She seems anxious and flustered she admits that she has never invited a man into her home, and that Gallimard’s presence makes her nervous. Finally, after months of these encounters, Song invites Gallimard to her apartment.
She is sophisticated and confident, more like a liberated Western woman than the mild-mannered Asian woman he initially expected she would be.įor fifteen weeks after their initial meeting, Gallimard continues to attend Song’s performances every week. After the show, he and Song walk along the streets of Beijing. Four weeks after meeting her, he finds the courage to attend one of her performances at the Peking Opera. She leaves Gallimard stunned, but intrigued.įor several weeks, Song’s invitation tugs at Gallimard. Coolly but flirtatiously, Song invites Gallimard to come and watch her at the Peking Opera. Gallimard tells Song he finds the opera’s story “beautiful,” and Song tells him Madame Butterfly is an imperialist fantasy - a reflection of Westerners’ perverse desire to dominate Asian people. Gallimard is moved by Song’s feminine grace, and after the performance showers her with compliments.
Song is performing the final scene from Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, playing the title heroine as she commits suicide after the white man she adores abandons her. Convinced no woman could ever love him, Gallimard has resigned himself to a passionless marriage of convenience with his wife, Helga.Īttending a performance at the German ambassador’s house one night, he meets a Chinese opera star named Song Liling. He is hapless, awkward, and unimpressive. He is a junior diplomat living in Beijing, China - a tenuous situation, given the increasing extremism of the Chinese Communist Party. The narrative begins in 1960, when he is thirty-nine years old. Through a series of flashbacks and imagined conversations, Gallimard tells audience his story. Gallimard tells his audience that he has loved “the Perfect Woman.” Though he embraces his status as an object of ridicule, Gallimard confesses that he has been searching desperately for a way to tell his story that will redeem its pathetic ending, reunite him with the woman he has lost, and teach those people who laugh at him to understand him.
It is 1988, and Gallimard introduces himself to his audience as a “celebrity” - a man who is known and laughed about all over the world. In a prison on the outskirts of Paris, Rene Gallimard is serving a sentence for treason.
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