My Last Empress (9 page)

Though the outside world was only a wall away, the isolation seemed complete upon the closing of the tall iron door. A sense of suffocation and longing overwhelmed me. This must be what a convict would feel facing the mighty facade of his destiny.

Eunuchs draped over my shoulders an embroidered silk robe in the color of blue, with elaborate piping and patterns of dragons and phoenixes, and they put upon my head a hat with a peacock-feather plume: symbols of my rank. Henceforth I ascended into a four-man sedan. The foursome members of
the palace eunuch corps—maroon gowned, thinned-voiced men—carried me through the Gate of Valor, a northern back entry reserved for familial affairs, its casualness hinting at a heightened degree of privacy.

We passed Mai Shan Mountain, a slanting manmade hill piled from the soil dug from nearby Bei Hai Pond back-ending the palace outside its wall whereupon a Sinned Tree still stands, accused and convicted of providing a conniving branch, enabling another boy emperor, not this one, to hang himself in despair. The historian in me cherishes this nugget of factual reminiscence. A full Court trial was held to conduct a three-day proceeding wherein the tree was the defending culprit, with a charade of sobbing witnesses. The Court trial was necessitated by the need to find a killer because suicide would be impious to heavenly intent and purpose, making human and fallible what is loftily of gods and ages. The tree was uprooted to stand trial, possibly the first of its kind, only to be replanted back as irrefutable proof of a noxious growth, a sinner to be viewed by all and to suffer the insufferable, of having done in the one who could not be so undone. The tree, old it might be, blossoms annually with gusto, attesting not to its innocence but to a certain absurdity inherent in this monarchy or the next. Who, least this author, is equipped to critique an establishment that had outlasted many other empires?

Where am I, in the procession of my entrance? Oh yes, we passed beyond a canopy of old pines, expectedly gnawed and knuckled, skirted ponds and lakes, turtles and goldfish. I was passing the back palace—you see the historian in me
never quits working—the notorious dump for those of the hundreds of neglected palace women. All legal wives of the young emperor, they were chosen yearly, selected for their talent in needle, medicine, nursing, singing, dancing, or culinary skills: essential workers living at the Royal Court. A lucky one might one day catch the eye of the emperor and engage with him in a ritual known as
de fu
, getting lucky. That seed she carries and the child she bears, if she survives the envious saboteurs who hope for her death or disappearance, will bring fortune or misfortune.

My apartment was a gift from the emperor himself, a two-storied elegance deftly called House of Deference and Tranquility, renamed and redecorated for my use, much to the protest of the old liners, whose paws would, as you will come to know, impinge upon every fabric and inch of this city within a city: the nation within an empire.

A thin boy was kneeling at the apartment door awaiting my arrival in the dappled light of a noon sun, maroon gowned as all eunuchs were attired. All palace women naturally were to be watched over by the men in the house, the unique eunuch corps, thousands in number. Men they might be but manly they are not. This shy boy was my endowed vassal, an ink boy in name, though his chores varied. He was, foremost, to be my little lantern, shining the way in my initiation into the dead-end lanes of my palace existence. Without him I would go nowhere and accomplish less.

“What’s your name?” I asked after the sedan carriers departed.

The boy hesitated and said quietly, eyes downcast, “I was
bestowed the palace name of In-In, though I was known since my birth as Cow Penis in my home village, a fortnight’s journey from here.”

“Cow Penis?” I smiled at his endearing pronouncement, tinted vastly with a Shandong accent, one of many varieties made known to me thanks to my teacher, Dr. Jeffrey Archer.

“Father saw our neighbor’s cow’s penis while it was taking its piss when Mother bore me in our pigsty, in the midst of her chore of feeding a litter of thirteen piglets.”

“You could have been named Piglet then.”

“But it was what Father saw that counted. So Cow Penis I was called till the day I
yian ge
—cut off my penis. Uncle Ting of Lung’s original clan would not wish to let anyone know of this name: it would render my service here improper and disrespect the Heavenly One.”

“Why did you tell me then?”

“You are to be my protector to whom I shall enslave myself. No secrets are to be hidden from you because a secret would be a genuine act of disrespect. Please tell no one of this secret, and many secrets I shall hide for you.”

“Shall you?”

“That is the only way one stays safe, out of misfortune …” He stole a glance at me, trailing off. “I have already overspoken, haven’t I? From now on, I shall be mute with what I say, deaf to what I hear, and blind to what I see. I am your wind and its shadow. I am here, but I am not here. I will carry out any chores you please. I will keep clean every inch of this apartment and replenish it with fresh goods acquisitioned and gifted to you from the Heavenly One. In the morn, I shall be up before you making the early tea and fetching breakfast for
you. Lunch you shall have in your office together with other royal tutors, and supper is to be served from the servant’s kitchen with a special menu you shall select at daybreak so goods of your choosing can be secured and the bill be written for the Neiwufu’s review and approval.”

“Their approval?”

“It’s merely perfunctory. There will be no full board reviews, save for the seasonal one conducted by the Fu’s royal trustees and assignees. Have I spoken too much already, master?”

“You have not. I have much to learn from you. Will you be my guide?”

“I have many rules to adhere to, as stipulated by the chief eunuch. If my service to you fails in any manner, punishment awaits me.”

“What rules do you speak of?”

“Many that I have had to commit to my memory since the day of my arrival, speaking of which, I should not be having this conversation with you, as you are new, lofty, and …”

“And what?”

He stole another glance at me and whispered, “… alien and vastly strange and different from us.”

The boy’s utter candor caught me off guard, contradicting the rumor of the perversion and corruption of the entire eunuch corps surrounding the titular emperor. I gifted him with a Dobereiner’s lamp, a lighter, so to speak, that I bought off a legation staff member. When flame ignited the contraption, In-In’s face lit up. He kneeled again and rose only after I had departed the hallway and entered the room I was to dwell in for the foreseeable duration, leaving the scant
luggage I brought to be dealt with by my new boy servant. That night, after a meal of rice with four dishes and a soup were served to me—each officialdom is ranked by the count of dishes served per meal; four dishes with a soup put me, much to the anguish of Neiwufu personage, among the ranks of royal tutor—I retired for the first time to my sleeping chamber, the location of future sins and later shame.

That night, I dreamed of her, my dear darling Annabelle; it was the longest duration we have been apart. She came in a blur of angst, not in any physical solidness. In the background, there were sounds of waves. Amidst the hushing whisper of the sea, I heard her say, “Find her,” and repeating such till both her presence and her voice were no more.

In the graying twilight, In-In led the way along the walled lanes, our footfalls echoing down the courtyards, a lantern dangling from his hand casting our diminished shadows against the walls. I had endured an unbearable audience with the Queen Mother, a painted and bejeweled dowager in her full glory, who had acquired her title by way of an infamous arm-twisting adoption, wrangling the emperor at the age of two from the bosom of his own mother. After a thorough inspection, she dismissed me curtly with a wave of her silky handkerchief. A fan would have been more fitting, but she was being fanned by two young maids, sweeping away the morning flies buzzing over her painted veil.

I next met four fellow tutors, old scholars who, though toasting me with hot tea, greeted me coldly. Such guardedness was to be expected, adhering firstly to the belief that relations among educators are to be thin and pale like water; true affection would dent the thin walls of one’s intellectual sovereignty and demean the honor of a genuine scholar. A true intellectual should be scholarly about his own pursuit of knowledge, unbiased by his personal likes, thusly raising the bar of general scholarship. I also expected that the tutors would all bear a collective grudge against this slooped ocean man. They had all, without exception, ascended this
far not by chance but by academic achievement, earning the highest marks in the civil service examinations held every six years, based on which the palace selected their officials. Such achievement was then assiduously followed by decades of devoted service. Only then could one be considered for the lauded position of a royal tutor that would endow sumptuous estates and unparalleled prestige to be enjoyed by not just himself but all his offspring.

I offered each three deep bows of respect, which they returned. In the gloom, the morning hours trotted on. All the other tutors came and went like shadows in a puppet show in muted sequences, their gowns swishing, hats lifted passing one another, and chairs squeaking. Then my turn came, with a eunuch leading me to the royal study quarters. It was deep in a mansion quieted by tall walls, eunuchs passing and going, feet light, hovering, busying themselves, birds perching on willows seen through fan-shaped wall windows, blades of grass secretly poking up in cracks and seams between bricks and smoothed stones.

The emperor himself was on the porch, a fine-boned, thin-framed creature dressed in a white western suit and necktie, head tipped with a round-brimmed crown, and wearing a pair of black leather shoes.

“I wear this in your honor,” the teenager proclaimed in hesitant English, reaching over his right hand, ready to shake mine, when I heard the servant order me to kneel.
“Xia bai huang shang,”
he said harshly. But the young emperor was quick, grabbing my hand with his, shaking it healthfully. I was ready to attempt a kowtow, as required, when he pulled me up.

“Mian gui,”
he said, granting me pardon. In the same instant, he ordered curtly for the eunuch to leave.
“Qu le, qu le.”

The eunuch bowed, not daring to look up at his master, though his reply was firm, claiming a higher order from the Queen Mother, whom he called Grandpa, to watch over the teaching ceremony.

“Qu le!”
The emperor’s voice rose with severity.

Off the servant went, mumbling, casting me a low menacing glance.
“Yang ren bu shou ting fa.”
Translation: “That ocean man didn’t kowtow to the emperor.”

Heads would have normally rolled for such a slight, but not on this day.

As soon as he was gone, the emperor hunched his back, stiffened by his starched collar and snug suit, and bowed to me; his hands still held mine in a tight grip. The gentle manners had no doubt rubbed off from the obsequious eunuchs who had surrounded him since an early age, playing guards and angels, friends and teachers. Gratefully, I returned the favor, bowing back.

“Come see my house,” he said, resorting to his English again, urging me indoors.

I nodded.

“But you have to be a blind first.”

“A blind?”

“Close your eyes, if you will,” he amended excitedly, and I realized he had meant to say “blindfolded.”

I did, entering, his hand guiding mine, his gold rings cold to my skin.

“Now open them,” he urged.

When my eyes opened, it was not the somber schoolhouse
my mind’s eyes had foreseen—one desk, two dull chairs, his facing north, mine east—but the sight of his crowded collection of foreign artifacts: long-handed clocks, stubby snuffboxes, and bicycles, all in multiple numbers and disorderly display.

“They have all been gifted me by foreign kings and queens, princes, and female princes.”

“You mean to say ‘princess.’ ”

“Pince … ass?”

“Prin … ce … sses”

“You can’t begin my lessons without my permission,” the young man said with a giggle.

“But learning is everywhere and anytime.”

“Let me write that down.” He quickly whipped out a notebook and pen from his inner pocket. “Now who is it who says that?”

“I did.”

“You did.” He nodded, scribbling on his page, wrinkling his nose in all seriousness.

How could I stop such a zealous youth!

“There are many more, but they will ill-fit my chamber. Someday I shall show you the collection in its entirety. That clock is from the English queen … have you met her before?”

I shook my head.

“This vase is from the Emperor of the Sun—that would be Japan. The bicycle is a genuine Raleigh.” Upon which conjuncture he discarded me and leaped onto its saddle and pressed its bell, causing three rapid
dings
to echo the space. Then off he leaped. Led by the emperor through an open rear door, I suddenly saw a wavy mirage rising in the summer
heat. In a green-lawned backyard, a dazzle of a nymphet blonde, thirteen and no older, was straddling over a beastly motorcycle, sun in her face, goggles in her hair, thin thighs apart, one long and booted leg resting on the gas pedal, the other on the ground.