The Moon Opera Read Online Free Page A

not quite knowing what to do.
    A traffic policeman who had served in the army, he was rough around the edges, insensitive, and devoid of tact. Where marriage was concerned, the best he had hoped for was to find a worker in a government-run factory. Never, not in his wildest dreams, had the possibility entered his head that a famed beauty, that Chang’e herself, would become his wife. That’s what it had felt like, a dream.
    The process had been old-fashioned, nothing new. A matchmaker had introduced them beside a willow tree in the park, and they had begun dating. After doing this for a while, they hurried into the “bridal chamber.”
    Back in those days, Xiao Yanqiu had been an ice queen. On the cobblestone path in the park, she looked more like a sleepwalker, a zombie who had lost her soul, than an ordinary pedestrian. Yet rather than diminish a woman’s beauty, that sort of look often makes her more alluring. For it enriches her with an ephemeral grace that makes a man’s heart skip a beat and in turn instills in him a desire to love and protect her. When Miangua first laid eyes upon Yanqiu, his hands went cold, and the chill reached down to the pit of his stomach. She was shrouded in a frigid air, like a glass sculpture, and his immediate reaction was to feel unworthy. He silently cursed the matchmaker, for no matter how you looked at it, such a sparkling beauty was way out of his league. He walked gingerly down the cobblestone path with her, not daring to speak because she was so quiet. For him the early days of their relationship were not so much dating as unimaginable torture. But the torment was mixed with an indescribable sweetness. She remained cold and stern, her eyes unfocused, as if her soul had truly left her. At first he thought she didn’t care for him, but she always arrived on time, though looking unwell, when he asked her to go for a walk. Clearly, he had known nothing of her state of mind, for in fact she was possessed by the desire to marry herself off, the sooner the better. As inept at dating as he was, she walked with him, never saying a word. In her presence, Miangua’s self-esteem was in tatters, and he hadn’t an ounce of imagination. The park’s path was where they had met, so that was invariably where their dates could and, in fact, must take place. Focused on her singular goal, she never asked him anything, and was a shadow that went where he went, which was the same place day after day; he didn’t know where else to go. They walked down the same path, headed in the same direction, turned and rested at the same spots. Then they parted at the same place, where he would say the same thing, settling on a day and time for their next meeting.
    But one day everything changed—by accident, of course. That day she tripped and fell. She had been gazing at the moon and the heel of her shoe caught in a crack between cobblestones, turning her ankle and sending her tumbling to the ground. Miangua was so horrified his face turned whiter than the moon. Slow by nature, he was a man who could saunter along even if his head were on fire. But not this time; this time he was scared witless, so flustered he didn’t know what to do. Finally, he picked her up and carried her to the hospital; then, in the same flustered state, he took her home. Her ankle was swollen, black and blue, and she had skinned her elbow.
    Unlike Miangua, Xiao Yanqiu was unconcerned about her injuries, almost as if she’d seen someone else fall and get hurt. That lack of concern gave the impression that if someone were to cut off her head and place it on a table, she’d still be composed, calmly blinking her eyes.
    Miangua was the one who felt the pain. It hurt him to see her like that, and he stared at her ankle, not daring to look her in the eye. Eventually, he glanced at her, but quickly looked away. “Does it still hurt?” he asked in a tiny voice barely loud enough for her to hear. At that moment, she was not so much a glass