Empress Read online

  One morning, in that ocean of uninterrupted buffeting, I discovered the Yellow River stretching its frozen length away toward the sky. Countless trading caravans had already carved a white track through the ice. Early that afternoon it snowed: The snowflakes of the north, larger than a child’s hand, were like millions of birds twirling in the sky. Black and gray became opacity and transparency. The wind dropped. We were dark smudges strung out across this immaculate world as we forged ahead.

  Ten days later, just as the fleeting sunlight was about to be eclipsed behind the mountains, hundreds of men and women dressed in white appeared in the snow waving funeral banners. My brothers and cousins dismounted and ran over to meet them.

  My heart felt constricted. The thing I so feared was about to happen: I would discover my origins.

  A great uncle, head of the Wu clan, took us to the village. My brothers prostrated themselves in the Temple of Ancestors to announce our return. An ageing aunt, mistress of all the women, took us into a house lit by white lanterns. The meal provided for us in mourning was ice cold. Somewhere a dog howled. In the middle of the night, Little Sister came to join me, and we shivered in my bed, which was hard as a sheet of iron.

  The next day, in Father’s old bedroom, I witnessed the calling of his soul. The coffin and offerings were positioned behind a curtain of gauze. Members of the family tore their clothes and beat their foreheads on the ground, wailing and lamenting. The sorcerer danced until a powerful voice rose up from his throat. He turned to face the north, where the Kingdom of Shades is to be found, and shook one of Father’s tunics, calling on him and singing:

  O soul, come back!

  Why did you leave your body?

  Desolate and alone, you now wander the four corners of the Earth!

  O soul, go not to the east! For there ten suns have dried out the seas and set fire to the fields. They will charm you with their dazzling flames and will burn you to cinders!

  O soul, stop before the great swamps of the south! There are venomous snakes coiled in the mud, and their venom has poisoned the mists. They will transform themselves into beautiful, naked women draped with gold necklaces. They will suffocate you with their supple tongues and drink your blood!

  O soul, go not to the west! The desert sands conceal the great Abyss of the Earth. Storms whip up the stones and bleach skeletons there. The ground has been roaring and suffering since the creation of the Universe. Three-eyed vultures and deaf and blind asses wage war on each other for all eternity.

  O soul, do not cross the glaciers of the north. Nine-headed bears watch over the celestial gates. Snowflakes hide the jade scorpions lying in wait for wandering souls. Their venom turns the living to stone and the dead to water!

  O soul, come back home! Here your family gives you offerings. Here there is white rice, brown rice, millet, and sorghum! Here there is beef soup, turkey stew, and sautéed tortoise meat. Here there is wine from every region, that earthly nectar and the sweet headiness it brings! Here is your gentle bed, the gauze curtains, the silk sheets and downy cushions, and women more fragrant than orchids!

  O soul, do you not long for tender glances, plump lips, and caressing hands?

  O soul, have you forgotten your nights of love making, the pleasures of the spring?

  O soul, return to your body! The celebrations are beginning, and we are waiting for you to start the ceremonial poem!

  O soul, you are here! Forget the calls of ghosts, the world that has no shadows where the pale moon never sets. You are here, taking up your cloak again!

  The sorcerer collapsed. His assistant took the tunic from between his limp hands and disappeared behind a curtain.

  The soul had returned from the south. After a life of conquest, my father, who had changed his own destiny by leaving the land of his ancestors, had come back to the house of his birth.

  His end had reached his beginning.

  Dignitaries, officials, and distant relations hurried to us from the four corners of the region. Once again I prostrated myself behind Mother and my brothers while they received gifts and condolences.

  I had no tears left, no voice left. I hid my face behind my sleeves and twisted and squirmed to make myself scream.

  Why should Father—a hero as pure as a celestial being, as perfect as a lozenge of jade—have been born into a village where the three hundred members of his clan shared such gloomy houses linked by narrow passageways? Why was his beaming face already melting away behind the coarse features of his relations? I became obsessed with their clumsy gait and their grating accent. These men had his eyes, his ears, his hands, his beard. They offered me fragments of ugliness with which to construct another father.

  And there was the dead wife: Her shadow hovered over everything. Without telling Mother, I went to the cemetery to reassure myself that she was really dead. Her tomb was huge, the size of a house, looming up in the middle of a well-tended wood of silver birch. I recognized Father’s handwriting carved for all eternity into the impressive stone plinth. He told of the inconsolable sadness of having lost an exemplary wife who had raised their children, tended to their grandparents, and encouraged harmonious relations between members of the clan. I also found two more modest graves for two sons who had been taken by the same epidemic that took their mother. On their plinths Father expressed his regret that he could not leave the Capital and take part in the funeral ceremonies. His responsibility as Minister for Major Works kept him at Court, he said, but every evening his heart escaped to the motherland.

  The Wu village was haunted: I could see those dead brothers, two plump, pink little boys playing outside my door. At night I could hear that wife spinning silk. Father had come back, but he was no longer a minister or governor delegate: He did not even know I existed. He spat on the floor, talked loudly, and ate greedily; he loved this illiterate but submissive and thrifty woman; he watched his sons with satisfaction—he had high ambitions for them!

  Father’s coffin went into the Temple of Ancestors. Once the funeral gifts had been displayed and their donors’ names proclaimed, the hearse was raised.

  At the head of the cortège, men in white brandished images of the gods to drive away demons. A hundred musicians played trumpets and drums. A hundred Buddhist and Taoist monks recited prayers of appeasement. Hired mourners, with their sparse hair and their blood-splattered faces, ripped their clothes and chanted lamentations. The endless procession wound its way across the plain, between the fields of sprouting wheat. The trees ruffled their green veils, and a scarlet sun rose. The sky leaned in. I had never seen anything more dazzling than the clouds that accompanied Father on his journey to the Shades.

  As the fourth son of a modest councilor at the administrative offices in the eastern capital, my father, Wu Shi Yue, had grown up behind brick walls blackened by smoke and punctuated by crudely constructed windows. Very early, the child had displayed a tremendous appetite for knowledge: He delighted in mathematics, geography, and history. The heroes of antiquity and the emperors who founded dynasties became his idols. His cousins made fun of him; they called him “the Madman.” At fifteen, he left the village and traveled in the north of China. He found friends who became associates. Against the advice of the clan, he set himself up trading in wood. At the time, Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty was obsessed with the sumptuous palaces that the Empire was feverishly building. At thirty, Wu Shi Yue had accumulated the region’s first great fortune. He was noticed by Li Yuan, the military governor of the province, and became his advisor. In the seventh year of the Great Quarry,5 the conquest of Korea failed. Emperor Yang carried on with his huge building works with no concern for a people exhausted by military conscription and land taxes. Revolts broke out, and provincial governors proclaimed independence. Wu Shi Yue realized that the Sui dynasty had lost its Celestial Mandate and that the world was waiting for a new master. He offered his personal fortune and his book, Strategy, to Li Yuan. He encouraged him to rise up in revolt.

  In the thirteenth y
ear of the Great Quarry, Li Yuan marched on the Capital. Wu Shi Yue was in charge of his munitions and supplies. When the victor of that war founded the Tang dynasty and proclaimed himself emperor, he conferred a noble title on Wu Shi Yue and presented him with land, residences, and slaves.

  Wu Shi Yue was appointed Minister for Major Works, and he undertook the rebuilding of the ravaged empire. He restored roads, rebuilt bridges, dug canals, and irrigated fields. He developed agriculture, local craft industries, and trade. He contributed to the Book of Legislation. When his wife and two of his sons died, he did not have time to go home. Touched by his devotion, the Emperor ordered that he remarry, this time to a girl from the Yang clan who was famed for her virtue and erudition. The wedding was an occasion of great pomp and ceremony: Princess Sunlight of Gui conducted the celebrations. Born a commoner, Wu Shi Yue could see that his career would be safeguarded by an alliance with the most powerful nobility of the Central Plain. He was promised the position of Great Minister; he was to be a great politician who would leave his mark in history…. But life had other surprises in store for him.

  He had a furious longing for sons from this second union, but three daughters came into the world. In the ninth year of Martial Virtue, when Wu Shi Yue was posted in the Yang province, he heard that there had been a coup in the imperial palace and that the Emperor had abdicated in favor of his son. The new sovereign did not trust generals of the previous emperor: He appointed Wu Shi Yue as Governor Delegate of the Li province and kept him far from Court. Wu Shi Yue was pained by this disgrace. He died of sorrow at the age of fifty-five when he learned of the retired emperor’s death.

  My father, who had come so close to fulfillment, had failed.

  IN THE VILLAGE, the banquet was in full swing. Every house had its doors and windows flung open as guests drank toasts and devoured feasts. During the period of deep mourning, children of the deceased were forbidden wine, meat, or cooked dishes. With my cold rice soup for every meal, I was growing slender as the funeral coins scattered on the roads. Trying to flee from all the noise and bustle, I wandered through the maze of passages and galleries.

  I walked out around a wall-screen, and a garden appeared. The buttercups and pear trees were in blossom. A few rocks formed an island in the middle of a tiny pond. Some men were sitting out on the veranda watching a master of tea boiling water on his stove. I curtseyed to them briefly before scuttling away. A voice called me back:

  “Don’t be frightened, young lady, come closer.”

  I turned back and went over to the steps where I curtseyed again.

  “Judging by your mourning, you must be a daughter of the Lord of the Ying kingdom,” said a man sporting a white beard, dressed in a tunic of dark brocade. “What is your name?”

  “Heavenlight.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  I looked up, and, after looking him over carefully, I replied slowly and clearly:

  “You are Governor Delegate of our province of Bing, the Great General Li of the second imperial rank. Your portrait hangs in the pavilion of the Twenty-Four Veterans of the dynasty. The Chinese people venerate you. His Majesty, the sovereign, appointed you as master of our funeral ceremonies. My Lord, I thank you for being here. In heaven, Father is grateful for the honor you do him.”

  The Great General smiled.

  “It is rare to hear a little girl speaking with such assurance. Come up the steps, I would like to offer you a cup of tea.”

  Beneath the veranda I bowed deeply before sitting amongst the adults.

  The Great General spoke to the officials around him: “The Lord of the Ying kingdom was a cultured man who had a nose for business. During the war he excelled as manager of our finances. He spoke little, considered his every word, and worked hard and long. His opinions were always valid. What a shame that he has left us!”

  These words felt like a spring of cool water bubbling through my arid heart. I bowed right down to the ground to thank him. The honorable guest asked me about my age, about my mother’s grief, my favorite books, and my friends. When he learned that I could ride, he smiled and talked of his Persian steeds, their training, and their exploits.

  I had never had a long conversation with an adult, but the Great General spoke simply, without affectation. He listened to me patiently and enthusiastically. His questions were blunt, but his candor gave me confidence; his smile encouraged me; he made me forget that I was a little girl, and I spoke to him on equal terms.

  Time flew by, and the general had to leave. In the middle of the garden, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Heavenlight, you are an exceptional little girl. I shall take responsibility for your destiny!”

  The authority in his voice reminded me of Father’s. I was overcome with a most poignant sadness. My tears returned.

  MY TENTH YEAR was one long dream pervaded by the image of a catacomb dug into the belly of the mountain. I could not shake off the memory of the death chamber peopled with ceramic statuettes: guards, servants, dancers, horses, camels, houses, and dishes. All around the coffin there were chests and earthenware pots full of clothes, weapons, manuscripts, scrolls of paintings, ornate belt buckles, and an emerald ring carved in the shape of a tiger’s head. Suddenly the stone door would close while I was still inside the cave. I struggled to climb back up the slope, but my knees kept giving way, and the icy cold of the underground world was already drawing me in. The smell of damp earth was suffocating. I started to scream: “The mountains are eating me!” But no one heard, no one came to help me.

  Great General Li sent me a Persian colt branded with the symbol of his stables. This honor impressed the clan, and Eldest Brother appropriated him. The very next day my horse became his mount.

  In the countryside women did not receive an education. To keep the books and tend to the house, they needed only a few figures and as many ideograms to measure the world on the scale of their own minds. All day long three generations of women stayed in their houses spinning, weaving, and embroidering. Mother had never had any contact with that world. She knew nothing of manual skills. She was appalled by their raunchy jokes and embarrassed by their shameless conversations and uninhibited laughter; therefore, she kept away from their gatherings and took refuge in solitude.

  The fact that she was different ruffled the other women. They interpreted her silence as contempt. The jibes and insults they hurled over the wall came crashing down in our courtyard: “When you marry a cockerel, you become a hen; when you marry a dog, you become a bitch. When you marry a commoner, you become a commoner. She’s no more noble than we are!” “They think they’re such princesses. They’re just three more mouths to feed and nothing more!” “Parasites!”

  Mother remained impassive, fingering her wooden rosary. She had not been taught to defend herself, but she knew how to draw the strength to resist from her Buddhist faith. Our living conditions were deteriorating, and our mourning was becoming a penitence. The clan sold most of our domestic staff. My brothers had cut our allowance back by three-quarters. Meals were distributed from a communal cooking stove, and they often contained rotten vegetables and rice mixed with pebbles. The boiler room ran out of our share of hot water for baths. Sometimes, certain doors were never opened along the passageways, pinning us in. Mother had never complained. Religious fervor made her deaf and blind.

  But the clan was pitiless and went to extremes in persecuting us.

  At the request of the two brothers, the Council approved their decision to put their mother’s remains with my father’s. When this news was announced, Mother fainted. If the former wife was to be interred in her master’s tomb, Mother would be forbidden to be by his side. Upon her death, she would be repudiated for all eternity. She came to a moment later, without a word, without so much as a sigh. It was the only time I ever saw her falter.

  However much I worried about Mother’s health, she seemed to grow stronger as our lives deteriorated. Her soul already lived amid the marvels of Buddha’s world. Immun
e to the horror’s of daily life, she thought only of her future life. Her body withered, but her face grew radiant. Intrigued and fascinated, I watched this small, fragile woman dominating the turmoil of destiny with a particular kind of strength that goes by the name of serenity.

  I was ashamed of my anger. I prayed at the foot of the statue of Amida. I tried to see this world as a shadow-theater filled with illusions, and I sometimes remembered a house of light, color, and vastness. That was on the other side of eternity. At eleven, I was already an old woman. I was sliding through life like a pebble sinking to the bottom of a well. I had decided to accept the village and its walls daubed with grotesque paintings. I had decided to accept the mismatched plates, the smoking candles, the filthy basins, the foul stench of the latrines, and the women who spat on our door. Happiness had died with Father. I had learned to defy sorrow with my eyes open.

  PRAYER DID NOTHING to subdue my hate. The desire for revenge was a venomous gall that infiltrated my organs a little more every day.

  One morning my anger exploded.

  Sheep, the son of a cousin and a sturdy youth, was head of a gang of adolescents who loitered around the village. When they saw Little Sister and me, they would impersonate us and make fun of our good manners. We usually responded to this provocation by looking away. On that particular day, I was holding Little Sister’s hand and crossing an alleyway when the boys appeared from behind some trees. They chanted in chorus: “You’re just sluts! You’re just bastards!”