Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823)

by Basu, Kanal

  On most evenings he summoned the power of distraction, the pranks they’d play at the Faculdade. Friends in carnival costumes and nurses in white paraded through his courtyard. Memories of his adventures kept him occupied every night. He recalled carousing in the bars of Chiado where they’d befriend young Englishmen, the Inglesinhos, pretend to be secret republicans and ask for their help in overthrowing the House of Bragança. Ricardo Silva would go even a step further: promise a cache of the guns to the young innocents if they wished to assassinate the English queen.

  His racking laugh woke the pavilion’s attendants, made them scurry over with another pot of wine. He summoned horses, Alfama whores, bulls of the bullring. Drunk, he went strolling in the courtyard as if on Avenida da Liberdade – Lisbon’s Champs-Élysées – from Rossio to the Praça Marquês de Pombal, with a stop on the way to ride the new Americanos under the even newer gas lamps. Hats were raised to him at the theater hall where a crowd had gathered for a matinee, the hospital’s matron among them, hiding her face as he walked by. He saw himself enter a smoke-filled salon, order a glass of crusted port and watch Arees among her friends, chatting on about Voltaire and Hugo.

  Did Ricardo try to stop me on behalf of Arees? Does he hate me for keeping her waiting?

  Days before leaving, he had met Arees at the Tower of Belém. They’d gone up to the Moorish sentry box to stand with their backs to the city. The Atlantic current blew in a stiff breeze and it seemed as if they were at the bow of a ship cruising along over the waves. He had told her about his visit to China, that he’d be away for months, even for a whole year. “Syphilis?” Her gaze had strayed toward the monastery of Jerónimos as if she could hear the cries of the syphilitics in the cloisters. Her eyes had lit up in a way he hadn’t seen before. “Ah! Candide leaving his Eden for an adventure!” Then her face had clouded over and she had fallen silent. Almost seven thousand miles stretched between the two of them standing on the tower and the China coast, fifteen thousand or more on the sea. What did he know about ships and ships’ fevers? She had asked him about storms and murderous slavers. Blessed steam had shortened the journey from the days of Vasco da Gama, he had assured her, touched by her worries. Should I ask her to come along? His doctor’s mind had run through the course of things. He had wavered between certainty and doubt, never as close as he was that night to breaking his indecision and asking for her hand.

  “What if it takes more than a year to find what you’re after?” Arees had asked. He’d kept silent, not knowing what to say. She had sighed, and spoken under her breath, almost to herself, “It’d better be soon, or I’ll come to bring you back.”

  Swaying on his feet in the courtyard, Antonio heard Dom Afonso de Oliveira. “Why must you save the world from pox? Let the upstarts do it if they can – the English and the French, greedy Castilians, the Dutch. Portugal’s day as the leader of seafarers is over,” the governor lamented. “Once caravels and carracks ruled the waves from Estado da India to Estado do Brasil. Now it’s the turn of steamships. The new masters have taken over the spice trade, the gold, the slaves and opium, let them take the pox too. Let them do their work.”

  Antonio smashed the pot on the courtyard’s ground and raised himself on his toes to peer over the palace walls. Beyond the gates the Foreign Legation lay in darkness.

  His body behaved strangely after the first month at the Summer Palace. He missed his morning habit: regular drills with wooden clubs and barbells, or a game of jogo do pau with his friends, fighting a friendly duel with fencing sticks. In Lisbon, he’d run the whole length of the Jardim Botânico and arrive at the All Saints panting like a race horse. Morning exercises prepared him for his long hours at the hospital and even longer evenings. He missed the sparring, the grind of bones and muscles, and invited the attendants for a wrestling match.

  Tian laughed like a child and ran to tell his friend when Antonio explained to him the rules. “You can fight me with your hands and legs any way you like. But you can’t poke my eyes or kick between my thighs.” He pointed to the folds of his robe.

  Wangsheng came out of the kitchen looking ashamed and apologized on behalf of his “stupid junior.”

  “If he has insulted you, you can punish him.” He handed a broom to Antonio and forced Tian to get down on his knees. “You can hit him as many times as you like, even if he starts to bleed.” The younger eunuch made a whimpering sound, as he raised his tunic and bared his back, looking fearfully at Antonio.

  “No, no, he’s done nothing wrong! I just want to play a game with him.” Antonio was taken aback seeing the distress on their faces. “He can hit me too!”

  Both eunuchs fell silent. Then Wangsheng got down on his knees and bared his back as well.

  “I don’t want to punish either of you. Just fight a wrestling match. It’s a game like your kung fu. You fight to win but not to hurt your opponent.” Antonio went around his two kneeling attendants, and imitated the sparring he’d seen in Macau’s Ama Temple. “Some even fight with weapons, but we can simply use our arms and legs.” He drew a circle on the ground with the broom, stood in the middle and coaxed his attendants to join him inside. “Whoever wants to fight me, can step in now!”

  Wangsheng stood up and cast a sad look at the circle. “What will happen to him who loses?” Straightening his back, Tian slunk away toward the kitchen.

  “Nothing! We can fight again tomorrow.”

  “And if he loses again?”

  “No one really loses, it’s just a …”

  The older man shook his head. “We can’t win against a guest or lose to a foreigner.”

  “Then let’s just fight and forget about winners and losers.” Antonio made a dash toward Tian, hoping to infect him with the fun of wrestling. The young eunuch ducked under his arms and ran around the courtyard with Antonio chasing him. Wangsheng scampered into the kitchen and slammed the door. Antonio thought he could catch Tian easily, but he showed great skill evading his grasp, jumping over the pool and running round the lodge. The lion dog kept up a steady barking from the kitchen, scaring the chickens in their coop. The songbird called in a shrill note.

  “Stop!” Antonio shouted, as Tian started to climb up the plum tree, wrapping his feet around the branches like a monkey. “I won’t hurt you!” Maybe there was a reason after all why he was called Tianfen – blessed at birth with the gift of tree climbing! Antonio tried to go up the branches too, but slipped and fell. Looking up, he saw the young eunuch’s eyes among a bunch of fruit, glowing down at him from the top.

  “They won’t fight with me, or let me swim in the lake, or visit the empress’s court, just feed me rice and watch me grow fat!” Antonio complained to Joachim Saldanha when he stopped by his pavilion the next day, on his way to the Legation to baptize the newborn son of the Italian minister’s aide.

  “But they are looking after you very well, aren’t they?” Joachim Saldanha sounded unconcerned. “Last time you were complaining of insects, but not anymore, I think?”

  “A well looked after prisoner you can say.” Antonio glared at his padre friend. “Not free like you to risk my life.”

  Emptying his pocket of scraps of food that he had picked up from his well wishers, Joachim Saldanha gave Antonio a stern look. “The important thing is to keep learning. That’s why you’re here, aren’t you? Just like your time at the Faculdade.”

  Antonio thought about Festa das Latas, and the burning of ribbons at Queima das Fitas; the drunken fights, the whores, and lampooning their teachers at the yearly ball. “It wasn’t all work at the Faculdade, but mischief too.”

  Joachim Saldanha screwed up his nose fishing out a rotten pear that had taken on the color of a dead rat. “No one’s stopping you from playing your mischief outside the palace. Why don’t you ask your eunuch friends to take you to the market, or to one of the villages? You’ll find no shortage of festivals there, no dearth of rascals to remind you of your friends.” He spoke to reassure Antonio. “As long as you come back here, your
teacher doesn’t need to know where you’ve been.”

  Antonio went down to the lake after Joachim Saldanha had left promising to be back soon to collect his box. He thought about Xu, the way he had rushed off at the call of the messenger. The empress must’ve asked for him. She must know where I live, know my pavilion. She could be watching me. … Her barge lay waiting at the foot of marble steps, but the boatmen were absent. The empress liked to take her afternoon tea there with her ladies-in-waiting, Tian had told him. It was her favorite spot. She’d call over musicians and poets, even actors from the palace theater to perform scenes of a play. Antonio took a quick look around, then went down the steps to the barge. A few strides took him up to the deck and into the cabin. He expected to find ladies-in-waiting or a head concubine preparing the room for the tea service.

  I’d be stopped and asked who I am. … Her guards might force me out. … He felt drawn to enter the empress’s sight.

  A thronelike chair stood in the middle of a raised platform, beside it a couch covered with cushions. Curtained windows and painted walls gave the cabin the appearance of a private chamber, complete with a mirror and fresh lilies in vases. Remnants of a meal lay on a table, with silver teapots. Cream from an upturned saucer ran down the tablecloth into a pool on the wooden floor. She’s left after her tea … he thought, picking up a fine jade bowl and smelling the rim for a whiff of the invisible lips. A pale lamp shone on a mantel, and swayed with the boat. Antonio sat down on the couch. This is where she comes to rest after she’s visited her sick nephew. He thought of the young concubine Yehonala who’d become the dowager empress, the cavalryman’s daughter who had charmed the emperor with her singing. She had jumped rank to become his favorite consort and had borne him a son. When her young nephew ascended to the throne after the emperor’s death, she became his guardian, and had ruled China ever since from behind the scenes. Her beauty would captivate young and old alike, Marcello Valignoni had told him, like a flower that never dies.

  Ye-ho-na-la … He rolled the word on his tongue. The planks creaked under him, and he heard the muffled sound of returning boatmen.

  Antonio left the barge quickly and went up to the Palace of Clouds, which bordered the lake. She might’ve come here to watch the sunset; maybe he could glimpse her playing with her dogs while they were being groomed by her maids. He went up the steps and heard murmurs. Her consorts were likely to sight him first, raise a cry to attract the guards. They’d rush in from all sides, wrestle him down before they dragged him over to the empress.

  I must be ready to answer her questions. Take Xu’s name if needed. I must tell her I am a doctor.

  The sound of chanting came from the room. He smelled the rare Chinese orchid that he’d seen in Dona Elvira’s villa. A voice called everyone to attention, and recited a few lines in a singsong. Is it the empress. …? Antonio inched closer to a window and pressed his face against the pane. A smoke screen covered the circle of women dressed in white, sitting around an open box with gold trimmings. They were strewing it with petals and fanning the incense burner. One of them stood with her back to Antonio and started to wail as guards came into the room carrying an old concubine in their arms, her face painted white, dressed in a white robe and wearing a garland of white lotus. Only her lips were as red as a ripe plum.

  Moving away quickly from the window, he ran down the steps of the Palace of Clouds.

  Back in his pavilion, Antonio surprised his attendants. They had lit lamps around the courtyard and swept the ground clean of twigs and dead leaves. Wangsheng and Tian stood inside the circle that Antonio had drawn, and were wrestling each other with their arms and legs.

  “Heart stores the spirit

  Lungs harbour instinct

  Liver holds the soul

  Spleen is home to ideas

  Kidneys fuel ambition”

  Antonio noticed a woman dressed in the common blue of a peasant with a black band around her head. She had come with Xu, and sat listening to him in the courtyard like an actor ready to make her appearance. He thought he was dreaming of one of the many gardeners he’d seen clearing the dead leaves. His appetite had died after a week of specialties prepared by his attendants and he longed for the soothing tea to calm his restlessness. Glancing impatiently toward the kitchen, he caught her looking at him.

  Xu cleared his throat, expecting Antonio to ask a question. “Do you agree?”

  Antonio kept silent. His teacher waited for him to speak, then called Wangsheng over. “Ask your master which of your organs is at fault.” The older eunuch stood before the two of them with a shamefaced smile, while Xu egged him on. “Is it an organ or something else, something more important?” Waving the poor eunuch away, he smiled mischievously at Antonio. “Going by Nei ching, one could say it’s the heart that warms the spleen to drive the lungs to help the kidneys to nourish the liver. So it’s not his liver that’s at fault but his heart!” He looked expectantly at Antonio. “Don’t you want to argue with me?”

  “It doesn’t matter if I do or I don’t. The most important thing is that I learn enough to cure pox.”

  “Ah!” Xu scared off a fly soaking up steam from his tea bowl. “But to cure a patient you must believe in the principles. Learning the rules simply isn’t enough. You must believe in qi, for example, trust the zang and fu organs to transmit it through the body. Otherwise …”

  “Otherwise what?” Antonio stopped note taking and looked up.

  “You’ll fail as a doctor.” He gave Antonio a teasing look. “Like you had to believe that our empress might wish to meet you before you went looking for her.”

  He knows …! Antonio was stunned by his teacher’s words, spoken with just the right tinge of warning. He isn’t just a Nei ching master, but a spy. …

  “I can’t believe things that are untested and unproven.” He rose and walked to the lodge to relieve himself, holding his hurting stomach. When he returned he found a plate of shrimp eggs by his stool. Antonio pushed it away and grimaced. His teacher studied him closely, then spoke in a friendly voice.

  “In your case it might indeed be the liver that’s at fault. It sleeps during winter and wakes in the spring. That’s the general rule. When it’s ill with a hot disease, the urine become yellow, the stomach aches, sleep vanishes and the patient becomes restless. Summer troubles the liver, while winter keeps it calm.”

  “A liver is a liver, summer or winter.” Antonio smashed the plate on the ground. “The shrimps are the culprit here, not the liver.” Tian rushed in across the courtyard and scooped up the broken pieces.

  “It’s a zang organ and stores the qi. It harmonizes emotions. Anger is injurious to the liver, sadness results when it’s weak. If unprotected it harms the heart.”

  “Nonsense!” Antonio rose from his seat and prowled the courtyard, throwing back his words over his shoulder. “Its job is to supply blood to the heart. A job it does very well till attacked by an enemy. We must kill the enemy, not worry about emotions.”

  Xu’s thin face broke into a smile, having succeeded, finally, in provoking his student into an argument. “Ah! What if the liver itself is the enemy?”

  It was a question an assistant wouldn’t have dared ask Antonio during his rounds at the hospital. He stood still, controlling his urge to scold the elderly man, then delivered his stern lecture. “Yes the liver might indeed become corrupted, by alcohol, for instance. It could suffer too the yellow atrophy, or from a saturation of copper. For each condition, one must select the right treatment. Even surgery can’t be ruled out, especially if …”

  “What if I were to tell you that to cure the liver you must first treat the kidneys?”

  He thought Xu was teasing him. Maybe he should’ve heeded Dom Miguel’s advice and gone west on the Carriera do Brasil, spent his days in snake-infested jungles rather than in a palace, coaxed the Amazon savages to reveal their secret of curing the pox. He was tired and angry. His teacher motioned him to sit, placed his palm down and noted his pulse. />
  “It’s not the shrimp but your stomach. It doesn’t wish to see the sight of food.” He advised Antonio to rest for a few days before they resumed their lessons. “The liver is the first to complain as summer sets in. When the water dries up and the earth cracks open. It’s time to store. The liver speaks for all the organs.”

  Holding his side and bending over, Antonio spoke hoarsely. “It has nothing to do with the liver. Just the shrimps and the plum wine that …”

  With a quick gesture, Xu called Wangsheng over and spoke to him in a low voice. The older eunuch glanced over to the kitchen with a nervous look.

  “I’ve told him to stop the shrimps, the starfish and the seahorse and stay with plain dishes. Also to stop quarrelling among themselves and let you sleep longer in the mornings.”

  The kneeling form rose and left with Xu. I should’ve asked him about nightmares. … Maybe he can stop them, make me sleep along with my liver.

  Tian surprised him by announcing a visitor when he brought him his late rice. The girl in blue stood at the door of the lodge. She had come to fetch him for Xu.

  He’s found a syphilitic, a victim of Canton rash! He wants me to observe the treatment. Antonio was thrilled. His stomach recovered instantly, and he changed quickly out of his robes. The girl was telling him to bring something along, making a shape with her hands. My hat! She pointed under the bed. He followed her gaze to the surgical box.

  Why would he ask me to bring it? How would Xu know what was inside, under the lid? Perhaps the patient needed a little treatment while he recovered, he thought, like removing a long-suffering abscess.

  Antonio followed her out and into a part of the palace he hadn’t visited before. Lamps had lit up the terrace by the lake, forming shadow rings on their path like ripples. The trees and pavilions were shrouded in mist, and gave him the feeling of walking along a cliff’s edge as he followed his fleet-footed guide.