Empress (31 page)

My daughter disappeared, and I received Gentleness whom I had freed from the Cold Palace. The girl had been spared the one hundred strokes on my orders, but she had suffered the harsh treatment meted out to all imperial prisoners. In only a few days, she had become thin as a reed.

“I can make you powerful or take your life, do you know that?”

She prostrated herself at my feet in tears, and I sighed: “I know that, here in the Inner Court, Court Ladies, officials, and overseers are only too eager to obey you, and outside these walls, princesses shower you with compliments, and ministers and magistrates bend over backwards to please you. Your mother has been raised from the position of seamstress in the Side Court to the ranks of nobility once more. She has taken up residence in a palace, and I myself have given her precious stones and countless servants. You already have everything a woman could dream of! If you want to take a lover, choose one from among the princes and kings. Leave Little Treasure to me. He is mine.”

In my bed chamber that evening I dismissed my serving women and ordered Little Treasure to kneel. My mind was made up: If he did not love me and wanted to leave, he would be killed at the gates of the Forbidden City. If he loved me and decided to become a monk, I would give him honor and glory.

I eyed him sternly.

“You will not be executed or mutilated. I shall give you your freedom.”

A little shiver ran through him.

“Will I still be able to see Your Supreme Majesty?” he whispered.

As I gave no reply, he looked up. His beautiful face was bathed in tears: I had not realized that this hard-hearted man could falter too.

“Supreme Majesty, I beg you. Keep me. Don’t abandon me! Think of your servant as a dog who asks only for a little food and to stay by your side.”

I contained my emotions as I told him, “I cannot keep a man in the Inner Palace.”

“Then have me castrated! What does that matter to me now! Never mind if I can no longer give you pleasure and if I become like all the other eunuchs with their flaccid flesh and cloying eyes. I only hope my heart will stay intact and will still love you.”

“I would not let you leave as you arrived,” I said, trying to test him. “Once outside the Palace, you would be rich. The money I give you would be enough to buy the most beautiful concubines, to start a large family, set up a business, and become a respectable man. Why do you want to remain a slave when you could be a master with women and land? If you wanted you could own merchant ships that could transport you up and down the Empire with their scarlet sails billowing in the wind.”

The young man only wept more desperately: “Supreme Majesty, forgive me for hiding the truth from you. I did not leave my village because of an arranged marriage. The great epidemic in the first year of the Era of Eternal Purity killed my parents, my grandparents, and my brothers and sisters. I fled after burying all their bodies in the fields. After that I roamed around Luoyang with death hovering over me. In five aimless years I was beaten, robbed, and raped; I was spat at, kicked, and insulted. You are the first and only woman who took me in her arms as anything more than a tool. No woman in the world, not even my mother, looked at me with the tenderness that you do. Supreme Majesty, forgive me. Keep me in your gynaeceum or have me killed! Don’t abandon me!”

Little Treasure’s words tore me apart. His distress awakened my own. I sighed and drew him into my arms: “Then you must listen to me and do as I ask. You, the son of a peasant, the vagrant, the aphrodisiac-seller, you shall be respected by the world. If you obey me I shall make you, a man off the streets of Luoyang, into a glorious Lord in the Imperial Court.”

LITTLE TREASURE’S SUFFERING was that of my people, and I felt ashamed for living in artificial abundance within a fortified city. This Court bathing in its happiness was a miraculous island in an ocean of misery. When I resolved to change Little Treasure’s fate, the fate of one child picked up by the wayside of life, it was not merely to reward his devotion: He was my window to this world of despair. The Mandarin Competitions had allowed thousands of scholarly individuals to enjoy a better life, but diplomas could in turn become barriers, and opening doors could transform into exclusion. Peasant children, orphans, and abandoned youngsters still had no right to fulfill their talents. Little Treasure was one of these battered, frustrated creatures, and I was offering him a chance.

On my orders, the young man shaved his head and became a monk. As a member of the bonze community, he broke with his past and became unimpeachable. He surrendered the name Feng and the common first name Little Treasure, and I gave him the Buddhist title of Scribe of Loyalty. I asked my daughter’s husband, Xue Shao, to recognize him as a distant uncle, and from then on, he bore the name of the famous aristocratic Xue clan.

The impostor proved to be a genius: Scribe of Loyalty had that raw intelligence that has never been damaged by academic study. His time as a vagrant had sharpened his intuition, which was more effective than any bureaucratic reflections. His audacity and imagination made his tongue more agile than the wooden-mouthed administrators. His many experiences in his past life had metamorphosed into peculiar knowledge. Although he knew nothing of design, he restored the monastery of the White Horse with great aplomb. After leafing through some sutras and memorizing a few formulaic prayers, he stepped up onto the stage and preached with thundering conviction. All of Luoyang gathered round to hear sermons by the imperial lover. They found a magnificent temple filled with white lotus flowers and columns of incense escaping from huge basins to darken the sky. Through this intoxicating fog, monks could be heard chanting a steady, dull drone. Suddenly Celestial Kings loomed up taller than mountains, and a long line of bodhisattvas opened out, beaming with light. The faithful would eventually find Scribe of Loyalty in the very depths of the hall, sitting with his hands joined in prayer in the middle of a golden lotus glittering with millions of diamonds. With his wide forehead, lowered eyes, and bulbous earlobes, he was almost a celestial apparition. He himself started rumors that quickly spread throughout the city; soon the Capital was venerating him as the reincarnation of a famous Indian monk who had the gift of healing and magical powers.

A man’s glory lies in his clothes. When my guards removed the lacquered linen cap, ivory tablet, and jade-studded leather belt from a disgraced minister, the statesman with his unruly hair and wild eyes lost all his imposing presence, already reduced to a convict or a slave. Wrapped in his purple tunic, astride an imperial charger, preceded by palace eunuchs and followed by his acolytes, Little Treasure, the aphrodisiac-seller, had no trouble establishing himself as the most elegant aristocrat in the Imperial City.

The more prudish ministers in the Outer Court eyed the scandalous Scribe of Loyalty scornfully and sent me letters of protest, reminding me of stories I already knew: Sovereigns besotted by their favorites neglected their duties; their passions had been the ruination of dynasties. Others, always alert and at the ready, fought for opportunities to win favor with this new figure of power. Generals prostrated themselves before the monk, addressing him as Master. My nephews-arrogant, impetuous princes-held his bridle for him as he mounted his horse. I watched these scenes from my lofty position on my throne with a sly smile.

Scribe of Loyalty was a lie that had become a truth.

Scribe of Loyalty was the merciless mirror I held up to this absurd world.

IN THE SECOND year of the Era of Lowered Arms and Joined Hands, I put my second invention into operation: At the entrance to the Forbidden City, I installed a giant bronze urn embossed with inscriptions worked in pure gold by my goldsmiths. The urn was divided into four compartments and was to be used to receive letters from the people.

An imperial decree was posted up in the four corners of the Empire: “Any individual who has no official State duties may now address Her Supreme Majesty freely by placing their written statements in the Urn of Truth. The eastern side of the urn is reserved for recommending competent officials and for comments on sound imperial decisions. The southern side is intended for censure of social and political events. The western side is for denouncing crimes and offences. The northern side will be used for astrological predictions and reports of premonitory dreams concerning the fate of the Empire.”

This first edict was followed by a second: “During their travels to the Sacred Capital, those bearing messages intended for the Supreme Empress will be given a daily payment and will be provided with bed and board by the regional authorities. Any imperial administrator committing the crime of questioning his guests, intercepting their letters, or impeding their journey to the Capital will be punished by death.”

It was not long before a third decree was sent out: “Any man, regardless of his origins, bearing useful advice or having suffered an injustice, shall be received by Her Supreme Majesty in person.”

My announcements put the Empire into turmoil. Convoys organized by provincial governments formed long uninterrupted streams of people along the country’s roads. The people queued up outside the Forbidden City to reach the Urn of Truth. Imperial bailiffs collected the letters at dusk and brought them to me at night. Banquets and concerts were temporarily suspended in my palace. I chose the best pupils from the women at the Inner Institute of Letters as my readers. Ornate chandeliers were extinguished, and only candles on short candlesticks were kept alight. The young women did not wear topknots or official court tunics and sat with their bare feet in silk slippers. They were virgins in flesh and in their judgments, and they were shocked by the vulgar turns of phrase. From time to time, Gentleness would lay down the work and call for wine and fruit. She would sit behind me and massage my tired temples. Somewhere in the depths of the room, a girl would play the zither, and another would accompany her with the clear notes of a bamboo flute. When they fell silent, the only sounds were the rustle of paper and the whisper of silk sleeves. Scribe of Loyalty would arrive late in the night, and, when he appeared, the young girls would flee in every direction like flocks of birds disappearing into the darkness.

A palace in the Outer City was prepared to receive the people. At certain times throughout the afternoon, I would sit on my throne surrounded by gauze curtains, watching all of China file past.

A peasant came to complain about the taxes on his land. A butcher denounced a dignitary who had taken his wife. A fisherman suggested that a canal should be built in his region. An impoverished scholar in love with a courtesan begged me to free his beloved. A madman talked about the end of the world. A woman from my region came to thank me for encouraging widows to remarry. Another brought me a basket of eggs.

Countless hundreds of them were terrified by the majestic palaces and the imposing military parades around me. Intoxicated by their fears and their veneration, they could not utter a word and carried on striking their foreheads on the ground until they were led away by eunuchs.

I delighted in hearing all the regional accents; I was touched by people’s modest dreams and humble longings; and I suffered for those in despair-the starving, the old, and the orphans.

Learned, self-taught men without diplomas were given official positions. Strong and supple young men joined the army. Criminals saw their punishments reduced. To every creature who called on my help, I tried to grant clemency, justice, and happiness.

I was consumed by the vastness of China. The silhouettes on the far side of the curtain became confusing and overran me like a fever. All these people-thin, fat, tall, short, deformed, and ill-grasping the hem of my gowns pressed against my retina and invaded my dreams to ask for my goodness once again. The more I gave, the bigger the crowd of supplicants grew. All these miseries that were being revealed to me were just tiny portions of an infinite suffering.

I was proud, and I was disappointed; I was happy, and I felt guilty. Through these hundreds of lives, I was trying to find an answer to all the sorrows and pains of this world, but the solution melted away like water on sand. The root of these evils was still impenetrable.

During one of these sessions, the Council of Great Ministers brought me a petition in which my imperial officials begged me to suspend the public audiences in the interests of my own health.

“Supreme Majesty,” said the Great Chancellor, prostrating himself, “no other sovereign has deigned to receive the people. And yet the Scholarly King of Zhou, the Emperor Lordly Forebear of the Han dynasty, the Scholarly Emperor of the Wei dynasty, and the Emperor Eternal Ancestor were all able to fulfill their celestial duties successfully and gloriously. A good sovereign knows the suffering and the joy of the people, but also knows how to delegate concerns to servants. That is why the ancient Zhou dynasty created the position of inspector and disguised these men as beggars before sending them out to every province. Her Supreme Majesty’s health is the Chinese people’s most precious resource. If she were exhausted, the entire world would be deprived of every joy. She must save her strength and her energy for the most important decisions.”

“When I introduced the Urn of Truth,” I replied, “and opened the Forbidden City to the people, this act was not intended to mock previous emperors, but to warn future sovereigns. Shut away in his palace and surrounded by courtiers dressed in brocade, the Master of the Empire knows nothing of hunger, poverty, and the trials of life. If he is the motionless center of the hub, then let the world come to him! The public audiences over the last few months have shown me the truth: As I treat each successive case, my power seems to diminish. Every act of kindness is a drop of water added to a constantly moving river. By granting my favors to some, I have withheld them from others who dared ask me for nothing. I must not take the place of the gods by handing out the fates of men. A sovereign’s power is an illusion and a promise. Only Buddha’s compassion can turn suffering into perpetual joy. I now accept your request, and I shall suspend the public audiences. But the Urn of Truth will continue to receive the complaints of the people. Politics can heal, but it cannot cure. Only a spiritual force can overcome ailing flesh and aching souls. He who is in the light forgets hunger and thirst. Let us pray that our empire will know religious bliss and be lifted up to the heavens.”