smaller share for her, and the room rent she'd kept bringing up still had to be paid. She didn't immediately praise the troupe leader for his consideration. She just returned the hair flower she'd meant to add and had Gao Man repair an old one instead. Gao Man refused to take money from her own savings to cover her father's food budget. She told him not to spend the same money three times before the autumn run had even brought it in. He was annoyed and wanted to snap at her. In the end all he said was, then you write it down and I'll watch.

The front of the stage at South Hall had to be laid out again, too. Gao Shoucheng wanted another row of seats. Master Yu measured the way in and out at the side and shook his head. Forty seats was the limit. The two tall banners wouldn't stand upright under the beam, so Azhao put the banner covers she'd prepared back in the materials cabinet. Lu Heniang didn't want a banner leaning across the front of the stage where it might knock her headdress. With the banners gone, the planks and rope were all that remained of the boat and the bank, so Xiaoman began to bring the sound of the wind in through the singing, ahead of the sweeping turn that had once brought it out.

When they reached the end of the final act in rehearsal, Han Rong asked what Scholar Liu could offer A-Heng when he returned. He stood between the two planks in his newly let-out costume, finally looking as though he hadn’t borrowed some younger man’s clothes. Gao Shoucheng said of course he would take her away. That was how the play had always gone. Lu Heniang asked where on shore she was supposed to keep her boat. The troupe leader said the play didn’t say, but Han Rong felt his book satchel and laughed. “I’m a junior clerk who’s only just got his first post. I may not even have a house, and here I am promising her a grand courtyard. Am I going to make her sell her boat as well?”

Few people laughed this time. Xiaoman searched the script for a long while and said that earlier it had A-Heng running the ferry for her father, yet at the end nobody asked if she wanted to leave. Lu Heniang had no wish to sing the finale as a lecture to the scholar. All she wanted was one line that sounded like something a person would say. They tried things out until after dinner. Some lines came out too stiff, others sounded little like a farewell when sung. A-Zhao sat nearby sewing the mouth of a flag case and listened as they tried out one lovely ending after another and made a mess of each.

In the ending they kept, before Liu the scholar went ashore, he asked if he could take her boat again when he came this way next year. A-Heng said that depended on whether she was there that day, and he’d still have to pay the fare. She turned away, still reluctant to part. Gao Shoucheng thought it too subdued, so Han Rong tried leaving his book bag by the boat. A-Heng had to follow him to give it back, and they got one more look at each other. The troupe master held off deciding and told them to run it again tomorrow with the scenes that came before. They couldn’t judge it by the cleverness of the ending alone.

Even at the end of the fitting, Han Rong was reluctant to take off the costume. Standing by the door, he asked A-Zhao in a quieter voice whether the collar looked too old-fashioned. She nearly said an actor's age wasn't in his collar, but she saw how he was tucking his chin a little and asked instead whether he liked a narrow trim or a wide one. They tried both. The narrow trim really did make his face look livelier, and he saw it too and smiled with satisfaction. A-Zhao realized she could allow for the pause in his knee and still honor his wish to look good. She made a note of the trim and waited for his shoulders to relax before settling on the last stitch.

When they finished work late that night, A-Zhao drew diagrams showing Gao Man how to change between the two costumes and had her close her eyes and feel for the ties. Gao Man got one wrong and said in annoyance that A-Zhao was still the only one who understood her markings. A-Zhao didn’t argue. She took that part off and stitched it back on differently. She couldn’t stand guard over every costume forever after the autumn run. The job would truly be finished when the person she handed it to could still use it.

When Xiaoman returned to the room, A-Sheng was already asleep against the little table, a crooked 舟—the character for “boat”—written on the paper. She carried the child to bed and touched the table leg made from an old drum stand. A-Zhao covered the new collar. Outside the window, she heard someone humming the newly revised ending again, forgetting half a line and slipping into the old words, while someone else laughed and corrected them. The autumn performances had yet to begin, but that new road was already being traveled in fits and starts by several mouths unwilling to give up together.