Empress

by Shan Sa

  The eunuchs became more insistent. Wearily, he drained the last cup of tea.

  “Heavenlight, do you know that I have been very unhappy? Last year my sister the High Princess Sun of Gao plotted against me with her husband, the son of Fang Xuan Ling, a minister who was a close confidant of the previous Emperor. They managed to enlist support from my aunts, the Great High Princess Sun of Dan and the Great High Princess of Ba Ling, and my uncle the King of Jing. My own family wanted to overthrow me to put my brother the King of Wu on the throne. I had to let my uncle Wu Ji arrange their trial and sign the papers sentencing them to death. Up on my imperial throne, I am like a man sitting alone at the top of a mountain, surrounded by vultures ravenous for power. Heavenlight, I am already tired of reigning. Every morning I strive to be worthy of Sovereign Father, but the ministers take my orders lightly and obey only my uncle Wu Ji. In the evenings, in the Inner Palace, I find it hard to sleep. I am possessed by the obsessions that have tormented every Emperor before me. Lying in the dark, I listen for the drip, drip of poison, the sly footsteps of an assassin, and the rumblings of revolt.

  He broke off to wipe away his tears. Standing before this unveiled divinity, I let my torments subside. I held out my arms to him, and he wept on my shoulder. Then I helped him change and repowder his face. As he stood before the mirror, he explained: “For you to return to the Palace, the Empress must draw up a decree and affix her seal to it. She is a jealous, unpredictable woman, and she supports her uncle whom I appointed Great Minister in a rush of generosity. He now dares to disagree with me over everything. Tired of resisting him, I have often given in to his absurd demands. But this time I am determined to see the fight through to the end. That is why I have left my seed in your belly. It is proof of our love. The heir who is born of your belly will give me the courage to defy the impossible.”

  Looking in the mirror, I thought I could see a malicious smile on his face. Little Phoenix had just caught me in a trap. If I were with child, I could no longer stay at the monastery and would have to go back to the Palace. After he left, I collapsed at Buddha’s feet. Let him show me the way!

  Barely five days later a miracle happened: The Empress called me back to Court, appointing me as one of her ladies-in-waiting. A carriage escorted by eunuchs and soldiers came to collect me from the monastery. I left the nuns, their thin bodies, and their silent loathing of men without regret. Buddha had spoken. My fate lay elsewhere.

  FASHION HAD CHANGED in the Side Court. Women wore their hair in elaborate topknots, shaped like birds with outstretched wings, dragons coiled on themselves, and galloping horses. They pinned fresh flowers and long strings of pearls into them. On their red-powdered cheeks, they stuck bees in yellow silk. They wore long, pleated skirts just under the rib cage to exaggerate their nearly bare breasts and expose their shoulders, which were veiled under wide-sleeved muslin tunics.

  I was cradled within the eternal landscape of the Middle Court. The palaces, lakes, and gardens were all still the same color, in the same light, breathing to the same rhythm. Their immutable music played itself out to the very end of the sacred world. But the servants’ faces had become overrun by wrinkles; the dead would be absent forever; the survivors had been subject to promotion or deposition. Some areas were now full of life, others had been condemned to dust.

  Courtesy required that I introduce myself to the Mistress of the Palace as soon as I arrive and thank her for signing the decree for my return. Not to awaken her jealousy, I had chosen a tunic in saffron-colored brocade and leggings in crimson satin, and I wrapped a mauve turban around my head to hide my shaved scalp.

  I thought she would send me away contemptuously, but she received me eagerly. In the days when I had served the previous emperor, I had seen her from a distance, and she must not even have known I existed. She sat, frozen in a majestic pose, on a platform before a screen painted with powdered gold and bearing the calligraphy of a great master. Her hands lay in her lap, and she had a pink peony pinned into a topknot two cubits high. Her features were pure and regular, finely chiseled by her distinguished birth in which the noblest bloodlines in the Empire had been combined. She must have been twenty years old, but she looked fifteen. Her face was expressionless. Only her huge eyes, examining me from head to toe, betrayed her inner turmoil. To her left, at the foot of the steps, there was a woman who was nearly forty. From the resemblance between them, I guessed that this must be the Lady Mother.

  I prostrated myself at the Empress’s feet before bowing deeply to her mother. I expressed my profound gratitude, and the sovereign asked me a few questions about my living quarters, then fell silent. She had the voice of a little girl. I sensed that she was shy and reserved—in noble women, silence was a sign of elegance. I was preparing to ask her permission to withdraw when the Lady Mother spoke out in her haughty voice: “Talented One, when the sovereign returned from his pilgrimage to the Monastery of Rebirth, the Empress learned of the sin that had been committed. Given that her heart knows no jealousy and that, as an exemplary wife, she considers her master’s happiness as her own, she suggested that he should recall you to the palace to quell the scandal that would have damaged his august reputation. We here are well aware that you served the previous emperor. To obtain your return, the mistress had to disobey ancestral codes, and this offense attracted reprimands from the Outer Court. I hope that you now recognize the error of your ways and that this boundless generosity will be repaid with your grateful devotion.”

  I struck my forehead against the ground several times, repeating the words: “Majesty, your servant shall never forget your goodness.”

  The Lady Mother eyed me with a hostile sneer and went on: “Talented One, you are already familiar with the laws of the Inner Court, and I shall not enumerate them for you. The Empress rewards worthiness and punishes crime. She may occasionally choose to offer lapsed women a second chance, but she expects absolute obedience in exchange for this clemency. To ensure that you do not commit a further error that would cost you your life, Her Majesty has instructed me to warn you against a particularly perverse and dangerous person: Lady Xiao. She was born into a lowly, fallen family. As a child she knew poverty and trailed through the streets of the eastern capital. Our family took her in out of pity, and I appointed her as a maid to Her Majesty during her childhood. We lavished her with care, and this creature—so full of bad manners learned in the depths of Luoyang—metamorphosed in a few short years. When Her Majesty was married to the sovereign, she took Lady Xiao with her to Long Peace. Unbeknown to her mistress, Lady Xiao seduced the prince and plotted to ensure that she was raised to the rank of Resplendent Wife. This distinction only fuelled her excessive ambition and her insatiable greed. Under her evil spell, the Emperor is forgetting his duties and losing his mind. The Empress called you back to the Palace because she is counting on you to exorcise the sovereign and to help him return to the path he must tread.”

  The Lady Mother’s words clarified the ambivalent nature of the hasty ruling made on my behalf. Jealous of the favors enjoyed by the Resplendent Wife, the Empress wanted to use me to deflect the sovereign’s passion. On my return to the lodgings in the Side Court, I came across a woman whose beauty was stupefying. The Resplendent Wife Xiao feigned surprise and introduced herself to me. She was sheathed in a dress of crêpe and a muslin tunic, and above her right breast she flaunted a beauty spot in the form of an avaricious wasp.

  I curtsied deeply before her.

  She returned my greeting and said in an eager, affable voice: “It is indeed you, the Talented One of two reigns! I have heard that you are twenty-eight, but you look ten years younger. Is it true that the nuns have magic recipes to preserve eternal youth? It seems that your friends, the monks, know the secrets of ecstasy and are more virile than ordinary men. Come and talk to me of all this when your Empress gives you the time. I invite you to take lunch on my boat. The poor girl must have spoken to you of me, anyway. I expect that, once again, she ground her teeth and shed
many tears! So much the better if her morbid jealousy drives her insane! She is barren, and she resents every belly capable of bearing a child. No one is stopping her from conceiving, but her own perfidious nature has dried her out!”

  She came closer to me and hissed in my ear: “I know that the Empress had you brought back to the Palace to steal the sovereign from me. You should know that she has already pushed a number of unfortunate girls into his arms. Alas for her, at the moment, it is I who command His Majesty’s heart in this Inner Palace. Every woman who has tried to dispute his favors with me has met an unpleasant end. Some died, struck down by the lightning wrath of the heavens; others were sent away to the Cold Palace. Do you know that frozen place where women fester in dank dungeons and in their own excrement? It makes me laugh to think of the beauties who have ended up in those dung heaps. Only the other month, the Emperor authorized me to expedite some shrew who wanted to poison me. Do you know what became of her? I had her arms and legs cut off and threw her into a vat of wine. She died blind drunk!” Then, with a peel of laughter, she walked away.

  IN THE CLOSED world of the gynaeceum, despite the gardens and parkland extending beyond the horizon, despite the insurmountable walls separating pavilions and palaces, the tangled web of our fate was inescapable. Why did these women love each other to the point of madness? Why did they loathe one another so vehemently, and why did sworn enemies feel such horror and fascination for one another? Why should furious hate become obsession, then intoxication and the very reason to live?

  Because love and hate were the two heads of the demon.

  The Empress had been married at fourteen, and now, at twenty-two, her stomach was still flat, while in the other palace, a succession of concubines and slaves brought imperial children into the world. Infertility is a major crime committed toward the ancestors, and any man whose wife is sterile is free to repudiate her. Many former Empresses had lost their title on these grounds, and the Empress Wang was well aware of the danger that threatened her.

  Like the noble women who grew up in the closed world of the gynaeceum’s apartments, she valued the comfort and refinement of an artificial existence. She was afraid of life’s urges and enthusiasms, bored by copulation; from the very day she was married, she had received the Emperor’s advances by playing dead. But, to conceive a son, she would suffer anything, even rape. At first light every day, she prepared herself feverishly to appear beautiful. Her Lady Mother forced her to drink medicinal infusions for fertility and to have warm fluids injected between her thighs. As the sun began to fall still, there would be no sign of the Emperor. She would sit in the middle of her day room, with her hands on her knees, a black silhouette against the vermilion silk carpets covering the ground, and her heart would curse him. She swore to herself that she would no longer live in such humiliation once she had delivered a son. Night stole through the palace, and servants lit candles and lanterns. Her face lit up at the tiniest rustling sound; she would get up and run to the door. The women she sent out as spies came back one after the other: His Majesty had finished dining! He had ordered his litter to be prepared. His Majesty was about to leave his palace! He was heading for the apartments of the Resplendent Wife!

  The Empress would collapse, and her shrill cries would echo round the room: “Snuff out the lights! Snuff out the lights!” She would shrug off every hand offering to help her and would spend the night on the spot where she had fallen. With day break the servants would come and open the shutters. The hope and disappointment began again with the sun as it circled endlessly across the sky.

  Her rival, the Resplendent Wife, had had her belly filled three times, and her son had been given the crown of Yong, the kingdom-province that boasted the capital Long Peace and one that was usually reserved for the eldest son of the Mistress of the Palace. Every time the Empress heard her accursed name, she faltered and dissolved into tears: She wanted to drive this whore out of the Forbidden City. She accused her of practicing black magic to make her sterile; she was a demon incarnate in a woman’s body who wanted to steal her throne and destroy the Empire!

  At twenty-three the Resplendent Wife’s heart was ravaged. The more the emperor cherished her, the more she feared. At the height of her beauty, aging obsessed her and she trembled to be abandoned one day. In government, ministers despised her very existence, and in the gynaeceum the women leagued against her. Her desperate loneliness, her violent sensuality, and her fierce struggle to survive had a strange hold over the Emperor, who was weary of bland, characterless women. With the Empress he had to observe rituals and ensure he spoke in imperial vernacular. Sleeping with the Mistress of the World was a sacred duty, an attempt at procreation, an anxiety that chilled his entrails. In his favorite’s palace, he could dispense with the solemn poses and courteous conventions. His pleasure had only one aim: to be satisfied.

  Despite his renewed promises to the Resplendent Wife, the Emperor could not remain faithful. He succumbed to all temptations, and his every adventure was devastating to her. On those evenings when he disappeared into other pavilions, she could see herself reduced once more to the starving orphan wandering barefoot through the streets of Luoyang. The thought of losing her savior, her boat in the ocean of misery, drove her demented with worry.

  Younger and more beautiful ladies constantly challenged her. With the passing of every moon, when the blood flowed between her legs, she had to resign herself to the nights of silence, alone with her own stain.

  She always had to think, calculate, lie, and smile when she wanted only to weep. Her adversaries were as cunning and determined as she was. She confronted her rivals more and more often, but her strength was flagging. The Empress and her Lady Mother had declared war: They were waiting for the sovereign to grow weary of her and throw her into the Cold Palace. She sought relief in drugs, but found the mornings all the more painful. One morning she decided that the title of Empress would be the remedy to so much suffering that she should now fight to give her son the title of heir. She enlisted her slanderous tongue and her fevered imagination: Night after night, she succeeded in inciting the sovereign’s disgust for his sacred wife.

  The duel between the two rivals spread terror throughout the Inner City. The two camps in this battle had concentrated the energies of all these women on the brink of madness. Poisoned wine, toxic clothes, and fans dusted with fatal powders were frequently found in their palaces. Servants died mysteriously instead of their mistresses, but the investigations never went any further than the eunuch valets. Some servants were punished for their betrayal: They were beaten to death, put into a sack, and thrown into the imperial river that flowed beyond the thick walls and into the outside world. The Emperor became fearful: Unable to untangle the web of crimes and to impose his authority, pursued by fits of weeping and threats of suicide, he wanted to escape but did not know which way to turn.

  Once again he relied on me to give him counsel, to support his will, and to provide a haven of peace.

  I HAD LOST some of my naiveté and gained strength. These women with their pointless scheming could not contain me, and I watched the volatile world of the gynaeceum with a detached eye. The Forbidden City had buried my youth, and in the monastery, I had died and come back to life. Friends, enemies, and mistresses had all disappeared. I was a ghost from a lost world, still going from one season to the next and still living for one man alone.

  But this time it was not a provincial adolescent terrified by the sensuality and corruption of the Inner Palace: Women would bow to my strategy and my experience. From the very first day, I succeeded in securing the loyalty of servants who had grown weary of the despotic Empress and the vindictive favorite. My instructions were respected and carried out; the Court Ladies wanted to escape the conflict between the two mistresses, and, in me, they found the peace and wisdom they sought. At first they were disconcerted by my disdain for tunics that revealed too much flesh, then they decided that modesty was more sensuous. The Court started to imitate my warrior
-nun style. The young girls tried in vain to squeeze their ample waists into the wide belts of sculpted leather in an attempt to make themselves attractive. They had neither my slender figure, nor my muscles, nor my fine waist. They did not know that my habit was my armor.

  I was ashamed of our sex and disgusted by its aggressiveness. I attended to the daily management of the Palace as a way of forgetting all the misery it harbored. The Middle Court appreciated my abilities, and the Empress entrusted me with more and more responsibility. Little Phoenix tried to find me the whole time and constantly sought my advice.

  At night, despite his supplications, I refused to join him in his palace. He then alighted on the idea of summoning me to his offices to dictate letters. He had the entrance to the pavilion closed and welcomed me in the entrance to the secret passage. He would smile at me as he tore off his tunic, untied his silk trousers, and bared his vigorous body. My heart would beat wildly. I would let him kiss me and draw me down to the carpet. Our muscles rubbed against each other; our sweat mingled. When Little Phoenix penetrated me, I was surprised that I did not feel pain, but I recognized the pleasures of this act. Soon a feeling of warmth would roll around within my belly and spread throughout my body. I kept my eyes open and saw Little Phoenix’s face blending with the frescoes on the ceiling. I saw the gods dancing on clouds and pouring millions of petals on us. I saw myself raised up from among the hordes of chained women who were still struggling. Then, at last, I was borne away from this life, from its short-lived seasons and its murderous weakness.

  After making love, Little Phoenix would rest his head on my knees and whisper all his problems to me. When he had acceded to the throne, he had had no experience and had left important matters to his uncle Wu Ji. Since then the Great Chancellor had taken a liking to ruling the Empire and paid little attention to his opinions; Little Phoenix was inexplicably afraid of his all-powerful uncle, and he lamented that he had betrayed his Emperor Father’s wishes and become a puppet sovereign. I encouraged him to impose his authority gradually on the government. To avoid the balance of power falling once again into the hands of an ambitious lord, I offered to read political reports for him and to help him prepare for his audiences.