Empress Read online

  Empress

  Shan Sa

  Translated by Adriana Hunter

  The sharp wind and the swift dagger

  The only blessings from my ancestors

  —Shan Sa

  Contents

  Epigraph

  One

  Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth.

  Two

  The horizon kept receding further. The road forked and melted…

  Three

  Heaven and Earth, sun and moon, day and night, man…

  Four

  One afternoon in the spring, the groom entrusted a Turkish…

  Five

  Ruby ran to me so quickly that she tripped. She…

  Six

  The same scene kept coming back to me in my…

  Seven

  The Emperor Lordly Forebear had brandished his sword and conquered…

  Eight

  Future ascended to the throne and inaugurated a new reign.

  Nine

  My periods had stopped.

  Ten

  I, the wandering child, I, the shaven-headed nun, I, the…

  Eleven

  The world forgot Confucius’s maxim: “It is as scandalous for…

  Twelve

  The seasons came and went. In springtime, the skies were…

  Thirteen

  Why does the body shrivel and dry when the soul,…

  Fourteen

  The Empire venerated me as the wife and mother of…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Shan Sa

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head, I thought, I listened, I longed not to exist. But life was there, a transparent pearl, a star revolving slowly on its own axis. I was blind. My eyes stared into that other world, that other existence that dwindled a little every day. Its colors were extinguished, its images blurred. I was still left with cries of astonishment and feeble sobbing. I was oppressed by the impotence of these vague recollections, burned by their melancholy. Who am I? I asked Death as it crouched at my feet. Death moaned and gave no reply.

  Where am I? I could hear laughter, voices saying, “It will surely be a boy, my Lord. He is moving. He is full of life.”

  It mattered little who I would be. I was already weary of this vastness. I was weary of hoping, of waiting, of being myself—the center of the world.

  I was soothed by the rustle of the wind. I listened to the trickle of rain. Across my sky in which the sun never rose, I could hear a little girl singing. I was lulled by her gentle, innocent voice. My sister, I foresaw great sorrow for her. A hand tried to caress me. But a wall lay between us. Oh Mother, the shadow outlined against the screen of my thoughts, do you realize I am already old, condemned to live within the prison of your flesh?

  IN THE DEPTHS of the lake, in the sepia-colored waters, I swiveled round, curled up into a ball, spread my limbs, turned circles. Day by day my body grew, weighing heavily on me, strangling me. I would have liked to be the prick of a needle, a grain of sand, the flash of sunlight in a drop of water; I was becoming flesh, an exploding flesh, a mountain of folds and blood, a marine monster. One breath raised me up and rocked me. I was irascible. I was furious with myself, with the woman who was my jailor, with Death—my only friend.

  They waited for me. I heard someone whisper that the boy would be called Heavenlight. The rustle of preparations hampered my meditation. They spoke of clothes, celebrations, wet nurses: plump, white, and sturdy. They were forbidden to speak my name, for fear that demons would possess my soul. They were waiting for me to pick up where their own destinies had left off. I felt pity for these fervent creatures, so affable and eager. They did not yet know that I would destroy their world to build my own. They did not know that I would bring deliverance—but with fire and ice.

  One night I awoke with a start. The waters were seething. Furious waves broke over me. I held myself tightly, struggling with my fear and concentrating on my breathing, on my gnawing pain. When the tide surged, I was launched into a narrow opening. I slid between the rocks. My body bled. My skin tore. My head imploded. I balled my fists to stop myself from screaming.

  Someone pulled me by my feet and slapped my buttocks. With my head hanging down, my cries spewed from me. I was wrapped in a cloth that flayed me. I heard a man’s anxious voice: “Boy or girl?”

  No one replied. The man grabbed me and tried to tear open my swaddling.

  He was interrupted by a woman’s quiet wail:

  “Another girl, my Lord.”

  “Ah!” he cried before dissolving in tears.

  A dozen women watched over me as I grew. Three wet nurses took turns quenching my thirst. My appetite was frightening. I was already laughing. My eyes were great black pearls rolling in their sockets. I looked on the world day and night, never wanting to sleep. My mother was worried by my constant agitation; she called on a number of exorcist monks. But no one succeeded in expelling the demon from me.

  I eventually grew weary of their fears. Behind the gauze of my mosquito net, I pretended to sleep to have some peace, while a woman sang as she rocked my cradle. Another waved a fan to waft away the odd fly that had strayed into the perfumed universe. With my eyelids closed, I let my thoughts fly away.

  The kingdom that Father ruled as absolute master was divided into two parts. The Front Quarter was reserved for men. Stewards, secretaries, accountants, cooks, pages, valets, grooms, guards, and lackeys busied themselves from the first light of dawn. Government officials took their orders and set off on horseback. Troops of soldiers undertook training exercises all day long in the great courtyard to the side. This virile world ended before the vermillion gate where the gynaeceum began. Behind the high, snow-colored wall lived hundreds of women: old, young, and little girls. They wore their hair in topknots pinned with flowers and had jade rings threaded into their silk belts. It was the eighth year of Martial Virtue;1 fashion favored the pallor of early spring: dresses were crocus yellow, the soft green of narcissus leaves, the pleasing pink of cherry blossom, and the crimson of the sun reflected in a lake. Sweepers, servants, seamstresses, embroiderers, bearers, wet nurses, cooks, governesses, stewards, gracious attendants, singers, dancers…all of them moved slowly, with composure, and spoke in hushed tones. They rose at dawn, bathed at dusk. They were the flowers of my father’s garden, blossoming to compete with the beauty of one person alone.

  Mother dressed soberly. Her least little cough was a command, her every gaze an order. She was naturally elegant. Fashion changed, a flitting butterfly, Mother maintained an eternal springtime. She was of the Yang clan from the Hong Nong region; one of the thirty most noble families in the Empire. As a daughter, niece, and sister to eminent ministers, a cousin to imperial brides, and a close relation to the Emperor and the princesses, Mother wore her dignity like a jewel, a cloak, a crown. She gave alms in the monasteries and distributed food to beggars. She was a fervent Buddhist, observing a vegetarian diet and showing no interest in the turmoil of this lowly world. She copied out the sutras in her careful hand and dreamed of reaching the land of Extreme Joy, the kingdom of Buddha Amida, He who launches countless rays of light.

  Mother was cold, delicate, soothing. Her gentleness was cutting and opaque and reminded me of the jade disc that hung over my cradle. I wanted her. I grew agitated waiting. She would appear from time to time after several days’ absence. When she arrived, her long silk train and her endless muslin shawl set the curtains to my room aquiver. The ground kissed by her slippered feet whispered with pleasure. Her perfume went befo
re her. It smelled of sunlight, snow, the East Wind, flowers laden with happiness.

  She never took me in her arms, happy to contemplate me from a distance. My eyes consumed her hungrily. Her lips were two scarlet petals. Her face was as perfectly smooth as a mirror. Beneath her eyebrows, which had been shaved and redrawn in the shape of cicada wings, her eyes betrayed her disappointment. She had desired a boy.

  THE POMEGRANATE TREES exploded into blossom and the summer arrived. My one hundredth day was grounds for a celebration. Mother had the pavilion in the middle of the lake opened up and gathered together her noble friends and relations for a sumptuous banquet.

  In that room surrounded by the glittering water, I was passed from hand to hand. I was stroked and petted. Servants came up the steps to lay down gifts. One lady offered me a pair of emerald bracelets—she was convinced that my sparkling black eyes were a sign of intelligence. Another had nine gold ingots brought on a silver tray, saying that my wide forehead was an omen: I had been placed under the sign of a wealthy and happy marriage. Another bedecked me with nine rolls of brocade—she said that my straight nose, my chubby cheeks, and my round mouth foretold exceptional fertility: I would have many sons.

  Mother was happy. With a nod of her head, she ordered for a carpet of silk to be unrolled in the middle of the banquet, for me to be freed of my swaddling and to be seated. The servants laid a dozen objects out around me. I forgot this gathering of pale women in all their finery, caught hold of an ice-cold toy and tried to lift it. There was a general murmuring and one woman said: “She chooses neither the makeup box of Beauty, nor the jade of Nobility, nor the flute of Music, nor the book of Wisdom, nor the quill of Poetry, nor the abacus of Commerce, nor the rosary of Spirituality. My dear cousin, your daughter’s future will be singularly unusual. It is truly a shame that she is not a boy.”

  “Indeed, your Highness, it is a great shame,” agreed another.

  “Ah well, we must not let this distress us,” exclaimed a sonorous voice, ringing with pride. “In our time women can demonstrate prowess in a thousand ways. Long ago the great Princess Sun of Ping fought for her father, the August Sovereign. At her funeral, His Majesty called for the trumpets and drums to be sounded, an honor reserved for men. Your daughter has a curved forehead to accept the celestial breath, she has luminous eyes, a strong jaw, generous lips; she has touched of her father’s sword. Excellent! My dear, from this day you must dress her as a boy. Give her an education worthy of her own determination. The daughter of a general likes commandment. I can see her as the mistress of a noble warrior household!”

  Soon I felt the need to venture out into the world rather than receiving it from my cradle. Unable to stand upright on my feet, I crawled. One step toward the unknown meant coordinating all my muscles. Pinning my eyes on an object, keeping my ears alert and my mouth open to roar silently, I raised an arm, a leg, I crawled my way through the universe.

  A bearded man leaned toward me. He was wrapped in a silk coat lined with sable, and seemed to have come from far, far away. When I saw him, I heard the thundering of hooves, the wailing of the wind, the unbridled moans of the courtesans. The bestial smell of him made me shiver. His gruff kisses tore my cheek.

  There was a little girl watching me. I was fascinated by her pink complexion, fine features, sturdy legs, dark eyes, and the wooden duck she trailed behind her. After looking carefully up and down, she put a finger in my hand, and I squeezed it until she flushed red and began to cry. “You must not hurt your sister,” my wet nurse told me. She did not know that later, as she had in those days of innocence, Elder Sister would beg me to be her torturer.

  In the ninth year of Martial Virtue, the Emperor abdicated in favor of his son. Twelve moons later, the new sovereign recalled Father from the noble province of Yang where he had been sent on a quest, and named him Governor Delegate of the province of Li where an insurrection under Prince Li Xiao Chang had just been repressed.

  I was two years old. I stumbled around among the wooden cases and the carriages covered in oiled drapes, unaware of the suffering of a father exiled from Court. The horses and the oxen trod the endless road that dissolved into the horizon. I devoured the world through an opening in the carriage door. Outside, the colors jostled and furrowed, spreading out and contorting. We shall see each other again, Long Peace, my native town!

  The wheels’ rattles over the stony track kept me awake. We crossed a vast plain where the arid soil had been cracked and crazed by the sun. Hordes of children in rags came and prostrated themselves as we passed by. I was astonished that such thin, dirty creatures existed at all. Mother asked for food to be handed out to them: biscuits, bread, and rice meal, which they swallowed while it was still scalding hot.

  I was tormented by questions. I kept asking them all day long: “What is hunger? Why do the fields need to be cultivated? What is wheat? How is bread made?”

  After a month of traveling, the caravan embarked into the misty mountains. The track was carved into the cliffs and, further down, the Jia Ling river roared as it hurled itself against the tormented rocks. Forts rose up from the peaks; military outposts opened their barriers for us. The imperial soldiers were brutish men who drank from chipped bowls and ate haunches of beef with their bare hands. In the evenings, around the camp fires, they beat their drums and sang. The moon rose, and I fell asleep listening to the roar of tigers. When the first hint of dawn appeared, birds launched themselves in pursuit of the sun, while monkeys fled the light, screeching as they swung from one strand of creeper to the next. “Why is the sky going red? Why are the trees so still? Why do the boatmen slash their own faces?” Streaming with blood, they raised anchor and threw themselves into the torrents.

  I HUNG THE birdcages under the awnings. The robins, orioles, and canaries started to sing. I let the ducks out onto the pond, the cranes into the long grass, and the peacocks into the camellia bushes. Inside our new home, the furniture was taking root, the curtains were growing, and the cats and dogs scrapped over their territory.

  Nurse dressed me as a Tartar boy. In my blue turban, leather boots, and emerald-green tunic with its fitted sleeves and cuffs embroidered in gold thread, I tottered like a drunken man, bellowing military songs.

  Four years old, the age of diamonds. Free. There, with my arms in the air, I could fly. The new garden was a vast expanse of parkland, a whole continent. The summer was on its way: the hills oozed, the sky evaporated, life slowed down. I crouched down and watched the caravans of ants at the foot of trees. I shook off my servants by running through the bamboo forests. In the evenings, I would refuse to sleep and asked questions till the early hours: “Why does the frog have such a fat belly? Why do mosquitoes flee the herbs burning in bowls? Who do the stars play hide-and-seek with? Why is the moon sometimes round and sometimes thin? Who are the fireflies bearing their tiny lanterns for?”

  Mother was afraid of my capacity to think. She called for a wandering monk known for the truth of his predictions. The man assured her there was absolutely no evil in my soul, praised my intelligence, and decreed that I had a spiritual vocation.

  In the fourth year of Pure Contemplation, maternal Grandmother left this world. Mother asked me whether I would like to be the family delegate to observe mourning in a monastery and to pray for the salvation of the honorable deceased. I was five years old. I accepted the suggestion with joy: Father was my idol, so the word “delegate” filled my heart with pride, and I would at last have the same degree of importance as the governor of six districts and forty thousand souls.

  The river flowed at the foot of the fortified town. The torrents propelled sailing boats toward the skies. From the harbor we could see the mountain of the Black Dragon. Along its sheer cliffs thousands of pavilions sheltered the entrances to Buddhist caves filled with statues and decorated with frescoes. After the boat crossing, I was carried on a servant woman’s back up the steep steps and over the bridge of plaited rope that swung across the middle of the valley. I was engulfe
d by the Monastery of Pure Compassion, which hung between the earth and the sky.

  I LOST MY family name and my own name, I was now known as Light of Emptiness. I did not even know how to untie my belt. I would wake in the night calling for my wet nurses. I missed their breasts. I would finger my bedclothes and suck on my blanket, but in these I found neither the satin of their skin nor the wrinkles of their nipples and I wept.

  Mother did not come to see me. She had abandoned me to Buddha. Every day I watched and waited for a familiar face at the entrance to the monastery. On that gently rising path, the leaves fell with the dusk.

  This monastery, which was famous throughout southern China, bustled with more than one thousand nuns. Pure Intelligence was responsible for my education. She was twenty, her muscled body smelled of green tea, and her impeccably shaved head was velvety soft as a white lotus. She gave me my bath, scrubbing my big tummy and my thin legs. She answered my questions and introduced me to reading. She taught me how to wash my face, dress, fold my blanket, and sing the songs of her homeland.

  I swept the courtyard, shuffling back and forth with a bamboo broom taller than myself. I climbed onto the altars and dusted the faces of Buddhas and celestial kings. I crouched beside a waterfall and beat my clothes clean with a large pebble. I busied myself with the old women. For some of them, who were simply tired, I arranged their cushions and fetched pails; for others, who were already loosing their minds, I acted as a prompt for their memories. In the mornings, begging bowl in hand, I seduced rich visitors and made them open their purses. In the evening, after all the lights had been put out, I put on great performances at everyone’s request: acting out the scenes I had witnessed during the day; I played wealthy, worldly townswomen as well as our obsequious superiors and an exasperated Buddha. I could hear their laughter and compliments buzzing from beneath their blankets. I savored this glory, but feigned modesty.