The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure

by Adam Williams

  So he had waited. And waited. The evening sun glinted on the rooftops of Shishan. A cuckoo called from the wood on the hill. The gates remained closed. Towards dusk an old woman appeared carrying a teapot in a basket. She poured and the elder of the two runners, a waggish man with a well-worn face and stumpy teeth, offered the doctor his bowl. Airton refused huffily. The man shrugged, reached within the folds of his robe and extracted an earthenware bottle. He unstopped it, lifted it to his nose and mimed delight at the smell, then smiling broadly, he offered the liquor to the doctor. Airton turned away, his ears burning. He waited for the laughter to come, but it didn’t. The yamen runner took a sip from the bottle himself, offered it to his companion, then replaced it in his robe. The vigil continued. A chill wind blew. The yamen runners busied themselves with lighting then raising the lanterns above the gate. Airton pulled his jacket tighter round his body. The friendly guard blew on his hands, then pointed at the moon, which had risen palely in the sky; then he mimed a yawn and a head lying on a pillow. He peered at the doctor quizzically. Airton looked despairingly at the closed door. The yamen runner shook his head sadly. After a moment Airton nodded once, twice, then turned and made his way slowly down the hill.

  Three weeks later, hunched by the fire in the clearing, he lived again the shame of that walk back to his house. Everyone he passed seemed to mock him. A group of women giggled; he hurried on by. Another threw a bucket of slops across the street behind him and he quickened his pace. He threaded his way through the busy high street with his head bowed. He seemed to hear catcalls of jeering laughter from every alleyway.

  He preferred not to recall the desolate return to the hospital, Nellie’s recriminations, the nuns’ tears, and the pathetic sight of his children in their cots—George’s battered face and, worse, the rigid, wide-eyed silence of his daughter. He felt a strangling impotence: her terrified stare was an accusation of him both as father and physician. He had sat by her throughout the night, watched her into fitful sleep, held her tightly when she burned and screamed in her nightmares, and only with the dawn had he relaxed. That was when she awoke and recognised him and began to sob in his arms. ‘Promise me, Papa, you’ll never let the Boxers come again. Promise me. Promise me,’ she had begged him, and he had promised again and again before she allowed herself to fall into a normal sleep.

  The light of morning and a reviving cup of tea had put him in a calmer mood, and he was able to reflect that perhaps he had not been snubbed by the Mandarin, after all. More likely the vengeful Jin Lao had never passed on his message. He determined to write, therefore, directly to the Mandarin. He doubted whether even Jin Lao would dare to obstruct a letter. The Mandarin would certainly call for him when he heard what had happened. Zhang Erhao was duly packed off to the yamen with an envelope under the doctor’s most impressive seal. He also sent messages to Herr Fischer and Henry Manners at the railway camp asking if they had experienced any incidents involving Boxers. Herr Fischer himself arrived at the hospital in the afternoon, all concern. The Honourable Manners was absent as usual, he reported, probably enjoying himself in the town, but speaking for himself he had seen or heard of nothing untoward and neither had Charlie. Was Airton sure that it had been Boxers and not some other band of armed vagrants? Again they interrogated Ah Lee, who against Airton’s instructions had already left the sick ward and was back at work in the kitchen—but the cook, while giving a histrionic account of what had developed in his telling to be an epic battle, was not able to provide a convincing proof that it had really been the ‘Harmonious Fists’. The doctor and Herr Fischer decided that certainty must await the Mandarin’s own investigations. In the meanwhile they should take precautions to protect their properties. They agreed to remain in daily contact. Fischer rode back to his camp and the doctor settled down to wait for the Mandarin’s summons, resuming as best he could his duties in the surgery—but no summons came.

  Nor did it the next day, or the day after. Instead, on the morning of the third day after the accident, one of Major Lin’s officers had arrived, with four armed and mounted soldiers, a sedan chair, and orders that the doctor was required to attend the yamen court forthwith. He protested that he had not completed his morning surgery. Nor was he dressed for an official audience with the Mandarin. The young lieutenant had politely, but firmly, made it clear that this was no invitation to take tea. The criminal court was in session and the doctor had been requested to give evidence. He would be obliged if the doctor would enter the sedan chair that had been provided for him. He might observe for himself that a suitable escort had been prepared for his safety.

  ‘Is this in answer to my letter?’ The doctor had pushed aside the curtains of the sedan to ask. ‘Is this to do with the attack on my children?’

  The officer riding beside him had not even turned his head.

  When they reached the yamen, the soldiers, dismounted but still holding their rifles, formed two in front, two behind him, like a court-martial detail. The lieutenant, his sword drawn and sloped against his shoulder, led them through the gate.

  ‘Here, am I under arrest?’ the doctor called. ‘Why the guard?’

  Instead of going straight through the main courtyard to the Mandarin’s apartments, the lieutenant led them through a small door leading to a bricked-in corridor lined with benches, which opened into a smaller courtyard, to which the doctor had never been before. Soldiers with spears guarded a gate beyond. The courtyard itself was full of men and women squatting on the ground or leaning against the walls. They came from all classes—the doctor recognised the brown silk gowns of merchants and the blue cotton pyjamas of peasants. They had the blank expressions of people waiting all night at a railway station for a train long overdue. Dull eyes surveyed him incuriously. Then he noticed that in one corner a man was crouching on his heels weighted down by a cangue. In another, three iron cages hung from a pole. With horror, the doctor identified ragged arms and legs inside and bodies contorted into positions where they could neither stand nor lie nor sit. In the shadow of the left-hand wall his eyes made out manacle rings and chains. The lieutenant halted his detail. ‘We wait here,’ he said.

  ‘What is this place?’ The doctor had to make an effort to keep his voice firm. ‘Have you brought me to a prison?’

  ‘As I told you, this is the yamen court. Be patient, Doctor. Your case will soon be heard.’

  ‘My case?’ said the doctor—but the lieutenant had sauntered over to the gate, in front of which sat a dark-spectacled official with a pen and parchment. Anxiously the doctor watched the two conversing. He felt a tugging at his trouser leg and looked down to see the exophthalmic eyes, open mouth and twisted shape of a beggar. One of the soldiers hit out with his rifle butt and the man crawled away. High-pitched laughter erupted from his right. A young, well-built, shaggy man manacled by his hands and feet to a pole was winking facetiously at him. Airton turned away.

  ‘I demand to know what is happening,’ he said quietly, when the lieutenant returned. ‘Does Liu Da Ren know that I have been brought here like this? Like a common criminal?’

  But the lieutenant ignored his question, merely beckoning him to follow him. ‘Your case is ready to be heard now,’ he said. ‘Come.’

  ‘What case? Am I on trial? On what charge? This is madness. I am a foreigner, sir. I am not subject to Chinese courts.’

  ‘Come, Doctor, you are wasting time,’ said the lieutenant.

  The gates opened into a candle-lit hall. It took a moment for Airton to adjust to the gloom. At the end of the hall was a raised table covered by a red cloth. Behind the table sat the Mandarin, in splendid blue robes. A servant with the official yellow umbrella stood behind him. Next to him sat a younger man, also in blue robes, also under an umbrella, and he, too, wore the green button and peacock feather hat. While the Mandarin sat impassively and stiffly, no hint of expression on his wide face, the young man next to him lounged in his chair, covering his mouth with his fan to hide a yawn, his moist brown eyes lazily su
rveying the room. He looked very much at ease.

  The doctor was confused. His mind ran rapidly over everything he knew about Chinese protocol. There was nobody of equal rank to the Mandarin in Shishan, that was for certain. Then who was this handsome fellow whose manner signified equal if not higher status than the Mandarin?

  Beneath the table sat the scribes and court officials. With no surprise he recognised Jin Lao, who was studying a scroll.

  There were three figures kowtowing on the ground in front of the magistrate’s table, two adults and a small boy. The man on the left had his hands bound behind him. An armed yamen runner stood two paces away. There was something familiar about the man bound on the ground, the long thin neck and the sticklike limbs. With a start of anger and fear Airton recognised Ah Lee.

  The lieutenant stepped forward, clasped hands above his head, knelt and bowed. ‘May the court behold the foreign doctor, Ai Dun,’ he shouted.

  ‘The court beholds him,’ said the Mandarin gruffly. ‘The officer may retire.’

  Jin Lao raised his reedy voice. ‘It is customary for the accused to kowtow.’

  ‘The foreign doctor may be excused a kowtow,’ said the Mandarin. ‘And you will not refer to him as the accused, Chamberlain. As you know he cannot be tried by this court. Foreigners are protected by treaty and the extraterritoriality laws, none of which have been repealed.’ He turned to the man beside him. ‘As far as I know that is still the case, Prince, is it not?’

  The young man smiled. ‘I am very much afraid that it is. What a shame. I would have enjoyed the sight of a hairy barbarian attempting to bow in a civilised manner.’

  ‘You may proceed, Chamberlain,’ said the Mandarin.

  Jin Lao began to read, in the stilted, falsetto voice that convention demanded of an indictment. The phrases were literary and opaque, and the doctor had to struggle to follow the sense, his mind lulled by the lilting rhythm and shrill crescendos of the delivery. He might have been listening to a virtuoso performer at the opera (he had always thought that Chinese formal proceedings modelled themselves on the opera), but Jin Lao was no theatrical king with flags and a beard and a painted face. The barbs and thrusts of his language were a spear pointing directly at the doctor, wielded by someone whom he now realised he could never again dismiss as a functionary but must treat as his deadly enemy. Airton felt the man’s eyes on him, gloating, triumphant, reptilian. Long nails unrolled elegantly out of the chamberlain’s robe in the direction of the cowering Ah Lee, pointing the power of the court in accusation like a magician’s wand—but the snake eyes still flickered on the doctor, drawing him also into his spell. Airton could feel the perspiration growing on his hot forehead; at the same time he felt a chill of fear. Jin Lao was talking about his children. In a yamen court. This was deeply unreal. He felt that he had stumbled into a dream, or a nightmare.

  Behind the flowery language the charges were simple. There had been a children’s quarrel. The foreign daifu’s son and daughter had one day set upon and attacked some smaller village children in a spirit of hooliganism, which was only to be expected from barbarian brats untrained yet in the ways of their own country, let alone those of a civilised society. An older boy in the village, grieved to see his brothers and sisters so abused, had bravely come to their rescue and in so doing had inflicted some well-deserved chastisement on the foreign bullies, including, regrettably, a few bruises and cuts on the body of the doctor’s son. This was a minor matter, of no formal interest to the yamen; a certain rough justice had been turned on the perpetrators of an act of juvenile delinquency; there the matter should have ended. It was then, however, that this foreign daifu—a barbarian who had been uniquely honoured and revered in Shishan, recognised for his apparent good works and privileged by the favour of no less a person than the Da Ren Liu Daguang himself—showed his true colours, his pride and his arrogance. Incensed that anyone would dare to reprimand his children, he had boldly marched to the yamen itself and demanded that the weight of Chinese justice be turned on innocent children’s heads, merely to satisfy his revenge for a perceived slight—against himself and the Christians whom he represented.

  At the mention of the word Christians the doctor was startled to see the young man next to the Mandarin, who had been yawning through the earlier parts of Jin Lao’s speech, suddenly frown and nod enthusiastically. The Mandarin himself remained impassive, waving Jin Lao with a slight movement of his fan to go on.

  He himself had been forced, Jin Lao continued, to interview the foreign daifu on that unpleasant occasion outside the yamen gates—and unedifying it had been. The doctor had been so enraged and irrational with anger that at one point he had rolled in the dust, and the violence of his language had shocked the guards. He had concocted a story that his children had been attacked by criminal gangs of martial artists. His intention had obviously been to deceive the yamen into punishing an innocent village—presumably one that had spurned his missionary activities. Here, again, the young man on the bench nodded vigorously. This was not only to be revenge for a personal slight but another attack by the Christians on their enemies. Jin Lao had told the raging man to go home, which eventually he did, but little did anyone know what vengeance he still harboured in his heart.

  Frustrated by his inability to use the law for his own advantage, the foreign daifu had taken the matter into his own hands, and ordered his servant, a Christian in his pay (‘See him—this insect grovelling before us today’), to go to the village in the night and to find the boy who had hurt his son. He had been ordered to inflict wounds on the boy that only a doctor skilled in the art of healing, and therefore knowing, too, the ways in which a body can be most effectively injured, could imagine. The servant had been so obedient of the wicked instructions of his master that it was feared that the young hero of the village would never walk again. ‘So do the Christians behave!’ Jin Lao had cried. ‘See their handiwork!’

  He pointed his finger. A guard—Airton recognised the friendly yamen runner who had offered him a drink at the gatehouse—gently lifted up the middle of the three kneeling figures, the boy, whom he now saw was wrapped in a cloak. Supporting him, the guard let the cloak fall to the floor, and the boy was presented stark naked to the court. Only there was hardly any whole flesh to see among the welter of bruises and lacerations that covered the tottering body. The doctor noted the misshapen angle that indicated one leg was broken and needed to be set, the drop of the shoulder suggesting dislocation. Then he winced and turned his head away, a tear in his eye. ‘Animals,’ he wanted to cry.

  ‘See their handiwork!’ Jin Lao crooned on. ‘Does the Christian doctor avert his gaze? Does the foreign healer not wish to examine his patient?’

  The Mandarin’s rough voice rasped through the mood that Jin Lao had created. ‘The court has seen this evidence. Get this boy out of here and find him a doctor. This is the yamen, not a grotesque stand at the fair. Chamberlain, make your case—and quickly.’

  Jin Lao bowed. ‘My Lord Prince Yi, Liu Da Ren, I will present one witness more and then I am done.’

  He pointed to the third kneeling figure, who rose jauntily to his feet when pushed by the guard. Airton saw a young, well-built man with a sour face and traces of smallpox scars on his cheeks. His expression was half a sneer and half a smile.

  ‘And who is this?’ said the Mandarin.

  ‘A patriot and a model citizen,’ said Jin Lao. ‘He is the restaurant owner, Master Liu Ren Ren. It was our good fortune that he happened to be in the village on the night in which this misdeed was done. Unfortunately he was too late to prevent the beating of the boy, but he was able to recognise and apprehend the villain and identify him as the servant of the Christian doctor. The city owes him our thanks. None of the villagers would have reported this matter,’ he added darkly. ‘They would be afraid of the Christians. We have Master Liu to thank for bringing this evil matter to justice.’

  ‘And what were you doing in the village that night?’ asked the Mandarin.
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  ‘I was visiting my auntie,’ said Ren Ren. ‘She lives there.’

  ‘He is filial as well as public-spirited,’ said Jin Lao.

  ‘Is he?’ said the Mandarin.

  ‘The case seems cut and dried to me,’ said the Prince. ‘This is typical of the sort of outrage that the Christians have been getting up to in other parts of the empire. I was right to come here. I think that you should get on and punish them.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘All right, the Christian servant, then. These pernicious extraterritoriality laws … You can reprimand the master and punish the man.’

  ‘We judge them guilty, then, Prince, without giving them a chance to refute the charges?’

  The young nobleman raised his eyebrows and smiled affectionately at the Mandarin. ‘My dear Daguang. How punctilious you are! What is the point of questioning them? They are Christians. Christians lie. Their guilt is adequately proven already by your chamberlain, who has done a most worthy job. You are to be congratulated. Get on, get on, my dear fellow. Deliver an exemplary verdict, and then we will go to lunch.’

  ‘Prince, I hear you,’ said the Mandarin. ‘But if we flout the extraterritoriality laws and it gets to the notice of the Legations…’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,’ smiled Prince Yi. ‘As I told you, there are to be some changes. Great changes. These are very exciting times.’

  ‘Da Ren, I will speak.’ Airton’s throat was dry with tension and he had to repeat himself to be heard. Prince Yi dropped his fan in surprise.

  ‘Good heavens, the barbarian really can speak the language. How amusing.’

  The Mandarin sighed. ‘Daifu,’ he acknowledged, and nodded for Airton to continue.

  ‘Mandarin. Da Ren. I beg you to open your minds and hear the truth. What has been described is a—a travesty. I do not know who was the monster who savaged that poor boy, but it couldn’t have been Ah Lee. He’s been in my hospital for the last two days. He’s been injured himself. This is a malicious attack on my family, my servants, my faith, using innocent victims as tools. You know me, Da Ren. You know why I came to see you. It was to warn you of the Boxers—’