The Wudu La Grand Theater had been converted from an old power plant. The red brick walls still bore the steel beams that had once hoisted the boilers, rust bleeding from the edges of the rivets and staining the brick with dark red streaks.
Tsukago walked beside me.
The interior of the theater preserved the original structure of the plant. The audience seating was embedded between the old turbine foundations, and the stage was built beneath what had once been the coal bunker.
The crane rails still ran across the ceiling, and the rusted hooks hung suspended in midair, dyed dark gold by the stage lights. The aisles between the seats were very narrow, knees nearly pressing against the backs of the chairs in the row ahead.
The lights dimmed. The hooks on the ceiling vanished into the shadows. The curtain parted. The set on stage was a river. The river was made from gray silk cloth, lit from beneath so that the silk rippled.
The play was called The Man by the River. It told the story of a boatman and his daughter. The boatman ferried people across the river, from his youth into old age. When the daughter was small, she would sit on the gunwale, her feet dangling in the water, and the boatman would teach her to recognize every bird on the river.
Later, the daughter got into a university and went to the city. The boatman stayed by the river alone. He still ferried people every day, but fewer and fewer people came. Someone had built a bridge, just two hundred meters upriver from the ferry crossing. He still rowed every day, from this side to that side, from that side back to this side.
In one scene, the boatman spread a map across the empty cabin. The map was marked with the route his daughter had taken to school: from the river to the train station, from the train station to the provincial capital, from the provincial capital to somewhere even farther.
He traced the route with the pole he used to push the boat, and each time, the pole stopped on the city where his daughter was in school. That city was very far from the river. There was no water on the map there, only streets packed densely with names. When he finished tracing, he set the pole down, folded the map, and tucked it into a crack in the cabin wall.
In the final scene, the boatman burned his boat. He splashed a bucket of kerosene onto the gunwale and struck a match. The silk river was lit orange by the flames, and the boat collapsed in the fire. Ashes floated across the surface of the water, settling into the folds of the silk, darkening and then lit again by new fire.
Someone in the audience sniffled. Someone else rummaged through their bag for a tissue.
——Some people on stage are burning props.Some people by the river are burning the boat they rowed for thirty years.
Tsukago cried. No sound came out, but tears streamed down her cheeks and soaked a small patch into the program resting on her lap. The program was pale yellow paper. The spot where the tears soaked through was much darker than the rest.She didn't wipe them away. She just looked at the ashes floating on the water on the stage.
I didn't cry. But my right hand gripped the armrest very tightly. The armrest was cast iron, and the edges had burrs left over from the casting process, pressing into my palm.
The stage went dark. The curtain closed. When the lights came back on, no one in the audience stood up. Several seconds passed before the first applause sounded, and then it spread.
After the show, the audience trickled out in twos and threes through the corridor. Some were still wiping at the corners of their eyes with tissues. Some stood in front of the posters, staring blankly at the names on the cast list. I walked toward the backstage area and stopped in front of a half-open door.
The backstage was much smaller than the stage. The bulbs around the makeup mirror framed a mirror plastered with yellowed performance schedules. A young actor was removing his makeup, wiping his forehead with a cotton pad soaked in cleansing oil.
He heard the footsteps and looked up. The foundation wasn't fully off yet. Half his face still held the features of the boatman's daughter. The other half was his own face, a thin layer of sweat on his forehead.
"That old man who played the boatman," I leaned against the doorframe. "In the final scene, when he struck the match, his hand was shaking. That wasn't acting."
He set the cotton pad down. "It wasn't acting. He really is a boatman. The theater company went to the river to do field research and found him at the ferry crossing. He'd rowed for thirty years. After the bridge was built, the ferry shut down. We asked him to play this role. At first, he refused. Later, the director told him this was his own story. That's when he came."
He flipped the cotton pad over and continued wiping his face. The features of the boatman's daughter disappeared from his face little by little, until all that remained were the outlines of the young man himself.
"Did he know the ending." "He knew. He only started reading the script at the third scene. When he got to the scene where the boat burns, he cried. Not the kind of crying you do for a performance—he cried holding onto the wall.
He said the boatman in the play still had a boat to burn. His own boat had been dismantled after the ferry shut down. The people who took it apart sold the planks as scrap wood for three yuan."
Someone in the corridor was calling for the actors to come take a group photo after they'd finished removing their makeup. The young actor tossed the cotton pad into the trash, stood up, and looked at his face in the mirror. The boatman's daughter was no longer there.
Leaving the theater, I looked down at the armrest. The burrs on the cast iron were still there, right where my right hand had gripped it during the performance. Beside them were four shallow fingernail marks. I had dug them in.
When my nails bit into the iron, I hadn't felt it. Only after I let go did the marks stay behind on the metal. The skin on my fingertips still held the coolness of the cast iron and the traces of those burrs pressing in.
Tsukago came out of the restroom. Her eyes were still red. She had folded the program into a small square and tucked it into her pocket, one corner of pale yellow paper sticking out. She walked over to me and looked down at the armrest.
"You did this." "I did. When my nails dug in, I didn't feel a thing. Only after I let go did I notice the marks on the iron."
She didn't ask anything. She just reached out and held the hand that had been gripping the armrest. Her palm was warm. Her fingertips still smelled faintly of the paper pulp from the program.