My Last Empress (11 page)

“Indeed, it’s tiny—no bigger than our Formosa Island.” The emperor pinched out a monocle, a Western affectation he had picked up. “How dare their queen send her armies to my shore!”

“It’s got nothing to do with size, you dope.” Q pushed my head aside and inserted hers between ours, puffing her rattling fricatives into my left ear a thousand beats a minisecond. “They’ve got iron ships. What have you got?”

“We could have built iron boats ourselves.”

“Too late. Your auntie embezzled the navy’s money to
build her own palace, which she hardly summers in.” She draped one arm over my shoulder, the other over her consort. “She must die and die soon or we’ll all go to hell.” The
h
in her
hell
was coarsely Parisian.

“Qiu, darling! Mind your tongue before my tutor. He is a guest.”

“A robbed and blackmailed guest, at best.” Q slyly rubbed her right cheek along my left ear as she huskily hummed, “You won’t mind telling us the truth, will you?”

“What truth?” I asked.

“Robbed and blackmailed?” The emperor put down his monocle.

“He was fleeced by your eunuch last night.”

“You were?” the emperor asked in concern.

I remained mute, merely shaking my head, wishing to forget the ugly encounter.

“Say something, you big wolf,” urged Q. Turning me to face her, she shook my shoulders with her twiggy hands. “Please, Pi-Jin the Pigeon. Last night, an order to swindle you was given by the chief eunuch—my maid said so, and she never lies to me. If you don’t tell us, and these half-men are not duly punished, what you will see next is the cover of your coffin.”

“What pelf did he demand of you this time?” asked the emperor.

“It was nothing,” I demurred.

“Be truthful with me. Otherwise you are not fit to be my tutor.”

“What would his punishment be for the offense?” I asked.

“Can I answer that?” Q raised one hand like a schoolgirl,
eager for attention, covering my mouth with her other hand, commanding, “You be mute, Pigeon.”

Mute I was, her hot palm sticky on my quivering, helpless lips.

“Your eunuch didn’t get anything from him.”

“Why not?” asked the emperor.

Q pinched my nose bridge painfully. “Because Big Nose here demanded that he write a receipt for the sum of three silvers as proof of record, scaring him away.”

“A receipt? How brilliant,” the emperor declared.

“He should run this palace for us,” said Q. “Do you have the, shall I say, testicles for it?” With a gamine grin, she sank her bottom onto her husband’s lap.

“What are testicles?” The young emperor turned to me expectantly.

“These,” said Q, grinding her rump deep into her husband’s lap, a sly smile curling her lips, “are your testicles.”

“You mean, I believe, to say
courage
,” I corrected.

“In German we say ‘testicles.’ It means the same thing, you prude,” Q said.

“Worry not, I will provide you with plenty of testicles if you will agree to accept my decree and help manage my affairs here,” pronounced the young emperor. “It’s so very chaotic at times that I think there is a conspiracy against me within my very own palace.”

“Of course there is a conspiracy here against you, and me, and now, your new court jester is included!” Q gave her man a peck on his lips, her eyes slanting at me. “And you know why?” she asked, turning to me. “Because my husband loves me like no emperor has ever loved his woman before.”

“No,” I protested. “I am here only to teach.”

The emperor shook his head sternly. “No one is to say no to me. I will assign you your new tasks in due course. Now it is time for punishment. In-In, go fetch Elder Li and Dong Shan, and don’t forget to bring the squad.”

The comedy had just turned tragic, I realized, as the boy flew out the door like a ghost.

“No, please,” I begged.

“Told you he has no balls. Be calm,” Q said playfully at me. “You will enjoy the spanking. It’s such a spectacle.” Whipping out a pack of Rothmans cigarettes, she tipped one into her mouth and lit it with a Dobereiner’s lamp.

Elder Li, the toady chief eunuch, with a set of muddy eyes hidden under bushy brows, led the dome-headed Dong Shan and a squad of four, bamboo poles in hands. The squadron knelt on the courtyard stones awaiting their master’s orders. Blurred words were exchanged tersely, an order given. Dome Head, knowing his fate, pulled up the tail of his gown and peeled down a flimsy wretched undergarment, baring his bony buttocks. Silently, a squad member struck him again and again with a supple pole. Red stripes instantly marred his skin, and blood soon oozed, streaking his bare thighs. After a short spell, the whipping ceased and Dome Head collapsed face down, too exhausted to gather himself.

Then another order was given, this time not by the emperor. It was Q’s words, high-pitched and thrilling like the jingle of a silvery bell. “Now you, Elder Li. It’s your turn.”

A fleeting puzzlement clouded Li’s face, a glint of sinister hate that darkened his eyes as they darted the span between
the emperor and me. Then he undid his ready robe, a saggy ass peeking at the shining sun.

This time, it was not the silent squad but Dome Head who took the pole, whipping and spanking his superior. First gingerly; then, after being scolded by Q, savagely, as if in wretched retaliation, one heavy strike after another, engaging his act with the utterance of one losing a grip on things, maddened by certain rage, not against the one under his painful pole but at his own hands, which had been cursed by a devilish spirit, beating his very own master for which he was bound to receive another bout of punishment. His strikes threw Li left and right, an old frame in jeopardy. The old skin broke seam by seam and bled reluctantly without the chief eunuch crying once as he buried his head on the ground, digging his nails into cracks along the paved yard. Then it was done.

The two limping and aching eunuchs had to be carried out of the courtyard by the squad.

The palace doctor would be summoned, I was assured by my pupil, but the lesson was taught. Very well taught, I might add.

A pouring rain ruined the prospect of a noon picnic the next day. My pupil and I were ensconced in my apartment playing chess behind a rain-streaked window. Two mosquitoes had been pelted against the pane. The bamboo grove was rendered gaunt with leaves down and branches felled. Wet birds chirped forlornly from damp nests flooded by the downpour. Outside Q was climbing a tree, calling to a pigeon dozing on a lone twig, nursing a big belly sickened from a meal of squirmy worms.

“Goo goo gooo!”
she coaxed impatiently, her thin limbs tangled palely against the slippery tree. “Come back or you will die.”

“You’re going to fall, Qiu Rong, and wet yourself,” my pupil urged without looking up from our chessboard of jade. “Checkmate!”

“Are you blind? I’m already dripping wet,” she shouted back, waking the bird for a moment, but the pigeon soon resumed its nap in the rain, swinging with the windblown branch.

“I’ll kill you with arrows, you hear me, birdie?” Q threatened her pet, which moved the creature not at all. “You playing deaf, huh?”

She produced a pebble and threw it, missing the pigeon.
“You cursed bird. Now I’m going to kill you with cannonballs. Yep, I’ve got cannons all lined up in the barracks. I will crush you into a bloody mess—”

“Come on down,” the emperor urged again absentmindedly, pinching my king away before resetting a new game. “And you called yourself a Yalor.”

“Do you mean Yalie?” I asked, as I surrendered two silvers into his waiting hand.

“Should have gone to the other school—Harvard, isn’t it? I’ve heard it’s much finer.” The emperor was a jokester at times, befitting the reputation of what other tutors called
fu
, a streak of frivolity in the character.

“One should never bring about the cursed H before a Yalie,” I said.

“A rivalry, huh? Just like those English schools, what is it … an Ox and a Bridge? I know things, you know. I had firstly requested a tutor from them.”

“Did you?”

“Grandpa detested their queen, especially disliking her beaky nose. It was that unlucky nose, Grandpa said, that bewidowed her early in life.”

“How wise of her. What made Grandpa a widow herself then?”

“A poisonous arrowhead killing my predecessor instantly.”

“Tell me about your empress.”

“Darling, isn’t she?” he said, his eyes full of delight looking out of the window at Q. “Native born, foreign raised, but all mine now.”

I tilted my head, a frowning inquiry.

“She used to be Grandpa’s favorite company—rare, exotic.”

“Not anymore?” My frown deepened.

He shook his head. “She’s all mine now. That’s all that matters. You know, she is really a cousin of mine.”

“A cousin?”

“Well, not in blood or flesh. By adoption at her birth, which, of course, is never to be talked about per Grandpa’s strict order.”

“Why not?”

“Shameful. She lacks a blood lineage from the original Yellow Banner Clan.”

Looking away from Q, he glanced my way. “Do you fancy her?”

“I …”

The emperor could be quite sly.

“It’s no crime, really. Everyone else does, initially at least. Five silvers this time?” he asked, shoving a pawn forward across the drawn paper river.

I followed his move with that of a leaping horse, diagonally. “You’re robbing your tutor blind.”

The emperor—let us for brevity’s sake call him S, short for sovereign—paused in his next move. “Want to make it interesting?”

“How so?”

“You win, spend the night in my chamber. I win, I will spend this night here.” He raised his brows in anticipation.

I shook my head, protesting, “You can’t lodge in this humble dwelling.”

“Of course I can. It was my very intention that I spend some nights with you here.”

“But where would you sleep?”

“I could sleep in this chair or that sofa. It’s quite all right. I’ve always wanted to do that. I have been sleeping in the same bed all my life. But no one has ever invited me as a guest before.”

“Defeat me then.”

“Defeat you I will,” said S cheerfully.

A gust of wind blew Q’s pleas to tickle my ears. “You cursed bird … Please, please come back. I will never feed you worms again, I promise.”

Though she sounded in tears now, the bird remained forlorn and unaffected.

“I will make you a new nest with feathers—goose feathers! Not good enough? How about silk or cotton? I will feed you only the sweetest fruits. Please, I will make you a mother. I will buy you a man pigeon with white feathers like yours …”

Only then did the imperial pigeon reply “Coooo … coooo.” It spanned its tips, fluttered its plume, and flapped wetly to perch on Q’s left shoulder. With the slight weight added, Q’s branch snapped and gave, landing Q in the mud. But she was unhurt and only had attention for her pigeon, like a mother with her fledgling, her chest heaving with gratitude, unstirred by neither the thunder’s roar near nor S’s pleading afar.

I raised off my chair, seeking S’s approval. “Might I?”

“Suit yourself,” said S, busy with his move, swiping a horse and a pawn with one leap of his chariot.

Umbrella in hand, I rushed across the dimpled courtyard to her side. Rising to meet me, Q leaned against my chest,
a wet child. With a towel, I tenderly dried her sweet cheeks, puddled dimples, matted hair, reddened earlobes, and angelic neck—Oh, my heart!—then her pet, which beaked back and cooed defensively.

Q’s giggles vibrated the thready rain pelting the oil-papered umbrella. “You tickle, big man.”

“Shall we go inside?”

“No.” She pouted. “Lookie … I’m bleeding.” Skin was broken on her hand, a tincture of red forming, nipped by a timorous twig.

“I know just the cure. May I?”

“Cure it then.”

I lowered my lips onto her pale palm, licking her cut with the quivering tip of my tongue, one eye glancing at her sideways. Her palm coiled in a fist then relaxed. She blushed before letting fly a series of curses in German or some other Balkan lingo, faking anger.

“It is a Cherokee Indian’s favorite remedy. Manly saliva.”

“You savage man.” She kissed me on my left cheek on raised toes, minty breath, leafy tobacco.

“Your neck is bleeding, too.”

“Really? You twit.” She pushed me away with a throaty chuckle, then slipped away from my arms, my heart, ankle thin, slender calfed, child slick. “Awful man!”

Oh, my dearest Annabelle, is she the one you pledged? Is her arrival your departure? Who is she to you, to me, to us, to your dying, to your sustaining within me? Am I to be her savior or ruin?

Faltering, I followed her back to my living room. Barely did I pay attention to him, preoccupied with the image of
Q curled up in my sofa, wet as a drowned cat. Her pigeon flew tentatively from bookshelf to desk to armchair, then to my bedroom and back, in transit dropping her poop whitely on the chessboard.

“You ruined our game!” exclaimed S.

“All you care about is your chess game and yourself, Husband!” Q admonished. Seeking her cigarettes and finding them wet, her anger rose.