The Face of the Seal

by Jennifer Cumiskey

  Those words were familiar but shocking. Could that child be great-grandmother Lis, delivered to the French missionary house in a royal blanket? The year was 1881, so the timing was right and the circumstances eerily similar.

  Using her cell phone, Gerel took a photo of the plaque. Mechanically, she drifted into Meigui’s bedroom. Her brain was in overdrive. She wandered among the furnishings but failed to conjure up images of Meigui nestled on the rosewood alcove bed, lounging on the dragon phoenix bench, playing pipa, or examining her appearance in front of the jade-framed mirror. The palpable splendor and beauty of the room escaped her.

  Gerel drifted out of Rose Pavilion from the back exit without realizing that she’d passed the famous well in the back courtyard. Only one question filled her entire being.

  Could Meigui’s missing daughter be great-grandmother Lis?

  Gerel rounded her way back to the Rose Pavilion entrance. A man was standing behind the wooden threshold wearing a similar badge she’d seen on Jane. He stood erect, more like a guard than a docent. He was unlikely to be as friendly and helpful as Jane. But Gerel approached him anyway. “Excuse me sir, I’m very interested in the history of Meigui. Is there anything that can provide a more detailed account of her life, like a book, a biography?”

  “You can get a brochure inside.” The man shot her a dutiful but annoyed look.

  “I already got one. I’m wondering if there are books written about Meigui, in bookstores, or the museum gift shop?”

  The man shook his head. “You can get information inside,” he repeated.

  No hope here. But she thanked him anyway. I’ll go to the gift shop, someone there might be able to help.

  But the museum gift shop yielded no luck. Gerel thought she would try one more thing and go back to Jane.

  Chapter 11

  Beijing, one week before the murder

  Later that day, Jane and Gerel left the Palace Museum together. Jane had called a car using DiDi, the Uber of China. Minutes later, the two women were heading toward where Jane lived, a small town near the Summer Palace about twenty miles outside the city center. Gerel found out that Jane was a fifty-six-year-old retired English teacher, had never married, and lived alone. She worked in a local gift shop a few days a week to supplement her meager teacher’s pension and volunteered as a docent at the Palace Museum.

  When Gerel had trudged back to Jane at the Enamel Hall earlier that day, the middle schoolers were just spilling out, as noisy as they had been an hour ago. Gerel fidgeted by the entrance, her patience uncharacteristically tried. The second the last two students stepped out at the pace of snails, she dashed in.

  Rushing through the hall like her shoes were on fire she finally spotted Jane near the exhibit case of the Empress Seal. Gerel hurried toward her. “I believe my great-grandmother was Meigui’s daughter,” Gerel blurted. Her voice echoed until it didn’t seem to be her own.

  In a mere few minutes Gerel explained to Jane how she’d been caught up in the recent events related to the Empress Seal, and how she’d been troubled by the mystery surrounding her great-grandmother’s origin ever since she was a little girl. “It could just be pure coincidence, but it’s hard to dismiss the fact that Meigui’s baby disappeared around the same time my great-grandmother showed up on the doorstep of a French missionary house in Beijing.”

  “Do you have any proof?” Jane had asked hesitantly, though she looked more shocked than doubtful.

  “No, but it’s a story told from generation to generation in my family. I want to be sure . . . I’d like to know more about Meigui and her daughter if it’s possible. Maybe there are books or records . . .,” Gerel’s eyes pleaded helplessly. But to her surprise, Jane agreed to offer more than just a few book titles.

  “But an excursion is required,” she had said. “If you don’t mind waiting for a while I can take you there in about an hour, after the docent for the afternoon shift arrives.”

  Now they had left the traffic-congested city behind and were cruising comfortably on the open highway. Jane shifted their conversation to the purpose of their trip. “I can’t promise anything, the woman I want you to meet is almost one hundred years old. She often mumbles lots of stories but I’m not sure if they are really about her mother’s life in the palace or if they are mixed with her own imagination. But she may be able to give you some details about Meigui, even if it is a storied version.”

  Might be, could be, and perhaps. Gerel was used to those words when it came to great-grandmother Lis. “But it’s already more than I expected to be able to talk to a living person who might know what happened more than a century ago,” Gerel said quietly. The shock of her discovery at the Rose Pavilion had been easing off since they left the Palace Museum. She was having doubts again. There were documents and records to prove that great-grandmother Lis was an orphaned girl from Beijing, later adopted by a Parisian couple and grew up to marry a Garnier. Who Lis was or could have been before her entry to France was at best hearsay, according to Gerel’s father.

  “We should make a stop here.” Jane’s sudden request to the taxi driver pulled Gerel out of her doubtful thoughts. “You’ll find this place very interesting.”

  They pulled up in front of a carved stone gate. A pair of lion dogs sat atop, facing each other. They had arrived at a cemetery with tombs of famous eunuchs. The grounds were deserted. “It’s well off the tourist trail, it’s like this on most days,” Jane explained. She asked the taxi driver to wait for them.

  “This is the only eunuch cemetery that survived the looting of the warlords when China became a republic at the turn of the twentieth century. It also escaped destruction during the Cultural Revolution during the 1960s. There are tombs of five famous eunuchs, but we’re not here to see them,” Jane said, walking at a brisk clip toward the gate.

  Upon entering the cemetery, Jane led the way to a small building. “This is the Eunuch Museum, established only a few years ago when the country finally realized that eunuchs were not freaks. They are symbols of the feudal past, part of the history of the imperial dynasties.” Jane grabbed a brochure at the entrance of the museum and shoved it into Gerel’s hand. “Take this and you can study it later or come back to visit if you have time.” But as they traversed the museum hall Jane did slow their pace a bit to allow Gerel glimpses of pictures and limited English narratives that compared eunuchs and castration methods around the world throughout the ages. As if no words or pictures could describe the pain and agony, the museum designer had decided to show how castration was performed using a diorama.

  Gerel stopped in her tracks and stared at the gruesome scene. Three men huddled over a young boy tied down on a table, his penis and testicles tied with a strip of cloth. One man held the boy’s legs with both hands, another man carried a tray, waiting for the depository of the soon-to-be-severed bits and bobs. In the middle was the surgeon, holding a curved knife, about to carry out the deed. The expression on his face was vivid revulsion and fierce determination.

  “Imagine: it was done without any anesthetics, all for the chance to serve the Emperor and his family. The one I’d like you to meet is special.” Jane tugged Gerel by the elbow and they proceeded to the exit.

  Behind the museum was a small courtyard that resembled a miniature ancient ruin. Remnants of stone carvings, fragments of sculptures, broken monuments and cracked tombstones reminded her of things lost to the ages. Yet the grounds possessed a strange tranquility in contrast to the tumultuous history of the eunuchs.

  Jane guided Gerel to what looked like a headstone, detached from its root, leaning on the red brick wall of the yard. “See the characters on here? It’s the name of a eunuch, Li Yi. He may not be as famous as the others buried on the main grounds, but he was once the eunuch who served the noble consort Meigui. It is said that Meigui’s death was due to her unfaithfulness to the Emperor, but some scholars of late Qing Dynasty suspected that Meigui’s Christian faith and distaste of the feudal dynasty had direct influence on the
Emperor’s decision to reform China into a republic. Eunuch Li was considered a co-conspirator by the Empress Dowager who wanted nothing but total control of her son and the dying Qing Dynasty.”

  “What happened to Li after Meigui’s death?” Gerel was engrossed immediately.

  “For what he was accused, he could easily have been put to death, too. But somehow, he was dismissed from the palace and lived out his life quietly in the hills, not far away from where I live now. By the early twentieth century, the Qing Dynasty toppled and eunuchs were thrown out of the palace. A few came to live with Li in the wilderness and they designated a desolated foothill as their burial ground. Some of the eunuchs buried there were from our town. My mother told me that for forty some years the small graveyard was a place where many people in our town went to reflect on a time gone by. Then came the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Almost everything that was associated with the old times was destroyed. It’s a miracle that the burial ground survived, except for a few smashed headstones which have been moved here.”

  “What happened to the bodies?”

  “Rotted, of course. Though the skeletons were still intact. Since most of the headstones didn’t even have a name, the bones and teeth of these eunuchs were collected by the government for archeological research.”

  “I guess Li never left anything behind that could give us some insight as to what it was like to serve a noble consort like Meigui,” Gerel said contemplatively.

  “Not that I know of. Though we know eunuchs like Li received good education, so no doubt he could read and write. If he did keep some kind of diary, he wouldn’t have dared show it to anyone considering the chaotic times he lived through. But it’d be great if Li had written something like a biography. I’m sure he had a lot to tell about what Meigui’s life was like deep in the back palace.” Seeing Gerel’s disappointment, Jane said, “You know, if it’s any consolation, I envy you people. A lot of the foreign tourists I talk to at the Palace Museum are able to trace back their roots for several generations. For me, besides my parents who were migrant farmers from a small village in the middle of the country, I never really knew what my grandparents were like or where they originally came from.”

  Gerel was touched by Jane’s light-hearted approach to life, even if the subject she was addressing was a rather heavy one. I need to lighten up, to not be so self-absorbed. “Thank you, Jane. What you’ve done means a lot to me. This whole thing about my great-grandmother might turn out to be just my own imagination. I’ll be forever grateful if we find something that could shed some light on who she really was. If we don’t, this trip will still have told me so much that I didn’t know before, the history of the city and the time period in which one of my ancestors lived. That means it’s also part of my roots. I never expected this when I left Paris a week ago.”

  Jane flashed an ear-to-ear smile. “I think you’re my dream tourist. My job as a museum docent has never been more rewarding than at this moment. Let’s get on our way to hunt for more of our history.”

  Yes, our history. The connection may be loose, but shreds of a common root, nevertheless. Gerel nodded and followed Jane out of the cemetery.

  *

  As they traveled further west, the expressway narrowed into what Jane called local main roads. Gerel could feel the car gradually rolling uphill along cypress woodlands and dormant cornfields. They passed an apple orchard and turned onto a road just wide enough for two-way traffic.

  “How do you usually get to the museum?” Gerel asked.

  “It’s a drawn-out process. I usually ride a bicycle to the bus station two miles away from where I live, lock the bicycle and take the bus into the city. About three miles away from the city center, I get off the bus and hop on the metro. A few stops later I’m at the Forbidden City station. I only go through this two to three times a week, and it really doesn’t bother me. I’m retired, I have all the time in the world. Besides, volunteering at the museum gives me something to do, something I love. Ah, we’ve arrived.” Jane pointed out the passenger’s side window.

  They were looking down at a small village nestled in a shallow valley. Clusters of ancient quadrangle courtyard complexes slopped upward, their swooping roofs fanning out like terraces with grey stone tiles.

  The DiDi driver dropped them off at a pathway along the side of the road, the entrance to the village of Stone Wall. Flights of steps led to the ascending tiers of homes. “Just about every house was built with stones from the nearby mountains almost four hundred years ago,” Jane explained.

  Winding through a labyrinth of narrow lanes, they came to face a stone wall that was giant compared to the one-story crouching houses Gerel had seen so far. “This wall runs north to south, cutting the thirty-family village into upper and lower parts. Now, we need to go to the higher part.” Jane pointed at an arched gate in the wall and gestured for Gerel to go through.

  At the upper part of the village, they came to a vermillion double door, a pair of foo dog knockers grinning at them. Jane didn’t bother to knock. She gave it a gentle push and the age-old door opened with an arthritic groan. Uneasy, Gerel peered inside at another stone wall a few meters away. “Are you sure we should just march in unannounced?”

  “Don’t worry, nobody locks the entrance door during the day. It’s a safe town with mostly old residents. I’m the young one here.” Jane gave Gerel a nudge on the shoulder.

  They entered and turned left to a short corridor leading to the interior complex—a walled compound with single-story structures on three sides surrounding a rectangle courtyard in the middle. “In the past, the tall stone wall and total enclosure of the home was intended to ward off neighbors’ prying eyes and provide peace for the family. In more recent times, a courtyard house like this is shared by three or more families so there goes privacy and quiet. These days the number of families in most courtyard houses have been dwindling, with young people off to the city for better jobs and older ones dead or dying. One side here is empty,” Jane said matter-of-factly.

  Except for the clicking of Gerel’s boots on the dipped and bulged ancient stone pavement, all was quiet as they headed toward the main room across the courtyard. Gerel regarded the side rooms along the way, their doors and windows shut. Some of the facades still bore the age-old lattice shutters, but they looked tattered and brittle, stripped of any paint or varnish. Gerel realized she’d arrived at a place drenched in history, everything there had a story to tell. Strangely, Gerel’s thoughts drifted to her mother, an archeology and history student from America who ended up marrying a French doctor and spent the rest of her life in Paris. Maman would have had a million questions for Jane.

  They arrived at the door of the room. “Now I’ll have to bang on the door, and when we get inside, I’ll have to talk loud because Mama can’t hear very well,” Jane warned.

  “Mama? She’s not your mother, is she?”

  “Oh no,” Jane chuckled. “Her last name is Ma. It means horse in Chinese. Anyway, children here call their mothers mama, and often the villagers refer to their mothers by their last name followed by mama. So, Mrs. Ma became Ma mama. After a while, we just dropped the first Ma. Right now, at ninety-six years old, she certainly is the mother of the village.” Jane began to pound on the old lattice door, its warped frame quivering on its rusty hinges.

  A full minute went by, Jane gave another vigorous knock. “She’s old but a very alert woman, always making sure she knows the people at the door before she lets them in.” Jane tilted her chin at the side panel of the door. The inside curtain fluttered.

  Then came a click. A face peered out from behind the narrowly opened door.

  “Mama.” Jane stepped forward and said something in Chinese. The door opened wider. Mama was not exactly what Gerel had expected. Despite her ninety-six years of age, she stood quite straight. Only her face bore the imprint of time—pleated and furrowed like the bark of an ancient mahogany tree. It was a face that had weathered harsh natural elements and the storms
of life.

  “Gerel, I just told Mama that you just visited the Forbidden City and would like to hear old stories about the palace.”

  Gerel nodded and gave Mama a smile. But the old woman didn’t smile back, didn’t invite her visitors in. She just stood there, her droopy, red-rimmed eyes studying Gerel with intense curiosity. Then she mumbled something to Jane.

  “Mama wants to know where you are from. I told her you’re from Paris, France. She also wants to know if you speak French,” Jane translated.

  Gerel nodded, shot Jane a questioning look. Of course, I speak French, what an odd question. When she turned to look at Mama again, the old woman had stepped aside, both hands beckoning Gerel to enter. A smile parted her tight lips, revealing the toothless inside of her mouth. She murmured something.

  “Mama said she knew you’d come one day.”

  Chapter 12

  Beijing, one week before the murder

  On the gigantic stone bed in Mama’s back chamber Gerel and Jane sat cross-legged, a short-legged table crouched between them. Jane had helped Mama put a steaming pot of tea and three lidded teacups on the table. One side of the bed was attached to the wall which had two latticed windows to let in natural light. Gerel relished the warmth rising from the heating stove underneath the bed.

  “This is called a Kang bed,” Jane said. “Translated loosely it means the fireplace bed, or oven bed. Its function is not limited to sleeping. We also use it to receive guests. It’s been around northern China for thousands of years. For a big family, one Kang bed sleeps four or five people comfortably. Of course, now the bed seems excessively large for families of one or two seniors.”

  The light coming through the lattice windows was surprisingly bright. Recently sealed fractures and cracks scarred the discolored walls and stone flooring. Oddly, Gerel felt a sense of comfort and security in this timeworn place, a sanctuary that offered unyielding protection in difficult times.