Empress (40 page)

I gradually broke away from that accursed family and turned toward the soothing smiles of the Zhang brothers. When I listened to Prosperity playing his bamboo flute, I forgot the gaping wound in my entrails.

On my way to the Palace of Solar Breath, I had visited a misty hillside and followed a sinuous path through fields of sorghum. At the end of the path I found a simple, rustic temple dedicated to a prince from the venerable Zhou dynasty, a distant ancestor of mine. He had become immortal by means of purification exercises and had broken away from the honors and cares of the earthly world to join the skies, borne on the back of a white crane. When I was sad, when I lost all hope, I would picture that scene. My serving women would set up lacquered tables, young eunuchs would hold quivering silk parasols, Court ladies would spread out the paper and prepare the ink, Gentleness would hold her calligraphy brush, and with my hands behind my back, I would dictate the hymn of the Celestial Prince.

The wind billows through my long sleeves. The sun strokes my face. The sorghum leaves rustle, creating endless murmuring waves. Not one bird sings, even the grasshoppers are silent. The ephemeral is a reflection of the eternal.

The Celestial Prince blows into his bamboo flute, announcing the End and the Beginning.

Why does the body shrivel and dry when the soul, this fathomless voice, still longs to flourish? Why did anyone invent mirrors to glorify and assassinate women? Why should I, Emperor of the Zhou Dynasty, Master of the World, a Divinity on Earth, be obsessed with my ephemeral form? And why should I, who knew celestial beauty, still strive so desperately to look after my earthly face? Why did I choose this torture when I aspired to deliverance?

I asked to be woken when it was still dark. While the Forbidden City slept, my eunuch hairdresser would subject me to his excruciating routine: He positioned a stag’s horn wrapped in hair on the top of my head, then he took my own hair, one strand at a time, and drew it into that gleaming black topknot. The horn was a symbol of virility and was meant to impart its tonic properties to me. My scalp was pulled so tight that it smoothed my forehead, temples and cheeks. Once this impression had been successfully created, my makeup women would apply four layers of unguents and powder to my face before drawing in new features for me. A wide strip of fabric wrapped round my waist supported my back, which ached from the weight of the topknot and the ornamentations on it. I had stiff collars on my tunics to hide my wrinkled neck and my slumped bosom, and long sleeves to cover my liver-spotted hands with their gnarled, reddened joints. The Court marveled at my eternal youth, and I accepted their praise with a bitter smile.

How could I dupe myself? I was worn down by frequent intestinal complaints. My strength was slipping away like water from a cupped hand. I walked more slowly, grew short of breath more easily, forgot people’s names or important dates, and Gentleness acted as my memory. I had difficulty heaving myself onto my charger. My doctors first forbade me from cantering, then from riding altogether. I would suddenly be gripped by violent rages and then would be despondent for days on end. Without a horse, I had no energy or enthusiasm. I was no longer myself.

On some days, then, as dusk fell over the Imperial Park, I would ask to be taken to the top of a hill, and I would sit out on the terrace of a pavilion. On a sign from me my eunuchs would raise flags, and Earth would tremble as hundreds of horses surged out of the forest and stampeded around a track at the foot of the hill. I watched, fascinated, their every muscle was tense, their manes streamed in the wind. My most able young horsewomen would stand on their saddles and perform acrobatic displays. Their supple movements, so perfectly attuned to the rhythm of the gallop, lifted me out of my motionless body. On the distant horizon, night closed in like a rising tide, eating away at my life a little at a time, the races and the battles, the turmoil and the rage.

My friends and mistresses had disappeared! Every month the government presented me with a list of the dead, and I recognized the names of exiled enemies, retired servants, poets, and monks. They had all closed their doors, leaving me in a world where-sunbeam by sunbeam-their light was dimming.

The hillside would succumb to the darkness and my servants would light lanterns and braziers. Somewhere musicians played. My world had shrunk to the confines of that tiny pavilion. Candles lit the faces in the frescoes that would line my tomb: Gentleness, seen in profile with her pensive brow, holding a writing case in her hand. Behind her, Court ladies and serving women all painted according to traditional codes, perfectly proportioned and with a melancholy beauty. In the background, little eunuchs in brown tunics and black lacquered linen caps merged into the balustrades. The moon, pinned close to a window, lit various minutely drawn objects: an incense-burner, a bonsai tree, a long-handled round fan, a curly-coated puppy, a bowl, a teapot. The group of women looked like a great cluster of peonies, standing facing Simplicity in Tatar dress with tight sleeves. They did not look at each other, but into space, at absence, at the dead woman. In the distance Prosperity’s graceful silhouette was outlined beneath a clump of bamboo, drawing serene notes from his flute.

ONE NIGHT THE town of Long Peace appeared to me in a dream. The gates and archers’ towers of its Forbidden City loomed through golden clouds. Flocks of birds circled over its crimson walls. Its avenues filled with cherry and wild orange blossom had the outdated charm of an abandoned concubine. Overcome by a pain I could not name, I woke.

All of Luoyang trembled and the order was given: My Court and dignitaries packed up the furniture, the tableware, and the animals. The Southern Gate opened, and the city reverberated to horses’ whinnying and my soldiers’ rhythmic marching. I sat in my carriage of gold, led by two hundred coachmen, and hurried toward the past. The Emperor of China was traveling to Heavenlight. I was fleeing Luoyang, where the sun was about to set, in order to reach the sunrise in Long Peace.

The smell of meadows seeped through the pearl-edged brocade door hangings. Soon my sleep was haunted by the breath of the Yellow Earth and the slow music of its rivers. Memories of a former life came back to me in snatches: I was in a carriage heading for Long Peace, huddled in my seat weeping, my stomach knotted with fear. I missed Mother and Little Sister. Why did I have to grow up?

I sat up with a start, thinking I could hear thunder. Thousands of voices were chanting, “Ten thousand years to the Sacred Emperor, ten thousand years to the Sacred Emperor, millions of years of health and happiness to the Sacred Emperor of the Celestial Mandate and the Golden Wheel!” Through the window of my carriage, I could see endless horsemen with stirrups of gold and silver, countless crimson banners fluttering in the wind and bristling arms plying forward. Prosperity was riding close by and he called out, “Long Peace is not far now! I can see the crenellated ramparts.” He broke off to draw level with me again. “Majesty,” he went on, “the people have come out of the city to greet you. Men, women, children, the elderly, all prostrated along the way with their foreheads in the dust.” A moment later he added, “Majesty, the whole city is at your feet. The people are weeping with joy and asking for your blessing. Majesty, here is the avenue of the Scarlet Bird. Ah, Majesty, the Imperial City!”

My eyes filled with tears. I suddenly remembered a smell from the past, familiar figures forgotten for half a century. Their high foreheads, their distant eyes, their slow, precise footsteps: serving women and governesses from the Palace who had come to greet the new Talented One.

I was so young then and I am now so old!

The door hangings were drawn apart. Great ministers prostrated themselves and asked me to alight. I decreed the Great Remission and the beginning of a new era, the Era of Long Peace, in homage to the city that had been awaiting my return for twenty years. I made offerings and ceremony of prayers to my august parents, to the Emperor Lordly Forebear, the Emperor Eternal Ancestor, and to my husband, the Emperor Lordly Ancestor. Leaning on my cane, I walked slowly through the Forbidden City, followed by Gentleness, Simplicity, and Prosperity. I could see my sister sitting before her bronze mirror with her gold flasks of perfume. I stroked the yellowed scrolls of silk on which the Delicate Concubine Xu had written her poems. I stood in quiet contemplation in the pavilion where the Gracious Wife had lain naked in the scarlet glow of the setting sun. I envied all these women I saw before me, their beauty still intact. Life has its revenge of life. Untimely death is the secret of eternal youth.

After the fevered excitement of the first months, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion and my hands started to shake violently. My calligraphy, always a source of such pride, became tortured scribbling. I sometimes tripped when there was nothing in my way. I saw a succession of doctors and was deluged with their diagnoses: unhinged winds, warring hot and cold elements, internal disorders. Some prescribed herb teas, baths, ointments, whereas others would have me bled, counsel acupuncture, and breathing exercises. The morning salutation was a challenge that I renewed daily. I should get out of bed, walk, get into a carriage, and endure the difficult journey to the Outer Court.

But I myself had found the best remedy against old age: never stop working, continue to invent. Amid the affairs of state and celebrations, I forgot the trembling of my body. I set up the military Imperial Competition and I myself corrected the papers on strategy and arbitrated the tournaments. I received ambassadors from Japan who, after a thirty-three-year hiatus, had crossed the boiling seas once more to prostrate themselves before the sovereign of the Celestial Empire. I sent my son Miracle to command my forces in war against the Tatars who had rebelled once again in the northwest. I arranged a marriage between a princess and a Tibetan king. When the King of Sinra died, I quickly sent an emissary to help his younger brother take the throne. The judicial mistakes made in the days of the torturer-prosecutors were corrected and the condemned rehabilitated. I reclassified the books in the Imperial Library. My nephew Spirit oversaw a hundred archivists and scholars compiling the annals of the overthrown Tang Dynasty.

TWO YEARS HAD passed since I left Luoyang when a terrible winter cold confined me to bed. It took me longer than usual to recover; I had to suspend the morning salutation for a month. Even when I was well again, I could no longer walk without help. I was horrified by this deterioration, convinced that I had fallen prey to the evil spirits of my rivals. Fifty years after their death, the Empress Wang and the Splendid Wife had surged suddenly in my dreams, accusing me of having ordered the murder of my own daughter. I hastily fled Long Peace. Luoyang welcomed me with acclamation and tears.

THE COURT WAS like a merciless mirror, reflecting my decline: The Supreme Son grew more stooped every day-so much waiting for the crown had turned him into an old man. Moon was nearly forty, and she was a grandmother herself. The kings, my nephews, who were still involved in endless intriguing, had to dye the hair black at their temples, and their foreheads were ravaged with creases. The great voice among my ministers had fallen silent: The chancellor Di Ren Jie had died. The government had lost its soul and I my right hand man.

The Empire continued to flourish, although I had less energy to bear the weight of prosperity. My judgment had slowed, and it took me twice as long to study a dossier. I was no longer a wizard of solutions. I secretly longed to retire, leaving Luoyang with my lovers. I dreamed of spending my last days in the Palace of Solar Breath far away from earthly matters: In the spring, there would be the cruise along the River of Rocks; in the summer, open-air concerts; in the autumn, poetry competitions would be washed down with chrysanthemum wine; in winter, my palace would be surrounded by snow, and puppets would act out plays that I had written.

I accepted when the Court offered the Zhang brothers the title of Great Lord, but refused my children’s hypocritical suggestion that they be raised to the rank of kings. Favorites should be kept far from the circle of power. But my rigorous attitude failed to reassure my anxious ministers. Some leagued against the two brothers and queued before me, trying to convince me of their ambition. I took note and made no comment. I left my government to its worrying. I left my sons, daughter, and nephews to their hateful jealousy. I left my favorites to pursue their pleasures in torment. My loneliness was bleaker than ever. Paralyzed by fear and despair, I watched my eightieth birthday draw nearer and nearer.

How could I abandon my empire, my lovers, and my descendants? How could I leave Luoyang, its peonies, canals, and bewitching loveliness? How could I exchange the comfort of my bed for a coffin, my sumptuous palace for an underground chamber? How could I close my eyes, stop hearing, or let myself forget? How could I stop breathing, stop existing? What would my next life be? Would I be a beggar having been a sovereign? Would I change into a bird to fly away from the very pinnacle of humanity or into a stone thrown down from the summit having fulfilled my destiny?

I called exorcists to my palace. Monks in monasteries recited purifying sutras and prayers in my name. I offered up my sacred veins to leeches, my divine scalp to the acupuncturists’ silver needles. I braved snakebites and suffered in hot mud and iced baths. There were brief periods of improvement, occasional miracles, but evil continued to make its progress through my body. I could no longer walk; two sturdy serving women carried me in a litter. My words became confused and Gentleness served as my interpreter. The most simple tasks and gestures became personal battles. Something stronger than my own will was triumphing over me. The gods punish men in their arrogance and pride. Little Phoenix, so indolent and offhand, had ended his days in a morass of pain. I who had held the reins of my destiny so firmly, I who had commanded the greatest Empire beneath the skies, was robbed of authority over my own flesh.