Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823)

by Basu, Kanal

  He heard the dizi and the konghou. Tempted as he was to go over to the Franklins’, he decided not to. He might give himself away to the American doctor and his wife. It’d be hard to disguise his feelings, and they might take him for a troubled visitor. The funereal strains of the duet wafted through the breeze, filling him with deep foreboding.

  The more he thought about Fumi’s last words, the more guilty he felt. Perhaps she had come to ask for his help. As a foreigner he could be trusted with delicate matters rather than her husband, the empress’s servant. She might be wary of Xu, unwilling to confide in him lest he should think she had simply feigned her recovery, when in fact she was still grieving for Jacob, still angry at his killers, still bent on exacting her revenge. Who was to say that she was in love with Xu, that she’d ever been in love with her husband, marrying him simply to stay alive?

  Antonio waited the whole day for Fumi to return, to talk things over calmly with her. Perhaps he could stop her from following her impulse. Drunk on plum wine in the evening, he considered joining her. What did he have to lose, except Fumi? He could teach her to fire a gun. They could travel together in their sedan chair like lovers then turn into assassins. His laugh rang through the pavilion and scared the songbird in its cage. He wished Joachim Saldanha would come with a box of hacked limbs or a scorched apostle. The eunuchs would scurry to bring him his late rice, the pavilion transformed by his jovial laugh and constant demands from the kitchen. The presence of soldiers wouldn’t deter his padre friend. He’d find a way to humor them even, have them carry his box for him.

  You must tell Fumi to name the killers. … Joachim Saldanha would’ve advised him. It wasn’t just a matter of revenge but of justice, he’d have argued. If the empress wasn’t prepared to punish them, then maybe the foreigners could. What if the killers were foreigners themselves? This last question would’ve silenced the padre before he came up with his answer. He wondered what Joachim Saldanha’s answer would’ve been, what clever ploy might he have suggested to win Fumi back.

  The kitchen fell silent the day after. Waiting for his porridge in bed, he didn’t hear his chattering attendants or the splash of water in the vats. Perhaps they’d left to chase down the donkey cart that was now busy selling to the soldiers’ women in their camps. The songbird’s cage was empty; the painted rock and the clay warrior had vanished from the courtyard’s shrine. Looking around he failed to spot the New Year’s streamers or the paper cut-outs. The pavilion bore an abandoned look, as if the residents had fled an advancing army. It took him the whole day to realize that his attendants had disappeared with their belongings.

  As his stomach complained, Antonio raided the kitchen, finding nothing more than a sack of birdseed. He scraped the clay jars in vain, hoping to find surplus stocks of rice and noodles. The shelves were empty without the baskets of maize, quails’ eggs, peanut buns and lotus cakes. Even the pickle jars had disappeared, along with evil-smelling strips of dried fish that hung like bats from the roof. His hunger grew by leaps and bounds as the day wore on, and he dreamed of the honeyed crab apples and rice cakes that Tian fetched for him from the kitchen to munch between meals. He remembered seeing Wangsheng bury a nest of old eggs in the kitchen garden to preserve their pungent yolks in ash and salt, and dug up every bush and shrub.

  Antonio wondered what’d happen if he went out to the food stalls, if there’d be enough left for him to buy after raids by the Kansu Savages. Perhaps he’d end up having to prowl around the other pavilions to steal from their kitchens, caught by the guards and tonsured for his crime like a common thief, handed over to the soldiers even, for a more severe punishment.

  I must see Fumi, even if it means risking my life. His anger had turned into a sense of unfathomable loss after just three days of waiting. It was the same distress he had felt after learning of his father’s illness. Just as hunger inflamed his stomach, Fumi’s absence purged his mind of all thoughts except the unstoppable urge to be with her.

  He dressed carefully in the English gentleman’s dress popular among the dandies of Lisbon – muslin shirt with frilled cuffs tucked under an evening tail coat, with a top hat and an ivory handled stick. If caught he’d claim to be the empress’s doctor and point to his surgical box. He might need to bully the maids to enter the private quarters, and pretend that he knew his way through the maze. He must face the guards calmly if stopped, otherwise he might be taken for an intruder and shot.

  Setting out from his pavilion, he knew it’d be hard to find her in the numerous teahouses and temples spread out over the gardens. She might be in the throne room even, sitting next to the dowager commiserating with her generals.

  The grand pavilion and the throne room were empty, without a single guard in sight, just as before when he’d come with Xu to “treat” the pregnant maid. He didn’t see the eunuchs either, those he’d expected to stop him.

  He was ready to meet the invisible. The neighbor he’d seen only as a shadow; the one who prayed at the temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas, played cards in the tearooms and sailed on Kunming Lake under his very nose. He’d meet her delicately arched brows and tell her why he had entered her sight. Surrounded by glass mirrors and chiming clocks under the dimmed cloisonné lamps, he expected to meet Fumi in the most private pavilion in all of China.

  The antechamber was empty as well, and the silk curtains blew in the breeze through the open window. He examined the divan, his mind returning to the moment when he had handed Fumi the fetus and seen her eyes glowing on him. Lost in thought, he imagined a shadow on the silk partition, setting his pulse racing.

  Antonio returned to the throne room. A gong sounded. “Fumi!” he called in a soft voice. The clocks started to chime just then – crowing cocks and singing birds, church bells, gushing waterfalls and organs playing the music of a waltz.

  V

  WARRIOR QUEEN

  The bleeding hand

  May 25, 1900: The much feared Boxer rebellion had started, and the siege of the Peking Legation was imminent. News of the advancing rebels had brought genuine panic. With the telegraph lines cut, it became clear to residents that if the foreign soldiers didn’t arrive soon, they’d be too late. Eighty miles away in Tientsin, a meeting of the rescue party on the German Hansa debated the considerable difficulty of landing soldiers in the dark night: lowering, manning and equipping the boats in the face of possible hostilities. If the Chinese general of the Taku Forts didn’t surrender, the war might have to start right away at the mouth of the Peiho River in the Gulf of Pechihli before troops could board the cattle train to Peking and save the Legation. The possibility of Boxers dynamiting the rail link was real, and the risks of a foot charge to the capital crossed everyone’s minds.

  The streets of Peking’s Tartar market were deserted. The screeching wheelbarrows and their noisy owners had disappeared; the jingling bells of the camel trains had fallen silent, with no signs of the abusive hordes that trailed them and poked the animals’ hinds with razor-sharp stems of desert palm. Downed shutters kept the idlers away from shops, as roving bands of dogs patrolled the lanes, strangely at peace with their rivals and behaving like docile pets. Beggars had left the temples, urchins locked themselves away inside abandoned homes; the mad women who ambushed foreigners and pretended to bite their hands huddled under trees in the nearby cemetery and slept the sleep of death.

  Only the Legation was busier than usual, bustling with newcomers. Refugees had poured in from the provinces to the safety of the fortified walls and the jade green canal that guarded the quarters from free contact with the natives. Terrified Chinese converts streamed in, led by their pastors through the east gate next to the Italian mission. They carried their possessions on their backs and looked like sheared lambs, having marched for days in torrential rain. Lying on waterproof sheets in the godowns of the Imperial Maritime Customs surrounded by their fowls, pigeons and ducks, they slept with eyes wide open and dreamed of the headhunting Boxers who displayed the grimacing heads of their victim
s in cages. They’d escaped by the skin of their teeth; many had seen their loved ones thrown down wells inside their homes; smelled the leaping cremation flames. Dark crusts of blood showed on the necks and ears of those beaten with rifle butts. The children slept the least, and kept a frightened watch on the poor adults who’d carried them on their backs for days.

  The missionaries had been the last to leave their far-flung posts, although some had stayed back resigning themselves to their fates. The Mitchells had arrived on a houseboat with their three adopted Chinese daughters, dressed in European clothes to hide them from the Boxers. They were certain they’d be attacked when their boat ran aground in a narrow channel. Other boats had crowded up behind them, and the Boxers ambushed each with bricks and stones, smashing the windows and threatening to board them with guns and swords. Glen and Nancy Mitchell had saved the day, firing from their recently acquired English Webley revolvers and disproving to their frightened flock that the Boxers were immortal. In mourning for the loss of their deckhand, an elderly Chinese man who had suggested bartering the adopted daughters for safe passage, they had dug the Legation’s first grave in the grounds of the Expats’ Club.

  The population had swelled to double its size almost overnight, and the refugees were forced to spread out their bedrolls and mattresses wherever they could find space, from the tennis courts to the aisles and vestibules of the recently built Legation chapel. They had even started to share the stables with mules and ponies. Charlie Baxter, the American mining engineer who had fled after the rebels had overrun his company’s gold mine in the north, showed a special knack for building shelters out of everyday things, earning the praise and gratitude of residents and refugees. Within days of arriving, he had turned Canal Street into a row of shanties, covered with tarpaulin that he had managed to wrangle out of Monsieur Darmon’s champagne warehouse. Camp cooking in the evenings was his solution for feeding so many mouths, and a large crater-like pit had been dug in the middle of the post office’s grounds to serve as a common oven, sending up a great swirl of smoke that tricked outsiders into thinking that the Legation had been set ablaze by enemy fire.

  Sanitation had proved to be a bigger problem, and Mr. Pinchback had come up with the practical solution of using the canal as a flowing repository, obviating the need to bury the night soil and risk an outbreak of infection.

  “It’s silly to invite so many inside our walls,” the banker had argued with the mission officers as the refugees marched in like a tired army. “It will make it easy for the Boxers to kill all their enemies in one go. I’d be delighted if I were a Boxer! No need to search for bloody Christians when they’re all congregating at the Great Basilica of the Legation!” He showed despair at the false logic of saving as many lives as possible, speaking like a mandarin himself, “How many eggs remain intact when a nest is destroyed?” No one suspected that Mr. Pinchback was a crafty general in disguise and willingly accepted him as the leader of civil defense; they trusted his novel methods of building barricades should the Boxers decide to storm the missions. Selecting the strongest from the newly arrived converts, he had them dig and fill cardboard boxes with earth and stack them up in front of the mansions; board up windows by removing the glass from the frames and closing the openings with bricks. Garden rollers were lined up before the gates by his order and bombproof shelters dug inside the walls of the British Mission, considered to be the safest spot of all.

  Linda Harris’s circle of ladies were kept busy with scissors and thread, sewing up sandbags which the rugby boys carried to the roofs to prevent bomb splinters from raining in, having to keep pace with deft fingers that worked at a frenetic pace. Whoever could lend a hand was urged to do so, with the first secretary’s wife going around the missions and shaming the lazy ones who slept all afternoon in their hammocks. Luckily for both, Polly had gathered her own ladies circle around the tricky problem of feeding so many mouths, without the luxury of raiding the Tartar market and bribing the sellers for scarce items. The refugees arriving with their animals provided enough meat, and grains had been stockpiled by the local shops that had foreseen just such a catastrophe. Never one to serve the simplest of suppers, her instructions were no less severe than her American rival’s: to save the animals for later, while making do with boiled eggs and tinned beef, Chinese biscuits and condensed milk for the babies, and fifty blows of a bamboo cane for thieves. Professor Norman Brummel, who had fled his archaeological excavations in the Gobi Desert, was entrusted with the whipping although it was common knowledge that the gentle professor could hardly bring himself to hurt a fly.

  “We’ll be eating mules and dogs if the thieves have their way!” Those who heard her thundering were ready to believe Polly Hart, given her reputation for fastidious attention to detail.

  There was no shortage though of champagne and claret, cigars and Egyptian cigarettes. Monsieur Darmon had promised to distribute French ships’ tobacco in the unlikely event that fresh supplies failed to arrive and the Hôtel de Pékin was forced to serve the awful Chinese variety meant for stable hands.

  Mission officers burned the midnight oil as they waited for word from the commanders of the foreign fleet. Perhaps an advance party would arrive followed by a regiment in case a full offensive was required. Perhaps the fickle dowager would change her mind and unleash her Kansu Savages on the Boxers. Imperial soldiers were already in the capital, encamped before the Temple of Heaven, creating panic among the natives and raising temperatures among foreigners.

  “The English seem to be always at war with somebody!” A few among the missionaries were secretly furious at the “war dance” of the British and the Americans, believing that not enough tact was being shown in convincing the Tsungli Yamen that the foreigners were the empress’s allies. The troubles were caused by foolish officers and greedy merchants, with the common visitor having to pay the price. Everyone worried about the “price,” if the Boxers kept their word and dumped all foreigners into the sea.

  Just a few iron cots and a handful of camp beds at the Legation’s makeshift hospital did little to comfort those tormented by the thought of casualties, the vast number of the sick and injured expected to occupy the floors, lying on donated mattresses and bales of hay covered with sheets. A trained nurse and a couple of cheerful doctors attended to those who had arrived in critical condition, and kept their eye on a possible epidemic breaking out. With water scarce and close contact between the sick and the healthy, enteric fever or septic poisoning, even dysentery, couldn’t be ruled out.

  “The Boxers will kill us with infection, not their rusty spears!” Mr. Pinchback never failed to point out the folly of the general evacuation, directing his barbs at the Americans for lording it over the Europeans despite their inexperience in dealing with colonial crises.

  Riding on his bicycle, Antonio went from camp to camp to tend to the refugees. Half-starved mothers called out to him to examine their sick babies, or to revive a child who seemed on the verge of death. Men with spear gashes and bullet wounds begged for relief from ulcers teeming with maggots. Breathing in spurts due to exhaustion, almost all of them showed blistered feet and a dull gray look in their eyes from dehydration. A peasant carried his sick wife on his shoulders and tried to stop Antonio, speaking incoherently. A mother clutched a dead baby and screamed a curse after him. In places, he had to push his way past the throngs who had gathered around a man to mourn his death, when in fact the patient was still alive. There were days when he’d see a great many who couldn’t reach the hospital, standing in queue to be examined, and he’d stop frequently as he rode along the lanes crammed full with shanties. Harelips to cataracts, tumors to ulcers – more than just the casualities of war, he’d treat the whole range of ailments that plagued the human race. Luckily, the missions had done admirably well stockpiling medicines and he could count on the field hospital’s nurse to fill his prescriptions.

  The refugees lit bonfires at their camps in the evenings to drive away insects and blood flies
drawn by the scent of open wounds. Children cried all night, their parents trying to calm them with a bleating sound, like lambs waiting to be sacrificed. Familiar voices called out to Antonio when he rode by, including that of Chris Campbell. The reporter was squatting beside an old man who had lost all his fingers to the Boxers for the crime of weaving the cross on a silk handkerchief for a Jesuit Father in exchange for a few bushels of rice. Chris took notes as his native interpreter held up the man’s maimed fingers. Each tale of misfortune drew another, and soon the young Englishman had to raise his arms to stop the eager voices.

  “There’s enough here to keep the papers going for a full year! All the blood and gore London wants, even better than the bush wars with the Boers!” Why didn’t he offer to pay for his sins by weaving the Boxer slogans on their banners? Chris asked the old man, who shook his head sadly. Even if he wished to make a simple flower, the Boxers said, the devil would turn it into a cross. It was better to rid him of his evil instrument altogether. Another man showed his right ear wrapped inside a pouch, and started on his own tale. A weeping woman gestured with her eyes at her daughter, raped for housekeeping a Christian home, who was slinking away to a corner of the tent.

  Chris Campbell told his interpreter to hurry up; he’d had enough stories to fill his column. But the maimed man spread out his arms before him and begged to be treated for a numbness that had followed the amputation of the fingers. “It’s as if he’s lost both arms, struck off from the shoulders,” the interpreter said in a nervous voice. “He wants you to cure him.”

  “Me?” It was Chris’s turn to be nervous. He sensed the crowd of victims eyeing him accusingly, as if he had stolen their stories and provided nothing in return. “He’s the doctor,” he said, pointing to Antonio, then babbled something about the field hospital.

  It was sanjiao, the tenth channel, he knew instantly, starting from the tip of the ring finger and traveling up between the metacarpal bones to the wrist and onward to the upper arms and the shoulder region. The shock to the fingers had cut off the flow of qi, and made the victim go numb in the limbs. If untreated, the blocked channel might damage his hearing as well, as a branch of sanjiao forked up to the neck and ran a loop around the ears.