Combing Hair at Midnight

“So did you refuse?” Zhou Yang's answer pushed Ding Ling's question right back at her. After all, a short spell of observation told him nothing about how Ding Ling stood with the members of the opera troupe. All he could do was make a rough guess at their temperaments from first impressions. In that case, whatever he declared now could be overturned the very next moment. So he simply pushed the question back and let Ding Ling think it through for herself. In a classroom, a teacher who did that would be praised for “drawing out the students' own thinking.” His answer was unremarkable in itself. But it came together with that laugh he had deliberately let out, and both landed in Ding Ling's senses at once—and it made her feel that this “person” lodged inside her body seemed to understand her present situation, and was all the more sitting tight, calmly sure of himself. Zhou Yang was inside her shell, like two souls sharing one body. Yet their positions were far from equal. Ding Ling knew nothing at all about Zhou Yang. Zhou Yang, on the other hand, knew a little of what Ding Ling had been through, and through that Knife-Credit Ledger he knew her particulars in detail: “Retribution body: Ding Ling. “Right Thought: 7 (own 2 + knife-credit man 5). “Identity: cook and odd-job hand for the Dengtai Liyuan Troupe. “Abilities: skilled slaughterer, capable cook, self-taught performer of folk opera.” … Because that imbalance of information set them at different heights, Ding Ling's probing was bound to accomplish very little. After all, she was still frightened out of her wits by this consciousness that had barged into her body, still guessing whether the other was a malevolent spirit or a true and mighty god—while Zhou Yang already had the rough shape of her situation in his grasp. Ding Ling listened to that male voice, now unmistakably present in her head, and went blank for a moment. During the time she had lain unconscious from a chill, she had dreamed the same dream over and over. In the dream she was hunted by a one-eyed demon with a bull's head and a human body. That demon was the legendary Fei, the ghost that spreads plague. Whenever she was about to give out and the Fei was on the point of catching her, a male voice would gently tell her to hold on. Along with that man's voice there were always noises—sometimes like iron being forged, sometimes like a blade being sharpened. Then one time she truly could not run another step. She stopped at the roadside and let the Fei catch up, ready to be eaten—and the man walked out of an alley and handed her a small blade. That crude little knife finished off the Fei, for all its terror. And with that she woke from the dream. She had dreamed this long dream more times than she could count. By the end she could no longer tell where the dream stopped and the waking world began. In her own senses the dream had come to feel like a dream and not a dream. And then, just before she woke earlier, she had heard that man's murmuring voice again. She had thought it was a hallucination. But now, as she tested it, that male voice truly rang inside her head—Ding Ling curled up, her palm pressed to her chest, where it felt swollen and warm. Gratitude rose up in her. Ding Ling felt that what she had lived through in the dream might not be false. “If I can't refuse anyway… c-can I take this chance to ask the master for something in return? Do you—do you think that would be all right?” Zhou Yang sensed Ding Ling's heart-voice again. The thought she sent him carried plain excitement, and something else, faint and deep. Zhou Yang thought that if he had suddenly come to share a body with another person, he might not have kept his feelings in hand as well as Ding Ling had. Her reaction seemed to him, if anything, normal. He smiled mildly and said, “That idea of yours happens to match mine. If we don't take this chance to get something out of it, we'd be doing ourselves a great wrong, after the price you've paid. What do you mean to ask for?” Ding Ling lowered her head, the corners of her lips curving slightly upward. The people around could not see her face. They simply assumed she was still wavering. There was plenty of time yet before midnight; they could afford to wait—wait for Ding Ling to talk herself around. “I don't know what I can ask for… What do you think would be best?” Ding Ling asked the voice in her heart with reverence. She had judgments of her own, but she wanted to hear the man's. The man answered at once, and his answer suited her as well: “Master Chang says they can drive the kui off by singing opera. But singing a few plays by itself won't drive a kui away. The plays they sing contain a certain skill that lets ‘the play take the body, the play reach the gods.’ At a stage like this, money is only a worldly thing. Whether you can keep yourself alive under a ghost's assault—that's what matters most. So… “You can try asking Master Chang for the secret skill of ‘the play reaching the gods.’ That method is the key to whether you live through what comes next. “And before you ask for that skill, you must first refuse—flatly—Master Chang's demand that you ‘comb your hair at midnight to see the ghost’… How flatly? Decide for yourself. However flatly you can, be that flatly…” If such a “play reaches the gods” skill really existed, Zhou Yang might be able to use it on himself as well. He was in fact somewhat worried that the so-called “the play takes the body, the play reaches the gods” was nothing but years of hard grind at singing and stage posture, and that Ding Ling, cramming at the last moment, would never manage it. But be that as it may—whether or not there are dates on the tree, it costs nothing to give it a few whacks and find out. “Thank you!” Ding Ling felt that the person in her heart was truly a man of wisdom. She had only thought of asking the master for the “play reaches the gods” skill. It had not occurred to her that asking for a skill that important would itself take some skill. The skill this man had taught her was very practical. She learned it quickly— “Clatter!” Everyone had been certain that this woman Ding Ling would in the end bow her head in silence. But no one had expected that at that very moment Ding Ling would suddenly sweep her hand across the pile of costume crowns and ornaments, forehead plaques, and rouge on the wooden box in front of her, seize a hairpin, and press it against her own throat! Her throat—pale, slender, bare—was scored by the sharp hairpin, and a bright red line of blood appeared at once! “Don't!” “What are you doing?!” “Stop, stop—” Seeing that Ding Ling plainly meant to kill herself on the spot, every one of them was so frightened that a chill shot from the base of the spine straight up to the crown of the head. They shouted at her to stop, yet none dared provoke her too far. They could only ring her round wearing fawning smiles, terrified she really would take her own life. If Ding Ling truly made an end of herself at that moment, never mind the great matter of “combing hair at midnight to see the ghost” for now. Just think: in a place that had a ghost, for someone to die with a grievance on top of it… what would come of it—these men did not dare imagine. And what was more, their little hope of sending Ding Ling to comb her hair at midnight had not faded either. People are all like that: no tears until they see the coffin. Ding Ling's eyes were resolute. She swept her gaze around the room, and it cowed those twittering, chattering small-footed men. Only Chang Dafeng, seated at the back, watched Ding Ling with something complicated in his eyes. “You think because I'm a woman I'm easy to push around? Comb my hair at midnight… heh! “If anything goes wrong with this, I'll likely die with my body in pieces! “Either way I'm dead. Better to finish it myself, keep my corpse whole—and if I get the chance to become a ghost, we can still have some fun together!” Ding Ling said with a cold laugh. She looked as frail as a little white flower, but her tone and bearing were fierce and proud. “What kind of talk is that, what kind of talk is that?” The effeminate Li Yichun was both angry and frightened, stamping his little bound feet. He repeated the same sentence several times, then abruptly turned to look at Chang Dafeng. “Oh! Master, say something—” Chang Dafeng sighed. As if helpless, as if moved, he patted his knee again, stared at the tips of his shoes for a good while, and only then lifted his head. A pair of eyes bright enough to startle fixed straight on Ding Ling, as though his gaze could shine into her heart. Meeting that gaze, Ding Ling—who had had a little courage a moment before—suddenly felt somewhat guilty. She was just about to lower her eyes and dodge Chang Dafeng's stare when her body abruptly went rigid— Zhou Yang had taken over Ding Ling's body. Chang Dafeng was a man who could make the play take his body; he must have some hidden trump skill. Ding Ling could not withstand his methods. Zhou Yang felt it was fine, though. This troupe master's gaze was still very bright to Zhou Yang. But he did not find it frightening. Most likely he had seen too many more frightening things in Guancun, and his capacity for fear had long since been worn away. So he too stared straight back at the man, wanting to see what ghostly trick he meant to play. After staring at Ding Ling a long while, Chang Dafeng grinned, shifted his gaze away, shook his head, and said, “People who kill themselves are the weakest of all. Most of them can't even become ghosts. “But you might actually manage it… “By our ancestors' rules, women aren't allowed to learn opera. “In an opera troupe, the men bind their feet, train their stage posture, lift incense sticks, arch their backs, hold oil in their mouths, do their splits… These movements always have to be done bare-chested, and when they're beaten, they're beaten bare-bottomed. “In such a state of things, for a woman to mix into an opera troupe—what decency is there in that? “So in our troupe you're only an odd-job hand. You can't sing opera. “And yet you—a woman, good-looking and young besides, surrounded by a pack of men—have gone on bouncing about with everything still intact, and in your spare time even stolen a bit of opera for yourself. “I'll say this much: you're fine material. You've got that ruthlessness in you, the kind that can hold down these men who look like men! “The playbooks call it ‘not to be bent by force.’ You might just be the one to get it done… “So the business of ‘combing hair at midnight to see the ghost’ can only be carried off by you. “I wouldn't trust these good-for-nothings with it. “So tell me—what do you want? “What will it take for you to agree to do this thing I'm asking of you?”