The Last Empress (6 page)

"I'll see you off," my son said to his friend.

"Tsai-chen will leave with his father!" I told my son. Then I told An-te-hai to block the door so Tung Chih couldn't get out.

"You bunch of dead bodies!" Tung Chih shouted, kicking An-te-hai and the other eunuchs. "Molds! Poisonous snakes!"

As I waited for the results from Doctor Sun Pao-tien, I visited Nuharoo to inform her of what had happened. Without mentioning Tung Chih's outrageous behavior, she worried about the possibility of venereal disease but even more about the Emperor's reputation—and hers, since as the senior mother she was responsible for the important decisions in Tung Chih's personal life. Nuharoo suggested that we begin the selection of an Imperial consort right away, "so that Tung Chih can start his life as a grown man."

An-te-hai was silent on our way back to my palace. The look in his eyes was that of a beaten dog.

At first Tung Chih showed no interest in the consort selection. Nuharoo was determined to carry on anyway. When I called Tung Chih to arrange a date to inspect the maidens, he instead wanted to discuss An-te-hai's "misconduct" and the proper punishment.

I ignored my son and said, "What's going on between us should not interfere with your duties." I threw a court report at him. "This arrived this morning. I want you to take a look."

"Foreign missionaries have made converts," Tung Chih said as he riffled through the document. "Yes, I am aware of that. They have attracted layabouts and bandits by offering free food and shelter, and they have helped the criminals. The issue is not religion, as they claim."

"You have done nothing about it."

"No, I haven't."

"Why not?" I tried to keep my voice calm but wasn't able to. "Was whoring all over the city more important?"

"Mother, every treaty protects Christians. What can I do? Father was the one who signed it! You are trying to say that I am bringing down the dynasty, but I am not. Foreigners were having their way in China before I was born. Look at this: 'Missionaries demand rent for the last three hundred years on long-standing Chinese temples which they declare are former church properties.' Does that make sense to you?"

I was speechless.

"I'd like to believe that the missionaries are good men and women," my son continued, "that only their code of morals is defective. I agree with Uncle Prince Kung that Christianity lays too much stress on charity and too little on justice. Anyway, it's not my problem, and you shouldn't try to make it mine."

"Foreigners have no right to bring their laws to China. And that is your problem to fix, son."

"The business of running the nation makes me sick, period. Sorry, Mother, I have to go."

"I am not done yet. Tung Chih, you don't know enough to know what to do yet."

"How could I not know enough? You have made the court's papers my textbooks. I have been considered weak as far back as I can remember. You are the wise one, the all-knowing Old Buddha. I don't send spies to invade your rooms and empty out your closets. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid and know nothing. I love you, Mother, but—" He stopped and then broke down sobbing.

In the darkest moments of my life, I would go to An-te-hai and ask him to comfort me. I was beyond shame.

It would be unimaginable for any woman to stand the thought that her body was being touched by a eunuch, a creature from the underworld. But I felt as low as the eunuch.

That night, An-te-hai's voice soothed me. It helped me escape reality. I was taken to distant continents to experience exotic voyages. Excitement would fill An-te-hai's expression as he blew out the candles and came to lie by my side on the bed.

"I have found my hero," An-te-hai whispered. "Like me, he was an
unfortunate one. Born in 1371 and castrated at the age of ten. Luckily, the master he served was a prince who was good to him. In return he rendered outstanding service and helped the prince become the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty..."

The sound of a night owl quieted, and the moonlit clouds stood still outside the window.

"His name was Cheng Ho, the greatest explorer in the world. You can find his name in every book of navigation, but none reveals his identity as a eunuch. No one knew that his profound suffering was what made him extraordinary. The ability to endure hardship that only I, a fellow eunuch, can understand."

"How do you know Cheng Ho was a eunuch?" I asked.

"I discovered it by accident, in the Imperial Registration Record of Eunuchs, a book nobody else would care to read."

In Cheng Ho An-te-hai recognized an achievable dream. "As the admiral of the Treasure Fleet Cheng Ho headed seven naval expeditions to ports all over Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean." An-te-hai spoke in a voice of passion. "My hero traveled as far as the Red Sea and East Africa, exploring more than thirty nations in seven voyages. Castration made him a broken man, but it never stayed his ambition."

In the darkness An-te-hai walked to the window in his white silk robe. Facing the bright moon, he announced, "I shall from now on have a birth date."

"Haven't you one already?"

"That was a made-up one, because no one, including myself, knew when I was born. My new birthday will be July 11. It will be in memory and celebration of Cheng Ho's first naval expedition, which set off on July 11, 1405."

In my dream that night, An-te-hai became Cheng Ho. He was dressed in a magnificent Ming court robe and was out on the open sea, heading toward the distant horizon.

"...He flaunted the might of two generations of Chinese emperors." An-te-hai's voice woke me. Yet he was in deep sleep.

I sat up and lit a candle. I looked at the sleeping eunuch and suddenly felt crushed as my thoughts fled back to Tung Chih. I had an urge to go to my son and hold him close.

"My lady." An-te-hai spoke with his eyes shut. "Did you know Cheng Ho's fleet included more than sixty large ships? A crew nearly thirty thousand strong! They had one ship to carry horses, and another one carried only drinking water!"

Nuharoo summoned me on the eighth anniversary of our husband's death. After our greeting, she announced that she had decided to change the names of all the palaces in the Forbidden City. She began with her own palace. Instead of the Palace of Peace and Longevity, its new name would be the Palace of Meditation and Transformation. Nuharoo said that her
feng shui
master advised that the names of palaces occupied by females should be changed once every ten years in order to confuse the ghosts who came to haunt their old palaces.

I didn't like the idea, but Nuharoo was not the type of person to compromise. The problem was that if we changed the name of a palace, the names that went along with it also had to be changed—the palace's gates, its gardens, its walkways, its servants' quarters. Nevertheless, she forged ahead. Nuharoo's gate was now the Gate of Reflection instead of the Gate of Restful Wind. Her garden was now called the Spring Awakening instead of the Magnificent Wilderness. Her main walkway used to be the Corridor of Moonlight and now was the Corridor of a Clear Mind.

To my mind, the new names were not as tasteful as the old ones. The old name for Nuharoo's pond, Spring Ripple, was better than its new name, the Zen Drops. I also liked Palace of Gathering Essence better than Palace of the Great Void.

For months Nuharoo spent her time working on the names. More than one hundred title boards and nameplates were taken down and new ones created and installed. Sawdust filled the air as the carpenters
sanded the boards. Paint and ink were everywhere as Nuharoo ordered the calligraphers, whose style she found deficient, to redo their work.

I asked Nuharoo if the court had approved her new names. She shook her head. "It would take too long to explain the importance to the court, and they wouldn't like it because of the expense. It's better that I don't bother them at all."

She started to call the palaces by their new names on her own. It caused great confusion. None of the Imperial departments, which would take orders only from the court, were notified. The gardeners had great difficulty figuring out where they were supposed to work. The palanquin bearers went to the wrong places to pick up and drop off their passengers, and the supply department made a mess sending items to incorrect addresses.

Nuharoo said that she had invented an excellent new name for my palace. "How do you like 'the Palace of the Absence of Confusion'?"

The name had always been the Palace of Long Springs.

"What do you expect me to say?"

"Say you love it, Lady Yehonala!" She called me by my formal title. "It's my best work. You have to love it! My wish is that the new names will inspire you to retire from the world to pursue calmer pleasures."

"I'd be more than happy to retire tomorrow if I could forget about the threat of being overthrown."

"I am not asking you to quit the audiences," Nuharoo said, patting both of her cheeks with her silk handkerchief. "Men can be wicked and their behavior should be monitored."

It amazed me that she didn't really mean it when she had told me to leave the business of governing to men. What struck me was how she achieved power by appearing to want nothing to do with it.

I was glad that most of the palaces that underwent name changes were the inner quarters occupied by concubines. Since there was no official record of the changes, everyone except Nuharoo continued to call the buildings by their old names. To avoid offending her, the word "old" was tacked on to all the names. For example, my palace was referred to as the Old Palace of Long Springs.

Eventually Nuharoo grew tired of the game. She admitted that the new names were confusing. Her house eunuchs got so mixed up that they lost their way while trying to carry out her orders. She meant to send her lotus-seed cake to me, but it ended up on the gatekeeper's table.

"The eunuchs are too stupid," Nuharoo concluded. So everything was changed back to the way it had been, and the new names were soon forgotten.

An-te-hai sent Li Lien-ying, who was now his most trusted disciple, to give me a head massage. With a good rubbing I felt the tension in my body dissolve like clay in water. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that wrinkles had crept onto my smooth forehead. My eyes had bags beneath them. While my features retained their beauty, their youthful glow had disappeared.

I did not tell An-te-hai about my conversation with Tung Chih, yet he sensed it. He sent Li Lien-ying to guard me at night and moved his sleeping mat out of my room. Years later, I would find out that my eunuch had been threatened by my son. An-te-hai was to either stay away or be removed—meaning murdered. As if to make sure that no eunuch developed a close relationship with me, An-te-hai rotated my room attendants. It took me a while to realize his intention.

Among all my attendants, I adored Li Lien-ying, who had served me since he was a young boy. He was sweet-tempered and as capable as An-te-hai, though I couldn't talk with him as I had with An-te-hai. As masters of serving another, Li Lien-ying was a craftsman, but An-te-hai was an artist. For example, An-te-hai had been devising a way to get Yung Lu into my inner garden for some time. He had arranged for bridge and roof repairs around my palace, so outside workers would have to be brought in, and with them Imperial Guards. An-te-hai believed that this would give Yung Lu a chance to supervise. The plan hadn't worked, but An-te-hai had continued his effort.

Li Lien-ying was a much more popular eunuch than An-te-hai. He had a talent for making friends, a skill An-te-hai lacked. Servants never knew when An-te-hai would show up to inspect their work. And if he was dissatisfied, he would make a scene, try to "educate" them.

A rumor began to circulate among the servants that An-te-hai would soon be replaced as chief eunuch by Li Lien-ying. An-te-hai became furiously jealous and suspected that Li had stolen my affection. One day An-te-hai found an excuse to interrogate Li. When Li protested, An-te-hai charged him with being disrespectful and ordered him whipped.

To show fairness, I had An-te-hai whipped and withheld his food for three days and confined him to the eunuchs' quarters. A week later I went to see him. He was sitting in his small yard examining his bruises.
When I asked what he had done during his confinement, he showed me something he had built from scraps of wood and bits of rag.

I was in awe of what I saw. "A little dragon boat!" It was a miniature ship, modeled after one of Cheng Ho's fleet. It was no bigger than An-te-hai's arm but was intricately detailed, with sails, rigging, and tiny cargo crates.

"Someday I'd like to travel south to see Cheng Ho's burial site in Nanking," An-te-hai said. "I will make an offering and ask his spirit to accept me as a distant disciple."

The late summer of 1869 was hot and humid. I had to change my inner shirt twice a day. If I didn't, sweat would make the dye run on my court robe. Since the Forbidden City had few trees, there was no escape from the heat. The sun baked the stone paths. Every time eunuchs poured water on the ground, we could hear a hissing sound and see white steam.

The court tried to cut audiences short. Blocks of ice were brought in, and carpenters devised makeshift box chairs to hold the blocks. The summoned, who wore heavy court robes, would sit right on top of the ice. By noon, puddles of water would spread out from beneath the boxes. It looked as if the ministers had urinated.

Nuharoo wore a moss-colored dress when she entered the Hall of Spiritual Nurturing during a break in the audience. The eunuchs began to work the wooden fans to draw wind. Nuharoo frowned because the fans made a terrible noise, like the slamming of windows and doors.

She sat down elegantly on a chair opposite me. We glanced at each other's dresses, makeup and hair while exchanging greetings. I hated wearing makeup in the summer and applied it only lightly. I sipped tea and made an effort to appear interested. By now I knew Nuharoo well enough to predict that any proposal of hers would have nothing to do with the nation's urgencies. I had made many attempts in the past to brief her on court business. She would either change the subject or simply ignore me.