Petals from the Sky

by Mingmei Yip

  “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.

  I guessed that Mother secretly thought little brother’s death came as a punishment for her love with Father. Other times she’d think that little brother had actually died of malnutrition because she didn’t have enough milk to feed him. Because Father, his money lost to the gambling house, hadn’t brought enough food home to feed her in the first place. However, this didn’t keep Mother from questioning all the gods and goddesses about why they’d planted such a beautiful seed on earth, but had crushed its chance to grow, flower, and bear fruit.

  But Father thought about another kind of chance, as in gambling: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. He even wrote a poem. “I call it chance”:

  Sometimes you win

  Sometimes you lose.

  My baby boy born and gone.

  Like the gold on the gambling table.

  In life there’s no take two.

  Gambling has a different rule:

  Nobody knows if luck’s up or down.

  Today I lose; tomorrow I’ll win

  Keep going; there’s always another round.

  When I was small, Father would whisper this poem into my ear. “Ning Ning, this is a secret between you and me only.” Then he’d hold my hand, whirl me around and around, and begin to sing, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose…” Toward the end, his voice would trickle like water dripping from the tap-“So just keep going, there’s another round, another round”-until I collapsed in his arms in giggles. I couldn’t believe that I used to be so happy to hear Father sing this poem. Now I felt sick…

  And a touch on my thigh. Michael slipped me a piece of paper-a handwritten haiku:

  These thirty-eight years

  All empty now.

  Can the rest be full?

  Followed by:

  I love you. Meng Ning, will you marry me?

  Startled, I didn’t know how to react. As if sensing my emotions, the music now suddenly became stormy with a cacophony of drums, cymbals, flutes, fiddles, and a frantic beating of the wooden fish. Michael took my hand in his; I felt its warmth, but also my own confusion. Slowly I withdrew myself, feeling sad, guilty, and uncertain.

  A long pause.

  I lowered my head and whispered a soft, “No.”

  Right then the curtain fell and the opera ended amid waves of applause crashing out at the performers. When the crowd began to disperse, Michael excused himself to go to the men’s room. Although he looked calm and poised when he came back, I noticed the red in his eyes and his wet hair.

  “Meng Ning, you want to go back to the hotel with me to have something to eat before I take you home?” he asked awkwardly, our bodies pressing against each other in the lobby swarming with people.

  We walked back to the Kowloon Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui in silence. Once inside the lobby, Michael led me to the counter to check whether he had messages.

  He did.

  “Damn!”

  “What’s wrong, Michael?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s urgent. I need to return the call immediately.”

  “I’ll take a taxi home then.”

  “No…”

  “Don’t worry, Michael. It’s just a ten-minute ride.”

  “No. I can’t let you go home by yourself,” he said, his voice full of concern and tenderness, breaking my heart.

  But I insisted repeatedly until he gave in.

  Michael hailed a taxi in front of the hotel and helped me get in. The door closed with a disheartening thump. I turned to him and our eyes locked.

  When the taxi started to take off, he mouthed, “Take care. I love you.”

  His face was lost among a crowd thronging toward the entrance. My heart hurt with such a swelling emptiness that I wanted to cry, but no tears came.

  Did I really want the life of the empty gate?

  12. The Nun and the Prostitute

  I didn’t hear from Michael the next morning. Finally, just before eleven (his flight was scheduled to leave at two-thirty), I called the Kowloon Hotel, but the receptionist told me that he had already checked out. However, a letter had been left for me.

  I got out of the taxi at the entrance to the Kowloon Hotel, hurried to the counter, took the letter from the receptionist, tore it open, and stood in the lobby to read.

  Dear Meng Ning,

  Professor Fulton has suddenly fallen very sick while visiting a temple in Lhasa. I had to take a flight to Sichuan at six AM, the only way I can connect to Lhasa today. I believe things will turn out fine, so please don’t worry. I’ll call you as soon as I can.

  Love,

  Michael

  By myself in the lobby, I tried very hard to stifle tears as I watched tourists-faces beaming and laughing as if mocking my misery-whirling in and out of the hotel’s glass door.<
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  A week had gone by and I still hadn’t heard anything from Michael. I thought again of Yi Kong and realized I had not inquired about her since my visit to her in the hospital. I decided to make a trip to the Golden Lotus Temple.

  Walking down the sunny corridor lined with potted plants leading to Yi Kong’s office, I ran into a young nun clasping a stack of files in her arms and asked her about Yi Kong. She told me, with chin pressed to the folders to keep them from falling, that her mistress had flown to Shanxi to invite high monks to come to bless the Fragrant Spirit Temple after the fire.

  I asked about the damage caused.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said, her tone casual. “Except that the whole five thousand three hundred and twenty sutras of the Tripitaka were burnt to ashes.”

  “I’m so sorry!”

  A meaningful smile flashed on the nun’s face. “But doesn’t Yi Kong Shifu always teach us that everything in this world is transient?”

  An awkward pause, then she said, “Miss, before you leave, please take a look at our new Tang dynasty-style temple complex, which took Yi Kong Shifu five years to achieve.” After that, she lumbered down the corridor and disappeared down the stairs.

  I wandered about the temple complex, stopping here and there to try to figure out the locations of the old places I’d been familiar with before I’d left to study in Paris. Construction was going on all over the place. Half-finished buildings, surrounded by bamboo scaffoldings and green mesh, looked imposing but vulnerable, like huge bandaged animals. Thick-torsoed workmen in yellow hard hats, shorts, and soaked T-shirts or bodies bared to the waist, toiled with intense concentration-cementing a foundation, plastering a wall, hammering a beam, pushing a cart piled with bricks. Sweat dripped down their deeply tanned faces; their tightly muscled arms flexed and gleamed under the scorching sun. Judging from their solemn expressions, they must have felt honored to work for the most influential temple in Hong Kong.

  The new sites under construction did not really interest me. I wanted to go to the old stone garden, hoping to see the carp in the fishpond. Before I went to Paris, I’d spent many days reading in the garden, perched on my favorite stone bench overlooking the pond. When tired, I’d walk up close and stare at the carp to abstract my spirit. Sometimes Yi Kong would join me to discourse on Buddhism, the arts, or her many charitable projects while we sat shaded from the sun, or under the bright moon and twinkling stars.