Imperial Woman (42 page)

When the eunuch had dressed her hair, parting it in the center and braiding it and bringing the braid into a knot on top of her head, he set upon her crown the high Manchu headdress she always wore, and pinned it through the knot with two long pins. The Empress Mother herself had arranged in her headdress the fresh flowers she loved, and for today she chose small scented orchids freshly plucked. When the headdress set with orchids was in place, she washed her face again and this time herself, and she rubbed into her cream-white skin the foam of a perfumed soap. This in turn she washed away, the water very hot, and now she smoothed into her skin a lotion made of honey, asses’ milk and the oil of orange peel. When this was absorbed, she dusted upon her face a pale-pink powder, very soft and fine and scented.

There remained only the choice of jewels for the day. For these she sent for her lists and read aloud the number of a jewel case. A lady whose duty it was to tend the jewels went to a room next to the bedchamber, where the jewels were kept. Here the walls were lined with shelves and upon the shelves were cases of ebony, each numbered, each with its gold lock and key, and upon each case was written what jewels were inside. There were some three thousand boxes in all, yet such jewels were only for daily use. Beyond this room was still another, strongly padlocked, where state jewels were kept, which the Empress Mother wore only upon the occasion of imperial functions. Today, since her robe was blue, she chose sapphires and seed pearls set in earrings, rings, bracelets and a long chain about her neck.

When the jewels were fastened upon her she had next to choose her kerchief. It was the last touch of her toilet, to be decided upon only when she had finished all else, and today she chose an Indian gauze, white imprinted with blue and yellow flowers, and she fastened it over the sapphire button of her robe. With this, she was ready for her morning meal, whose dishes waited for her in her pavilion. Under each dish was a small lamp to keep the food hot. From one dish to the other she drifted, choosing here and there, her ladies standing at a distance, until from twenty dishes she had eaten a light breakfast of sweetmeats, followed by a bowl of millet gruel, which she supped. Only now could the ladies come forward to choose from what she had rejected, and they came forward somewhat timidly, careful not to eat from the dishes she had chosen.

But today the Empress Mother was in pleasant mood. She reproved no one, she was amiable with her dogs, courteously waiting to feed them until her ladies had finished their meal. Not always was she so amiable, for when angry for some reason she fed her dogs first before the ladies ate, saying that only her dogs could she trust as her friends, always loving, always loyal.

When all had eaten she went into her gardens to view her peony mountain. It was the season of returning birds, and as she walked the Empress Mother listened for the wild sweet music that she loved. When a bird called she answered, pursing her lips and replying so perfectly that after a while, she standing motionless in the middle of the garden and her ladies at a distance with the dogs in leash, a bird came fluttering down from among the bamboos, a small yellow-breasted finch, which with coaxing murmuring sounds the Empress Mother persuaded to alight upon her outstretched hand. There it clung, half alarmed, half bewitched, while upon the Empress Mother’s face there came a look so tender, so enchanting, that her ladies were moved to see it, marveling that this same face could sometimes be so harsh and cruel. When the bird flew away again, the Empress Mother called to her ladies to come near, and as it pleased her to do, she instructed them thus:

“You see how loving kindness conquers fear, even in animals. Let this lesson be engraved upon your hearts.”

“Yes, Majesty,” they murmured, and they marveled again because this imperial woman could be so varied, generous and kind, indeed, and yet as truly they knew secretly that she could be vengeful and ruthless.

But this was a good day, her pleasant mood continued, and her ladies prepared to enjoy themselves with her. In season it was the third day of the third month of the moon year, and the Empress Mother bethought herself of a play she had written, for now that the heaviest cares of state were upon her son, the Emperor, she enjoyed her leisure not only in painting and calligraphy but also in writing plays. This imperial woman, so diverse and rich in her genius, might have chosen her own greatness had she been able to single one gift above another, but she could not make her own choice of what she loved best to do, and so she did something of each and in all she excelled. As for those affairs of state which had absorbed her until her son sat upon the Dragon Throne, they seemed forgotten or ignored, yet the eunuchs were her spies, and through them she knew everything.

When she had walked about her gardens for an hour, when she had rested and eaten again, she spoke amiably to her waiting ladies. “The air of this day is fine, the wind is still, the sun is warm, and it would be a pastime to see our court actors perform my play,
The Goddess of Mercy.
What do you say?”

At this all the ladies clapped their hands but the Chief Eunuch, Li Lien-ying, made his obeisance. “Majesty,” he said, “I venture to fear that the actors have not yet learned their lines. This play is very subtle, the lines must be spoken with sureness and clarity that humor and fancy be not lost.”

The Empress Mother did not approve what he said. “The actors have had time, they have had plenty of time,” she declared. “Go at once and tell them that I shall expect the curtain to rise before the beginning of the next period of the water clock. Meanwhile I will say my daily prayers.”

So saying the Empress Mother walked with her usual grace through a pavilion to her own private temple, where a white jade Buddha sat upon a great lotus leaf of green jade, holding in his right hand an uplifted lotus flower of rose red jade. On his right stood the slender Kuan Yin, and on his left the God of Long Life. Before the Buddha the Empress Mother stood, not kneeling but with her proud head bowed as she told the beads of a sandalwood rosary she took from the altar.

“O mi t’o fu,”
she murmured for each bead, until the one hundred and eight sacred beads were told. Then she put down the rosary and lit a stick of incense in the urn upon the altar and again she stood with bowed head while the fragrant smoke curled into the air. She was careful to pray each day, and while she prayed first to the Buddha, who was Lord of Heaven, yet she never left her temple until she had bowed too before the Goddess of Mercy. This goddess she loved extravagantly, imagining in her secret thoughts that they two were sisters, one Queen of Heaven and the other the Queen of Earth. Sometimes in the middle of the night she even so addressed the goddess, murmuring thus behind her bed curtains:

“Sister in Heaven, consider my troubles. These eunuchs—but do you have eunuchs in heaven, Sister? I doubt it, for what eunuch is fit for heaven? Yet who serves You and Your angels, Heavenly Sister? Surely no man, even in heaven, can be pure enough to be near You.”

And sometimes, now that she had time to remember, she would inquire of the goddess whether in Heaven it were possible to receive at last a faithful lover. Nay, she did even mention his name.

“Sister in Heaven, you know my kinsman, Jung Lu, and how we would have been man and wife, except for my destiny. Tell me, shall we be free to wed in some other incarnation or shall I still be too great? I, sitting at Your right hand, in Heaven, Sister, I pray You raise him up to me, so that at last we may be equals even as my sister, the English queen, Victoria, once raised her Consort.”

All but the truth she told the goddess, and now, gazing into that pure and pensive face, she wondered whether her Heavenly Sister did perhaps know all the truth, told or not, in such midnight thoughts.

When she came out from the temple she led her ladies and her dogs through a large courtyard, where stood two immense baskets made of cedarwood logs in which grew ancient vines of purple wisteria. The vines were in full blossom, scenting the air until the fragrance drifted through the pavilions and the corridors of palaces. It was their season and the Empress Mother came every day to see the wisteria in bloom. Through this courtyard she passed after she had admired the flowers, her entourage behind her, and next she led the way through a corridor that was built into the side of a hill, and by this means she came to her theater.

The theater was like none elsewhere in her realm, nor, she believed, even in the whole world. Around a great open courtyard was a brick building, five stories high, and open in the front toward the courtyard. The three top stories were storerooms for costumes and sceneries. The lower two stories were stages, one above the other, the upper one made like a temple for the sacred plays concerning gods and goddesses, which the Empress Mother loved best to see, for she was ever curious about the lives of Heavenly Beings. Inside the courtyard itself were two long buildings wherein were sitting rooms and pavilions, and here the Court might rest when so invited by the Empress Mother. These buildings were raised ten feet above the ground, level with the lower stage, and faced with glass, so that in wind or cold the Empress Mother still could watch the play. In summer the glass was moved away and gauze was hung, so thin that eye could see through it clearly, yet strong enough to forbid flies and mosquitoes, but especially flies, for the Empress Mother would not allow so much as one fly to come near where she was, and if a fly perched upon a bowl of food, she refused it even to her dogs. In these buildings were three rooms which she alone could use, two to sit in, one of them a library so that she could take up a book when the play was dull, and the third to sleep in when she was inclined, waking again when the play grew lively.

This day, the hour being after noon, she chose the sitting room, and there upon a cushioned throne she sat surrounded by her ladies to watch the play that she had written. It was not the first time she had seen its performance, but she had not been satisfied with the skill of the actors and she had commanded certain changes. In secret they complained that she expected magic of them, but from her was no escape, and today they did their best, achieving such wonders as a great lotus flower rising from the middle of the stage, wherein sat a living Goddess of Mercy, who was a young and delicate eunuch, his face so delicate and pretty that he made a lovely girl. As the goddess rose from the center of the lotus, a boy rose on her right, and a girl on her left, who were her attendants, the girl holding a bottle of jade in which was thrust a willow branch, for it is a legend that if the goddess dips a willow branch into the jade bottle and lifts it above a corpse, then life returns to the dead. Many pieces of magic the Empress Mother devised in her plays, for she was charmed by magic of all sorts and listened eagerly to old wives’ tales and legends told by these eunuchs who were the Buddhist priests in the imperial temple. And she liked best the tales of magic which came first out of India with the Buddhist pilgrim priests, a thousand years ago, which tell of runes and sacred rhymes and talismans and secret words that, when chanted, spoken and pronounced, can make a human man safe against a spear thrust or a blow. She all but believed such tales in spite of her natural shrewdness and distrust, for she felt herself too strong to die, and she mused often upon whether there might be a magic that could prevent death and make her eternal. All this wonder and hope and longing to believe in heavenly power, half fantasy, half faith, she put into her plays, exacting a skill nearly magic to perform them, for she directed her own plays, even to the sceneries, and she devised curtains, wing slides and drop scenes which she had never heard of elsewhere but made from her own fertile fancy.

When the play ended she clapped her hands, for indeed it was well done and she was pleased with herself, as playwright. As usual when she was gay, she declared that she was hungry, and so the serving eunuchs came to lay tables for her next meal. It was the habit of the Empress Mother to take her meals wherever she happened to be, and now while she waited she talked with her ladies and asked them questions about the play and what they thought, and she encouraged them to tell her its faults, for she was too large-minded to fear their judgments and was only eager to make what she did more perfect. When the tables were laid the serving eunuchs formed two long lines from kitchens several courtyards away and they passed the covered dishes of hot food from hand to hand and with great speed to the four upper eunuchs who set them on the tables. Now the ladies stood back while the Empress Mother chose what she liked and she ate indeed with good appetite. Since she was in high spirits she pitied the ladies still hungering and she told a eunuch she would drink her tea in the library and so withdrew. Two eunuchs followed, one bearing her white jade cup set in a saucer of pure gold and covered with a lid of gold, and the other bearing a silver tray on which stood two jade bowls, one filled with dried honeysuckle flowers and the other with rose petals, and with them a pair of ivory chopsticks tipped with gold. These flowers the Empress Mother liked to mix with her tea in such delicate proportion that she must do it herself.

It was now as she sipped her tea that the present shadow of her life fell hard upon her. For as she sat upon her cushioned couch, she heard a dry cough at the door and recognized the voice of the Chief Eunuch, Li Lien-ying.

“Enter,” she commanded.

He came in and made obeisance, while around her the eunuchs waited.

“Why am I disturbed?” the Empress Mother inquired.

He lifted up his head. “Majesty, I ask to speak to you alone.”

She put down her tea bowl and made a gesture with her right hand. All withdrew, a eunuch closed the door.

“Get up,” she said to Li Lien-ying. “Sit yonder. What has the Emperor done?”

The tall gaunt eunuch rose and sat down on the edge of a carved chair and turned his hideous wrinkled face away from his sovereign. “I have stolen this memorial from the archives,” he said. “I must return it within the hour.”