The Last Empress (11 page)

Tung Chih had a beautiful full forehead. His eyebrows had just grown into their permanent shape like two fine brushstrokes. When he was a young boy, the color of his eyebrows had been so light it looked as if he had no eyebrows at all. Nuharoo was never satisfied with the makeup Tung Chih usually wore for audiences. Especially his eyebrows. Many times he arrived late at court because Nuharoo insisted on doing his face all over again.

Tung Chih's bright eyes had been the joy of my life. Like mine, they were single-lidded and almond-shaped. In my mother's opinion, his best feature was his straight nose. It went well with his high cheekbones, which were characteristic of a Manchu. His lips were full and sensuous. In death, he was still handsome.

I followed the lama's advice and tried to treat my son's death as a natural event of life. But remorse had begun its tortuous path. My heart was soaked in its own poison.

Tung Chih's coffin was as big as his father's. It would be borne on the shoulders of 160 men. When Li Lien-ying told me that it was time to
bid farewell, I stood only to fall back on my knees. Li held my arms and I rose like a hundred-year-old crone. We moved toward the coffin, where I would take a last look at my son.

Li Lien-ying asked if Tung Chih would like to take his favorite old toy, a paper model of Peking, with him. The inner circle of the city would stay with him; the outer city would be left for the paper-burning ceremony, to help send Tung Chih's spirit on its way.

"Yes," I said.

By the coffin, the eunuch asked for my son's forgiveness for having to take the inner city apart so it would fit. "Here is your Ladder Lane," Li Lien-ying said. "As Your Majesty can see, it looks like a ladder going upward onto the slope. Here comes Bag Lane and Grout Lane, the streets that we can enter but not go through. And now, on this side, the Soochow lanes. Your Majesty once asked me if the original streets were built by people from the south. They might not have been from Soochow but from Hangchow. Your Majesty didn't have time to bother with the details and small differences, but now time is on your side."

For a moment my mind flew elsewhere, and Li Lien-ying became An-te-hai. What would An-te-hai say about all this? There had never been a memorial service for him. Few mentioned him after his execution. His wives and concubines divided his fortune and soon forgot him. None mourned him. I secretly hired a stone carver who built a tablet for An-te-hai's grave. Because of my status I was never able to visit the site and had no idea what his resting place looked like. It was Tung Chih's misfortune that he never became An-te-hai's friend.

Finishing his packing of the coffin, Li Lien-ying continued to speak to my dead son. "I never had the chance to tell you what 'Horse God's Lane' or 'Horse God's Temple' meant. Your ancestors might ask you such questions, and it is important that you are prepared. The early Manchus were people who lived on horseback. Without the help of their horses, there would have been no conquering China. Manchus adore, admire and respect horses. Temples built in Peking honor legendary horses who died in important battles. Maybe in your next life Your Majesty will have the opportunity to visit the lanes and temples honoring horses."

It was in death that Tung Chih would learn of the city he had lived in. With my eunuch's help I burned the rest of the city, the outer city, for my son's spirit to carry away. The names were copied from the originals: Sweet Water Well Lane, Bitter Water Well Lane, Three-eyed Well Lane, Four-eyed Well Lane, Sheep Mart, Pig Mart, Donkey Mart. The
vegetable market stood beside the dynasty's arrow factory, and the military training ground, the Big Fence Place, was filled with paper horses and soldiers.

Also included in the sacrificial burning was the paper shopping area mimicking the Royal Well Lane, Peking's largest, which extended for miles. Li Lien-ying didn't forget the execution site, called the Livestock Market. All this, he believed, would be a necessity for Tung Chih as a ruler in his next life. I ordered that the famous Porcelain Kiln be included, which was the largest bookstore, built in an abandoned kiln. Since my son would have all the time to appreciate the details, we added Dog Tail Lane, Woodchopper's Lane, and Open Curtain Lane.

It was cold and dark when I returned to my palace. Li Lien-ying tried to close the windows, but I stopped him. "Leave them open. Tung Chih's spirit might visit."

The giant pale moon hanging outside above the bare trees brought back memories. I recalled a moment in Jehol when Tung Chih begged me to let him bathe in the hot springs. I refused him because he had a cold. I remembered breathing the fresh air and wishing that I could raise Tung Chih there. We stood among the wild tall bamboo that evening. The leaves danced in the breeze. Thick ivy draped forty or fifty feet down from century-old oaks like Heaven's curtains. The stone-paved ground was bleached by moonlight, as white as it was tonight. The shadowy jasmines on each side of the path looked like frozen ocean waves.

I went to the library looking for material that would help me construct Tung Chih's obituary. A slim book,
Convalescent Home for the Winter Plum Flowers,
caught my eye. It's author was J. Z. Zhen of the early Ch'ing Dynasty. I found myself unable to put the book down once I started reading.

In southern China, especially in Soochow and Hangchow, a floral winter plum tree has been popular. It has become a subject for famous painters. However, the tree's beauty lies in its sickness: abnormal shapes and bent branches with giant knots and exposed roots were preferred. Straight and healthy trees were considered plain and tasteless. Foliage was trimmed off and the tree reduced to bare trunks.

Once the tree growers understood what their customers
wanted, they began to shape the trees. In order to suppress normal growth, the trees were bound like a woman's feet. The branches were braced to form desired shapes. The trees grew sideways and downward. They were considered "fabulous" and "elegant" when released.

Winter plum flowers all over China are diseased now, because the growers had invited worms to create knots. The grotesquely shaped branches caused the tree to suffer a slow death, while merchants profited.

One man gathered his family fortune and went to the local nursery. He purchased three hundred pots of diseased winter plums. Turning his house into a convalescent home, the man began to care for the trees. He cut off the braces, destroyed the pots, and planted the trees in the ground. He left the trees alone to grow naturally and covered the soil with rich compost. Although the sickest winter plum didn't survive the disease, the population did.

Tung Chih was like those winter plum trees, I thought, closing the book. Since birth, he had been bent and twisted into a showpiece. I had dreamed of him swimming in the lake near my hometown of Wuhu. I even fancied him riding on the back of a water buffalo like the boys I knew when I was a girl. But Tung Chih was a winter plum that was bound and braced and skewed. His schooling included everything but common sense. He was taught pride but not understanding, revenge but not compassion, and universal wisdom but not truth. Endless ceremonies and audiences drove him to desperation. Tung Chih achieved the desired form, but at the cost of his life. He was deprived of an understanding of himself and the world, robbed of options and opportunities. How could he not have grown sideways?

Flirting with brothel girls might have been Tung Chih's attempt to find out who he was behind the mask of an emperor. Maybe he possessed a hunter's nature and had needed to pursue freedom and adventure. Three thousand concubines competing for his dragon seeds killed the hunter in him. Had I seen things from his point of view, I might have learned of his suffering. After his funeral I discovered more obscene materials in his bedroom. They were hidden inside his pillows, between his sheets, under his bed. The books had the lowest taste and quality. The private world of my son, the Emperor of China.

I remembered my husband once saying to me, "You come to occupy
my bed like an army." He said it with disgust in his voice. I had participated in forcing the same displeasure on my son, which made his death a true revenge.

I sent Li Lien-ying to invite my daughter-in-law Alute for tea. To my shock, she sent back a message threatening to commit suicide.

I was confused and asked for an explanation.

"I will be entitled to the regency when I give birth to a son," Alute declared in her return message. "And I expect you to hand over power. However, I have been told that you will never step down because you live only for that power. I can see no other option but to remove myself from this indecent world. I have decided that my unborn child should go with me."

I had never taken Alute seriously when she acted like this. I had let it pass when she hadn't bothered to be sweet or humble in front of me. She didn't like my wedding gift, a light green silk-embroidered summer dress. Openly she criticized my taste and insisted on redecorating her entire palace. When I invited her to my favorite opera,
The Peony Pavilion,
she kept her head turned away throughout the performance. She believed that as an Imperial widow I should be ashamed of myself for enjoying a silly romantic opera.

I was displeased, but I left her alone. I thought that if she was this way with me, she would be the same with her eunuchs, her maids and her fellow concubines, who would in turn do her great harm. The Forbidden City was a place where females ganged up on one another. It seemed that Alute took my silence as an invitation for more insults.

Would Alute be capable of ruling the country, assuming my grandchild would be a male and she took over the regency? She seemed to believe that she could handle a national crisis without any training or experience. As an outsider, she saw glamour and glory in my position. I, on the contrary, could see reflections of a double-edged sword. If Alute only demonstrated some aptitude and merit, I would gladly assist her.

Everything Alute did told me that she was spoiled and had no idea of the consequences of her actions. Instead of taking part in her husband's mourning, she spent her days with senior court members, my opponents.

If Alute left me with a choice, I would be able to show her the way. But she couldn't conceive that transferring power would involve contending political factions at court and in the government nationwide.
She didn't believe there could be a struggle. Alute let me know that she didn't desire my help and that her distrust of me was solid and final.

How could an innocent girl who didn't know me hate me so much? I was more puzzled than upset. Although Alute was Nuharoo's pick, I didn't think Nuharoo was aware of the depth of Alute's hatred.

I feared this girl Alute, and I worried for my grandchild. The fact that Alute had considered taking her unborn's life scared me. What would she do to China if she were given total power?

I wrote back to Alute after she rebuffed my proposal for a sensible solution between us: "The ministers, governors and commanders in chief of China would not be willing to serve unless their ruler proved to be worthy of their devotion and lives. It would not be as easy as attending a dinner party, doing embroidery or watching an opera."

Alute answered me with her suicide.

She left the court an open letter, which she might not have written alone. The language was vague and her metaphor obscure.

"When a bird is dying, its song is sad," Alute began. "When a lady is dying, her words are kind. This is the condition in which I find myself today. Once went a girl to her death, and she could not walk erect. A bystander said to her, 'Are you afraid?' She replied, 'I am.' 'If you are afraid, why not turn back?' The girl replied, 'My fear is a private weakness, but my death is a public duty.'"

Did Alute believe that she had a duty to die? I saw it as nothing but a protest and a punishment against me. I had not only lost Tung Chih but his unborn child. No enemy could destroy me more.

Alute's maid said that her mistress was pleased with the decision to end her life. Alute treated the suicide as an event to celebrate. She awarded the servants with money and keepsakes for helping her. The servants were called to witness the suicide act. Alute declared that anyone who dared to disrupt her would be whipped to death. When the morning of the set date arrived, Alute dosed herself with opium and then dressed herself in an eternal robe. The servants were then dismissed. Alute shut herself in her bedroom, and by afternoon she was dead.

The opium Alute took was smuggled into the Forbidden City by her father, who had learned of his daughter's plan. Although he was against it, as a patrician loyalist who had been given a high royal title upon his daughter's marriage, he complied with her wish. He feared that her misbehavior would cost him his own good life. After he had supplied
Alute with enough opium to kill her, he wrote to the court that he had nothing to do with his daughter's action.

I summoned the father and asked him if he had said anything to upset Alute. The man replied, "I told her to stop grating on Your Majesty's nerves."

I felt sorry for Alute, for she had received no support from her family. More than that, I resented her for killing my unborn grandchild. Then it dawned on me that I had never received confirmation of Alute's pregnancy from any doctor, nor had I seen her belly swell.

Doctor Sun Pao-tien came at my summons. He reported that an examination had never taken place, because Alute had never granted his entrance.

Was it possible that all was staged?

If the pregnancy was false, Alute's suicide would make more sense. She would have ended up being one of scores of Tung Chih's backyard ladies. She would not have been given the role of regent, since she was childless. By accompanying Tung Chih to his grave, she achieved virtue and would be honored. In the meantime, her letter placed the responsibility for her death squarely on me.

Beneath Alute's shy manners was a strong and willful mind, an unquiet character with a monstrous ambition.

My opponents made good use of Alute. It disgusted me to look at her father, who appeared to be harmless. I couldn't forgive a man who would encourage his daughter to kill herself. If this was how Alute was raised, it might be fortunate that she didn't have a child.