Imperial Woman (17 page)

This Summer Palace had first been built for pleasure several centuries earlier by the emperors then ruling, and they had chosen for its site a place near an eternal fountain which ran so clear and pure, its waters sweet and ever fresh, that it was named the Fountain of Jade. The first Summer Palace was destroyed in a war and rebuilt again two centuries earlier than this time, and by the Imperial Ancestor K’ang Hsi, then ruling, but the Imperial Ancestor, his son Ch’ien Lung, then ruling, brought all the separate buildings together, uniting them into a vast park threaded with lakes and rivers and crossed by marble bridges or bridges of ironwood, painted and carved by master workmen. Dearly indeed did Ch’ien Lung enjoy what he had done, so that when he heard that the King of France, then ruling, had also such pleasure grounds in that distant land, Ch’ien Lung inquired of French ministers and Jesuit priests what the French king had that he had not, for Emperors in those days were diverted by Western men and even welcomed them, not dreaming that they could have a later evil intent. When Ch’ien Lung heard of the beauties that the French king had made he wished for them, too, and he added Western beauty to the Summer Palace as well as that which belonged there. The Jesuit priests, for their part, thinking to find favor with the great Ch’ien Lung, brought with them from France and Italy pictures of the palaces of Europe, which Ch’ien Lung studied closely, and he took from them anything which caught his fancy. After Ch’ien Lung’s time, however, the Summer Palace was long closed, for his Heir, Chia Ch’ing, loved better the Northern Palace in Jehol and there was struck by lightning one summer’s day when he was in the company of his favorite concubine and so died. And T’ao Kuang, his son, the father of the Emperor Hsien Feng, now ruling, was a miser and would not allow the Court to move even in the hot season to the Summer Palace, because he feared expense.

In high mood, therefore, the Court set forth one summer’s dawn. The day was fine, a dewy day, the morning moist and warm with unusual mists. Tzu Hsi had risen early and had commanded her women to dress her in simple garments, befitting the country. Thus the women put on her a thin silk, made of pineapple fiber imported from the southern islands, a pale water-green in color, and she wore no jewels except her pearls. In her haste she was ready hours before the Emperor bestirred himself to waken and be dressed and eat his morning meal. Yet it was still midway between dawn and noon when the imperial procession set forth, the Bannermen going first, then the princes and their families and at last the Imperial Guards upon horses, and Jung Lu was at their head upon a great white stallion. Behind them and before the yellow-curtained palanquin of the Emperor, Tzu Hsi followed in her own palanquin with her son and his nurse and beside her was Sakota, the Empress of the Eastern Palace, in her palanquin. Not for many months had these two ladies met, and seeing her cousin’s pale face this morning Tzu Hsi blamed herself again and said in her heart that when she had time to spare she would renew her kinship with her sister Consort.

The streets through which the imperial procession passed were emptied and silent. Flags shaped in yellow triangles had been placed at early morning along the route chosen for the Son of Heaven and these warned the people that no man or woman or child should be upon the streets at this hour. The doors of all houses were closed, the windows curtained, and wherever a cross street gave into the main highway curtains of yellow silk forbade the entrance of any citizen. When the Son of Heaven left the Gate of the Meridian, drums beat and gongs roared to give the signal and at this noise the people went into their houses and hid their faces. Again the drums beat and gongs roared and those who smoothed the highway with yellow sand also retired. Upon the third warning of drums and gongs the nobles of the Manchu clans, all in their best robes, knelt on the sides of the highway before the Son of Heaven as he passed, surrounded by his thousand guardsmen. In the old days the emperors rode always upon great Arabian horses, bridled with gold, the saddles covered with jeweled velvet. But Hsien Feng, now ruling, was not able to sit upon a horse and so he must ride in his palanquin. He was shy, too, because he knew himself so thin and sallow, and he would not allow the eunuchs to lift the curtains. Hidden and in silence he was carried along the yellow-sanded highway, and the kneeling noblemen neither saw him nor heard his voice.

At the village of Hai T’ien, outside the city walls, the road turned eastward, and through this village the palanquins of the Emperor and his two Consorts passed with all the Court. The little town was bustling with good business, for here the Imperial Guardsmen were to live, and in the countryside nearby the princes and the dukes and other noblemen had summer palaces on their own estates, that they might more easily wait upon the Emperor at the Summer Palace. Everywhere the villagers were in high mood, for when the Court took residence at the Summer Palace of Yüan Ming Yüan, they grew rich.

At sunset the imperial procession approached the gate of the Summer Palace itself and, peering through the cracks between her curtains, Tzu Hsi saw the lofty gate of carved white marble, guarded by two golden lions. It was open and waiting, and she was carried over the high threshold and into the quiet of the vast park. Now she could not forbear opening her curtains with her hands to look out and she saw a dreamlike scene. Pagodas hung as though suspended on the green hillsides, clear brooks ran smoothly rippling beside the winding roads paved with marble, and bridges carved of white marble led the way to a hundred pavilions, each different from the others and beautiful in gold and colored tile. A lifetime would not be enough to know it all. And with much that she could see, there was more unseen, the great palaces themselves, designed so long ago and enriched by every emperor in his time, the famous water clock whose twelve animals spouted water from the Fountain of Jade, each for two hours at a time. And every palace, so she had heard, was filled with treasures not only of the East but of Europe and the West. Her pleasure-loving soul rejoiced and she was impatient to be free to wander as she would.

At sunset she felt her palanquin set down, the curtains put aside by Li Lien-ying, and she rose as one who greets a fairy country, bewitching and unknown. She looked about her and by a strange chance at this very moment her look fell, unwary and unprepared, on Jung Lu. He stood alone, his men behind the Emperor, whose palanquin was already at the great Hall of Entrance. Not expecting, he lifted up his head and looked into the eyes he knew so well. She caught his look, and he caught hers, and for one instant their hearts entangled. They turned their heads in haste, the moment passed. Tzu Hsi entered her assigned palace and her ladies followed. But a sudden happiness sprang up in her. She overflowed with lively joy at all she saw as she went from one room to another. This palace, now hers, was named the Palace of Contentment. It was old, and its very age enchanted her. Here emperors and their courts had come for pleasure and to escape from their burdens, and here they had found peace in gaiety. When she had seen all that could be seen today she returned to its entrance and standing upon the threshold of the wide doors, thrown open to the sunset, she stretched out her arms to the landscape, exquisite and calm in the clear brightness of the evening sun.

“The very air is mellifluous,” she said to her ladies. “Breathe it, and feel how light it is in the lungs! Compare it with the weight of the air inside the city walls!”

The ladies breathed in as she commanded and they cried out their agreement with her. Indeed, the air was pure and cool but not chill.

“I wish I could spend all my life here,” Tzu Hsi exclaimed. “Would that I need never return to the Forbidden City!”

Her ladies cried out against this. How, they inquired, could she be spared in that center of the nation’s life?

“At least let us not speak of anything not joyful,” Tzu Hsi insisted. “Whatever is sorrowful or rouses anger or gives pain must here be forgotten.”

Her ladies agreed to this in a chorus of mild murmurs and sighs, and Tzu Hsi, eager to continue her discovery of the manifold variety of palaces and gardens, lingered in the doorway. Alas, the day was at its end, the sun slipped down behind the spires of the pagodas, and the afterglow faded from the lakes and streams. Soon even the shadows of the marble bridges no longer lingered upon the waters, and the day was ended.

“I shall retire early,” Tzu Hsi said, “and I shall rise at dawn. However many tomorrows are allotted to this joyful place, they will not be enough to see all that is to be seen here or to take our fill of pleasure.”

Her ladies agreed and the moon had scarcely risen before Tzu Hsi went to her own apartments. A light meal of sweetmeats and tidbits was served to her, she drank her favorite green tea, and then, bathed and in fresh silk garments, she lay down to sleep. At first she said she could not sleep, so sweet was the night air, and twice, after her weary women slept, she rose from her bed to look from the open windows. The palace stood high above the low encircling walls, and she could see beyond them to the distant mountains, pale in the moonlight. Peace stole over her spirit, so deep a peace that it seemed the prelude to sleep itself, and yet she was awake in every sense. Before her lay the golden moonlit landscape, she smelled the fragrance of night-blooming lilies, she heard the clear call of the harvest bird, early in its season. Her loneliness subsided, the fear of wars and troubles died away, her impetuous heart grew gentle and her thoughts kindly. Beyond the terrace, to the right, stood the Palace of the Floating Cloud, assigned to Sakota. Tomorrow—no, not tomorrow, but some day when her happiness was full enough she would stay by her resolve and renew her sisterly friendship with Sakota. How strange to think that they who had grown up beneath the same roof in Pewter Lane should now live side by side in their two palaces, their one lord the Emperor!

And then, because her mind was never long at rest, she thought of Jung Lu, her kinsman, and how she had seen him for a moment today, how their unwary eyes had met, had clung and then had parted again, unwillingly, and she longed fiercely, of a sudden, to hear his voice and know him near. And why should she not summon him as her kinsman—say, for some advice she needed? What advice did she need? Her mind roamed in search of its excuse. Her promise to her mother, still unredeemed, her promise to wed her sister to a prince—for that, surely, she could ask advice from a kinsman? And her own eunuch, her faithful one, Li Lien-ying, to him she could say honestly:

“I have a family matter, a promise I made to my mother, and I wish to ask my kinsman, the Commander of the Imperial Guard—”

The moonlight grew more golden, the air more fragrant than it had been and she sighed with happiness. Here in this magic place, could not magic be accomplished? She smiled at herself with secret mockery. There was an edge to her joy, a thin sharp edge of old desire, a teasing memory waking to renew itself. Well, let it be no more, she thought. She need not put a guard upon herself—he would do that. His rectitude would be her guard, the lock to which he held the key. Him she could trust, for he could not be corrupted.

Suddenly she longed for sleep and stealing to her bed and walking softly among her women sleeping on their pallets on the tiled floors, she parted the curtains and lay down.

The morning dawned clear again and calm, a day without wind, yet cooled by some distant northern storm, and she let this day pass, forgetful of everything except her childlike pleasure in what she saw about her. Many days must pass before she could see all there was to see, for when palaces and lakes and courtyards, terraces and gardens and pavilions were visited, there remained the treasure houses, the annexes to Yüan Ming Yüan, and in these were stored the gifts that had been given for two hundred years to the emperors of the ruling dynasty. Silks by lots of a thousand bolts apiece, furs by bales from beyond the Siber River, curios from every nation in Europe and from the British Isles, tributes from Thibet and Turkestan, gifts from Korea and Japan and all those lesser nations who, though free, acknowledged that their guide and leader was the Son of Heaven, fine furniture and precious wares from southern provinces, jades and silver toys and boxes, vases of gold and gems from India and the southern seas, all these waited for her searching eyes and quick hands to judge their weights, shapes and textures.

And in the evening of every day, by the Emperor’s command, a play was presented to the Court by the Imperial Players, and for the first time Tzu Hsi could indulge to fullness of her desire her love of theater. She had read books about the past, and she had studied well the old paintings and writings, but in the plays she saw men and women of history come to life again before her eyes. She lived with other consorts and empresses, and saw her own self, born earlier to rule and die. And thoughtful thereafter she went to bed at night if the play were thoughtful, and merry if the play were merry, and whatever she did was all pleasure.

Among the treasures which she mused upon more than the rest was the library which the Ancestor Ch’ien Lung himself had caused to be collected and created from the great books of the past of four thousand years. By his command these books had been copied by the scholars of his reign into one vast treasure. Two sets of the manuscripts these scholars made, the one to remain in the Forbidden City and the other here, lest fire or invading enemies destroy either. Tzu Hsi had not herself laid hands upon these libraries which the scholars had made, for inside the city the one was stored in the Hall of Literary Glory and kept under lock and key, except for a single season each year, this at the Feast of Classics, when it was the duty of the highest scholars to take out the ancient writings and expound their meaning to the Emperor, then ruling. For ever since the First Emperor eighteen hundred years ago had burned the books and buried scholars to put an end to ancient learning, and make himself supreme, it had been the first care of scholars to preserve books by teaching reverence for them, first from the Emperor and then from all his subjects, and that the words of the sage Confucius could not be destroyed by willful rulers, the Four Books and the Five Classics were even carved on stone and these stone monuments stood in the Hall of Classics, whose gates were barred. But here at Yüan Ming Yüan Tzu Hsi, though a woman, could read the ancient writings and so she promised herself she would do, if on a day it rained, or if she were sated with the sights to be seen.