Chapter 2: Joyla forgets herself
Joyla, bias-cut hair sweeping over dark eyes over flawless cheeks, watched from the back of the 1,400 seat Hong Kong City Concert Hall as the run through progressed. The singer portraying Du Liniang slowly moved across the stage, clever lights projecting the words she traditionally sang as hanji upon her flesh. A faux sunbeam slanted down from the gunslit above.
The words on flesh had been Joyla’s idea as artistic director of this modern adaptation of the Kungu opera Peony Pavilion, renamed the Peony Bunker, but she had come to regret it. She was torn back, again and again, to Singapura, to the flowing hanji and English upon her skin, thrown there by the spell of that bastard, Kaa, or whatever his name really was. He had seduced her through those motile tattoos, entranced her with visions of power and eroticism, torn her from her rut and tossed her panting into a Singapura she had never known existed.
He had been with her there. For a while. And then less. And then a decade passed between visits. And then two. It had been sixty years since his words danced across her flesh, and the duel of wills and intent had never been matched in a seduction since, either of her or by her. Sadly.
He had left her much. Her command of the subtle arts of will and power had been magnified under his example and tutelage, enhanced again by the sorcerers and collectors of cantrips he had introduced her to. Her visible business of costuming the rich and the entertainers of the rich and masses had been expanded by his contacts and his arts. Her knowledge of the ways of passion had grown from a zephyr to a tornado. And due to his arts, she remained as she had been more than half a century earlier. But he had left her. Some apotek in Bali had caught his eye, then a mathematician in Cambridge, then a historian on sabbatical in Cambodia from her home in some chilly place. And presumably many others in the decades since he had sent her the emerald envelope. He lived in the moment of seduction, not the aftermath. The bastard.
Joyla wished, not for the first or tenth or hundredth time since this damnable gig with Opera Hong Kong started and she had foolishly channeled that early memory into a key artistic decision, that Kaa was waiting for her in the apartment she had been installed in, conjuring sensual meals from raw ingredients, razor sharp knives, technique and thin air, spreading them before her and on her in front of her floor to ceiling windows overlooking the sea and city, consuming them and her with that unequalled pleasure and appetite.
She sighed. Blinked. Returned from an inner vision to the outer world, from a personal fantasy to this public fantasy.
Joyla looked again at the words on Du Liniang’s flesh, and realized that they were overdone. Moderation was the key. The story was so well known, the songs so much a part of the audience’s experience, that they could be hinted at instead of seen. She had enlarged them, exaggerated them, torso-sized hanji writhing with the movements of the beautiful singer and now she would shrink them, wash the projected black ink with water to create an allusive rather than erosive vision.
Resolute, she kept her mind on her current job, her current distraction. The scene ended. She took notes, merged them with her previous instructions, emailed them to the creative team.
Backstage in an open space, she took a dowel in her hand, imagined a free-for-all and took refuge in the hanbō art she had grown to be a vicious and subtle mistress of over the years. Misconducts addressed, in absentia. Actions from decades before, retaliated for. Regrets, assuaged.
Moments passed. Then minutes. Tens of them. Then, steam rising from her skin, she opened her eyes again. And saw that she had drawn a ring of cast and crew, looking at her open-mouthed, their eyes adhering to her curves, the men erect, the women flushed. Belatedly, she realized that she had let loose her magic with her usually hidden physical talents.
She stilled. Concentrated. Willed. Their eyes lost their intense focus, their breathing calmed, their flesh wilted. They blinked, forgot what it was that they had been privy to, what they had been exposed to, remembered that they were in rehearsal of an opera opening in a week. Their lovers and private time would be more fevered for the next few days, but they wouldn’t know why, wouldn’t care.
Joyla promised herself a steam bath with extra Epsom salts. And perhaps a lover again, perhaps from Zau’s current coterie. Although it wouldn’t be Kaa. The bastard.