Petals from the Sky (7 page)

11

The Proposal

I
called the Kowloon Hotel and asked for Michael several times, but each time the syrupy, professional voice of the receptionist told me he was out. Finally Michael called back at five, but I was quite upset because now we’d only have a few hours together before he had to fly back to New York tomorrow.

I could hear the tension in his voice. “Meng Ning, I called several times in the morning, but a woman kept telling me that I dialed the wrong number.”

“That’s my mother.”

“Hope she’s not offended.”

“I don’t think so. She’s just overprotective of me.”

Our conversation was brief and somewhat strained; however, toward the end, it started to brighten up when Michael invited me to dinner, then asked if I’d like to go to the Cultural Centre to see a Chinese opera performance.

We went to Tsim Sha Tsui and dined at the Merit Forest Vegetarian Restaurant. After dinner, Michael and I strolled down Nathan Road toward the Cultural Centre. Neither of us mentioned what had happened between us the previous night.

As we were window-shopping, enveloped by the heat and noise of the boulevard, I noticed our reflections in the glass. Michael’s arm encircled my waist; I nestled my head on his shoulder. Bathed in the shimmering neon light, he looked cheerful, as usual. His beige suit hung well on his broad shoulders, and his flowered tie in burgundy, brass, and amber complemented my floral dress in Chinese imperial yellow. My face was flushed and my hair tumbled loosely around my shoulders. Mother was right; I looked drunk—in a man’s aura.

Once inside the Cultural Centre, Michael excused himself to get us drinks. I looked around and saw that on the pink-tiled walls, colorful banners advertised upcoming performances. One, advertising a Beijing opera, showed a heavily made-up figure in a pearl-tasseled crown and a many-layered, sequined costume. But “she” was a man. Beneath the banner a group of expensively dressed
tai tai
s, society women, were discussing this impersonator. One—her plump, gold-bangled hand gesturing in big movements—spoke shrilly: “He can play a young widow so well because he’s a man, so he’s not inhibited. That’s why he can express a woman’s frustrated sexual desire so openly.”

Her friend in a pink suit nodded. “But if a woman acted like that, could she have face to go home to her husband?”

A pretty one in an embroidered Chinese dress chimed in, her diamond teardrop earrings swaying erotically in the air. “Ah, Mrs. Chan, you don’t have to worry.” She winked. “If she acted like that I bet her husband would find her even more desirable!”

They all giggled, covering their mouths with their brightly manicured, many-ringed fingers.

Michael returned with orange juice in tall glasses. I told him about the ladies’ conversation.

“That’s an interesting theory.” He handed me the glass and a neatly folded napkin, and looked at me curiously. “But don’t you think a man will also lose face by acting like a
real
woman?”

“No, on the contrary. He’ll gain face.” When I tried to drink, the rim of the tall glass hit my nose. “Chinese used to think that because men are free of the impurities of the female body, they can portray feminine beauty from a distance—and render a more gripping performance.”

Michael touched my hair. “Meng Ning, you really know a lot about Chinese opera.”

“My mother is a Chinese opera fan. She used to take me to performances when I was a kid.”

He searched my eyes. “You think I’ll have the chance to meet her someday?”

Right then the bell chimed. Michael cupped my elbow and eased me through the throng into the concert hall. A young Chinese woman in a tight dress and spiked heels moved rhythmically ahead of us. Her ponytail kept pecking her buttocks while her arm held tightly onto a foreigner.

Discreetly, I freed myself from Michael’s grasp. Hadn’t I promised myself I’d never be attached to a man?

Inside the concert hall, the mostly middle-aged and elderly audience settled into their seats. At the right-hand corner of the stage, a small orchestra gathered, its musicians carrying drums, gongs, clappers, cymbals, two-stringed fiddles, flutes, and a wooden fish.

After Michael and I had exchanged more small talk, we began to read the program notes amid the crescendoed ambush of the tuning. There were two performances tonight: “Longing for the Pleasures of the World” and “Seduction of the Zither.”

“Longing for the Pleasures of the World” told about a beautiful young nun forced by sickness and poverty to enter a nunnery as a child. Reaching womanhood and bored by the daily routine of
sutra
-reciting among lifeless statues, she decided—after many months of inner turmoil—to taste the forbidden splendors of the floating world outside. “Seduction of the Zither” told how a young scholar seduced a Daoist nun by skillfully playing the
qin
—the seven-stringed zither.

A strange feeling crept over me. Could it be coincidence that Michael and I came to see two operas about the love stories of nuns? Was Michael—like the scholar—a messenger of some mysterious destiny, sent to lure me further away from the empty gate? Were the two operas to tell me that the world outside, not the one inside the temple, was my true calling in life? Or were they warning me against its temptation?

I turned to look at Michael; he squeezed my hand, then continued to read his program notes.

The orchestra began with ear-splitting sounds of drums and gongs, and the lights dimmed to the audience’s enthusiastic applause. Next to the orchestra, English subtitles were projected on a screen.

Slowly, the curtain rose to reveal a temple scene with a nun in a loose robe, her bald head simulated by a pink plastic wrap. The flute began to play a mournful tune in the background, and the nun, her eyes flitting among the various objects on the altar—a bell, a drum, a roll of
sutra,
a big-bellied Buddha—recited in a melancholic tone, “A pity that my head was shaved to become a nun. Time spins fast and spins people old. I don’t want to sacrifice my youth for nothing!”

Stroking her “bald” head, she declared, “My name is Form Is Emptiness. In my youth, my mistress shaved my head to make me a nun.” She frowned, her delicate finger pointing to an embroidered pillow. “Every day I burn incense and recite the
sutra,
while every night I sleep alone with only this pillow!”

The music changed to a passionate outpouring of fiddles, flutes, gongs, and cymbals, with the nun singing in a high-pitched voice full of sweet innocence. “What a pity that my cushion is not a wife’s pillow.” She pouted her lips. “I am a woman, not a man, so why should I shave my head and wear a loose robe?”

She strode to the imaginary temple gate, made a butterfly stroke with her white-powdered hands, and delicately extended a step. Her expression turned mischievous. “Every morning when I burn incense, I see a lad idling on the mountain behind the temple. He keeps peeking at me and I keep peeking back. Ah, how we long for each other, my destined love! My destined love!”

She turned to look directly at the audience, her tone decisive. “I don’t care if the King of Hell is going to punish me by throwing me into a boiling wok or sawing me in two. Let him do whatever he wants.” Suddenly the music increased in speed and volume; she wildly beat her chest. “We always see the living souls suffer. When do we see the dead despair? Ah, I don’t care! I don’t care! I’m going to tear my robe and bury my
sutras,
throw away my wooden fish and give up my cymbal. I don’t care what the King of Hell will do to me when I’m dead!”

Both the music and the nun’s singing shot to an extremely high register. “Honestly, I don’t want to be enlightened! I don’t want to recite the Heart Sutra!” She yanked her robe, her eyes glowing with passion. “Whenever I see husband and wife wearing silk and brocade, drinking wine and making merry, my heart burns with desire! Burns with desire!”

This bold declaration from a Buddhist nun took me aback, even though it was only a play. I peeked at Michael; he looked thoughtful. I turned around and looked at the audience. Some men cackled. The foreigner looked thrilled, while Ponytail next to him smiled a dimpled smile. Several rows behind them the three
tai tais
giggled, this time without covering their mouths and so revealing all their gleaming teeth.

I turned back to the stage to find the nun now singing with a lingering voice, as if unwilling to let go. “I wish I might soon give birth to a baby boy, and joy is awaiting! Joy is awaiting!” Then the curtain closed on this unabashed pronouncement, to the audience’s thunderous applause.

It was intermission and when the cheers died down, Michael turned to me, his face vivid. “Wonderful, Meng Ning.” Then he asked me how I liked it, but I was still too disturbed to give any opinion. Finally I managed to comment on the actress’s supple body movements, her rich falsetto, and the orchestra’s lively playing…all to avoid talking about the story.

But not Michael. He said, “I think the nun looks like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s so pretty and lively. She just…makes me think of you.” He smiled suggestively, then said, “I think people shouldn’t stay inside the empty gate if it’s against their nature to be monks or nuns.”

His words sent a tremor across my chest. Had he realized that I’d always wanted to be a nun? But before I could respond, he eyed me askance and said, “When I first got seriously interested in Buddhism, I thought of becoming a monk. But I realized that it’s not for me.”

I felt myself starting to blush. He went on: “I once read a Japanese legend about an immortal. One day when he flew above a river, he happened to look down and see a pretty woman washing clothes by stamping her feet on the garments. Her beautiful legs dazzled him so much that he instantly lost his magical power and fell to earth. But he had no regrets about becoming mortal—he’d realized that if a man has no taste for women, he has no life.” Michael’s expression turned mischievous. “So, if I’d become a monk I’d have been like him.”

As I wondered what to say to this, the light dimmed and the curtain began to rise. Michael turned back to look at the stage.

The flute led the other instruments in a lyrical melody as the second play opened. In a garden, the Daoist nun Wonderful Eternity played the
qin
under the moonlight, her hair wrapped up in a tight bun and tied with a long, flowing white ribbon. A handsome but effete-looking scholar hid behind the imaginary temple gate and listened intently to her playing. A smile bloomed on his face as he watched her fingers glide on the strings like butterflies drifting from flower to flower.

When the nun had finished, the scholar stepped forward and bowed, introducing himself as a poet and
qin
player. They exchanged small talk about music and poetry, then the nun invited him to play. The scholar seated himself, paused in meditation, put his fingers on the strings, and began to sing, “In the clear morning, the turtledove flies home by himself, feeling lonesome because he has no wife. Single for such a long time, I feel lonely, oh so lonely….”

While I concentrated on the scholar’s quivering voice and the vibrato of the fiddle imitating the subtle inflection of the
qin,
I felt my stomach whipped by some delicate emotions. Onstage, the scholar stole a glance at the nun to see her reaction.

I peeked at Michael; he was also looking at me. I lost myself in his face for a few moments, battling an urge to kiss his intense, searching eyes. The wailing of a flute broke the spell of our stares and I turned my attention back to the events onstage.

Now the scholar stepped out of the nun’s garden as she sang to herself, “I deliberately put on a harsh expression, and talked as if I didn’t understand his insinuation of love. How can I, being a nun, accept his love?” Her voice turned anxious. “But, while pretending not to understand his love, my heart aches with desire for his tenderness!”

The nun bent her slim torso to watch the scholar’s departing back, her eyes flickering with longing and melancholy. “Ah, look at the moon, casting a lonely shadow on him, as well as on me….”

My mind began to drift. Was a nun’s life that lonely? Yes, according to Mother’s description of No Name’s existence. No Name had passed endless nights in her bare room inside the walled nunnery, with only the faint glow of a solitary lamp, the echoes of her own monotonous chanting, the tedious beating of the wooden fish…and emptiness. Endless emptiness, which had become so haunting and overwhelming that it had finally taken her last breath on earth.

Yet my mentor Yi Kong’s life seemed to me quite the opposite of No Name’s. Yi Kong meditated and chanted, but she also lectured and traveled extensively, painted, took photographs, collected art—and large donations. A celebrity surrounded by admirers and followers, she was never lonely.

Which nun’s life painted a truer picture of life within the empty gate—Yi Kong’s or No Name’s?

I couldn’t be sure. I was only sure that as a woman, Yi Kong had a higher vision of her life than just to let a man in, get married, and have children.

But Mother said, “Higher vision? Nonsense! What kind of vision can be higher for a woman than to get married and raise children? That’s her heavenly duty!”

But heavenly duty can turn to hell, as when Mother lost her baby—my chubby little brother—who’d died at three days old. Mother told me little brother had looked perfectly healthy with bright eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a full head of hair, even when his tiny body, the size of a small thermos, lay motionless in an equally tiny crib. He was sick, of what nobody knew. In the column for cause of death on his death certificate, the doctor only put down one character: Unknown. As if little brother’s life, and death, were not worth any deeper concern beyond this one word.

As a child, I thought maybe my little brother just didn’t want to be born into the world. This thought made me sad, because, had he lived, he would have enjoyed my tenderest love. I’d have sung him lullabies to sweeten his dreams; told him heroic tales to strengthen his character; knitted him warm sweaters when cold wind began to blow from the north; cooked him hot, tonic soup and wholesome meals when his stomach rumbled hungrily; loved him with all my being and soul and shared with him my heart’s deepest secrets.