Empress (2 page)

I was tormented by questions. I kept asking them all day long: “What is hunger? Why do the fields need to be cultivated? What is wheat? How is bread made?”

After a month of traveling, the caravan embarked into the misty mountains. The track was carved into the cliffs and, further down, the Jia Ling river roared as it hurled itself against the tormented rocks. Forts rose up from the peaks; military outposts opened their barriers for us. The imperial soldiers were brutish men who drank from chipped bowls and ate haunches of beef with their bare hands. In the evenings, around the camp fires, they beat their drums and sang. The moon rose, and I fell asleep listening to the roar of tigers. When the first hint of dawn appeared, birds launched themselves in pursuit of the sun, while monkeys fled the light, screeching as they swung from one strand of creeper to the next. “Why is the sky going red? Why are the trees so still? Why do the boatmen slash their own faces?” Streaming with blood, they raised anchor and threw themselves into the torrents.

I HUNG THE birdcages under the awnings. The robins, orioles, and canaries started to sing. I let the ducks out onto the pond, the cranes into the long grass, and the peacocks into the camellia bushes. Inside our new home, the furniture was taking root, the curtains were growing, and the cats and dogs scrapped over their territory.

Nurse dressed me as a Tartar boy. In my blue turban, leather boots, and emerald-green tunic with its fitted sleeves and cuffs embroidered in gold thread, I tottered like a drunken man, bellowing military songs.

Four years old, the age of diamonds. Free. There, with my arms in the air, I could fly. The new garden was a vast expanse of parkland, a whole continent. The summer was on its way: the hills oozed, the sky evaporated, life slowed down. I crouched down and watched the caravans of ants at the foot of trees. I shook off my servants by running through the bamboo forests. In the evenings, I would refuse to sleep and asked questions till the early hours: “Why does the frog have such a fat belly? Why do mosquitoes flee the herbs burning in bowls? Who do the stars play hide-and-seek with? Why is the moon sometimes round and sometimes thin? Who are the fireflies bearing their tiny lanterns for?”

Mother was afraid of my capacity to think. She called for a wandering monk known for the truth of his predictions. The man assured her there was absolutely no evil in my soul, praised my intelligence, and decreed that I had a spiritual vocation.

In the fourth year of Pure Contemplation, maternal Grandmother left this world. Mother asked me whether I would like to be the family delegate to observe mourning in a monastery and to pray for the salvation of the honorable deceased. I was five years old. I accepted the suggestion with joy: Father was my idol, so the word “delegate” filled my heart with pride, and I would at last have the same degree of importance as the governor of six districts and forty thousand souls.

The river flowed at the foot of the fortified town. The torrents propelled sailing boats toward the skies. From the harbor we could see the mountain of the Black Dragon. Along its sheer cliffs thousands of pavilions sheltered the entrances to Buddhist caves filled with statues and decorated with frescoes. After the boat crossing, I was carried on a servant woman’s back up the steep steps and over the bridge of plaited rope that swung across the middle of the valley. I was engulfed by the Monastery of Pure Compassion, which hung between the earth and the sky.

I LOST MY family name and my own name, I was now known as Light of Emptiness. I did not even know how to untie my belt. I would wake in the night calling for my wet nurses. I missed their breasts. I would finger my bedclothes and suck on my blanket, but in these I found neither the satin of their skin nor the wrinkles of their nipples and I wept. Mother did not come to see me. She had abandoned me to Buddha. Every day I watched and waited for a familiar face at the entrance to the monastery. On that gently rising path, the leaves fell with the dusk.

This monastery, which was famous throughout southern China, bustled with more than one thousand nuns. Pure Intelligence was responsible for my education. She was twenty, her muscled body smelled of green tea, and her impeccably shaved head was velvety soft as a white lotus. She gave me my bath, scrubbing my big tummy and my thin legs. She answered my questions and introduced me to reading. She taught me how to wash my face, dress, fold my blanket, and sing the songs of her homeland.

I swept the courtyard, shuffling back and forth with a bamboo broom taller than myself. I climbed onto the altars and dusted the faces of Buddhas and celestial kings. I crouched beside a waterfall and beat my clothes clean with a large pebble. I busied myself with the old women. For some of them, who were simply tired, I arranged their cushions and fetched pails; for others, who were already loosing their minds, I acted as a prompt for their memories. In the mornings, begging bowl in hand, I seduced rich visitors and made them open their purses. In the evening, after all the lights had been put out, I put on great performances at everyone’s request: acting out the scenes I had witnessed during the day; I played wealthy, worldly townswomen as well as our obsequious superiors and an exasperated Buddha. I could hear their laughter and compliments buzzing from beneath their blankets. I savored this glory, but feigned modesty.

My greatest friend was called Law of Emptiness. She was a white goat who followed me everywhere in my feverish activities. When I wandered into a temple, I would tell her about the life of Prince Siddhartha and the wonders of the Pure World. Deep in the forest, I would take a twig from a tree and give her writing lessons. When I was thirsty, I would slip between her legs, and she would offer me her udder full of milk.

“Were you sent by Buddha to watch over me?” I asked her. In her golden eyes, Law of Emptiness had all the goodness that was lacking in humans. Her curly coat was a parchment scribbled with ineffable words. Her hooves, like cloven rocks, trampled over the history of the world. One day I fell asleep at the foot of a statue of Bodhisattva. She woke me by licking my face: darkness was creeping over the sky, and I was late for evening prayer. As I sat up I saw the twinkle of a smile on her muzzle.

“Law of Emptiness, are you an incarnation of Buddha?”

My family home disappeared like a dream.

The mountains seemed to breathe. The mountains were sad; the mountains were happy. The mountains flaunted their furry coats of snow, their brocade robes, their sumptuous and extravagant cloaks of mist. The sky opened up vertically when dusk fell, all ochre, yellow and black. When evening came up from the valleys, the heavenly bodies revealed themselves. I would lie down in the long grasses: red, blue, green, sparkling, evanescent. Every star was a mysterious writing on the sacred book of the sky. Seasons passed, clouds drifted away and never came back. On the other side of the valley, hanging from ropes in the void in front of a cliff face, workmen sculpted day and night. I was told that an imperial donation had been made to create the largest Buddha on Earth.

The moon waxed and waned. The days, those tiny dots and circles, changed into a flowing script whose meaning was now lost. I understood the passage of time by watching the Buddha gradually materializing under those iron picks. Gentle eyes, a mysterious smile, drooping ear lobes, the mountain revealed his face. The cliff lost its sheer exterior, and his body appeared. His draped robes started to flutter in the wind. Birds wheeled around his knees with terrified cries. His ankles came away from the rock. The curve of his toenails emerged. I was mute with awe: Divinity had risen from nothingness!

One morning, in the reception hall, I found Mother and her retinue. She had gained weight; her breasts bulged. I was dazzled by her carefully applied makeup, her hair piled high on her head, and her embroidered gown. She told me that Father had been named Governor Delegate of the distant province of Jing and asked whether I would like to go with him or stay in the monastery.

My feeling of joy shattered: She made it clear that if I left, I would never see the mountains again, and if I stayed, I would lose my family forever. That same evening the monastery shook in the grips of a violent storm; the thunder roared, and the earth trembled. A tree just outside our sleeping quarters was struck by lightning and collapsed. The girls were terrified and started to pray. Huddled in my cot, with my hands over my ears, I slipped into another world. The darkness was drawing me in; I had never felt so alone. The thought of gliding across the years without seeing Mother again frightened me. I cried all night.

Before I left, Pure Intelligence gave back the box of belongings I had entrusted to her when I arrived. I secured the necklace of pearls and jade about my neck, put earrings in my ears, and put on three gold bracelets. I was heartbroken to find that the pleated skirt, the silk shirt, and the scarlet tunic with the bird design had all shrunk. I had grown.

With one hand I held Law of Emptiness by a length of string attached round her neck, and with the other I shook hands with Pure Intelligence. My tears flowed on and on. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her tunic and stopped by the monastery gate.

“Buddha speaks through every moment of pain. Listen to his words. Your destiny lies elsewhere. Forget me.”

She turned away and started to run. Her grey dress melted into the trees.

Farewell, monastery! Time will devour you, and you will be turned to dust. Farewell, Pure Intelligence! You will soon die, and we shall see each other again in another life. Farewell, my friends the monkeys, the tigers, and the pandas. You will become carrion, and only the mountains will remain.

They will watch over the Buddha’s enigmatic smile.

HORSES WHINNYING. Cartwheels rumbling. Coachmen shouting. Huddled on my cot, I drifted in and out of sleep. The endless earth unfurled as I traveled onward. In my dreams, I was straying through the belly of the mountains with a torch in my hand. A succession of frescoes: green, mauve, yellow, ochre, indigo, images of the gods, the celestial kings, and the bodhisattvas appeared and disappeared. Birds called, wild cats laughed, dancers tiptoed through the clouds scattering a shower of flowers. In the depths of the cave, I could see a statue of Buddha lying down, taking up the entire valley. He had one hand under his cheek but was not asleep. He was the only breath of life, his vast body weightless as a feather ready to fly away. Not the faintest rustle of wind, not one insect cry, not one drop of water falling. The world was silent before his state of bliss. Suddenly Buddha smiled at me. I woke with a start. I no longer knew where I was or what my name was.

I had lost Law of Emptiness. The little goat had disappeared without a trace; the mountains had reclaimed her from me. I had gone there almost naked, and now I was emerging with nothing.

“Everything is dreams and illusion,” Pure Intelligence had told me.

WE ABANDONED THE earth path. The wind filled the sails, and the huge boat was like a whole town as it traveled down the River Long.

The banks stretched out, mountains loomed up and dispersed into the mist. Fishermen surrounded by cormorants, groups of little houses on stilts, villages clinging to the side of the cliffs and fortified towns glided past. We threw anchor in ports that smelled of grilled fish. Hundreds of boats buzzed around us, offering cloths, furniture, clothes, vegetables, and young girls. At night the reflection of the moon would scatter over the water, a myriad of silver flowers flutter away. There were black boats covered in oiled cloth and red lanterns at the top of their masts; they emitted the wail of musical instruments, women’s laughter, and ugly voices of drunken men.

The river was growing wider. The torrents, no longer eager to rejoin the sea, were slowing down. There were countless vessels, still larger and more magnificent than ours, traveling in both directions.

The journey ended when the season of green plums began. The rain trickled and did not stop. Water streamed over the roofs in the town of Jing; it seeped down the walls and crawled over books, leaving its flower-shaped tracks. Servant women dried damp clothes over fires fed with sandalwood bark. I studied the Four Classics with a private tutor. The cook heaved me up onto her donkey’s back and gladly brought me along on her trips to the market.

In the narrow streets paved with black stone, the servants’ feet grew red in their wooden clogs. The whole town came together in the floating market on the river, their rain hats pulled down over coats woven from bamboo leaves. The boats bustled and nudged one another on the water. The cook bartered fiercely: She could feign anger or improvise with flattery. The fishermen, beaten back by her eloquence, would throw us fish that squirmed through the air.

To console me for the loss of Law of Emptiness, Father gave me a horse and permission to go through the gateway into the side court. I went into the exercise yard where soldiers trained for battle. The animal was as tall as a mountain, spewing hot breath through great nostrils that quivered. All of a sudden he sneezed: terrified, I backed away and fell flat on my backside. He shook his head up and down and laughed, showing off his yellow teeth.

I called him King of Tigers. Up on his back, the world was at my feet. When he went into a gallop, my body melted away, my thoughts scattered in the wind, and I became a warrior on his flying fortress, a goddess on her winged chariot. At last, days of happiness had arrived like the midday sun. Only a few sorrows flitted across the skies of a childhood that knew no suffering.

My sisters and I had private tutors who gave us lessons in painting, calligraphy, music, and dance. When she was twelve, Eldest Sister Purity was as beautiful as the dawn breaking over the River Long. Having been forbidden any exposure to the sun by the doctors because her skin was so delicate, she preferred candlelight, and she would read and write all day long. Her poems already had the rhythm and resonance of a more mature mind. While I scratched my head trying to find obscure words, indispensable ornamentation for my prosaic compositions, sentences would flow from her swift hand in elegant pairs.