A Girl Named Faithful Plum (29 page)

T
he exercises done, Zhongmei went with Xiaolan for breakfast. She watched as the other girls checked their names on the rehearsal lists for that afternoon, something that Zhongmei didn’t bother to do anymore because she knew her name wouldn’t be there.

“Zhongmei,” Xiaolan said. “You’d better look at this.”

Zhongmei looked up at the bulletin board. There was the usual list of rehearsal teachers, a studio number, and the names of the boys and girls chosen for that rehearsal. But there was something else that Zhongmei couldn’t quite believe was really there. Her name, written in conspicuously large characters, as if the person who wrote them wanted to be sure they were seen by everybody, was there also, for the first time ever! And the name of the rehearsal teacher just above it was somebody who never taught rehearsal. It was Jia Zuoguang! And the dance she was to do:
Butterfly Lovers
duet!

This was amazing. Zhongmei had been chosen by the
biggest star of the Beijing Dance Academy to rehearse a duet from
Butterfly Lovers
! It was one of the most famous and difficult dances in the Chinese classical repertory, a drama about a girl who, in order to become a scholar, pretends to be a boy. First-year students did some simple duets, which they practiced at rehearsal, but not
Butterfly Lovers
, which was technically very difficult, involving all sorts of complicated lifts and acrobatic movements. And since no boy was listed on Jia Zuoguang’s rehearsal notice, it appeared as though Zhongmei’s partner would be none other than Vice Director Jia himself! Zhongmei could hear a kind of oohing and aahing around her as the other students, boys and girls, absorbed the remarkable information on the bulletin board. She heard her name whispered with surprise and the words
“Butterfly Lovers”
and “Jia Zuoguang” spoken with reverence. The girl nobody wanted and that everybody knew was going to be returned home at the end of the year had suddenly been chosen for something very special. What could be going on?

Zhongmei went through the morning in a kind of trance. She hardly noticed when Teacher Zhu treated her like any other girl in fundamentals of ballet, letting her take her place at the barre and giving her the same rough treatment she meted out to everybody. Later, she attended calligraphy, math, and reading classes, barely paying attention. She had lunch standing up in the cafeteria, her leg stretched across the table in front of her, unaware of what she was eating. She didn’t sleep a wink at nap time. The time for rehearsal came and she stood at the bulletin board, because no studio had been listed for
her solo with Jia. All the other students disappeared to their assignments. Zhongmei waited by herself, and just as she was beginning to wonder if this too was something she had imagined, Jia Zuoguang appeared down the corridor, a smile on his handsome face.

“Hello,
xiao mei zi
,” he said. “Come with me,” and he led Zhongmei up the stairs to the third-floor studios. “Listen,” he told her. “I don’t have time to practice with you myself, but I’m going to put you in Teacher Peng Guimin’s solo class. It’s for second-year students, but I’m sure you can handle it.”

He opened the door to a studio, and Zhongmei saw half a dozen girls and Teacher Peng.

“Xiao Peng,” Jia said, using the diminutive for Teacher Peng. “This is Li Zhongmei. Do me a favor and take her in your class.”

“Well, I guess I can take her for today,” Teacher Peng said.

“No, I want you to take her for the rest of the year,” Jia said, “and prepare her for her final-day performance.”

“But I already have a full complement,” the surprised Teacher Peng protested. “And she’s just a first-year student, I think. This class is for—”

“Yes, I know,” Jia interrupted. “Never mind that. Please just take her. You’d be doing me an enormous favor. I’ll explain the situation to you later. Meanwhile, do your best with her. You’ll see that she’s a very hard worker and very talented. Do what you can with her, and I want to see progress by the end of the semester.”

“Yes, of course, Zuoguang,” Teacher Peng said. Turning to
Zhongmei, she said, “Take a spot there, and just follow as best you can. My schedule is full and I don’t have time to give you any extra attention, but come every day and we’ll see what you can do.”

Zhongmei took a place in the back row, feeling out of place among all these older girls, but thrilled as well.

“We’re doing the solo parts of the Dunhuang dance,” Teacher Peng said for Zhongmei’s benefit. “You’ve heard of Dunhuang probably?”

Zhongmei nodded, but in truth she wasn’t sure. Anyway she understood that she wasn’t doing
Butterfly Lovers
. Jia had just written that down to impress everybody else. But what was important was that he wanted her to do well at her final performance, and he was giving her a special chance to succeed.

“One of our most famous Chinese places is called Dunhuang,” Teacher Peng explained. “It’s in Gansu Province in western China. More than a thousand years ago, Buddhist monks painted the walls of caves there. The Dunhuang dance is based on one of those paintings. It shows a goddess, called a flying apsara, who spreads the wisdom of the Buddha across the universe. Just try to follow.”

Zhongmei did. And she did the next day as well, learning the intricate movements and poses of the flying apsaras, who were a kind of nymph flying through the air trailing long, curling gossamer ribbons. On Zhongmei’s second day of rehearsal, the girls spent the entire time on a single movement, a very hard one. The dancer stands with one arm raised over her head, the other extended in front of her, the body arched
backward, one foot raised behind her while she turns smoothly through one or more complete rotations on the other.

“The trick is to hold the position and to turn in a single, smooth, slow motion,” Teacher Peng said. “Don’t turn a little bit, then stop, then turn a bit more. You have to get enough momentum to complete the turn at the same speed all the way around, but not so much momentum that you start fast and end up slow, or go too far around so you end up with your behind facing the audience.”

The other girls laughed at that, but Zhongmei was thinking. The same speed all the way around! One smooth uninterrupted motion! Zhongmei wondered if she could ever do that. After a while of trying, her hip and calf muscles burned with the effort, but she kept on trying.

“Not too fast,” Teacher Peng said. “Slowly. It’s even harder when done slowly, but it’s more graceful and stately that way.”

At the end of the class each of the girls did the movement in turn while the other girls watched. Most of them could manage at least one respectable turn, but when Zhongmei’s turn came, she failed miserably, flailing her arms to keep her balance while wobbling on her right foot as she tried to make the turn.

“Don’t be discouraged,” Teacher Peng said. “Nobody gets it on the first try. We’ll do it again tomorrow.”

That night, during the practice hour before lights-out, Zhongmei went into a corner of studio two and practiced it over and over. She felt it was like a figure skater’s spin, except a figure skater has a metal blade and ice to turn on. A dancer has only the ball of her foot, which had to be planted firmly
in the ground like a spike and to be able to turn effortlessly at the same time. Zhongmei took up the position, her arm over her head like an overhanging branch, her leg curved backward, her body tilted, and then turned. And again. And again. By the end of the hour, she was able to do one turn well enough so she didn’t look like a clown pretending to be a dancer. The next day, she tried again and the day after that, until one turn looked pretty good to her as she examined herself in the mirror, but the second and third turns were wobbly and uneven. Would she ever get it?

Zhongmei also went to rehearsal every afternoon, and she kept on practicing at night. After two weeks, Teacher Peng had each of the students in her class do a small performance, just that movement, in front of the others.

“Those of you who have mastered it will go on to the next movement; those of you who haven’t will prepare something a bit easier for the final performance,” she said.

Zhongmei, as the youngest in the class, was the last to go. She watched as the other girls did the movement, and all of them were pretty good. They could all do at least one excellent turn, some of them two and even three. After each mini-performance, all the girls applauded politely, wanting, no doubt, to be applauded in turn.

It was Zhongmei’s turn. She could see from the expressions on the other girls’ faces that not much was expected of her. She was, after all, only a first-year student, and she had started the rehearsal late, so surely she would be behind the others. If she managed one shaky turn, she would be doing pretty well. As long as she made it all the way around, stopped with her
front toward the audience, and didn’t end up sprawled on the studio floor.

She took her place in the middle of the studio. She saw herself in the mirror on the opposite wall as she raised her arms and went into her spin. When she finished, the girls, sitting on the floor in front of the mirror, were silent and expressionless. There was no applause at all. Zhongmei was crestfallen. She felt she had done pretty well. Why this disapproving silence from her fellow students? Did they hate her because she was a farm girl, or because she was just a first-year student who had gotten special treatment from Vice Director Jia?

Then, after a long minute, one of the girls started to clap her hands. And then the others joined in, not perfunctorily like before, but loud and long. Zhongmei saw that Teacher Peng, who was standing on the side, was also applauding and smiling as she did so.

“Three perfect rotations!” she exclaimed when the applause had finally died away. “And two weeks ago, you could hardly do one! I think at the very least, Zhongmei deserves the prize for most progress.”

It wasn’t lost on Zhongmei that Teacher Peng wanted her to succeed, in contrast to Teacher Zhu, who wanted her to fail, and that Teacher Peng would view a success by Zhongmei as a success for herself. This realization brought tears to Zhongmei’s eyes.

“The next step is the long sleeves,” Teacher Peng said as she handed Zhongmei a ribbon of blue-gray silk. The two of them were alone in the rehearsal studio, because Teacher Peng had
been so pleased with Zhongmei’s progress that she was giving her extra classes to prepare for the final-day performance. The ribbon was divided in the middle by a heavy twist of fabric that rested on the dancer’s shoulders, so that the lengths on each side were thirty-five feet long.

“They’re awfully long,” Zhongmei said. “How can anybody possibly control them?”

“They’re long because they symbolize streaks of heavenly light, and I’m going to teach you how to control them.”

Teacher Peng placed the twist of fabric over Zhongmei’s shoulders and put one ribbon end in each of Zhongmei’s hands.

“The idea is to think the ribbons into the air, to think them into swirling around you like the breeze, and when you have your thoughts right, your arms and hands will take care of the rest.”

“OK, I’m thinking, but the ribbons aren’t flying,” Zhongmei said, and the two of them laughed.

“Think the ribbon into the air, and as you think, raise your arms and begin to turn to give them some lift.”

Zhongmei followed directions.

“That’s right,” Teacher Peng said. “They’re both airborne. Now keep thinking them up in the air. Keep turning. And then, whirl your right arm over your head so the right ribbon arches up; then just as it begins to settle down, do the same thing with the left one.”

Zhongmei whirled the right ribbon, but it caught on the left-hand ribbon, and the whole thing ended up in a tangled heap on the floor.

“That’s OK,” Teacher Peng called. “It would have been a
miracle if you’d done it the first time. Try again. Think the ribbon up. Think it swirling around your head. Think it describing circles in front of you. And then your hands and arms will do what’s necessary.”

“I have two weeks to get ready,” Zhongmei said. “Do you really think I can do it?”

“My dear,” said Teacher Peng, “I think you can do anything you set your mind to.”

And for the first time in the nine months that Zhongmei had been at the Beijing Dance Academy, she felt something like happiness.

“M
ay I speak with you?”

Zhongmei, lying on her upper bunk just before lights-out, was so absorbed in the book she was reading that at first she didn’t even hear Jinhua’s voice. The book contained a collection of reproductions of the Dunhuang cave paintings that she studied every night, pictures that teemed with life, with amazing, sinuous images, a lustrous blending of pastels, and costumes of intricate elegance. Being extremely old, many of the paintings were faded and cracked, but that only increased their appeal for Zhongmei. There was a burnished quality about them, a radiance that came from within that something brand-new and shiny could never have. Here, for example, was a celestial musician floating in a space of streaming colors exactly like the long silk ribbons kept aloft by the apsara Zhongmei incarnated in the dance she was learning, her body curved gracefully, her long, slender fingers cradling a flute. It was as though the image were speaking across the
centuries to Zhongmei, telling her, “Be beautiful and ethereal like me; bring me to life.”