China

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “What?” He glared at me.

  “Your servant has been drawn to the finer things in life, ever since he was a boy,” I said. “It made me become a lacquer worker. And the day I first saw a retinue of the palace people, I knew this was where I belonged. So I have dared to wonder if these extraordinary circumstances, which I certainly didn’t foresee, might be the result of some hidden force at work. Could it be the operation of yuanfen?”

  I’ve never seen a more cynical expression on any man’s face. “I see. You think you’re someone special. It’s a common delusion.” He sighed. “Any fool who wins a game of mah-jong believes it was destiny.”

  “I suppose, sir,” I suggested, “that if something happens, it must have been destined.”

  “Don’t try to be clever,” he said. “Do you realize you’re making a lot of enemies? How do you imagine the other palace people feel? They’d have to wait six years for such a chance. But you, a new arrival, insinuate yourself with the emperor’s consort and get promoted over all their heads. You think they like that?”

  “No, Mr. Liu,” I replied.

  “You haven’t a friend in the palace,” he said. “Except one: the Noble Consort Yi. And how long will that last? Until you make a mistake and she throws you out.” He paused a moment. “Or she gets thrown out herself.”

  He said those last words very softly, but I heard them well enough, and I felt a stab of fear. What did that mean? What did he know that I didn’t? I must have looked shocked.

  “I’ve seen them come,” he went on. “I’ve seen them go.” He considered for a moment. “She’s got some things in her favor. At least the emperor manages to perform with her. Most of the time he can’t, you know.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. He was talking about the Son of Heaven! To me, the lowest of all the eunuchs.

  “It’s no secret,” he said blandly. “Not here in the palace. When he was a very young man he used to sneak out and visit whores in the city. That was his main adventure. But since then…He’s had a child with one of the other concubines. But only a daughter. The empress herself, poor lady, seems to be barren. Only the Noble Consort Yi has given him a son.”

  “Doesn’t that make her position secure, sir?” I dared to ask.

  “Not entirely. Legally, her son could be given to another mother. The empress, for instance. The son might still be the heir. But the Noble Consort Yi could find herself out in the cold.”

  “Your servant hears that the emperor likes her company,” I said.

  “Yes. He even discusses state affairs with her. It’s against the rules for concubines to meddle in such things, but he doesn’t seem to care. He asks her advice, and she gives it.”

  “Her advice is bad?” I asked.

  “No. She may be ignorant, but her judgment is rather good.” He sighed. “The kingdom’s in a terrible state. I suppose you realize that? The Taiping have ruined most of the Yangtze valley. That’s where the Noble Consort Yi spent her childhood, by the way. She hates the Taiping with a passion. We had them boxed in, but they broke out again this spring, went up to Hangzhou and back, then mauled our troops outside Nanjing. Who knows what their next move will be? The emperor is terrified of them. The last time the Taiping got anywhere near Beijing, he wanted to desert his capital and run away beyond the Great Wall. Did you know that?”

  “No, sir,” I said, “I didn’t.” I remembered the Taiping advance all too well, but I didn’t know about the emperor. I was quite shocked.

  “She’s the one who persuaded him to stay, before the news of his cowardice leaked out.”

  “Why north of the Great Wall, sir?” I asked.

  “Centuries ago, before the Ming dynasty, the Mongol emperors, the family of Genghis Khan, had a huge hunting palace called Xanadu up on the steppe. I suppose because they wanted to be like them, the present Manchu dynasty built a similar place, though not as far north, on their ancestral hunting grounds. Until a generation ago they used to go up there for a huge hunt every summer. But it got so expensive they gave it up. The place is slowly falling apart. But he feels safer up in those endless plains, I suppose. I daresay he’d run all the way into the forests of Manchuria if he had to.”

  I was quite astonished that Mr. Liu was saying these things to me. Looking back on it, I’m sure he must have felt frustrated by the emperor. I like to think that however angry he was with me, he allowed himself to share his thoughts because he knew I was intelligent. Naturally, I wanted to know more.

  “Is the emperor afraid of the barbarians, too, sir?” I prompted.

  “The pirates? We’re still not sure what they want. There’s always the worry they could combine with the Taiping, of course.”

  “And the Noble Consort Yi?”

  “Despises all barbarians. Says we should destroy them. They may have better ships and guns, but their numbers are small. Do you know how many people the emperor rules?”

  “Your servant does not,” I said.

  “About four hundred million. Think of it. In a land battle, if the pirates fired every musket and every cannon they have, how many could they kill before they were swamped? Twenty thousand? I doubt it. Moreover, though it’s true that they’ve smashed our ships and forts in the past, when they came to the coastal forts last year, we were better prepared and we defeated them. That put the Noble Consort Yi in high favor. Even the emperor pretends not to be afraid.”

  “Is it believed the barbarians will come again?” I asked.

  “They may. But we’re even better prepared now. I have seen for myself.”

  This sounded well. But it raised a question in my mind. “All this would seem to support the strong position of the Noble Consort Yi,” I suggested. “Yet your servant had the impression that you thought she might fall from favor.”

  “Yes. It must worry you a great deal.” I noticed the satisfaction in his voice. “You’ll have to discover that for yourself, won’t you? By the way,” he continued, “the court’s moving to the Summer Palace in two days. You’ll like it there.” He gazed at me. “Enjoy it,” he said softly, “while you can.”

  * * *

  —

  As the long cortege left the Forbidden City, I was sitting in a covered wagon with a dozen other eunuchs. The morning was overcast but warm. As we rumbled slowly through the northwestern suburbs, I wasn’t really paying much attention to the scene. I was too busy wondering why Mr. Liu seemed so confident that the Noble Consort Yi would fall.

  “This is the road to paradise,” the fellow sitting next to me cried, and several of the other eunuchs nodded and smiled.

  Despite what Mr. Liu had said about everyone’s hating me, the other palace people in the cart had all been very friendly. I suppose I might have wondered why, but I didn’t.

  The narrowing road wound between wooded slopes. The distance from the suburbs to the Summer Palace was only a few miles. Although we traveled at a snail’s pace, we still passed through the gateway before noon. And I found that the fellow’s words had been true: We were in paradise.

  How can I describe it, the most beautiful place in the history of the world? People call it the old Summer Palace now, but the palace itself, the emperor’s residence, was just one compound in the Yuanmingyuan—the Garden of Perfect Brightness. And when we say garden, we don’t mean a walled enclosure, but a huge park, a landscape with lakes, islands, and wooded hills, sprinkled with temples, villas, pagodas—everything to delight the eye and calm the soul. Nor was the Yuanmingyuan the only garden. There were two or three other great parks adjoining it so that the emperor’s paradise went on for miles.

  That first day when we entered, I felt as if I’d walked inside a landscape painting—the kind where mountains rise out of the mists into the silent sky, curved bridges hang over the empty void, and scholars contemplate in tiny hermitages, perched high on distant rocks.

 
People talk about yin and yang as the two forces of the universe. We say that yang is the male force, the bright sun, the blue heavens, and so forth, while yin is the female, the earth, the moon, shadow. Like man and wife, yang and yin complement each other; each needs the other to exist. And our sages showed great wisdom when they also declared that there is a little yin in yang and a little yang in yin. For inside the famous yin-yang circle, we see that each of the two interlocking shapes contains a dot of the opposite color. Yang and yin must be in balance, or there can be no harmony in the world.

  So it didn’t take me long, once I came to know the Yuanmingyuan, to understand its purpose. For it was nothing less than to be the yin to the yang of the Forbidden City.

  The mighty symmetry of the vast fortress was all about the emperor’s power, which shines, golden as the sun; the huge round temple, with its blue roof, where the Son of Heaven made sacrifices to the gods; the animals and figures on the corners of every roof that showed the exact status of the building in the city’s perfect Confucian order. All these were tokens of the manly yang, which belongs to the sky.

  But the paradise of the Summer Palace evoked the spirit of the yin. This wasn’t a walled fortress, but nature’s landscape. The various buildings were dotted here and there, sometimes half hidden in the trees in the most picturesque manner. Nor was each building strictly regular. The different parts seemed to have grown up together in the most informal way, almost by chance.

  There was art in all this. One might say the hand of man arranges the chaos of nature, and that this is the yang within the yin. Indeed, it’s true that some of the hills and lakes in the Yuanmingyuan were artificial. But it wasn’t so simple. Like the painter and the calligrapher, the landscape designer must sense the spirit of the place and allow that spirit to permeate and fill his mind. This is the negative capability of the yin. Then, almost without positive thought, he allows the spirit to guide his hand.

  * * *

  —

  She sent for me the next morning. The emperor and his family lived in a waterside compound by what they call the Front Lake. This was just like a rich man’s summer villa, really, but more spread out, with a lot of courtyards.

  After I’d done her nails, she asked me, “Are the other palace people treating you kindly?” I said that they were. She looked a bit surprised, but she didn’t make any comment. Then one of the older eunuchs appeared and asked if she wished to walk outside with her ladies, and she said yes. So I assumed I should withdraw. But she motioned me to follow them.

  The royal compound faced the Front Lake, which was a large body of water. Behind the compound, however, lay the Back Lake, which was also a good size. This being my first day on duty, I hadn’t had a chance to look at this lake, and so as we walked towards it, I was quite curious.

  “Lacquer Nail’s never seen the Back Lake,” the Noble Consort said to the old eunuch. “Tell him about it, and we shall all listen.” So after bowing low and clearing his throat, the old man began.

  “The Back Lake has for many generations been the delight of the Son of Heaven.” He called the words out in a high singsong voice, as if he were reading out a royal proclamation. I noticed several of the ladies looking amused, but nobody interrupted him. “As well as its waters, which contain many golden carp and other fish of great rarity, the lake is blessed with nine islands, which are reached by footbridges of wonderful beauty. Each island, some small, others larger, has its own particular character. Over there…”—he indicated an island not far off—“you see the Island of the Peony Terrace, where there are over a hundred kinds of peony and where many of the emperors have composed notable poems. Over there…”—he pointed to another—“is the Island of the Green Wutong Tree Academy, where the emperor likes to listen to the sound of falling rain. Farther off you can see a steep hill, the top of which is the highest point in the Yuanmingyuan. That hill is in fact on another island. At the base of the hill is the lovely Apricot Blossom Spring Villa, a favorite place in the spring. Of great importance also is the Island of Shrines, where there are temples to all the important religions.”

  And so he went on until he had described the nine islands. And all the time he was speaking I, who truly love the finer things of life, was gazing in rapture across the lake at this silent, watery stillness, in the heart of the paradise at the center of the world.

  “Thank you,” said the Noble Consort Yi when he was done. “Very good.” She turned to me. “Some women,” she remarked, “use red paint on their lower lip, in the middle, and smear it down into a little red square towards their chin. I hardly ever do that. Do you think I should? What’s your opinion?”

  I stared at her in amazement. “My opinion, Noble Consort?” I asked. I didn’t know why she was asking me. What did it mean? And what on earth was I supposed to say?

  “It’s quite a simple question,” she said. “And if you don’t answer at once, it will be disobedient.”

  I hoped this was some kind of joke, but I couldn’t be sure. “Your servant thinks the Noble Consort’s face has a perfect elegance and can hardly imagine it could be bettered,” I replied. Now as it happens, I’ve never liked that fashion of smearing the lower lip red. So what I really wanted to say was: Don’t do it for me. But of course I couldn’t say that.

  “So you’re telling me not to,” she said with a smile.

  “Your humble servant could never do such a thing,” I replied.

  “Oh well,” she said, “you can go now. Come back tomorrow.”

  * * *

  —

  The next morning she was waiting for me with several of her ladies. Her little son the prince was there, too. And the first thing I noticed was that she had painted her lower lip with a red square. I bowed low and didn’t say anything. Nor did she.

  Had she done it to tease me? I wondered. Or to remind me that my opinion counted for nothing? Be careful, I told myself. This may have nothing to do with you at all. She’d probably been asking everybody before deciding to give the red lipstick a try. Whatever her reasons, it wasn’t for me to say a word unless she asked me, which she didn’t. But I had the feeling, all the same, that she was teasing me for her private amusement.

  When I had done her nails, which didn’t take long, she called one of her ladies and told me to attend to her nails as well.

  I’d just finished this second task when everyone in the room suddenly turned towards the door and bowed. So I turned, too.

  I’d caught sight of the empress once or twice in the Forbidden City, but I’d never been in her presence before, so I immediately went on my knees and knocked my head on the floor in the kowtow.

  “Just bow,” I heard her say softly. So I scrambled to my feet and bowed low.

  “Bow lower,” called the Noble Consort Yi. So I tried to do that and nearly fell on my face. Then I realized that both she and the empress were laughing. Not maliciously. They were just having a little fun with me. “This is Lacquer Nail, the one I told you about,” said the Noble Consort.

  “I have heard only good things about you, Lacquer Nail,” said the empress. And she smiled at me.

  I knew she was pretty, of course. But I must say, seeing her close up for the first time, I was really amazed. Dainty features, flawless skin: She looked like a painting on a vase.

  So how was it possible that she hadn’t given the emperor a child? Mr. Liu had said she was barren. It might be the case. Or was the emperor not attracted?

  I’m not impressed by conventional prettiness. If she’d been a painted doll with a cold heart, I suppose her character might have put him off. But she wasn’t like that at all. A sweet gentleness radiated from her. She was a lovely person in every way. Any man would want to take her in his arms. And if you feel affection, then it’s going to be all right on the night, I always think. I could remember that, even if I had been chopped myself.

  And I felt sorry fo
r her, because she must have felt that she’d failed the Son of Heaven and the whole empire, not to mention her own clan, who were losing a lot of face when they might have expected all kinds of riches, if only she’d produced an heir. And every day the poor girl had to walk around the palace and know that people were looking at her and thinking: There goes the pretty wife who was a failure in the bedroom.

  So I wondered how she felt about the concubine who’d done so much better and given the emperor a son. Was she jealous? However nice a person she was, I thought, it would be hard for her not to hate the Noble Consort Yi.

  Yet this didn’t appear to be the case. Not that day or any time afterwards. Quite the contrary. As far as I could see, the empress loved the Noble Consort Yi like a sister.

  How had the concubine done it? I still don’t know. Perhaps she saw the empress was lonely and needed a friend. Was it possible the empress didn’t really like being intimate with her husband and wasn’t sorry if someone else performed that duty? As for discussing state affairs with His Imperial Majesty like the Noble Consort did, I can’t imagine the empress had the desire or the ability to do such a thing. I daresay she never had any wish to be empress in the first place. It’s not as if anyone would have asked her what she wanted.

  They stayed in the room chatting for a while, talking about what they should wear and how they might do their hair and whether they should visit one of the nine islands that afternoon. Then the Noble Consort gave me a sign that I should go, and I didn’t see her again that day.

  * * *

  —

  But where was the emperor? That’s what I wanted to know. If I could just observe him and the Noble Consort together, then I might get some idea of how things stood between them—and therefore what my own fate was likely to be. Was he getting bored with her? How long had I got before she fell out of favor and I was cast out of paradise?

  I soon learned where he was physically. Close by the residential compound was the Audience Hall, where the emperor might receive ministers, provincial governors, or even the envoys of subject peoples from faraway lands; and a short distance from that was a courtyard complex called the Hall of Diligent Government, where palace people conducted the imperial administration. When the emperor was not secluded in his private apartment, he was usually in one or the other of these business places.