The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  Armpits sweating, the seams of my sapphire silk gown straining. My breath resists my attempts to reduce its speed, to make breathing inconspicuous.

  ‘Actually, Your Majesty, I do have one suggestion, if Your Majesty would do me the honour of lending his much revered ears. My lowly opinion concerns Imperial Consort Bamboo. I think she is unworthy of serving the Emperor. The low-breed slut ought to be demoted to a maidservant.’

  The Emperor lifts his porcelain cup and drains the last of his elk-horn and deer-penis beverage.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That is all, Your Majesty.’

  Emperor Jiajing gestures that luncheon is over with a wave of the hand. He moves to the doorway where the sedan-chair-bearers await, without glancing backwards at Concubine What’s Her Name, who is nervously wringing her hands. The servants part the curtains and the Emperor enters the silk-veiled carriage. He murmurs his destination, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, and the bearers lift the poles and carry him away through the courtyards of the Forbidden City.

  Alone in my bedchamber, I seek solace in the opium pipe and wine and I strum upon my zither a melody called ‘The Calamitous Golden Eel’. I doze and dream of you, my fingers fiddling under my skirts, masquerading as your tongue, and I wake to emptiness, aching temples and a dry mouth. Dusk has cloaked the Palace of All Sunshine. There is a knock at the door. Eunuch Li of the Bureau of Affairs of the Bedchamber has come.

  ‘Concubine Swallow, the Emperor Jiajing requests your attendance tonight in the Leopard Room.’

  Heart stops, breath caught in throat. Nearly three years since I was last impaled on the imperial cock.

  ‘Shall I go to the bathhouse and have the maidservants prepare me?’

  ‘His Majesty has requested you as you are.’

  ‘Then the Emperor’s wish shall be granted.’

  I strip out of my robe. Legs shaking so much I can barely stand, I rinse my stale mouth with water and splash my face. Naked but for slippered feet and a feather duvet worn as a cloak, I climb on Eunuch Li’s back and we proceed thusly to the Leopard Room.

  VI

  In the vermilion-pillared Leopard Room magical cranes fly across the lapis lazuli ceiling panels. Blazing lanterns dangling silk tassels hang from hooks. On the four-poster bed is Concubine Bamboo, naked but for a jewelled tiara. Your eyes are vacant, your pale skin unsullied, but for some slight discolorations where I feasted too keenly the night before. Eunuch Li takes my feathered duvet and backs out of the room. His conscience is besmirched by what occurs in the Leopard Room, the concubines he carries out to be stitched up afterwards, and the ones that pass away. But what is to be done? The Emperor’s wishes must be granted, his every desire fulfilled.

  Emperor Jiajing emerges from an annex with silk rope and I am palsied with terror. He orders me to stand against a vermilion pillar and binds my wrists around the pillar behind my back. I tremble, grovelling like a whipped dog. ‘O, Your Excellency, I beg your forgiveness. I sincerely regret having spoken this afternoon. Please be compassionate to the mother of your three daughters . . .’

  ‘Quiet.’

  His Majesty turns to you on the bed. The maidservants have bathed you, prepared your toilette for the Leopard Room. Perfume scents your pulse beats and your lips are red as rubies. Emperor Jiajing directs a question to the pale masque of your face. ‘Concubine Bamboo, your elder sister Concubine Swallow has been spitting vinegar. Do you know why?’

  You shake your head with those ever-vacant eyes. The precious gems of your headpiece glitter with the changing angle of striking light. Emperor Jiajing laughs.

  ‘Sweet Bamboo, how innocent you are! Let us take a look at your elder sister. Do you know she has given birth to three children? Do you know what childbearing does to a woman’s body? The teats sag like cow udders, the stomach flops and folds over. As for her cunt, well . . .’ His Majesty chuckles. ‘. . . if the barbarians invade Beijing we have a vacant storehouse for the imperial jewels! I have not lusted for her for years, but the wretched hag still lusts for me. So much so she has tried to warn me away from you, my sweet Concubine Bamboo. We’ll teach her a lesson, shall we?’

  Barely perceptibly, you nod. To me, the Emperor hisses, ‘Now watch me split the bamboo.’

  His Majesty throws off his padded blue silk, fox-fur-trimmed robe, proceeds towards you. Emperor Jiajing is underweight, asthmatic, feeble and sickly weak but, after smearing his erection with verdigris and snake dung and snorting powdery aphrodisiacs up the nose, he is convinced of his invincibility. The only man in the Forbidden City with his genitalia intact, His Majesty is virility itself. You are quiet as he parts your legs and mounts you. Perfectly still, but wincing in virginal pain as yet another member of the imperial household makes use of your young body. Despite my fear of what post-coital punishment awaits, the sound of him sliding up and down inside you and your whimpers and moans arouse me, make me want you too. After the snake has spat he collapses on you, as though his heart has arrested and he has died a little death. Beneath him, you lie still. You roll your head to the side. Your eyes are still blank. Let this be it, I beg the Heavens above. Let my only punishment be to watch him writhe above another. Let his ego imagine my ‘jealousy’ is torture enough.

  Emperor Jiajing slowly revives on the bed, conceitedly muttering of his sexual prowess in your ear, prodding you there and dabbing his bloody fingerprints on your collar bone. He molests you in this way for a while, then calls to me from across the room.

  ‘See. You don’t compare to sweet young Bamboo. Confronted with your haggard body, my cock dies a whimpering death.’

  I hang my head as though tormented, and the Emperor quotes from the Book of Odes:

  ‘Women with long tongues

  Are harbingers of evil.

  Disasters are not sent down from Heaven

  But originate in the female of the species.

  ‘See how pale she is, my sweet Bamboo? The God-awful pallor of her lips and cheeks? I think we ought to rouge them for her, don’t you?’

  He whispers in your ear and you giggle impishly. The Emperor smacks your bare bottom as you slide from the silk sheets. You scamper over to me, touch your finger to the bleeding palette between your legs, then smear the blood on my lips and rub your finger in circular motions on my cheeks. I stare into your traitorous eyes. You are blank as ever, though you turn to the Emperor to giggle every so often. The Emperor stands, walks away from the bed.

  ‘What do you think, Concubine Bamboo? Do you think her complexion has improved?’

  You shake your head no. Emperor Jiajing walks to the dresser and opens a jewellery box of knives and other sharp instruments of torture. The Emperor removes a silver scalpel from the velvet-lined case. Acrid wine-tasting vomit spills down my chest. The Emperor laments, ‘Oh dear, she is paler than ever now! What do you think, Concubine Bamboo?’

  He hands you the silver scalpel. You turn to me and treacherously utter, ‘More rouge.’

  VII

  Concubine Jasmine spoons herbal soup between my parted lips and I struggle to choke it down.

  ‘One more spoonful, dear sister Concubine Swallow,’ she encourages, dabbing my chin with lace cloth. ‘You need nourishment to strengthen and heal.’

  Concubine Jasmine smooths the cotton bedsheet that covers my torso, bound tight by bandages. Her beauty and kindness contrast starkly with the portrait of the Emperor of Knives staring at me from the wall opposite the infirmary bed. Though I am no longer in the Leopard Room, my torture is ongoing, for every night the eunuchs unwind the gauze from my crudely stitched chest and douse my flayed skin with fiery medicinal concoctions. My teeth bite down on rags stuffed in my mouth and my hands claw the bedsheets, until a tide of darkness comes, sweeping the pallid, tittering eunuchs away.

  Imperial Consort Jasmine, a high-ranking concubine like me, knows the monotony of the infirmary, has spent weeks convalescing there herself. So she smuggles in a Siamese kitten to amuse me by chasing balls of yarn, and some
bamboo paper, ink-brush and ink, so this recuperating concubine can churn out imitation Song Dynasty landscapes. Puffing on the opium pipe together, we transcend into a giggling realm of lightness and ease as Concubine Jasmine reads to me from illicit, bootlegged erotic novellas (swearing me to secrecy, for if the eunuchs knew she was literate, they’d gouge out her eyes). She reads the tale of a cuckolding wife who romps with a gang of servant boys behind her master’s back, and she acts out each part with comic timing, changing her voice for each character, exaggerating carnal moans. Spellbound by her deft tongue moving behind her luscious lips and her eyes widening during climactic scenes, I reach and touch her lovely breasts. Concubine Jasmine ceases reading. She takes my hand in hers and kisses it tenderly.

  ‘O dearest beloved sister Concubine Swallow. Believe me, I wish I could. But it is my misfortune that I am not that way inclined.’

  VIII

  When I am pronounced well enough to return to the Palace of All Sunshine, Concubine Jasmine and I celebrate by wandering arm in arm about the Imperial Gardens. The spring thaw has begun. Many species of flowers are budding and numerous winged insects hover about the shrubs. Our little bound feet, three silk-cocooned inches peeping from under the hems of our robes, tap tap tap along the winding pebble-mosaic path as we admire the songbirds on the branches of the cypress, catalpa and scholar trees. Under my bandages, the stitched lesions protest movement with lacerating pain, but I hobble on. Concubine Jasmine has sought permission for us to enter the Emperor’s Menagerie to see the tributes from the kings of other lands: the elephant from Laos, the African zebras and the strutting ostriches with feathery bums and uppity beaks thrust to the sky. We stroke the zebras’ black-and-white-striped hides and laugh and clap our hands as the stable boy climbs astride the elephant and gets a backward hosing from the wrinkled grey trunk.

  Back in the Imperial Gardens in the late afternoon we hear a tinkling of voices in the Pavilion of Melancholy Clouds.

  ‘Ah, who might that be?’ stage queries Jasmine.

  On the circular stone bench within is a gathering of palace ladies, resplendent in shimmering robes, jewelled combs in their impeccably coiffed hair. They arise as we enter the pavilion. ‘Concubine Swallow!’ they cry, and flock to me.

  ‘O precious Concubine Swallow, we prayed to the Goddess of Mercy for your swift recovery. We requested permission to visit you, but the eunuchs wouldn’t allow it.’

  They embrace me and caress my chilled early-spring cheeks. Fourteen of my harem sisters, each a faded beauty of more than thirty years with age-spun webs around her eyes. A stove blazes in the corner and on the table are porcelain teapots and cakes baked in the moulds of butterflies. The party is in my honour. They present me with gifts prepared during my convalescence: peony-stitched satin slippers, pouches embroidered with Buddhist emblems and a balm of crushed petals to perfume my wrists. Silly frivolities that show how limited in skill and artistic expression the harem women are, but I battle my inner contempt and express gratitude for the gifts. For years I have rejected my sisters, and superiority is a hard habit to break. We sit on the circular bench. Surreptitious breezes sneak through gaps in the wax-paper windows to stir the pavilion air. Concubine Jasmine begins, ‘We may speak without restraint, Concubine Swallow. Maidservants have been dispatched along the paths to look out for spies such as Hunchback Guo.’ She lays a hand on the carved gully where her bellybutton used to reside. The afternoon stroll has aggravated Concubine Jasmine’s wound.

  ‘We have news of a tragedy that occurred last week,’ continues Concubine Autumn Rains. ‘Imperial Consorts Tranquillity, Heavenly Orchid, Bamboo and Joyous Abundance were summoned by Emperor Jiajing to the Leopard Room. As the Emperor engaged in coitus with each in turn, he became convinced they were giggling at him. His Majesty confronted them with his paranoid imaginings, then handed them each a knife and ordered them to commit suicide. Tranquillity, Heavenly Orchid and Joyous Abundance successfully put themselves to death. But Concubine Bamboo survives in the infirmary.’

  Under my bandages, the lesions on my chest scream as the maggots of ire writhe. ‘Bamboo is not dead? She survives? Indeed, that is a tragedy! I must go at once and finish the job!’

  Elegantly coiffed heads shake at me in dismay. Concubine Emerald reaches and squeezes my hand. ‘Forgive her, Concubine Swallow. Every one of us has incised the flesh of others. Who amongst us has been brave enough to refuse the torturer’s blade? The tyrant must be obeyed under pain of death. You must forgive Concubine Bamboo.’

  ‘Forgive her, forgive her,’ the she-goats bleat. But I can’t. Fury chokes the gullet at the mere thought of you.

  ‘Concubine Bamboo was no unwilling torturer,’ I spit. ‘Her eyes lit up as she spilt my blood, and with every incision she grew ever more ambitious with the blade.’

  ‘She is a child of only fourteen years old.’

  I hiss, ‘A demonic child. A satanic nymph with a thirst for blood.’

  ‘At the Emperor’s bidding she slashed her own throat,’ says Concubine Tender Willow. ‘How many cups of blood do you think poured down her gullet? Enough to quench her thirst for good, I should think.’

  ‘Concubine Swallow,’ Jasmine says sternly, ‘you must let the desire to take revenge on the child go. We have more urgent concerns. Do you know of the Daoist monk One Hundred Trees?’

  ‘The hermit sage who lives in the enchanted forest on Mount Emei?’

  ‘Yes. Him.’

  Melodious Songbird, Tender Willow and Emerald each speak in turn:

  ‘One Hundred Trees has come to the Forbidden City to tell Emperor Jiajing of a new cure for mortality . . .’

  ‘The hermit sage says it is the blood that thickens the uterus then seeps from our womanly orifice every moon cycle.’

  ‘One Hundred Trees told Emperor Jiajing that a cupful every day will prolong his life.’

  ‘Every day the harem-keepers consult the Ledger of Menstrual Cycles of the Concubines. Those menstruating are ordered to a chamber by the Gate of Obedience. They are forced to lie on a wooden bed, their ankles hooked in stirrups that hang from the ceiling . . .’

  ‘A long, hook-ended needle is the tool that is used. Sometimes the bleeding cannot be staunched afterwards, and some have bled to death.’

  ‘No one is safe. Not even the princesses.’

  My eldest, Lily, is eleven. Has the curse struck her down yet? I must protect her from this atrocity! Outraged, I spit, ‘We must end this barbarous practice! We must bribe the eunuchs to trick Emperor Jiajing with chicken’s blood!’

  ‘Bribery has been attempted. Concubine Splendid Jade is now subject to torture in the Palace of Punishments.’

  ‘But something must be done,’ I cry. ‘If Emperor Jiajing harms my daughters I shall . . . I shall . . .’

  ‘Murder him?’ suggests Concubine Jasmine with a wry smile.

  I look at the fifteen palace ladies on the circular bench, their hands clasped on laps. They look back at me, their eyes glittering and fierce. Together, we are the sixteen mothers of the twenty-six princesses. Now I see. Concubine Emerald continues, ‘We are plotting now, the ways and means. We each accept the sacrifice of our lives, for assassination of the Emperor won’t come without this penalty.’

  My heart beats swiftly beneath my flayed and bandaged chest. For the eighteen years I have lived in the Inner Palace, I have shunned my harem sisters. High on my lofty perch of lonely selfregard, I dismissed them as empty-headed and vain. How wrong I was. My courageous sisters are far nobler than I.

  ‘We invite you to join us, Concubine Swallow,’ says Concubine Jasmine. ‘Will you accept?’

  Murdering Emperor Jiajing is a recurring fantasy of mine, but am I willing to die for it? I dwell for a moment upon my wretched and lonely existence. So what of death? I decide. Better to die nobly than to live on wretchedly, listlessly wandering about the Garden of Dispossessed Favourites, slowly wasting from the rot of old age. Better to die having saved my daughters and the entire Celesti
al Kingdom from the worst Emperor ever to reign.

  ‘I will be honoured to,’ I tell them, tears glistening in my eyes.

  On a circular stone bench in the Pavilion of Melancholy Clouds, we clasp our pale-as-ivory hands together in solidarity, our pact to kill the Emperor now commenced.

  IX

  Evening in the palace infirmary. Eunuch physicians unbind my tightly bandaged chest. I lie on the bed and the eunuchs dab at the bleeding and pus-weeping wounds with cotton gauze in tweezers, tutting at my slowness to heal. They unplug the stopper from a bottle of herbal potion, and I claw the sheets as my doused chest blazes like oil set alight.

  I go back to the Palace of All Sunshine, aching for the opium pipe, and snow flutters unexpectedly out of the night sky. I gaze up at the spiralling snow, falling to sabotage the winged debut of creatures from cocoons and the burgeoning buds of spring. What does this portend? I wonder. The Gods must be angry indeed, to gust the icy breath of disapproval upon the Imperial City after the coming of spring.

  Mesmerized by the snow drifting out of the dark void of sky, I nearly don’t see the girl kneeling in the courtyard of the Palace of All Sunshine. It is Lily, my eldest, and I hasten over, stricken by her bled-dry pallor and the bandages around her neck. But as I draw nearer, my maternal instinct turns to horror and abhorrence. The deceitful night has tricked me again, for it is not Lily, but you. Concubine Bamboo. You shiver in the cold, your shawl of winter mink a pelt of icy tufts. Repentant eyes look up and meet mine. It’s the first time I have seen you since the Leopard Room, and my screams are gagged and bound in my throat. I clench my spitting muscles, gathering saliva. Spittle drips down your cheek, but you don’t wipe it away.

  ‘Elder Sister Concubine Swallow,’ you cry, ‘I can no longer live with my abominable sins against you. I beg you to forgive me after I am gone . . .’