The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel
Read The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel Online
Authors: Maureen Lindley
Tags: #Romance, #Fiction, #Historical, #General
The Private Papers
of Eastern Jewel
MAUREEN LINDLEY
Contents
Persimmons in Honey and a Bowl of Golden Tea
Airag and Russian Tea with Salt
Life-prolonging Eggs and Goose Testicles
Sour Cherries and Acacia Honey
Also Available by Maureen Lindley
The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel
is a novel based on the extraordinary life of a Manchu princess whose striking image, that of a beautiful girl in men's clothes, caught my attention when she appeared momentarily on screen in Bertolucci's film,
The Last Emperor.
Eastern Jewel is fascinating in the way in which all women who have the courage to step outside the mores of their time and make their lives an adventure are fascinating. At a time of loss and emotional turmoil in my own life, I sat in the beautiful old reading room of the British Library and became lost in hers. The facts of her life as I read them presented her as a one-dimensional woman, thoroughly bad. I don't accept that she was and as I believe historians to be just as partial as novelists, I set out to bring to life through fiction what I imagined had made Eastern Jewel into the woman she became. The bad is there, but so are courage and love and a measure of loyalty and loss.
A handful of the characters in the book are loosely based on real people and I have followed the known dates and the historical facts as faithfully as I could.
The written account that follows was discovered at Peking Number One Prison amongst the private papers of the prisoner Eastern Jewel. Also found amongst her papers were a copy of a poem by Chikamatsu, an empty jar of brilliantine, a small bottle of chrysanthemum oil, a scented letter signed from a 'true friend', a half-eaten box of dried lychees and the receipt for a black pearl purchased from the Sincere department store on Nanking Road, Shanghai.
In 1914, at the age of eight years, I was caught spying on my father Prince Su as he made love to a fourteen-year-old girl. The girl had glycerine eyes and marvellous lips that had no bow but were the shape and colour of a segment of blood orange, a soft, sanguine red.
I watched from behind a carved screen as he removed her silk shoes, then dipped her tiny feet into his bowl of tea before drinking from it. The girl sat motionless and completely naked on a plump floor cushion. There was not even a comb in her long hair, which shone like laurel leaves. Deep into this amorous ritual my father pressed a sweet almond between her toes, lowered his lips to it and slowly ate the nut as though it were the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. She remained silent even as he mounted her, reaching his climax with groans of ecstasy. When he had finished and rolled away from her, she gave an exaggerated sigh of pleasure and whispered something to him that made him smile and look proud. After a little time had passed she rose, filled a bowl with warm, scented water and carefully washed between my father's legs. Then she slipped into her doll shoes and, with her robe unbuttoned, she fluttered from the room.
Under her shoes and bindings the girl's feet would have been putrescent and fetid; yet crushed into the shape of a lotus flower so that, as legend had it, her lord could enjoy 'eating the gold lotus while driving his jade spear into her jade gate until the moment of clouds and rain', it hardly mattered. To please one's master was all.
I was destined never to experience this ritual, this passion brought on by the sight of those childlike feet. It is not customary for Manchu women to indulge in the practice of foot binding. We were the lucky ones. In those days in China, women's lives were ruled by the whims of the men who were their lords. Bound feet kept them from straying too far, like ducks on a domestic pond. At least we Manchu women could run away on our big feet.
I was a Manchu princess named Eastern Jewel, the fourteenth daughter of Prince Su, one of the eight Princes of the Iron Helmet in the old Imperial Court of Peking. Like my father I am a direct descendant of Nurhachi, the founder of the Manchu dynasty, and a distant cousin of the boy Emperor Pu Yi. Yet despite my heritage, I am female and considered by Manchu men to be less than them, an unimportant person hardly to be thought of at all. Yet, by my actions I make them think of me all the time. I have always believed myself a match for my brothers and made them angry by not kowtowing to them. Ninth brother said I must have been a warrior in a previous life.
I was discovered at my spy hole by Jade Lute, the thirteenth of my nineteen sisters, the daughter of my father's second and most jealous concubine. My own mother, a poised, elegant woman, was Prince Su's fourth and youngest concubine. She was thought to be of Japanese descent and considered to be the second most beautiful woman in my father's household. For the sake of good manners his wife accepted the compliment of being the first. My mother was named Yuzu after the prized citrus fruit of that name. She had a sweet, oval face with eyes as dark as muddy pools, rosy lips and a tiny provocative gap between her front teeth. Like most concubines she had an obedient nature but there was a streak of fun in her that sometimes overtook her at inappropriate moments.
I was so completely spellbound by what I was witnessing through the intricately carved screen that I did not hear thirteenth sister coming. She pulled at my hair, screaming, 'I have found a nasty little spy, a horrid little worm.' She shrieked and held on to me until the whole household came running to see what all the fuss was about.
My father was outraged by my behaviour and had me confined to my mother's rooms. For hours he paced the halls and courtyards of our house, calling my mother to his side and going over and over my many misdemeanours. Her shame was deep and painful, made worse by the pleasure taken in her disgrace by my father's wife and concubines. I vowed to myself that I would one day poison them all. Meanwhile, I took my revenge in dreams where Jade Lute, made half Gorgon half girl, was pursued by demons and devoured.
It was fortunate for my mother that she had already given my father a son, my brother Xian Li, otherwise she might have been cast out for burdening him with me. She was accused of being a woman without character, on whom her daughter's outrages reflected badly. My father said that it was unheard of for a daughter to be so vile, so without modesty or honour.
'Since Eastern Jewel burst into the world covered in blood, straining at the wet nurse until she had nothing left to give, you have allowed her will to succeed over your own,' he told my mother coldly. He reminded her that it was I who had made sexual overtures to his servant boy Pao, causing him to be flogged and given away to a less generous master. The truth was I had only asked to see Pao's snake because he was always boasting of its size and I wanted to prove him a liar. I had inspected and even touched at least two of my brothers' members and couldn't believe that a servant might have a finer one. I had thirteenth sister to thank for that betrayal too. It is irksome in the extreme to live in a house of women where the air is cloyed with envy and bitter with the smallness of their lives.
My mother, bent double with humility, tapped along beside my father in his rage, her murmurings of regret barely audible. I had gone too far this time and she knew better than to make excuses for me. While other concubines had daughters who busied themselves in feminine pursuits, I was a wild and uncultured girl who was openly interested in sex, capable of cruelty and rebellious to the point of stupidity. Although she loved me I was my mother's burden and her shame.
The days passed and my father's anger cooled, but I was still confined to my mother's quarters without even a servant for company. Lonely and bored, I resorted to small mischiefs. I ate a whole box of fragrant dried lychees, which were my mother's weakness, I wasted her precious supply of rouge papers, colouring my face a bright peony pink and dancing madly around her room. Finally when I had run out of things to occupy me and my screams and kicks on her door no longer brought my mother to my side, I braided my hair into two long pigtails and, using her bone-handled fruit knife, I liberated one of them. It lay on the floor like a small, dark, dead serpent.
When she saw it my mother moaned and put her fist into her mouth to stop her cry lest she be heard by anyone listening at her door. She spent hours searching in her book of medicine for a concoction that would both speed the growth of my hair and cool my temper. She settled on a snake and chrysanthemum soup which, although delicious, had little effect on either. In her distress she made the mistake of seeking comfort by confiding in third concubine. And thus my fate was sealed.
This time my father did not shout but was alarmingly quiet in his rage. His concubines talked in whispers so as not to provoke him further. Finally, when it seemed that his anger would never reach its peak, he called the women of the household into the central courtyard and sent word to my mother to bring me to him. They all knelt, humble and expectant, as I stood before him. As though he was catching a cat by the tail he lifted my remaining pigtail so high that the pain of it made my eyes water. Then he cut it off and threw it to the ground.
Some of my sisters gasped while second concubine sniggered in the moment before my father silenced them all by raising his hand. He pushed me towards my mother, who was hot with embarrassment, and addressed his audience.
'It is my misfortune to be the father of Eastern Jewel,' he said. 'This unimportant daughter continues to disgrace her name with her ignoble behaviour.' He looked towards my mother and continued, 'She is like an unlicked cub, which perhaps is not her fault. I have no inclination to bother with these irksome concerns. Eastern Jewel will be sent to Japan to the house of my blood brother Kawashima where she will be taught the manners fit for her station in life, which is high, but still only that of a woman. Go about your business in this house as women and do not let the news of your small affairs reach my ears again.'
Minutes after his declaration, my father accompanied by his running servants left the house on horseback, shouting for them to keep up. A great sigh of relief was heard as the women began to chatter and gossip, knowing that my father, having made his decision, would eventually return home with his mood restored. I was led away by my dry-eyed mother to the hostile hissing of my sisters. I never saw my father again.
I could not believe that I was to be sent away to this strange place called Japan. My father's 'blood brother' sounded as scary as the dragons I had heard of in the stories told to me by third concubine, who had a vivid imagination and suffered terrible nightmares populated with the legendary creatures. Filled with a fear so strong that I couldn't eat or sleep, I begged my mother to keep me with her.
'Please, Mother, save me from the blood man,' I pleaded. But with sadness in her eyes she said that my father was not to be approached further and that I was to make the best of the situation I now found myself in. At the thought of losing my mother, as well as the only home I had ever known, my heart felt hollow. I was frightened by what lay ahead of me, but strangely, accompanying that fear a run of excitement at the thought of the unknown kept my blood singing.