Imperial Woman

by Pearl S. Buck

  “I cannot use it as once I did,” he said unwillingly.

  She put back his sleeve and saw his bare arm, thin and yellow as old ivory beneath the satin robes.

  “Ah,” she moaned, “ah, why was I not told?”

  “What is there to tell?” he said. “Except I have a slow creeping coldness on this side.”

  He pulled his hand away. “Come,” he said, “come into my bed. None of them has been enough. Only you—only you—”

  She saw the old hot light come creeping back into his sunken eyes, and she made ready to obey. And yet as the dark hours passed to midnight and then beyond, she felt a sadness she had never known before. Deep, deep was the woe in this poor man who was the Emperor of a mighty realm. The chill of death had struck his inward life and he was man no more. As helpless as any eunuch, he strove to do his part and could not.

  “Help me,” he besought her again and yet again. “Help me—help me, lest I die of this dreadful heat unslaked.”

  But she could not help him. When she saw that even she was helpless she rose from the bed and sat by his pillow and took him in her arms as though he were a child and like a child he sobbed upon her breast, knowing that what had been his chief joy could never be again. Though he was young in years, indeed his third decade not yet come, he was an old man in body, weakened by his own lusts. Too early had he yielded to his desires, too often had the eunuchs fed them, too humbly had the Court physicians whipped his blood alive again with herbs and medicines. He was exhausted and only death remained.

  This certainty overwhelmed the woman as she held the man to her breast. She soothed him with pleasant words, she seemed so calm, so strong, that he was at last persuaded.

  “You are weary,” she said, “you are beset by worries. I know our many foes, and how the Western men with all their ships and armies do threaten us. While I have been living my woman’s life, such troubles hide inside your mind and sap your strength. While I have borne my son, you have bent beneath the burdens of the state. Let me help you, my lord. Throw half your burden upon me. Let me always sit behind the screen in the Throne Hall at dawn and listen to your ministers. I can hear the inner meaning of their plaints and when they are gone I will tell you what I think but leaving all decision to my lord, as is my duty.”

  From unsatisfied desire, she wooed him thus away from love and to the affairs of the nation, the threats of enemies, and the strengthening of the Throne itself, now that he had his Heir. And she saw how weary was this man with all his burdens, for he gave great sighs and then he lifted himself from her bosom and leaned against the pillows again, and holding her hand with his own hand, he tried to tell her his perplexities.

  “There is no end to my troubles,” he complained. “In the days of my forefathers the enemy came always from the north and the Great Wall stopped them, men and horses. But now the wall is useless to us. These white men swarm up from the seas—Englishmen and Frenchmen, Dutch and Germans and Belgians. I tell you, I do not know how many nations there are beyond the border mountains of K’un Lun! They make war with us to sell their opium and they are never satisfied. Now the Americans are here, too. Where did they come from? Where is America? I hear its people are somewhat better than the others, yet when I yield to those others, the Americans demand the same benefits. This is the year when they wish to renew their treaty with us. But I do not wish to renew any treaty with white men.”

  “Then do not renew it,” Tzu Hsi said impetuously. “Why should you do that which you would not? Bid your ministers refuse.”

  “The white men’s weapons are very fearful,” he moaned.

  “Delay—delay,” she said. “Do not answer their pleadings, ignore their messages, refuse to receive their envoys. This gives us time. They will not attack us so long as there is hope that we will renew the treaty. Therefore do not say yes or no.”

  The Emperor was struck with such wisdom. “You are worth more to me than any man,” he declared, “even than my brother. It is he who plagues me to receive the white men and make new treaties with them. He tries to frighten me by telling me about their big ships and the long cannon. Negotiate, he says—”

  Tzu Hsi laughed. “Do not allow yourself to be frightened, my lord, even by Prince Kung. The sea is very far from here, and can there be a cannon long enough to reach as high as our city walls?”

  She believed what she said, and he wished to believe what she said, and his heart clung to her more than ever. He fell asleep at last upon his pillows and she sat beside him until dawn. At that hour the Chief Eunuch came to waken the Emperor because his ministers waited for the usual early audience. When he came in, Tzu Hsi rose to command him while the Emperor still slept.

  “From this day on,” she said, “I am to sit behind the Dragon Screen in the Throne Hall. The Son of Heaven has commanded it.”

  An Teh-hai bowed down to the floor before her and knocked his head on the tiles. “Venerable,” he exclaimed. “Now I am happy.”

  From that day on Tzu Hsi rose in the darkness of the small hours before day. In the candlelight her women bathed her and put on her robes of state and she entered her curtained sedan and Li Lien-ying went before her with a lantern in his hand to the Throne Hall and she sat behind the great carved screen before which was the Dragon Throne and Li Lien-ying was her guard. He stood near her always, a dagger ready in his hand.

  From this day, too, the Heir slept no more in his mother’s bedchamber. He was moved into his own palace and the Chief Eunuch was made his servant, and Prince Kung, the brother of the Emperor, was appointed his guardian.

  The cold came soon that year. No rain had fallen in many weeks and already by midautumn the dry and bitter winds blew from the northwest, scattering their burden of pale sand from the distant desert. The city was clothed in the faint gold of the sand and the sun glittered upon the roofs of the houses where the sand drifted into the crevices of the eaves. Only the porcelain tiles of the roofs of the Forbidden City, royal blue and imperial yellow, shed the sand and shone clear in the white glare from the sky.

  At noon while the sun still gave forth a mild heat, old people, wrapped in padded garments, stirred out of their houses and sat in sheltered corners between walls, and children ran into the streets and played until the sweat streamed down their brown cheeks. Yet when the sun went away again at nightfall the dry cold congealed the blood of young and old alike. Throughout the night the cold deepened until in the hours after midnight and before dawn it reached its depths. Those beggars in the streets who had no shelter ran hither and thither to keep alive until the sun came up again, and even wild dogs could not sleep.

  In such a cold and silent hour and upon a day set by the Board of Imperial Astronomers, Tzu Hsi rose one day to take her usual place in the Throne Hall. Her faithful woman slept near her. When the watchman’s brass gong sounded three times three through the streets, the woman got up from her pallet bed and laid fresh charcoal on the brazier and she set on the coals a kettle of water. When it boiled she made tea in a silver and earthen pot, and approaching the vast bed where Tzu Hsi slept she put aside the curtains and touched her shoulder. It needed but a touch, for though Tzu Hsi slept well, she slept always lightly. Now her great eyes opened wide and aware, and she sat up in bed.

  “I am wakened,” she said.

  The woman poured the infused tea into a bowl and presented it with both hands and Tzu Hsi drank it slowly, but not too slowly, gauging exactly the measure of the passing time. When she had drunk the bowl empty the woman took it again. In the bathing room the water was already poured steaming hot into the porcelain tub. Tzu Hsi rose, her every movement graceful and precise, for grace and precision were her habit, and in a few minutes she was in her bath. Her woman washed her gently and then dried her and put on her garments for the imperial audience. Her undergarments were of perfumed silk and over these was a long robe of rose-red satin lined with northern sable and buttoned at the throat and over this again a robe of pale-yellow gauze embroidered in small blue
medallions in phoenix design. Upon her feet Tzu Hsi wore lined stockings of soft white silk and over them her Manchu shoes set on high double heels in the middle of the soles. Upon her head, when her hair was dressed, the woman set a headdress made of figures and flowers of satin and gems and veiled with beads of fine small pearls.

  They moved in silence, the woman silent because she was weary, and Tzu Hsi silent because her mind was filled with somber thoughts. The times grew more grave. Only yesterday in private audience Prince Kung had said to her, “The people of any nation do not care who their rulers are, if there be peace and order in the realm and if they can laugh and attend plays. But if there be no peace and order is disturbed, then the people blame their rulers. It is our misfortune to rule in these times. Alas that my imperial brother is so feeble! Today neither white man nor Chinese rebel fears the Throne.”

  “If these white-skinned foreigners had not come from across the seas,” Tzu Hsi said, “we could quell the Chinese rebels.”

  To this he agreed sadly and thoughtfully. “Yet what shall we do?” he inquired. “They are here. It is the fault of our dynasty that our ancestors did not understand a hundred years ago that Western foreigners are different men from all others. Our ancestors at first were charmed with their cunning and their clever toys and clocks, and, thinking no evil, they allowed them to visit us, expecting that in courtesy they would then leave our shores. We know now that we should have pushed them all into the sea, from the very first man, for where one comes a hundred follow, and none goes away.”

  “It is strange indeed,” Tzu Hsi observed, “that the Venerable Ancestor Ch’ien Lung, so great and so wise and ruling so many decades, did not perceive the nature of the men from the West.”

  Prince Kung, shaking his head, went mournfully on. “Ch’ien Lung was deceived by his power and by his own good heart. It did not come to his mind that any could be his enemy. Indeed, he even likened himself to the American George Washington, then living, and he was fond of saying that he here, and Washington in America, were brothers, though they had never met face to face. It is true their reigns were contemporary.”

  Such was the stuff of her talk with Prince Kung, and he took pains to teach her often, nowadays. Listening to him and lifting her eyes to that thin handsome face, though sad and weary it was for a man so young, she thought how far better it would have been if this Prince could have been the elder brother and so the Emperor, instead of her own weak lord, Hsien Feng.

  “You are ready, Venerable,” her woman now said, “and I do wish you would eat a little hot food before you go to sit behind the Dragon Screen. A bowl of hot millet soup—”

  “I will eat when I return,” Tzu Hsi replied. “I must be empty and my mind clear.”

  She rose and walked toward the door, her pace measured, her body erect. Her ladies should be with her but she who could be stern and harsh enough when she willed was always mild to her obedient ladies, and she did not require that they rise early. It was enough that her woman rise and that Li Lien-ying, her eunuch, be waiting at the door. Yet one lady often rose, and it was the Lady Mei, the young daughter of Su Shun, prince and Grand Councilor. This morning when her woman opened the door for Tzu Hsi to pass, Lady Mei stood there already, somewhat pale from rising so early, but fresh as a white gardenia flower. She was at this time only eighteen years of age, small of stature and exquisitely shaped, a tender creature so loving in her ways and so yielding that Tzu Hsi loved her much in return, even though she knew that Su Shun was her secret enemy. It was a grace that Tzu Hsi was large of mind and exceedingly just and therefore she did not lay the blame of the cruel father upon the tender daughter.

  She smiled now at the young girl. “Are you not early?”

  “Venerable, I was so cold I could not sleep,” Lady Mei confessed.

  “One of these days I must get you a husband to warm your bed,” Tzu Hsi said, still smiling.

  She spoke these words with careless kindness, not knowing why she said them, but when they had fallen from her lips she knew instantly that they had come from an instinct which she would not recognize. Ah yes, ah yes, the gossip of the women in the courts, where there was little to do except to gossip, had fluttered from mouth to ear, ever since the first moon feast of the Imperial Heir, and she had caught the rumor that Lady Mei had been seen to look more than once at Jung Lu, the handsome Chief of the Imperial Guard and kinsman of the Fortunate Mother. Tzu Hsi heard this as she heard everything, her mind always aware, her eyes seeing, her ears hearing whether she woke or slept. Who could guess all that she knew, who made no confidante?

  “Venerable, please, I want no husband,” Lady Mei now murmured, her cheeks suddenly pink.

  Tzu Hsi pinched the pretty cheek. “No husband?”

  “Let me stay with you always, Venerable,” the lady pleaded.

  “Why not?” Tzu Hsi replied. “This is not to say you shall not have a husband.”

  Lady Mei went pale and red and then pale again. Unlucky, unlucky to talk of marriage! The Empress of the Western Palace had only to command her marriage to a man and she must obey, whereas her whole heart was—

  The gaunt shape of Li Lien-ying appeared before them, large and hideous, the light from the lantern in his hand flickering upward against his coarse features.

  “The hour grows late, Venerable,” he said in his high eunuch’s voice.

  Tzu Hsi recalled herself, “Ah, yes, and I must see my son.”

  For it was her habit every morning to see her son before she went to audience, and she entered her sedan, the curtains fell, and the six bearers lifted the poles to their shoulders and marched forward in swift rhythm until they came to the palace of the Heir, her lady following in a small sedan.

  At the entrance to the Heir’s private palace, the bearers set down their burden poles by habit and Tzu Hsi descended, her lady waiting while she hastened to her son. Eunuchs stood on guard, and they bowed as she passed to the royal bedchamber. There thick red candles of cow’s fat in gold candlesticks stood on a table, and by the. guttering light she saw her child. He was sleeping with his wetnurse and she lingered by his bed of quilts laid upon the platform of heated brick. He was pillowed on his nurse’s arm, his cheek against her naked breast. Some time in the night he must have wakened and cried and the woman had suckled him and they had both fallen asleep.

  Tzu Hsi gazed down upon them with strange and painful longing. She it should have been who heard him weeping in the night and she it should have been who suckled him and then lay sleeping in deep peace. Ah, when she chose her destiny she did not think of such a price!

  She forced her heart down again. The moment of choice was gone. By his very birth her son now confirmed her destiny. She was mother not to a child but to the Heir of the Empire, and to that day when he would be Emperor of four hundred million subjects she must give her whole mind. Upon her alone rested the burden of the Manchu dynasty. Hsien Feng was weak but her son must be strong. She would make him strong. To this end her whole life was directed. Even the long and pleasant hours of study in the palace libraries were fewer now, and few, too, the painting lessons with Lady Miao. Some day it might be that she would have time to brush the pictures which her teacher Lady Miao had never let her make, but not yet.

  She was soon in her sedan again, the curtains drawn against the winds rising before dawn, the sight of her sleeping baby warm in her heart. She had been ambitious, once, to make herself an empress. How mighty was her ambition now, who must hold an empire for her son!

  Through the shifting curtains of the sedan she could see the light of the eunuch’s lantern flickering upon the cobbles of the road, and by alleyway and courtyards she was carried until the Throne Hall was reached, and there by a side gate her sedan set down and the curtain lifted. Prince Kung stood waiting to receive her.

  “Venerable, you are late,” he exclaimed.

  “I lingered too long with my son,” she confessed.

  He looked his reproach. “I hope, Venerable, that yo
u do not wake the Heir. It is necessary indeed that he grow strong and full of health. His reign will be most arduous.”

  “I did not wake him,” she said with dignity. No words passed more than these. Prince Kung bowed and led the way by an inner passage to the space behind the Dragon Throne. Here, shielded by the immense screen carved deep with that bold design of dragons, their scales and five-toed claws gilded and gleaming in the light of the great lanterns that hung from far up in the lofty painted beams, Tzu Hsi took her seat. On her right stood Lady Mei, and on her left the eunuch Li Lien-ying.

  Through the interstices of the screen she saw now that the wide terrace in front of the Audience Hall, vast in shadows, was already filled with princes and ministers who had come before midnight in their springless fur-lined carts to bring petitions and memorials to the Emperor himself. While they waited in the courtyard for his arrival they separated themselves according to their rank and stood in groups together, each group beneath its own banner of bright silk and dark velvet. The darkness was still intense around and above, but the terrace was lit by the flaming lanterns in the lower courtyard. There at the four corners stood bronze elephants filled with oil, and this oil fed the torches which the elephants held in their uplifted trunks, and the fire, leaping toward the sky, cast a fierce and restless light upon the scene.

  In the Audience Hall itself a hundred eunuchs moved to and fro, mending the huge horn lanterns, arranging their vivid and jeweled robes, whispering now and then as they waited. No voice spoke aloud. A strange silence brooded over all, and as the hour, fixed by the Board of Astrologers according to the stars, drew near, this silence deepened into something like a trance. None moved, all faces stiff and grave, all eyes gazing straight ahead. In the last moment before dawn broke, a courier blew his brass trumpet loudly and this was a sign. The Emperor had left his palace and his imperial procession was on its way, moving slowly through the broad lower throne halls, passing through one great entrance and another into the higher halls to arrive at the exact hour of dawn.