by Tan Twan Eng
“It was not unusual to come across opium addicts lying on the roads, eyes glazed, uncaring, even as the reformers kicked and shouted at them. Opium dens were torn down and foreign-owned opium factories and warehouses were set alight, sending clouds of sweet smoke into the sky, so thick, so potent and unending I thought the gods in their homes above us would become intoxicated with the fumes. Maybe they did, for the country suffered catastrophes and disasters. I knew many impoverished addicts congregated at such burnings, sucking in the air, hoping to extract every ounce of their drug from such wanton waste. I worried about the Old One’s reactions, for the reformers were surely eroding her influence, opening her to greater danger from the Westerners, who were enraged by the destruction of their properties. It was also well-known that the Old One’s clawed fingers clutched many such enterprises.
“On one of these trips we saw a eunuch carrying a wooden box into the shop of a dealer in antiquities. The owner examined the contents of the box, appeared spellbound, and seemed willing enough to part with a large number of gold taels.
“We knew then that what we were witnessing was one of the many methods the eunuchs used to enrich themselves. Theft of palace treasures was one of the unsavory practices the emperor, in a fit of reformatory success, then decided to stamp out.
“We watched as the palace accounts were scrutinized. The eunuchs panicked and many escaped into the night, taking with them containers holding their most precious possessions—their preserved organs. They knew they could not enter Heaven if they were not complete.
“To save themselves some took to accusing their fellow eunuchs of theft. Most distressing was the number of suicides. It became quite common for a serving maid to scream with horror when she opened a door to find a pair of legs dangling before her eyes, the body swinging from the beams. What frightened me more were the rumors that some of these suicides were murders ordered by the Old One.
“And then we heard the rumor that the dowager empress had secretly selected another heir, an infant barely weaned from his mother. The factions that had once backed Wen Zu shifted, like the bits of glass in the mirrored tube which an English tutor had once shown me, creating new configurations of power and leaving Wen Zu to stand on his own. The appointment had not been announced and I tried to calm Wen Zu’s anger and fears. It was a direct insult to him to have to cede to an infant, and I knew then that Wen Zu had become inessential, and even inconvenient, to have around.
“Although most of the eunuchs were too clever to infuriate Wen Zu—for who knew how the winds of Heaven would blow tomorrow?—they were politically wise enough to know of his precarious position. But the younger ones got along well with us, in particular Tsiao Li, a slender beautiful youth who, I knew, loved Wen Zu. He was the one who warned me.”
“What did he warn you about?” I nudged him on gently when it seemed to me he had become lost in his thoughts.
“Strange how I can still remember it so clearly,” he said in a soft voice. I leaned closer to him, not wishing to miss anything. “It was a hot summer’s day, the carp ponds so still the dragonflies seemed mesmerized by their own reflections on the water. As I walked along the paths circling the ponds, waiting for Wen Zu to join me in a game of elephant chess, Tsiao Li came with a message from Wen Zu.
“The young eunuch was unusually formal. ‘His Highness regrets to inform you that he has been summoned by the emperor to discuss the reforms and is therefore unable to join you.’
“I made a face. ‘Must you talk in that terrible way? Can’t you talk like a normal person?’ I was too annoyed and too hot to pay attention to him, expecting him to reply with one of his usual witty barbs.
“‘You must eat properly and take care of your health. And His Highness’s also. Once one’s health has been broken it cannot be reformed.’
“The unusual use of the last word he had spoken and the note of fear in his voice made me stop fanning myself. I met his eyes and was chilled. Suddenly the summer heat did not bother me any more.
“‘Yes,’ I replied with difficulty in the same stilted form. ‘As must you.’
“I looked behind him. A few courtiers stood on a bridge, gazing into the pond. ‘It is not only food I must fear but also the dagger beneath the honeyed tongue,’ the young eunuch said.
“He turned, and walked away quickly. I stared at the plate of fruit before me. That was the last time I spoke to him, for two days later he was fished out from an old well, water dripping from his mouth, eyes wide open.
“‘You are mad,’ Wen Zu said when I told him of the conversation with the eunuch. ‘Nobody would dare!’ he said. Silence fell. We both knew there was only one person in the palace who would dare.
“I took out the jade hairpin my mother had given me. It had been presented to her by her abbot who had once taught at the Shaolin monastery and it was said that it had come from one of the Five Ancestors who had used it to test their food for poison, the existence of which would turn the jade a darker green.
“Wen Zu nodded when I told him this. Unlike me, he believed it completely. Perhaps by that time he was also frightened for his life. I remembered one of the many strange sayings I had to memorize in my English lessons, something about a drowning man clutching at a straw. We were now dying youths clutching at a hairpin.
“‘Put it into this.’ Wen Zu pointed to the pot of snake’s tongue grass tea, a cooling infusion perfect for a hot summer’s day. I poured some into a small cup and wet my pin with it. We held our breaths as the pin came out of the tea.
“‘Does it look darker?’ he asked.
“I studied it closely. ‘I don’t know. I think it does. I think they will poison us in small doses.’
“He masked his rising fear behind his annoyance. ‘Can you not tell at all?’
“‘I don’t conduct tests for poisons every day,’ I said.
“He snorted and walked away. If there had been poison, the amount would be tiny, I reassured myself. I resolved to test every dish we ate with the pin. But first there was one person we had to warn.
“I had seen the emperor once from some distance away, in the early days of my arrival. Now, as we entered his chambers, I wondered if the person before us was the same man. He appeared to have regained his health: the pallor so common to opium smokers was gone, although he still coughed violently. His skin, once stretched taut and dry, now had the elasticity of his relative youth. We touched our heads to the ground and shuffled to him on our knees.”
“It couldn’t have been easy to get to see the emperor,” I said.
“The audience with him had been possible only because of Wen Zu’s brashness; breaching countless rules of etiquette and bureaucracy, he had simply gone to the emperor’s quarters and asked for an immediate response. Outside, dusk had fallen. Occasionally, by a trick of the wind I seemed to hear the night-watchman cry out the hour, his voice mournful as a wounded hound.
“The emperor listened to our carefully worded warning. He frowned at us but in his sad eyes I saw that he was aware of the turn in the tide. I was afraid for him. Through his recent edicts he had wielded his power with delight. Such power had been denied to him for a long while. I wondered for how much longer would he be allowed to exercise it before it was taken away again, this time perhaps for good.
“‘You have brought unsubstantiated accusations against persons you do not want to name. What do you expect me to do?’ he said finally.
“I kept silent, but from the manner in which Wen Zu lifted his head I knew the words he was going to say. Looking back, perhaps if I had stopped him, things would have turned out differently. I suppose, as his tutor, I had failed him.
“‘If my words have been obscure, forgive me. What I wish to state is that we suspect we are being poisoned by the dowager empress. We further suspect that you are also being fed doses of poison.’
“The emperor stood up and came to us, lifting Wen Zu to his feet. ‘Thank you for warning me,’ he said. ‘Now it is time for you to go
to sleep.’
“He already knew his fate, we saw. And consequently, ours had also been revealed. He led us out and at the door he said, ‘Let what you have discovered be good advice: never let your children become dangerous to you.’ His eyes looked up to the moon, his laugh knowing and bitter. ‘That was also the dowager empress’s advice, years ago.’
“I did not sleep well that night. I held on to the pin tightly and whispered a prayer to my mother’s gods for protection.
“A month later the emperor fell ill. Doctors from the International Settlement visited him, but found nothing wrong. To cure him the Old One ordered that opium be administered to him. And it seemed to me that on the day the order was carried out I could scent and taste the pervasive sweet odor in every room in the palace. The reformation movement, its head cut off, fell to pieces. Those members who could not flee in time were assassinated.
“It was time for a new emperor to ascend the Dragon Throne and Wen Zu knew with certainty that it would not be him. One night the pin came out black from a bowl of soup and he let out a moan. I threw away our food, as I had done for weeks, and thought of my plans to escape. I refused to be killed here, my body thrown into some abandoned well. I had to get my family to a safe hiding place. ‘You must come with me,’ I urged Wen Zu again. He stared, fascinated, at the pin.
“‘Where will we go ? Where in the vastness of China can we hide from her? We have no money, no friends. Her power is limitless. She will hunt us down.’
“‘My mother has friends. They will shelter us, and guide us to a safe place.’
“‘Your mother’s friends? They are revolutionaries and criminals, and they would happily see me die, or worse, they would just capture me and send me back to the Old One out of spite.’
“‘No. You’re my friend, and that is enough.’ I held his shoulders firmly, but he looked away and said, ‘Tell me about your famous monks again.’
“‘This is no time to seek refuge in fairy stories. We must act now! Tonight!’
“‘I am so afraid. She will find us down wherever we hide.’ He laughed shortly. ‘She’ll even come after us when we are dead. We’d have to stay vigilant forever. Even after death.’
“When he turned his gaze away from the pin I saw his eyes were just as dark. They were filled with a terrible fear and, worse, something I could not identify.
“‘We’ll leave tonight,’ he said, after a long pause.
“I closed my eyes in relief. He had seen the sense of my arguments.
“I started to pack a small bundle of clothes in my room. At the Hour of the Rooster everything fell quiet. Suddenly even the moon seemed loud. I stopped moving and waited. A moment later I heard a small wail, keening, drifting over courtyard after courtyard, like a crow flying from tree to tree, sending out the awful news.
“The emperor was dead. I continued my packing and then panic jolted me. I snatched up my bundle and moved silently across the corridors, avoiding the spectral figures carrying lanterns. Everyone was moving, going somewhere. The wailing was unrelenting, as though it wanted to penetrate the very edges of the empire. I ran through the hallways until I saw the familiar lights in Wen Zu’s room. It was empty. I spun around, fear making me dizzy. I found his note on the table. I read it, folded it away and made my way to the Hall of Repentance where the massive silk fan hung.
“It was dark, but a small candle gave some light. I heard no sound except for the constant wailing, blowing like a desert wind. I entered the hall, crossing over the wooden threshold, the floorboards creaking. The silk fan lay half folded on the floor like a giant crane shot down from the sky by an archer, its spine cracked, its wings broken.
“Wen Zu sat on a wooden chair, his back to me, facing his handiwork. From the blood on the floor I knew he was dead. On the table his left arm stretched out, his hand holding a long narrow knife. I stepped around the spreading pool of blood— thinking how appalled he would be by the mess—and faced him.
“He had cut his own throat. His robes stuck to him in a bloody paste. And he had cut his eyelids off before he killed himself. His brows and cheeks were crusted with blood, and his eyes stared ahead, eternally aware, vigilant even beyond death against the woman he feared so much.
“I knelt before him, and bowed to him who was, for the briefest moment, between Kuang Hsu’s death and his own, the Emperor of China, the Son of Heaven.”
Here my grandfather stopped and I realized it had become painful for him to continue. I was torn between consoling him and urging him on. The house had become silent and the courtyard, lit by the moon, had the desolate air of an abandoned stage. He got up from his chair and stretched himself.
“Did the dowager empress order the death of the emperor?” I felt a heavy sadness for Wen Zu’s death and for my grandfather’s loss.
He shrugged. “No one would ever know, for she died the day after Kuang Hsu’s death. I knew that the factions which had wanted Wen Zu dead would also want to cut off all the loose ends. My life was still in danger. I ran.
“I became one of the hysterical figures that crowded the night in that palace. I sent a message to my family and my father made arrangements for my wife and daughters to join me. I invoked my mother’s name whenever possible and we were given safe passage to Hong Kong. As I hurried up to the boat, the driver of the cart that had carried us to the harbor said, ‘Don’t worry. Your parents will be moved to Hong Kong also. You’ll see them soon.’
“I waited for three years but they never came. Eventually we sailed to Malaya, hoping to evade whatever people they sent after us. In that time the three-year-old distant relation of the dowager empress was named emperor, and China collapsed. Do you know the phrase from the foreign devils’ God Book?—’Woe to you, O Land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning!’
“The monarchy disappeared forever and Sun Yat Sen’s Republicans prayed before the tombs of the old Han Chinese emperors, informing them that, at long last, foreign invaders— white or yellow—no longer ruled China. It was only then that I finally felt safe. By that time Malaya had become my home—even your grandmother grew to love it here.
“Aunt Mei said she died not long after she came to Malaya,” I said.
“Giving birth to my third child, a boy,” my grandfather said. “He was too weak, and did not live long.”
He let out a heavy breath, and I knew we had come to the end. “All records and traces of Wen Zu disappeared. He never existed in history except to me and to those few who remembered him. Many of them will be gone now. Perhaps only I am now aware that once there was an emperor by that name and that once, strangely enough, I was his friend.” My grandfather stopped, his eyes looking far, far back in time. “I have never told anyone of him. Not even my wife or my children. But the lessons I learned in the palace have stayed with me.”
I sat as unmoving as the miniature tree in the courtyard. Somewhere in the house some jasmine incense had been lit and I breathed in its light, discreet scent.
The wily old man, I thought. I saw too late that he had used the magical jade pin to lead my mind, taking it to wherever he had wanted me to go. Despite Endo-san’s lessons, I had fallen into the trap my grandfather had laid for me. But I could not help liking him. I had come to Ipoh expecting accusations and acrimony to be thrown from both sides. I had planned never to see him again after this meeting but the afternoon by the fountain, and now this strange tale, had made him human, a man with a history, not the caricature of a controlling, narrow-minded man. I realized I could not be indifferent to him now, especially when he made it clear that I was the only one to whom he had ever divulged his past.
He would never come out and ask for forgiveness for casting my mother away, and to ask him to do so would be futile. The offering of this strange fragment of his past was a request for understanding and absolution.
He reached out and took my hand. “I have told you this long-winded, winding tale because I want you to know your history also. I want y
ou to know that you have a long tradition behind you, so that you do not have to chase after a tradition that is not yours.”
He meant Endo-san, that was obvious. Once again I wondered who was reporting my activities to him. “But I want to,” I said, looking him firmly in the eye. Who was he to tell me what to do?
“You must wonder why I was so against your mother marrying your father. What a terrible, bigoted, and vindictive old man, you must have thought. And I did not even bother to attend her funeral.”
“It had crossed my mind,” I said.
“I went to her, in the temple. I saw your father in the crematorium, placing your mother’s bones and ashes in the urn. I asked her for forgiveness. But of course it was too late then.
“When she set her heart on marrying your father I tried my best to prevent it. I had been warned that she could not marry him.”
“Warned? By whom?”
“A fortune-teller at the snake temple in Penang.”
I held my breath and a feeling of unreality came over me as the memory of the day I had spent with Endo-san at the temple uncoiled itself inside me.
“Because of her warnings I tried to stop the marriage and, when I failed, I allowed my anger to dictate my words.”