My Life as Emperor Read online

  MY LIFE AS EMPEROR

  SU TONG

  Translated by Howard Goldblatt

  Contents

  Title Page

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE

  ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  TWO

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  THREE

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  About the Author

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE

  FOR YEARS I HAVE DREAMED of becoming a prolific writer and have devoted all my energies toward realizing that dream.

  My Life as Emperor could be considered a pleasure cruise through my inner world. It has long been my wish to penetrate the millennia of China’s history, to transform myself into an old customer at some teahouse on an ancient street in the midst of a kaleidoscopic world with its teeming masses, and soak up the passage of time with my eyes. I am fascinated by classical times; fascinated by palaces, concubines, and traditional music; fascinated by the lives of popular entertainers who roamed all over the landscape to perform for the people; fascinated by the intermingling of suffering and pleasure. I sigh over the turbulence, the ups and downs of life, and have come to feel that the perfect life is nothing more than the organic unity of fire and water, of venom and honey. This may be a naïve and illogical way to look at life, but it has been, without doubt, the stimulus for My Life as Emperor.

  I hope my readers do not approach My Life as Emperor with the idea that it is historical fiction; that is why I have set the novel in no particular time. Identifying allusions and determining the accuracy of events places too great a burden on you and on me. The world of women and the palace intrigues that you will encounter in this novel are but a scary dream on a rainy night; the suffering and slaughter reflect my worries and fears for all the people in all worlds, and nothing more.

  I have said that my writing and my life both emerge from a dream world. My Life as Emperor is a dream within that dream world.

  MY LIFE AS EMPEROR

  ONE

  ONE

  THE SUN, LIKE A BROKEN EGG YOLK, hung suspended behind the summit of Brass Rule Mountain on the frost-laden morning the Imperial Father passed away. I was reciting my morning lessons in front of Mountainside Hall at the time, and saw a flock of white herons sweep in low from the black tallow tree forest. They circled the vermilion corridors and black-tiled roof of Mountainside Hall for a moment, leaving in their wake cries of anguish and a fluttering of feathers. I saw that my wrist, the stone table, and my books were covered with gray, watery heron droppings.

  Those are bird droppings, my young attendant said as he cleaned my wrist with a silk handkerchief. Autumn is deepening, and the Prince should return to the palace to study.

  Autumn is deepening, and calamity will soon befall the Xie Empire, I said.

  At that moment, palace attendants entered Mountainside Hall to report the Imperial demise. They carried the Black Panther banner of the Xie Empire and were dressed in white mourning clothes, their bereavement headbands fluttering slowly in the wind. Four attendants behind them entered with an empty palanquin, and I knew it was there to take me back to the palace, where I would stand with people I revered and others I despised to pay my last respects to the Imperial Father.

  I despised the dead man, even though he was my father and had ruled the Xie Empire for thirty years. His bier now rested in Received Virtues Hall, surrounded by thousands of golden yellow daisies. Sentries ringing the casket looked like cypress trees in a graveyard. I stood on the top step of Received Virtues Hall, where my grandmother, Madame Huangfu, had led me by the hand. I did not want to be there, did not want to be so close to the bier. The sons of my stepmother stood behind me, and when I turned to look at them, I was confronted by what seemed to be looks of hostility. Why were they always looking at me like that? I did not like them. What I did like was the sight of the Imperial Father’s bronze alchemy cauldron. It was what now filled my eyes. I saw it standing in solitude against the palace wall, a fire still burning beneath it, the elixir inside sending a shroud of steam into the air. A servant was feeding kindling into the pile of ashes. I knew it was Sun Xin, the aged attendant who often went up into the mountains behind Mountainside Hall to cut firewood. Tears rolled down his cheeks when he saw me, and he went down on one knee, pointing off toward the Xie Empire beyond the palace with his kindling knife. Autumn is deepening, and calamity will soon befall the Xie Empire, he said, as he had said so many times before.

  Someone struck the large bell hanging in the vestibule, and the people in front of Received Virtues Hall fell as one to their knees. Sensing I should kneel along with them, I did. I heard the aged yet still robust voice of the Funerian break the stillness: The late Emperor has a testamentary edict. The Emperor has a testamentary edict. A testamentary edict. An edict.

  When my grandmother, Madame Huangfu, knelt beside me, I saw a jade ruyi, the symbol of power, hanging from her girdle. Carved in the shape of a panther, it touched the step no more than a foot from me, and was a powerful distraction. Furtively I reached out and grabbed the ruyi, wanting to snap the strap from which it hung. But Madame Huangfu, aware of what I was doing, pushed away my hand and whispered somberly, Duanbai, listen to the edict.

  Suddenly I heard the Funerian speak my name, the gravity of his voice deepening: Fifth son, Duanbai, succeeds to the throne as Emperor of Xie. A buzz erupted in front of Received Virtues Hall, and when I turned to look, I saw an expression of joyful satisfaction on the face of my mother, Madame Meng. The faces of the royal concubines varied: some were impassive, others wore looks of anger or despair. My four half brothers’ faces paled. Duanxuan bit his lip, while Duanming muttered something and Duanwu showed the whites of his eyes. Duanwen alone pretended to be unaffected, but I knew that he felt worse than all the others, for his heart was set on ascending the throne, and he likely had never dreamed that the Imperial Father would hand it to me. Nor had I. Never in my life had I thought that one day I would suddenly find myself Emperor of Xie. The aged attendant in charge of alchemy, Sun Xin, had said, Autumn is deepening, and calamity will soon befall the Xie Empire. But what had been written in the Emperor’s final edict? I was summoned up to the Imperial Father’s gilded throne. I did not know what all of this meant. Still a child at fourteen, I could not figure out why I had been chosen to continue the Imperial line.

  My grandmother, Madame Huangfu, motioned for me to go up and receive the edict, but I had barely taken a step when the aged Funerian walked up holding my father’s Black Panther Imperial Crown in his hands. He walked so unsteadily, with a thin stream of sticky drool sliding down his chin, that I grew anxious for him. Rising slightly on my toes and stretching my neck, I waited for the Black Panther Imperial Crown to press down on my head. Bashful and embarrassed, I cast yet another glance at the alchemy cauldron up against the west palace wall, where Sun Xin sat dozing. The Imperial Father had no more use for elixirs, and yet a fire continued to burn beneath the cauldron. Why is it still burning? I asked, but no one heard me. The Black Panther Imperial Crown settled slowly yet heavily onto my head. My scalp felt cold.

  All of a sudden, a chilling shout exploded from the crowd in front of Received Virtues Hall: Not him, he is not the new Emperor of Xie. A woman burst from the line of imperial concubines. It was Madame Yang, the mother of Duanwen and Duanwu. I watched as she threaded her way through the dumbstruck throng, mounted the steps, and made her way up to me, where, like a crazed woman, s
he removed the Black Panther Imperial Crown from my head and held it to her bosom. Listen to me, all of you, Madame Yang shrieked. The new Xie Emperor is Duanwen, the eldest prince, not the fifth prince, Duanbai. She drew a sheet of rice paper out from her clothing. I have here a testamentary edict stamped with the late Emperor’s personal seal, she said. In it the Emperor bequeaths the throne to Duanwen as the new Xie ruler. The edict naming Duanbai is a forgery.

  Another roar erupted in front of Received Virtues Hall. As I watched Madame Yang clutch the Black Panther Imperial Crown to her body, I said, Take it if you want it so badly. I certainly never wanted it. In the turmoil I tried to slip away, but my grandmother, Madame Huangfu, blocked my escape route. By then, sentries had seized the crazed Madame Yang, one of them gagging her with a funeral sash. I saw them carry her down the steps and bundle her out of the tumultuous Received Virtues Hall.

  I was stunned, wondering why all this had happened.

  *

  On the sixth day of my reign, the Imperial Father’s casket was moved out of the palace. The vast funeral cortege surged to the southern foot of Brass Rule Mountain, where the tombs of generations of Xie rulers were located, as well as the grave of my younger brother, Duanxian, who had died in infancy. It was during that procession that I laid eyes on the face of the Imperial Father for the last time. A ruler who had once held sway over heaven and earth, a proud and gallant, carefree and dashing Emperor, now lay in his camphor casket like a shrunken, decomposing log. The thought of death horrified me. I had always assumed that the Imperial Father would live forever, but there was no denying that he was dead now. I saw there with him in the casket a variety of funerary objects—some made of gold, others fashioned from silver, jade, and agate, and all sorts of gems. There were many that I coveted, including a short bronze sword with inlaid rubies, and I had to hold back from reaching in to retrieve it for myself, knowing I was forbidden from removing any of the Imperial Father’s funerary objects.

  The procession of chariots halted in the marshy land at the entrance to the tombs to await retainers conveying red caskets containing the imperial concubines, who were to be buried with the Imperial Father. From where I sat on horseback, I counted seven in all. I was told that the women had been ordered to hang themselves with white silk in the early morning hours. Now their red caskets were arriving, to be arrayed auspiciously around the Imperial Father’s tomb, like the Big Dipper encircling the moon. I was also told that Madame Yang had been commanded to commit suicide along with the others, but had refused, running barefoot through the palace, only to be caught by three retainers, who had looped a piece of white silk around her neck and throttled her.

  After the seven red caskets were in place, a thumping sound emerged from inside one of them, causing everyone within earshot to go pale with fear. I watched as the lid slowly rose and Madame Yang sat up in her casket. Her disheveled hair was flecked with sawdust and red sand, her face white as paper. Sapped of energy, she could no longer shout as she had done only days before, and I watched as, for the last time, she waved the edict with the imperial seal to the crowd assembled around her. Retainers rushed up and filled the casket with dirt before nailing the lid shut. I counted: They drove nineteen long nails into the lid.

  *

  Everything I knew about the Xie Empire I learned from the Buddhist monk Juekong, whose name meant Enlightened Void. Chosen by the Imperial Father as my mentor, Juekong was a man of profound learning, a master of the martial arts, and an adept at music, chess, calligraphy, and painting. During my days of exhausting study in the cold confines of Mountainside Hall, Juekong never strayed far from my side, always ready to instruct me in the two-hundred-year history and nine-hundred-li territory of the Xie Empire, and to relate incidents in the lives of rulers and of generals who had died in battle. He chronicled the totality of mountains and rivers within our borders, and told me that our subjects spent their days planting millet, hunting game, and fishing.

  Once when I was eight, I was accosted by little white demons. Whenever the lamps were lit, they hopped onto my desk, even onto the squares of my chessboard, and leaped about, scaring me out of my wits. Juekong ran over as soon as he heard my cries, drew his sword, and drove them away. And so, from my eighth year on, I revered Juekong, my mentor.

  I summoned Juekong to the palace from Mountainside Hall. As he knelt before me, looking wretched and desolate, a dog-eared copy of The Analects in his hand, I noticed that there were holes in his cassock and that his straw sandals were coated with dark mud.

  Why has the mentor entered my presence with a copy of The Analects? I asked.

  Your Majesty has not finished studying it. I made a mark where we left off and have brought it with me so that he can finish it, Juekong said.

  I am now the Xie Emperor. Why burden me with more study?

  If the Xie Emperor does not continue his studies, this poor monk must return to a life of meditation in Bitter Bamboo Monastery.

  You may not return, I shouted abruptly as I took The Analects from Juekong’s hand and flung it onto the imperial bed. I will not permit you to leave me, I said. If you go, who will drive away the demons? Those little white demons have grown up, and they will squirm inside my bed curtain.

  I spotted two little serving girls stifling giggles with their hands over their mouths. Incensed that they were laughing at my fear, I pulled a lit candle out of a candelabra and flung it into the face of one of them. Stop that laughing, I shrieked. I’ll send the next one who laughs to the Imperial Tombs to be buried alive.

  . . .

  Chrysanthemums in the Imperial Garden bloomed riotously in the autumn breezes, and everywhere I looked my eyes were filled with a yellow that emitted the repellent smell of death. I had given an order for the gardeners to root out every last chrysanthemum in the Imperial Garden, which they had fawningly agreed to do. But then they had gone behind my back and reported to my grandmother, Madame Huangfu. I later learned that it was she who had ordered the planting of chrysanthemums everywhere in the Imperial Garden. They were her favorite flower, in part because she insisted that their unique fragrance had a soothing effect on her chronic light-headedness. My mother, Madame Meng, once told me privately that in the autumn, Madame Huangfu feasted on chrysanthemums, ordering the imperial chefs to prepare them both as a cold dish and a hot soup, closely guarded recipes to keep her healthy and prolong her life. But I was not won over. Chrysanthemums never failed to remind me of cold, stiff corpses, and swallowing the petals of chrysanthemums was virtually the same as eating the flesh of the dead, a nauseating thought.

  *

  The tower bell rang out when I held an audience with my chief ministers and officials to hand down opinions on imperial memorials. My grandmother, Madame Huangfu, and the Empress Dowager, Madame Meng, sat on either side of the throne. My opinions always derived from them, either by a veiled look or a whispered comment. That is how I preferred it. Even though I was of sufficient age and knowledge to excuse the two women from administering state affairs from behind the scenes, I chose not to so that I could avoid having to watch my every word and overtax my brain.

  I sat there holding a cricket jar on my knee. The black-winged cricket inside would, from time to time, shatter the suffocating decorum by calling out crisply. I loved crickets, but I was growing anxious as autumn chills deepened, afraid that palace servants would find it increasingly difficult to catch any of the ferocious, black-winged crickets on the mountain.

  I did not like my ministers or officials, who approached the vermilion steps to the throne on trembling legs to report on the status of provisions for our frontier armies or to offer ideas on land distribution south of the mountains. Not until they stopped talking and Madame Huangfu raised her purple sandalwood longevity cane was I free to bring the audience to an end. However impatient I grew, I was stuck. The monk Juekong once told me that the life of an emperor is spent amid gossip, complaints, and rumors.

  In the presence of the ministers, Madame Huang
fu and Madame Meng maintained a dignified and genteel demeanor. The two women appeared perfectly matched and were politically shrewd, but after the audiences ended, they were invariably embroiled in heated arguments with each other, lips on the attack, tongues rapier-sharp. On one occasion, the ministers had barely left Abundant Hearts Hall, my throne room, when Madame Huangfu slapped Madame Meng. I was aghast, and could only watch as Madame Meng held her cheek and ran behind the curtain, where she broke down and cried. I followed and heard her say between sobs, Damn that old crone, the sooner she dies the better.

  I stood there gazing at a face twisted by humiliation and loathing, a beautiful face despite the gnashing of teeth. From my earliest memory, that singular look was a permanent, unchanging expression on my mother’s face. Always a suspicious, apprehensive woman, she was sure that her son, my brother Duanxian, had been poisoned, and that the likely suspect was the late Emperor’s favorite concubine, Dainiang, who subsequently paid for her alleged cruel deed with the loss of all ten fingers. After that she was thrown into the filthy Cold Palace, where, I well knew, concubines who had fallen out of favor lived out their days in misery.

  I once sneaked over to the Cold Palace to see what Dainiang’s fingerless hands looked like. Located at the rear of the palace grounds, the area was threateningly cold; all sides of the courtyard were overgrown with moss and draped with cobwebs. Peeking through a window, I spotted Dainiang, who lay in a lethargic sleep on a bed of straw, next to which stood a cracked chamber pot, from which rose a sour stench that hung in the air. I watched as Dainiang rolled over, exposing one of her hands to me; it hung limply over the side of the straw bed, caught in a beam of sunlight that filtered in through the window. Resembling a blackened flat cake coated with putrid dried blood, it had attracted a swarm of flies, which perched fearlessly on the crippled limb.