Empress

TWELVE

The seasons came and went. In springtime, the skies were filled with peach rose, pear white, grenadine orange, and magnolia mauve. In the autumn, the wounded leaves of the maples and the bloody tears of the persimmon trees showered over the city. I lived in the most beautiful palace in the most beautiful city in the world. I was surrounded by indolent calligraphers and sensuous poetesses draped in muslin and silk. I owned the world’s best chargers, so swift they struck flying swallows as they galloped. I commanded warrior and spiritual princes, philosopher and strategist ministers. I was adored by an entire nation of passionate, hardworking people. But these triumphs, this grandeur-the apotheosis of earthly achievement-no longer moved me.

Beauty is not happiness. The secret flavor that wet my appetite had disappeared. The inner light that gives people their soul, the city its color, the rain its sweet melancholy, and the monotone days their serenity-that light had been extinguished.

I lost my faithful companions Ruby and Emerald that year. Despite her perseverance, the Princess of Gold proved unable to seduce Time. Death interrupted her futile gabbling and juvenile laughter. Her perfume dissipated; her name was no longer whispered. The very day after her burial, she was forgotten.

I could not bear anyone to use the words “old” or “tired,” and I exiled every official who dared advise me to retire. I flew into a rage whenever my ministers broached the subject of the succession. “I am not senile yet,” I would reply coolly to anyone who tried to imply that I must appoint a Supreme Son. I would wake with new aches and pains and go to bed with a little more despair. The world may well have recognized me as a goddess, but I was no less human for it. My slide into decline proved that my fate would be as miserable as a commoner’s: I was condemned to die.

The accusations leveled at Miracle began to accumulate, but I could not make up my mind to eliminate the last of my sons. My nephew Piety made one appeal after another: His impatient ambition was almost usurpation in itself. My nights were haunted by terrible nightmares. Sometimes I would see Piety crowned, exterminating Miracle, Moon, and Future. All my grandchildren whose legitimacy challenged his were reduced to bloodied flesh and severed heads borne aloft on iron pikes. Sometimes I saw Miracle as emperor, weak and easily influenced, becoming a puppet to his concubines and eunuchs. As a powerless sovereign, an impotent lord, he would be besieged by Future coming out of exile at the head of a rebellious army and demanding his birthright. The Forbidden City would burn; my nephews would revolt. Piety would ascend to the throne only to be supplanted by Spirit, and he in turn would be assassinated by some other power. The Empire would shatter into a thousand rival kingdoms. Armies of mercenaries would trample the fields, burn villages, massacre the population, and ransack towns. Luoyang, Long Peace, Jinzhou, Bingzhou, and Yangzhou would be strewn with corpses and reduced to ruins and cemeteries. I would wake with my forehead covered with sweat. Peace on Earth was fragile, and prosperity precarious. Every dynasty was destined to perish.

At night my bed was frozen. As I lay in the darkness, I knew that the music I missed was the music of love. How I longed for that blissful drug that could allow me to escape from my desperate aloneness! I would sometimes dream of a silhouette, a smile, a combination of Little Phoenix and Little Treasure. This stranger would heal my anguished soul, and I would forget the tragedy of being an emperor without a successor. The bitter solace would vanish when I woke. I had not known how to love, and now it was too late.

The precious flavor had been wasted; the light had dimmed. I would occasionally savor a boy or a young girl, sent to me secretly by the eunuchs to fortify me. Not one of them could save me from the river in which I was slowly drowning. My flesh was weary, my heart impervious. I was turning into a deep sea monster, guardian of an illusory world.

GRIM DAYS ALTERNATED with moments of exultant happiness. Determined to conquer my mood, I threw myself into extensive building projects. The excitement on the huge construction sites drowned my despair. Thousand year-old trees groaned and crashed to the ground, furnaces taller than the hills blazed, and the streams of red-hot bronze set the sky alight. The constant din of hammering and the hiss of metal plunged into water reverberated around the four corners of the kingdom.

The workmen’s skills meant I could realize the most outlandish dreams. The ramparts were fortified and built up all round the Imperial Capital. The avenues were widened to accommodate nine giant tripods, monsters molded out of 560,000 jins of bronze and decorated in bas-relief with landscapes from our nine regions. They were drawn by 100,000 soldiers and countless oxen and imperial elephants and taken to the foot of the new Temple of Ten Thousand Elements. A celestial temple was built behind the sacred sanctuary, standing two stories taller than it. This new temple housed the largest Buddha in the world, big enough to sit ten people on just one toenail. The imperial path was adorned with seven gold statues: the Wheel, the Elephant, the Celestial Girl, the Winged Horse, the Pearl of Intelligence, and the Divine Servants. By the Southern Gate of the Forbidden City stood the Celestial Pivot. This extraordinary monument, offered by three barbarian kings, conversed with the clouds, and overlooked the entire city from its dizzying height. It was a column of bronze covered with magical inscriptions, sacred drawings, and celebratory poems, and at its highest point, four golden dragons reared up to the sky bearing the Pearl of Fire that lit up the Empire with its eternal flames.

After endless reshuffling, I succeeded in putting together a well-proportioned government where strengths balanced out weaknesses in a harmonious structure. I gave my steadfast ministers complete freedom to reprimand wrongdoers and suggest changes. My nephew kings ensured my authority went unchallenged. The prosecutor Lai Jun Chen and his collaborators terrified the disloyal. I granted closely supervised autonomy to the provinces. Our social hierarchy was consolidated: Every caste had its own symbols, its constraints and privileges. But gone were the intransigent segregation and the fatal lack of social mobility. Every eventuality was permitted. Every talent must be allowed to flourish.

The equitable statutes of the former regime were respected, and ancient rites and forgotten traditions were unearthed and restored. I had created a new culture while respecting the continuity of dynasties. With the favor granted to me by the gods, the Empire’s prosperity was like a galloping charger: Controlling it was now just a question of balance, breathing, and concentration.

I had a burning desire to realize my husband’s unfulfilled dream, to perform the Sanctification of Heaven at the top of Mount Song. I was impatient to be the unique woman in the world who leads the supreme ceremony awarded to the greatest sovereign. The preparations soothed away the boredom that gnawed at me constantly. I raised the imperial parade, accompanied by my Court and our foreign vassals. The procession was wider than the River Luo and filled entire plains and valleys. As I observed the rites of purification, I felt a weight lift from my body and my spirits. Despite my seventy-one years, I reached the snowy peak of Mount Song. After carrying out the libations, I dismissed my attendants and stood alone in the sacred enclosure at the very top of an altar-hill built as a sequence of terraces in five different colors of Earth. There prostrated, I recited the prayers of invocation.

Somewhere in the distance, musicians were striking their bronze bells and their sounding stones. The peak was shrouded by the wind and snow. In the darkness, I searched in vain for a light, a sign from the Supreme Being. I could see nothing. The god was deaf to my prayers. He who turned the wheel of destiny knew that I had falsified the stone with the inscription “Divine Mother, who graces the earth, through her, let the Emperor’s reign prosper” and thrown it into Luo River. He knew that I had dictated to the monk, Clarity of Law, the passage concerning a Celestial Daughter called Purity of Heavenlight when he was translating the Sutra of the Great Cloud. I had fashioned the divine will to take the reigns from men’s hands. But God had not appointed a woman to rule the world. I was just a usurper, and this was why I had no heir!

I wept in silence. Suddenly, the sun sprang out of the darkness and poured out a thin stream of red that swelled to tumbling waves in an ocean of mist. In those brightly colored undulating clouds, I could see celestial horses galloping toward me. Suddenly the miracle I had waited for all my life came to pass: The glowing disc of the sun drew closer, grew larger and larger like a silk sheet unfurling, then it filled space in its entirety. Its countless rays were like sharpened arrows hurtling toward my flesh, and the pain as they burned me became the sweetest pleasure. God was there; God appeared to me! With my forehead to the ground and my eyes closed, I let his incandescence embrace me bodily. I did not have time to ask him whether I was his beloved daughter, nor what death was, nor who would be my heir. I forgot to beg his protection for my dynasty or my people. I forgot my dream of an eternal reign. The questions that had always tormented me ebbed away. I was burning. I was turning into a ball of fire revolving slowly on itself. I could feel myself dissolving in a sea of light. I suddenly saw my own body prostrating itself at the top of a mountain, surrounded by the snow. I saw the world below, beneath the clouds, in the depths of the abyss.

Rivers scour through the earth and run toward the ocean. The snows fall, and trees cover themselves with leaves. Palaces crumble, paths disappear, wheat sprouts up and transforms deserts into fields. God is the source of all movement, inexhaustible life, eternal energy. God had made me and sent me here to demonstrate his might: He creates and destroys, erases and renews. Even at the heights to which I had risen, I remained dust in the palm of his hand.

THE JOURNEY BACK to Luoyang was gloomy. I lay huddled in fur coats inside my carriage surrounded by fires crackling in braziers, but still shivering with cold. The strength was being drawn out of me like an ebbing tide. My ears were filled with a buzzing sound. My eyesight became hazy, and I ordered my officials to write their political reports in larger characters. Once I had dictated the commemorative hymn that would be engraved on the stela erected at the top of Mount Song, I accepted the idea of dying.

One evening the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen asked to speak to me in secret. He was brought to the palace along an underground passageway. As he threw himself at my feet, I noticed a feverish red flush on his pale cheeks. His wolf-like eyes glowed with something akin to joy. My wildcats seemed to have picked up the scent of blood on him; they roared and paced agitatedly. The judge was surrounded by dogs and leopards, but he showed no fear. He took from his sleeve a scroll of paper and held it aloft in both his hands to offer it to me. I unrolled it in the candlelight to reveal a diagram in which the First Magistrate had traced the networks of conspirators from the time of Wu Ji, Shang Guan Yi, and Pei Yan right up to the present. There were hundreds of names, all written in large characters and connected to form a tree whose branches reached as far as provincial governments and the encampments of those who had been banished. Every enemy of the State was inscribed there: The dead were ringed with red ink, the exiled with blue, and prisoners in green, and there were black circles hovering threateningly around those who were still free. At the very end of the scroll, I found Miracle, Moon, Future, Piety, and Spirit.

Lai Jun Chen’s voice quavered slightly. Miracle, the Emperor who had resigned; Future, the deposed emperor; Piety, the King of Wei; Spirit, the King of Liang; Moon, the Princess of Eternal Peace; and her husband, Tranquility, the King of Jian Chang were secretly planning a coup and preparing to share the kingdom between them.

“Lord Lai,” I sighed, “I have taken note of your observations. You may leave.”

“Majesty,” he said, edging forward on his knees, “the King of Wei has been restless the whole time you have delayed appointing an heir. He is weary of waiting; he is preparing to resort to force and will call on his cousins who command your guards regiments. The Princess of Eternal Peace is secretly scheming to establish an agreement between her brothers and her husband’s clan. Majesty, the time has come, an uprising in the Court is imminent!”

“Let me think!” I said, silencing the prosecutor with a wave. He disappeared through the partition. Lai Jun Chen had an acute sense of smell like an animal, which meant that he could identify the ideas that people were harboring and the longings they themselves had not yet formulated. While other judges were happy simply examining the facts, he projected himself into the future. The plot he was imagining was one I had already lived in my nightmares. Men’s strengths go hand in hand with their weaknesses. That is why there is no such thing as an invincible warrior, and why heroes die.

Two days later during the morning audience Piety, King of Wei, asked to speak. His powerful voice reverberated around the hall: He charged the magistrate Lai Jun Chen with corruption, exploiting his influential position, and attempting to usurp power. My Great Ministers and my nephews Spirit and Tranquility stepped forward and unanimously upheld his charges. In keeping with Palace codes, Lai Jun Chen had risen from his seat and prostrated himself as soon as his name was mentioned. I was surprised by this violent attack and remained silent. Someone had betrayed the prosecutor by warning the King of Wei, who had responded with an adroit riposte: Piety had pointed the finger at Lai Jun Chen for the crimes of which he himself was accused. The entire government had joined him and was declaring war on the most feared man in the Empire. How was it that the prosecutor, who saw plots in every direction, had been unaware of this one, like a soothsayer blind to his own fate?

I silenced my own irritation while my ministers pressed me for a response, and Lai Jun Chen asked to speak. Either I would hand the magistrate over to the Court, or I would let him explain himself. He would denounce the conspiracy: With one hundred members of both my families in prison or condemned to death, I would become the laughing stock of the entire world. I would be the senile emperor sinking the very ship on which she sails. What authority would I have left to reign? Who would be heir to the throne? Piety had played his part very cleverly. On the chessboard of the Forbidden City, he had just checkmated his opponent. I did not grant the judge the right to defend himself, but pretended to be furious and ordered that his cap and official’s tablet be removed and that he be thrown in prison.

A wave of hatred rippled through the Court. I created a special court made up of high-ranking magistrates and Great Ministers, and while they were deliberating the charges brought against the accused man, the kings and dignitaries and the Princess of Eternal Peace filed past me begging me to apply the law. A stack of thirty scrolls, listing 1,500 charges, was laid before me. A petition bearing hundreds of signatures was brought to me. The entire Court was asking for this torturer to be put to death. Ten years earlier, I would have firmly defended Lai Jun Chen. But now my soul, which had embraced God himself, was weary of human quarrels, and my policies were restricted to engineering compromises. A sovereign is never entirely master of his kingdom. I was constrained to abandon thoughts of exiling him and to concede that he should be put to death.

The wind picked up, and the mountains whispered. Migratory birds crossed the sky with anguished cries. The chrysanthemums in the Imperial Park exhaled their bitter fragrance and dropped their petals into the River Luo. I watched the moon wax: It would soon be the mid-autumn full moon, the date set by the ancestors for public executions.

The night before the fateful day, I tossed and turned in bed before falling asleep. In my dreams, I climbed up to the observatory. The Forbidden City at my feet steeped in shadows, like a cemetery where the red lanterns of night watchmen on their rounds danced like will-o“-the-wisps.

All of a sudden someone stepped out of the darkness and threw himself to the ground.

“I have come to prostrate myself at your feet one last time,” Lai Jun Chen told me, his voice echoing as if from the depths of a well and his iron chains rattling. “Before leaving this world, I wanted to tell you that all the accusations are false. I have never betrayed Your Majesty’s trust.”

“Lord Lai, you made only one mistake: You criticized my family.”

“Majesty, they are plotting against you!”

“I am tired. I no longer have the strength to unravel all this hatred and to cause bloodshed. In a kingdom everyone except the king is a conspirator. There is always an intelligent way of making peace with enemies. Why did you not realize that? Why have you forced me to sacrifice you?”

“Majesty,” he said, prostrating himself, “I am not yet beheaded. So long as there is breath left in me, I shall fight for you. Majesty, you must choose! Either you shall reign for ten thousand years, or the Zhou dynasty will be overthrown, and you will be betrayed for all eternity!”

“Lord Lai,” I cried despairingly, “look at my hands; look at my face.

I’m growing old; I’m going to die! What does glory mean to me now or the dynasty!“

“You are wrong, Majesty; you are a goddess who will live as long as the River Luo flows and Mount Song stands!”

“I am a mere mortal in this existence. I too shall end up in the Yellow Earth, like all the other emperors resting in their tombs. While I am alive, I am Master of the World. Once I die I shall have only the narrow confines of a coffin! Lord Lai, leave me. Our families are a congenital illness. Mine is my infirmity. I did not choose it; the gods imposed it on me. I am condemned to disappear along with my dynasty.”

A sob wracked the man whom I believed to be incapable of emotion. His weeping was the strangled howl of a dying animal.

“How can I leave Your Majesty alone in this world! How can you fight everyone alone? Majesty, I beg you, let me live; let me defend you!”

My heart contracted, and my voice shook as I said, “Leave!”

“Majesty,” he said, wiping his tears, “your wish is my command. For you, I shall go to my death. May my sovereign be granted ten thousand years of happiness! May the Sacred Emperor be granted ten thousand years of good health!”

The wind lifted, and the judge disappeared. I was woken by a needling pain. The glow of nightlights danced on the walls of the Palace, like dying fireflies. I asked for Gentleness to be woken, and she played the zither until dawn.

The following day I hosted the annual banquet held in celebration of the moon. Dancing girls on the stage swirled their long sleeves. My son, my daughter, and my nephews took turns offering me wine. I waved them back to their seats. Up on my throne, I served myself and got drunk. I contemplated the heavenly mirror in its full and perfect splendor. In the middle of its silvery surface, there were darker patches that made its luminosity seem all the more pure and mysterious. Judge Lai Jun Chen had been the impurity that had accompanied me in my solitude. His head would already have rolled to the ground, and his body would have been handed to the crowd to trample on it in their fury. I had lanced an infection. I had stripped myself of my last weapon.

I stood alone at the top of the world. Before me and behind me, there was now only emptiness and infinity.

THE REGIMENTS OF the imperial guard were posted along every avenue, and the inhabitants of Luoyang received orders to stay at home with their doors and windows closed. I stepped into the golden carriage to join Moon, who was celebrating her thirtieth spring. The imperial procession filed through the streets for hours on end.

Hills covered in blossoming plum trees undulated around a frozen lake, and crimson galleries snaked through the snow. The residence of the Princess of Eternal Peace was a palace of jade and crystal. Fires crackled in braziers, and rare dishes appeared in a heady succession. This banquet marking the reconciliation between emperor and her family brought together every powerful figure in the Empire. The great men in magnificent finery were soon drunk, constantly raising their glasses to toast the omnipotent princess and to wish her a thousand years of happiness. A dais had been set up for me at the far end of the room, and perched on my throne, I was bored as usual.

A rustling sound woke me from my snoozing; I opened my heavy eyelids and saw a silhouette in the doorway. Whoever it was prostrated themselves and came toward me through the turmoil of the banquet, a slender boat plying through a lotus field. The figure drew closer and revealed itself to be an extraordinary beauty: Now I could make out the square tips of his shoes and the flowing movements of his tunic with its long sleeves. His oval face was lightly powdered, and he had dark slanting eyes. There was something familiar about this stranger!

He prostrated himself again, then took a bamboo flute from his belt and brought it to his lips with his eyes still modestly lowered. When he blew into the instrument the world suddenly stopped buzzing around me, the winter faded away, and spring spread its wings. Flowers bloomed between his arpeggios, and I saw swallows flying overhead. A great plain of green meadows embraced me in its cool, fresh grasses. A hill wreathed in mist appeared on the horizon. A pathway zigzagged through fields of sorghum toward the top of the hill where there was a stela covered with inscriptions. Then the vision melted away. The youth bowed to me once more and backed away respectfully before disappearing. I looked at the emptiness he had left, speechless and terrified.

I called Gentleness and asked her the musician’s name. She told me that he was called Prosperity and was a descendant of Zhang Xing Cheng, a minister in the Department of Punishments during Emperor Eternal Ancestor’s reign. She added that my daughter, Moon, was hoping to find a position for him at the Court.

That night I was haunted by the boy’s pale face and pink lips. A year earlier, as I returned from Mount Song, I had secretly met with a Taoist monk who claimed he had lived a thousand years and could see a thousand years of the future. I remembered his enigmatic prediction: “The end will come when the Celestial Prince plays his bamboo flute.”

Prosperity had come, the end was beginning. A bamboo flute was guiding me through the darkness to the mouth of the labyrinth. It had all been written.

The very next day I sent a message to Moon, and that evening the princess sent her lover to the Inner Palace and offered him to me.

HOLDING PROSPERITY IN my arms, I realized I was no longer the same woman, no longer ashamed of my old age or filled with self-loathing. The despair had vanished. This coming together of two bodies had been inscribed in the Book of the Earth. Prosperity was a present from God. He was bringing me new life even as he announced my death.

When the Mistress of the World, Emperor of the Zhou dynasty, quivered to a man’s rhythms once more Tai Mountain crumbled, the Yellow Sea boiled, wild animals roared in the forest, and the whole universe shivered with joy and amazement. It was a long time since I had had an official favorite, and the Court was bowled over by the news.

Urged on by my Great Ministers, the imperial doctors recommended that I should be examined immediately, and they forbade violent orgasms that might prove fatal. Their eager concern amused me. From the very first night with my new lover, I knew that my pleasure was no longer the physical contractions. In my dotage, death’s mystic light was blinding me. My erotic pleasure was almost a breathing exercise, an elation that lay along the torturous path of caresses on my skin. It was a dreamlike pilgrimage toward the kingdom of the immortals.

A month later, for my entertainment and to ensure that he was no longer the only man in the gynaeceum attracting jealousy, Prosperity brought his elder brother Simplicity to my bed. The boy was eighteen. Their fresh faces, their soft skin, and their exquisite smell of crisp green leaves overwhelmed me. I had been neither a good mother nor a good lover. The Zhang brothers were my last chance to savor the joys of ordinary women. They were my last rays of sunlight before the ultimate sunset.

I gave them the most beautiful things in my possession. Sumptuous palaces had been raised for them close to the Forbidden City. Their stables were filled with the rarest chargers, gifts from kings in the west. Imperial peonies bloomed in their beautiful gardens where little boats glided over serpentine lakes, and cranes danced under canopies edged with gold bells. I gave noble titles to their mother and brothers, and all five boys from the family now had honorable positions. I indulged their faults in a way I never had my husband, and I was tender with them as I never had been with Scribe of Loyalty. I had stopped questioning my every move and forbidding myself pleasures. I had given up worrying about betrayal and usurpation. Simplicity and Prosperity’s delicate virility erased memories of the presumptuous phallus of man. I was no longer an assailed female, a conquered land. The love that I had always thought of as a theft was offered as a soothing balm.

Spring spread its fragrance. Swallows flew back to the eaves of the Palace. With the first mild breeze, the willows flowered. Soon their downy, silvered catkins were fluttering. The court ladies fixed colored kites to lengths of red string and made them dance in the sky. Waking became a delicious treat. The eunuchs congratulated me on my glowing good health so frequently that I felt young again. Where I had lost a tooth, a new one was growing: This miracle flooded me with childish joy. My frugal soul had been seduced by pomp and splendor. My thrifty mind stopped counting the cost. I gave sumptuous banquets and let the Zhang brothers organize extravagant shows with fireworks, animals, and acrobats from the western kingdoms.

Death was no longer an ice-cold bed, a fatal boredom. I wanted to leave this world in a whirlwind of celebrations. Politics were no longer a priority. Like a peasant who has worked hard all his life and resolves to enjoy his accumulated wealth, I decided to appoint an heir. I had to choose between my nephew and my son. The problems were still the same, but I felt less anxious when I confronted that tangle of hopes and frustrations. I was determined to be done with it. The ministers dared to give me frank advice, “Years ago the Emperor Eternal Ancestor braved the wind and the rain, and bared his life to the blade of the sword. He himself led his troops into battle to overcome disorder in this world. He founded the Tang Dynasty so that he could hand it on to his descendants. Before he died, the Emperor Lordly Ancestor entrusted his sons to you so that you might make great sovereigns of them. If Your Majesty now chooses to offer the throne to strangers, her actions would betray his wishes! Which is the more intimate connection, between a mother and her son or between a mother and her nephew? If Your Majesty appoints her son as successor, she shall still be receiving offerings in the Temple of Ancestors in ten thousand years’ time. If Your Majesty appoints her nephew… your servants have never heard of a nephew building a temple to honor his aunt!”

Lai Jun Chen was no longer there to pick out the dark plans for restoration beneath these words. Without his hissing comments, I myself was less susceptible to doubt. Granted, the imperial banners bore my colors, I had altered the calendar and the Empire venerated my ancestors as the founding sovereigns… but my husband’s Tang Dynasty lived on through his descendants and through me. Heaven’s wishes were more powerful than my own. I could not devour my own children so I decided my dynasty should not be the cause of radical revolution, no blood should flow. The forces of destiny had unarmed me for such was the destiny of the Empire. Piety the despot and Miracle the powerless emperor would see their claims brushed aside. I would call Future back from exile. This unworthy son had neglected his principle responsibility. His fourteen years banished from the Court might have put some polish on his flippancy. Now that his youth was buried in the wild mountains, he would come to me with no hint of arrogance.

AT THE BEGINNING of the first year in the era of the Divine Calendar my third son returned from the distant region in the south. At forty, the chubby, jovial prince had become a thin, stooped man with a graying beard. When he threw himself at my feet calling me “Mother” and “Majesty,” my eyes filled with tears. It was like hearing Splendor’s voice, and Wisdom’s, the echoes of their cries as tiny babies. I remembered the polo matches, the noisy celebrations with all four of my sons fighting for the golden goblet in my husband’s hand.

The past was a hurricane blasting through my dreams. How strange, how sad, to be receiving grandchildren-flesh of my flesh-who were strangers and already head and shoulders taller than me! Some had features vaguely like mine, others were like the Emperor Lordly Ancestor or their grandfather the Emperor Eternal Ancestor. Peaceful Joy, the daughter who was born on the road to exile, delivered into her father’s tunic, had grown into a princess whose beauty was mysterious and proud. Fourteen-the age at which I had come to the Imperial City for the first time. And this young girl who grew up in the wilds of the countryside like Heavenlight, was she too reeling and disorientated?

When he heard that his eldest brother had returned, Miracle was eager to offer him his title as Imperial Descendant. He made the request three times in writing. In the ninth month of that year I appointed Future as Supreme Son and his eldest son, Progress, as Supreme Grandson. At the same time I pronounced a Great Amnesty and gave banquets for the people. All the pomp of the celebrations was interrupted by Spirit weeping in grief: Piety had just died! He had been struck down as his father had been sixty years earlier.

General jubilation became imperial mourning. Laughter and congratulations turned to tears and lamentations. My nephew’s body went into the belly of Mount Mang. He would rest in an underground palace with funeral treasures fit for a powerful king who could so easily have been emperor. The entire Court and all of Luoyang was there to witness his journey toward Heaven. My nephew kings and my great nephew county princes wept, and their tears devastated me. I had just dashed their hopes for the future. The defeated were now open to reprisals from their victorious rivals.

I appointed Spirit as head of the Wu clan and first officiator in worshipping our ancestors, well aware that this subtle, learned man would succeed in endearing himself to the heir. To protect my clan from the possible revenge of the Tang princes, I arranged countless marriages between my granddaughters and great nephews, and ensured that my great nieces ruled in my grandsons’ households and gave them descendants. In order to calm the inevitable rivalry, I summoned Future, Miracle, Moon, Spirit, and all of their children to the Temple of Ten Thousand Elements. I stood facing the Altar of Heaven, the Altar of the Emperors of the Five Orientations, and the Altar of Ancestors. I asked my highest Court dignitaries to bear witness, and I ordered my descendants to swear on their lives to serve the dynasty together like the left arm and the right arm of one body. Their oath that they would never quarrel was inscribed on an iron blade and laid in the heart of the sanctuary.

HAVING EMERGED TRIUMPHANT from the succession crisis and free of the prosecutor Lai Jun Chen, the Court was ready to follow me to inaugurate a new era. On my way to Mount Song, I had discovered the River of Rocks, and beside it I commissioned the Palace of Solar Breath. The skilled workmen transformed the deep valley into an extraordinary garden of marvels. Pavilions with turquoise roofs blended into the luxuriant forests. Birds flew in and out of open windows and doors. Waterfalls cascaded inside pavilions built with the trunks of trees. Fish like long, translucent arrows swam beneath the crystalline floor. I kept beehives and herds of sheep. I liked watching Simplicity and Prosperity coming toward me through the huge magnolia woods, their tunics and wide sleeves flying in the wind as they brought me a chick, a fawn, or a butterfly. After two years of research, the bonze Hu Chao offered me the Immortal Remedy.

The pills he gave me warmed my entrails and made my body feel light. My hearing and eyesight improved. The world became limpid: Its waters began to whisper, bees no longer buzzed in silent abstract words. Soon I could even pick out the yawn of a leopard, the sighing of the trees, or even of the wind as it blew across the valley. Everyday I rediscovered forgotten sounds, and I listened delightedly to the creak of a shutter as it was lifted or the sneeze of a little eunuch who believed I was still deaf. To thank the gods and demonstrate my humility I renounced the title of Emperor who Holds the Mandate of Heaven and Turns the Golden Wheel. I entrusted the monk Hu Chao with a golden blade engraved with my prayer to all the gods in the universe. He toiled all the way to the summit of Mount Song and pushed it into a crack in the rock.

I set off with my lovers, sons, nephews, and ministers, on my boats decorated with dragons and phoenixes. We were an elegant gathering, all rustling silks and brocades, as we made our progress down the River of Rocks, passing cliffs where waterfalls languidly stroked the rusts and emeralds of lichens and mosses. The young princes plucked at musical instruments and the princesses danced, fan in hand. Great ministers served as cup bearers while I judged a poetry competition between my lovers, my nephews, and my sons.

The alchemy of Hu Chao’s pills gave me new energy: I undertook my last mission on this lowly earth-pacifying the murderous conflict between Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. My dynasty would recognize these three doctrines as three pillars of Chinese thought. Any quarrels or confrontations between their adherents would be punishable by death. Gods, immortals, Buddhas, spirits, Heaven and Earth would all be considered so many different manifestations of the one God, the source of multiple divinities. In my Imperial Park there were pavilions all along the River Luo, linked by brightly colored galleries. Geese, cranes, and storks flew through the soft red twilight along the reed-lined banks. That was where I set up the Academy of Sacred Cranes, where I asked Simplicity and Prosperity to compile the great encyclopedia The Pearls of the Three Sects. With the help of illustrious scholars, they produced 1,300 volumes in which they gathered every tract on Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. I succeeded in proving-from the way they used the same words to spread different convictions-that the three religions had the same veins through which the one and only source of Wonderment flowed.

IN THE FIRST year of the era of the Foot of Buddha, on the day we celebrated the Feast of the Moon, I hosted a banquet for 3,000 people in the Forbidden City. Lanterns and glasses full of wine floated along the city’s rivers. Lamps of jade and crystal sparkled in the trees. Acrobats vaulted through the starry sky leaving trails of pale flames behind them. Tatar dancing girls with masked faces and bare midriffs undulated between the river banks and the firework displays and snatched improvised poems from my guests’ hands. Sitting there watching those cheery, drunken faces, those dancing eyes, and smiling lips, and lulled by the hubbub of music, I succumbed to the sweetest sleep.

I was suddenly woken by a scuffle at a table in the distance. I sent my eunuchs off hastily for an explanation. My great nephew, the King of Wei, who was married to the Princess of Eternal Plenty, had just argued over a game with his cousin and brother-in-law, the Supreme Grandson. I called the two troublemakers over-one had a torn tunic, the other had blood trickling from his head. My last illusion was now shattered, and my anger soon found loose tongues willing to explain: The King of Wei, Piety’s eldest son, had accused his cousin’s family of assassinating his father. The Supreme Grandson had responded by saying that Piety had been an ungrateful intriguer. With alcohol fueling his hatred, my great nephew-who would have been the Supreme Grandson if his father had been appointed heir-vented his anger on the boy who had robbed him of his future. The two cousins who were brothers-in-law had insulted each other and come to blows. Their indignation unleashed ancient resentments. Great nephews and grandsons from both sides of my family had fought violently.

I trembled with shame and disappointment, but I did not want to spread any scandal. I silenced the servants, sent the two young princes back to their seats, and called for a deafening piece of music from the drums and mouth organs. I did not summon my two families to the Temple of Ten Thousand Elements until half a moon-phase later. I ordered the princes and princesses to kneel and asked for the iron blade, on which their oath of unity was carved, to be taken from his golden casket. There, before the Altar of Heaven, the Altar of the Emperors of the Five Orientations, and the Altar of Ancestors, I decreed that the law must be applied.

The King of Wei and the Supreme Grandson removed their brocade coats and their caps with jade pins. Wearing their simple white tunics and with their hair loose about their shoulders, they prostrated themselves at my feet, bowed to their parents, and went to hang themselves in a wing of the sanctuary. Silence reigned. I stared into space watching motes of dust dancing. Then I heard the sharp sound of two wooden stools being overturned. The first wife of my son and heir let out a gasp; she had just lost her only male child. Behind her, the Princess of Eternal Plenty-sister and wife to the dead men-passed out. Three days later Gentleness told me that this poor granddaughter had lost her child in the seventh month and had died bathed in blood. She was barely eighteen.

The Supreme Grandson and the King of Wei had both dreamed of bearing the crown one day. But the crown had struck them both down.

I gradually broke away from that accursed family and turned toward the soothing smiles of the Zhang brothers. When I listened to Prosperity playing his bamboo flute, I forgot the gaping wound in my entrails.

On my way to the Palace of Solar Breath, I had visited a misty hillside and followed a sinuous path through fields of sorghum. At the end of the path I found a simple, rustic temple dedicated to a prince from the venerable Zhou dynasty, a distant ancestor of mine. He had become immortal by means of purification exercises and had broken away from the honors and cares of the earthly world to join the skies, borne on the back of a white crane. When I was sad, when I lost all hope, I would picture that scene. My serving women would set up lacquered tables, young eunuchs would hold quivering silk parasols, Court ladies would spread out the paper and prepare the ink, Gentleness would hold her calligraphy brush, and with my hands behind my back, I would dictate the hymn of the Celestial Prince.

The wind billows through my long sleeves. The sun strokes my face. The sorghum leaves rustle, creating endless murmuring waves. Not one bird sings, even the grasshoppers are silent. The ephemeral is a reflection of the eternal.

The Celestial Prince blows into his bamboo flute, announcing the End and the Beginning.