My Last Empress

by Da Chen

  Elder Li, the toady chief eunuch, with a set of muddy eyes hidden under bushy brows, led the dome-headed Dong Shan and a squad of four, bamboo poles in hands. The squadron knelt on the courtyard stones awaiting their master’s orders. Blurred words were exchanged tersely, an order given. Dome Head, knowing his fate, pulled up the tail of his gown and peeled down a flimsy wretched undergarment, baring his bony buttocks. Silently, a squad member struck him again and again with a supple pole. Red stripes instantly marred his skin, and blood soon oozed, streaking his bare thighs. After a short spell, the whipping ceased and Dome Head collapsed face down, too exhausted to gather himself.

  Then another order was given, this time not by the emperor. It was Q’s words, high-pitched and thrilling like the jingle of a silvery bell. “Now you, Elder Li. It’s your turn.”

  A fleeting puzzlement clouded Li’s face, a glint of sinister hate that darkened his eyes as they darted the span between the emperor and me. Then he undid his ready robe, a saggy ass peeking at the shining sun.

  This time, it was not the silent squad but Dome Head who took the pole, whipping and spanking his superior. First gingerly; then, after being scolded by Q, savagely, as if in wretched retaliation, one heavy strike after another, engaging his act with the utterance of one losing a grip on things, maddened by certain rage, not against the one under his painful pole but at his own hands, which had been cursed by a devilish spirit, beating his very own master for which he was bound to receive another bout of punishment. His strikes threw Li left and right, an old frame in jeopardy. The old skin broke seam by seam and bled reluctantly without the chief eunuch crying once as he buried his head on the ground, digging his nails into cracks along the paved yard. Then it was done.

  The two limping and aching eunuchs had to be carried out of the courtyard by the squad.

  The palace doctor would be summoned, I was assured by my pupil, but the lesson was taught. Very well taught, I might add.

  17

  A pouring rain ruined the prospect of a noon picnic the next day. My pupil and I were ensconced in my apartment playing chess behind a rain-streaked window. Two mosquitoes had been pelted against the pane. The bamboo grove was rendered gaunt with leaves down and branches felled. Wet birds chirped forlornly from damp nests flooded by the downpour. Outside Q was climbing a tree, calling to a pigeon dozing on a lone twig, nursing a big belly sickened from a meal of squirmy worms.

  “Goo goo gooo!” she coaxed impatiently, her thin limbs tangled palely against the slippery tree. “Come back or you will die.”

  “You’re going to fall, Qiu Rong, and wet yourself,” my pupil urged without looking up from our chessboard of jade. “Checkmate!”

  “Are you blind? I’m already dripping wet,” she shouted back, waking the bird for a moment, but the pigeon soon resumed its nap in the rain, swinging with the windblown branch.

  “I’ll kill you with arrows, you hear me, birdie?” Q threatened her pet, which moved the creature not at all. “You playing deaf, huh?”

  She produced a pebble and threw it, missing the pigeon. “You cursed bird. Now I’m going to kill you with cannonballs. Yep, I’ve got cannons all lined up in the barracks. I will crush you into a bloody mess—”

  “Come on down,” the emperor urged again absentmindedly, pinching my king away before resetting a new game. “And you called yourself a Yalor.”

  “Do you mean Yalie?” I asked, as I surrendered two silvers into his waiting hand.

  “Should have gone to the other school—Harvard, isn’t it? I’ve heard it’s much finer.” The emperor was a jokester at times, befitting the reputation of what other tutors called fu, a streak of frivolity in the character.

  “One should never bring about the cursed H before a Yalie,” I said.

  “A rivalry, huh? Just like those English schools, what is it … an Ox and a Bridge? I know things, you know. I had firstly requested a tutor from them.”

  “Did you?”

  “Grandpa detested their queen, especially disliking her beaky nose. It was that unlucky nose, Grandpa said, that bewidowed her early in life.”

  “How wise of her. What made Grandpa a widow herself then?”

  “A poisonous arrowhead killing my predecessor instantly.”

  “Tell me about your empress.”

  “Darling, isn’t she?” he said, his eyes full of delight looking out of the window at Q. “Native born, foreign raised, but all mine now.”

  I tilted my head, a frowning inquiry.

  “She used to be Grandpa’s favorite company—rare, exotic.”

  “Not anymore?” My frown deepened.

  He shook his head. “She’s all mine now. That’s all that matters. You know, she is really a cousin of mine.”

  “A cousin?”

  “Well, not in blood or flesh. By adoption at her birth, which, of course, is never to be talked about per Grandpa’s strict order.”

  “Why not?”

  “Shameful. She lacks a blood lineage from the original Yellow Banner Clan.”

  Looking away from Q, he glanced my way. “Do you fancy her?”

  “I …”

  The emperor could be quite sly.

  “It’s no crime, really. Everyone else does, initially at least. Five silvers this time?” he asked, shoving a pawn forward across the drawn paper river.

  I followed his move with that of a leaping horse, diagonally. “You’re robbing your tutor blind.”

  The emperor—let us for brevity’s sake call him S, short for sovereign—paused in his next move. “Want to make it interesting?”

  “How so?”

  “You win, spend the night in my chamber. I win, I will spend this night here.” He raised his brows in anticipation.

  I shook my head, protesting, “You can’t lodge in this humble dwelling.”

  “Of course I can. It was my very intention that I spend some nights with you here.”

  “But where would you sleep?”

  “I could sleep in this chair or that sofa. It’s quite all right. I’ve always wanted to do that. I have been sleeping in the same bed all my life. But no one has ever invited me as a guest before.”

  “Defeat me then.”

  “Defeat you I will,” said S cheerfully.

  A gust of wind blew Q’s pleas to tickle my ears. “You cursed bird … Please, please come back. I will never feed you worms again, I promise.”

  Though she sounded in tears now, the bird remained forlorn and unaffected.

  “I will make you a new nest with feathers—goose feathers! Not good enough? How about silk or cotton? I will feed you only the sweetest fruits. Please, I will make you a mother. I will buy you a man pigeon with white feathers like yours …”

  Only then did the imperial pigeon reply “Coooo … coooo.” It spanned its tips, fluttered its plume, and flapped wetly to perch on Q’s left shoulder. With the slight weight added, Q’s branch snapped and gave, landing Q in the mud. But she was unhurt and only had attention for her pigeon, like a mother with her fledgling, her chest heaving with gratitude, unstirred by neither the thunder’s roar near nor S’s pleading afar.

  I raised off my chair, seeking S’s approval. “Might I?”

  “Suit yourself,” said S, busy with his move, swiping a horse and a pawn with one leap of his chariot.

  Umbrella in hand, I rushed across the dimpled courtyard to her side. Rising to meet me, Q leaned against my chest, a wet child. With a towel, I tenderly dried her sweet cheeks, puddled dimples, matted hair, reddened earlobes, and angelic neck—Oh, my heart!—then her pet, which beaked back and cooed defensively.

  Q’s giggles vibrated the thready rain pelting the oil-papered umbrella. “You tickle, big man.”

  “Shall we go inside?”

  “No.” She pouted. “Lookie … I’m bleeding.” Skin was broken on her hand, a tincture of red forming, nipped by a timorous twig.

  “I know just the cure. May I?”

  “Cure it then.”

  I
lowered my lips onto her pale palm, licking her cut with the quivering tip of my tongue, one eye glancing at her sideways. Her palm coiled in a fist then relaxed. She blushed before letting fly a series of curses in German or some other Balkan lingo, faking anger.

  “It is a Cherokee Indian’s favorite remedy. Manly saliva.”

  “You savage man.” She kissed me on my left cheek on raised toes, minty breath, leafy tobacco.

  “Your neck is bleeding, too.”

  “Really? You twit.” She pushed me away with a throaty chuckle, then slipped away from my arms, my heart, ankle thin, slender calfed, child slick. “Awful man!”

  Oh, my dearest Annabelle, is she the one you pledged? Is her arrival your departure? Who is she to you, to me, to us, to your dying, to your sustaining within me? Am I to be her savior or ruin?

  Faltering, I followed her back to my living room. Barely did I pay attention to him, preoccupied with the image of Q curled up in my sofa, wet as a drowned cat. Her pigeon flew tentatively from bookshelf to desk to armchair, then to my bedroom and back, in transit dropping her poop whitely on the chessboard.

  “You ruined our game!” exclaimed S.

  “All you care about is your chess game and yourself, Husband!” Q admonished. Seeking her cigarettes and finding them wet, her anger rose.

  “I am inviting Pi-Jin as our night guest. It is settled.” He looked at me with the confidence of one who is rarely contradicted. “Tonight, six p.m. sharp. Isn’t that joyous, my dear?” he asked.

  She shrieked back, “Give me a cigarette or something. I’m freezing to death, can’t you see?”

  “I am not your servant,” replied S mildly, “and you should quit smoking, among other things.”

  “You are the virtuous one, huh?” Q lunged at S, who nimbly dodged out of the way.

  I caught her, falling, in my meddling arms.

  “What can I get for you?” I asked, not knowing what was amiss.

  “Big wolf, you don’t have what I need. He hides it! He is the one who has to pay. Get out of my way.” Q picked up an inkwell and threw it at S, missing him but knocking down my collection of history books. The jade well, undented, fell on the posh carpet.

  The crisis only ebbed when eunuchs, without warning, as is the rule herein, appeared and carried her away, with S sinking diminished into his chess chair. Onward he complained in a manner that was remorseful and teary, generous on the part of his wife but critical of himself. “One day,” he said, “this would all be over. She will be undone. And I don’t know what will become of me.”

  Here was the tale that flowed out of S’s mouth.

  Q had been a lively child bride who had caught S’s eyes in their first encounter when she had been presented to Grandpa upon return of Q’s father’s foreign service. No one had been more enamored by Q’s easy charm and quaint beauty than the dowager herself, who fancied herself an arbiter of all arts and tradition and who daily surrounded herself with talented and artistic personages. Among the dowager’s close companions was a noted Peking opera singer named Yu Fang, a diminutive man who played a woman’s part (singing and dancing being the rarefied trade of men), winning the hearts of both female and male patrons. Another favorite was a famed calligrapher whose style of calligraphy the dowager herself mimicked with great success.

  Qiu Rong, however, was a novelty, trilingual and white-skinned, the latter being seen as gui, which meant noble, versus dark and lowborn. All the Chinese nobility painted their faces and necks with powder when seen in public to appear “pale as jade,” a phrase worth more than the value of the stone itself. Q also possessed musical talents, playing the oomphing organ, which her father had imported from Frankfurt.

  Q became the favorite of the dowager’s daily companions. Her days were filled with Q’s music. The dowager even sponsored a soirée for all the foreign diplomats’ wives at the Summer Palace for the sake of Q, who acted as an interpreter among the attendees, much to the dowager’s pride.

  It was at the height of such buoyancy that the dowager had decided that S should be married a year earlier than previously intended, as required by the Manchurian law of royal matrimony. He, S, would conduct an abbreviated bridal search to round up the rest of his empresses, the first, second, and third consorts, giving the fourth designated position to Qiu Rong, notwithstanding the blemish that she was of mixed blood and an adoptive offspring rather than an inherently born girl of the Yellow Banner Clan. The dowager took it upon herself to advocate it against the naysayers of this matter as a sign of the Queen Mother’s being advanced in thinking and progressive by example, though she pointedly made clear that no one was to ever discuss the pedigree of Q outside or inside the palace. The only thing the dowager mentioned was the prospect that the coupling would produce, if any, the finest-skinned heir to the throne, thusly reducing the darkness of S’s skin and adding further purity to the Qing tradition, which the dowager believed was tellingly manifested by the color of their paler skin in contrast to the darker tan of the inferior Han nationality, the bulk of the Chinese citizenry under her rule.

  The emperor himself was the most joyous, for he not only fancied the blue-eyed blonde as his consort but he also cherished the bridge that Q would span across the cold shores between him and the dowager, whom he had regarded with fear since a young age, and who had subjected him to many torturous disciplinary acts whenever a deviation or dereliction had been committed. At one period between ages seven and eight, S had trembled whenever coming into the presence of the dowager. Q, in sum, was to be the sunlight that thawed all the rigidity of that cold frontage, and warmed his desolate chambers with her beams of light.

  The beginning months of their matrimony were music and talk—talking till night had long faded and strolling along all the ponds and lakes. She took up nearly all his nights, including those rationed to the first, second, and third empresses, the latter two a twin set of beauties from the southern province of Fukien, chosen for their beauty and talents in calligraphy, which won the dowager’s heart, and their ability to sing throaty Hing Hua opera melodies. But soon a certain light began to fade in Q, and boredom seeped into their married life. The lakes seemed dry despite their clear water; the ponds, rich with fine memory, seemed sour. Q became an insomniac, staying up nights, slumbering away days, forsaking the trivialities of many a Court ceremony, most vitally the Sunrise Homage to Grandpa Dowager, resulting in her being alienated from the dowager’s inner circle, which resulted in more petty dereliction on Q’s part that the dowager increasingly blamed on Q’s bastardly seed. The alienation did little to lessen Q’s deviation. She resorted to that which he now had to hide. “Tonight at six,” he said curtly. Peeling himself off the chair, he dragged his leaden feet in chase of his beloved Q.

  18

  Dancing in my head, awake or in dreams, was nothing but Qiu Rong, my empressly fugitive, not of this earth but of my soul at large, largely waiting to be marshaled and tamed.

  Oh, her legs apart, her calves inwardly plump. A memory of a mole gradually surfaced, right under her left ear along a blue vein. And that smile … sisterly to Annabelle’s, rightfully all mine.

  Had my Annie patently given her likeness to Qiu Rong’s keeping? Had my old love finally given way to the new?

  I bathed myself in the tub. To dull my urges, I drank a shot of single malt while phantoms of the past flew around me, the scent of muggy hair, of Annie and Q, the fragrance of summer weeds all mixed together.

  Upon arrival at his royal dwelling, an enthused S met me, wearing a mysterious smirk. Q, my piquant gadfly, was nowhere to be found, though her faint shrieks and silvery giggles lurched amidst us deep in an adjoining grove, an iridescent yet muffled hide-and-seek, hidden and sought.

  A certain emptiness drove me to down with S toast after toast of my own brew, ignoring a supper of steamed hairy crabs, simmered bear paws, stewed leaping rabbit, and braised fatty goose, to name but a few. Dim prospect dulled all things around and above but not my fiery urge. More shots
of whiskey finally emboldened me to inquire S about Q’s absence.

  “It’s not her night here per palace rule,” he intoned solemnly. “This night belongs to my first consort. Q, being the fourth, my last empress, has few rights or honors that way, though I will have more say after an heir is born of my first empress, per Grandpa’s advisement. It’s the bargain agreed upon when I was granted permission to take Qiu Rong as consort.”

  “Intriguing.”

  “Indeed, it is. What you see here is not what it is. Few things here are of my own will, except Qiu Rong, and now you.” He sighed. “I endured much to have you here for her.”

  “For her?”

  “Much melancholy she has. Palace life hasn’t been easy. To you.” He raised his cup, downing it before refilling it with my bottle. “One thousand cups of wine intoxicates this host not at all.”

  I followed readily with the closing verse of the famed and much lorded couplet composed by Li Bai, a Tang Dynasty poet. “Ten thousand volumes would pale against the depth of my gratitude.”

  “Well versed you are.” Emptying another shot, he challenged me to a poetry contest and alcoholic consumption.

  “Gin Shi, you and I?”

  “Rhymes and meters?”

  “Style and polish.”

  S called out to Dome Head, hidden behind a teak screen. “Servant, bring more wine and four treasures.”

  A battalion of eunuchs appeared, some adding plates of fresher food, others bringing jars of fine brew, still others carrying in an oblong writing table, a jade inkwell, rolls of rice paper, and quivers of wolf-hair brushes. Rice ink was circularly ground in the inkwell by In-In, the palace’s finest, his hands as soft as bird’s feet, ensuring the silkiest fluidity. Risen sheaves of paper were smoothed out and settled by a jade ruler.

  The tawny wine of Shaoxing origin was only to be served in a silk-thin porcelain ware and sipped carefully and slowly. But imperially, S tilted the earthen urn and took a big wincing swallow before handing it over to me for the like taking.