The Opera Soul

The opera stage in Hewan Village stands beneath an old locust tree, no more than a few paces from the water. Decades of rain have soaked the wood into a deep brown, and the moment you set foot on it, a sour smell of damp rot mixed with years-old rouge seeps out from between the planks—turn a corner and the wind carries it halfway down the street. This stage was raised by the grandfather of Troupe Master Zhu, its beams salvaged from a ruined old temple down the mountain, said to have warded off evil, or perhaps warded too much, and so kept something behind. The old locust in front was planted by the first troupe master with his own hands; now two men cannot wrap their arms around its trunk, and its roots have burrowed into the stage's foundation, pushing the boards up uneven, so that stepping on them feels like stepping on someone's back. Before every performance, Seventh Master would crouch and tap the boards with a knuckle, listening for an echo from below. In his younger years he could tell hollow from solid; now his hearing is failing, and all he catches is the hollow thud of his own anxious heart—as if something beneath the boards were tapping back, knuckle for knuckle, keeping time with him.

Seventh Master was born He Qi, and he sang the old male roles his whole life—the last in these tens of villages willing to open his throat for the dead. Among the two troupes of the living and the dead, the living come for the spectacle, but the dead come for an ending unanswered. Whenever someone passed with a grievance, a word left unsaid or a thing left undone, their descendants would bring incense and candles to beg Seventh Master for a yin opera—one act sung for the dead. No full costume needed; an old martial robe, half a water sleeve, one strike of the gong, and he would round out the knot in the dead one's heart. The old folk of the village had a saying: every time Seventh Master finished an act for the dead, he took on one more unfinished thing of his own, like another green stone added to a carrying basket on his back, bowing him forward until he could never straighten again. Seventh Master never argued whether it was true; he only knew his back bent a little more each year, and his voice grew a little grittier, so that before any high note he had to wet his throat with hot liquor three times before he dared to lift it.

On ordinary days the stage stood idle, coming alive only at festivals when the living climbed up to make noise. In the daytime sun the boards creaked and the smell of rot would thin; but at dusk, when the damp rose from the river, the smell returned, thick enough to settle on a sleeve. The villagers, heading home from work, quickened their steps and none dared linger beneath the stage, as if the moment they stopped, that echoing thud would climb up through the soles of their shoes.

The village held Seventh Master in both respect and fear. They respected that he had rounded out so many wishes; they feared the basket on his back was too heavy, that standing near him brought a chill, as if he carried an endless funeral. Children were warned by their elders never to go near the stage after dark, told that an old player slept beneath the boards and rose at night to tune his strings. Seventh Master, hearing this, never explained; he only brightened the oil lamp a little, to light the way for those passing by. Of the other yin-opera players who once worked these parts, some changed trades to sing at banquets; some were invited out one night and never returned, and their families found only a pair of soaked boots beside the stage, toes pointing toward the back. Seventh Master knew well enough where they had gone—beneath the boards, one more companion joined, then another, until slowly it was no longer so lonely down there.

Seventh Master never married. It was not for lack of matchmakers; he turned them away himself, saying the basket on his back, brought into another's home, would only chill two families. At night he would often sit alone at the corner of the stage, lamp unlit, listening to the river and the boards, like listening to two old companions talk. Over forty years, though he feared the stage, he came to feel a kind of wordless kinship with it—just as with the man beneath the boards: hate and resentment aside, in the end that man became the longest companion of his life.

He kept an old routine before mounting the stage. First he cleaned his hands, not with water but with incense ash—the cold grey left in the burner, scooped up and warmed between his palms, then rubbed over his face and neck, to press down the heat of the living so he would not disturb the yin above. Then he painted his brows with the box of rouge his senior brother had left behind, its color long sunk to a dark red, lying on the skin like a thin scab. Last he lit the lamp, setting one oil lamp at the stage corner; the flame had to stand straight—if it leaned or flickered, that night's act would not be sung; he would pack the opera away as it was and come another day. In forty years the lamp leaned but rarely, yet every time it did, he understood: the one beneath the boards was not yet ready to let him up.

After the Dragon Boat Festival last year, the Zhao family's daughter-in-law threw herself into the river. She had waited three years for her man, who had gone by boat to Hankou and sent no word; in the end she could not hold on, and clutching a washing stone she plunged into the back-eddy bend. The water was cold enough to bite the bone, and they said she went down with her eyes open, as if afraid to miss something on the bank. Half a month after she passed, her mother dreamed the girl standing by the stove, saying she wanted once more to hear that act, "Waiting for My Man"—the night before her man left, he had heard Seventh Master sing it from below the stage, and she had hummed along half a line from behind the crowd. The Zhao boy came to ask, and Seventh Master agreed. At night he mounted the stage alone, scattered three handfuls of incense ash in the burner, painted only half his brows, and wore a plain white robe to sing "Waiting for My Man." In the first passage, "Standing by the River," his voice was still smooth; in the second, "Mistaking the Boat," the wind below the stage suddenly died, and the lamp flame stood straight and still. When he came to "Oh my man, when will you return," the trailing note went out and did not come back—from the seam of the boards came a soft thud, light as a knuckle tapping in reply. The act finished, the Zhao woman's wish was rounded out, yet Seventh Master felt a cold knot settle in his chest ever after; when autumn came, every time he passed the back-eddy bend, something seemed to tug gently at his feet, and he knew it was the unfinished thing he had taken on for her: she had after all never waited for that man.

Old Widow Li of the western slope took longer to go. Her son had left at twenty to seek his living, promising to send money home the first year to build a house, but once gone he scattered on the wind—no letter, no money, not even word of his death. Widow Li kept an empty house for thirty years, and on her deathbed, clutching her daughter-in-law's hand, she said all she wanted was to hear the word "Mother" once more. Seventh Master went to sing, no other words, only drawing the word "Mother" out of the old male role's chest line by line until the whole stage rang with echoes. When he finished, Widow Li's brow relaxed in the coffin. But Seventh Master's own ears, from that night on, would not stop humming, as if someone pressed to his ear and softly called "Mother," so far and faint he could never shake it off. After some days that "Mother" turned into something else—when he rinsed his mouth at dawn, the water he spat sometimes held incense ash; when he turned in his sleep, his pillow would be strewn with flakes of rouge-colored dust, as if someone had touched up his makeup while he slept. He knew the green stones in his basket did not merely weigh on his spine, but seeped into his flesh as well.

There was also a peddler who wandered from village to village and froze to death on last year's snow road, a spool of red thread for his daughter still hidden in his coat. His daughter came to ask, saying her father had loved above all to hear his own rattle-drum and his bellowing cry of "Needles and thread—" Seventh Master took up the tune, shaking a borrowed rattle-drum on the stage, humming and singing half an act in that manner. When he finished, his left ankle ached the whole winter through, and he had to pause before each step down—the sprain the peddler had suffered in the snow before he died had, in the end, fallen upon him.

For more than forty years he sang such yin operas, the green stones in his basket bending his spine out of shape. Yet what kept him awake night after night was not these. It was the body beneath the stage.

Lately the boards sounded by themselves every night. Past the third watch, with no one above, the gong would hum on its own, and then the strings of the erhu would tremble, creaking, as if an invisible hand were tuning them—and the tune it tuned was none other than "The Command to Silence the Soul." At first Seventh Master took it for wind through the seams, until he saw faint boot prints on the boards, trailing toward the back, one drag per step, like a man with bad legs, the toes pointing toward the old seam where he had buried the body. He swept them with incense ash, but far from fading, the prints deepened where the ash fell, as if someone were stepping up from below, and with each step the boards gave a muffled thud. He crouched and pressed his ear to the boards, and heard a very low humming from beneath—the tune of the "Summoning Death" passage from "The Command to Silence the Soul," broken and intermittent, stuck on the third line, unable to get past.

The boy who carried Seventh Master's lamp was Gouwa, thirteen, his parents working away in the city, raised by his grandmother. Gouwa was bold, yet careful too. The first time he came upon the boards sounding themselves was on a night in the sixth month, when he brought Seventh Master a midnight rice cake; from far off he heard the erhu ringing on the stage, yet the stage was empty, only the oil lamp's flame standing straight. He clung to the stage's edge and looked up: a line of wet prints ran from the stage center to the back, their edges seeping a little old red, like someone who had broken the skin on his feet. Gouwa called for Seventh Master, who came running, crouched to tap the boards, and his face changed; he sent Gouwa home and stayed himself, sitting before the empty stage until dawn. After that, whenever Gouwa came, Seventh Master would block him at the foot of the stage, saying it was cold up there and a child's soft bones could not bear it. Gouwa would not give in; he would hide below the edge to listen, and what he heard was more than the erhu—there were two voices speaking, one gritty, one hoarse, broken and intermittent, as if discussing how an act should begin.

That third line was exactly the one his senior brother had left unfinished.

His senior brother was called Liu Mingxiao, three years his elder, born with a fine voice the villagers called behind his back "Big Throat Liu." In those years the two of them studied under Troupe Master Zhu, both training for the old male roles, yet what they fought over was the one main stage at the head of Hewan Village—whoever held the main stage was the troupe master who received offerings for miles around. At the height of his voice, Liu Mingxiao could shake the dust from the eaves with a single "Behold the Mountain," and the whole crowd would stare, spellbound. He Qi was not bad either, but he always fell short by half a breath, as if a grain of sand were forever lodged in his shoe, and he could never catch up. The master praised his senior brother more and gave him the better parts, and even the junior apprentice, pouring tea, set the cup by his brother's hand first. He called him "senior brother" to his face, but in his heart he had long chewed that word "brother" bitter.

The two had slept on the same communal bed as boys. Once He Qi had broken the master's gong by accident, and it was Liu Mingxiao who snatched it up and claimed he had dropped it, taking a beating of rattan from the master and lying prone three days unable to rise, yet turning back to squint at He Qi and say the gong wasn't even cracked, what was the fuss. That night of the Lantern Festival, when they first shared a stage at fifteen, Liu Mingxiao brought down the house with a "Havoc in Heaven," and the master clapped his brother's shoulder and said the boy was born for this bowl of rice. He Qi stood to the side, heard this, and the drumstick in his hand beaded with sweat—it was that night the bitterness took root. Such days He Qi did not fail to remember. Yet remember or not, that bitterness, kept in his belly year after year, fermented into something else.

The troupe's ancestors had left behind a forbidden play called "The Command to Silence the Soul," said to have been composed by a player the troupe master had buried alive, who appeared in a dream to teach it; whoever sang it went hoarse, his breath sucked dry by the boards, his soul left upon the stage, never to come down. He Qi never believed it, yet he harbored a private motive. On the eve of the contest, he brought half a gourd of strong liquor to his brother's room and said the master, on his deathbed, had let slip that this "Command to Silence the Soul" was meant for the two brothers to make their name; with your high voice, sing it tomorrow to crush the rival troupe and hold the main stage, and I will back you from the side curtain. Liu Mingxiao, flushed with wine, slapped his chest and agreed. He Qi knew his brother's pride could least bear the words "you cannot," and with that goad, it was as good as done. What he did not say was this: the last line of "The Command to Silence the Soul"—"Soul, return; I go with you"—was sung to the one beneath the boards, and to sing it was to go down yourself; it was a home the players left for themselves, and a pit they dug for the living.

On the day of the contest, Liu Mingxiao indeed sang "The Command to Silence the Soul." The first two passages were fine, his high notes still stilling the crowd; but in the third passage, "Summoning Death," his voice suddenly cracked like a snapped string, followed by fit after fit of coughing, flecks of blood spattering the flag on his back, red and glaring. The crowd forgot to cheer; only the gong's aftershock from his earlier strike circled the beams with a hum. He clung to the stage pillar, trying to go on, yet no sound would come from his throat; his eyes wide on the dark mass of the crowd below, he fell straight back, his boot toes toward the back, not managing a single step, and so breathed his last. He Qi, in the side curtain, watched his brother's back-flag slowly tilt and cover that face; he dared not go up to support him, dared not call out—for he feared they would learn it was his goad on the eve of the contest that had sent his brother to his death.

That night, alone, He Qi crept to the stage in the dark, pried open an old seam where his brother had fallen, and stuffed the body into the stage's foundation. He scattered half a bag of incense ash to cover the blood-smell and smeared a layer of rouge over it, nailed the board, knelt and kowtowed three times, telling himself it was to spare his brother dignity, so no one would know he had sung himself to death on stage, so the Zhu troupe's name would not be ruined. Yet he knew clearer than anyone: that last line of "The Command to Silence the Soul," his brother had after all not finished; stuck on the third line, "Summoning Death," his breath had simply stopped. From that day he dared not touch the play again, turning instead to yin opera, rounding out wishes for the dead one by one, growing old year by year, loading onto his back, act by act, what his brother owed and what he himself owed.

And so he carried it—forty years.

In the first few years he thought he could hold it. But come the dog days, the muffled sounds beneath the boards grew more frequent, nearly every night, and sometimes by day—he would be picking vegetables below the stage when half a line of "Summoning Death" leaked from the seam and startled the greens from his hand. His voice went wrong too: the high notes he used to lift after wetting his throat three times now cracked even after five, as if the hoarseness were climbing from the boards up through the soles of his feet. One night, emboldened by liquor, he said toward the boards in a hoarse voice, "Brother, spare me." The boards were silent a long while, then returned a very soft "No," so gritty it sobered him, and the wine bowl in his hand clattered onto the boards. Seventh Master knew: his brother was urging him. His brother's wish was never the main stage—that stage had long since collapsed, and what stood now was a later repair of wood—his brother's wish was the last line of "The Command to Silence the Soul" he had not finished singing when he died. Who that line was sung to, Seventh Master had not understood before; now he did: it was sung to He Qi, asking him to go down and keep company. For forty years his brother had been alone beneath the boards, too lonely.

Seventh Master stopped hiding. On the night before the fifteenth of the seventh month, he pulled out the old martial robe his brother had left, the flag on its back still bearing the blood-spots of that year, now brown scars; the smell of rouge mixed with mildew, and when he shook it, incense ash sifted down. He painted his brows and touched on rouge, then put it on, straightened the faded back-flag, and turned his head away, fixing his eyes only on the oil lamp standing straight at the stage corner. He brought liquor and carried the gong, and mounted the stage alone. The gong sounded once on its own, as if to welcome him; the oil lamp at the corner stood straight, not flickering. The sour smell of rot and rouge in the air was ten times stronger than usual, as if someone had turned out decades of incense ash and rouge and spread them across the whole stage.

Facing the empty seats below, he opened his mouth and sang "The Command to Silence the Soul." In the first two passages his voice held steady, the high notes lifting and shaking a few flakes of dust from the beams. At the "Summoning Death" passage, he suddenly felt a cold at his throat—not hoarseness, but emptiness, as if a hand had reached in from within to hold that breath and lift it for him. He heard an answer from beneath the boards: his brother's voice, gritty, hoarse, yet not a line missing, and the third line stuck for forty years was pushed toward its end by the two voices twining together. Seventh Master closed his eyes and saw old red seep from the seams of the boards, the faded red of stage costume, spreading bit by bit to his boots, then climbing up the boot shaft, so cold his toes went numb. He thought of the rattan his brother had taken for him as a boy, of the master's hand clapping his brother's shoulder on Lantern Festival night, of his own face that night, liquor in hand, saying "you cannot"—and by now every account had come due.

As he sang the last line, "Soul, return; I go with you," he had barely voiced half of it when his throat went suddenly empty—not hoarse, but light, as if something had been pulled out of him by the root, and his whole self sank down. He looked down and saw his own shadow fading on the stage; from the seam of the boards a hand reached out, not white but that old red, and gently took hold of his boot. He did not struggle. The gong's aftershock scattered, the lamp flame leapt once and went out, yet before it went out he clearly saw the seats below filled with a dark crowd—all the dead for whom he had sung wishes over the years: the Zhao woman, Widow Li's son, and the fellow players who had gone down before, sitting quiet one and all, waiting for this act to close. As he sang that final line, the shadows below swayed gently, like the most well-mannered audience in any opera house, holding even their coughs; the gong's aftershock spread in rings, wrapping the whole stage in an old, worn warmth—the warmth of having someone beside him that he had not tasted in forty years.

The seats below were still empty. Wind leaked down through the locust leaves, cool and soaking. Seventh Master—or the one still standing—looked down at his boots; the old red was gone, and the boards were silent as if they had never sounded. Yet when he tapped the boards with his knuckle, what came back was no longer hollow, but a very soft, smiling "Bravo," drawn long, as if his brother had at last heard a full house's applause. He stepped back two paces, his legs too weak to stand, and caught the side-curtain pillar; only then did he find his hands full of the smell of rouge, unable to tell if it was his brother's or his own.

From that night on, the stage in Hewan Village no longer sounded every night. Yet the villagers slowly noticed Seventh Master sang little now, and spoke less to people; at midnight he would always walk alone toward the stage, sit at the corner, and listen for an echo from below. Gouwa asked what he heard, and he only shook his head, his eyes sliding toward the seam, a small curve at his mouth, as if he had heard something fine he should not tell the living. Once Gouwa went to find him at night and from afar saw a lamp lit on the stage, and under it two figures—one in old red robe, one in plain white—facing the empty stage, singing that act of "The Command to Silence the Soul" from beginning to end, line by line, their tune seamless, as if one man split in two. Gouwa rubbed his eyes; when he looked again, the lamp was out, and only Seventh Master sat alone on the stage, legs folded, leaning on the pillar, asleep, that small smile still at his mouth.

On the Dragon Boat Festival of the next year, Gouwa passed the stage again and saw a single old-red opera boot left on the boards, lonely, as if someone had taken it off at the stage center and gone down, never to come up. He crouched and tapped the boards; what came back was two voices, one gritty, one hoarse, singing right at "Soul, return," seamless, as if they had never been apart. The wind blew and the locust leaves rustled, covering that faint tune, yet Gouwa knew it was always there, beneath the seams, in the rouge and incense ash, singing day and night without cease.

Later, when a village child cried at night, the elders no longer frightened them with the stage; they only said, do not fear, two old players are up there singing, and singing, it is not so cold. Gouwa too grew up, and on the night before he left the village he went as usual to sit at the corner; he saw no figure, yet heard from the seam a very soft thud, as if someone were tapping, knuckle for knuckle, keeping time with him. He dared not answer, only set the rice cake he carried at the stage center and turned to go. The next day the cake was still there, but the oil paper beneath it was stained with a ring of old red, as if someone had quietly tasted it, along with the rouge.

Later still, men came from town to collect folk customs, saying the stage was unlucky and should be torn down for a cultural square. On the day work began, the excavator had barely touched the foundation when the operator said he heard erhu music from below, creaking and tuning the melody of "The Command to Silence the Soul," and shut the machine down in fright and left. The story spread, and the square was never built; the stage stands as it was, and the old locust too, only now no one dares pass beneath it at night.

Note from the Midnight Record: In yin opera one rounds out the wishes of the dead, but round it onto oneself and it can never be rounded back; beneath the stage there is never an empty seat, and the missing corner is always filled by someone who goes down.