The Incarnations (25 page)

(The Hall of Literary Brilliance is a curious venue for luncheon, as the Jiajing Emperor does not possess a scholarly bent, never reads the accumulated works of Chinese civilization crowding the shelves . . .)

‘Your Excellency, why not have some steamed one-hundred-year-old turtle in ginseng soup? Ginseng strengthens cardiac function, will keep your heart beating vigorous and strong!’

(. . . the five-thousand-volume encyclopaedia, the Tang Dynasty poetry and the scrolls of Song Dynasty paintings . . .)

‘Your Majesty, may I be so bold as to suggest some wolfberries and snow peas to aid digestion? Though I must say, Your Majesty’s selection thus far has been exemplary!’

(The Emperor does not care about ancestor worship, or the historical records of the empire. Emperor Jiajing’s solipsism limits pursuit of knowledge to mortality cures . . .)

‘I see now that His Majesty is sated. I must compliment His Majesty on the judicious array of delicacies of earth and sea selected for his luncheon today!’

(Selfish as a newborn, nothing that exists beyond His Majesty is worth a moment’s thought.)

Emperor Jiajing toothpicks from his canines shreds of pork and flicks them aside. One of the serving eunuchs falls upon the sacred toothpicked debris, gathering them to stow in a locket around his neck, thus bringing this mere castrato closer to Heaven’s Son. Emperor Jiajing speaks to me for the first time, his back to me as I stand behind his throne.

‘Imperial Consort, you do not dine. You have my permission to do so now.’

‘Your Majesty, to dine is nigh impossible when you are near. When you are near all corporeal need flees my body. All thoughts leave my head.’

‘As one expects. Women’s brains are anatomically very tiny. I expect scant few thoughts rattle about the confines of your skull to begin with. Thoughts of dressmaking and other silly frivolities.’

‘Your Excellency is correct. I am dim-witted as a she-goat. ’Tis a pity, but there is nothing to be done.’

‘How are my daughters?’

‘Your daughters fare well. Azalea has recently been weaned from the breast, Chrysanthemum had her feet bound last week, and everyone is of the opinion that Lily’s embroidery is the finest of all the princesses’!’

The Emperor yawns wide his rotting-molars-and-gum-pits-stinking breath.

‘Imperial Consort, you bore me tremendously. Do you have anything of noteworthy interest to say to me at all?’

Armpits sweating, the seams of my sapphire silk gown straining. My breath resists my attempts to reduce its speed, to make breathing inconspicuous.

‘Actually, Your Majesty, I do have one suggestion, if Your Majesty would do me the honour of lending his much revered ears. My lowly opinion concerns Imperial Consort Bamboo. I think she is unworthy of serving the Emperor. The low-breed slut ought to be demoted to a maidservant.’

The Emperor lifts his porcelain cup and drains the last of his elk-horn and deer-penis beverage.

‘Is that all?’

‘That is all, Your Majesty.’

Emperor Jiajing gestures that luncheon is over with a wave of the hand. He moves to the doorway where the sedan-chair-bearers await, without glancing backwards at Concubine What’s Her Name, who is nervously wringing her hands. The servants part the curtains and the Emperor enters the silk-veiled carriage. He murmurs his destination, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, and the bearers lift the poles and carry him away through the courtyards of the Forbidden City.

Alone in my bedchamber, I seek solace in the opium pipe and wine and I strum upon my zither a melody called ‘The Calamitous Golden Eel’. I doze and dream of you, my fingers fiddling under my skirts, masquerading as your tongue, and I wake to emptiness, aching temples and a dry mouth. Dusk has cloaked the Palace of All Sunshine. There is a knock at the door. Eunuch Li of the Bureau of Affairs of the Bedchamber has come.

‘Concubine Swallow, the Emperor Jiajing requests your attendance tonight in the Leopard Room.’

Heart stops, breath caught in throat. Nearly three years since I was last impaled on the imperial cock.

‘Shall I go to the bathhouse and have the maidservants prepare me?’

‘His Majesty has requested you as you are.’

‘Then the Emperor’s wish shall be granted.’

I strip out of my robe. Legs shaking so much I can barely stand, I rinse my stale mouth with water and splash my face. Naked but for slippered feet and a feather duvet worn as a cloak, I climb on Eunuch Li’s back and we proceed thusly to the Leopard Room.

In the vermilion-pillared Leopard Room magical cranes fly across the lapis lazuli ceiling panels. Blazing lanterns dangling silk tassels hang from hooks. On the four-poster bed is Concubine Bamboo, naked but for a jewelled tiara. Your eyes are vacant, your pale skin unsullied, but for some slight discolorations where I feasted too keenly the night before. Eunuch Li takes my feathered duvet and backs out of the room. His conscience is besmirched by what occurs in the Leopard Room, the concubines he carries out to be stitched up afterwards, and the ones that pass away. But what is to be done? The Emperor’s wishes must be granted, his every desire fulfilled.

Emperor Jiajing emerges from an annex with silk rope and I am palsied with terror. He orders me to stand against a vermilion pillar and binds my wrists around the pillar behind my back. I tremble, grovelling like a whipped dog. ‘O, Your Excellency, I beg your forgiveness. I sincerely regret having spoken this afternoon. Please be compassionate to the mother of your three daughters . . .’

‘Quiet.’

His Majesty turns to you on the bed. The maidservants have bathed you, prepared your toilette for the Leopard Room. Perfume scents your pulse beats and your lips are red as rubies. Emperor Jiajing directs a question to the pale masque of your face. ‘Concubine Bamboo, your elder sister Concubine Swallow has been spitting vinegar. Do you know why?’

You shake your head with those ever-vacant eyes. The precious gems of your headpiece glitter with the changing angle of striking light. Emperor Jiajing laughs.

‘Sweet Bamboo, how innocent you are! Let us take a look at your elder sister. Do you know she has given birth to three children? Do you know what childbearing does to a woman’s body? The teats sag like cow udders, the stomach flops and folds over. As for her cunt, well . . .’ His Majesty chuckles. ‘. . . if the barbarians invade Beijing we have a vacant storehouse for the imperial jewels! I have not lusted for her for years, but the wretched hag still lusts for me. So much so she has tried to warn me away from you, my sweet Concubine Bamboo. We’ll teach her a lesson, shall we?’

Barely perceptibly, you nod. To me, the Emperor hisses, ‘Now watch me split the bamboo.’

His Majesty throws off his padded blue silk, fox-fur-trimmed robe, proceeds towards you. Emperor Jiajing is underweight, asthmatic, feeble and sickly weak but, after smearing his erection with verdigris and snake dung and snorting powdery aphrodisiacs up the nose, he is convinced of his invincibility. The only man in the Forbidden City with his genitalia intact, His Majesty is virility itself. You are quiet as he parts your legs and mounts you. Perfectly still, but wincing in virginal pain as yet another member of the imperial household makes use of your young body. Despite my fear of what post-coital punishment awaits, the sound of him sliding up and down inside you and your whimpers and moans arouse me, make me want you too. After the snake has spat he collapses on you, as though his heart has arrested and he has died a little death. Beneath him, you lie still. You roll your head to the side. Your eyes are still blank. Let this be it, I beg the Heavens above. Let my only punishment be to watch him writhe above another. Let his ego imagine my ‘jealousy’ is torture enough.

Emperor Jiajing slowly revives on the bed, conceitedly muttering of his sexual prowess in your ear, prodding you there and dabbing his bloody fingerprints on your collar bone. He molests you in this way for a while, then calls to me from across the room.

‘See. You don’t compare to sweet young Bamboo. Confronted with your haggard body, my cock dies a whimpering death.’

I hang my head as though tormented, and the Emperor quotes from the Book of Odes:

‘Women with long tongues

Are harbingers of evil.

Disasters are not sent down from Heaven

But originate in the female of the species.

‘See how pale she is, my sweet Bamboo? The God-awful pallor of her lips and cheeks? I think we ought to rouge them for her, don’t you?’

He whispers in your ear and you giggle impishly. The Emperor smacks your bare bottom as you slide from the silk sheets. You scamper over to me, touch your finger to the bleeding palette between your legs, then smear the blood on my lips and rub your finger in circular motions on my cheeks. I stare into your traitorous eyes. You are blank as ever, though you turn to the Emperor to giggle every so often. The Emperor stands, walks away from the bed.

‘What do you think, Concubine Bamboo? Do you think her complexion has improved?’

You shake your head no. Emperor Jiajing walks to the dresser and opens a jewellery box of knives and other sharp instruments of torture. The Emperor removes a silver scalpel from the velvet-lined case. Acrid wine-tasting vomit spills down my chest. The Emperor laments, ‘Oh dear, she is paler than ever now! What do you think, Concubine Bamboo?’

He hands you the silver scalpel. You turn to me and treacherously utter, ‘More rouge.’

Concubine Jasmine spoons herbal soup between my parted lips and I struggle to choke it down.

‘One more spoonful, dear sister Concubine Swallow,’ she encourages, dabbing my chin with lace cloth. ‘You need nourishment to strengthen and heal.’

Concubine Jasmine smooths the cotton bedsheet that covers my torso, bound tight by bandages. Her beauty and kindness contrast starkly with the portrait of the Emperor of Knives staring at me from the wall opposite the infirmary bed. Though I am no longer in the Leopard Room, my torture is ongoing, for every night the eunuchs unwind the gauze from my crudely stitched chest and douse my flayed skin with fiery medicinal concoctions. My teeth bite down on rags stuffed in my mouth and my hands claw the bedsheets, until a tide of darkness comes, sweeping the pallid, tittering eunuchs away.

Imperial Consort Jasmine, a high-ranking concubine like me, knows the monotony of the infirmary, has spent weeks convalescing there herself. So she smuggles in a Siamese kitten to amuse me by chasing balls of yarn, and some bamboo paper, ink-brush and ink, so this recuperating concubine can churn out imitation Song Dynasty landscapes. Puffing on the opium pipe together, we transcend into a giggling realm of lightness and ease as Concubine Jasmine reads to me from illicit, bootlegged erotic novellas (swearing me to secrecy, for if the eunuchs knew she was literate, they’d gouge out her eyes). She reads the tale of a cuckolding wife who romps with a gang of servant boys behind her master’s back, and she acts out each part with comic timing, changing her voice for each character, exaggerating carnal moans. Spellbound by her deft tongue moving behind her luscious lips and her eyes widening during climactic scenes, I reach and touch her lovely breasts. Concubine Jasmine ceases reading. She takes my hand in hers and kisses it tenderly.

‘O dearest beloved sister Concubine Swallow. Believe me, I wish I could. But it is my misfortune that I am not that way inclined.’

When I am pronounced well enough to return to the Palace of All Sunshine, Concubine Jasmine and I celebrate by wandering arm in arm about the Imperial Gardens. The spring thaw has begun. Many species of flowers are budding and numerous winged insects hover about the shrubs. Our little bound feet, three silk-cocooned inches peeping from under the hems of our robes,
tap tap tap
along the winding pebble-mosaic path as we admire the songbirds on the branches of the cypress, catalpa and scholar trees. Under my bandages, the stitched lesions protest movement with lacerating pain, but I hobble on. Concubine Jasmine has sought permission for us to enter the Emperor’s Menagerie to see the tributes from the kings of other lands: the elephant from Laos, the African zebras and the strutting ostriches with feathery bums and uppity beaks thrust to the sky. We stroke the zebras’ black-and-white-striped hides and laugh and clap our hands as the stable boy climbs astride the elephant and gets a backward hosing from the wrinkled grey trunk.

Back in the Imperial Gardens in the late afternoon we hear a tinkling of voices in the Pavilion of Melancholy Clouds.

‘Ah, who might that be?’ stage queries Jasmine.

On the circular stone bench within is a gathering of palace ladies, resplendent in shimmering robes, jewelled combs in their impeccably coiffed hair. They arise as we enter the pavilion. ‘Concubine Swallow!’ they cry, and flock to me.

‘O precious Concubine Swallow, we prayed to the Goddess of Mercy for your swift recovery. We requested permission to visit you, but the eunuchs wouldn’t allow it.’

They embrace me and caress my chilled early-spring cheeks. Fourteen of my harem sisters, each a faded beauty of more than thirty years with age-spun webs around her eyes. A stove blazes in the corner and on the table are porcelain teapots and cakes baked in the moulds of butterflies. The party is in my honour. They present me with gifts prepared during my convalescence: peony-stitched satin slippers, pouches embroidered with Buddhist emblems and a balm of crushed petals to perfume my wrists. Silly frivolities that show how limited in skill and artistic expression the harem women are, but I battle my inner contempt and express gratitude for the gifts. For years I have rejected my sisters, and superiority is a hard habit to break. We sit on the circular bench. Surreptitious breezes sneak through gaps in the wax-paper windows to stir the pavilion air. Concubine Jasmine begins, ‘We may speak without restraint, Concubine Swallow. Maidservants have been dispatched along the paths to look out for spies such as Hunchback Guo.’ She lays a hand on the carved gully where her bellybutton used to reside. The afternoon stroll has aggravated Concubine Jasmine’s wound.