Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823)

by Basu, Kanal

  “Which foreigners?” Antonio looked at him with disbelief. He couldn’t imagine Polly and Cedric or the rugby boys rubbing shoulders with the Savages. He hoped the dowager hadn’t foolishly planned to raid the Legation and imprison all foreigners in the Summer Palace.

  “We have Heinz Ulrich here. He’s our friend from Germany, who’s come to teach us the art of modern shipbuilding. A team of Swedish explorers have arrived as well from the Gobi desert, where they’ve spent the last two years digging for lost civilizations. Then there’s Edward Pickering, who was born to Australian pastors here in China, the editor of the New Hunan Review. He has brought over his two assistants with him, and hopes to keep the paper going from the palace. Do you know any of them?”

  Antonio shook his head.

  “And we have a doctor here as well, a western doctor. Just like you.”

  “Who?” Antonio thought the deputy prince had mistaken a padre for a doctor. It was common for men of cloth to travel in China with their own dispensaries and share the medicines with their flocks.

  “Oscar Franklin, the most famous foreign doctor in China.”

  “Of the Locke Mission, do you mean?” Antonio was excited hearing the name Yohan had mentioned to him: “Pure wisdom,” who was a friend of Xu.

  “Yes, you can meet him if you like. If he’d like to meet you, I should rather say!”

  Antonio took advantage of his visitor’s politeness to ask him the most uncomfortable question. “So there’s no truth to rumors that the empress is conspiring with the Boxers to throw all foreigners out?”

  The deputy prince smiled. “Rumors spread by whom? Boxers or foreigners?”

  He thought about the recently arrived foreigners after his visitor had left, about the ambition that had brought each of them over to China. He wondered if his was the sole lost cause among them. Even without the troubles he was no closer to learning the Chinese cure for syphilis. Alone in the courtyard he blamed himself. Why did he let Xu off the hook? How could he have allowed himself to be distracted by Fumi, to have fallen in love with her? In just a few seasons he had lost the fire that had made him the most successful doctor in Lisbon, turning into a lovesick wretch. He should’ve kept on arguing, kept the Chinese doctor on his toes till he revealed his secret; he shouldn’t have allowed Xu to disappear and pass him on to the amber-eyed seductress. As he tossed and turned in bed, he concluded that it was his obsession with Jacob’s death that was to blame. One mystery had replaced another, turning him into a second-rate sleuth, sifting through idle gossip like a vulture picking bones. What had caused him to trust in a housewife’s hunch? What invisible thread had he glimpsed that joined the Dutchman to syphilis?

  The Kansu Savages could be his saviors. It’d be nothing short of a miracle if there was no one among the soldiers and their camp wives who suffered from the pox. Coming through the gates he had seen several of them lying under blankets in their tents, coughing and spitting blood; a great many showed gashes and tumors; the acidic smell of pus had turned his stomach as he picked his way through the festering heap of human cattle.

  As doctor to the soldiers he’d learn about Chinese syphilis. The age of a chancre or a skin lesion would tell him if treatment had failed; he’d be able to judge a real recovery from one that was fake. The sick might take him into their confidence and tell him about quacks, while those recovered could reveal the mystery of the Yellow Emperor’s method. His spirits lifted as he thought of surprising Xu with his own findings. He imagined Polly shrieking … You examined the privates of those stinking savages …! His attendants would worry, shake their heads madly like freshly slaughtered pigs at the very mention of soldiers. He must calm them down, Antonio thought. Picking up his surgical box, he called out to them. He found the kitchen empty and the gates of the pavilion shut, with him, the prisoner, locked securely inside.

  “I’ve found a patient for you.”

  He woke instantly at Fumi’s words, but kept his eyes shut.

  “She’s suffering from Canton rash, and has never been to see a doctor before.” She poked him in the ribs, and tickled him. “Don’t you want to see her?”

  “Ask Xu.” He turned over, and pretended to snore. He shouldn’t show his keenness, he thought, but wait for his teacher to invite him for a proper demonstration of the treatment.

  “But he’s disappeared! Don’t know if he’s in Peking even.” She prodded him again and spoke pleadingly. “Why don’t you treat her?”

  Antonio sat upright and held Fumi by the shoulders, drawing her close to him. “I’m not stupid, Fumi. I can’t save her, you know that, don’t you? That’s why I’m here, to learn from Xu how to cure the pox. He should be her doctor, and I his student.” He drew her even closer. “I’ve seen my dying father, don’t need to see another one just for the sake of it. You must go and fetch Xu from wherever he’s hiding.”

  She pulled away and withdrew from his side. “Who’ll save her then?” She spoke angrily. “Jacob said there’s always a way if one can think like a good machine.”

  “He lied. That’s why he’s dead, because the best machines couldn’t save him.”

  Her eyes lit up for a moment and she said under her breath, “That’s not true,” then strode out into the courtyard.

  “Wait!” he called after her, struggling to put on his robe and follow her out.

  “I must take her to see the other doctor,” Fumi shouted back at him.

  “Which other doctor?” He stumbled and caught himself against the door.

  “Oscar. The American. He’s come to stay at the palace.”

  Catching up with Fumi, Antonio tried to take her hand, but she turned away and spoke without looking at him. “We can’t be seen together anymore.”

  He didn’t have time to fret over Fumi’s words. Wangsheng rushed in with news of a palace maid who’d been kidnapped last night as she went about lighting lanterns by the lake. She was a concubine, a promising girl who could’ve risen in rank some day by bearing a royal child. The jeweled clasp of her robe was found in a nearby grove, and all evidence pointed to the gunners on the marble bridge and to their evil bed of sandbags guarded by barbed wire. “She’ll be alive as long they have a drop of spunk left to fill her up. Then she’ll sink under the bridge. Or she might be saved for later, dumped with their whores to follow them as long as she can bear children.”

  Antonio asked him about the deputy prince who had boasted that the palace was the safest in Peking. Wangsheng scowled. “Anybody who’s important has already fled. Only the eunuchs and poor servants are left behind.”

  “What about the newly arrived foreigners?”

  “They’re foreigners only in name,” the eunuch remarked caustically. “These men are Chinese really. Heinz the German shipbuilder is worshipped as the son of Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, for starting an orphanage in Shandong after he lost his family in a shipwreck. Pickering the Australian has had his two arms cut off by the cruel governor of Hunan for writing against his policy of taxing the poor to profit the rich.”

  “And the American doctor? What’s his story?”

  “He’s a dizi player, famous for playing the bamboo flute in local operas. His Chinese wife was a dancer when she was young. She plays the konghou harp, and has lived with him ever since his American wife left him many years ago.”

  Returning to the subject of the vanished concubine, Wangsheng warned him to stay out of the soldiers’ sight and get his things ready. Ready for what, Antonio asked him. “To leave the Summer Palace,” the older eunuch replied without thinking. “Chair bearers may still agree to take you to the Legation during the afternoon when soldiers are asleep in their camps after their early rice.”

  “But I don’t want to go the Legation. Nor will I need a chair to go over to see Oscar Franklin.”

  “Oscar!” Wangsheng exclaimed. “His tongue smells worse than a donkey’s bottom!”

  His attendants led Antonio along the palace’s long corridor that ran from east to west, with
pavilions on both sides. It didn’t take them long to pass the four arched gateways and reach the American doctor’s quarters. After he’d exchanged greetings with the eunuchs of the Franklin household, Wangsheng offered them the gift of a dozen snipe caught by his nephew with the clever net he had devised and tested on his songbird. The doctor was sleeping, they were told, having spent all afternoon trying to calm his patient.

  A naked woman lay on her back on a reed mattress in the living room. Lixia, the Chinese wife of Oscar Franklin, looking prim in her dancer’s dress and wearing her silver hair down to her waist, knelt by her side and rubbed a lime green paste all over her skin. The woman lay perfectly still, and he couldn’t even see her breasts lifting as she breathed. Shadows of giant cranes flying in from the cold mountains flitted through the room like passing clouds. From Lixia’s smile Antonio saw that she knew who he was. Wangsheng must’ve told his eunuch friends about him, or the deputy prince when he presented French bonbons to Oscar Franklin and his wife. She motioned him to sit and resumed anointing the patient’s skin. Acrid smell of burning leaves came in from the open courtyard and he wondered if the eunuchs of the palace were making offerings to the gods to rid them of the soldiers.

  “She has two navels instead of one.” Lixia called Antonio over, “Come look …”

  The gash above her navel was wide and deep, like a recently erupted volcano. The rest of her body was unblemished, but exuded the smell of dead oysters. Not even a hint of emotion showed in her eyes, which were open and unblinking.

  “The green lotion will kill the smell. It will let her sleep. When the fever returns at dawn she’ll be stronger to fight off her headache and nausea.”

  Lixia spoke kindly, as if showing off a newborn to a fond relative. “It’s her first month. She went to visit her village for a few days and returned with the Portuguese disease.”

  Portuguese disease! Antonio asked Lixia if the patient had been treated.

  “She was brought here, because you refused to see her.” Washing her fingers in a small bowl, Lixia started to fan the young woman, spreading the smell of jasmine around the room. “Her friend said she’d asked you first.”

  Antonio felt angry at Fumi for talking to strangers about him. “Why didn’t she practice her Nei ching and treat her friend herself?”

  “She isn’t a proper Chinese doctor, and her master is away. Besides …”

  “Besides the Chinese are shit scared of syphilis.” Antonio heard the deep voice of Oscar Franklin. “One sniff of her, and they’d have run!”

  A tall and muscular man dressed like a coal miner in his dungarees came over to his wife and the sleeping woman. “It doesn’t take a doctor to know what’s wrong with her.” He motioned Antonio to kneel at the woman’s feet as he parted her legs. “Just one look’s enough.”

  An angry rosebud showed on the mount of her vulva, breaking free from the dark vines. Her eyes twitched, but she didn’t try to cover herself with her hands.

  Settling down beside his wife, Oscar poured tea for all three of them and resumed. “I don’t blame you for refusing to treat her. I’d have done the same had it not been for our Chinese friends saving our lives. I thought I owed them at least a little look-see.” They drank in silence, then Lixia spread a blanket over the sleeping girl, tucking in her toes like a loving mother.

  “Could a Nei ching master have saved her?” Antonio asked cautiously.

  “You mean like our Xu?” Oscar turned to his wife. “Why don’t you tell our friend about the Horseman?” Antonio edged forward on his seat remembering Yohan’s words. … If anyone knows the real story about Xu, it’s Oscar. … From the way she behaved, he knew Lixia wished to avoid the subject. Fidgeting with the teacup, she shook her head. “You tell him, he’s your Horseman not mine.”

  “He was the empress’s spy who became our friend. It was impossible for a Western doctor in China to avoid Xu. The dowager was suspicious of our medicine, and wanted her favorite physician to keep an eye on us. He was imposed on the Locke Mission as an interpreter.” Oscar took a quick look at his sleeping patient and continued. “He was the nicest guy you could ever meet. Never lost his cool, didn’t mind us pulling his leg. He was real sweet when it came to putting up with our crazy wives who hated China and drove us mad! He learned to speak English the American way, picked up our vices – chewing tobacco and spitting on the ground – but kept us clean.” Oscar chortled. “The golden lilies never had a chance with Xu around.”

  So he’s indeed a spy, Antonio mused. He’s used to playing games with foreigners. … He thought to put to rest the mystery of Xu’s name.

  “He was raised in the north among horsemen, but didn’t fancy the animals. So who named him Horseman and why?”

  Oscar roared with laughter, spilling tea on his robe. “We all did! To tease him. He had a mortal fear of being trampled by horses and lost his cool whenever he was near them.”

  Rising, Lixia suggested they move over to the garden to enjoy the evening breeze and taste freshly baked spring cakes, but Oscar stopped her. “Wait, I haven’t told him the best story yet.”

  “Worst not best,” Lixia sat down reluctantly.

  “Our spy friend almost got us killed and died himself.” Oscar seemed happy to tell his favorite tale to someone new. “It was a tricky mission in the northern steppes, where we were called to treat an epidemic of typhus. Xu came along as our guide. Everyone suffered on the way over on account of poor food and water, and sleeping in yurts on windswept nights, sharing our blankets. The typhus turned out to be a strain that killed babies faster than adults, and we spent more time digging graves than tending to the sick. Xu was remarkable, doing what we did by imitation and a whole lot more, like teaching hygiene to the villagers.”

  “Why didn’t he treat the victims with his Nei ching?”

  “Because he didn’t know how to.” Oscar paused, then went on. “All seemed to go well, till the day we were set to return. The mule carts that had brought us over went suddenly missing. There was no choice but to return to Peking on horseback. But there was another problem. Xu disappeared when he found out about the missing carts.”

  Antonio smiled, remembering his own story of the disappeared teacher.

  “We knew we’d be dead without Xu. The road to Peking was full of dangers. Bandits would chase us down and greedy peasants demand bribes for sheltering us from dust storms.”

  “You must’ve known though, why Xu had left.” Lixia seemed ready to defend the Chinese doctor.

  Oscar nodded. “He had panicked at the prospect of riding horseback with us.”

  “So did you leave him back in the North?” Antonio asked.

  “No! We weren’t stupid. We couldn’t risk the journey without him. Also, we didn’t know if he’d be safe returning to Peking all by himself.”

  “And so you did the stupidest thing, going out into the desert all by yourself to hunt him down,” Lixia added wryly. “Spent a whole night and a day on a one-man search party looking for him. Bandits could’ve got you before they got Xu. Then dug both your graves.”

  “I was lucky. Everyone had given him up for dead when I found him swooning on the dunes like a mad man, starved and parched on the brink of death.” Oscar thumped the floor with his fists.

  The three of them sat holding their empty teacups, feeling the hot breeze of the steppes. The girl snored and mumbled in her dream, smelling like a wreath of jasmine. Then Antonio brought the Locke doctor back to his question.

  “Can Xu cure syphilis?”

  “It’s hard to know.” Lixia whispered. “They have two methods, one for the royals and one for …”

  “And one for soldiers and whores, sailors and peasants.” Oscar added impatiently. “The first is mysterious, the second simple.”

  “What’s the simple cure?” Antonio’s breath quickened.

  “Death.” The elderly doctor passed his hand around his neck and made the sign of Cross. “Kill the patient, that’s the simple cure.”


  “Cure by killing?”

  “It’s a crude philosophy really. Get rid of the syphilitic to eliminate infection. Life is marvelously cheap in this country, don’t you know? Brothel owners are punished with death if they hide a sick girl, ship owners too if a rotten sailor boards the planks, a peasant suffering from the pox is kept in a cowshed to die of hunger, soldiers are drowned to save bullets.” He took a long look at the sleeping girl. “They’ll kill her as soon as the chief eunuch finds out, or send her back to the village where she’ll be locked up and called a demon.”

  Antonio noticed a tear on Lixia’s cheek.

  “And the cure for royals?”

  Oscar shrugged. “Don’t know.” His wife cradled the girl’s head in her lap and started to fan her once again. A distant explosion sounded like a firecracker and made them look out of the window.

  “Everyone who comes to China hears of miracle cures.” Oscar sounded dismissive. “It’s the easy way of explaining why you don’t see any victims of the pox here or even the plague. They are smarter than us– haughty Europeans and foolish Americans – we’re told. Inventors of paper and gunpowder have trumped us when it comes to the treatment of diseases. Rumors never die about the ‘pill of longevity’ meant only for emperors.”

  “But it can’t be as simple as killing all sufferers, can it?” Antonio’s mind went back to the sailors on Bom Jesus. Were the sick ones thrown overboard? He pressed on, “If indeed there were a royal cure, the Yellow Emperor’s Canon would describe it, wouldn’t it?”

  “If only their Yellow Emperor wanted to reveal his secret! The Locke doctors, including myself, never paid any attention to Nei ching. China needs the Materia Medica, we believed, not the treatment of porcupines, sticking needles into bums! Xu wouldn’t have told us the real cure anyway, if such one existed. He wouldn’t have told even his little sister,” Oscar snorted and pointed at Lixia.

  She had resumed talking to the sick girl, woken by the sound of firecrackers now nearer than before. “Whose little sister?” Antonio asked, watching the patient, whose eyes had come alive with pain.