Empress

MY DAY BEGAN at three in the morning, summer and winter. Every other day I received the Salutation of my officials at daybreak. After the prostrations and the ceremonial wish for ten thousand years of my reign, some presented reports, and others received my instructions. At the end of the audience, the officials went to their respective ministries, and I moved to my private room to read political files and discuss them with Great Ministers.

On the intervening days, I remained in my bed chamber until dawn when I received the prostrations of the overseeing eunuchs and the lady governesses who presented me with accounts, bills, plans for forthcoming banquets, lists of birthday gifts, embroidery designs for official costumes, and requests for promotions and punishments. As Emperor of China, I was also my own empress.

In the afternoons, after a brief siesta, I would be taken by litter to the Pavilion of Treaties and Interviews. I would sit behind a curtain of purple gauze, although I might remove this for those I knew well. Poets and calligraphers, Taoists and monks, merchants and peasants prostrated themselves at my feet: Each of them came to me with a complaint, a piece of advice, or some new knowledge. Thanks to the things they told me, I traveled to distant towns, witnessed foreign customs, learned of alliances and rivalries between neighboring kingdoms, and ensured my armies remained loyal even in the furthest limits of the desert. With poets I talked of rhymes and language; monks interpreted the sutras they brought back from India after braving a thousand dangers; geographers suggested building new roads and canals; astrologers spoke to me of the stars.

On some days at the end of the afternoon, I would go for a long ride through the Imperial Park on one of my horses. The thought of this period of escape brightened my mood from the moment I awoke. The vermilion glow of the setting sun tinted the tops of the trees and turned the River Luo into a ribbon embroidered with golden waves. A retinue of animals followed me: dogs, leopards, giraffes, and elephants. There were many men to dispute the honor of leading my steed by the bridle: my nephews the kings; Lai Jun Chen, the magistrate; and the Great Ministers. It was when I was inspired by the melancholy calm of these rides that I improvised my most beautiful poems.

Deep in the forest, eunuchs would free thousands of birds: blackbirds, orioles, skylarks, and thrushes launching themselves into the skies. Their song, an exuberant hymn to life full of virtuoso trills, moved me to tears. The more I was surrounded, the more I was alone. Dusk was falling. It would soon be everlasting night.

ONE MOMENT OF bliss followed another, and time wrapped itself around me like an endless thread tightening its stranglehold. From the depths of my opaque cocoon, I was expecting a miracle: never to grow old.

My lovemaking with Scribe of Loyalty was losing its intensity. At first his vigorous body and well-defined muscles had been like an unfulfilled fantasy, then a vague dream. As the years went by, his virile youth became disturbing.

My lover was thirty, and I sixty-nine. Like other wealthy debauched monks, he had bought houses for his mistresses in the commoners’ town outside the Forbidden City. His many wives dripped with jewels and lived off my generosity through him. The one he liked best was a young girl of sixteen bought for a jug of pearls in a brothel. She could make love to him for hours on end without tiring. Their cries of ecstasy had even carried to the depths of my gynaeceum where I struggled with my jealousy and despair.

Scribe of Loyalty came to the Palace less and less. Once a month, on the night of the full moon, he would caress me and spill his seed on me as a peasant sows his field. His every move was precise and attentive; he performed his duties as a favorite like an official carrying out a laborious task. In the darkness I could still read his pity, his resignation, and his indifference. Scribe of Loyalty no longer loved me. I no longer afforded him any pleasure.

I developed a profound loathing for my own body, this Future Buddha’s body which was said to be sacred and indestructible. The baths, massages, and unguents could no longer stop this flesh from slackening and crumpling. I hid my resentment toward my young lover who shattered the myth every time he undressed me.

I was obsessed by hygiene: I forced him to undergo medical examinations and to be washed from head to toe before he came to my bed. In spite of the soaps and the vigorous scrubbing by my serving women, he still gave off a smell of earthly debauchery, underlining the irony of my decrepitude. His member had trawled through the town; his dirty hands had delved in other orifices; his tongue had licked fresh, pungent young skin. Every time I took him in my arms, I exposed myself to his gaze, to being compared.

One night, I exploded angrily, and he dared to reply: “Majesty, I know you have me followed and that your spies have been sold into my houses as slaves. You spy on my every coupling; you follow my life with the ferocity of a lioness. But you have never tried to look into my heart. Have you ever thought that it is you who drives me into other women’s arms:

“Little Treasure,” I sneered, using his original name. “All these years, I have never forbidden you from finding pleasure elsewhere when I could have demanded your complete faithfulness. Imperial concubines are shut away in the gynaeceum, but I have allowed you to run free. That is the greatest proof of affection an emperor can give. Instead of showing gratitude, you abuse my patience. Now you dare accuse me of driving you into other women’s arms! What do you mean by this? Am I so very old and hideous?”

“Faithfulness, yes, let us talk of that,” he said furiously. “Has Your Majesty herself been faithful? If you had told me at the very start that, as sovereign, you had the right to every pleasure, then I would have been forced to accept that in silence. But you claimed that I was the only man in your life. You prided yourself on your faithfulness and found some glorious virtue in the fact that you did not have ten thousand beautiful men in your I