Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823)

by Basu, Kanal

  There were no more words from Ferguson when the final verdict was read out. The crowd quieted down too, and a flurry of rain seemed to arrive from nowhere, rustling the casuarinas, and scattered bird feathers in the courtyard. Almost an hour passed without the noise of crashing things. The bells of the shrine rang softly in the breeze, adding a gentle refrain to the bonfire sputtering to a slow death under the drizzle.

  Footsteps came up the stairs, as Antonio and Arees gathered themselves and rose to their feet. This was the moment that was bound to come, he knew, from the day he had taken shelter in the Legation, the moment when he’d have to face the enemy. He raised his pistol and took aim at the landing where the Boxer soldier would appear. Standing apart from Antonio, Arees pointed her Mauser at the landing too, giving herself the best chance to fell the intruder who was heading up steadily toward them, pausing for a moment as the chiming clock struck the hour.

  Antonio saw the spirit soldier at the head of the stairs, dressed in peasants’ blue with a black band around her head; a pair of almond eyes, and plaits dropped down to the back. The peasant who had once visited him dressed as a courtier. The rebel he had held in his arms. The woman who had made him feel helpless, the one he had loved like no other. A flush crept over Fumi’s face as she observed the two of them, Antonio and Arees pointing their guns at her. He made a sign to Arees to stand still, then dropped his pistol to the floor and took a step toward her. Fumi’s gaze flickered for a moment then she raised her hand to stop him, and pointed with her head toward the stairs. Glancing back at Arees, he hesitated then tried to speak to Fumi, who warned him with her eyes and motioned again for them to start walking down.

  Smashed pieces of blue china crunched under their feet when they reached the parlor, watched closely by Fumi who walked behind them. What would she do, now that she’d killed Jacob’s killers? How will she punish her lover, her foreign lover, and his foreign friend? What charges would she level against him? What exquisite torture did she have in store? He wondered if she’d be as brisk delivering her punishment to Arees as she had with the servant. It might be impossible for her to save them, even if she so wished. The Boxer army couldn’t let go of their catch, they’d take delight in torturing the woman, the devil’s consort. He felt as troubled as when he had seen her for the very first time, possessed by the same urge to be with her again, to hold her one last time.

  The room seemed peaceful after a storm, Ferguson’s bloodstained robe serving as the only reminder of recent events. The throne chair was gone, taken away perhaps by the Boxers as bounty along with the dead foreigner to display at their public gatherings. The glass mirrors had been smashed, but the shards glinted in the sun like lanterns. The stack of drawers had been left intact by the intruders, he noticed through the open door of the library. Arees gave a start as they stepped into the courtyard filled with smoke from the smoldering bonfire, and pointed to Ferguson’s servant lying face down in a pool of blood. A few scraggly peasant soldiers sifted through the wreckage, barely paying them attention, the priests and acrobats disappeared just as suddenly as they’d arrived at the villa. Fumi guided them through the open gates to the chair bearers sitting under the casuarinas’ shade.

  So this is the end … the act of mercy that’s her supreme punishment. … Antonio thought.

  “Wait!” He raised his voice to stop her before she could disappear back into the villa. She didn’t answer him, but motioned to the bearers to leave. Sitting inside the sedan, Arees pressed him to hurry. He stood under the trees and called after Fumi, “Let me show you what I’ve learned.” Trembling all over, he took off his shirt and drew the heart channel on his body with his finger, beginning at the eyes then swooping down to stab his chest.

  Pinchback’s bearers appeared to be wide awake carrying him and Arees away from Ferguson’s villa. They rode in silence, without a grunt from their phantom carriers, galloping over deserted streets and wondering if they were being dispatched to a secret destination for the pleasure of the Boxers. Even with shutters down, Antonio could sense them leaving the narrow streets of the Tartar city away from the foreign Legation. Howling dogs chased the bearers as they leaped over narrow ditches and skirted fences like a flock of geese. It seemed a familiar journey, with the sun darting rays through the shutters into their coupe.

  The lake carried the scent of the blooming plum trees when they arrived at the Summer Palace. The magnolia blossoms had come and gone, and a tent of green shade hung over every pavilion. With no sign of soldiers, the gulls had returned to nest by the shores, forming a line of surf along the calm waters.

  The sight of the palace calmed Antonio. He recovered his voice and instructed the bearers to bring them over to his pavilion, spotting it easily among the trees. His steps quickened after they’d disembarked, leading Arees past the arched gate to the courtyard and to his lodge. Just as before, he expected his eunuch friends to rush out of the kitchen and welcome them, shying away perhaps from Arees and exchanging glances among themselves. Tian, he was certain, would be the more curious of the two, discreetly observing the wisps of smoke leaving her fine nostrils, as he feigned sweeping the lodge with his broom.

  A flock of ravens feasted on worms in the courtyard, their croaking filling the pavilion with an eerie cacophony. Not a single leaf seemed to have fallen from the trees; the branches drooped tantalizingly low with swollen gourds and drew a homely pattern of light and shade on the ground. The teacher’s chair faced the student’s stool at the lodge’s entrance, keeping a watch on the surroundings like a pair of stone animals. Entering the lodge, he found the vats empty, their bottoms caked over with ugly sediment and turned into a refuge of busy gnats. The kitchen was empty as well, just as he had left it after his attendants had disappeared, the stone-cold oven reminding him of his days of hunger.

  Antonio wished he could show Arees the pavilion as it once was. Four full seasons flashed through his mind, and he saw himself in each one of them like an actor performing scenes from a Chinese musical show. The memory of each temple and tearoom, each bridge and terrace came flooding back to him, memories that seemed as ancient as the palace yet as alive as the gulls circling under the clouds. You can stay here for as long as you need, till you’ve found what you’re after. … He wondered what his padre friend would’ve said had he seen him now. The sweet note of the konghou harp sounded like rain on the lodge’s roof and blended with the flute, and he glanced quickly at the home of the American couple.

  Why did Fumi send them to the Summer Palace? It must be a hidden sign, a hint of things to come. Perhaps she wants us to escape the fate of the foreigners at the Legation.

  Arees called him from the lodge. He found her standing next to a coarsely built box, strapped hastily together with ropes, just like the ones Joachim Saldanha would bring over from time to time and leave with him for a few days before taking them back to his Macau museum. His mood lifted as he thought of his friend. Maybe he had come to look for Antonio, to remind him that Captain Jacque was still waiting in Tientsin to take him back on the Warrior Queen. Perhaps he was hungry and had gone out to look for the attendants. He remembered the Legation’s fat teas: Joachim Saldanha wolfing down half a table before others had barely started, worrying his hostess about his insatiable appetite. He’s worse than a pregnant mother!–Polly joked watching him eat, but he was making up for the past and for the days of hunger that’d follow. The box reminded him of Dona Elvira pulling the padre’s leg for “scaring the poor Chinese with his stomach, happy to see him off with a few pieces of burnt log!”

  Maybe my friend has left me a letter inside, Antonio thought as he opened the box, taking Arees’s help to cut the ropes and prise the lid open. The room filled with a rotting smell and forced him to turn away for a gasp of breath. Arees screamed, banging the lid down, and fled from the room.

  Antonio found Joaquim Saldanha inside the box, a gaping hole through his heart over the plain cross.

  Almost seven thousand miles separated them from th
e European coast, and a mere eighty from Tientsin. The Boxers were known to be active around the enormous walled city with its separate quarters for foreigners and the international port. Yet it was their only way out of China. They’d be safe if they managed to reach Tientsin, Oscar agreed with Antonio. Foreign ships would come to their rescue once they solved the tricky problem of navigating these eighty miles, steaming them away over the coast’s unfriendly currents.

  The Franklins joined hands with Antonio and Arees, burying Joachim Saldanha under the shade of a flowering narcissus, in the very same box in which they’d found him at the pavilion. Antonio kept the padre’s cross to take over to his Macau museum. The American doctor was first to raise the matter of leaving the palace, a day after they’d arrived. “We’ll stay, Boxer or no Boxer, but you must go,” he said, with Lixia nodding in agreement. Arees objected: “It’ll be risky for you to stay here, riskier than making the trip to Tientsin. The Boxers won’t spare you just because you’ve saved hundreds of Chinese lives.”

  Lixia shook her head. “Not everyone is mad in this country. It’s no worse now than before, when foreigners fought the Chinese for opium. We must wait till everyone’s tired of killing.”

  Shall I tell them about Fumi, Antonio wondered, then decided not to. It’d be hard for him to hold back once he’d started, he’d shock the elderly couple with his outpourings. It would be awkward too to talk about her in Arees’s presence. She hadn’t asked him about Fumi ever since they’d left Ferguson’s villa, although she must’ve seen enough to confirm what Polly might have told her.

  With bridges destroyed, taking the train to Tientsin wasn’t feasible any longer. Luckily the river was still flowing between the two cities, making it possible to travel by houseboat if one could find trustworthy boatmen. They conferred with Oscar and Lixia over a suitable plan to reach the Peiho River, before returning to their pavilion.

  He felt strange sharing the lodge with Arees. She sat in the courtyard smoking, while he tossed and turned in bed. What does she think of her Candide now? He shut his eyes and tried to stop his mind from endlessly churning over the events of the past few days, to fall asleep before she came in, sharing the same bed like two strangers. His nightmares had gone, but he found it hard to sleep, fidgeting like a camp doctor on the alert all night.

  Arees woke him, and led him out into the courtyard. She pointed to the plum tree, under which their visitor was sitting. With a shaven head and dressed in a white robe, he looked like a young monk. Antonio took a few moments to recognize him, then he called out to Tian. A rush of questions flooded his mind but he held himself back, waiting for his attendant to speak. The eunuch came up to him and stood with his face down.

  “Why have you come?” He asked Tian, breaking the silence. “Why are you wearing a mourning robe?”

  He looked fearfully past Antonio toward the lodge, and made a sign with his hands.

  “What have you come to look for?”

  Dropping his gaze back to the ground, the young eunuch spoke haltingly about a box that was inside Antonio’s room. “It belongs to the padre.”

  “You mean Joachim Saldanha’s box?”

  Tian started to cry. “He had come here only to eat, and asked us to give him whatever we could. He ate his early and late rice with us, told us stories of the villages he’d visited. He stayed in the lodge for a whole week and then …”

  “What happened?”

  He wiped his eyes and looked despairingly at Antonio. “Boxers caught my uncle one day, when he’d gone out to the market. They called him a spy, helping foreigners and passing secrets to them. They tortured him and he confessed.”

  “Confessed to what?” Antonio brought his face close to Tian.

  “That we were sheltering a dangerous foreigner in the pavilion, a devil worshipper, a Christian who was planning to kill our empress.”

  Antonio could imagine Boxer soldiers entering the pavilion, raiding the kitchen and dragging his friend out of the lodge. They wouldn’t have found much to set to flames, disappointed too perhaps by the absence of treasures.

  “The Savages didn’t stop them when they came here. The padre was tying up his box to leave; he’d asked me to carry it out of the lodge with him. He thought my uncle had brought his friends over to help.” Tian’s voice dropped, watching the scene that reenacted itself before his eyes. “He tried to tell the Boxers that he wasn’t their enemy; explained to them why he collected the statues, but …”

  “Did they make Wangsheng fire the gun …?” Antonio asked, his voice choking.

  Tian nodded. “He didn’t know how to. He’d never held a gun in his hand, but the Boxers taught him. They said he must atone for his sins.” The eunuch bit his lips, then blurted out, “They made him kill the padre.”

  A white owl flew into the courtyard looking for a suitable perch, then flew back into the trees. Arees had lit a lamp, and asked Tian whether the older eunuch had managed to save himself from the Boxers. Tian shook his head. He didn’t know; his uncle had gone away with the padre’s killers. He hadn’t seen him anywhere in the palace.

  “Why have you come?” Antonio whispered to his young friend.

  The eunuch raised his troubled eyes to him. “To tell you about the padre, and …”

  “And what?”

  “To go with you wherever you’re going.”

  Antonio sat in the courtyard long after Arees had fallen asleep in the lodge and Tian inside the attendants’ quarters by the kitchen. The owl had returned, unhappy with its nest in the trees. The plums had ripened in the summer and fallen to the ground, pecked by the raven, and started to rot. It wasn’t after the sweet fruit, but the nest of scorpions under the twigs. He saw the bird’s eyes glow.

  He thought about the invisible empress. She had lived so near, and yet he’d never even seen her face. He wondered if it was true of everything he’d hoped to find in China, the invisible reminding him of what was still living and possible. The owl screeched, and he smiled to himself. It has found its food. The half moon cast a shadow over the pavilion, and kept him awake listening to the trees.

  Whereas before he’d worry about their impending journey, the perils of traveling to Tientsin didn’t occupy his mind. He thought instead about Tian. How he must’ve suffered at the loss of his uncle – his protector. The gruesome murder had changed him: he was no longer Tianfen, the gifted one, the young eunuch who was full of mischief and wonder. The death of the padre had turned him, finally, into an eternal sufferer. The anguished face of Norma Cook, the dead pastor’s wife, came to mind, pleading to him to let her die. Whereas in the past he’d worry over curing a patient, it troubled him now to think of those who must somehow go on living with their burden of loss.

  Tian called them over to the arched gates in the morning, and they saw a mule cart waiting. The driver beamed and raised his whip to welcome them into the carriage. For most of the day, they rode in silence, passing bands of peasants fleeing their homes with bundles of food and bedding. Further they went from Peking, they were asked for news about the capital, and if the emperor was alive. To those fearing a general massacre, it didn’t seem to matter who was fighting whom, who the victims might be – foreigners, Boxers or Chinese Christians. The carriage would be safer than covering the distance on a boat, Tian advised them, safer than having to rely on boatmen who were already mad at foreigners for threatening their livelihood with their railways. On shore they’d have to guard against petty thieves, and stay out of the way of marching soldiers.

  Yet for the most part, their journey turned out to be just as uneventful as Antonio’s trip on the carriage with Joachim Saldanha more than a year ago. With Arees and him resting under the thatched hold, Tian changed out of his funeral robe and sat next to the driver dressed as a simple farmhand. “No one should know that I’m a eunuch. Otherwise we’d be taken for palace royals escaping with treasures. Or spies, sent out by the empress to track her enemies.”

  “Where shall we take him?” Arees asked
Antonio, as they waited for the driver and their young friend to return from the market with fodder for the animals.

  “He has no family.” He told her what Wangsheng had said about his nephew. “He lost everyone in floods.”

  “What will he do away from China? What use will anyone have of him?”

  “He can come to Macau with us.” Perhaps Dona Elvira would have use for him, Antonio thought. She’d think of something to keep him occupied, and out of the gaze of the curious. “Maybe he’ll come back to Peking after the troubles are over.”

  They watched Tian and the driver as they made their way back, chatting merrily with sacks of grain thrown over their shoulders.

  “What if there was nothing for him to come back to?” Arees sighed.

  Both sat silently, imagining the Summer Palace in flames, the pavilions empty and scorched.

  Unlike the fleeing peasants they avoided making nightfall. It’d take less than two full days to reach their destination, but the journey was prolonged by the only spectacle of war they came across, barely hours before arriving at the port city: the provincial armory had been set on fire, and blazed under the sun surrounded by open fields. A crowd had gathered around to watch the fireworks, and blocked their path. Shooting flames went up like rockets amidst thunderous explosions, and an immense column of smoke hung like a mushroom cloud over the charred depot. Antonio left the carriage, ignoring Tian’s warnings, and joined the onlookers. The peasants were cheering the explosions, hoisting their children up on their shoulders to let them catch a glimpse of the streaking flames. The pack animals had broken rank to scamper away, raising a cloud of dust and chased by their owners. Uncertainty prevailed over the attack and the attackers. If Boxers were to blame, why didn’t they loot the weapons? Few among the crowd had ventured close to the depot and returned with gory reports of mangled bodies of the armory guards who seemed to have been murdered in broad daylight before the arson.