Empress (43 page)

The Court altered my will. In keeping with “my last wish,” the sovereign withdrew the title of emperor and gave me the posthumous title of August Empress of Celestial Law. After lengthy debate, Zhang Jian Zhi and his adherents gave in to officials determined to respect my wish to return to Long Peace and be interred with my husband.

The Palace undertook the twenty-seven funeral ceremonies: calling upon my soul, bathing, clothing, making offerings, the invocation, and laying me in my coffin. Meanwhile, officers from the Department of Funerals went to Mount Liang and carried out ritual libations to appease my husband’s spirit before opening up the passage to his burial chamber. The frescoes were repainted, false chambers and the true burial chamber were redecorated, and tri-colored ceramic sculptures representing animals, slaves, and houses embellished the underground corridors.

The work was finished by the time spring came round again. The imperial soothsayers chose the day of the fifth full moon for my departure: my coffin, an interlocking set of four sarcophaguses in lacquered wood, silver, gold, and jade, and hundreds of vases, pots, and jugs filled with ice were all arranged on a carriage drawn by one thousand soldiers. With no jewelry, makeup, or fine brocade, wearing simple white linen, the sovereign, kings, princesses, and dignitaries climbed into their carriages and followed my body as it made its slow progress with majestic dignity.

The road was covered in yellow sand, and it snaked across the Central Plain. The sun rose. The moon set. People came from the four corners of the Empire to lay funeral offerings made of paper and gold leaf: palaces, horses, servants, money, all the way to Long Peace. In the evening, after I had passed, they set light to these gifts, turning them into thousands of pillars of smoke reaching for the stars.

Mount Liang, my tomb, loomed up on the horizon. Two hillocks had been built at the mouth of the tomb with two archers’ towers to drive away demons. The gates of the Sacred City opened to reveal its palaces, temples, and pagodas. The stone statues of horses, griffons, ministers, and lions passed beside me as my hearse rumbled up the Imperial Way. Two huge stelas stood out against the sky. One had shimmering inscriptions filled with powdered gold: my eulogy for my husband’s reign. The other was smooth as a mirror, waiting for my words intended for men of the future.

The sun withdrew from the horizon. The sky shrank and then vanished. There in the mouth of the mountain, the wind from the shades flattened the torch flames. In the frescoes along the walls, the great imperial parade marched toward the light, and I descended into eternal darkness.

The torches lit up a huge chamber in which trunks containing my clothes, jewels, paintings, and calligraphy had already been arranged. The workmen had respected my will and had added portraits of Scribe of Loyalty, Simplicity, and Prosperity-disguised as eunuchs-to the frescoes on the walls. On the ceilings my animals and serving women were already enjoying the carefree life of the other world.

The coffin was put onto a white marble catafalque up on an alabaster stage decorated with scenes of rejoicing.

The officiators recited the final prayers, then withdrew.

A deafening roar made the whole mountain tremble.

The door of rock closed.

The Gates of Heaven opened.

They venerated me as the wife and mother of Tang Dynasty sovereigns. Future destroyed the epitaph I had prepared for my stela and decided to replace it with a commemorative text dedicated to an empress and not an emperor. Ministers and princes argued over every turn of phrase. The different stages of my life were disturbing for these men who had to deny me and cover me with praise at the same time. Spring left and came again. The Court dignitaries could not agree on terms to describe my reign, so my stela remained a virgin surface, smooth of any inscription. It was forgotten.

Future could not identify his allies from his enemies within the Palace. In the gynaeceum, Empress Wei wanted to follow in my footsteps, with Gentleness to back her. She had her brother and cousin appointed to the government and took to sitting to the left of the Emperor during the morning audience. She sided with Spirit against Great Chancellor Zhang Jian Zhi and exiled the septuagenarian minister.

The heir, who was the son of an imperial concubine, saw that his position was threatened and decided to ensure his future by means of force. One night, leading a troop of high officials and lieutenants of the guard, he assassinated Spirit, forced his way into the Forbidden City, and called for the Empress’s head. She fled to the Northern Gate and the imperial regiments arrived in time to save her. The insurgents beat a retreat, and, during their flight, the rebel prince had his head sliced off by a soldier.

The Emperor appointed his third son as successor. Unable to wait any longer, Empress Wei poisoned her husband and pronounced herself Regent. Only five years after his accession Future left the world. He was only fifty-five.

While the new empress’s family and followers maneuvered to cope with another Supreme Empress, two of my family decided to defend their lineage: Moon, the Princess of Eternal Peace, and Miracle, the former emperor. On a dark night twenty days after Future’s death, Miracle’s third son, Prosperous Heritage, led his army through the gates of the Forbidden City. The Supreme Empress Wei and the Delicate Concubine, Gentleness, were sleeping embraced until they perished under the rebels’ sabers.

Moon took the initiative, insisting Future’s son should abdicate, and she urged Miracle to take the throne. This prince who had never wanted to reign was now constrained by history to become Emperor for the second time. Now it was up to the High Princess of Eternal Peace, Great Imperial Protector Moon to vie for influence over the sovereign with her nephew Prosperous Heritage, now appointed Supreme Son. When Miracle abdicated two years later, it took the new sovereign only one day to kill all of Moon’s adherents and to compel her to hang herself in her palace.

Six years after my death, everyone who had tried to overthrow my dynasty had met with a violent death. Convinced that I had put an evil spell over the Court, Prosperous Heritage sent sorcerers to my Funeral City. My stela with no inscription stood on the side of Mount Liang, at the foot of my tomb, looking down over the Central Plain. The sorcerers spilled human blood round the monument. Their black magic, which combined telluric powers with furious demons, was meant to hasten my vengeful soul to hell. But still I haunted the Empire. Even though Prosperous Heritage condemned every male member of my Wu clan to death, my blood flowed through his own veins. He was a blossoming branch, and I was the tree.

The Empire never returned to its once insolent prosperity. The century drew to a close, and the Tang dynasty declined. The Tatar invasions eroded the land as stealthily as time itself, annihilating green fields and flourishing towns. The Empire shattered into five kingdoms, then each of them perished in turn. Long Peace and Luoyang were now little more than ruins. The imperial tombs and princely sepulchers were desecrated. Hordes of peasants now wandered the country pillaging. My palaces had been burned. The bronze of the Celestial Pillar had been melted down long since to make weapons.

Time passed. The wheel of fortune turned. Skills vanished in the flames of war, and men no longer knew how to build palaces tall enough to touch the clouds. The Tatars streamed in from the deserts and the steppes, one dynasty followed another. Women abandoned the arts and bound their feet. Emperors continued with the Mandarin competitions I had instigated and still used the Urn of Truth I invented. But I had become a symbol of a corrupt woman. The Annals told how I had strangled my daughter so that I could ascribe the crime to Empress Wang. Misogynistic historians accused me of poisoning my son Splendor who contested my authority. Novelists invented a life of debauchery for me, attributing their own fantasies to me. With passing time, the truth became unclear, and the lies took root.

Other women reigned behind the purple gauze of the curtain. Other women governed the Empire but not one found a dynasty. Other emperors undertook the pilgrimage to the Sacred Mountains, but not one witnessed a celestial revelation.

Eternity runs on. Ivy crawls up over the walls, and the frescoes fade. Wooden pillars are gnawed away by worms and rot under the lichen.

Why do some things cross through the curtain of time? Why do some places resist erosion and decline? Why should one name, one jewel, one vase moor up in a distant century, stray vessels finally finding a harbor?

All the trees have now been cut down in the region where the Palace of Solar Breath once sprawled. Glass phials cast their gloomy reflections in the dark underground galleries. Workmen streaming with inky, black sweat operate machines to extract energy from the darkness. Some say they have seen women in muslin dresses, trailing their long silk sleeves, slipping in and out of those walls of black crystal. They claim to have heard laughter, tinkling bells, a bamboo flute between the mechanical drumming.

One thousand three hundred years later, floods have poured earth and stones into the River of Rocks. The emerald cliffs have become piles of black rock. The poems that I had engraved can still be seen on two rock faces-almost illegible. Peasants confirm that when the moon is full and the sky is clear, when the wind whispers through the wheat fields, you can still see boats dripping with gold and bristling with scarlet banners navigating to a concert of sumptuous music.

My mountain tomb has watched civil wars and foreign invasions. It has resisted extremes of frost, heat, and torrential rain. All that remains of my discredited name and my forgotten dynasty is my stela. Men come to visit it in the vain hope of finding some answer to their questions. It is flat and smooth, reaching for the skies but naked. Some see this lack of any inscription as a symbol of my humility: I wanted to give men the opportunity to inscribe it with their blame or their praise. Others interpret it as an expression of overweening pride from a woman who became emperor: No one can comment on my destiny.

God robbed me of a legacy to make me timeless, to spread my soul over the entire earth:

Shan Sa was born in Beijing, China, to a scholarly family. Her real name is Yan Ni Ni; she adopted the pseudonym Shan Sa, taken from a poem by the Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi. At age 8, she published her first poetry collection, and went on to obtain the first prize in the national poetry contest for children under 12 years, an event that created a public upheaval. After graduating from secondary school in Beijing, she moved to Paris in August 1990 thanks to a grant by the French government. Settling there with her father, a professor at the Sorbonne University, she quickly adopted the French language. In 1994, she finished her studies of philosophy. From 1994 to 1996 she worked as a secretary of painter Balthus. Thereafter she published her first two novels and a collection of poetry, meeting with great critical acclaim. In 2001 she reached the top of her success with the publication of her most famous book so far, The Girl Who Played Go (La Joueuse de Go in French). The book received good feedback from readers and was awarded a number of prizes, including the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens (Prix Goncourt of the High-school students).