Empress

  The summer passed. I no longer believed I had anything to wait for. My journey back to Long Peace was one long monotonous swaying of my carriage. I could not wait to see my horse again. The day after our return, a messenger from the Gracious Wife burst into my room: Her Highness was waiting for me to visit; she was free at the end of every afternoon.

  Escorted by Ruby and Emerald, I went to her quarters that very day. Surprised by my haste, she received me in her indoor clothes. She offered me tea and asked me about how I had come to be at the palace. I stammered. Her pretty face and her body wrapped in a fragrant cloud made me feel uncomfortable. Beneath her grenadine red tunic, she wore a dress of chrysanthemum yellow muslin through which I could see her shoulders and the tops of her naked breasts. A long shawl of pale green crêpe was wound around her arms and hung limply on the floor. With no wig or framework, she had coiled her hair into a lazy topknot and pierced this black mound with a pin bearing a pearl the size of a quail’s egg.

  Seeing her so happy and animated, I forgot the purpose of my visit: to warn her of the danger that lay in wait for her. The spiteful rumors accused her of being the poisoner. She had to defend herself! Her misty gaze drifted over me, and this haze of languor was a disguise for her dark eyes probing me.

  Suddenly she spoke to me: “My cousin, do you already have an older sister?”

  I shook my head to mean no.

  “Why not? All the girls in the Side Court have sisters.”

  I flushed so deeply that I felt my ears burning. How could I tell her that I wanted to remain faithful to her?

  “You are not beautiful,” she went on. “But there is something unusual about you that is very striking. The way you look, your body…. Has a woman ever offered to take you in hand?”

  Then she leaned closer to me and whispered in my ear: “Have you ever been kissed?”

  I wanted to be swallowed up by the ground.

  “Come, I’ll show you my secret garden.”

  She stood up and I followed her, with my eyes lowered. I heard her flash an impetuous order at my servants: “You may go home. Tell your governess that I shall keep my cousin here to dine. I shall send her back later.”

  I was ashamed and embarrassed, unable to breathe a word.

  After going through a string of rooms and courtyards, she pushed open a crimson door set into a wall painted with the white of pear trees in blossom. The servants stopped and closed the door behind us. There were mauve lanterns lighting a walkway that ran past pomegranate trees laden with fruit on one side and went around a pond covered with lotus flowers on the other.

  She took my hand and led me toward a pavilion. My heart beat frantically, and I no longer had any strength in my arms. I sensed that something was about to happen, and it was too late to flee.

  The door opened onto a mysterious embracing perfume. I saw a hexagonal room with the dusk filtering through the windowless wooden walls in which craftsmen had carved thousands of apertures in the shape of five-petaled flowers.

  “I had this pavilion built so that I could watch the sunset without being dazzled. It’s the only time of day when the sky is a faithful reflection of life. Look over there, look at the crimson, the deep red, the violet, the scarlet. Tonight, somewhere in our empire, innocent blood is flowing!”

  I opened my eyes wide. In that eruption of red and gold, I could make out her face, a hazy circle of black drawing closer. She took me in her arms. I was amazed when I felt her tongue probing my mouth. She leaned the full weight of her body against me, and I fell down into the cushions with her. Her expert hands untied my belt and peeled off my dress, trousers, and silk slippers.

  “Undress me,” she said.

  I did not know that when sisters slept together they had to be naked, but I obeyed her without hesitating. She removed the golden pin with the pearl, and her long hair tumbled endlessly over her neck. She lay down on this sheet of gleaming hair and drew me on top of her. She put her hand between my thighs. Almost before I felt the agile serpents of her fingers, I gave an involuntary groan.

  I started to cry over this undeserved happiness, this little corner of love in my lonely life. My sobbing aroused my cousin. She slid against my body, whispering instructions. I did as she asked. I imitated what she did and watched her face express itself with smiles or frowns. She was trembling and peculiarly tense. Her cheeks grew red and droplets of sweat formed on her brow. The sun slipped off her body. It lingered on the ceiling for a moment, then disappeared through the partitioned wall. She lay in the dark, no longer moving. She was silent for a long time. I was starting to think that she might be dead when she rubbed the flint and lit a candle. Her face was framed by her messy hair, and she looked pale as a ghost.

  “I hate night time,” she said darkly. “The shades are my enemies. I know that all these women are jealous of my beauty, and they wait until it’s dark to cast evil spells over me. Can you hear their voices?”

  The garden was quiet; I could hear the rustle of leaves, the earth breathing. But she blocked her ears with her hands to escape the malevolent incantations. In the candlelight the roses of her breasts were so pale that her body seemed almost unreal. Then her face was filled with a grimace of pain, as if a strident sound had just pierced her ear-drums; she shuddered and whipped her hands away. A strange snigger of distress distorted her face, and she started throwing the cushions we had been lying on to the four corners of the room. It was only then that I saw that the floor was made of bronze and mercury—it was a mirror.

  “Spread your legs,” she said, bringing the candle closer. “Look!”

  It was the first time I had seen it, seen that cleft: hairy, convoluted, red—a monstrous lesion.

  “Have a good look. It’s with that hideous mouth that they sing, they curse, and they spit their venom! Can’t you hear their hideous music?”

  I tried to put my arms around her. She slapped me and started screaming: “Go away! Go away! You disgust me! You’re just a whore, a spy from the Delicate Concubine, a poisoner! Go away!”

  “Highness, you’re wrong, I mean you no harm. I love you.”

  I knelt before her with my forehead to the ground. She spat at me like a fury and struck me repeatedly. I hid my face in my hands and wept. Then she collapsed, exhausted; the demon left her, and her lucidity was restored. She crawled over to me and begged me to kiss her. We made love again, but I no longer felt anything. Suddenly she started moaning as if in her death throes, and she drenched me in her moment of ecstasy.

  IN THE SIDE City eyes were constantly spying, ears constantly listening: Soon I was treated to mysterious smiles expressing irony and envy. A feeling of pride mingled with aching sorrow overwhelmed me. What did they know of this wounded, damaged woman’s madness? When I kissed the Gracious Wife, I believed I was tasting of some delicacy, but I was just drinking the first draught of a terrible poison. I went over the events of that late afternoon a thousand times, throwing myself into that incandescent pavilion as a fisherman throws his net into the river. As I studied every moment, slowly, minutely, forgotten details emerged. Pleasure, shuddering, uneasiness, disgust—the most contradictory emotions caught at my throat in the day and kept me awake at night.

  I was determined not to see her again, not to go back to that abyss that swallowed the sunlight, but this woman who was in thrall to demons could surely read the secrets in my heart. Days passed, and I received no further invitation, and absence—that wily magician—turned my aversion to desire. Daily life came to the fore again, with all its weariness and filth. The women around me were walking wounds. I felt an urgent longing to love, to raise myself to the skies through whatever obsession brought me new hope. The Gracious Wife was a lie, a liberating lie!

  The violence erased itself from my memory, and only her astonishing beauty remained to obsess me. What torture it was to feel her gentle breasts on my face and her stomach soft as a newly hatched chick only to wake from this impotent dream! I now missed her cries of ecstasy that had fright
ened me. At night I smelled the air to try and catch the scent of her hair. One strand at a time, it slid over my breast, but I could not hold it. My life had become more unbearable than before I knew her. Now, I had to stand by my choice even if it would be the death of me!

  One afternoon, in the grip of madness, I ran to her palace. She received me with no sign of surprise. We had barely exchanged a few polite words before she dismissed her servants, led me to the Pavilion of Dusk, and pushed me to the floor. She lay on top of me, and once again I let myself be beaten. Her pleasure became more intense as she inflicted more pain and humiliation on me. I cried. I hated myself. I despised myself for loving such a monster. My tears fuelled her ecstasy. When she had mortified me with insults, when she had stripped me, abused me, and violated me, she sent me back to the women in the Side Court.

  I had become her slave. She who understood the strength of silence never called me. My wounds barely had time to heal before I hurried back to her. Sometimes I found her palace empty: She had left; she was serving the imperial bed. My stomach constricted, and my limbs turned to stone. In the emperor’s arms, she was a servile slave! I would go back to my world, devastated, dead.

  She was not interested in horses, books, or her little boy, the beautiful prince with such sad eyes. She loved jewels, dresses, and tiny little dogs with curly coats. Before making love she was charming, all smiles, gentle. She touched up my makeup, dressed me, made me blush with her shameless jokes. But naked she would gradually go mad, insulting me and trampling over me. It was only when she had unleashed onto me her loathing for all humanity that she reached a form of release, a voluptuous happiness. The Pavilion of Dusk was my torture chamber. She forced strangers on me, girls I did not desire. In that accumulation of mouths and breasts, above the mirror that multiplied the gaping orifices further, she would beat me until I bled. The other women would fondle one another as they watched me. They were naked, with their heads between one another’s thighs, their bodies writhing in the blaze of sunlight, shrieking with pleasure; and I felt only loathing.

  The seasons changed. I silenced my pain, my body stiffened, my heart was sickened, but still I feigned rapture. There was nothing left to say between us. The tender words had given way to repetitive moans, the fascination had been tarnished by a wearied eroticism. Her gaze was not so misty now; her face was harder. I found her ugly, and she was tiring of my battered body. My visits became less frequent, but I did not know how to bring an end to this liaison. I pitied her: Without me, without my strong muscles that were the lure to her demon, how could she achieve physical gratification? And without that gratification, how could she live?

  One evening when I went to her palace, her keepers told me that their mistress was out. When I went back past her door after nightfall, I saw a girl coming out. I hid behind a tree and saw the same servants who used to take me back to the Side Court helping her along, lighting her way with lanterns. I recognized a Forest of Treasure who had arrived at Court a month earlier. She staggered as she walked. Her tears were barely audible, but they reached my ears. While the keepers were distracted, I slipped into the palace and crept into the Pavilion of Dusk.

  Through the petal-shaped apertures, I could see there were so many candelabras that the room was lit up as if it were midday. She was lying naked on the cushions, musing happily and eating fruit while the servants massaged her legs. I knocked down the door, pushed aside the terrified girls, and sat astride her. My hands tightened around her neck, and I strangled her with all my might. She struggled. Her face turned purple, and her eyes rolled back in their sockets. The women threw themselves at me in vain, and I abandoned her when I thought she was dead.

  That night I dreamt of the sun-bleached skull of a horse. The dark cavities of its eyes, so like a woman’s avid orifice, stared at me. I woke screaming. There was blood on my bed: I had just had my first menses.

  The Gracious Wife had foreseen this stain in me. She had plucked me in my innocence and betrayed me when I was reduced to corruption. The following day Governess arranged a ceremony to celebrate my reaching fertility. She burned the stained corner of the sheet, then made me drink the ashes blended with warm wine. The women of the Side Court gave me gifts and paid me compliments. My cousin had regained consciousness but was still in bed; she sent me an enamel box containing a pearl necklace and this poem:

  Whiteness and purity

  May my love bring into bloom

  Your scarlet valleys.

  I sent back the necklace with a note:

  The treasures of the ocean

  Must return to the night

  Of furious waves.

  I stopped seeing her.

  THE GRACIOUS WIFE had passed on to me her refined taste in clothes and her experienced eye with women. In that Court so full of extraordinary beauties, I decided to perfect my appearance. My skin was tanned by the sun; my figure was slim with bronzed muscles. I was like a challenge to those pale faces and concealed bodies. My energetic stride sneered at their sickly little footsteps. In contrast to the profusion of jewels, muslins, and embroidered shoes with upturned points, I had my tunics of heavy cloth tailored to fit closely, and my archer’s wrists were free of any jewelry. To other women the choice of clothes was a form of ingenious exhibition, a shameless seduction. To me, dresses were like a breastplate that I put on to set off to war against this life.

  I was complimented on my elegance, my skin color, my features. I found consolation in a string of casual affairs, girls who, unlike the Gracious Wife, afforded me some pleasure. My memories of the Pavilion of Dusk burned through my entrails. I succeeded in using my charms like a weapon; I learned to play with others’ hearts and to master my own desires.

  The snow fell, and the days were short and sunless. On the night of the New Year Banquet, I saw my cousin dancing up on a dais between firework displays carried on the heads of two acrobats. Her silhouette swayed and twirled between those sparkling showers, like a bird hovering in its cage decorated with precious stones.

  FOUR

  One afternoon in the spring, the groom entrusted a Turkish colt to me. The wild animal charged around the outdoor manège, whinnying, jumping, but however furiously he twisted and lurched, I stuck fast in the saddle. When he slowed down, exhausted, I reinforced my every order with a crack of the whip.

  I did not realize that this commotion had attracted a good many spectators. When I leapt to the ground, a eunuch ran over and told me that Princess Sun of Jin and the King of Jin wished to give me their compliments.

  On the far side of the enclosure, I found a girl in boy’s clothing, and the young king, who wore a tunic of willow-green brocade embroidered with golden lions over a second tunic in daffodil yellow. The princess’s eyes shone, and she could scarcely conceal her admiration. The king flushed as he accepted my greeting. He had beautiful elongated eyes and was shy as a little girl.

  The princess, a happy fluttering creature, chattered constantly. She asked me the secret of my courage, then she wanted to know everything about me: my name, age, and position. The king listened. When he heard that I was from Bing, he emerged from his silence and told me that the sovereign had appointed him the great governor of that glorious province.

  “When my noble grandfather, Emperor Lordly Forebear, was a mere military governor, he encouraged his children to practice the martial arts,” he confided solemnly. “And so, when he rose up against the Sui’s corrupt Court, my honorable sovereign father, my uncles, and my aunt, Princess Sun of Ping, brandished their swords and rode at the head of their armies. As the descendant of those intrepid warriors, I am preparing to conquer the world. When I am older, I shall subjugate the Barbarians of the dark kingdoms, and I shall impose China’s supremacy over the entire world!”

  The young king’s ambitions were in contrast to his slight frame and the fact that his forehead was still covered by a youthful fringe. But I looked into his face—the face of a dreamer—with envy. I too would have preferred to die on a battlefield
than to wither slowly in the Side Court.

  “May we call you Heavenlight?” asked the Princess. “Father calls me Little Bull and my brother Little Phoenix.”

  She turned to the king and asked: “Heavenlight could use those secret names? Would you agree?”

  “I give you my permission, Talented One. But do not tell anyone.”

  The gynaeceum had produced fourteen sons and twenty daughters for the Emperor. Two of the boys had died very young. In keeping with Court custom—ever wary of pretenders to the throne—the remaining princes were required to leave the Inner Palace as soon as they received the royal seal, and they went to live in their official residences in the noble district of Long Peace. But Little Phoenix and Little Bull were the children of the Empress of Learning and Virtue. Her untimely death had robbed them of the only protection they had in the Forbidden City. United in their grief, they had become inseparable. The emperor had taken pity on them and had made a special decree allowing the young king to prolong his stay in the Inner Court.

  I did not know what had led the other to me, and I could not explain how this friendship began, but it would become a pact of life and death. The princess was nine, the prince eleven, and I was fourteen. They were fascinated by my strength and saw me as an idol, a protector. I sympathized with their bereavement, which reminded me of my own. I missed Little Sister. I would give my time and my patience to this princess to appease the sorrow.

  I shared a love of horses and archery with Little Phoenix. Together we plotted the routes of his future expeditions across geographical maps. Through him I lived my dream of being a man, of being strong and free. In time, this weakling who strove to look so aloof and proud admitted to me how alone and afraid he felt. His elder brothers had left the Forbidden City. The eldest, who was his full brother, was ensconced in his Eastern Palace playing the part of an authoritarian Supreme Son. He would not tolerate being outshone by his younger brothers. The favorites in the gynaeceum tried their best to distance Little Phoenix from the sovereign, who was so busy with affairs of state that months could go by without his speaking to the boy. Little Phoenix was shy and self-effacing. He had to settle for living in an imaginary world where he now included me in his great conquests overseas.