by Shan Sa
I closed my eyes to this clandestine love. But the day Purity learned of this betrayal, she flew into a rage. One morning, a group of eunuchs burst into my palace. An argument had broken out between the Lady of the Kingdom of Han and her young rival. “The noble lady slapped her daughter,” I was told. “She called for a strong rope with which to strangle her!”
I ran to my sister’s pavilion. The governess’s cries announcing my arrival immediately calmed both women. Purity was lying prostrate, and Harmony was kneeling stiff and motionless beside her. Her face was rigid as an iron mask and showed no trace of tears. She was staring darkly at the ground and greeted me with one sharp gesture.
“What does this mean?” I asked them. “You have fought in the Inner Palace and for that you both deserve twenty strokes of the plank! For two women of my clan to argue like common shrews is an insult to my favor and my patience! Take Harmony away, shut her up, and have her copy out The Book of the Virtuous Women ten times!”
Once Harmony and her retinue had moved away, I spoke to my sister: “How could you get so angry that you forgot the dignity required by your rank? Before making such a scene, think of the mocking smiles of all the ladies and the laughter of all the high-ranking women in the Outer Court. Everyone envies the power our household enjoys. Why give them an opportunity to gossip about us? Have you thought of Mother? She is eighty-three. How would she cope with the sorrow if she saw you strangle her favorite granddaughter! Your extreme nobility demands that you be a model for every woman in the Empire. Is this any way to behave?”
Crippled with shame, she walked on her knees, pressed her forehead to the ground, and asked my forgiveness. I ordered the servants to serve us tea. A eunuch master of ceremonies appeared. He pounded the tea in the canister, brought the spring water to a boil, rinsed the cups, and let the green powder infuse before adding a pinch of salt.
Purity confided her distress to me: “Majesty, I have projected so many hopes and ambitions onto Harmony! All these dreams are now dashed forever. The gods have just robbed me of both the sovereign and my daughter. Who would dare to wed a young woman deflowered by the Son of Heaven? Why did I not marry her sooner? Is this a divine punishment for failing to observe abstinence as a widow?”
Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she went on: “Majesty, I beg you, as my daughter’s body is sullied, send her to a monastery, exile her far from the capital. As a nun, she will learn to pray for her future life, and Buddha will forgive her for her impurity.”
As I gave her no reply, she insisted: “Children come into the world to ensure the continuation of the lineage. They grow up to fulfill their filial duties toward their parents. Why does this she-devil want to rob me of the dearest thing I have in the world? Why did I give birth to my own rival in love? Majesty, I offer you her life. Please apply the laws of the clan to her: the death sentence for those who dishonor us!”
I repressed my pity and announced icily: “Good lady, you are jealous. Is that a sentiment worthy of your rank? Did you think the Emperor belonged to you alone, that his favor would last forever?”
Purity’s face twisted with pain.
“Majesty, have you forgotten the suffering you endured when the two commoners were alive? Have you never wanted to have the Emperor to yourself for one day, for one month, for life? I have not allowed any other woman touch him but you. For all these years, I have fought for him to be ours alone, and now my own daughter challenges me. When I close my eyes, I can see the longing in their eyes; I hear the Son of Heaven whispering tender words; I imagine his expression when he is holding her in his arms. I am an old woman of thirty-seven, while, at fifteen, Harmony is at the height of her beauty. How can I compete with her? Such treachery! Such ingratitude! Such scandal! One of us must die!”
I tried to reason with her: “Good lady, you make me laugh. You who read the Sacred Writings so fervently, you who have been reciting the sutra beside our venerable Mother since childhood, have you still not grasped that the law of impermanence applies to all things? That a man’s heart is far more vulnerable than a pearl of glass and is pervaded by inconstancy? Our sovereign has never loved one particular woman. He is permanently in pursuit of love, excitement, and his own delight. Neither you nor I can confront the whims of his heart; it would be as pointless and pretentious as trying to stop the sun from shining or the moon from waning. We can choose only resignation.”
“I would rather die.”
I hardened my tone still further: “Good lady, you have been raised to the first imperial rank. You are treated in a way worthy of a princess by blood. You owe all that to His Majesty. We are both on a downward spiral: We will never again be as fresh as we once were; we will not be able to keep a man for long when he thirsts for new beauty. Be grateful that his favor is staying in the family, that it is not some scheming outsider who would fight me for the title of Empress. Never forget how my deposed rivals Wang and Xiao ended their days. We too could fall like them.”
Purity opened her eyes wide with horror, then threw her hands over her face. She let out a rasping sob.
“I see now!” she cried. “A few years ago you pushed me into the sovereign’s arms so that I could keep him in your bed. Now you think I am old and tired, so you looked for a young girl who could act as bait for you and you chose Harmony! You can think only of holding on to your power!”
“Good lady, you have gone mad,” I said, leaping to my feet. “For all these years, I have never thought of my own happiness! I have struggled and upheld our family’s dignity, and I have worked for the prosperity of the Empire. Everything I have endured has been turned into the beautiful silks you wear and the sumptuous palace in which you live. There is not one thread, not one grain, not one crumb of your gilded existence that you do not owe to my hard work. Now you can meditate on that—I am leaving.”
Elder Sister threw herself at me and blocked my path with her body. She tore open her dress, and her breasts sprang out.
“Look, Majesty, I’m not yet ugly. I have no lines on my face or my breasts. I rub my groin with powders of pearl every day; it is still soft enough to accommodate the divine member. Majesty, give me back your Little Phoenix. I swear I shall satisfy his every desire. I will be grateful to you even into the next life!”
Elder Sister’s sobs rang out, echoing back to us through the deserted halls so that they sounded like the howls of some desperate animal. I sighed and left her to her pain.
When the Emperor came home from his hunting trip at twilight, he ran to my room.
“Heavenlight,” he said, watching my face closely, “I have heard that the Lady of the Kingdom of Han was angry and that you have had Harmony locked up. Why?”
I was saddened by Elder Sister’s selfishness and heartbroken at my husband’s frivolity, and I resented Harmony for upsetting the equilibrium that I had established in the Inner Palace.
My silence frightened the sovereign. He took my hands.
“For all these years,” he said, “I have had only you in my heart. The other women are just so much dust, butterflies for a day. You, though, are a tree that has taken root in my flesh.”
His tender words did nothing to move me. My husband used sweet caressing words like these to manipulate women’s hearts.
“The Lady of the Kingdom of Han is becoming unbalanced,” he admitted. “She spies on me and makes scenes. She cries all night and makes my life dark and sinister. If she were not your sister, I would have withdrawn her title and sent her to the Cold Palace.”
“The Lady of the Kingdom of Han has served His Majesty with devotion,” I said with a note of irony. “Have you forgotten the days of happiness so quickly?”
“I no longer desire her. I am tired of her fits of jealousy. I don’t want to make love with a bundle of tears. Do you understand that?”
“Is that a good reason to show an interest in Harmony? Now that you have done the rounds of the women in my clan, have you thought of what lies in store for them in their future?”
The Emperor flushed scarlet.
“I never think about that sort of thing,” he stammered, “because you are there to help me resolve all my problems. I have even entrusted my government and my empire to you. She’s very like you, the girl. So wild…so ardent! My sweet Heavenlight, life is short, and Harmony is my one last desire. Let me have her, and in return you shall have more honor than any empress has ever had!”
“Your Majesty has been suffering from violent migraines for some time,” I said in a gentler voice. “Your treatment requires a period of abstinence. Is this the time to be abandoning yourself to excesses?”
“My impatience to hold Harmony in my arms does me more harm than anything else. Please arrange this for me, please.”
“Your Majesty has already fathered seven princes, enough to ensure the continuity of his dynasty. Like all the women in the gynaeceum, Harmony must undergo treatment to stop her bearing children.”
The Emperor drew me into his arms.
“Do as you please. You are the Mistress of the Palace!”
Harmony had refused her meal in the pavilion where she was locked up. When my serving women opened the door and lit the candles, she turned to look at me; she looked disheveled but showed no hint of remorse. It was as if she had lost all the heedless joy of childhood in one night. Her drawn features and her dark expression were those of a woman consumed by hatred.
With her forehead on the ground, she said, “Majesty, send me to a monastery or to the Cold Palace, condemn me to death, I would have no regrets. My body already belongs to the Son of Heaven. I am happy to offer him my life.”
Harmony’s impetuousness reminded me of my own. I had experienced this same voluptuous suffering, this heroic sadness, but I had lost my innocence: I no longer believed in that ridiculous word—love.
I ordered the young girl to look up. I looked her right in the eye and said: “I shall spare your life because you are the daughter of the Lady of the Kingdom of Han, my beloved sister, and because the Lady of the Kingdom of Dai, my venerable mother, would die of grief if you left this sullied Earth before she did. You are fifteen. The path of life before you is long. Today I am giving you a choice: Either I arrange to find you a good marriage and you shall have a husband and children, or I shall offer you a palace in the Inner Court. But you should know that, like your mother’s, your liaison with His Majesty will never be official. You will remain the Empress’s niece. Your body will never be touched by mortal men again; you will never have children.”
Harmony prostrated herself three times. “Who am I to make such a decision?” she said darkly. “My fate depends on the sovereign’s wishes. If he prefers my mother, I should kill myself straight away.”
Instead of expressing her gratitude, she was defying my authority. And yet I felt no anger. I had become a spectator to all their insanities in the name of love.
ELDER SISTER BEGAN to wither.
On a ruling from the sovereign, Harmony received the title of Lady of the Kingdom of Wei and was raised to the first imperial rank. This august favor granted her a magnificence that no other princess could hope to rival. A lake was dug in the grounds of her residence to the south of the Imperial City. The excavated earth was used to create hills topped with pavilions several floors high overlooking the Capital. It was in the center of this body of clear water, in the endless meadows of lotuses and water lilies, that the favorite received the Emperor and his retinue. Their boats glided through the mist with musicians at the prow playing the latest melodies and dancing girls on the bridge twirling their long sleeves. Acrobats spun in the air at the top of the masts and created shapes together with extraordinary virtuosity.
The Lady of the Kingdom of Wei also owned several pavilions within the walls of the Forbidden City. She came and went between the two palaces on a Persian horse branded with the imperial iron. Dressed as a man, preceded by eunuchs and a detachment of guards, and followed by young girls dressed as pages, she would gallop through the avenues of Long Peace raising clouds of dust.
Mother and daughter no longer spoke to each other. They were rivals in love and murderously jealous of each other. When Purity received a piece of jewelry, Harmony would demand one twice as valuable. When His Majesty, consumed with nostalgia, furtively visited the mother for a cup of tea, the daughter would immediately be informed by her spies and would send word that she was dying of some strange illness. Horrified, the Emperor would leap up, and Purity would throw herself at his feet and soak the bottom of his tunic with her bitter tears. The sovereign would have to tear himself from her embraces with a broken heart and an aching soul.
The mother aged as the daughter blossomed. The august visits to Purity’s palace became less frequent and then stopped. The sovereign no longer summoned Elder Sister to his banquets for fear that the two women might argue. The favorite’s arrogance irritated me, but I held my anger in check. The fragile harmony within the gynaeceum depended on the calm and generosity of its Empress, and I pretended to know nothing of the turbulence amongst its capricious younger members.
Elder Sister followed me everywhere with her weeping. She was deaf to my reasoning and went around in circles of her own despair. I eventually tired of her miserable monologues; there were affairs of State calling for my attention: Famine and epidemics were ravaging the south. I turned away from my sister’s unhappiness in love and devoted myself to my people’s suffering.
In our Inner Palace, which was the size of an entire town, it was easy to melt into the labyrinth of passageways and to disappear in the tangle of gardens. Elder Sister was still alive, but she was already a ghost. My people informed me that her terrible sorrow had made her lose weight. She now refused to leave her palace for fear that people would make fun of her thin, wasted frame. The turmoil in the Court settled. Harmony was growing more charming; her laughter brightened our ageing pavilions. The household became accustomed to Elder Sister’s absence. They forgot her.
One evening when I summoned Elder Sister to my room to gossip with her, I was informed that she had not been living in the Forbidden City for three months. She had gone back to her property. I sent eunuchs to give her dishes served at my table, and they came back to tell me that the Lady of the Kingdom of Han was confined to bed. She was taking a drug that made her forget her heartbreak; she was living a half life, barely awake. I sent her a letter talking to her of life’s simple pleasures, of my affection for her, and of the future. I begged her to get up and come back to my side. I promised I would find men who would cherish her without the sovereign knowing. She replied only once to my countless letters. Her words quavered across paper white as a shroud: “Loving just once is enough for me.”
In the first year of the age of Dazzling Prosperity, on the first day of the seventh moon, I was informed that Elder Sister was dying. I rushed the imperial doctors to her bedside, and, at nightfall, their messengers knocked at the doors to my palace: The previous evening the Lady of the Kingdom of Han had taken a mortal poison. She had just exhaled her last breath.
An icy chill swept over me. I remembered the pale, ravishing child reading by candlelight. I remembered the scene when, dressed like a goddess, she had set off for a distant land to wed her destiny. My life was a tree that had spread too wide and robbed my sisters of light. They had both been like fragile flowers uprooted by a storm and laid at the foot of my altar.
THE EMPEROR WEPT over Purity’s death and called for an imperial funeral. He raised Mother to the position of Lady of the Kingdom of Rong and granted her the ultimate privilege of coming into the Palace on a litter. I adopted Purity’s son and named him as heir to my late father. To the detriment of my brothers’ children, when Intelligence was twenty years old, he inherited the title and the revenue of the Great Lord of the Kingdom of Zhou, he became the principal officiating priest in the worship of the Wu ancestors, and he took on his duties at Court.
The generous offerings and elaborate ceremonies devoted to the deceased did nothing to heal my
sorrow. I could not shake off a feeling of guilt. To cut short this pointless grief, I gave orders to close the residences that had belonged to the Lady of the Kingdom of Han.
But her death had thrown the shadow of doubt over my life. Instead of accepting the changing of the seasons, the loss of her happiness and the decline in her beauty, Purity had rebelled against the laws of nature. The demon she had fought had been nothing other than an obsessive desire to make time stand still. Mutilating herself and destroying herself were her ways of refusing inevitable failure. There was a nobility and veracity in that desperate gesture that constantly troubled me.
I felt I was growing old, floating. Everything pitted an Empress nearing forty against a young favorite: The beauty treatments and the beneficial effects of medicine that were a constraint and a necessity to the first were a distraction and a waste to the second. Specialists had started to treat my failing kidneys, my slackening intestines, and my back damaged by the weight of my headdresses. The eunuch masseurs ran their vigorous hands over my face to smooth my wrinkles; they rubbed my breasts, pulled my stomach, and twisted my buttocks to firm up the muscles. All these manipulations convinced me that this body, which had brought four children into the world, would soon be a wasteland.
In the sixth moon of the second year of the Breath of the Dragon, I brought a chubby pink boy into the world. His laughter and tears gave me new confidence. I called him Miracle. Let him drive the demons from my life and fill my horizons with his golden beams of light!
The blissful happiness of this event devastated Harmony. Now over twenty, the very noble Lady of the Kingdom of Wei could not escape the torments that ambush women at particular points in their lives: All the pride of youth was also a fear of decrepitude. To keep the sovereign’s favor for any length of time, she felt she must have a child.