Empress

ELEVEN

The world forgot Confucius’s maxim: “It is as scandalous for a woman to meddle with politics as for a hen to crow like a cockerel.” Men forgot their indignation at seeing a widow emerge from the gynaeceum and command an empire, and all the rumors about my sexual exploits faded. The cheers of the people still reverberated through the Forbidden City; it was these heartfelt cries of a humble people- rather than any crown or imperial cloak-which restored the confidence of a sovereign dented by betrayal and revolts among her officials. I had become an inescapable truth, and now, as I sat on my throne facing my ministers and generals, I no longer saw them all as potential traitors.

I no longer needed the blood-thirsty judges-who I myself had appointed after Xu Jing Yei’s uprising three years earlier-to quash further conspiracies. I began to understand that some of them had earned promotion by exposing imaginary plots. It was time to reestablish justice in the special judgment court I had built within the Forbidden City, behind the Gate of Magnificent Landscape. I decided to eliminate those prosecutors and magistrates who were acting on their own initiative like the princes of independent kingdoms. A secret investigation revealed that they brought charges with no more proof than a simple denunciation; and, from the moment of their arrest, all of the accused were subjected to torture during interrogations. The tortures were given names such as “the phoenix spreading its wings,” “the braced donkey,” “the immortal offering divine fruit” and “the Daughter of Jade climbing the ladder.” To ensure that no culprit was spared, these trials condemned innocent men. On the pretext of quashing rebellions, the judges had created a parallel power that was beyond my control.

Their spies were proliferating throughout the Empire, even within the walls of my palace. To strike quickly and efficiently, I chose one judge who was familiar with the network’s every secret, strength, and weakness. Lai Jun Chen, famed for his cruelty, was the Lodge of Purification’s prosecutor. A former criminal, he had been sentenced to death by beheading. When I had opened my court four years before and given audience to humble commoners, he had obliged his jailor to accompany him to the capital, where he had dared to plead his innocence before me. I had pardoned his crimes and appointed him as prosecutor to hunt down his fellow creatures. The man who owed me his life received his orders without comment. One by one, he exterminated his colleagues, patiently and methodically. I learned that, to obtain a confession from Zhou Xing-a judge reputed to be a sinister torturer-Lai Jun Chen invited him to dine with him, and during the course of the meal, he asked his advice on how to interrogate especially resistant conspirators. Zhou Xing replied, “Put them in an earthenware jar over a pile of logs, set light to it, and let them cook dry. Even the dumb speak then.” It was then that the prosecutor drew the arrest warrant from his sleeve and announced, “At the entrance to this room, there is an earthenware jar set up on a blazing fire. Her Majesty suspects you of stirring up a plot against her. I beg permission to interrogate you on this matter.”

Lai Jun Chen triumphed over his own kind.

Decapitated: Qiu Shen Ji, Great General of the Golden Scepter of the Left, who crushed rebellious armies in their blood.

Decapitated: Magistrate Suo Yuan Li, a Turk scholar with the eyes of a lynx, an eagle nose, and a Barbarian heart.

Exiled: Zhou Xing, the ill jurist who drew his strength from his fevered interrogations. He was eventually assassinated.

Decapitated: Fu Yu Yi, the councilor for the chancellery who instigated the people’s petition calling for my enthronement.

Decapitated: Justice of the Peace Wang Hong Yi.

Decapitated: Judge Ho Si Zhi, the illiterate peasant who thrived on his intuitions and his ferocious cruelty and who despised wealth and pleasure. I shall never forget our brief exchange when I smiled and asked him, “You cannot read. How can you conduct investigations?”

Quite unperturbed, he replied, “Legend confers on the sacred griffon the ability to distinguish between good and evil. It can neither read nor write, and yet it recognizes the truth.”

Decapitated: Those three years of merciless repression. Bloodshed wiped away bloodshed; crime assassinated crime.

I summoned the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen to a private audience. He prostrated himself before me and then stood a few paces from me, upright and motionless. His face was magnificently chiseled; he would have been a beautiful man if there had been a hint of color in his ashen cheeks, if his face had been animated, and if his eyes had looked on this life with any warmth.

I showed him scrolls of denunciations.

“Zhou Xing, Suo Yuan Li, Fu Yu Yi, and Wang Hong Yi are dead; you alone are alive. There are just as many accusations leveled at you: corruption, buying favors, attempts to seize power-how dare you disobey the law?”

His face remained marble-like and his voice devoid of emotion as he replied, “Zhou Xing and Suo Yuan Li were anonymous scholars. When Your Majesty discovered their talents, they were able to make careers for themselves as magistrates, and this position meant they could take their revenge on the rich and the powerful. As for Fu Yu Yi and Wang Hong Yi, they both came from the lower depths of the Empire. They used flattery and intrigue to achieve their ends. Your Majesty likes unusual talents, their pride at the recognition you granted them outweighed their gratitude: They exploited their independence to build a separate network of power, and that is how they came to nurture the evil ambition of challenging Your Majesty’s strength. I was condemned to death and kept in a dungeon when Your Majesty heard my cry and gave me the opportunity to live and serve her. Ever since that day, I have sworn myself to my sovereign, body and soul. The real Lai Jun Chen was already dead. The one who prostrates himself at Your Majesty’s feet is another man, a creature who lives only to follow her orders and only by her will. The day that he ceases to be of use to her will be the day he returns to the shades. The officials understand the powerful ties I have to the sovereign; they are afraid of my intransigent devotion. That is why I have frequently been attacked by their paid assassins, and when their attempts at murder fail, they slander me. They want to be rid of me by whatever means they can, to weaken Your Majesty.”

I looked Lai Jun Chen in the eye for a long time. Other judges harbored anger, hatred, and perversion, but this prosecutor fascinated me with his coldness and his calm. The judges’ ferocity had served their own longings for power, and that was why I had them killed once they had served my ends. But Lai Jun Chen’s ferocity knew no vanity; this man who was once condemned to death was probably the greatest torturer of all time. He carried the Abyss within him, the Eternal Fire, Hell itself. He wanted neither to conquer nor to subdue. He was a destructive force-both chilling and blazing-offered to me by the gods.

I threw the denunciations into a brazier.

“I shall give you your life once again. You are now master of the Court at the Gate of Magnificent Landscape. I want no more persecutions and torture. Men apply hatred in response to hatred; my dynasty shall apply compassion.”

I was careful not to admit that this magnanimity was calculated. By leaving the most feared and loathed magistrate in his position, I was implying to officials that I had ceased to fight, but was by no means disarmed.

Lai Jun Chen prostrated himself before me. His voice was still echoing around the room as he backed out: “May my sullied existence allow Your Majesty to remain immaculate.”

MY DAY BEGAN at three in the morning, summer and winter. Every other day I received the Salutation of my officials at daybreak. After the prostrations and the ceremonial wish for ten thousand years of my reign, some presented reports, and others received my instructions. At the end of the audience, the officials went to their respective ministries, and I moved to my private room to read political files and discuss them with Great Ministers.

On the intervening days, I remained in my bed chamber until dawn when I received the prostrations of the overseeing eunuchs and the lady governesses who presented me with accounts, bills, plans for forthcoming banquets, lists of birthday gifts, embroidery designs for official costumes, and requests for promotions and punishments. As Emperor of China, I was also my own empress.

In the afternoons, after a brief siesta, I would be taken by litter to the Pavilion of Treaties and Interviews. I would sit behind a curtain of purple gauze, although I might remove this for those I knew well. Poets and calligraphers, Taoists and monks, merchants and peasants prostrated themselves at my feet: Each of them came to me with a complaint, a piece of advice, or some new knowledge. Thanks to the things they told me, I traveled to distant towns, witnessed foreign customs, learned of alliances and rivalries between neighboring kingdoms, and ensured my armies remained loyal even in the furthest limits of the desert. With poets I talked of rhymes and language; monks interpreted the sutras they brought back from India after braving a thousand dangers; geographers suggested building new roads and canals; astrologers spoke to me of the stars.

On some days at the end of the afternoon, I would go for a long ride through the Imperial Park on one of my horses. The thought of this period of escape brightened my mood from the moment I awoke. The vermilion glow of the setting sun tinted the tops of the trees and turned the River Luo into a ribbon embroidered with golden waves. A retinue of animals followed me: dogs, leopards, giraffes, and elephants. There were many men to dispute the honor of leading my steed by the bridle: my nephews the kings; Lai Jun Chen, the magistrate; and the Great Ministers. It was when I was inspired by the melancholy calm of these rides that I improvised my most beautiful poems.

Deep in the forest, eunuchs would free thousands of birds: blackbirds, orioles, skylarks, and thrushes launching themselves into the skies. Their song, an exuberant hymn to life full of virtuoso trills, moved me to tears. The more I was surrounded, the more I was alone. Dusk was falling. It would soon be everlasting night.

ONE MOMENT OF bliss followed another, and time wrapped itself around me like an endless thread tightening its stranglehold. From the depths of my opaque cocoon, I was expecting a miracle: never to grow old.

My lovemaking with Scribe of Loyalty was losing its intensity. At first his vigorous body and well-defined muscles had been like an unfulfilled fantasy, then a vague dream. As the years went by, his virile youth became disturbing.

My lover was thirty, and I sixty-nine. Like other wealthy debauched monks, he had bought houses for his mistresses in the commoners’ town outside the Forbidden City. His many wives dripped with jewels and lived off my generosity through him. The one he liked best was a young girl of sixteen bought for a jug of pearls in a brothel. She could make love to him for hours on end without tiring. Their cries of ecstasy had even carried to the depths of my gynaeceum where I struggled with my jealousy and despair.

Scribe of Loyalty came to the Palace less and less. Once a month, on the night of the full moon, he would caress me and spill his seed on me as a peasant sows his field. His every move was precise and attentive; he performed his duties as a favorite like an official carrying out a laborious task. In the darkness I could still read his pity, his resignation, and his indifference. Scribe of Loyalty no longer loved me. I no longer afforded him any pleasure.

I developed a profound loathing for my own body, this Future Buddha’s body which was said to be sacred and indestructible. The baths, massages, and unguents could no longer stop this flesh from slackening and crumpling. I hid my resentment toward my young lover who shattered the myth every time he undressed me.

I was obsessed by hygiene: I forced him to undergo medical examinations and to be washed from head to toe before he came to my bed. In spite of the soaps and the vigorous scrubbing by my serving women, he still gave off a smell of earthly debauchery, underlining the irony of my decrepitude. His member had trawled through the town; his dirty hands had delved in other orifices; his tongue had licked fresh, pungent young skin. Every time I took him in my arms, I exposed myself to his gaze, to being compared.

One night, I exploded angrily, and he dared to reply: “Majesty, I know you have me followed and that your spies have been sold into my houses as slaves. You spy on my every coupling; you follow my life with the ferocity of a lioness. But you have never tried to look into my heart. Have you ever thought that it is you who drives me into other women’s arms:

“Little Treasure,” I sneered, using his original name. “All these years, I have never forbidden you from finding pleasure elsewhere when I could have demanded your complete faithfulness. Imperial concubines are shut away in the gynaeceum, but I have allowed you to run free. That is the greatest proof of affection an emperor can give. Instead of showing gratitude, you abuse my patience. Now you dare accuse me of driving you into other women’s arms! What do you mean by this? Am I so very old and hideous?”

“Faithfulness, yes, let us talk of that,” he said furiously. “Has Your Majesty herself been faithful? If you had told me at the very start that, as sovereign, you had the right to every pleasure, then I would have been forced to accept that in silence. But you claimed that I was the only man in your life. You prided yourself on your faithfulness and found some glorious virtue in the fact that you did not have ten thousand beautiful men in your Inner Palace. Can you explain to me then why you enter into relationships based on intellect and affection with your ministers, your magistrates, and your generals? That particular love, which has no physical element and is forbidden between master and servant, is so much more intense than mere copulation. You love Judge Lai Jun Chen! I only have to see you with him to know that you marvel at his coldness and that you guard his life jealously even though the whole Empire wishes him dead. You exiled Great Chancellor Li Zhao De because your ministers urged you to, but soon you will call him back to Court as if nothing had happened. If that is not love, what other word is there to explain it? There is also the Great Secretary Ji Xu, who holds your horse’s bridle and who can make you laugh so readily. Two years ago, like a loving wife stitching a war uniform for her husband heading off to the front, you gave each of your delegated governors an official tunic sewn by the serving women in your gynaeceum. You claimed you yourself embroidered the words ”firm, supple, calm, ardent“ on the back of these garments. Majesty, do you realize that some of these coarse creatures sleep with those tunics folded neatly beside their pillows, that others have laid them on altars and converse with them as if they were divinities? When you receive the candidates for the final imperial test; when you sit behind your gauze curtain and interrogate them in your deep, kindly voice; when you seduce budding ministers with your humor and erudition, you sew the seeds of love in their hearts, and those seeds will grow into blossoming trees whose fruits you can harvest. And after this great succession of men, there is me: a pitiful vagrant, a monk whom you forbid to take any part in politics! I am your weakness, your sickness, the shame that you keep hidden. There are plenty of humble girls who appreciate my kindness and venerate me, but Your Majesty is a cruel goddess who neglects me and destroys me! She offers her attentions to her subjects-men, women, young, and old-all of them beloved in her heart. She therefore saves herself from becoming attached to any single man; she manages her feelings so that she can never be disappointed. Her eyes never truly look at men; they are fixed on the skies. Her hand gives, takes away, pardons, kills… and I, Scribe of Loyalty, I live in the mire, struggling with contempt and longing. I am an object of slander and ridicule. Your ministers hate me, and the kings believe I manipulate you with a giant phallus! And yet you receive me only by night like a thief, and you turn me away when I want to make love to you!”

I had not realized that Scribe of Loyalty could feel jealousy, and his admission filled me with joy. I would have liked to ask his forgiveness and to admit that I was ashamed to let him touch my tired, old skin. I would have liked to reveal to him the secret that I kept hidden: I despaired as I grew old. My heart was calling out for his help, but my pride made me respond with a sigh: “What can I do to improve your standing? The Temple of Ten Thousand Elements has brought you wealth and notoriety. Twice I have appointed you commander of my imperial armies to fight the Tibetans, and I have given you the glorious title of Great General of the Invincible Defense and that of Lord of the Kingdom of Liang. But, as you are unable to rise early, you never attend the morning salutation. How do you expect to earn the Court’s respect if you do not respect its constraints and discipline?”

“Majesty,” Scribe of Loyalty interrupted me, “you know very well that I am not interested in power. If you care for me, if you love me, I ask just one thing of you: give me status. Marry me! Name me your Imperial Husband!”

I was so astonished by what I heard that I could find no words to reply. An emperor’s wife received the Empress’s Seal, but could a female emperor raise a man to the position of Imperial Husband? If an empress were considered to be the mother of the Empire and the most perfect incarnation of feminine virtue, would an imperial husband be the father of the Empire and master of all men? If Scribe of Loyalty received prostrations from the Court and the veneration of an entire people, would he not foster a desire to reign, would he not be tempted to usurp power? The people would never tolerate the image of a former drug peddler to be associated with me. How could I renounce the tomb of my glorious late husband, Celestial Emperor, Sovereign Lordly Ancestor, and lie down in the grave of an ordinary man?

My voice became hard and surly as if I were addressing a minister: “This may be what you dream of, but it is impossible.”

“Majesty,” he insisted, “you have encouraged widows to remarry; you have scorned tradition and created new laws. You have just inaugurated a dynasty and ascended to the throne. An Emperor has an Empress, four wives, nine Concubines, nine Elegant Ones, nine Beauties, nine Talented Ones, twenty-seven Forests of Treasure, twenty-seven Imperial Serving Women, twenty-seven Gatherers, and a huge Inner Palace to satisfy his desires. And you have just one lover whom you have forced to become a monk and who has become a laughing stock for the entire world! Majesty, you need to take just one more step to be equal to a man. Marry me! I will abandon my freedom.” “It is late. I have to rise at dawn. We must sleep.” “Majesty, just one word. Do you want me as a husband?” My heart felt the chill of a strange premonition. Instead of replying I turned my back to him. He shook me and wept as he held me in his arms. Half way through the night, he sat up with a start, leapt to the ground, and disappeared.

While I sat on my raised throne the following morning, I was distracted. During the Celebration of the Double Sun, my nephew Piety presented me with a petition of five thousand signatures in which State officials and common people begged me to take the title of Sacred Emperor who Turns the Golden Wheel. All this glory was now my enemy: I was a divine sovereign, Master of the World, but I was losing my hair, my teeth, and my strength like any lowly creature. The Sacred Emperor who kept time and the fortunes of this world turning was also a prisoner of the wheel that would ultimately lead to downfall. Life, like love, strengthens and betrays, soothes and punishes. I was a usurper. I had stolen a crown, an epoch, a transient illusion.

SCRIBE OF LOYALTY was sulking and avoiding me. He paid no attention to my summons and lay low in his monastery.

In the arms of the imperial doctor Shen Nan Qiu, I found the confidence of which Scribe of Loyalty had robbed me. His body was docile, discreet; it soothed my anxieties and eased my troubles. The news spread through the Forbidden City, and the Court made no effort to hide its joy in seeing the monk losing my favor. The dignitaries who, only the day before, had been proud to call themselves his friends were now eager to speak ill of him. It seems that Scribe of Loyalty, the Lord of the Kingdom of Liang, Great General of the Left of the Invincible Defense, thought of himself as a founding force in my dynasty and chose to play the role of master in the Monastery of the White Horse. He fortified its walls and recruited thousands of young monks who were experts in martial arts. The clash of bamboo poles and war cries rang out all day long: this was Scribe of Loyalty having fun training his soldier-monks. When he came out of his temple and went into the city, he surrounded himself with the most beautiful and vigorous of his disciples. His horse would be decked in a harness of gold set with gems, and around him he would have a troop of young monks carrying the rod of iron and the long saber, marching in time. When they came across Taoists and devout followers of other religions, on a nod from their master, they would attack them, shaving their heads and forcing them to convert to Buddhism. It was not long before the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen, who loathed my lover, begged me to charge him for abducting and sequestering women, for forming an illegal army, and for attempting to usurp power.

Scribe of Loyalty came before me only when he had been beseeched through three imperial summons accompanied by my handwritten orders. I felt my stomach contract when he came into the room: I had not seen him forthree months and had forgotten how beautiful he was.He stood head and shoulders about the other men and walked with a swagger like the heroes of ancient mythology. When he prostrated himself, I noticed that his face was thinner and that his forehead bore the mark of melancholy. I was overwhelmed by emotion: Scribe of Loyalty was suffering!

I indulged him by offering him a seat. Then I asked him gently about his life, and he answered me in brief sentences. I caressed him in my mind. His eyes lingered neither on my face, which had been smoothed of all wrinkles by the latest unguent concocted by the doctor Shen Nan Qiu, nor on the very open neckline of my gown. He seemed to look through me and stare glumly at the screen behind my seat. Our love was damned: the forty years that lay between us were drawing us slowly but inexorably to a tragic conclusion. But, at my age, I had no time for tears. He was the one my desire had chosen!

I would have like to tell him that Shen Nan Qiu had never had permission to penetrate me. The fifty year old had served me as a sleeping draft and a bed-warmer. The affair had been a game, just to have revenge for Scribe of Loyalty’s infidelities, to make him jealous. I would have liked to tell him that I was disappointed by my sons and felt that my grandchildren were strangers, that my nephews could think of nothing but taking my place on the throne, and that he alone-he, Little Treasure, fished out of the mysterious river of destiny-brought light into my life. I was prepared to offer him a flock of young women to keep him close to me as he had been before, like an exuberant talkative child.

I was unable to put all this in words and was afraid that he would blackmail me; instead I spoke of the accusations leveled at him. First he paled, then he sneered“ ”So it is true then, what they say about the doctor Shen Nan Qiu. If you want to be rid of me, nothing could be easier. If you hand me over to Lai Jun Chen, I will tell him everything without being tortured: your obsessions, your fears, your weaknesses, your secret fantasies. You would do better to have me killed straight away!“

Seeing that he had flushed scarlet in his indignation, I smiled.

“I am showing you these denunciations only to tell you that I am prepared to forgive you. Don’t you see that, without my protection, you will be trailed by the judges like a hare hounded by hunting dogs. In your few years in the Forbidden City you made very few friends and a good many enemies. What would you be without me?”

He stared at me, and his eyes glowed with a dark fire.

“Why do you toy with me? You must choose between the doctor and the monk. Just one word: do you wish to marry me?”

My heart turned to ice, and the smile froze on my face. I delivered a prepared speech: “I still have not appointed the successor to the throne in Court. If, in such a situation, I were to marry, if I were to confer the first imperial title on one man, my actions would create confusion.”

“Majesty,” he cried, throwing himself at me and almost suffocating me, “I love you. I want you to be my wife; I want to call you Heaven-light; I want to be joined to you in life and in death! Yes, I will renounce the title of husband; I spit on recognition. Let us be married in secret, here, now; we shall take Heaven and Earth as our witnesses. Swear to me that you are mine.”

How could I believe that such a young and beautiful man could love an old woman so passionately? Was he hoping to manipulate me? Was he willing to usurp the throne? I pushed him: “The insolence! Kneel before your sovereign!”

Scribe of Loyalty froze and collapsed at my feet, and I spoke slowly and deliberately: “Leave and never come back!”

He smacked his forehead heavily against the ground and then ran off. When his silhouette was reduced to a blur and then disappeared between the gates of my palace, I was devastated.

The gods had not invented love for an emperor.

I WAS HAUNTED by Scribe of Loyalty’s sadness. I could not forgive myself for hurting him. By breaking off with him, I had deprived myself of happiness and of my remedy for immortality. I drove the doctor Shen Nan Qiu from my palace to lock myself away with my pain.

News of my lover reached me: The master monk was sowing terror in Luoyang. His disciples trawled the streets all day picking fights. They broke down the doors of foreign temples and destroyed their unfamiliar idols. For Buddha’s anniversary celebrations, the monk secretly arranged to have a pond dug out in front of his monastery. He stood up on a stage in public and cut his own thigh, then he unveiled the huge hole filled with the blood of an ox he had had slaughtered the day before. Claiming that it was his own blood, he said he would commission a divine portrait of me in this crimson paint.

Word of his clashes echoed through the Court. Some said he had gone mad; others called for him to be punished. His cries of despair tore me apart, but I brushed aside my own weakness by asking the judges to disarm his monastery. Delighted to be free to attack the imperial favorite, the Court raised an army and surrounded the estate. The monks were surprised and surrendered immediately. They were chained, thrown into prison, and then exiled. After a brief morning in custody, Scribe of Loyalty received my edict granting him grace and was freed from prison. He headed for the Palace and asked to speak with me, but I refused.

One night two months later, I woke with a start. There was an acrid smell in my pavilion. I asked for the door to be opened: Outside the sky was lit up like a brazier and seemed to be rippling. A column of smoke rose up from the Temple of Ten Thousand Elements where clusters of giant flames were blooming like monstrous flowers and spitting out showers of sparks.

Gentleness ran to me in tears. “Majesty, it’s the temple. Heaven is angry!”

My eunuchs arrived with a litter. They wanted to take me to a palace beside the river, but I refused to move.

Swarms of birds wheeled in the darkness screeching in fear. In the courtyard outside women fell to their knees, joined their hands and recited prayers. The fires rose up and dropped back down in time to their chanting. I was overwhelmed by a dark premonition and stood rooted to the spot. The macabre dance of the flames fell on my retinas, beneath the vault of my head, within my bleeding soul.

My ministers were silent during the morning salutation the following day. They feared my rage, but what they feared most was that the blaze might have been a warning from Heaven, a harbinger of imminent catastrophe. To calm the mood of anxiety spreading through the Empire, I decided to sacrifice myself. I published an imperial edict in which I asked my people and officials to lay the blame on me. Libations were made in the Eternal Temple. Taking the Ancestors as my witnesses, I prayed that the punishment of the gods might be visited on me alone.

I decided to have the Temple of Ten Thousand Elements rebuilt, and Scribe of Loyalty was appointed to oversee the work. But the master monk seemed to take a long time to come and thank me for this appointment. Gripped with indescribable anguish, I cancelled my evening ride and waited for him. A few days later, I was told that a beggar child claimed to have a message for me from Scribe of Loyalty. I received him. The boy was so awestruck that he shook from head to toe and could not answer my questions. I nevertheless managed to tear a crumpled letter from his hand. The paper seemed unbearably fine to me. My heart felt heavy in my breast, and my body froze under the effects of an unspeakable fear. I took a long time unfolding that piece of rice paper. My lover’s terrible handwriting leapt off the page at me: “Heavenlight, you shall never grow old. Tonight I shall be your sacrifice to Heaven.”

Near the Southern Gate of the Forbidden City, tens of thousands of workmen were toiling to evacuate melted bronze statues, charred wood, and ashes that were still glowing hot. One official reading through the Sacred Writings found a verse which said that the bodhisattva Maitreya had become Buddha of the Future after sacrificing himself by fire. This reading triggered a new religious fervor and restored hope among the people.

The world was borne on a wave of renewed enthusiasm that I pretended to share. As I watched the new temple reaching toward the skies, taller and more sumptuous than its predecessor, I saw Little Treasure’s smile, red on white. I sometimes dreamed of him, this man whose imposing statue was now silhouetted against the sky. With his phallus in my belly, he would lean over me and say, “Heavenlight, you misunderstood me.”

I had not realized that he loved me. I had thought he was acting out of self-interested ambition. I had been afraid he would rob me of my throne.

I had destroyed my own immortal remedy.

Had I become a senile tyrant?

FOR MY BIRTHDAY I ordered that feasts be offered to the people in every town for a period of nine days. Within the Palace I summoned only members of my family and a few favorite ministers to a banquet set up in the Pavilion of Flying Snow.

That evening I missed Scribe of Loyalty’s voice. The night had not come yet, and snowflakes fell against the window, gray forms wriggling down on a translucent screen. I sat with pride in the heart of the palace, with my back to the north, looking southward. Serving women stood behind me holding round or square fans on long handles, symbols of my imperial splendor; Gentleness and my Court ladies brought ink, paper, flowers, incense, handkerchiefs, and vases. They were all dressed as men. My son and his twenty children were lined up on my right, on the eastern side. His large family still seemed tiny compared to my thirteen nephews and the spreading mass of scores of great nephews and great nieces in the opposite wing. Further away from me, closer to the door, I had put my relations from my mother’s family and the ministers, indistinct silhouettes merging in the candlelight.

I had had the year of my birth erased from every register in the Forbidden City: No one knew how old I was, but this was a bitter secret that filled me with piercing melancholy. When the Empire paid homage to my eternal youth, I pretended I too believed in it.

The Emperor of China had just turned seventy, a figure that terrified me. The Ancients said that, at the age of seventy, certainty opens the door to wisdom. Yet, on that evening, watching the sun set and the light fade, my doubts flooded in with the darkness.

My dynasty still did not have a legitimate heir. I was torn between a son who bore the blood of the overthrown dynasty and a nephew descended from a brother I had loathed. My gaze came to rest on Miracle to my right. Music meant nothing to him, and here, at this jubilant gathering, he drank incessantly and concentrated on his food. His drawn features afforded a glimpse of the weariness and boredom in his soul. Since he had reached adulthood, I had never seen him smile or express anger. Miracle was an aesthete with no ideals. Life flowed through his body like an unruffled river. He never made any decisions, never voiced an opinion. He was shut away in his own world pervaded by the purity of calligraphy and the voluptuous delights offered by his concubines, and he bowed to every current. Recently yet another group of conspirators had made use of his ambiguous status. When they were arrested by Lai Jun Chen, they claimed that Miracle had given them orders to reinstate the Tang dynasty. The prosecutor urged me to punish the unworthy prince, but I was satisfied with merely moving him to a guarded residence. I really could not exile the last of my four sons!

I caught the eye of his wife, Lady Liu, who had been Empress for a few years. I had never liked her round face with its thin lips. I stared at her. Her gaze wavered, and she looked away.

The two county princes, Happy Success and Prosperous Inheritance, rose to their feet behind her and threw themselves at my feet. They asked for my permission to dance. How old were these boys? I did not know. With their crimson lips and pink cheeks, they had the proud bearing of childrenof highbirth.Ontheir invitation,the little princesses stepped forward, bowed to me, and began to play various musical instruments. The boys imitated adults’ solemn movements and swirled their sleeves, singing: “Ten thousand springs for the Sacred Emperor, the ownership of ten thousand kingdoms.”

They twirled with their arms in the air like butterflies struggling in a rainstorm. These innocent creatures could not know that they would be struck down by misfortune. Before the banquet, a serving woman had come to denounce their mothers to me. Lady Liu and the Favorite Duo had set up an occult altar in a secret alcove within their palace. With their evil incantations, they had called forth the souls of my two rivals, the deposed Empress Wang and the disgraced concubine Xiao, and had ordered them to destroy me. Anyone who practiced sorcery was condemned to death by law, but I would not give Lai Jun Chen the pleasure of spreading a family scandal. That evening, neither Lady Liu nor the Favorite Duo, who was sitting in the shadows, would return home. My eunuchs had received orders to keep them back at the end of the meal. They would help them to commit suicide.

I could almost hear the orphans weeping, but I felt no pity. The following day an imperial decree would order my grandsons to abandon their residences and come to live in an enclosed wing of my palace. By holding his heirs hostage, I would find it easier to watch over Miracle, whom I could not punish.

The princes stepped back, and my nephew Piety came forward. He prostrated himself energetically and called loudly for me to have ten thousand years of good health. He had barely returned to his seat when the musicians began to play the Melody of Long Life. The doors of the Palace were drawn open, and one hundred dancing girls streamed onto the vermillion carpet of silk and wool threaded with gold. They wore black scholars’ caps, mauve tunics lined with yellow, emerald colored belts, and gray trains, and they performed a dance devised for my birthday by Piety.

My eldest nephew sat in the half light smiling and clapping in time to the music. He was now over fifty and had a curly beard, thick eyebrows, a hooked nose, and eyes that blazed with ambition-a curious mixture of features inherited from my Father and the latter’s first wife who had some Tatar blood. Everything about my son Miracle and my nephew Piety was different. The first, an imperial prince, had grown up surrounded by silk and velvet; the second, son of my commoner brother who had been scorned and exiled, had lived in contempt and poverty. Miracle had been given the title of king when he was four years old; Piety had become king when he was fifty. Miracle, the fervent Buddhist, refused to kill game; Piety, the cannibal, beheaded his enemies without a moment’s hesitation. Miracle, the poet, felt only distaste for command; Piety, the banished, longed for revenge.

My nephews’ rise had shadowed my sons’ fall. Ever since Splendor’s death, Wisdom’s suicide, and Future’s exile, Piety-now head of the Wu clan-had adapted to his good fortune and done everything he could to improve his position. He may have looked coarse, but he did understand the subtleties of human relations. He had defended my legitimacy, he had supported the magistrates in their persecution of the conspirators, and he had organized the personality cult surrounding me. When my own sons had tried to revolt against my authority, he had urged officials to sign the petition calling for my accession. It was also him, with his feverish imagination, who had invented all the emphatic titles that the Court was so eager to give me.

The blood of a wood merchant flowed in our veins. Piety, who was not unlike me, had inherited from Father an infallible calculating mind. The very day after my coronation, he had set to work on having himself recognized as heir to the throne. The fact that my sons were descended from the overthrown household did, indeed, throw some doubt over the legitimacy of my reign. If Miracle came to the throne, he would reinstate his father’s dynasty. If Piety, my nephew, were appointed as successor, he would more likely ensure the eternal sovereignty of our Wu clan.

Opinion was divided in Court. Some of the ministers saw my reign as a glorious extension of my husband’s; these were men who consented to grant me their loyalty so long as my son Miracle continued to represent a moral guarantee for the future. But there were countless young officials united behind Piety and my nephews, determined to replace the former dynasty’s dignitaries. They called for a break with the past and insisted we have a radical and bloody revolution.

That evening, once again, I looked back and forth between my son and my nephew. I had no strong ties of affection with either of them. Both were yoked to me by blood. I was hurt by Miracle’s indifference and put on my guard by Piety’s ardor. If Miracle were Emperor after my death, he would probably remember the mother who had brought him into the world whereas, if Piety were sovereign, he would surely be eager to honor his father, the brother I loathed, and his mother, the sister-in-law I despised. Even if I had forgiven the Wu clan for humiliating my mother and assassinating Little Sister, my nephews would always remember the period of exile that had robbed them of their youth. Even though I had brought our ancestors into the Eternal Temple, even though I had handed out provincial kingdoms to my nephews and the seals of county princes to their sons, this generosity was only a display of reconciliation. The clan had been both my torturer and my victim. The magnificence of the present could not erase the past, the Wu village with its small dark rooms. There was only a self-interested kind of solidarity between my nephews and myself. They gave me political leverage, and I held their future in my hands.

GENTLENESS WOKE ME from my reverie. The music was growing louder, bonze bells were ringing, and thousands of birds were singing. The dancing girls knelt on the ground and then flipped over backward, their faces disappearing in a ripple of sleeves. A giant peony opened up one petal at a time, and in the heart of this great flower, I read the characters, “Ten thousand years to the Sacred Emperor.” I ordered for a glass of wine to be taken to Piety to congratulate him for his creation. Proud and gratified, he prostrated himself toward me and downed the entire glass. Miracle sat facing him, his bored expression unchanged.

Not far from him, Spirit, my eldest brother’s son, suppressed a grimace and forced himself to smile at his cousin.

Spirit was beautiful, elegant, and cultured; he was the one successful incarnation in a clan bent on raising its status to extraordinary heights. Where Piety was still rigid and unrefined as a peasant, Spirit-who was five years younger than him-was from a more highly evolved strain, comprising subtlety and an urbane ambiguity. Piety was as inflexible as Spirit was amenable. The first was like an attacking chariot storming forwards; the second could navigate every kind of current, could insert himself through every closed door. The more demonstrations of loyalty Piety laid on, the less I trusted him. Spirit kept to his cousin’s shadow, but he showed me genuine adulation. While he urged Piety to supplant Miracle, he knew how to tackle my son, who the officials no longer dared approach. He slipped easily from one camp to the other, and he strove to reconcile my ministers with the clan by acting as my secret messenger. The more impatient Piety was to oust Miracle from the Eastern Palace and take up residence there himself; the more adroitly Spirit carried out his work. His maneuvering had not escaped my attention. Spirit also wanted the title of Supreme Son and was waiting patiently for the outcome of this insoluble conflict: The two cousins would kill each other, and he would then present himself as the ideal candidate.

The Princess of Eternal Peace was sitting close to Spirit, but she seemed distracted. With her oval face, wide forehead, and full mouth, her slender, well-muscled body and her haughty, energetic bearing, she was disturbingly like me in my youth. Given that her ancestors, grandfathers, father, mother, and brothers had all been Emperor, my only daughter wore her name, Moon, with glory. My large family of descendants paled in comparison to her luminous presence, they were the insignificant stars in my darkness. I had renounced the affection of my sons long ago and concentrated all my maternal passions on her. She was erudite, intelligent, and blessed with a scope for politics that was lacking in the male members of both clans. But this princess would never be heir to the throne: The ministers would not let her reign; her brothers and cousins would join forces to supplant her; the people would see her accession as a usurping of power and would rise up in revolt on the smallest sign from one of the princes. Moon was sentimental, tortured, hesitant, and fragile. She could advise, but she would never subdue. Too much power would have killed her.

I had given her an income equivalent to that of a king. I had chosen a life for her devoted to the arts and to love; I had hoped her life would be full of pure, crystalline joy to make the immortals jealous. But terrible suffering-that epidemic that ignored the crimson walls of the Palace, which invited itself into the homes of rich and poor alike and which struck down beggars just as readily as princes-had succeeded in reaching Moon in her jade cocoon.

At the age of thirteen, my daughter conceived a violent passion for Xue Shao, whom she had met while walking beside the River Luo. To fulfill her desires, I ordered the young aristocrat to repudiate his legitimate wife, and I offered them the most lavish wedding in history. But prince consorts have hearts as capricious as imperial princesses: Having been forcibly married, Xue Shao remained attached to the memory of his first wife who had chosen to commit suicide rather than be abandoned. He had treated Moon with respectful contempt. Moon was accepted and rejected, feared and loathed by her husband’s family, and she had hidden her pain from me until the day I discovered that this unworthy son-in-law was involved in a conspiracy.

Xue Shao was executed; Moon lost her failed source of happiness. I urged her to remarry, and she fell in love with my nephew Tranquility who was also a married man. The cousin, astonished by this unexpected good fortune, did not wait to be begged. He dismissed his wife and loved Moon with religious fervor. But she was haunted by the memory of Xue Shao: The imperial princess preferred an impossible love to the adoration she was offered. Very soon after they were married, she betrayed her husband in the arms of a guards officer.

I despaired at my daughter’s turbulent emotions. When she chose Tranquility, I thought the gods had showed me the path of hope: Marriages between my nephews and my children would knit together the two clans, both tributaries of the same river. But the failure of this exemplary marriage only increased hostilities.

Filial love cost me endless waiting, much disappointment, and considerable pain. I kept the succession unclear to maintain the balance: My nephews continued to live in hope, and my ministers continued to obey me, while I woke a little more tired every morning. The crown, which conferred power on me, was not enough to alter the course of the stars, the cycle of the seasons, or the hearts of men.

After his wife and his concubine had been executed and his sons had been captured, Miracle became a ghost. Moon changed her lover, and Tranquility drowned his sorrows in alcohol. My nephews pursued their fight for my favor. None of them was interested in the people, the land or the splendor of the Empire. None of them knew anything of self-abnegation and the sacrifices of being sovereign.

I envied all those who saw their lives stretching to infinity in generations to come. I searched in vain for the future of my dynasty.