Jinhua asks Resi, and Resi shrugs.
Resi has put the picture into a silver frame she found in a drawer, and Jinhua has put it next to her bed. It is where she keeps the dictionary that Wenqing gave her, and Dream of the Red Chamber—and these are the things that are most precious to her right now, besides her memories from a long time ago.
Wenqing has written about the empress in his diaries, and Jinhua has read the entries again and again.
The Empress is much admired throughout Europe for her appearance although this is according to the European taste, which is not the same as ours. There is a painting of the Empress which hangs quite openly in the Imperial Palace, I am told. She has been painted without the covering of any clothes at all. I have not seen this shameful painting for myself, and I cannot therefore confirm that it exists—
And he has written more.
About a love affair.
There are scandals at court. I have heard about these matters from Pah Shah, who is the Turkish Ambassador and who is a well-connected personage, having been in Weiyena for almost five years. The empress Elisabeth is rarely at court, evidently preferring to spend her time in the neighboring lands of Hungary, and Italy, and Greece. She leads a life, they tell me, that is best described as jiao she yin yi—indulgent and decadent. She is often away from the Emperor Franz Joseph, even though she is his only wife and he has no concubines, and there is only one son, the Crown Prince Rudolf. There is talk, also, of a love affair between the Empress and the former Foreign Minister, the Hungarian Count Andrássy. It is mentioned that the Crown Prince may not be the true son of the Emperor Franz Joseph—
She finds the slip of paper tucked between the pages of Wenqing’s Diplomatic Diary. It is not a part of the diary, but something else that he has written.
When an Emperor cannot maintain order in the affairs of his Consort—how can there be Harmony? When a man cannot understand the thoughts of his wife—
Another entry on this piece of paper reads:
It is the wisdom of Mencius that a man and a woman should not touch when an object passes between them, but if a sister-in-law is drowning, to pull her out with one’s hand is a matter of expedience. Questions: What thoughts are in my wife’s mind when she looks out of her foreign-glass window and sees men and women walking openly together, arm in arm? Is it true that the Christian religion encourages immoral behavior between the sexes?
And yet another written below this:
The spirit of my little concubine is hungry. I fear I cannot feed her. The solution is elusive. My own feelings cannot be understood. When she bears my son, perhaps then there will be Harmony for us both. I must return, soon, to her bed. I think she is willing.
31
THINK FIRST ABOUT
THE PRESENT
Resi
Vienna, the 12th of May, 1887
Liebe Mutter,
I am well, and sorry to read of the death of Herr Maier. I am sorry about something else, Mother. I do not want to marry Sepp. Not even a little bit, not even now that he will inherit his father’s house and the farm of fifteen Joch. I know that you think I can do no better than to marry him, but I love someone else. His name is Bastl. In my next letter I will tell you more about him. You have asked me how the little Chinese mistress is doing. I have told her the story of Rapunzel like you suggested, and she can understand almost everything now in German. I don’t even need to speak slowly, but sometimes I draw pictures to be sure that all is clear. I drew Rapunzel in the tower and made Rapunzel’s hair long and black and straight like the mistress’s hair. She liked that. She liked that the Prince rescued Rapunzel from the Tower. She said—maybe one day a prince will climb to my foreign-glass window over the Freyung and rescue me, and we both laughed at that, but it was a sad thing for her to say, don’t you think?
The Little Chinaman goes to Saint Petersburg next week to visit the Tsar. The Mistress has asked me if I would take her to the Prater on Sunday while he is away. She insists that she will go. I wonder, shall I do this? I feel sure that the Little Chinaman would not agree, that he would be very angry at this. I will almost certainly lose my position if he finds out.
Resi
Jinhua
They have been on her mind—the empress Elisabeth and her Hungarian count. Jinhua has read and reread what Wenqing wrote in his diary, and she cannot stop thinking.
The eighteenth day of the month of March. 1887. There are scandals—
She has been rereading Dream of the Red Chamber too, and wondering—is the love between Black Jade and Baoyu, the love that is doomed because love is out of balance and because Baoyu must marry Precious Virtue, is it the same for the empress and her count because she is married to the emperor?
Jinhua finds Resi in the Speisesaal. She tells her, “I would like to ask you a question.” It occurs to her that it is a question of a kind she could never have asked Suyin, not really, because Suyin knows nothing about love. Sunshine is leaping through the windows. Resi is cleaning the silver. Her fingers move in tiny circles; her whole body shakes with the effort of polishing the sugar bowl. The coffee pot is already gleaming.
“Is it true,” Jinhua asks, “what they say? Is it true that your empress loves the Hungarian count, and is it true that he loves her?”
Resi stops. She looks up, blackened polishing cloth in one hand, sugar bowl in the other. Stacks of forks and knives sparkle. She has not yet cleaned the spoons.
Resi leans back in her chair.
“I don’t know,” she says, taking a moment to think, tipping her head from side to side. “I grew up in the village. I am not an empress. But I hope these things are true. I hope they love each other very much. You see, gnä’ Frau, our emperor is a fine emperor, and a fine man too, but—how shall I say this? As a man he is a little bit stiff. A little bit serious. A little bit lacking—in humor. It would be a nice thing—even for an empress, don’t you think?—if there were someone who was . . . less like that.”
Resi goes back to her sugar bowl. “Can you tell me one more thing?” Jinhua says, and she is thinking that Resi is a very wise maid. “Can you tell me—what is virtue?”
Resi makes a gesture, a quick movement with her right hand. She touches her forehead, her chest, her left shoulder, her right. She does this sometimes when she is worried, or grateful, or wondering about something. But Jinhua has seen this gesture before; it is a small thing, a thing from her past, a thing Jinhua can’t quite place. And Resi says, “To answer your question I must tell you a story. It is the true story of a man named Joseph and a woman named Maria. In the story Maria is untouched by Joseph; she has never been touched by any man and yet she has a child, and the child’s name is Jesus Christus, and he is the son of God.”
Jinhua is thinking that this story cannot be true, because without bed business a woman cannot have a baby—it is not possible—and what does this story have to do with the question she has asked? And now Jinhua remembers where she has seen this gesture before, the sign of Resi’s god. It is the gesture that the boatman made when he told Jinhua that his heavenly father had made him strong, when he told her that he lost his number four finger facing down the enemy. When he gave her the pussy willow spray. Thinking of him makes Jinhua sad—sad for the boatman with his missing finger, for the empress with a husband who cannot laugh, for herself, and for Suyin, who—yes, Jinhua is sure—for Suyin, who knows nothing about love.
32
AZURE SPRINGS FROM BLUE
Jinhua
Today, happiness feels like a thousand flowers opening, spilling feelings out into the fresh air, and Jinhua’s hands and feet are dancing and it feels, almost, as though her feet are not bound. It is because Wenqing has gone to Saint Petersburg, and because Resi has confessed that she is in love with a chimney sweep named Bastl who is strong and handsome and who loves her, and it is because it is springtime and the dome of heaven is a cloudless lavender blue.
“There are two Praters,” Resi is saying, and Herr Swobod
a is nodding, pulling the reins to the right, turning the carriage, leaning his body to the right as well.
Jinhua is nodding too.
“There is the Nobelprater, which is where—” Resi interrupts herself to say, “Schau’ns—look”—she grabs Jinhua’s arm and points—“a Schimmel—a pure white horse—he’ll bring us good luck.” And then she says, “A kiss from a chimney sweep brings good luck too—and what was I saying? Ah ja, the Nobelprater is where fine people go to promenade in their carriages and show their fancy clothes.”
Resi is not her black-and-white self today; she is wearing her Dirndl with sleeves that bloom from her shoulders, an apron of cherry-blossom red, and a neckline that plunges and doesn’t even try to cover the hollow between her breasts. Her hair is a sparkling mass of golden curls, and Jinhua has never seen her like this, happy and muddled and not at all calm.
Jinhua feels just the way that Resi seems: happy and muddled and not at all calm, and she is not thinking—even a little—about Wenqing with the tsar in Saint Petersburg.
“And then,” Resi says, “there is the Wurschtlprater, where anything can happen—well, you will see it soon enough, won’t she, Herr Swoboda?”
They are driving down the gray stone corridor of the Herrengasse, where the princes have their city palaces, and the sky is a solid blue cutout above high rooflines, and it has been a long time since Jinhua has seen and felt the open sky above her head. They pass the Palais Lembruch, the Palais Liechtenstein, and the Palais Modena. At the Michaelerplatz Herr Swoboda holds the horses back and steers the carriage close, as close as he dares, he tells them, to the black iron gates that are heavy with curls and scrolls and bits of gold. “It is the Hofburg,” he says, “where our emperor lives.”
The imperial residence. The home—in winter—of the empress Elisabeth—when she is here and not in Hungary with her lover, the count.
Jinhua strains to see. Two trabant guards stand by the gates. Their boots gleam; their faces are stern; their jackets are red and cluttered with gold, their britches as bright as polished ivory. They have swords and white gloves and helmets with feathers, and they stand there, utterly still.
“She doesn’t show herself today,” Herr Swoboda is saying. And then he calls her the Beautiful One. He means the empress Elisabeth.
Herr Swoboda’s hips and shoulders and tall black hat sway from side to side keeping pace with the horses’ gait as they move on—and Jinhua is disappointed.
“Can we come back to see the empress?” she asks. “Another time?” And then she says, “Sing the song about the bride’s fate, Resi, the one I like. The one that is about Christinchen.”
Resi begins to sing, and her voice is clear and sweet, and the melody is beautiful. It goes around and around and around, from beginning to end and from end to beginning, and Jinhua is thinking about the story of Christinchen first in German and then in Chinese, and now she understands this time, for the first time, that Christinchen’s fate was written in the stars. She understands that even though her wedding procession had thirty-two carriages, and her own was a carriage of silver, and Christinchen was a princess, it is not a story with a happy ending.
Christinchen sass im Garten
Ihren Bräutigam zu erwarten—
Sie hat es schon längst in den Sternen geseh’n,
Dass sie im Fluss soll untergeh’n.
Jinhua understands now and only now that the beautiful song she has come to love is about fate, and that Christinchen drowns in the river on the way to marry her beloved, and she sees—can it be?—the sparkle of tears in Resi’s eyes as she sings about tragic love.
“We are here at the Prater already,” Resi has just said, and in a whisper Jinhua translates for herself—Yijing daole.
It has been jijizhazha with Resi all the way from the Palais Kinsky. She has talked without stopping, and Jinhua has both listened and not listened. What Wenqing has written in his diary about the Prater and what Resi has said are not the same at all.
The people of Weiyena have a volatile aspect which is evident on Sundays when they do not work. In the morning there are festivals in the churches, and as soon as the god has forgiven them for six days of evil deeds, they go in droves to the Prater, being an area measuring approximately sixty acres according to the map of the Kaiserlich-Königliche Residenz-Stadt Wien. This place was once the hunting ground for the emperors of the present dynasty, but long ago, during the time of our Illustrious Qianlong Emperor, the lands were given to the people of Weiyena. I can only think that the Habsburg emperor of that time intended it as a place to contain the behavior of the common people far away from the imperial palace. Perhaps he also did not wish to hunt. I am told that there are monstrosities on display in this Prater, and that even princes and princesses spend their Sunday afternoons here, staring at human specimens of particular ugliness in cages—and putting their wealth and possessions immodestly on display.
The Wurschtlprater is like nothing else in the world, Resi has said, and now she is saying, “We will have sausage and beer and spicy cakes in the shape of little hearts with colored icing and pictures and ribbons on them—and they are called Lebkuchen. And, Herr Swoboda,” she continues, hardly taking a breath, “did you hear about the person last week who jumped from the Crown Prince Rudolf Bridge into the Danube? He left his top hat, his jacket, and his umbrella on the bridge, and puh—just like that he was gone. Drowned. Dead. It said so in the Extrapost, and there was a drawing of his things that he left behind when he jumped, and no one knows why he did it. And in the Wurschtlprater, gnä’ Frau, we can see shows and bears, and clowns, and puppets, and all sorts of oddities—we call them Abnormalitäten.”
It is a little bit too much, what Resi is saying and what Wenqing has written. Too much to hear and too much to think about. Herr Swoboda’s attention is on the horses and the road and the water cart that they have followed all the way down the Praterstrasse. Jinhua has been watching the water boy running behind the cart, his trousers rolled to his knees, his bare feet filthy, steering a rubber hose from side to side with his hand. He has been making sloppy patterns with water in the street—to keep the dust down, Resi said. And he’s been making silly faces too, directed at Jinhua, and shouting things, but Resi says, “Never mind. Pay no attention to him.”
“Abnormalitäten like the thin man, who is no wider than a measuring stick”—Resi is relentless—“and the Haarenmensch, who is covered like an animal everywhere with hair, even on his elbows and eyelids and the bottoms of his feet—but he is really a man, and the fat lady, Dicke Rosl, who weighs five hundred and fifty pounds”—Resi spreads her arms to show how big this is—“and a whole village of little black people from Afrika who live in huts made of straw, and I think that they eat each other too, sometimes—and we can go to see them in the Wurschtlprater.”
Jinhua nods and cannot imagine these things that Resi tells of—and she cannot imagine either going to see a show of people who are fat and thin and hairy and who eat each other. The water cart has made a turn, and the boy is no longer to be seen. They are now in a busy circle of traffic, the Praterstern, with spinning carriage wheels and clattering hooves and clouds of dust; people by the hundreds are pouring out of horse-drawn trolleys like ants from a nest. It is chaos.
“It is the gateway to the Prater,” Resi almost screams, and Jinhua cannot take this in, quite. She is thinking now of the foreign-glass windows at the Palais Kinsky, and the view from them that has become so familiar, and how maybe that is enough for her. She thinks of the words in Wenqing’s diaries, and she thinks of his unease—and maybe it is just too soon for this—and why did that person jump from the bridge, leaving his top hat behind?
He did not hang himself—or eat opium. He jumped instead from the bridge.
Resi touches her arm, and for an instant Jinhua thinks of Suyin nodding, urging her forward, telling her to be careful. They are on the Hauptallee, driving more slowly now in a steady stream of carriages, and the Hauptallee is just as Res
i has described it. Long and straight and wide, and lined on both sides with perfect rows of chestnut trees. And in the carriages are people in hats: tall black hats and hats with feathers and flowers and ribbons and birds, and so many pink barbarian faces. There are parasols, and people waving, greeting one another. White gloves. Whips that snap on horses’ rumps. Horses’ rumps that twitch. People walking. People looking, Jinhua notices. Looking at her as though she were strange. And Resi’s eyes are hurrying from place to place to place. Searching, Jinhua supposes, for her chimney sweep, the one who calls her herzallerliebste Resi. The Resi whom I love with all my heart.
The carriage has pulled now to one side, and Resi is getting to her feet. She is saying, “This, my darling, gnäd’ge Frau, is the Wurschtlprater, where you will see the real Vienna, the very best parts.” She grabs Jinhua’s arm. “And that,” she says, “that young man over there, that fesche, kräftige Bursch, he is my darling Bastl.”
She didn’t expect to feel like this, like a blade of grass beneath the boots of a barbarian army. Wenqing never mentioned this in the diaries or how a Chinese person must worry about his feet and his shoes and falling down among all these enormous people, and how it would be hard to breathe in the smell of Langosch—which is fried dough with garlic, Resi says, and the smell of which reminds Jinhua of banquets in the Hall of Round Moon and Passionate Love—but the smell is stronger here by far and mixed with the smells of oil and barbarian sweat and the smoke from barbarian pipes, which is not the same as Chinese smoke. She didn’t expect the view of mostly people’s buttons and the backs of their jackets and dresses, a mob of people who are so much larger than she is.
The Courtesan Page 19