My periods had stopped.
The moon waxed and waned in vain. The crimson tide had run dry.
In this lowly world, women are the ocean’s pearls, their brilliance derived from the stain of their flesh. The blood had been the thread linking me to an underground world where a grim labyrinth twisted around a perpetual furnace. It had been the source of all my energy.
As Supreme Empress I had to conceal my failing, but the changes in my mood did not escape my old servant Emerald. One evening she forced me to accept a visit from a woman doctor, an austere creature who wore a man’s hat. After a brief examination the doctor prostrated herself and congratulated me: My divine body had returned to its original state. The serenity accorded me by my resting senses would allow me to achieve immortality at last. I did not like the term “resting,” and I interrupted her croaking pronouncements with a desultory wave. None of these women who officiated in the palace had known the violence of a phallus or the seismic upheavals of childbirth; virginity had made diaphanous creatures of them. A tree emptied of its sap loses its leaves and dries out. Stripped of my womanly barbarity, it was as if I were dead. The gods were imposing a virtuous widowhood on me, and I accepted their censure. The pleasures of the flesh no longer interested me. Carnal gratification would be the sacrifice I made to the heavens.
My duties running the Empire came to the fore again. Once again I was the weaver before her loom, unraveling inextricable threads. During the day, surrounded by ministers and generals, I forgot my age, my weariness, and the absence of a man to listen to me and support me. In the evening, sitting before my mirror in the Inner Court, I watched as my women dismantled my topknot, my pride, and my deceptive youth. Servants smoothed little squares of dampened silk over my face, and the white powders and red makeup melted away. I had to contemplate my bare skin and the wrinkles that had begun to knit their mesh in the corners of my eyes and lips. There in the candlelight, the mirror invited me to step into the abyss. I pictured Little Phoenix young and beautiful, his eyes brimming with desire. Then an aloof young woman appeared behind him, laughing, teasing him, and then drawing him up onto her horse. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, they disappeared into the dark night of my memory.
Without Little Phoenix, his migraines, and his turbulent emotions, the Inner Court felt empty. In that huge garden that seemed to have been deserted by human beings, every tree whispered, every piece of furniture spoke, every window exhaled a perfume that reawakened snatches of the past. I slept alone and was tormented by insomnia. I would wake Gentleness and order her to walk before me, carrying a lantern. As I arrived in each successive pavilion, the women who kept watch at night prostrated themselves and held open the doors. The rooms I dared not venture into by day were fully lit. Here a zither he had caressed; over there, in front of the aquarium, I could still hear his childlike laugh; here, beneath this window, we once argued; over there, his calligraphy brushes and inkpots-his books still lying open. Sometimes Little Phoenix seemed to walk so close to me, whispering words of love; sometimes I would lose him behind a painted balustrade, as I turned along one of the galleries. He always eventually disappeared into the bushes, into infinity. Sometimes I would even ask for the door to the stables to be opened. When they saw me, his horses would stamp and snort with joy. I would put my arms around his favorite mount, Song of Snow, who would stare at me with sad, steady eyes. I would bury my head in that fine mane and weep.
The shadows had taken Little Phoenix, my father, my mother, my sisters, my niece, and my rivals. For the time being, I had learned to forget my body, which was “resting.” I grew accustomed to the lofty height of the throne on which I now sat alone. Alone, I manipulated the pawns on the vast chessboard of an empire orphaned by its master. I was nothing more than a mind, a mind contemplating the world below with chilled compassion.
POLITICAL AFFAIRS KEPT me breathing. I extended the time I dedicated to my work on into the evening to avoid my palace, my prison, my tomb.
The transition in reigns was an opportunity for plots to be revealed, for hidden ambitions to betray themselves. These little problems that needed resolving distracted me and occupied my solitude.
One night, a strange dream disturbed me. Someone was scratching at the door to my pavilion. As there seemed to be no servant on duty, I went to open the door myself. It was dark outside, and there was a little boy standing on the steps. A man! Who had let him into the gynaeceum where all males were forbidden? The child held up both his hands, holding a tiny box. “Could you give me some salt? Please?” Behind me, the room was deserted. In front of me, beyond the threshold, the dark rooftops of the Imperial City spread out to infinity. The wind blew, and I was gripped by an uncontrollable fear. Was he a professional killer, a hired assassin? And yet I could not find the resolve to close the door on him. Perhaps he needed my help? How could I refuse him a few grains of salt? I shook with fear, but in that agonizing moment of hesitation, I decided, in spite of myself, to let him in. As the stranger stepped over the threshold, my fear suddenly dissolved, and I woke feeling amazed and happy.
I confided this dream to the Princess of Gold, the youngest daughter of Emperor Lordly Ancestor, and my friend for thirty years. The princess thought for a while and then smiled at me mischievously: “Does your Supreme Majesty not think that salt gives food its taste? When there is no salt, life is bland and flavorless!”
I could not help myself sighing. In my dream, it had not in fact been a little boy asking for salt, but I, Supreme Empress, begging for the savor of life! The previous sovereign had given me back my freedom. Whatever I wished was now granted. In all of China, I had no other master but myself; I had become my own jailor, and I was my own prisoner.
My distress did not go unnoticed by the princess. She went on: “For a year now, Your Supreme Majesty has worked day and night. She receives me little, but I know she is hiding her sorrow from me, and only keeps going because she has a will of iron. Has she considered that every human body is a fragile organism and that, by accumulating too much melancholy, by neglecting the need for relaxation, it will eventually be exhausted and may suddenly succumb to some fatal illness? It seems that Your Majesty’s body has entered into the age of rest. I can, therefore, offer a remedy that will disperse your sadness and fortify your health!”
Intrigued, I asked her what it was.
“Supreme Majesty,” she said, blinking slowly, “the yin element must be mixed with the yang element, and the combined force of these two primordial energies creates the seasons, makes the flowers bloom, raises up the wind, and brings forth the rain. Even though Your Supreme Majesty’s soul is as virile as a warrior’s, your body remains that of a woman. Since our Celestial Sovereign was called to the heavens, the dark exhalations of yin have accumulated in your organs. The weight of them darkens your mood, causes gloominess, diminishes your strength, and beckons old age! Majesty, your servant has in her possession a remedy full of the power of the sun, the remedy you so need. It will recapture forever the freshness of your features, the suppleness in your limbs, and the elation in your spirit!”
Her charlatanism made me smile: the Princess of Gold-a great bulky woman who was impossible to age-was a constant whirlwind of celebrations and pleasure. Born into a jade cradle, raised in the closed universe of the Imperial Court, she maintained a constant battle against the extinction of desire that threatens all such high-born creatures. Strangely, I who loved sobriety, exactitude, and profundity, had become fond of her guileless eagerness, her desperate frivolity, and her debauched escapades that overflowed with joy and tears.
“Come then, princess, do not toy with my impatience, make out the prescription!”
She waved her painted silk fan and breathed these words: “It is late now. I shall go home and find the formula. May Your Majesty reserve the night of the next full moon for me, I shall return with my medication!
WHEN THE NIGHT of the full moon came, I dined with the Princess of Gold. She became a little drunk and told me stories that would have caused any respectable woman to blush: princesses and their passing fancies for officers of the guard, princes and their attachments to their pages. She laughed as she related all these fatal encounters, all these terrible separations that had torn apart those silken hearts.
It was only after dinner-when, weary of listening to her and of laughing idiotically, I decided to go to bed-that she followed me into my bedroom, helped me to undress, and insisted once more on the excellence of her remedy. I ordered her to show me these magic pills. She smiled mysteriously and asked that the servants withdrew. Then she blew out the candles, and she too slipped away, taking Gentleness by the hand.
I waited on my bed, with my head lying along my arm. In accordance with my instructions, the blinds were left raised every night of the full moon. Outside, the celestial mirror projected the motionless shadows of the bamboos and the millennial cypress trees onto my windows. A long time passed before anyone came in. I called for Emerald and Ruby, but neither of them answered. Suddenly I heard the rustle of a dress, and the door was drawn aside. A tall, unfamiliar silhouette appeared. I thought she must be one of the princess’s attendants, and she did in fact raise the bed curtain and give me a cup of sweetened infusion. Then she whispered very quietly that she was to massage me to stimulate the effects of the medicine.
I lay full length on my front. Two strong hands applied slow pressure to the acupuncture points at the nape of my neck. They slid into my hair and rubbed my head, wearied from the constant wigs and golden hair pins. Then they moved down over my shoulders and settled on my spine. The fingers were supple and charged with pleasing energies; wherever they applied pressure, my muscles were eased, and a life-giving warmth spread through my body. I was overcome by a hazy sleepiness and a sense of exaltation. I suspected that the masseuse was herself part of the magic remedy the princess had given me: She was not like any of those I already had. Her palms were wide and vigorous, and they relaxed me while at the same time reawakening ardors that had been extinguished since my husband’s death.
Further down, after she had anointed my thighs with fragrant oil, the stranger’s manipulations became more equivocal. Her hands glided over my buttocks, sometimes sliding delicately off course. The silent language of her fingers made my blood seethe within me. I encouraged her by spreading my legs slightly. Her middle fingers plunged into the core of me and grew bolder. My prolonged abstinence had made me all the more sensitive, and her caresses provoked quivers that rippled through me. The stranger was an expert. She overcame my nervous agitation and steered me to the first pleasurable climax with great precision. Slowly, she turned me onto my back and took my face in her hands. As she rubbed my cheeks, my eyes, my forehead, and my ear-lobes, she made me blaze with desire. I rose up abruptly and clasped her in my arms. She fell onto me, and I tore her tunic. Her skin smelled of honey and orchids. Her chest was flat and muscled like a man’s, her stomach firm, and I felt an erect phallus.
A man!
A man in my bed, in the bed of the Supreme Empress, widow of the Sovereign Lordly Ancestor!
I leapt up, but he held me in his arms, against his burning member.
“Yes, Supreme Majesty, do not be afraid. I am a man. My name is Little Treasure. I am your remedy. Tomorrow, you will have me beheaded or quartered by chariots. But tonight, let yourself go, allow me to love you.”
I cannot give a reason for my capitulation; it is impossible. I, Empress, sworn to virtue. I, a woman preoccupied with matters of State. I, a warrior who had never removed her armor, I, who considered men to be dust and who conversed with the stars. On that night I betrayed Little Phoenix, for whom my heart still mourned. I allowed myself that one weakness by revealing myself, without shame or regret, to a stranger.
My couplings with the Emperor of China had been a conscientious duty. By the time I was thirty, I had become obsessed with perfection and hygiene. I had had my genitals massaged for fear that they would lose their firm outline. I had abstained from spicy food and had drunk infusions to perfume my breath and my sweat. My body had been anointed with oil of peony and rubbed with cedar bark before being delivered, plucked and powdered, to my husband.
When Little Treasure parted my legs, my genitals were neither combed nor perfumed. I had the same nudity, the same lack of artifice as an ordinary woman. It was nearly twenty years since I had felt a phallus in my belly. The stranger tore me in two. For the first time I let myself neglect the man’s gratification to concentrate on my own pleasure. Little Treasure moved his hips with masterful skill. He listened to my shivers and conducted the music of my sighs. Where had he learned the art of copulation? It mattered little; the following day I would send him to his death.
Suddenly my body began to boil. A scream was torn from my lungs. With great assurance and little effort, the stranger had just delivered me an orgasm, a firework of ten thousand dazzling sparks.
I SPENT A feverish night.
One moment I dreamed that I had tied him up in a sack and thrown him into the river in the grounds; the next I saw him lying poisoned. I was suddenly afraid that I would not wake in time to receive the morning salutation. Then I wondered how I would look my servants in the eye and whether I should have all their eyes gouged out and their tongues cut off.
I woke with a start. In the half light, the stranger was sleeping naked on the crumpled sheets. His bronze skin gleamed. Filled by this giant frame, the bed looked narrow as a cradle. He was very young with a hint of a moustache on his lips. Quite suddenly he opened his eyes and smiled at me.
I had never seen such a happy smile. I was so surprised by it that I forgot my dark thoughts and let him draw me to him. He made love to me again. This time I realized that, in the distant past, Little Phoenix had never granted me such intense pleasure. Unlike my husband, who thought only of his own gratification, the young man guided my body and steered it till it folded on itself, stretched out, and executed contortions. I became his zither, and he made my every string hum, discovering resonances I had not known until then. Dawn was growing lighter. I realized that my muscles were almost intact, that my firm breasts were those of an adolescent. My belly that had brought forth six children had kept its vigorous round outline. Little Treasure’s dark eyes betrayed his furious passion and reflected this flattering truth: I was still beautiful and desirable.
GENTLENESS SCRATCHED AT the door and announced that I was late for the morning salutation.
“The Supreme Empress is unwell,” I replied. “She will not go to the audience. Tell the officials to withdraw and return to their ministries. Tell the Great Ministers to prepare written reports. There will be no meeting today.”
Little Phoenix had often announced this decree while in the grips of a short-lived passion for a young favorite. I remembered finding it irritating, but now how I regretted battering him with my moralizing! For the first time I could appreciate that, beyond the interests of the Empire and my duties as sovereign, I had an obligation to the impetuous demands of my body!
I let my serving women in at midday. They arranged my hair in silence, eyes lowered. I sent Little Treasure to Ruby, who washed him in a side pavilion. He came back wearing a eunuch’s tunic. I made sure he shared my morning meal with me. He devoured it, and his appetite and vulgar manners fascinated me. As he ate, he answered my questions, often simply smiling at me instead of speaking.
As the third son of well-to-do peasants, Little Treasure had been educated by the master scribe in his village. At fourteen he slipped away from home for the first time and tried his luck in the imperial competitions held in the regional academy. In the space of three years, he failed three times, but, as he loitered in the streets, he glimpsed a better world. At eighteen he fled an arranged marriage to a cousin from his village and made his way to Luoyang.
He came to the eastern city that I had just named Sacred Capital and wandered aimlessly with no money or relations to call on. He did have a few contacts, beggars from the same district as himself, who found him precarious work as a porter, a mason, or a swindler. He learned to lie, steal, and defend himself; he shivered under the bridges and was kicked by passers by as he gazed enviously at horses with precious stones in their harnesses and carriages draped in gleaming gold cloth. He was eventually taken on by a Taoist who secretly concocted aphrodisiacs and was entrusted with bamboo boxes carrying precious pills with mysterious ingredients. He walked through the streets improvising cheerful tunes expounding their miraculous effects. In the poorest quarters, he would sell a pill for one sou, claiming it would cure every kind of sexual ill. In the noble districts, he became friends with footmen and lackeys, swapping these so-called contraceptives for things stolen from their masters. These medicines proved curiously effective, and Little Treasure became famous. Wherever he went there was always someone calling to him cheerfully, warm bread waiting for him, cups of tea offered on the pavement, and children running behind him joining in the chorus of his songs. One day a guard who worked for the Princess of Gold asked him whether he knew a good masseur, and Little Treasure recommended himself. He went into the princely palace by the back door and had not set foot in the outside world since.
The princess liked to bring on a dozen or so beautiful young men in the Side Court of her palace. They were bathed, fed, and perfumed, living like parrots in a cage. Eunuchs taught them how to massage their aging mistress, and on Her Highness’s orders, servants offered them their bodies to improve their performance. At night they were summoned in rotation. Occasionally some of them performed services outside the palace-gifts the princess gave to her friends. On her very first night with Little Treasure, she had recognized such exceptional sensuality in him that she set him up in his own pavilion and insisted that he followed a strict diet to purify his skin, hair, intestines, and blood. Apart from the experienced women whom the princess sent to him to widen his knowledge, Little Treasure never laid eyes on anyone. He was dying of hunger and boredom. Then, one evening, someone had called him from his rooms and entrusted him with the sacred mission for which he had been intended.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked him, amazed that a stranger should reveal his shameful past without embarrassment or artifice.
“Because when I opened my eyes this morning, I saw the gleam of a sword in your eyes. You will have me executed; I know you will. I left my village five years ago, and I have done nothing but invent lies ever since. I have not had a single friend I could tell the truth about my life. I will die later today. When I’m dead, I will no longer be ashamed of where I came from or my past! Thank you, Majesty, for listening to me.”
“It’s true, you may well die. Any man who enters the Inner City without my decree is punished with death. But your life has touched me, and I would, therefore, like to give you a chance. You will be castrated, and you will become my eunuch. To ensure that you keep silence about the favor granted to you last night, you will be given a poison that will strike you dumb, but you will be given a position on a par with the fifth imperial rank, and I will allow you to hold my horse’s bridle when I ride out.”
Little Treasure gave a derisory snort: “Supreme Majesty, fortune and rank mean nothing to me if I lose this little tool between my legs, this gift from my ancestors. It is thanks to him that I live and breathe. If he is taken from me, I would waste away. I would rather die straight away!”
I had never heard such vulgar language, and I marveled at it.
“How old are you, my child? Are you not afraid of death?”
“Supreme Majesty, I was born in the deepest darkest corner of the countryside. My life brought me to this palace, and I have loved the most beautiful and noble woman on this earth. I shall never have another night like that. My twenty-fourth year can be my last-I would die with no regrets!”
I liked his reckless attitude. I would not decide on Little Treasure’s fate before the moon was next full. I kept him hidden in my palace like a domesticated animal. Day after day I would come back from the Great Meetings still weighed down with concerns, and I grew accustomed to his enthusiastic greetings and his jubilant chirping that made me forget my busy day. As he gesticulated enthusiastically and told me about what he had done, he revealed a Sacred Capital that I had not known existed: sordid suburbs peopled by lepers and freed slaves converged on plots of wasteland where acrobats, magicians, and monkey-tamers performed. Waterborne gambling clubs and brothels glided along the rivers Luo and Yi. In mid-autumn every year, crowds gathered around the crossroads where executions were carried out. The saber whistled through the air, the head flew off, leaving the body motionless while a stream of crimson blood jetted out of it.
Little Treasure’s voice became more serious when he spoke of his homeland. Then scenes would unfold before my eyes with low houses made of beaten earth, and little boys running through the fields naked. I could smell the sheep and the fragrance of apple blossom. I could hear the bustle of a river and the birdsong at dusk. I forgot my serving women, those cold pale dolls, and my ministers with their fabricated elegance and false virtue. The village of Wu loomed in my memory with its mulberry trees and fields of wheat. I pictured a sturdy, little girl with bronzed skin jumping, singing, and climbing. I felt the sun burning my forehead once again and inhaled the happy smell of wet straw mixed with pig dung.
At the age of sixty, I learned that a man could give me more different kinds of pleasure than a woman. Little Treasure had revealed the wealth of all the senses to me. His inevitable death and my desire to hold him in my arms one last time made my ecstasy all the more intense. My face changed imperceptibly: Roses bloomed in my cheeks once more, ^he____________________ hard edge had gone from my eyes. My ruby-red lips glowed without makeup. Sitting on the throne for the morning salutation, I displayed my metamorphosis unashamedly. My voice had new energy, and my responses came more swiftly. I would sometimes smile for no reason during a political debate, and my embarrassed ministers would lower their eyes and prostrate themselves.
One afternoon, during a concert when Little Treasure was sitting behind me, I noticed that he was secretly stroking Gentleness’s hand. My breast seethed with anger. As a prisoner in the gynaeceum, he could seduce all the youngest, prettiest, and sweetest serving women behind my back. These women who had been cut off from the outside world all dreamed of knowing the pleasure only a man could offer. Who could resist this incorrigible charmer with his tireless member? I was overcome by morbid jealousy. I had never been so determined to have exclusive rights to a body, a skin, a beating heart. Little Treasure was my little dog, my toy. I, the Supreme Empress, was his owner, his goddess, the depository of his life or death. I knocked over the table and dismissed the musicians with one violent gesture. Alerted by my anger, the young man swore he was faithful to me, and Gentleness prostrated herself at my feet, bathing the hem of my gown with her tears. Ruby pleaded her innocence, and I gave full vent to my anger: “You are all accomplices in this crime! Call the doctors! Have every orifice examined! Throw Gentleness into the Cold Palace for one hundred strokes of the stick!”
The Palace guards tied Gentleness up and pulled her out by her hair. With the young girl’s terrified screams still echoing, Little Treasure dragged me forcibly into my bedroom and began massaging me to relax me. He slipped his clothes off in a flash and held me in his arms.
“Supreme Majesty, let me kiss you before I die.”
“I shall have you grilled on a fire; I shall have you flayed by a thousand knives; I shall have you cut in half.”
“Supreme Majesty, don’t scream. Your threats don’t frighten me. There is nothing that can hold me back when I desire a woman. At the moment, it is you that I want.”
As I lay beneath him, I was wracked by violent spasms and crushed by huge burning waves. It suddenly seemed as if it was my husband holding me by the hips. Men’s freedom is their unfaithfulness: the Son of Heaven or the son of a peasant, they could both reduce me to the mediocre torments of a woman.
THE PRINCESS OF Gold informed me that the Outer Court had heard of Gentleness’s disgrace and had learned that there was a man in the gynaeceum.
“Supreme Majesty,” she said, “if you cannot bring yourself to eliminate him, give him back to me, and I shall make him disappear.”
“Princess, this matter is of no concern to you.”
My old governess Emerald had the courage to whisper in my ear: “Supreme Majesty, you cannot keep a man in your rooms for ever. Even if your servant watches night and day over the virtue of the Court ladies, I shall stumble across the inevitable one morning. Lord Little Treasure is twenty-four-he is a bull, and you are shutting him away in a birdcage. Let him go, I beg you.”
“My poor Emerald, if he leaves, he will talk about me to the whole world! I must kill him. But I cannot…”
One of the eunuch officers who oversaw palace protocol wrote to me: “Some time ago the Emperor Eternal Ancestor appreciated the talents of a pipa-player from the Western Kingdom, but it was only once he had been castrated that the sovereign gave him permission to go into the gynaeceum and to teach the Court ladies his divine art. If Little Treasure’s knowledge can be of use to Your Supreme Majesty, your servant asks that he undergoes the procedure of castration before having access to the Inner Court. If not you shall be covered with opprobrium.”
In the end, my daughter Moon, the Princess of Eternal Peace, released me from my predicament: “Supreme Majesty, Little Treasure is an indispensable remedy to maintain your health and the balance of your energies, and those are qualities that warrant reward. Your child has found a solution that will satisfy both protocol and your own requirements. The Emperor of Clarity of the Eastern Han dynasty erected the Temple of the White Horse to the west of Luoyang some time ago. It was the first Buddhist temple to be built on Chinese soil. Alas, having survived countless dynasties and frequent wars, its fires no longer attract any pilgrims and the temple has fallen into ruins. Why does Your Majesty not present her servant with this sacred place? With his shaven head and his rosary in his hands, a master monk would be allowed to circulate freely in the Inner Palace and no one would be able to reproach Your Majesty for wanting to listen to the wise words of this Buddhist.”
My daughter disappeared, and I received Gentleness whom I had freed from the Cold Palace. The girl had been spared the one hundred strokes on my orders, but she had suffered the harsh treatment meted out to all imperial prisoners. In only a few days, she had become thin as a reed.
“I can make you powerful or take your life, do you know that?”
She prostrated herself at my feet in tears, and I sighed: “I know that, here in the Inner Court, Court Ladies, officials, and overseers are only too eager to obey you, and outside these walls, princesses shower you with compliments, and ministers and magistrates bend over backwards to please you. Your mother has been raised from the position of seamstress in the Side Court to the ranks of nobility once more. She has taken up residence in a palace, and I myself have given her precious stones and countless servants. You already have everything a woman could dream of! If you want to take a lover, choose one from among the princes and kings. Leave Little Treasure to me. He is mine.”
In my bed chamber that evening I dismissed my serving women and ordered Little Treasure to kneel. My mind was made up: If he did not love me and wanted to leave, he would be killed at the gates of the Forbidden City. If he loved me and decided to become a monk, I would give him honor and glory.
I eyed him sternly.
“You will not be executed or mutilated. I shall give you your freedom.”
A little shiver ran through him.
“Will I still be able to see Your Supreme Majesty?” he whispered.
As I gave no reply, he looked up. His beautiful face was bathed in tears: I had not realized that this hard-hearted man could falter too.
“Supreme Majesty, I beg you. Keep me. Don’t abandon me! Think of your servant as a dog who asks only for a little food and to stay by your side.”
I contained my emotions as I told him, “I cannot keep a man in the Inner Palace.”
“Then have me castrated! What does that matter to me now! Never mind if I can no longer give you pleasure and if I become like all the other eunuchs with their flaccid flesh and cloying eyes. I only hope my heart will stay intact and will still love you.”
“I would not let you leave as you arrived,” I said, trying to test him. “Once outside the Palace, you would be rich. The money I give you would be enough to buy the most beautiful concubines, to start a large family, set up a business, and become a respectable man. Why do you want to remain a slave when you could be a master with women and land? If you wanted you could own merchant ships that could transport you up and down the Empire with their scarlet sails billowing in the wind.”
The young man only wept more desperately: “Supreme Majesty, forgive me for hiding the truth from you. I did not leave my village because of an arranged marriage. The great epidemic in the first year of the Era of Eternal Purity killed my parents, my grandparents, and my brothers and sisters. I fled after burying all their bodies in the fields. After that I roamed around Luoyang with death hovering over me. In five aimless years I was beaten, robbed, and raped; I was spat at, kicked, and insulted. You are the first and only woman who took me in her arms as anything more than a tool. No woman in the world, not even my mother, looked at me with the tenderness that you do. Supreme Majesty, forgive me. Keep me in your gynaeceum or have me killed! Don’t abandon me!”
Little Treasure’s words tore me apart. His distress awakened my own. I sighed and drew him into my arms: “Then you must listen to me and do as I ask. You, the son of a peasant, the vagrant, the aphrodisiac-seller, you shall be respected by the world. If you obey me I shall make you, a man off the streets of Luoyang, into a glorious Lord in the Imperial Court.”
LITTLE TREASURE’S SUFFERING was that of my people, and I felt ashamed for living in artificial abundance within a fortified city. This Court bathing in its happiness was a miraculous island in an ocean of misery. When I resolved to change Little Treasure’s fate, the fate of one child picked up by the wayside of life, it was not merely to reward his devotion: He was my window to this world of despair. The Mandarin Competitions had allowed thousands of scholarly individuals to enjoy a better life, but diplomas could in turn become barriers, and opening doors could transform into exclusion. Peasant children, orphans, and abandoned youngsters still had no right to fulfill their talents. Little Treasure was one of these battered, frustrated creatures, and I was offering him a chance.
On my orders, the young man shaved his head and became a monk. As a member of the bonze community, he broke with his past and became unimpeachable. He surrendered the name Feng and the common first name Little Treasure, and I gave him the Buddhist title of Scribe of Loyalty. I asked my daughter’s husband, Xue Shao, to recognize him as a distant uncle, and from then on, he bore the name of the famous aristocratic Xue clan.
The impostor proved to be a genius: Scribe of Loyalty had that raw intelligence that has never been damaged by academic study. His time as a vagrant had sharpened his intuition, which was more effective than any bureaucratic reflections. His audacity and imagination made his tongue more agile than the wooden-mouthed administrators. His many experiences in his past life had metamorphosed into peculiar knowledge. Although he knew nothing of design, he restored the monastery of the White Horse with great aplomb. After leafing through some sutras and memorizing a few formulaic prayers, he stepped up onto the stage and preached with thundering conviction. All of Luoyang gathered round to hear sermons by the imperial lover. They found a magnificent temple filled with white lotus flowers and columns of incense escaping from huge basins to darken the sky. Through this intoxicating fog, monks could be heard chanting a steady, dull drone. Suddenly Celestial Kings loomed up taller than mountains, and a long line of bodhisattvas opened out, beaming with light. The faithful would eventually find Scribe of Loyalty in the very depths of the hall, sitting with his hands joined in prayer in the middle of a golden lotus glittering with millions of diamonds. With his wide forehead, lowered eyes, and bulbous earlobes, he was almost a celestial apparition. He himself started rumors that quickly spread throughout the city; soon the Capital was venerating him as the reincarnation of a famous Indian monk who had the gift of healing and magical powers.
A man’s glory lies in his clothes. When my guards removed the lacquered linen cap, ivory tablet, and jade-studded leather belt from a disgraced minister, the statesman with his unruly hair and wild eyes lost all his imposing presence, already reduced to a convict or a slave. Wrapped in his purple tunic, astride an imperial charger, preceded by palace eunuchs and followed by his acolytes, Little Treasure, the aphrodisiac-seller, had no trouble establishing himself as the most elegant aristocrat in the Imperial City.
The more prudish ministers in the Outer Court eyed the scandalous Scribe of Loyalty scornfully and sent me letters of protest, reminding me of stories I already knew: Sovereigns besotted by their favorites neglected their duties; their passions had been the ruination of dynasties. Others, always alert and at the ready, fought for opportunities to win favor with this new figure of power. Generals prostrated themselves before the monk, addressing him as Master. My nephews-arrogant, impetuous princes-held his bridle for him as he mounted his horse. I watched these scenes from my lofty position on my throne with a sly smile.
Scribe of Loyalty was a lie that had become a truth.
Scribe of Loyalty was the merciless mirror I held up to this absurd world.
IN THE SECOND year of the Era of Lowered Arms and Joined Hands, I put my second invention into operation: At the entrance to the Forbidden City, I installed a giant bronze urn embossed with inscriptions worked in pure gold by my goldsmiths. The urn was divided into four compartments and was to be used to receive letters from the people.
An imperial decree was posted up in the four corners of the Empire: “Any individual who has no official State duties may now address Her Supreme Majesty freely by placing their written statements in the Urn of Truth. The eastern side of the urn is reserved for recommending competent officials and for comments on sound imperial decisions. The southern side is intended for censure of social and political events. The western side is for denouncing crimes and offences. The northern side will be used for astrological predictions and reports of premonitory dreams concerning the fate of the Empire.”
This first edict was followed by a second: “During their travels to the Sacred Capital, those bearing messages intended for the Supreme Empress will be given a daily payment and will be provided with bed and board by the regional authorities. Any imperial administrator committing the crime of questioning his guests, intercepting their letters, or impeding their journey to the Capital will be punished by death.”
It was not long before a third decree was sent out: “Any man, regardless of his origins, bearing useful advice or having suffered an injustice, shall be received by Her Supreme Majesty in person.”
My announcements put the Empire into turmoil. Convoys organized by provincial governments formed long uninterrupted streams of people along the country’s roads. The people queued up outside the Forbidden City to reach the Urn of Truth. Imperial bailiffs collected the letters at dusk and brought them to me at night. Banquets and concerts were temporarily suspended in my palace. I chose the best pupils from the women at the Inner Institute of Letters as my readers. Ornate chandeliers were extinguished, and only candles on short candlesticks were kept alight. The young women did not wear topknots or official court tunics and sat with their bare feet in silk slippers. They were virgins in flesh and in their judgments, and they were shocked by the vulgar turns of phrase. From time to time, Gentleness would lay down the work and call for wine and fruit. She would sit behind me and massage my tired temples. Somewhere in the depths of the room, a girl would play the zither, and another would accompany her with the clear notes of a bamboo flute. When they fell silent, the only sounds were the rustle of paper and the whisper of silk sleeves. Scribe of Loyalty would arrive late in the night, and, when he appeared, the young girls would flee in every direction like flocks of birds disappearing into the darkness.
A palace in the Outer City was prepared to receive the people. At certain times throughout the afternoon, I would sit on my throne surrounded by gauze curtains, watching all of China file past.
A peasant came to complain about the taxes on his land. A butcher denounced a dignitary who had taken his wife. A fisherman suggested that a canal should be built in his region. An impoverished scholar in love with a courtesan begged me to free his beloved. A madman talked about the end of the world. A woman from my region came to thank me for encouraging widows to remarry. Another brought me a basket of eggs.
Countless hundreds of them were terrified by the majestic palaces and the imposing military parades around me. Intoxicated by their fears and their veneration, they could not utter a word and carried on striking their foreheads on the ground until they were led away by eunuchs.
I delighted in hearing all the regional accents; I was touched by people’s modest dreams and humble longings; and I suffered for those in despair-the starving, the old, and the orphans.
Learned, self-taught men without diplomas were given official positions. Strong and supple young men joined the army. Criminals saw their punishments reduced. To every creature who called on my help, I tried to grant clemency, justice, and happiness.
I was consumed by the vastness of China. The silhouettes on the far side of the curtain became confusing and overran me like a fever. All these people-thin, fat, tall, short, deformed, and ill-grasping the hem of my gowns pressed against my retina and invaded my dreams to ask for my goodness once again. The more I gave, the bigger the crowd of supplicants grew. All these miseries that were being revealed to me were just tiny portions of an infinite suffering.
I was proud, and I was disappointed; I was happy, and I felt guilty. Through these hundreds of lives, I was trying to find an answer to all the sorrows and pains of this world, but the solution melted away like water on sand. The root of these evils was still impenetrable.
During one of these sessions, the Council of Great Ministers brought me a petition in which my imperial officials begged me to suspend the public audiences in the interests of my own health.
“Supreme Majesty,” said the Great Chancellor, prostrating himself, “no other sovereign has deigned to receive the people. And yet the Scholarly King of Zhou, the Emperor Lordly Forebear of the Han dynasty, the Scholarly Emperor of the Wei dynasty, and the Emperor Eternal Ancestor were all able to fulfill their celestial duties successfully and gloriously. A good sovereign knows the suffering and the joy of the people, but also knows how to delegate concerns to servants. That is why the ancient Zhou dynasty created the position of inspector and disguised these men as beggars before sending them out to every province. Her Supreme Majesty’s health is the Chinese people’s most precious resource. If she were exhausted, the entire world would be deprived of every joy. She must save her strength and her energy for the most important decisions.”
“When I introduced the Urn of Truth,” I replied, “and opened the Forbidden City to the people, this act was not intended to mock previous emperors, but to warn future sovereigns. Shut away in his palace and surrounded by courtiers dressed in brocade, the Master of the Empire knows nothing of hunger, poverty, and the trials of life. If he is the motionless center of the hub, then let the world come to him! The public audiences over the last few months have shown me the truth: As I treat each successive case, my power seems to diminish. Every act of kindness is a drop of water added to a constantly moving river. By granting my favors to some, I have withheld them from others who dared ask me for nothing. I must not take the place of the gods by handing out the fates of men. A sovereign’s power is an illusion and a promise. Only Buddha’s compassion can turn suffering into perpetual joy. I now accept your request, and I shall suspend the public audiences. But the Urn of Truth will continue to receive the complaints of the people. Politics can heal, but it cannot cure. Only a spiritual force can overcome ailing flesh and aching souls. He who is in the light forgets hunger and thirst. Let us pray that our empire will know religious bliss and be lifted up to the heavens.”