Shan Sa - Empress

Cousin Wei Liang, who was disappointed not to have been given a more significant promotion, replied: “We are descended from the most highly skilled warriors in the dynasty, and we have climbed through the administrative ranks by our own efforts. Having no claim to the highest ranks in the hierarchy, we are forced to accept these new positions to please the Empress. This special favor weighs on our conscience. Good Lady, there is truly no glory in this!”

When Mother told me of this conversation, their lack of gratitude now and their oppression in the past inflamed me. I immediately wrote the Emperor a long letter, my hand working furiously across each page, denouncing the privileges of these relations from outside the Court and citing frequent historical examples when unworthy men had been heaped with honors and had usurped supreme power. To cut the evil back to the very root, I suggested my relations be sent away from Court to far off provinces. The ministers greeted my request with enthusiasm. My determination had dissipated their fears that my family would become embroiled in politics. The men of my clan had barely taken up their positions before they were driven out of Court like criminals.

Shortly thereafter, I received letters from them begging for my clemency, and I replied to their supplications by writing the book A Warning to Relations from Outside.

My brothers died in their postings. Their bodies were taken to the Cemetery of Ancestors. And so I buried the shadow over my glory forever.

The same scene kept coming back to me in my dreams: Elder Sister emerging from her room wrapped in crimson silk, her face carefully made up, and every eyebrow plucked, resplendent as a goddess. I was about to take her hand when a surging crowd of strangers knocked me aside. My anguished cries were drowned out by deafening music. She was carried away by the jubilant crowd and disappeared forever.

When she was fourteen, Purity had married into the He Lan clan. Her husband was a gangly, sickly boy of fifteen who soon began a career in local government. As the years passed, he made little progress in the imperial hierarchy, but he became very well read, could hold a conversation about the Great Classics, and was an able painter on silk paper. Like most young aristocrats, he did not go home when he left work. The young lords of the town would take turns organizing banquets in the Houses of Flowers and would invite the most famous courtesans to join them at the table. Clandestine loves flourished as they teased each other. A young poetess introduced a young lord to the astonishing pleasures of the flesh, but she refused to become his concubine and slave in his gynaeceum. In his efforts to persuade her, he visited her pavilion with tenacious regularity and squandered his fortune. Precious stones could buy her smile but not her faithfulness. Other men had found their way into the courtesan’s rooms: A poor but educated man offering her a roll of silk could hope to be given a cup of tea; rich merchants with gold might be granted a perfumed kiss. When, at the age of twenty-five, she was found hanging from a beam, the whole town was devastated, but no one knew which thwarted love had made her kill herself. Without her, life had lost its spice: Elder Sister’s husband succumbed to the incurable illness of his grief. He died six months later.

At twenty-five, Elder Sister was a widow and a mother of two. She had put away her colored gowns and wrapped herself in dark tunics. She no longer left her apartments where she divided her days between reading and prayer. Believing her life was over, she hoped to find happiness for her future life through Buddhism.

I still remembered the image of her as a beautiful adolescent whose coquettish pouting seduced every person she met. When Purity had appeared at the gates of the palace, I saw a woman from the provincial aristocracy who was chillingly severe. She was covered in layers of tunics of heavy purple-blue-black satin and looked like a crow bearing evil omens. I made her take off her sinister clothes and dress in silks and muslins. I looked at her closely while she changed. What an extraordinary surprise to find she no longer had the straight legs, thin arms, and flat stomach of the sister I used to glimpse at in her bath! Her monastic clothes had been hiding a fertile bosom and generous hips: an ivory sculpture!

The servants had then announced the sovereign’s arrival, and Elder Sister had wanted to escape, but I held her back. She had insisted on putting her gloomy clothes back on and had prostrated herself on the ground, trembling shyly. Little Phoenix looked closely at her, and his expert eye saw beyond her immediate appearance. The novelty of a widow appealed to the sovereign, overwhelmed by the polished sweetness of the Court ladies. I encouraged him to seduce her. Through him I hoped to slip inside of a woman who had been close to me and very distant. The union between Little Phoenix and Purity took place in a pavilion I had prepared. That night my soul was in turmoil, accompanying my husband as he explored a sacred kingdom.

At thirty-one, when most women are in decline, Elder Sister had rediscovered her youth. Her silk gowns and crepe muslin tunics had revealed a proud and happy bosom. Her face had thrown off its gloomy veil and adopted a thousand languid expressions, displaying her sensual delight. She who had never been loved had now discovered the fervent caresses of an emperor. Her chastity had been breached, and she had allowed herself to be borne away on a wave of pleasure.

I had watched my sister blossoming with the pride of a craftsman contemplating his masterpiece. I had offered her part of my palace, a pavilion surrounded by blazing azaleas and camellias, with orange blossom and jasmine wafting their subtle fragrances around it. The Emperor had stopped pursuing the beauties to spend alternate nights in our beds.

That summer the Zhong Nan mountain was covered with pale, pastel colors and heady moisture. The cicadas moaned in the trees. The silken breeze gently stroked our shoulders. Our three-way agreement was an invitation toward the highest pinnacle of desire. One evening, when the musicians were singing age-old melodies outside the door, Little Phoenix affected drunkenness and tumbled Elder Sister and myself down onto his bed sewn with leaves of jade.

I hardly had time to think, my fingers glided over her delicate skin, and my lips pressed up against my sister’s. I felt as if I were holding myself in my arms and kissing my own burning lips. I moved carefully, afraid of hurting her, but Little Phoenix guided me in my discovery of her body, as if climbing a magnificent mountain. Her breasts were the peaks wreathed in eternal mists. Her stomach, a deep lake reflecting the blue of the sky. Snatches of our childhood came back to me. I saw Purity pulling a wooden duck behind her. I remembered Little Sister, a restless child who craved affection. Mother’s youthful figure loomed up from the past with her high topknot, her collar left open, her noble bearing, and her dazzlingly white breasts. I did not know what Elder Sister was thinking: She kept her eyes obstinately closed. Her awkward gestures implied that she had never made love with a woman. Was she shocked by my experience? Little Phoenix had penetrated me when my sister’s naked body rolled on top of mine. I gripped hold of Purity’s shoulders, for I wanted to take her with me on my celestial journey. Suddenly, two streams of tears spilled from the corners of her eyes.

Elder Sister was ashamed. Elder Sister was an ordinary, sensible woman, who kept her feet firmly on the ground.

Purity had fallen in love with my god-like husband. She would be punished for this impossible passion.

WHEN I LEFT the village of Wu, I had wanted to console my mother and to give myself courage when I said: “My position at the Palace is our one opportunity. Have confidence in my destiny. Do not weep.”