As I turned the corner around the blue-umbrellad canteen, I recited the third verse of the libretto. At this time of night, at least, there weren’t so many heads turning. Still, perhaps I cherished a little those that did.
It had been three months since I got here, three months in full swing. Between meetings, rehearsals, seminars, and the chaos of adjusting to a new place, there had been hardly any time to practice. I resorted to making myself time whenever I was on my motorbike. Unlike my Vespa back home, it was electric. Sleek, eggshell-blue, and deadly quiet. I could sell it for the same amount I bought it for in a year’s time, perhaps more, and the charging points were free.
Coming to China had never been something I thought of doing, but the economic conditions of supporting a singing career had washed away all my preconceptions. A fully funded PhD, with hardly any classes? Entire years in which to enjoy the beauty of my craft, to perform for new audiences, maybe even write my own stuff? Hell yeah.
The rosy image of this unorthodox career trajectory had quickly worn off however. It took an entire month just to get the lease for my apartment. They wanted to know why I had been to Taiwan. To visit my girlfriend? Apparently that was not a valid excuse. Navigating the kafkaesque bureaucracy made the Genovian government seem easy to deal with.
There were days, such as today, when the busyness that burst like a deluge out of my calendar was entirely my own doing. “You are trying to do three full performances in three days? Are you crazy?” Rosalina chimed in. “No, don’t be silly!” I spat back. “You know what the booking fees are like. I have to.”
Three days would be hard, but this festival was a goldmine. It is true that the local musicians were pretty good. They put some of my friends back home to shame. But they never touched opera. Just having an Italian passport, and an Italian-sounding name did wonders for the flow of work. I even had my own agent. She took a twenty percent cut, and in return, conjured up all the posters and advertisements from Canva. I knew she was using AI half the time, but it didn’t matter. I could not suffer the embarrassment of trying to use badly translated Chinese.
It was laughable what having the right names on your CV could do. I went to a third-tier conservatoire, but slapping Paris on the first line was enough. They probably didn’t even read my biography. In truth, I felt far more at home on the buzzing and chaotic streets of my ancestral Sousse, or even Tunis, than I did amidst the geriatric glamour of Milan. I would give myself to Les Olympiades and the smells of Merguez and Fattoush over the snobbery of the 6th Arrondisement any day.
At first, I read the blank looks on people’s faces when I told them what I did as dismay. I was being used to hated for being successful, or, for the people whose noses saw more air, detested for being a failure. But to the shy strangers with whom I struck up conversation, I was simply another labourer. “Does it bring any money?” “Did you study for a degree?” “Why come to China?” Their questions were loaded merely with curiosity, no recognition of my position in relation to them. Rather than a cockroach inside Versailles, I was a normal person, living in a normal place.
The cracks in this utopia of otherness were beginning to appear, I knew. My fellow Europeans could detect the Maghrebi twang when I spoke French. So, I started talking to them less. I tried socialising with the Yanks, but my throat quickly got sore. My peers from Hokkaido and Yokohama made me feel like an egoist.
Hebei, Guangxi, Jiangsu; none of them were interested. And that was before I explained the scars two inches below my nipples. One to two years and they will fade? Bah; that’s what you get for cheaping out on the surgeon. I did smoke and drink while they were healing, to be fair.
Sometimes I looked longingly at the few pieces of lingerie that my ex had left in the draw on her last trip. The little, perfectly tied ribbons that were so obviously fake. The chiffon that was designed only to conceal a nothing. The noodle-thin straps that dug into your shoulders, your sides, your butt after half an hour, but cut your body into far more appetising pieces than you could ever look in your unadorned form. I remember it all well. But my shoulders were twice as wide as they were before. When I was still taking the T, I would bump into doorframes. Little bruises installed themselves for a few months on the far sides of my arms. And my close-cropped hair could not disguise how ridiculous they looked draped in the delicacy of what I used to wear.
I could not get used to the way the Beijing ren talked. Someone deeply in love with me over text would be shy, awkward, even recalcitrant in real life. A simple walk around the park seemed impossible, every turn a maddening undertaking. They need to rub some olive oil into their skin.
I longed to belong to someone, for the time it took to drink a coffee or order waimai, but I didn’t think that would happen here. The only ownership that would happen here would come solely from my side. Being one hundred and eighty centimetres tall did not mean I always wanted to be the big spoon.
So, I started building my own little mental garden. One in which I was back in Taiwan, zipping down the serpentine lanes with the deep sea on one side and tropical trees on the other. Sipping a beer on a terrace and looking out at the vast and hazy light that filled the space above the jungle. I thought about breaking open my piggy bank and returning, during the break. I was afraid that all I would find would be shadows.
Some day, perhaps in another four years, or another six, it would all make sense again. The pressure I had started feeling in my chest every time I stepped onto the hardwood stage would go. I could return back to the mistakes I had, the mistake of being poor, the mistake of being hungover, the mistake of being in pain, because I had laughed too much. When I looked in the mirror now, I saw bags under my eyes. And a complexion that, no matter how much I scrubbed, seemed dirty. Perhaps this place had infected me with its ivory infatuation. Call it cultural exchange.
While I was on my way home, my phone died, and I had to wind my way through the hutongs guessing which tree came at which corner. The plants were more recognisable than the grand, grey-brick buildings. I found the mossy tiles of a friend. The warm scents of xiaolongbao wafted from the kitchen. “Come in!” she smiled, “come in!”
Seven cups of tea passed. At each I could not tell how I felt about her.
- Welcoming,
- Unhappy,
- Pensive,
- Distant,
- Chaotic,
- Resentful,
- Flirtatious,
And then I unplugged my phone, went home. Was it so hard to keep lives separate? There were twenty insatiable people in the research group. Even the creepy guy had committed incest with one of the three mainlanders.
I needed to practice more. In truth, there were long, languid moments, in which I had a chance to do something. To make and use my voice what it should be, could be, would be if I put in the time. Maybe my complaints and entanglements were part of evermore complex efforts of procrastination.
The fourth verse, I started when I got back. I picked up a champagne flute, and imagined breaking it. I chuckled. They had really wanted me to do that, one time. I told them I was thirty-eight years old, I was not into silly tricks. If they wanted a respectable singer, I would sign my name at that figure. But no lower. They bought it, and I remember turning up at their Shanghai venue, clad in fake gold and synthetic velvet, more splendid and shiny than anything I have ever performed in in Rome. One person, at the front, recorded me with two phones. She hung around afterwards, and I bumped into her at the bar. “You have great style,” she said, plastered with a giddy grin. “this is the second time I’ve seen you”.
I looked at her quizzically. It was disturbing, almost. I drained my half-empty coupe of rosé, and left.