The Opera Chest

In Qinghe Town the Lord Guan temple has stood derelict for over a decade; the eaves-bells are rusted silent, and inside it shelters an opera chest.

The chest was Shen Jiu's. Shen Jiu was troupe-master of the Ninefold Fortune Troupe, who sang ghost-plays all his life—Mulian dramas, masked nuo rites, the repertoire of the Bridge of Lost Way and the Urn Festival. His voice was a strange thing, high yet never shrill, mournful yet never bleak; townsfolk said the word "bridge" as he sang it could draw a man's soul half an inch out of his breast. Shen Jiu died on the stage, performing the "Crossing the Bridge" passage of Mulian Rescues His Mother; his water-sleeves flung to the rafters, he fell straight back, face still to the audience, a smile at his lips. The troupe scattered; the chest, unclaimed, was left in the temple, locked.

The chest is of camphor wood, coppered at the corners, with tiny face-masks chiseled into the metal. The town's children dared not approach, saying at night the temple held the beat of gongs and drums—yet the temple door was barred from within, and none could enter.

Qiao was Shen Jiu's apprentice. After his death she kept the chest, awaiting the senior players to collect the costumes. Her own mother had been the troupe's head-dresser and lay in the troupe's old grave. Qiao lodged in the temple's side room, and often at night heard sounds from the main hall—not wind, but a creak of the bowed fiddle, as if someone tuned a string; or the soft shhh of a water-sleeve brushing the dusty floor. She summoned courage to peer through the door-crack; the hall was dark, the chest properly locked, nothing there.

The change came on a leap-month night. Qiao woke from a doze to a rattle of gongs and drums, in the urgent "Three Spears" rhythm of "Crossing the Bridge," quick as a summons to death. Barefoot she crept to the hall; by moonlight the chest's copper lock was intact, yet the lid had lifted a crack, leaking a thread of dim red light, like a guttered temple candle. She dared not speak, but pressed to the door-frame and looked in—

The chest had opened itself. Water-sleeves drifted out one by one, draping the offering table, arranging themselves into the shape of sleeves; a nuo mask floated in mid-air, its cinnabar still fresh; the bowed fiddle hung, its two strings rubbing themselves, drawing out that word "bridge," plaintive, a third sharper than Shen Jiu in life. A stage had risen too—planks of old doors joined for a floor, set somehow in the hall's center, with two flameless lamps at the corners whose empty shadows lit the stage a ghastly white.

Upon the stage stood a shadow in Shen Jiu's robe and paint, singing "Crossing the Bridge." But the words ran backward: where Shen Jiu in life sang of mother seeking son, son crossing the bridge, this shadow sang of luring those on stage down beneath the bridge, each phrase a hook, as if counting heads. Qiao knew the voice—Shen Jiu's—yet cold, as if dragged up from the water and sung swollen.

Near dawn the sounds ceased. Qiao entered; the chest was closed, the lock unbroken, the sleeves neatly folded within, the fiddle in its place, the stage-planks scattered aside, as if nothing had happened. Yet at the chest's bottom lay a pair of embroidered shoes—her dead mother's. The head-dresser had been buried with them in her coffin; how came they here?

Qiao moved the chest away and added three locks, but it was no use. Thereafter, each leap-month, each third watch, the gongs and drums rose again in the temple; listening through the window she always heard that word "bridge," phrase by phrase, drawing the night long. Once, unable to help herself, she pushed the door and entered: upon the stage stood an empty chair of Shen Jiu's, its seat still warm, as if someone had just risen and gone backstage.

She never dared push the door a second time.

There had been signs. On the seventh night after Shen Jiu's death Qiao heard, very faint, a hum from inside the chest—the opening of 'Crossing the Bridge'—and took it for wind through the seams. Another time the costumes she had aired in the yard folded themselves by night into a stage-ready shape, sleeves gathered in a bloom, as if someone had just sung a passage and tidied up. She blamed a stray cat, and thought no more.

Shen Jiu used to say that to sing ghost-plays one must first sing oneself into the role, or the ghost will not know you. He sang all his life, and at the end sang himself into the chest. Qiao understands that saying now—what she keeps is no opera chest but Shen Jiu's unbroken performance. Each time the gongs sound she extinguishes the lamp and lies beneath the covers, letting that word 'bridge' from the stage draw her, phrase by phrase, toward the bridge as well. Sometimes she cannot tell whether the one seated in that chair should be Shen Jiu, or herself.

Of Shen Jiu's plays the old townsfolk said that at their height, someone in the audience would hum along, and humming, would vanish—come morning only a shoe by the bridge. Shen Jiu only laughed, and said the play led them well. Qiao recalls this and a cold creeps up her back—for these nights she too, unwilled, hums softly along with that word 'bridge.'

Qiao set the embroidered shoes before her mother's grave, yet the next day they were gone, and appeared again at the chest's bottom, a fresh speck of incense-ash on the vamp, as if someone had worn them and trod the stage once more in the night. Thereafter each leap-month, children of the town would hear the singing from outside the temple and peer through the window-crack: upon the stage, they said, were two shadows, one in the robe, one in the head-dresser's jacket, singing face to face, the words unclear, only that word 'bridge' drawing the listeners' souls half an inch out, phrase by phrase.

The Midnight Record notes: a stage without a master, and the ghost mounts it himself; if what is sung is no human play, then the play is singing the man.