Anchee Min - Empress Orchid

“As soon as the couple departed, Yuan Ti ordered Mao Yen-shou’s beheading. Even so, the Emperor was forever haunted by the memory of the maiden and by regret for the happiness that might have been his.”

Emperor Hsien Feng gazed at me. “I summoned you because I didn’t want to suffer the regret Yuan Ti did. You are as beautiful as Chief Eunuch Shim described. You are Wang Ch’ao-chun’s incarnation. But Shim failed to tell me that you are also a lady of character. You are better than the orange-peel tea they make me drink. It is delicious, but I find no pleasure in its taste.

“It is the same with everything these days. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy Wang Ch’ao-chun even if she existed. And I am wondering about you. All I can think of, I’m afraid, is the shrinking map of China. Enemies are coming from all directions. They have grabbed me by the throat and spit in my face. I am beat up and shot through. Why should I-how can I-sleep with you or any concubine? To pass on a living man’s worst nightmare? I am incapable of producing an heir. I am no different from a eunuch.”

He began to laugh. There was a wrenching sadness in his manner and voice, which touched me. I knew the map he was talking about. It was the same map my father had shown me. The man in front of me reminded me of my father. He too had desperately desired to bring back the honor of the Manchus, and yet he ended up deserting his post. I felt the shame His Majesty bore. It was the same shame that killed my father.

I looked at Hsien Feng and thought that he was a true Bannerman. He could have sat back and enjoyed the garden and the feast of concubines, but he chose to worry himself to impotency.

An urge to comfort him overcame my fear. I moved to sit on my knees. I opened my arms and pulled him to my chest as a mother would an infant. He offered no resistance, and I held him this way for a long time.

He sighed and drew back to look at me.

I reached for the sheet to cover my exposed breasts.

“Leave it,” he said, pulling away the sheet. “I enjoy what I see.”

“My death sentence?”

He grinned. “You’ll have a chance to live if you help me get a good night’s sleep.”

Sunlight filtered through my heart’s darkest chamber, and I smiled.

“The smile is back!” he cried happily, like a child discovering a shooting star.

“Is it time for Your Majesty to sleep?”

“It is no longer an easy job.” He sighed.

“It will help if you let go of your thoughts.”

“Impossible, Orchid.”

“Does Your Majesty like games?”

“Games no longer interest me.”

“Does Your Majesty know ‘Joy at Meeting’?”

“That is an old song. By Chu Tun-ju of the Sung Dynasty?”

“What an excellent memory Your Majesty has!”

“Let me warn you, Orchid, no doctor has succeeded in helping me with my sleep.”

“May I have your qin ?”

He reached for the instrument and passed it to me.

I plucked the strings and began to sing.

Emperor Hsien Feng listened quietly and started to weep. He asked me to sing another song. “If you were an actor from the royal troupe, I would reward you with three hundred taels,” he said, taking hold of my hand.

I sang. I no longer wanted to think about how strangely things had turned out. After I finished “Farewell, Black River” and “The Drunken Concubine,” His Majesty wanted more. I begged his pardon and explained that I was not prepared.

“One last song.” He held me close. “Anything that comes to your mind.”

My fingers wandered over the strings. A moment later a tune came to me.

“It is called ‘Immortal at the Magpie Bridge,’ composed by Ch’in Kuan.” I cleared my throat and started.

“Wait, Orchid. ‘Immortal at the Magpie Bridge’? Why have I never heard of this? Is it popular?”

“Was.”

“That’s not fair, Lady Yehonala. The Emperor of China should be informed about everything.”

“Well, that’s why I am here, Your Majesty. For me, this lyric eclipses all other love poems. It tells the old legend of the Cowherd and the Maiden-or the Weaver-two stars separated by the Milky Way. They were to meet on the Magpie Bridge once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, when the autumn wind embraces the dew.”

“The pain of separation is known to many,” the Emperor said quietly. “The story reminds me of my mother. She hanged herself when I was a child. She was a beautiful woman, and we are separated by the Milky Way.”

I was moved to hear him say this, but managed not to comment. Instead, I sang.

Before my last note ended, Emperor Hsien Feng was asleep.

I put the instrument down beside the bed, wishing that this moment would go on forever. But it was time for me to depart. According to custom, I had to be sent back to my own palace at midnight. The eunuchs would soon come and remove me. Would I be summoned again? Most likely Emperor Hsien Feng would forget about me when he woke up.

A sense of melancholy descended. Fortune had not led to intimacy. I tried not to think about my ruyi and my lost hairpin and the energy and hope that went into my preparation. I hadn’t been given a chance to perform my fan dance. If Emperor Hsien Feng had desired me, I felt I could have made him happy.

Lying next to him, I watched the candles inside the red lanterns die out one after another. I tried not to feel beaten. What good would it do if I allowed myself to break down? The Emperor would only be irritated.

Sorrow drowned me in silence. My heart floated in an ocean strangled by seaweed. The candle in the last lantern flickered and went out. The room turned black. I hadn’t noticed until now that the clouds had blocked the moon completely. The singing of the yoo-hoo-loos was joined by other insects. The symphony of this night was marvelous. I lay in the dark and watched Emperor Hsien Feng breathing peacefully in his sleep. Like a pen, my eyes traced the contours of his body.

A shaft of moonlight cut the floor. The color was white with a touch of yellow. It recalled my mother’s complexion as she watched my father die. Each day the wrinkles chewed away a bit of her, biting deeper into her skin. Then suddenly one day the lines changed the entire landscape of her face. Her skin hung as if pulled by the earth. My mother was no longer a young woman.

Slowly and silently, I removed myself from the bed. I placed the qin on the table against the wall. I put on my gown and looked out the windows. I stared at the moon and saw myself in it-a large tear-washed face.

Hsien Feng lay curled in sleep, a man dreaming a man’s dreams. Like everyone in China, I used to think of the Son of Heaven as a god-like figure, the dragon who penetrated the universe. Today I saw a man whose delicate shoulders were having trouble carrying the nation’s burden; I saw a man who sobbed over my songs, a man who grew up without a mother’s love. What was misfortune if this was not? How terrible it must have been for him when his mother hanged herself in shame and everyone lied to him while all along he knew the truth! The irony was that he would never get to be the simple man he desired to be. Tomorrow morning, in front of his audience, he had to fake himself.