The Pavilion of Forgotten Concubines
Page 5
What can I say? In His unfathomable wisdom His Majesty demands of His humble servant that she rely on her strength alone, without honouring two men to whom honour is due. And I swear by the Throne I shall fulfil this task to the best of my abilities.
May I humbly ask for one favour?
Although I am loath to let His Majesty wait as He appeals to my literary prowess, haste has hitherto garnered nothing but the Court’s displeasure. Your unworthy servant therefore cherishes hopes that a postponement of ten days will be granted to her.
Memorial 893.17
Heshen, on behalf of the Qianlong Emperor,
To Chun Xian, favourite of the late Yongzheng Emperor
Old Venerable Second Concubine Chun Xian, favourite of the Emperor’s deceased father! Heshen, on behalf of the Emperor of the glorious Qianlong era, salutes you! We feel deeply committed to your venerable person; the entire Court is sending up prayers to Heaven for your sake; all fear for your health.
You must realize what prompts these prayers. For some time now, there has been an obnoxious intriguer among your ranks, one who vexes the Court with immoderate requests; not even corporal punishment seems to quiet her down. Recently, she added a demand for postponement to her pile of missives: conveyed, indeed, as an average request, yet dwarfed by the long-winded prose pieces to which she is prone. The day has come that we, given your years and frail constitution, must consider culprit Cao’s transfer to a place compared to which the Pavilion will stand out as a pleasure-garden. We hope it will be unnecessary and we trust you will correct Cao Baoqin, in a punitive manner if so required; you are to restore peace and order in your pavilion.
In return, we will ensure that you and your concubines lack for nothing: each and every need will be met, provided you acquit yourself of the aforesaid task. If you fail to do so, the Court shall take such measures as it sees fit.
Lady Chun Xian,
Second Concubine of
The late Yongzheng Emperor,
To the Son of Heaven
Hongli! Yes, Emperor, I call You by the name Your mother as well as Your nurse used to scold You. I, for my part, wish they had done so more often! As Your father’s last living concubine, and only six years older than You are Yourself, I have every right to call You by Your boy’s name, the more so since You leave matters of State to others and forsake Your duty. The other day I received a threat from Your confidant, maintaining the pretence that the caning of Lady Cao was willed by You. This kind of usurpation has been going on for too long, Hongli! Henceforth, I wish to receive no additional missives from that man, and I shall now make use of my prerogative to tell my Emperor-boy the truth.
This truth—need it be emphasized?—is far from pretty.
Yes, Your father was a tyrant. You, however, have become a braggart and a beggar as well. Your unbridled conduct inflicts more suffering on Your subjects than Your begetter’s harshness ever did. True, the Yongzheng Emperor committed murders and had murders committed before he could ascend the Throne. What of it? Had he not done his share of slaying, rivals would have slain him. Besides, his brutalities were confined to this tiny circle of princes and their families. His enemies were deprived of their worldly goods, to be sure, and their fate was pitiable, but with the revenues that he (indeed illegally) obtained, he could exonerate impoverished subjects from the burden of tribute and taxation that filled the coffers of corrupt courtiers. In a way, properties and funds flowed back to their rightful owners. Many a peasant who was reduced to mendicancy by floods, bandits, and brutes masquerading as authorities received benign treatment from the Emperor whom more than one official in the Imperial Censorate vilified as the cruellest Ruler the dynasty has ever known.
Yours is a world turned upside down. Dignitaries, courtiers, and princes no longer kill each other off; instead they conspire to accrue privileges as well as riches, amassed by crippling taxes. You, in turn, decree nominal exemptions, in order to curry favour with the populace!
Oh Hongli! You know who instigated these evils: he who lets You rot in Your vacuous life; he who clouds Your soul with opium and corrupts Your taste by recruiting catamites in the Peking streets, whose falsettos soil the Imperial Theatre to this day—none other than Grand Councillor Heshen! Recently, Your First Concubine paid us a visit, something to which she stoops only when in dire distress. So despairing was Her Ladyship that she even claimed to envy us, inmates of this pavilion, and she’s right to feel so. Under deep layers of oblivion we conduct our lives as we see fit. Who would care to bother us? In contrast, those who serve You day and night are to satisfy Your slightest whim; duty becomes an ordeal as Your appreciation for their charms wanes over time. Yes, yes, ruling an empire is a burden—I heard Your father complain about that often enough. And though I approach (as I hope but doubt You recall) my ninetieth birthday, my wit has not forsaken me. I know what goes on in the palaces, Hongli; I am aware of each and every detail!
Do not misunderstand me: Your exalted position entitles You to all imaginable and unimaginable delights under the sun. But under no circumstance may a ruler’s burden be a pretext to abandon himself to idle fatuity and to leave the issuing of memoranda—letters, as the Grand Councillor mistakenly calls them—to third parties. That You should despair amazes me not. Your gloom is engendered by him who pretends to be Your loyal, nay Your only friend! Have You forgotten Your father’s and grandfather’s lessons? Emperors have subjects. They have Councillors. Scholars, painters, poets, actors, and cooks. Eunuchs, servants, courtiers. Concubines. Catamites, if need be, whipping withered desires back to life.
But no friends, let alone loyal ones.
Forgive me, Son of Heaven, that I feel pressed to reprimand You as if You were a child, even if my offense is nothing next to the negligence on Your part! I am sure You are startled by my stern language. But then harsh words are deserved, if not overdue! They will reach You through my personal body servant, sealed.
You need to know that our pavilion is no longer burdened by envy, born out of despair since time immemorial. Hostilities are now abated for mutual aid; old feuds inspire us no longer; toxic thoughts have subsided. Instead of languishing on sofas, we entertain ourselves with Go-competitions, with song and dance and tales of childhood; we laugh at past sins and happily weep for lost loves…
Oh Majesty! Heshen may complain about the intriguer under my supervision all he likes, but let me tell You one thing. Since interpreter Cao Baoqin took up residence with us, it is You who stand in need of pity, not I! Ever since Your friend began providing for all Your needs, You have become the loneliest man under Heaven.
The other day Your Grand Councillor had a chest with silver coins carried into our quarters: is Your Majesty aware of these proceedings?
‘Lady Chun! Spend these one hundred thousand taels to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Emperor’s Reign. Shower him with gifts.’ Thus he addressed my person, like a petty warlord barking at his troops.
I wasn’t in the least impressed. ‘You’re half a year early! Only next winter will it be sixty years ago since our Emperor ascended to the throne, Heshen.’
‘That will give you time to prepare.’
Even his words are corpulent these days. ‘We do not need that sort of time,’ I ventured to remark. ‘Besides, I suggest you hand the money back to those from whom it was stolen.’
Cheeky, coming from Your old aunt, was it not, boy? But Heshen’s gesture reeks of accounting trickery, as I’m sure You’ll agree. I hope the stench entering my nostrils was imagined, yet it is hard to banish notions of fraud. Oh Hongli, don’t I know You inside out? Already I sense Your thought. It is she. You too cling to the delusion that it is the ‘schemer’ or ‘intriguer’ who is ill-disposed towards You. One half of You wouldn’t regret it if Cao Baoqin had indeed been scheming to undermine the foundations of Your rule, as do White Lotus in the Mars
hes and those triads in Formosa or Fuzhou. Things would be conveniently simple: You would have Lady Cao beheaded by Imperial Decree—a course of action which I wouldn’t recommend under present circumstances. Lady Cao is famous in the hutongs and alleyways of Peking, and beyond the capital as well. And soon her name will be on people’s lips all over China! Street-jugglers sing her praises; loiterers laud her dexterity of mind; the latest operas glorify her mature graces, albeit not under the name she received at birth. Informants tell me a printing firm in Macao amassed millions of taels with Dream of the Red Chamber. And through unfathomable venues, the untold multitudes now know that the ‘intriguer’ Cao Baoqin was stashed away in a sinister pavilion by Heshen, the country’s executioner! All China knows, my boy: it knows Lady Cao is none other than Lin Daiyu, the Dream’s heroine! If not for the lapsed attention of Your agents and Heshen’s henchmen, the Dream would have been fed to the flames as soon as its printed version was born. Of course, You may as yet decide to burn the novel, but it will be to no avail. Wield the flail of censorship as much as You like; Your subjects’ minds are free and their thoughts swarm like crows across China.
You are pathetic, Hongli, and I should know. Until recently I too inhabited the limbo wherein You currently linger. Believe me, boy, I was no better than You! Heart soaked in acid, stomach teeming with the vilest of juices, soul immersed in poisonous resentment. I hated happiness, as it had forsaken me; I sought oblivion in evil intrigue, and my mind was clouded by fumes of envy and slander, more toxic than opium-smoke. I loathed my fellow sufferers as I suffered likewise; I detested their petty schemes knowing that they hated me for that same reason, shackled as we were in mirrored aversion. Daily we were startled by sorrows we daily diluted with fear.
No longer: we concubines shook off our fetters! And we owe this relief, as we owe everything, to the intriguer. It was Cao Baoqin who roused me, roused us all, from slumber, from numbness tying us to misery, year after endless year. For the first time in history, our pavilion witnesses a resurgence of hope; and for this we have to thank Baoqin, and Baoqin alone.
When Lady Cao—Lin Daiyu!—arrived, she was no longer the youngest of women. If she had lost sight of her advancing age, we were too willing to wake the Ladyship from her lofty dreams. Subtly and not so subtly, we told her to abandon hope. Like all of us, she would die forgotten; any favourable verdict she hoped for was never to be delivered; anyone ending up here is erased from the Book of Names. All this we told her upon arrival. Yet while cajoling her, our tone altered; our glee ricocheted on her pride and rebounded on ourselves; Daiyu’s tears reflected our pitiful state. In reality, we were begging her to become contemptible,as we were ourselves; her radiant spirit was more than we could take. And because she never hated us, we were shamed by our own hatred. All went quiet in the pavilion. Gossip lost its meaning, malice missed its target, our poisonous tongues lay numb in the hollow of our mouths. And while we were consumed with shame, the ‘schemer’ rolled out a sheet of paper, put weights on its corners, and quietly started preparing her ink-stone.
She began to write. Composedly, she painted her characters in neat vertical rows. We were petrified. Immobilized by her perfection, I had a mind to rise from my seat, walk over to the haughty newcomer, and throttle her with my arthritic fingers, in front of all those discarded concubines who were swooning at her elegance.
Then she looked up. She said something—to me!
‘Won’t you learn my crime, dear Lady Chun?’
Her gaze disarmed me; her question restored me to dignity. With these few words, Cao Baoqin brought back an order in which sympathy regained its proper place; the mere idea that she had committed a crime, could commit a crime, and accused herself of one, was heart-rending. ‘We do not know you,’ I said with a tight throat. ‘But what we see of you belies your words. You do not look like one who would commit a crime.’
‘But I am writing a novel!’ Her words resounded in the dim hall. Uncomprehending, we stared at her. And mimicking Heshen’s coarse voice and mien, she added: ‘A woman should write poetry; prose is for men.’
In all sixty years that I have resided in this Pavilion, Hongli, I never heard its ceiling resound with such laughter. We laughed until we were breathless. Lady Cao, however, just stared at me, like a precocious child. She expected serious answers, I assume, especially from me. And while still choking with laughter, I burst into tears, as old as I was.
‘Fashions come and go, Baoqin,’ I said when I had regained my composure. ‘Even the Censorate is subject to the vagaries of whim. When I was young, it was the writing of poetry that condemned women; my sister can tell you all about it. Could have told you, rather; she died two years ago.’
The intriguer expressed hopes that the poetess had received a proper burial.
‘I had no permission to attend,’ I replied truthfully. ‘And I do not know that she came to her end in a natural way.’
I do not mention this to rake up grievances, Hongli; it was not Your wish to keep me away from that ceremony of mourning and last farewells. It must have been Your First Concubine who whispered it in Your ear, for she realised that even a burial would not deter me from speaking the truth. In my funeral oration over my sister’s grave, I would have encouraged First Concubine to take issue with Your inertia as well as Heshen’s whim, and she would not be grateful to me. And although I was bereft of this opportunity, said Lady still holds a grudge against me, because she knows that I know that she obliges Heshen in matters great and small; by doing so, she could stay aloof from the Pavilion of Forgotten Concubines and continue to scatter favours among her admirers without any unpleasantness—admirers of her jewellery to be sure; but then First Concubine has never been above seeking the short-lived attentions of males, has she?
Yes Hongli, I know everything. I even know First Consort slips money in Your trusted friend’s pocket to hush up illicit romance.
Your Majesty! I didn’t refuse Heshen’s money out of modesty! But an Emperor deserves better gifts than those obtained by extortion. I cannot add one day to Your life-span, of which the end is drawing near; but I can help You conclude it in a worthy manner. So in order to put a stop to Your depravity, I will offer You four simple guidelines, corresponding to the seasons, the phases of the moon, and the four winds: let this be our pavilion’s gift to Your Majesty, in honour of Your sixtieth anniversary as a Ruler—a gift worth more than all the taels in the world. For brevity’s sake, I will dispense these guidelines in the form of decrees.
1. At the end of the sixtieth year of Your Reign, You shall abdicate, thus honouring Your vow to Your grandfather the Kangxi Emperor that He would enter the annals as the longest-ruling monarch of the Qing Dynasty.
2. You will grace Your abdication by restoring descendants and relatives of author Xueqin to the dignities Your Imperial Father took from the Cao clan. This redress of justice will be crowned by an uncensored and Court-funded publication of Dream of the Red Chamber, that literary gem written during Your Reign. Even the simplest of lantern riddles in it surpasses Your poems in craft and beauty.
3. You will acquit Cao Baoqin, also known as ‘Lin Daiyu’, of her alleged negligence as an interpreter, for she is truly innocent.
4. You are to set up embassies for foreign envoys in order to foster trade and the free exchange of goods, ideas, art, and scholarship with sea-faring nations by facilitating the establishment of appropriate channels.
Your Majesty! If You truly take Your Own happiness, as well as the happiness of China, to heart, You will accept my humble words of wisdom as precious gifts. But if You persist in Your erroneous ways, You may as well put me to death, for then You will find in this missive nothing but slander.
Hongli, my boy, You have gravely offended the ancestors. Break with Your pernicious habits! Only then will You regain their favour, as well as the devotion of Your oppressed, extorted subjects.
Urgent (n
o number)
The Emperor
To Heshen
Ten days have passed since Lady Cao has asked for postponement. Our sources reveal she completed her plea in time. Heshen! Why do you hide it from the Emperor’s eye? Such wanton conduct is most unworthy of a Grand Councillor.
You shall rush to the Imperial Chancellery, taking Lady Cao’s last request with you. There, face to face with Grand Council members convening at present, you are to read it aloud, neither modifying nor omitting one word!
Interrupt whatever you are doing and obey Our command—now!
Lady Cao,
To the Son of Heaven
In reply to Imperial Letter No. 000.100111.011
Under seal 197112
Oh Majesty! All I ask is that justice be done. This request—my last!—will reach You through a messenger of Old Concubine Chun Xian, the one-time favourite of the late Yongzheng Emperor and the only one of Your father’s concubines still alive; I consider her my mistress. Lady Chun is the one who exhorts me to write this. Even though I fear the outcome, she is convinced of my innocence.
Far be it from me to abuse her name in my interest. I merely mention the Honourable Lady because it was she who exposed ‘Letter 000.100111.01 under seal 197112’ as false. The imprint of the imperial seal proved to be a ruse. The perpetrator was too careless: according to palatial parlance, no such things as ‘letters’ circulate in the Forbidden City: official messages should be labelled ‘Edict’ or ‘Memorial’ or ‘Missive’ or ‘Decree’. So if it is a ‘letter’ that informs us of the Court’s displeasure, it cannot possibly stem from Your Majesty Himself.