Kalpa Imperial (15 page)

“Yes,” the empress said, “I was married to Ereddam’Ghcen, the very rich man with a great house with a garden that backed onto mine, the man who, having seen me a couple of times up on my balcony, insisted that one of his daughters pay a neighborly visit to the sorrowful young widow. He was a widower. His children were all married and he was lonely. He was a good man, not too bright. He did think, though he hadn’t selected the best from other people’s thoughts, only the most inoffensive. He didn’t believe, for instance, that the South should be laid waste with fire and sword, or that everybody around him was out to cheat him, or that money was going to save him from death or misfortune, or that he ought to maltreat people who worked for him, or that what he didn’t know was dangerous. Ours was a peaceful marriage. And a good bargain for us all: his children didn’t fret themselves wondering who’d look after their father till he died, he’d found somebody to look after him and keep him company, I had more money than I’d ever thought it possible to have, and his fortune was so huge that his sons and daughters-in-law and sons-in-law didn’t see me as robbing them of anything. The imperial palace was a long way off. I didn’t think about going that far, why should I? It seemed to me that I was doing fine, I couldn’t do better. I could consider myself satisfied. And when the time came I’d bury my husband and live a nice life with no shocks or surprises, eating all I liked, going to the theater, doling out charity, occasionally having a reception in the drawing rooms of the house, strolling in gardens and along avenues with some woman friend as agreeable and placid as myself. How I could have imagined myself as agreeable and placid, I’ll never know. Maybe because my childhood had been poor and violent, so that I associated wealth with peace, which is false, and even if it were true it wouldn’t apply to people. Still, I should have known better, because sometimes I felt very uneasy, almost angry: looking after my husband, running the house, receiving a few guests and making a few visits, embroidering by the window—it wasn’t enough. So I’d undertake to change things, refurnish a room, think up new ways to lay out the garden, have a pergola built or a pool put in, and supervise the work myself. I even took an interest in Mr. Ereddam’Ghcen’s business and suggested a few innovations which, to his great satisfaction, and mine, were highly successful. I tried to think my own thoughts about my restlessness and my bursts of activity, and saw that I had too much energy and needed something to spend it on. What could I do, what more was there to do? I did everything that was at hand to do. But night would come and we’d sit in the sitting room talking about little daily things and I wouldn’t feel tired, I’d feel angry. I hid the anger, and it grew. We’d talk, too, about what people in the streets were saying, in the Chamber of Commerce, in the squares, the clubs, the cafés: rumors about the new bridge, or some municipal ordinance, or the arrangements for some public festival, and I’d say what I’d have done if I’d been one of the engineers or the town councillors. My husband would be amazed, his daughters would shake their heads and say women shouldn’t meddle in such matters, and one of his sons might look at me curiously or say that it seemed to him I was right. And we’d talk about the emperor, about his illness, his doctors. So we learned that they were trying out a new cure, and so I learned that in the name of the Emperor Idraüsse IV the doctors were asking anybody who found a tricobezoar to bring it to the palace to help stop the sick man’s hemorrhages. What’s a tricobezoar? I asked. And when they told me, I remembered that old Dudu had had what he called three magic stones, and that I still had them, along with a worked silver tea-stirrer. Tripestone, hiddenstone, bilestone, he called the three. Remembering that, I seemed to see the old man, the deepset, red-veined eyes, the unsteady mouth, the tortoise neck, the wine-swollen belly, the stained fingers, and the dirty palm on which lay three stones:

“‘You’ll never see the like of these, kid, no way. This is a tripestone, this is a hiddenstone, this is a bilestone, and they’re all magic. Tripestone makes hair grow, strengthens the kidneys, whitens the teeth. Hiddenstone enriches the blood, cures eye disease, takes off smallpox scars, and heals broken bones. Bilestone cures jaundice, stops vomiting, and drives away nightmares and madness.’ He’d laugh and close up his hand. ‘And the three together give a man what he needs to satisfy every woman he meets, and keep death away.’

“The tripestone was greyish brown, opaque, wrinkled; the hiddenstone was darker, almost black, and smooth, soft to the touch; the bilestone was greenish, with brighter, yellowish veins. The hiddenstone was the tricobezoar.

“I hadn’t looked at them since the day he was buried, when I’d dumped out what was in the leather bag he always kept with him and in the heap of filthy stuff found them and the silver tea-stirrer, which I kept. I didn’t believe in magic but still I kept the three stones because how can you not believe in magic? I don’t say it doesn’t exist, all I say is I wouldn’t trust one minute of my life to it.

“So I went to the palace. I could have sent a servant with the stones, but I was curious to see the house of power. It didn’t impress me, maybe because I was prepared to be astonished and diminished by the magnificence and pomp. Magnificence was there, wealth, luxury, and power, but no beauty, no interest, or passion, or intelligence. It was just a big business office where everybody worked very hard. I showed my three stones to a bureaucrat who examined them and gave me back the two that couldn’t help the emperor. Then he thanked me, praised my generosity, and asked me very pleasantly what my name was and where I lived. And I went back to my house which was quite beautiful, sufficiently luxurious, very small compared to the palace, and more and more boring.

“A month after that the imperial messenger came.

“My husband, his children, his sons-in-law and daughters-in-law got all excited and kept asking me questions. I told them about the tricobezoar, saying that when I was a little girl I’d been given it by a servant in my parents’ country house, because I’d never told them the truth about my childhood—why should I? And I told the messenger that I was quite willing to go to the palace next day to see the emperor.

“I wasn’t the only one. Twenty-three people had given their hiddenstones to prevent the emperor’s hemorrhages, and he called them in one by one and thanked them, because it had now been many days since he’d had bleeding or swellings in his joints. My husband’s daughters and daughters-in-law wanted me to wear every jewel I had; they wanted their father to buy me a new gown and coat and shoes and gloves and fan and hairdo; they wanted me to shadow my eyelids and pluck my eyebrows and paint my cheeks and mouth. I said no. With a smile, because they were good girls and terribly upset, but I said no. Next day the poor things were almost in tears seeing me put on a simple blue dress, shoes that were nice but not new and not particularly showy, plain blue gloves, and no jewels, none at all. You can’t, you just can’t! they said. At least wear this gold chain, or a pearl necklace, or your diamond ring, something, a jeweled belt, a pin . . . The carriage came. I kissed my husband and the girls and went to the palace.

“The emperor didn’t much impress me either, since I’d seen sick men before, past hope, near death, past relief and remedy. He received me very simply, looked at me attentively, smiled, and said he was extremely grateful. And the doctors and counselors around him looked at me with curiosity. I held up my head and looked right back at them, one by one, without the slightest timidity, and not with curiosity but with such cold lack of interest that one of them nearly said something but didn’t, and another flinched as if I’d threatened him. I did it deliberately, of course. And then I ceased to look at them, as if they weren’t there. Nor did I raise my eyes when they all left the room at a sign from the emperor. He told me to sit beside him and asked my name, though he certainly already knew it, and what my husband did, and if I had children, and how I had come by the hiddenstone.

“Magic can’t be trusted, I assure you; what’s useful is quickness and certainty in making up one’s mind. And that’s not magic even if it looks like it, because you can only do it when you’ve learned to think your own thoughts. In those few minutes I had realized that the emperor was dying, that some of the people around him were fakes and the rest incompetents, and that here, at the throne, I could find a use for the energy I wasted moving furniture around my house, building pergolas in my garden, studying budgets and markets in my husband’s office. Once I knew that and knew I knew it and discussed it with myself and accepted it, when the emperor asked how I’d come by the stone, I told him the truth and added, truthfully, that he and I alone knew it. Then he asked me—what could he ask me? come on, that one’s easy—a man who ruled the world, sick, exhausted, smothered in praise and adulation, disappointed, disillusioned—what could he ask me? Why I’d told him what I told him. And this time I didn’t answer with the truth. Of course not. I told him that my secret weighed upon me, not always but sometimes, which wasn’t true. I told him that when I felt especially happy or unhappy my secret weighed most heavily and was hardest to bear. And, of course, he asked me whether at the moment I was happy or unhappy, and I said: Both. In short, I drew him deeper into the informality that he had chosen for these meetings with people who’d parted with their hiddenstones for his sake. And by giving a personal tone to what was said I confused him, so that I could reassure him immediately, as if he was the one doing me a favor. He found this all so unexpected that I was the only one of the twenty-three who spent the whole afternoon with the emperor. And the only one who came back, once and again.”

Yes, said the storyteller: her influence in the imperial government began long before she became the Great Empress, long before she ascended to the throne. She was still the wife of the rich landowner and flour and grain merchant, she had no position, no official designation, but the emperor listened to her. At first he didn’t follow her advice, or not always, and didn’t base his decisions on her opinions; but the woman disconcerted him because she showed him things in another light, from different angles, turned them into something very different from what they’d seemed, and at the same time explained to him how he could understand how a minister felt, an employee, a rich man, a poor laborer, a fisherman, a nobleman, a bureaucrat, a soldier: in a word, how to make governing not a heavy legacy but a vocation, an adventure. For the first time in years, perhaps in his whole life, the emperor was happy; no less ill for that, but happy and serene. And the people felt the same. It was thanks to her, to give just one example, that the stevedores’ strike was settled, which had threatened to become a bloody struggle. On the advice of a couple of rapacious little men, the emperor was about to order the army to intervene, when Abderjhalda spoke up, and we know now what that means. While the emperor was reading the decree before signing it, she was drinking tea, looking out the window, very interested in what she saw out there, beyond the palace walls. And as if she wasn’t talking to him, and as if it didn’t matter at all to her what he was doing and was about to do, she said:

“There was a doctor that looked after a rich man who had a chronic illness. One day the sick man had a very serious attack, painful, cruel, and his children asked the doctor not to try and prolong his life, since death would free him from all suffering. ‘Yes, that’s true,’ the doctor thought, ‘they’re right: the sick man will rest at last, I’ll be well paid both for doctoring him and setting him free from his torment, and I won’t have to go on year after year, day after day, night after night, vainly rushing here to give the poor man some useless medicine; and the children will inherit, and won’t suffer because their father’s in pain, and they’ll remember him fondly.’ But before he quite resolved to suspend treatment, he looked into their eyes, those children of his patient. And he looked into the sick man’s eyes. And he looked at himself in a mirror on the wall across the room. The children’s eyes were bright; the sick man’s eyes were opaque; and on the day, not far off now, when death came at last, women would drape black cloth across the mirror. He saw another solution, then, which would do as much good as the first one to the sick man and to himself, though not to the children; but it would be much fairer to them all.”

The Emperor Idraüsse IV looked at the mirrors of his salon and said, “I understand.”

The soldiers stayed shut up in their quarters waiting for an order which didn’t come. Three days later the stevedores marched in front of the palace shouting hurray for the emperor, and the day after that they went back to work.

The members of the council, the ministers, and the secretaries all hated her, of course, but she didn’t oppose them, or sneer at them, or try to win them over; she ignored them. They didn’t exist, she didn’t see or hear them, didn’t know they were there. One of them tried to put a stop to her visits to the palace, but his machinations were so clumsy that they resulted in his being exiled to Lemnarabad. Another tried to collude with her, another made an attempt on her life, and so on, until, defeated though they didn’t want to admit it, they agreed the best thing to do was wait till her influence over the emperor waned and ceased, as had happened before. A vain hope, and in their hearts they knew it, but what else could they do?

Mr. Ereddam’Ghcen died of a sudden pneumonia, and she buried him with pomp and ceremony, wept for him, and wore mourning for him. When she began to go out again, she went to the palace, sat down with the emperor, and explained to him, clearly, mildly, firmly, what would become of the Empire if he died a childless widower; and then she explained what would become of the Empire while he lived and when he died, if he married her. A year later the Emperor Idraüsse IV, ninth ruler of the dynasty of the Elkerides, married Abderjhalda and crowned her empress.