Empress (35 page)

I developed a profound loathing for my own body, this Future Buddha’s body which was said to be sacred and indestructible. The baths, massages, and unguents could no longer stop this flesh from slackening and crumpling. I hid my resentment toward my young lover who shattered the myth every time he undressed me.

I was obsessed by hygiene: I forced him to undergo medical examinations and to be washed from head to toe before he came to my bed. In spite of the soaps and the vigorous scrubbing by my serving women, he still gave off a smell of earthly debauchery, underlining the irony of my decrepitude. His member had trawled through the town; his dirty hands had delved in other orifices; his tongue had licked fresh, pungent young skin. Every time I took him in my arms, I exposed myself to his gaze, to being compared.

One night, I exploded angrily, and he dared to reply: “Majesty, I know you have me followed and that your spies have been sold into my houses as slaves. You spy on my every coupling; you follow my life with the ferocity of a lioness. But you have never tried to look into my heart. Have you ever thought that it is you who drives me into other women’s arms:

“Little Treasure,” I sneered, using his original name. “All these years, I have never forbidden you from finding pleasure elsewhere when I could have demanded your complete faithfulness. Imperial concubines are shut away in the gynaeceum, but I have allowed you to run free. That is the greatest proof of affection an emperor can give. Instead of showing gratitude, you abuse my patience. Now you dare accuse me of driving you into other women’s arms! What do you mean by this? Am I so very old and hideous?”

“Faithfulness, yes, let us talk of that,” he said furiously. “Has Your Majesty herself been faithful? If you had told me at the very start that, as sovereign, you had the right to every pleasure, then I would have been forced to accept that in silence. But you claimed that I was the only man in your life. You prided yourself on your faithfulness and found some glorious virtue in the fact that you did not have ten thousand beautiful men in your Inner Palace. Can you explain to me then why you enter into relationships based on intellect and affection with your ministers, your magistrates, and your generals? That particular love, which has no physical element and is forbidden between master and servant, is so much more intense than mere copulation. You love Judge Lai Jun Chen! I only have to see you with him to know that you marvel at his coldness and that you guard his life jealously even though the whole Empire wishes him dead. You exiled Great Chancellor Li Zhao De because your ministers urged you to, but soon you will call him back to Court as if nothing had happened. If that is not love, what other word is there to explain it? There is also the Great Secretary Ji Xu, who holds your horse’s bridle and who can make you laugh so readily. Two years ago, like a loving wife stitching a war uniform for her husband heading off to the front, you gave each of your delegated governors an official tunic sewn by the serving women in your gynaeceum. You claimed you yourself embroidered the words ”firm, supple, calm, ardent“ on the back of these garments. Majesty, do you realize that some of these coarse creatures sleep with those tunics folded neatly beside their pillows, that others have laid them on altars and converse with them as if they were divinities? When you receive the candidates for the final imperial test; when you sit behind your gauze curtain and interrogate them in your deep, kindly voice; when you seduce budding ministers with your humor and erudition, you sew the seeds of love in their hearts, and those seeds will grow into blossoming trees whose fruits you can harvest. And after this great succession of men, there is me: a pitiful vagrant, a monk whom you forbid to take any part in politics! I am your weakness, your sickness, the shame that you keep hidden. There are plenty of humble girls who appreciate my kindness and venerate me, but Your Majesty is a cruel goddess who neglects me and destroys me! She offers her attentions to her subjects-men, women, young, and old-all of them beloved in her heart. She therefore saves herself from becoming attached to any single man; she manages her feelings so that she can never be disappointed. Her eyes never truly look at men; they are fixed on the skies. Her hand gives, takes away, pardons, kills… and I, Scribe of Loyalty, I live in the mire, struggling with contempt and longing. I am an object of slander and ridicule. Your ministers hate me, and the kings believe I manipulate you with a giant phallus! And yet you receive me only by night like a thief, and you turn me away when I want to make love to you!”

I had not realized that Scribe of Loyalty could feel jealousy, and his admission filled me with joy. I would have liked to ask his forgiveness and to admit that I was ashamed to let him touch my tired, old skin. I would have liked to reveal to him the secret that I kept hidden: I despaired as I grew old. My heart was calling out for his help, but my pride made me respond with a sigh: “What can I do to improve your standing? The Temple of Ten Thousand Elements has brought you wealth and notoriety. Twice I have appointed you commander of my imperial armies to fight the Tibetans, and I have given you the glorious title of Great General of the Invincible Defense and that of Lord of the Kingdom of Liang. But, as you are unable to rise early, you never attend the morning salutation. How do you expect to earn the Court’s respect if you do not respect its constraints and discipline?”

“Majesty,” Scribe of Loyalty interrupted me, “you know very well that I am not interested in power. If you care for me, if you love me, I ask just one thing of you: give me status. Marry me! Name me your Imperial Husband!”

I was so astonished by what I heard that I could find no words to reply. An emperor’s wife received the Empress’s Seal, but could a female emperor raise a man to the position of Imperial Husband? If an empress were considered to be the mother of the Empire and the most perfect incarnation of feminine virtue, would an imperial husband be the father of the Empire and master of all men? If Scribe of Loyalty received prostrations from the Court and the veneration of an entire people, would he not foster a desire to reign, would he not be tempted to usurp power? The people would never tolerate the image of a former drug peddler to be associated with me. How could I renounce the tomb of my glorious late husband, Celestial Emperor, Sovereign Lordly Ancestor, and lie down in the grave of an ordinary man?

My voice became hard and surly as if I were addressing a minister: “This may be what you dream of, but it is impossible.”

“Majesty,” he insisted, “you have encouraged widows to remarry; you have scorned tradition and created new laws. You have just inaugurated a dynasty and ascended to the throne. An Emperor has an Empress, four wives, nine Concubines, nine Elegant Ones, nine Beauties, nine Talented Ones, twenty-seven Forests of Treasure, twenty-seven Imperial Serving Women, twenty-seven Gatherers, and a huge Inner Palace to satisfy his desires. And you have just one lover whom you have forced to become a monk and who has become a laughing stock for the entire world! Majesty, you need to take just one more step to be equal to a man. Marry me! I will abandon my freedom.” “It is late. I have to rise at dawn. We must sleep.” “Majesty, just one word. Do you want me as a husband?” My heart felt the chill of a strange premonition. Instead of replying I turned my back to him. He shook me and wept as he held me in his arms. Half way through the night, he sat up with a start, leapt to the ground, and disappeared.

While I sat on my raised throne the following morning, I was distracted. During the Celebration of the Double Sun, my nephew Piety presented me with a petition of five thousand signatures in which State officials and common people begged me to take the title of Sacred Emperor who Turns the Golden Wheel. All this glory was now my enemy: I was a divine sovereign, Master of the World, but I was losing my hair, my teeth, and my strength like any lowly creature. The Sacred Emperor who kept time and the fortunes of this world turning was also a prisoner of the wheel that would ultimately lead to downfall. Life, like love, strengthens and betrays, soothes and punishes. I was a usurper. I had stolen a crown, an epoch, a transient illusion.

SCRIBE OF LOYALTY was sulking and avoiding me. He paid no attention to my summons and lay low in his monastery.

In the arms of the imperial doctor Shen Nan Qiu, I found the confidence of which Scribe of Loyalty had robbed me. His body was docile, discreet; it soothed my anxieties and eased my troubles. The news spread through the Forbidden City, and the Court made no effort to hide its joy in seeing the monk losing my favor. The dignitaries who, only the day before, had been proud to call themselves his friends were now eager to speak ill of him. It seems that Scribe of Loyalty, the Lord of the Kingdom of Liang, Great General of the Left of the Invincible Defense, thought of himself as a founding force in my dynasty and chose to play the role of master in the Monastery of the White Horse. He fortified its walls and recruited thousands of young monks who were experts in martial arts. The clash of bamboo poles and war cries rang out all day long: this was Scribe of Loyalty having fun training his soldier-monks. When he came out of his temple and went into the city, he surrounded himself with the most beautiful and vigorous of his disciples. His horse would be decked in a harness of gold set with gems, and around him he would have a troop of young monks carrying the rod of iron and the long saber, marching in time. When they came across Taoists and devout followers of other religions, on a nod from their master, they would attack them, shaving their heads and forcing them to convert to Buddhism. It was not long before the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen, who loathed my lover, begged me to charge him for abducting and sequestering women, for forming an illegal army, and for attempting to usurp power.

Scribe of Loyalty came before me only when he had been beseeched through three imperial summons accompanied by my handwritten orders. I felt my stomach contract when he came into the room: I had not seen him forthree months and had forgotten how beautiful he was.He stood head and shoulders about the other men and walked with a swagger like the heroes of ancient mythology. When he prostrated himself, I noticed that his face was thinner and that his forehead bore the mark of melancholy. I was overwhelmed by emotion: Scribe of Loyalty was suffering!

I indulged him by offering him a seat. Then I asked him gently about his life, and he answered me in brief sentences. I caressed him in my mind. His eyes lingered neither on my face, which had been smoothed of all wrinkles by the latest unguent concocted by the doctor Shen Nan Qiu, nor on the very open neckline of my gown. He seemed to look through me and stare glumly at the screen behind my seat. Our love was damned: the forty years that lay between us were drawing us slowly but inexorably to a tragic conclusion. But, at my age, I had no time for tears. He was the one my desire had chosen!

I would have like to tell him that Shen Nan Qiu had never had permission to penetrate me. The fifty year old had served me as a sleeping draft and a bed-warmer. The affair had been a game, just to have revenge for Scribe of Loyalty’s infidelities, to make him jealous. I would have liked to tell him that I was disappointed by my sons and felt that my grandchildren were strangers, that my nephews could think of nothing but taking my place on the throne, and that he alone-he, Little Treasure, fished out of the mysterious river of destiny-brought light into my life. I was prepared to offer him a flock of young women to keep him close to me as he had been before, like an exuberant talkative child.

I was unable to put all this in words and was afraid that he would blackmail me; instead I spoke of the accusations leveled at him. First he paled, then he sneered“ ”So it is true then, what they say about the doctor Shen Nan Qiu. If you want to be rid of me, nothing could be easier. If you hand me over to Lai Jun Chen, I will tell him everything without being tortured: your obsessions, your fears, your weaknesses, your secret fantasies. You would do better to have me killed straight away!“

Seeing that he had flushed scarlet in his indignation, I smiled.

“I am showing you these denunciations only to tell you that I am prepared to forgive you. Don’t you see that, without my protection, you will be trailed by the judges like a hare hounded by hunting dogs. In your few years in the Forbidden City you made very few friends and a good many enemies. What would you be without me?”

He stared at me, and his eyes glowed with a dark fire.

“Why do you toy with me? You must choose between the doctor and the monk. Just one word: do you wish to marry me?”

My heart turned to ice, and the smile froze on my face. I delivered a prepared speech: “I still have not appointed the successor to the throne in Court. If, in such a situation, I were to marry, if I were to confer the first imperial title on one man, my actions would create confusion.”

“Majesty,” he cried, throwing himself at me and almost suffocating me, “I love you. I want you to be my wife; I want to call you Heaven-light; I want to be joined to you in life and in death! Yes, I will renounce the title of husband; I spit on recognition. Let us be married in secret, here, now; we shall take Heaven and Earth as our witnesses. Swear to me that you are mine.”

How could I believe that such a young and beautiful man could love an old woman so passionately? Was he hoping to manipulate me? Was he willing to usurp the throne? I pushed him: “The insolence! Kneel before your sovereign!”

Scribe of Loyalty froze and collapsed at my feet, and I spoke slowly and deliberately: “Leave and never come back!”

He smacked his forehead heavily against the ground and then ran off. When his silhouette was reduced to a blur and then disappeared between the gates of my palace, I was devastated.

The gods had not invented love for an emperor.

I WAS HAUNTED by Scribe of Loyalty’s sadness. I could not forgive myself for hurting him. By breaking off with him, I had deprived myself of happiness and of my remedy for immortality. I drove the doctor Shen Nan Qiu from my palace to lock myself away with my pain.