Clothes for the Stage, Clothes on the Body

When A-Zhao reached the South Hall the next day, two people were already standing in the courtyard in their underclothes. One held out an arm and the other crouched while Gao Man chalked marks on the insides of their old costumes, as if tracing a different river on each body. A-Zhao wiped the mud from her shoes as soon as she came in. She was carrying her bamboo box so high that it nearly hit the bamboo pole the clothes hung from.

Qin Xiaoman asked her to move the tie opening on the gray-blue costume first. It needed taking in by only half an inch. The old knot had worn loose and slid sideways when pulled tight onstage. Feeling along the edge, A-Zhao found a pleat beneath the sleeve on the other side that seemed half closed. The stitching was different from what she did at home, and she assumed someone had stopped halfway through unpicking it the night before and hadn't finished. She moved the tie opening and kept right on sewing, closing up the pleat evenly and tucking in even the little patch that stuck out on the outside.

Someone called Xiaoman to the back courtyard to hand out headscarves. When she came back, the costume was already folded in A-Zhao’s hands. A-Zhao thought her stitching looked presentable and said at once that she had done both places. Xiaoman’s brow moved. She asked which two, but before A-Zhao could answer, someone outside called for the fitting. An actress lifted the curtain and came in, took her hairpin crosswise between her teeth, and slipped both arms into the sleeves, as though every part of her body already knew its turn.

That woman was Lu Heniang. She was a little taller than A-Zhao, with pale blue shadows under her eyes and hair at her temples that hadn’t been smoothed down yet. Her voice was bright, though, when she asked whether the new girl specialized in stitching old cloth tight again. A-Zhao couldn’t tell whether it was praise or teasing. By the time she nodded, Lu Heniang had already rolled up her cuffs, picked up a slender bamboo pole to serve as a punt pole, and turned to step onto two old planks laid side by side in the courtyard.

The two planks were a boat. They didn't move, but everyone else had to move with them. Xiaoman gave two taps on her clappers at the side. Lu Heniang turned, touched the bamboo pole to the ground, and the front of her costume swung back along the line of her waist. A-Zhao was spellbound. The fluster she'd felt in the back room vanished, as if this were how the garment had always been meant to move, as if it were far more than a woman wearing a gray-blue jacket.

When Lu Heniang went to move the pole from in front of her to behind her back, the sleeve suddenly pulled tight at the armhole. She stopped, looked at her right arm, then bent her head and turned up the seam under the sleeve. Qin Xiaoman came over, touched it once, then turned to look at A-Zhao. A-Zhao knew at once it was her doing, but her first impulse was still to wriggle free. She said she had thought that part of the seam hadn't been closed yet.

“Would I have sent someone onstage if it weren't finished?” Xiaoman asked.

The courtyard went quiet for a breath. Gao Man looked up just as Gu Ming came in through the back gate. Seeing them all gathered around a garment, he laughed and asked if they’d come to wait for his scholar. When no one answered, he fell quiet. Lu Heniang handed him the pole and slipped one arm out of her sleeve to show A-Zhao the patch hidden there. The piece inside ran on a different grain and had been set in specifically to give the wearer room to turn her shoulder. If the edges had been made to line up, she wouldn’t have been able to raise her arm as far as she needed.

A-Zhao wanted to say that the skirt she had altered also allowed its wearer to squat, but as the words reached her lips, they met the memory of Luo Yan trying on the clothes that day and suddenly seemed beside the point. It was precisely because she was not wholly ignorant that admitting she had misapplied what little she knew this time was harder. Xiao Man told her to unpick it without cutting the original fabric, then went to tend to another garment, as though there was no need to wait until she had said enough apologies.

Gu Ming recognized her and, when the others had scattered, quietly asked how someone who could reckon the price of half a cake so exactly had managed to make the stitching so tight as well. A-Zhao's face grew hotter. She said she'd already been paid for the cake and owed him nothing. He laughed and raised his hands to show he hadn't come to collect, then looked down at the pole Lu Heniang had thrust into his arms and put on a show of having no idea where to plant it. A-Zhao nearly laughed again and was annoyed that of all times she should want to laugh now.

That day they rehearsed the revised Reed Blossom Ferry (《芦花渡》). Gu Ming played Scholar Liu, who needed to cross the river, and Lu Heniang played A-Heng, who supported her family by ferrying people in a little boat. In the old script, Scholar Liu obtained an official post and returned to bring her ashore. In the final scene everyone changed into bright clothes, which made it perfect for a wedding feast. Gao Shoucheng said they used to perform only one excerpt. If they could put together a full play this year, they could rehearse it in spring and have an entire show of their own for the autumn festival, without always following other people’s old repertory.

As he said this, he was by the porridge pot fishing out a stem of grass that had fallen in. A-Zhao had expected the troupe leader to issue his orders from indoors. Watching him talk about the autumn performances while a child pressed him for another half bowl took some of the awe out of her. He saw A-Zhao unpicking stitches and asked whether she was the new costumer. Across the courtyard Xiaoman answered that she was here on trial. To A-Zhao's ears, the word “trial” stretched longer than all the thread she'd pulled out that morning.

The fastening hole really had been moved to a better spot. After putting the garment on, Lu Heniang acknowledged that it no longer slipped there. Still, she gave A-Zhao no assurance beyond that. The sleeve pleat would have to be unpicked and the whole sequence run again. A-Zhao sat under the eaves listening to the footsteps. Every tap of the bamboo pole on the ground made her fingers a little more careful. By the time the unpicking was finished that afternoon, the sun was already low, and Xiaoman still hadn't got to the other garment Gao Man had put down for her to alter.

Xiaoman lifted the other garment, exposing a broad stretch of the old lining, and asked what A-Zhao could do that day. A-Zhao grew anxious and said she could finish it that evening. Xiaoman gave her a look. ‘If all you want is to show you’re useful, sort the costume ties by length. Don’t decide for me again that this has to be finished tonight.’ She hadn’t raised her voice, but A-Zhao felt she’d been sent back among the children in front of the whole courtyard. She tightened her grip on the end of the thread.

She stayed and sorted the costume ties for most of an hour, growing more irritated as she went. The long and short ones had all been together, and Xiaoman herself hadn’t sorted them out, yet now the newcomer had to go through them one by one. Gao Man came for a few and saw she had separated the dark from the light as well. She said that would make them easier to find, then took the bundle right in the middle and left the others in disarray. A-Zhao watched and only just held back from asking her to put them back the way they had been.

A-Sheng came over and picked the shortest tie for his bamboo flute, saying the grown-ups couldn’t possibly need such a short bit of cloth. A-Zhao took it back and said she’d ask Xiaoman before giving it to him. The boy said he only wanted to borrow it, but she kept hold of it. When Xiaoman returned, it turned out the short tie went inside an old headdress to hold the hair in place and was needed there. A-Sheng walked off, his face fallen. A-Zhao looked at the little strip in her hand and found she couldn’t toss it in with the scraps again.

Lu Heniang came for the costume at dusk. In front of A-Zhao she went through the shoulder movement, raised her elbow and drew the pole in. This time A-Zhao looked beyond the evenness of the seams. Her eyes followed the underside of the sleeve, where the inset opened with the movement and vanished into the fold again when it closed. Lu Heniang asked if she still thought a stretch of stitching was missing this time. A-Zhao shook her head, and Lu Heniang carried the costume away without pressing the point.

On the fourteenth she came earlier than usual, but people were already in the yard. Gu Ming sat beside the empty drum stand practicing a spoken line, asking over and over where the gentleman was headed, as if every gentleman in the world refused to tell him. Asheng squatted nearby listening and said he was going to eat. Gu Ming changed his next line to say the rice wasn't done, and the boy fell over laughing. Azhao held in her laughter and carried the water past them. Gu Ming suddenly asked when she was finally going to tell people her name.

Only then did she remember that everyone had looked at her yesterday, yet all she had been called was the newcomer. She said her family name was He and her given name was Zhao, though everyone in Liuwan called her A-Zhao. Gu Ming repeated it, a little more softly than the people at the ferry landing did. For no reason, her grip tightened on the water bucket, and water splashed onto the front of her clothes. A-Sheng burst out laughing and said Liu Sheng had turned someone's name into a line of song. Gu Ming tapped him on the head and told him to stop spoiling the act, but he was laughing too.

That small smile stayed with A-Zhao all morning. She unpicked and washed garments, the water cold and her fingers wrinkled from soaking, yet her heart was not as blocked as yesterday. Later Gao Man told her to carry a dry garment into the inner room. She happened to hear Xiaoman saying not to let the newcomer handle new material herself; let her do these things first. It was as though a palm had pressed down on her smile. She waited outside until they had finished speaking, then handed the garment in, moving more gently than necessary.

She knew Xiaoman was right: yesterday, she really had tampered with things she should have left alone. Yet knowing was one thing. Seeing others take cloth and cut it straightaway while her own hands were left only with unpicking still made her unhappy. At noon, as everyone shared pancakes with salted vegetables, Gu Ming picked the largest piece from the middle. She thought how comfortably he lived with himself. Why did she have to wonder, even over one extra strand of vegetable, whether she had earned it yet?

Qin Xiaoman didn't come in that afternoon. She went to the stage to try out the mother's vocal part. A-Zhao thought she'd only sing a line in passing, but when she heard the second half through the curtain, she realized it sounded nothing like the way Xiaoman normally spoke. The final note stretched out as though the rafters themselves had opened up another stretch of space to make room. Lu Heniang came in opposite her. When she came in late once, Xiaoman stopped on the spot and said she couldn't just wait for the drumbeat, she had to listen for the other singer taking a breath. She wasn't tactful about it, and Lu Heniang didn't soften her answer either. She told Xiaoman not to cram in all the phrasing she'd used when she sang the lead.

The people outside the curtain went on working as if they'd heard it all before. This was the first time A-Zhao had realized anyone could talk back to Qin Xiaoman like that, and she felt a little pleasure she knew she shouldn't. She lowered her head and scrubbed a collar edge, rubbing that little pleasure into the water. It suddenly seemed to her that all the old stories she'd brought with her could no longer explain everything about this woman at a glance.

On the fifteenth, they settled up for the small jobs of the past few days. Gao Man counted out twelve cash and told Azhao to check it herself. Azhao could see it was right, but still counted the coins one by one. It was only enough for a little more than another night at the inn, yet it was the first money she'd earned with her own hands since arriving in Lanting. She didn't use it to prove anything to Xiaoman. She just put it away and asked whether there would still be work unpicking and washing clothes if she came back.

Xiaoman said there would be, then asked when she was returning to Liuwan. A-Zhao said she would leave on the sixteenth and take the lamp back too. Xiaoman nodded. After a long pause, she handed over the gray-blue garment again and told her to wipe away the trace of chalk showing outside the new sash opening. A-Zhao took it without tidying everything else as well. In the courtyard, Gu Ming was still asking where the traveler was bound. She wiped gently with the cloth and, for the first time, felt that she might have more than one answer to those words repeated so many times.