Empress (38 page)

Rivers scour through the earth and run toward the ocean. The snows fall, and trees cover themselves with leaves. Palaces crumble, paths disappear, wheat sprouts up and transforms deserts into fields. God is the source of all movement, inexhaustible life, eternal energy. God had made me and sent me here to demonstrate his might: He creates and destroys, erases and renews. Even at the heights to which I had risen, I remained dust in the palm of his hand.

THE JOURNEY BACK to Luoyang was gloomy. I lay huddled in fur coats inside my carriage surrounded by fires crackling in braziers, but still shivering with cold. The strength was being drawn out of me like an ebbing tide. My ears were filled with a buzzing sound. My eyesight became hazy, and I ordered my officials to write their political reports in larger characters. Once I had dictated the commemorative hymn that would be engraved on the stela erected at the top of Mount Song, I accepted the idea of dying.

One evening the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen asked to speak to me in secret. He was brought to the palace along an underground passageway. As he threw himself at my feet, I noticed a feverish red flush on his pale cheeks. His wolf-like eyes glowed with something akin to joy. My wildcats seemed to have picked up the scent of blood on him; they roared and paced agitatedly. The judge was surrounded by dogs and leopards, but he showed no fear. He took from his sleeve a scroll of paper and held it aloft in both his hands to offer it to me. I unrolled it in the candlelight to reveal a diagram in which the First Magistrate had traced the networks of conspirators from the time of Wu Ji, Shang Guan Yi, and Pei Yan right up to the present. There were hundreds of names, all written in large characters and connected to form a tree whose branches reached as far as provincial governments and the encampments of those who had been banished. Every enemy of the State was inscribed there: The dead were ringed with red ink, the exiled with blue, and prisoners in green, and there were black circles hovering threateningly around those who were still free. At the very end of the scroll, I found Miracle, Moon, Future, Piety, and Spirit.

Lai Jun Chen’s voice quavered slightly. Miracle, the Emperor who had resigned; Future, the deposed emperor; Piety, the King of Wei; Spirit, the King of Liang; Moon, the Princess of Eternal Peace; and her husband, Tranquility, the King of Jian Chang were secretly planning a coup and preparing to share the kingdom between them.

“Lord Lai,” I sighed, “I have taken note of your observations. You may leave.”

“Majesty,” he said, edging forward on his knees, “the King of Wei has been restless the whole time you have delayed appointing an heir. He is weary of waiting; he is preparing to resort to force and will call on his cousins who command your guards regiments. The Princess of Eternal Peace is secretly scheming to establish an agreement between her brothers and her husband’s clan. Majesty, the time has come, an uprising in the Court is imminent!”

“Let me think!” I said, silencing the prosecutor with a wave. He disappeared through the partition. Lai Jun Chen had an acute sense of smell like an animal, which meant that he could identify the ideas that people were harboring and the longings they themselves had not yet formulated. While other judges were happy simply examining the facts, he projected himself into the future. The plot he was imagining was one I had already lived in my nightmares. Men’s strengths go hand in hand with their weaknesses. That is why there is no such thing as an invincible warrior, and why heroes die.

Two days later during the morning audience Piety, King of Wei, asked to speak. His powerful voice reverberated around the hall: He charged the magistrate Lai Jun Chen with corruption, exploiting his influential position, and attempting to usurp power. My Great Ministers and my nephews Spirit and Tranquility stepped forward and unanimously upheld his charges. In keeping with Palace codes, Lai Jun Chen had risen from his seat and prostrated himself as soon as his name was mentioned. I was surprised by this violent attack and remained silent. Someone had betrayed the prosecutor by warning the King of Wei, who had responded with an adroit riposte: Piety had pointed the finger at Lai Jun Chen for the crimes of which he himself was accused. The entire government had joined him and was declaring war on the most feared man in the Empire. How was it that the prosecutor, who saw plots in every direction, had been unaware of this one, like a soothsayer blind to his own fate?

I silenced my own irritation while my ministers pressed me for a response, and Lai Jun Chen asked to speak. Either I would hand the magistrate over to the Court, or I would let him explain himself. He would denounce the conspiracy: With one hundred members of both my families in prison or condemned to death, I would become the laughing stock of the entire world. I would be the senile emperor sinking the very ship on which she sails. What authority would I have left to reign? Who would be heir to the throne? Piety had played his part very cleverly. On the chessboard of the Forbidden City, he had just checkmated his opponent. I did not grant the judge the right to defend himself, but pretended to be furious and ordered that his cap and official’s tablet be removed and that he be thrown in prison.

A wave of hatred rippled through the Court. I created a special court made up of high-ranking magistrates and Great Ministers, and while they were deliberating the charges brought against the accused man, the kings and dignitaries and the Princess of Eternal Peace filed past me begging me to apply the law. A stack of thirty scrolls, listing 1,500 charges, was laid before me. A petition bearing hundreds of signatures was brought to me. The entire Court was asking for this torturer to be put to death. Ten years earlier, I would have firmly defended Lai Jun Chen. But now my soul, which had embraced God himself, was weary of human quarrels, and my policies were restricted to engineering compromises. A sovereign is never entirely master of his kingdom. I was constrained to abandon thoughts of exiling him and to concede that he should be put to death.

The wind picked up, and the mountains whispered. Migratory birds crossed the sky with anguished cries. The chrysanthemums in the Imperial Park exhaled their bitter fragrance and dropped their petals into the River Luo. I watched the moon wax: It would soon be the mid-autumn full moon, the date set by the ancestors for public executions.

The night before the fateful day, I tossed and turned in bed before falling asleep. In my dreams, I climbed up to the observatory. The Forbidden City at my feet steeped in shadows, like a cemetery where the red lanterns of night watchmen on their rounds danced like will-o“-the-wisps.

All of a sudden someone stepped out of the darkness and threw himself to the ground.

“I have come to prostrate myself at your feet one last time,” Lai Jun Chen told me, his voice echoing as if from the depths of a well and his iron chains rattling. “Before leaving this world, I wanted to tell you that all the accusations are false. I have never betrayed Your Majesty’s trust.”

“Lord Lai, you made only one mistake: You criticized my family.”

“Majesty, they are plotting against you!”

“I am tired. I no longer have the strength to unravel all this hatred and to cause bloodshed. In a kingdom everyone except the king is a conspirator. There is always an intelligent way of making peace with enemies. Why did you not realize that? Why have you forced me to sacrifice you?”

“Majesty,” he said, prostrating himself, “I am not yet beheaded. So long as there is breath left in me, I shall fight for you. Majesty, you must choose! Either you shall reign for ten thousand years, or the Zhou dynasty will be overthrown, and you will be betrayed for all eternity!”

“Lord Lai,” I cried despairingly, “look at my hands; look at my face.

I’m growing old; I’m going to die! What does glory mean to me now or the dynasty!“

“You are wrong, Majesty; you are a goddess who will live as long as the River Luo flows and Mount Song stands!”

“I am a mere mortal in this existence. I too shall end up in the Yellow Earth, like all the other emperors resting in their tombs. While I am alive, I am Master of the World. Once I die I shall have only the narrow confines of a coffin! Lord Lai, leave me. Our families are a congenital illness. Mine is my infirmity. I did not choose it; the gods imposed it on me. I am condemned to disappear along with my dynasty.”

A sob wracked the man whom I believed to be incapable of emotion. His weeping was the strangled howl of a dying animal.

“How can I leave Your Majesty alone in this world! How can you fight everyone alone? Majesty, I beg you, let me live; let me defend you!”

My heart contracted, and my voice shook as I said, “Leave!”

“Majesty,” he said, wiping his tears, “your wish is my command. For you, I shall go to my death. May my sovereign be granted ten thousand years of happiness! May the Sacred Emperor be granted ten thousand years of good health!”

The wind lifted, and the judge disappeared. I was woken by a needling pain. The glow of nightlights danced on the walls of the Palace, like dying fireflies. I asked for Gentleness to be woken, and she played the zither until dawn.

The following day I hosted the annual banquet held in celebration of the moon. Dancing girls on the stage swirled their long sleeves. My son, my daughter, and my nephews took turns offering me wine. I waved them back to their seats. Up on my throne, I served myself and got drunk. I contemplated the heavenly mirror in its full and perfect splendor. In the middle of its silvery surface, there were darker patches that made its luminosity seem all the more pure and mysterious. Judge Lai Jun Chen had been the impurity that had accompanied me in my solitude. His head would already have rolled to the ground, and his body would have been handed to the crowd to trample on it in their fury. I had lanced an infection. I had stripped myself of my last weapon.

I stood alone at the top of the world. Before me and behind me, there was now only emptiness and infinity.

THE REGIMENTS OF the imperial guard were posted along every avenue, and the inhabitants of Luoyang received orders to stay at home with their doors and windows closed. I stepped into the golden carriage to join Moon, who was celebrating her thirtieth spring. The imperial procession filed through the streets for hours on end.

Hills covered in blossoming plum trees undulated around a frozen lake, and crimson galleries snaked through the snow. The residence of the Princess of Eternal Peace was a palace of jade and crystal. Fires crackled in braziers, and rare dishes appeared in a heady succession. This banquet marking the reconciliation between emperor and her family brought together every powerful figure in the Empire. The great men in magnificent finery were soon drunk, constantly raising their glasses to toast the omnipotent princess and to wish her a thousand years of happiness. A dais had been set up for me at the far end of the room, and perched on my throne, I was bored as usual.

A rustling sound woke me from my snoozing; I opened my heavy eyelids and saw a silhouette in the doorway. Whoever it was prostrated themselves and came toward me through the turmoil of the banquet, a slender boat plying through a lotus field. The figure drew closer and revealed itself to be an extraordinary beauty: Now I could make out the square tips of his shoes and the flowing movements of his tunic with its long sleeves. His oval face was lightly powdered, and he had dark slanting eyes. There was something familiar about this stranger!

He prostrated himself again, then took a bamboo flute from his belt and brought it to his lips with his eyes still modestly lowered. When he blew into the instrument the world suddenly stopped buzzing around me, the winter faded away, and spring spread its wings. Flowers bloomed between his arpeggios, and I saw swallows flying overhead. A great plain of green meadows embraced me in its cool, fresh grasses. A hill wreathed in mist appeared on the horizon. A pathway zigzagged through fields of sorghum toward the top of the hill where there was a stela covered with inscriptions. Then the vision melted away. The youth bowed to me once more and backed away respectfully before disappearing. I looked at the emptiness he had left, speechless and terrified.

I called Gentleness and asked her the musician’s name. She told me that he was called Prosperity and was a descendant of Zhang Xing Cheng, a minister in the Department of Punishments during Emperor Eternal Ancestor’s reign. She added that my daughter, Moon, was hoping to find a position for him at the Court.

That night I was haunted by the boy’s pale face and pink lips. A year earlier, as I returned from Mount Song, I had secretly met with a Taoist monk who claimed he had lived a thousand years and could see a thousand years of the future. I remembered his enigmatic prediction: “The end will come when the Celestial Prince plays his bamboo flute.”

Prosperity had come, the end was beginning. A bamboo flute was guiding me through the darkness to the mouth of the labyrinth. It had all been written.

The very next day I sent a message to Moon, and that evening the princess sent her lover to the Inner Palace and offered him to me.

HOLDING PROSPERITY IN my arms, I realized I was no longer the same woman, no longer ashamed of my old age or filled with self-loathing. The despair had vanished. This coming together of two bodies had been inscribed in the
Book of the Earth.
Prosperity was a present from God. He was bringing me new life even as he announced my death.

When the Mistress of the World, Emperor of the Zhou dynasty, quivered to a man’s rhythms once more Tai Mountain crumbled, the Yellow Sea boiled, wild animals roared in the forest, and the whole universe shivered with joy and amazement. It was a long time since I had had an official favorite, and the Court was bowled over by the news.

Urged on by my Great Ministers, the imperial doctors recommended that I should be examined immediately, and they forbade violent orgasms that might prove fatal. Their eager concern amused me. From the very first night with my new lover, I knew that my pleasure was no longer the physical contractions. In my dotage, death’s mystic light was blinding me. My erotic pleasure was almost a breathing exercise, an elation that lay along the torturous path of caresses on my skin. It was a dreamlike pilgrimage toward the kingdom of the immortals.