by Basu, Kanal
When the symptoms disappear, the patient might think himself lucky, he wrote to Rosa. With the rash disappeared and his hair grown back, Dr. Alexander Maria might think he had returned to full health. He might even resume a normal life, go hunting, or ride the carriage to Lisbon to see his friends. Young men often bragged about beating the pox, let off with just a scar on their vitals to flaunt as a souvenir. Antonio reminded Rosa about its supreme trickery: feigning a cure when the poison was up to its greatest mischief inside the body.
As the day wore on and his regret grew at missing his chance to meet Fumi, he began his letter to Ricardo Silva. Even without thinking, he filled a whole page with questions about Campo Pequeno, the new bullring; about the miracle funiculars that could float on air and lift passengers from the depths of Baixa to Bairro Alto. He asked his friend if the king was still alive, and whether his carriage had been attacked again with objects more lethal than stones.
Dona Elvira would’ve informed her godson about Antonio’s passage through Macau, and he resisted writing him about the palace. His friend would be angry at the arrangements. Why must you, the star of the Faculdade, spend a whole year learning to read pulse from the Chinaman? He’d question the wisdom of having a padre as his guide–“fools who’ve made a virtue out of dying at the hands of savages.” Why couldn’t he ask Dom Afonso to demand the cure from the Chinese? Foreigners were powerful in Peking, everyone knew. Hadn’t the British smacked the Yellow Emperor’s bottom with their gunships? Europe should demand what it wants from China, not pretend to be a humble student.
Antonio also resisted writing him about the Golden Lilies. His friend would snigger at him, “An Eastern empress! You’d do better with a Nubi, my friend, even a Brazilian mama. She’d bear you more babies than you can father!”
He missed his friend, and as he drank plum wine with his late rice Antonio wrote about everything he’d found unbearable since stepping into his pavilion, including the shrimp eggs and the insects.
Are books still being written? he asked, like a marooned sailor. And music? Do you still dance and drink, ride in the marshes? What do clean sheets feel on a soft bed? Do women still love to be loved?
The young eunuch hushed him with a finger. Stepping out of his lodge into the courtyard next morning, he thought the mob of his nightmare had arrived and they had but minutes to escape. Both his attendants were peering up at the plum tree, and circling it like predators about to pounce on a prey. A yellow bird perched on a branch looking down. It had flown its cage inside the kitchen, turned a few circles chased by the yelping dog before it escaped through the window. It was a rare songbird, he’d been told by his attendants, although he had never heard it sing. Just like Antonio it was fed a special diet of cooked rice wrapped in egg yolk, which deceived it into thinking that it was feasting on a little insect. His attendants spent more time on their pets than on their guest, Xu had complained, threatening to move Antonio over to another pavilion. Wangsheng closed in on the tree and gave it a good shake as if expecting the bird to drop down like a ripe fruit, causing it to shift to another branch and arch its neck to catch a better view of its captors.
“All is paradox in China,” Antonio recalled Dom Afonso saying. “Worrying over domestic details, when the house is on fire!” He thought of shooting the bird with the handgun the governor had given him, and presenting it to Wangsheng to throw into the kitchen pot.
Fumi joined the hunt, holding a wand like stick. The eunuchs gave way as she made a twittering sound with her lips. She kept her eyes fixed on the bird, circling the tree and calling it down from the branch. Rooted to the spot, Antonio heard her sing a lilting tune, the bird giving off a sudden flutter as if called by a greater force. Then it started to descend branch by branch till it swooped down on the crook of her wand like a docile pet, hopping onto her outstretched finger. She led it back into the cage being held up by Tian.
Antonio’s heart throbbed, observing the rarest of sights.
After the courtyard had been swept, he sat before his new teacher with the dog at his feet. The hwa-mei started to call, and Fumi spoke in the English she had learned from the Dutch printer of the holy book.
“If you want to know about Nei ching, you can ask me.” She waited as if expecting a reply, then drew back her sleeves baring her arms. “But first, you must wake early and prepare yourself.” She gave a quick look toward the kitchen. “Wangsheng can bring you tea when you’re ready.”
He observed her opening and shutting her lips like a pantomime. A blue form floated like a cloud before his eyes, with a dancer’s twirl of the arms.
“The body is cold and the mind open when the morning star appears, before the sun has risen fully. That’s the best time for Nei ching.”
Ah! Xu has sent more than a replacement! She wants more from her student, wants me to change my ways. She has conspired with the eunuchs to rule over the mornings when I’d be at my weakest.
“Body and mind are willing at dusk,” Antonio spoke in an even voice, not wishing to upset her, “when the evening star has risen, a time for learning new and useful things.”
“But how will you see in the dark?” She threw him a challenging look.
Her gaze fell like a raindrop from his shoulder to the tip of his finger as he pointed at the lamp behind the rice panes.
Fumi smiled. “In the evening you can go over what you’ve learned during the day. But to master Nei ching you must. …”
“I don’t want you to teach me Nei ching,” Antonio whispered.
She arched her eyebrow. “No? But aren’t you here to …”
“Teach me about nightmares, if you can.” He spoke quietly. “Tell me why I haven’t slept a wink since I’ve come here. Why do I dream of death every night?”
“But you were sleeping when I came last time!” Fumi looked uncertain.
He held out his palm without a word and laid it down before her. Reaching forward, she paused over it as if to examine the shape, then held the wrist lightly between her thumb and the middle finger. A dead worm came to life, crawling under his skin. The force doubled as she added the ring finger.
“Why do I hear voices when I’m alone?”
With the ring, middle and index fingers, she pressed down hard, and the worm turned into a dragon, surging through his veins. He closed his eyes.
An eternity seemed to pass, before he heard Fumi’s voice again. “It’s your mind, not your body.” She kept her eyes on Antonio’s wrist, as if she could see his pulse beating. “It’s not the rapid Sumai that shows a hardening of the arteries and a loss of blood to the brain. Nor Jinmai, which is proof of your stomach fighting with the nerves and creating confusion. The organs are all healthy, and they don’t know why you’re suffering. It’s Daimai.” She nodded. “The soft and frightened one, which hides under the rest.”
“What does Daimai say about nightmares?”
“It says you’re afraid of something.” She seemed to recall Antonio’s account of his dreams. “Maybe you’re afraid of death.”
He could hear the birdcage twittering, and a pair of fine nostrils inhaling and exhaling.
“But you’re young and strong, maybe you’re afraid for someone else. You are dreaming of someone who’s suffering.” Fumi spoke evenly, without taking her eyes off his wrist.
Antonio withdrew his hand. She drew hers back too and dropped down the sleeves. “Maybe it’s someone you love.”
Tian brought over tea. A fly joined them and circled the bowls.
“If I tell you what he’s suffering from, will you teach me how to cure him?”
From the look on her face, Antonio thought she hadn’t understood him properly. “If you can cure his disease, I’ll stay. But if you can’t help me, you must tell me now.”
A storm had risen, driving a mad squall into the courtyard. Fumi rose from her stool, placed her closed right fist under her chin and bowed. “Stay here.” She spoke calmly, then moved away.
“Stop!” He called out just as
she was about to vanish through the arched gate, making her turn back. He wanted to ask her about the night at the antechamber. Ask her why she had given him that look.
“You must help me save him, just as I saved someone the other night.”
She glanced up at the storm clouds then dropped her gaze back on Antonio. “I saw you kill someone the other night.”
He woke early to eat his lotus porridge and prepare himself to meet Fumi. She’d be less forgiving than Xu, he was certain. He’d have to learn quickly and surprise her by his brilliance. Then grit his teeth and bear her Nei ching. He’d be taught all about strange diseases, and their even stranger cures. Whatever their disagreements, he’d have to be ready to accept her views.
He had been overwhelmed by Fumi’s presence, but also stung by her unfair accusation. I saw you kill. … “And you did too!” he could’ve snapped back. “You helped me kill the child to save the mother.” He had fretted over her words long after she’d left. Why blame me, the foreigner, when even a fool knows that it’s impossible to overrule the empress?
Waiting, Antonio thought of the bird that had given up its freedom and become her prisoner. What gave her the power? He had bribed Wangsheng with a Venetian pocket mirror to find out more about Fumi, but he didn’t say much about her. “She is a better doctor than Xu,” the older eunuch said with a straight face.
“Has she managed to cure you?”
Wangsheng shook his head. “No doctor can! God has filled my belly with something, for what he’s taken away from below!”
He’s hiding the truth about Fumi. … Antonio thought, and wondered what that truth was.
When she arrived wearing a loose robe clasped at the neck, Antonio didn’t recognize her. She had the air of a princess who knows her place in the court, confident of presenting herself before the dowager. His attendants too seemed to treat her differently, not as Xu’s assistant but as an important visitor. She couldn’t be what he was told she was, not someone who’d learned Nei ching the hard way. Antonio wondered if Xu had misled him on purpose. Sitting down on the teacher’s chair in the courtyard, she issued orders to Tian and Wangsheng to shut the kitchen window to stop them from eavesdropping. Antonio surprised her with his question before she could start.
“How do we know what a disease is unless we see it?”
“We’d know because we’re all sufferers,” she said, settling down. Seeing the mischief in Antonio’s eyes, she added, “Our sages didn’t teach the sick, only the healthy. Students were taught to imagine sickness, and those with the most vivid imaginations became masters of Nei ching.”
Antonio smirked. “And so they became doctors without ever seeing a patient!”
She hushed him with her eyes. “Sick or healthy, we all have twelve channels, six starting at the feet and six at the hands.”
As with Xu, he prepared to face the boredom of his lessons: to drink tea and stay awake, and remind himself to calm his impulse for an argument. With Fumi, at least, he’d have distraction. He’d be able to put his vivid imagination to work. He thought about Wangsheng’s caustic answer when he’d asked him if Fumi was doctor to the empress as well. “The dowager needs her only to kill,” the eunuch had said with a straight face.
“Of the twelve channels, the first starts at the stomach then rises to the tip of the middle finger.” She laid her palm flat against her navel and passing her right hand through the valley of her breasts, held up the middle finger above her head. “The second from the heart to the inside of the little finger.” She smiled at Antonio, and parted her fingers to give him a glimpse of a secret nook. “The third …”
She danced before him, sitting with his notebook open on his lap, lifting up her arms, twirling on her toes, as if she was performing for the empress.
“The channels transmit qi and carry disease. To know them is to know the body’s secret passages.” She waited for him to ask a question, then bade him rise. “Show me how well you’ve learned the third channel that we call taiyin.”
Antonio knelt before her. He touched the small toe of his left foot, then drew his forefinger straight over his leg to the groin. A change in direction took it past the liver to the base of the throat, ending up at the tip of his outstretched tongue.
Fumi applauded, bringing the attendants out of the kitchen and they joined in the applause too.
“Tell me what happens when the third channel is blocked.”
Antonio repeated what he’d learned from his teacher. “It causes pain.”
“What sort of pain?”
“Like childbirth, a deep distress all over the body. And vomiting, and heaviness of the limbs, and a feeling of sinking under ice. …”
“And how would you know the pain of childbirth?”
“By my vivid imagination, of course.”
His teacher laughed and called for a round of tea.
Antonio wished they could be elsewhere, by the jade fountain of the lotus pavilion overlooking the lake; or at the very top of the hill, just the two of them, rehearsing the dance of the twelve channels. After weeks of boring lessons, finally, he sensed the exhilaration of Nei ching, like a young student discovering the human form for the very first time.
“The fourth channel is the hardest.” Fumi spoke between sips of tea.
She seemed to read his mind, stopping to give him time to finish his bowl. Then called Wangsheng over to remove the pot. “It’s easy to learn if you can think of yourself as a germ that passes blindly through it. If you can learn with your instinct rather than your mind.”
She knows I’m waiting … to show her how easily I can master the fourth channel. He looked steadily at her, mindful of noting down every detail. Fumi rose from her stool, took a few steps back and stood before him.
“The fourth channel starts at the heel of the right foot and ends at the pupils.” Turning her back to Antonio, she raised her robe to her waist and leaned back to trace the curve of her snowy calf with an index finger, tracing a silken thigh, naked hips and an arched back, reaching up to her closed eyes. She held her pose for him to take note then dropped the robe back.
“The fourth channel gives force to blind impulse.” Back on her seat, she spoke slowly.
Antonio sat before an empty page, barely listening to Fumi. His mouth turned dry and his breath quickened. A curtain of still air seemed to fall around them, and he heard neither the birds nor the trees. The courtyard seemed as still as the lake with the two of them alone on a barge.
“Who gives orders to the channels?” She looked stern, as if expecting the answer instantly. “How long have you been studying Nei ching?”
His mind went blank, and he turned his gaze back to the notes.
“The body is nothing.” There was a glint in her eyes. “Once awakened, the yin and the yang rule over everything – order and disorder, health and sickness.” She leaned toward him as if to pass on a secret. “To find the cure, you must first know what excites the disease.”
He blamed himself after Fumi had left for not asking Xu more questions about her, for letting him get away with his mysterious answers. How did the Dutch printer’s friend become a Nei ching master? How did she end up at the Summer Palace? What did she do for the empress? His curiosity grew with every passing moment. Who is she? Whose daughter, whose wife, whose mother? Was she a concubine of a special rank, or simply someone who’d taught herself the Yellow Emperor’s laws? He rued the missed opportunity when he could’ve asked her to tell him enough about herself before he agreed to be her student. He could’ve pretended to be a haughty foreigner, a proud doctor who needed to know everything. She is just like Maria Helena, he had thought in the antechamber. Someone who’d watch and admire his moves, fancy the work of his skillful hands on her healthy body. He knew his power to win over the ladies, the power he had had to cultivate as a boy following his famous father around. He was embarrassed, recalling his earlier thoughts. It was she who had the power, putting him at her mercy.
“Bring my por
ridge and bathwater.” Antonio surprised the eunuchs early next morning even before the kitchen fire had been lit. In the time it took to light up the oven, he memorized his lessons, reading them aloud, pacing the courtyard. Just like Xu, he laid out his drawings of the twelve channels on the ground and poked them with a stick, made Tian laugh by calling him over to pose as his student.
When they met, he surprised Fumi with his question: “What does your empress suffer from?”
“Empress?” Fumi seemed taken aback, as she settled into her teacher’s chair.
“You must know, mustn’t you, if you’ve spent time with her here?” Will she say who she really is, or keep on pretending to be an assistant? “Xu’s the empress’s doctor, we know. Do the two of you look after her courtiers as well? Her concubines and maids?” He thought he’d remind her of the abortion. “Who asked for the child to be killed?”
Ready to flout the rules, he heard Joachim Saldanha in his ear … You must keep to yourself, never ask questions about the empress. …
“What if she had died with her baby?” He made a sign for Wangsheng to bring them tea. “Would it have saddened the empress?”
“The palace is no different from the world outside.” Fumi seemed to have regained her composure. “There are as many sick people here as anywhere.”
“And can you cure them all?” He tried to probe her again. “What if there was an outbreak of plague?”
“Nei ching has a thousand cures for a thousand diseases. A master will know how to treat it.” She looked quickly over Antonio’s drawings of the twelve channels, and continued, “Unless, of course, there was only a novice to look after the patients, one who made silly mistakes like you.” She pointed to the lung channel “that mustn’t encircle the throat, otherwise it’ll throttle the poor thing to death!”