Fu Tsong loved Shakespeare.
“Because of his deep humanity and his belief in love,” she said coming into the bedroom, a cup of steaming cha in her hands. Her favourite silk robe, sashed at her waist, clung to her slender frame. A bath towel swathed her hair. He stared openly at her beauty. She smiled then shook her head slowly.
“What?” he asked, feigning innocence.
“Later, Fong. Later. The play first. ‘That’ later.” Her laugh tickled the walls and lit up their modest rooms. “So tell me what you’ve found for me in this play. You have done your homework, I hope.”
He had been examining the text on his lunch breaks. “I’ve read this Measure for Measure, Fu Tsong.”
“That’s a beginning. So?”
“It loses me. All the time, I’m off-balance with this one. Are there sections missing from it or something?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“But what the characters do doesn’t make sense.”
She took that in and nodded, “An example, please.”
“Well, Angelo’s the villain, right?”
“So it would seem,” she said sitting beside him on the bed.
Turning to her, he went on. “Then what kind of punishment is it for the villain to have to marry Marianne at the end? For that matter, how do the rewards in this play work anyway? I mean ‘Measure for Measure,’ the title, refers to equal for equal, doesn’t it? Rice bowl for rice bowl.”
“It’s a reference to the long nose’s Bible. Biblical justice.”
“Justice.” The word came from Fong’s mouth like something spat to the ground.
She was surprised. “Fong?”
Fong was on his feet, his angular body tense. “Justice! Justice! Who knows anything about justice? How does justice work?”
“This from a police officer, sir?” she said, twinkling, but was careful not to mock.
He turned to her. His face a mask of anger. “I’ve been a cop for twelve years and I don’t know if I’ve been involved in a single case in which justice was the issue. Retribution. Setting an example. Simple frustration. Putting an end to something. Prevention. Yes. But justice? I don’t know. When foreign delegations come to the city, we sweep the beggars off the Bund promenade. Is there any justice in that? When a peasant, freshly arrived at the North Train Station, looks at the wealth of the thieving Taiwanese and helps himself to some of it, is it justice that we throw him in prison? Why shouldn’t the whoreson Taiwanese be thrown in prison for the theft his father must have committed to allow him that much money?” Fu Tsong knew better than to try and stop him. “I spend whole months as a police officer where justice isn’t even mentioned. Not even thought about.” He turned from her and stared out the window. A group of untalented student actors lounged on the grass as if they had somehow earned the right to green space in the concrete jungle that was Shanghai.
Fu Tsong stared at him. She had come from a comfortable background. A loving mother and doting father. A whole family that had contributed to her education as an actress. Fong’s life had been much different. He pretended his life had begun when he met her. Only on occasion did she get glimpses into her husband’s past – most often when they went to Shanghai’s Old City. There he’d change before her eyes. People seemed to know him there. He’d stop standing erect and hunch over, crowd into himself, become a thing of that dank and dark place.
It always amazed her. He became so unlike the proud man that she knew and loved. This was an urban peasant. A spitter.
What she didn’t know was that in fact this was a night-soil collector. A person who makes his living from others’ waste products has a very different view of life than those who deposit their filled honey buckets on the street at night, and then retrieve them magically emptied in the morning.
“Are the first lines in scenes in Shakespeare the first lines of the conversation?”
“Fong?”
He turned toward her. “Is the first thing said in a scene the first thing said between the characters?” he repeated.
Fu Tsong thought about this for a moment. “Not always. Often it’s the first important thing said. Why, Fong? Have you found something in Measure for Measure that . . .”
“This Isabella. This nun person?”
“My role.”
“Yes,” he threw up his hands and began to pace. “Yes, this unlikely casting of my lascivious wife as a nun.” She took the towel from her head and snapped it at him. “Fine. This aggressive, lascivious wife of mine who’s supposed to be a nun . . .”
“Yes, dear – and your question would be?”
“Isabella, this woman who wants to be a nun, who you’re about to play?”
“Yes, Fong?” She tapped her foot in mock impatience.
“What’s the first thing she says in the play?”
Fu Tsong looked at him. He repeated his question. “What’s the first thing she says in the play?”
Fu Tsong reached for her Complete Works of Shakespeare, but Fong pulled it away.
“The first thing that this nun person says in Measure for Measure is ‘And have you nuns no further privileges?’ And what more privileges does she want? A second rice bowl, a new dress – a new lover – what? And isn’t it odd that that’s the first thing out of her mouth? This supposed virgin. And what about this Duke who walks away from his responsibilities? Hands over his kingdom to this villain Angelo. Is he not guilty of some offence? And what is he doing at the friar’s place when he leaves the court? He wants a disguise. Fine. But what does his opening line in that scene mean? ‘No, holy father; throw away that thought.’ What thought? That he is here for some lecherous rendezvous? And obviously from the way he’s speaking to the man, he has been there before. So is this Duke, this lecher, the man who will mete out justice? And going back to Isabella. Why is she anxious to join a nunnery? She doesn’t seem religious. Why is she going there? Is she spurned?”
“I love it when you talk like that, spurned.” She patted the bed beside her. He sat. “Say it again Fong. Spurned.” Her voice was suddenly hoarse.
“Spurned.”
She touched his lips with a hand soft as velvet. Then her fingers parted his lips and entered his mouth. Her eyes never left his. His tongue tasted the perfume on her fingertips.
She got to her feet. The sash whispered to the floor. “You going to spurn me, Fong?”
“I believe not,” he tried to say, but no sound came from his lips.
She smiled and let her robe fall away.
He managed to say her name, but his voice was pulled so far back in his throat that the words sounded as if they came from someone else. Someone far, far away.
After, entwined, she talked through her ideas of the character – of seeking piety, of celibacy and purity. He countered with Isabella’s refusal to face her own carnal desires. Her selfishness in the face of her brother’s death. Finally she threw aside the bedcovers and walked, lithe and naked, to the closet. He got up and sat on the side of the bed, waiting.
She returned with her Peking Opera stage paints and brushes. She straddled his leg and held out two large combs. He felt her wetness – their wetness – on his thigh. He reached up and put her long hair behind her shoulders. Then he pinned back her long bangs.
She stared into his eyes and began to talk. Just ideas of Isabella. Images. Flows of self. Currents of character. As she spoke he took the paints and brushes and began. Long ago she’d taught him the art of Peking Opera makeup. He’d been a swift and avid learner. Applying a beautiful artifice to the true beauty of her face sent razor shards of erotic shocks through his system. It was so close, as close as they could get.
Over his shoulder she looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror. And slowly the naturalistic Isabella grew beneath the artificial surface of the makeup. When he finished, she allowed her hands to trace his naked torso.