My Last Empress (26 page)

The man humbly bowed twelve times and docilely took us to the very hall where his Lord on Earth presided, as Wang Dan declared himself since the day of his own awakening.

The township of Wang was an enclave in itself, cut off from the northern plain by a manmade river serving as its outer moat. A town wall stood erect barring any intruders;
only a main ironclad gate allowed passage inward. Atop the gate were his flags, a red one with a roaring lion, a white one with a blue fish sign, and a black flag with a white moon. Sentries were posted, much as at the Forbidden City. One would imagine this to be an empty town with only soldiers, barracks, cannons, and gunpowder, but one would be proven wrong.

The gate led one to a conjuncture with three streets sprouting onward north. The main road was called Paradise Boulevard. It led one not to a palatial establishment but a domed sanctuary with a fronting piazza. There was even a balcony to overlook an absent throng. The streets were of northern variety paved with gray stone, the stores and shops all flying the red flag. Children, all donned in white tunics and accompanied by their mamas and papas, were running about as carefree as the birds above them and the deer and peacocks around them. There was a serenity to the place untouched by what lay outside no more than a short mile away. Soldiers sang and marched in columns along the streets, patrolling the township; women were covered under black scarves, moving about like shadows on the street, carrying baskets of vegetables and grain. The kites flown by the children were white bearing the blue fish symbols.

Upon Paradise Boulevard, with the ingratiating official accompanying us, the citizenry of Wang Township paused to acknowledge us with a bow and a one-knee bending, for sure an act borrowed from some faraway ocean practice. The children followed us as children anywhere would follow visitors and outsiders.

“Are you here to pay witness to our Messiah’s return?” a boy asked, sweetly tugging Q’s sleeve. “Are you?”

“Whose return?”

“His father, our Lord in Heaven, has sent for him. That is why Messiah Wang has been preparing his body and mind for the inevitable.”

“And what if we are here to see him return?”

“Then you are still days too early. God isn’t ready for him. But you can always give your heavenly tithing early so heaven’s gate will be open to you when you are ready.”

Q frowned and whispered to me, “What is this place?”

“The only safe harbor for you.”

By the time we arrived at the piazza in front of Wang’s sanctuary, it was already crowded with a throng of noon chanters singing in pious voice, looking up to the balcony where an elder was seen hitting a bronze bell, marking the passage of the meridian. An orchestra of Mandarin instruments played a majestic passage, no doubt some imitation of palace music, punctuated by the striking of gongs and rambling beat of mighty cowhide drums standing on their sides as in a Japanese drum ceremony. All these indeed conspired to give off if not a heavenly ambience, then a deeply somber one, unimaginable only a short while ago beyond that pull-bridge. But what plucked an onlooker’s heartstring was not the faux grandeur of this wacky vaudeville invention but the piety borne by the noontime mass who had apparently dropped whatever at hand to hurry here to the heart of the township to observe this daily ceremony. There was a look of hunger, of yearning, on their faces.

Entering the stone archway crafted with images of dragons
and
chi lin
, mighty mythical creatures, I followed Q, letting her lead. Her gait was blithe and her pose regal.

She walked proudly in a carefree gait of a loved and adored wife with her tamed spouse following behind her. She had a knowing stride, sure of herself and even better, of the lame pup at her heels.

On the dais of the empty sanctuary, a man leaned feebly on the arm of his throne, plopped upright by cushions and pillows. He was racking up quite a mouthful of phlegm, spitting it into a spittoon held up by a girl in a red tunic. The effort left him breathless. Another young nurse soothed the man by gently patting his back while urging him along with words of endearment. Sensing our approach, he curtly pushed away the spittoon, signaling with a turn of his head for the young nurse to stop. He frowned, deep furrows lining his forehead, as the official leaned over to whisper into his ear. The words stiffened him. He lifted his chin up and widened his eyes as Q and I offered our bow.

“On your knees in the presence of his sacredness,” a guard commanded.

“You don’t know who she is, do you?” I asked with cool command.

“All must bow, especially women.” Before the guard could strike me, Lord Wang Dan pushed him away with a long-stemmed pipe that bore the traces of darkened burn over its silver head.

“You look familiar. Come closer,” Wang said. Q stood quietly, letting the stranger examine her.

In my prior zealous jealousy, I had tried to mold, in my mind, the closest likeness of this man who had robbed me
of Annabelle’s virginity, the man who had stood tall in the way of her pristine past. But nothing would or could have come close to this. Before me was no man of Herculean proportion, full of rigor and martial bearing and religious zest, but instead a decrepit man on his dying path, inches away from the heaven of his own making. There were endless reasons making this, and every man, such. Leading its way, no doubt, would be some prevailing venereal infirmity evidenced by the gauntness of his body, his sunken cheeks, and protruding forehead with open sores dotting his trembling hands and thin neck. One shouldn’t be surprised, considering the number of wives and concubines he possessed and the horde of whores and courtesans he kept. I had even met some of his discarded favorites during the sordid days of my ennui.

“Is that you, Annie?” Wang Dan asked in a thin voice. The exertion kicked him into a fit of spasmodic coughing, shaking him like a wind-blasted sea reed.

“No, I’m her daughter, Qiu Rong,” said Q, leaning forward, unperturbed by his gory appearance. “Annabelle is my mother.”

“Ah, my poor eyesight and old age.” More phlegm gurgled in his throat, prompting his young nurse to drum his back for relief.

“Are you really Annie’s daughter?” he asked when the fit had passed, reaching out a trembling hand.

Undaunted, Q took his hand and cupped it between her soft palms. “I am.”

“God have mercy,” he exclaimed, shaking his head incredulously. “I could never have imagined this day coming.”

“Why not?” asked Q.

“If you only knew the circumstance of your birth.” He examined her face closely with his jaundiced eyes, gauging her as if she were an objet d’art.

“What did you come to me for, my pearl?” he asked, already giving her a term of endearment. What a fraud. I began to state our cause, only to be slapped silent on my knee by Q’s grudging hand.

Vividly and modestly, my nymphet empress regaled her plight, dating from the fire in the Treasure Chamber to her near death by hanging, to this very moment of relief. The word
kindness
surfaced often but never in conjunction with my name; indeed, it was as if I were a singular sadistic culprit drowning her already precarious destiny. I vied to correct her in her telling of the tale leading us this far but was pushed away by Q in disgust.

“So what good are you, ocean tutor?” Wang asked, after much nodding at the conclusion of Q’s tale. “You foreigners are outstanding in getting what you want and forsaking what you desire not.”

“I am merely here to plead for her safety,” I said stiffly.

“And not your own?”

“Never. How dare you question my motive!”

“The motive of an ocean man.” He chuckled. “It’s always beyond reproach, isn’t it? You took her as surety to keep your own life in flight.”

Had he not been so sickly a sight, I would have shown him the potency of my pugilist fist, but calm I kept, if not for propriety’s sake, then for my suddenly curt Q.

“Where is my Annie? Where is she?” the old man inquired,
craning his thin neck to look beyond us. “Is she hiding in the back trying to fool this old man’s weak heart? Where is she?” There was such playfulness. Utterly unbecoming!

“She is dead,” I said.

Wang was incredulous. “Dead? How?”

Q nudged my back with her sharp fist but I had to take this shot at the smug man, so I related the aromatic circumstances under which her and my life converged, our hearts colliding like stars, and colluded stealthily to the finality of the hay fire that ultimately claimed her, taking her away from me.

“She cannot be dead!”

“But dead she is,” I said pissily. I could not explain my agitation. The very thought that this man had preceded me in seniority and possibly in depth of intimacy with the one and only Annabelle leadened the day and moment beyond my reckoning.

“One shining so bright shouldn’t have died so soon,” he murmured, frowning as if saddened. After a long pause, he added, “I have missed her every day since she left me.”

That just about did it. The sordid, fraudulent philistine! I started to sputter but Wang waved me to silence and parted his robe, revealing a sunken chest covered with reddened sores and open wounds oozing with yellow exudate. In one, several maggots squirmed, feeding on his rotten flesh. I had heard of such archaic manner of healing by worm debridement but never imagined seeing such in practice. Wang gently picked the fattened ones up and placed them in his mouth, chewing them, replacing them with some thin, hungry ones from a nearby jar to continue the cleansing.

Q’s jaw dropped and she hid behind me after seeing the spectacle.

“Ailments and sickness: nothing new in this life or next,” Wang muttered. “Trials and tribulations—I have seen them all and yet more still come my way. Buddhists call this earthly life the ‘sea of bitter sorrows.’ I see it no differently. This is the old way of curing these cursed wounds. The larvae all come down to me from above to soak up my drippings.” He sighed and looked up to the sunlit dome of his chapel, wonderment in his eyes, a seeming gesture of thanksgiving to his god before returning his piercing gaze back to me. “Annie belongs up there, beholden to none, least of all you. But hardly can I blame you. We are all love’s fools.”

“Lord Wang,” said Q. “Tell me if I am your daughter as the hospital record shows.”

“I could not be your father,” Wang Dan said, his face stern and frowning.

“What?”

“Annie was seeded by another, not I.”

“And you call yourself the Messiah.” I jabbed at the man bitterly.

“But I am. It all started with my mother and the way I came to this earth. She was seeded not by my father but in a dream granted by God himself as the Virgin Mary was in that heavenly way. Mother was a maid working in the kitchen of a priest named Father Lafarge, the present cardinal of Quebec. Mother must have been touched by the holy spirit of that grand man.”

She had surely been touched, and by more than holiness. God, these frauds! When would they cease such treachery?

“My earthly father was just like Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary. My earthly father, a well-to-do scion of prosperity, was persuaded by Father Lafarge to wed my mother so that I, the begotten son, would have a home of warmth and wealth to be reared in. He brought me up without any complaints or bitterness, going on to bear no other sons or daughters of his own, devoting himself utterly to my well-being.”

“This is a Catholic cathedral then?” I asked, looking about me.

“No, not Catholic but one of my own faith. I am the only living truth, as Jesus, my brother, was to all Christendom.”

“Have you thought of the possibility that you might have been tricked by that Canadian cardinal?”

Wang chuckled, looking only to Q, ignoring my eyes altogether. “Petty minds think pithy thoughts. I would not expect anything less from this ocean tutor. I have been called bastard by foreigners, but never by my own people.”

“Because your Canadian father taught you his tricks of the trade?” I could not help jabbing, which readily begot Q’s assault, this time a nail-digging pinch of my leg.

“My followers have the faith and conviction that you all lack. They see my white skin as a rarity, my blue eyes as windows to heaven, and my tall, straight nose as uncommon authority and esteem among them.”

In Chinese belief, fair skin is regarded as a sign of wealth and exalted social station since commoners toiled under the unclenching sun, imbuing them with dark, leathery skin, and in a nation of flat-nosed citizenry, any unbroken nose of Caucasian extraction would be looked upon as indicative
of leadership. It was, at best, a national bias rather than truth, from which this man was wringing every drop of superstitious credence to fool his gullible parishioners.

So here we had the forsaken and bastardly seed of some salacious Quebecian fraud who had obviously fornicated upon Wang’s poor mother, the lurching kitchen maid—a shy virgin or a vile tease, no one would know—in some apron-over-her-head variety of coition that duly produced this child of ill fate, whose bastardry was concealed by the easy fallacy of a holy birth. I had seen and heard many improbable things in life, but never had I been more inflamed than by this brazen lie told by the one lied to. Was I to pity this man or despise him? I knew not which. The conviction in Wang Dan of his own life story was so complete that I could not help bending his way in the hope of gaining some truth from this contorted man.

“I am heirless as my brother Jesus was, made so by our mutual Father in heaven,” continued the self-proclaimed messiah. “All potency remains with our Father, as you know, even though wives I have many.”

“How many wives did you have when Annie came to you?” I asked.

He shook his head, avoiding my eyes. “It makes no difference how many. I am without any heir. You, my empress, will never be my child, though given the chance I would give my heart to claim you as mine.

“The battle I had with the Hawthorn Congregational Church started not with me but with them. Many of their parishioners came over to me, for their high tithing rendered the poor even poorer, and their strict canons and
laws suffocated them to breathlessness. First they came to me by the dozens, then the hundreds. I was in no need of any more; I had thousands and thousands in this region, with thirteen sanctuaries to tend to. I had no need to fight to gain more followers, but they came to me like flocks to their shepherd.