“Then,” says Liù, daring to look up, “there is forgiveness in you after all.”
With the Princess, Liù feels oddly free to speak. Each mistake means death, but Liù is used to death—and each success builds on the last. But the Stranger is a worn groove, a river of desire. He is always the same, always smiling, always sure he will win.
“She loves me,” says the Stranger, deaf to Liù’s protests on the filthy street.
“How do you know?” says Liù.
“She loves me,” says the Stranger.
“Even if she does love you,” says Liù, “what of it? If she loves you yet chooses against you, can you not honor that choice?”
“She loves me,” says the Stranger.
It goes on until Liù wishes to melt into the ground, to run to the executioner and have done with it. It does not change.
“I know what you are doing,” the Conductor announces after the curtain falls.
“Pardon?” says the Soprano.
Every night the Soprano resolves to do better next time. But she does not know how to sing without letting the character through. Every evening the Soprano goes elsewhere, and Liù deviates further and further from the libretto.
The Conductor snorts. “You think you are being clever. And my producers agree. The audience, they stream in like never before. It fascinates them, seeing a different opera every night. The papers, they gush—come see Turandot, the opera that the great maestro Puccini died writing. Come see us finish it differently each night; come see what might have been. They go on like this. But that is because they are fools. They do not see where it is headed.”
The Soprano smiles nervously. “Frankly, I’m not sure I see where this is headed.”
“It is headed to Liù surviving,” the Conductor snaps. “That is what you are trying to do. And once the audience realizes that, they will flee. You do not understand the people who come to these operas, signorina. For a romance with a happy ending, they look to Rossini. For sheer scale, they go to Wagner. Our audience is not like this. The people come to Turandot to watch the death of a beautiful woman. This is what Puccini does best. His money shot, if you will. I have hired you to sing those four gorgeous notes in your first aria, then to die; the rest is filler. Take the death away, and—” He makes a cutting gesture across his throat. “Liù dies either way, signorina. Physically or musically. Choose.”
The Lord Chancellor looks up from his books in surprise as Liù stumbles into his room, ushered by a pair of guards. She drops to her knees in front of him, bows her head in supplication.
“What is this?” demands the Chancellor. “Who is this?”
“Only a slave,” says Liù. “Less than no one, Excellency. You may kill me if you like. But I believe I am in a position to help you, if I know enough, and you are the most learned man in this empire. If it pleases Your Excellency, may we speak of the Princess’s current difficulties?”
The Chancellor smiles thinly. “My dear, they are my bread and butter. I want nothing more than for the little harridan to be married and the matter done with. Then I can retire to my home by the little blue lake in Honan. Rise; I will probably not kill you. But I am afraid I cannot help you very much.”
Liù does not rise. She manages, with an effort, to lift her gaze from the floor. She is not used to speaking to people she has not spoken to before, beginning conversations that were not tested and rehearsed a thousand times.
“Excellency,” she says, “I wish to know whatever you can tell me about ghosts. And stories. And . . . the way the two are trapped together.”
The Chancellor flicks ink off the end of his pen. “An overly vague request. The Princess claims to have a ghost, but personally, I doubt it. I think it is the story she prefers to tell.”
“But that is just it,” says Liù. “Imagine if someone was trapped in a story. Imagine if they could not stop executing men, or chasing a woman who does not want them, or—or dying, because they could not get out of the story. If the story refused to change, no matter what they did or how they argued.”
The Chancellor half smiles. “You are thinking of the Stranger.”
Liù’s mouth goes dry. They will kill her again, of course. As soon as the Chancellor finishes this conversation, he will send her to the executioner and have her interrogated; anyone who cares enough about the Stranger to ask, on his behalf, must know his name.
It does not matter. She has died so many times already.
“Slave,” says the Chancellor, “do you know the word protagonist?”
Liù nods hesitantly.
“Your Stranger is a protagonist. He is the one that the story revolves around. And the closer one is to the heart of a story, the less choice one has. Have you not noticed? He is paper-thin, apart from his desire, his protagonisthood—the thing that he will get at any cost, even if it kills him. If you wish for something to change, my dear slave, the Stranger is not where you must look. And I would not want you to change him anyway. He must do his duty and get this Princess off our hands so I can finally stop executing people and see Honan again.”
He spits the word Princess like an epithet.
“Even if it harms her?” Liù asks.
She is not sure why she asks. The Princess used to be a malignant force, as incomprehensible as the noble men who beat her for no reason. Yet though the Princess kills her again and again, Liù is beginning to see the glimmer of something else.
“Between you and me,” says the Chancellor, “she deserves it.”
The Princess is beginning to regret having Liù killed. Liù is a fool. Liù is weak. Yet she seems to understand how things work here, how the same story recurs again and again. Each time the opera begins, the Princess feels a greater unease, a premonition that things cannot continue this way forever.
“Daughter,” says the Emperor, shuffling through the garden flanked by his masked guards. “The Persian Prince is dead.”
“Yes, Noble Father. He stared into my eyes as the blade came down. What is it that you want?”
“He had family, you know. There was a slave who loved him.”
“I do not care,” says the Princess, swallowing hard, thinking of docile little Liù. “You swore to support me in this.”
“And my word is sacred.” The Emperor sighs and settles himself on a low bench next to her. “But, daughter, the soul of the empire is changing. It is time, I think, to speak with you again about Lo-u-Ling.”
The Princess looks up sharply. “What about her?”
“You know that Lo-u-Ling’s war is not the only violent incident in the empire’s history, nor the only one to reach the imperial palace. In your own lifetime, even, there was the Bellflower Rebellion.”
The Princess knows this, though she does not remember very much. She was twelve. She has a few blurry images, the feeling of hiding. Mostly her servants kept her safe.
The Emperor’s voice cracks with anguish. “My scribes have checked the ancient books. And what you say about Lo-u-Ling is not correct. She was not killed. How could she be your ancestress if she was killed before she bore children? What the invaders did to her was unforgivable. But she outlived them. She would not have wished for children who see only what was done to her then and not the wise leader she became. Daughter, whatever it is that has taken up residence in you—”
“I will hear no more.” The Princess stands abruptly. She does not understand why his words enrage her as they do, why she feels like fleeing and taking up arms both at once. “No more!”