“Come then, princess, do not toy with my impatience, make out the prescription!”
She waved her painted silk fan and breathed these words: “It is late now. I shall go home and find the formula. May Your Majesty reserve the night of the next full moon for me, I shall return with my medication!
WHEN THE NIGHT of the full moon came, I dined with the Princess of Gold. She became a little drunk and told me stories that would have caused any respectable woman to blush: princesses and their passing fancies for officers of the guard, princes and their attachments to their pages. She laughed as she related all these fatal encounters, all these terrible separations that had torn apart those silken hearts.
It was only after dinner-when, weary of listening to her and of laughing idiotically, I decided to go to bed-that she followed me into my bedroom, helped me to undress, and insisted once more on the excellence of her remedy. I ordered her to show me these magic pills. She smiled mysteriously and asked that the servants withdrew. Then she blew out the candles, and she too slipped away, taking Gentleness by the hand.
I waited on my bed, with my head lying along my arm. In accordance with my instructions, the blinds were left raised every night of the full moon. Outside, the celestial mirror projected the motionless shadows of the bamboos and the millennial cypress trees onto my windows. A long time passed before anyone came in. I called for Emerald and Ruby, but neither of them answered. Suddenly I heard the rustle of a dress, and the door was drawn aside. A tall, unfamiliar silhouette appeared. I thought she must be one of the princess’s attendants, and she did in fact raise the bed curtain and give me a cup of sweetened infusion. Then she whispered very quietly that she was to massage me to stimulate the effects of the medicine.
I lay full length on my front. Two strong hands applied slow pressure to the acupuncture points at the nape of my neck. They slid into my hair and rubbed my head, wearied from the constant wigs and golden hair pins. Then they moved down over my shoulders and settled on my spine. The fingers were supple and charged with pleasing energies; wherever they applied pressure, my muscles were eased, and a life-giving warmth spread through my body. I was overcome by a hazy sleepiness and a sense of exaltation. I suspected that the masseuse was herself part of the magic remedy the princess had given me: She was not like any of those I already had. Her palms were wide and vigorous, and they relaxed me while at the same time reawakening ardors that had been extinguished since my husband’s death.
Further down, after she had anointed my thighs with fragrant oil, the stranger’s manipulations became more equivocal. Her hands glided over my buttocks, sometimes sliding delicately off course. The silent language of her fingers made my blood seethe within me. I encouraged her by spreading my legs slightly. Her middle fingers plunged into the core of me and grew bolder. My prolonged abstinence had made me all the more sensitive, and her caresses provoked quivers that rippled through me. The stranger was an expert. She overcame my nervous agitation and steered me to the first pleasurable climax with great precision. Slowly, she turned me onto my back and took my face in her hands. As she rubbed my cheeks, my eyes, my forehead, and my ear-lobes, she made me blaze with desire. I rose up abruptly and clasped her in my arms. She fell onto me, and I tore her tunic. Her skin smelled of honey and orchids. Her chest was flat and muscled like a man’s, her stomach firm, and I felt an erect phallus.
A man!
A man in my bed, in the bed of the Supreme Empress, widow of the Sovereign Lordly Ancestor!
I leapt up, but he held me in his arms, against his burning member.
“Yes, Supreme Majesty, do not be afraid. I am a man. My name is Little Treasure. I am your remedy. Tomorrow, you will have me beheaded or quartered by chariots. But tonight, let yourself go, allow me to love you.”
I cannot give a reason for my capitulation; it is impossible. I, Empress, sworn to virtue. I, a woman preoccupied with matters of State. I, a warrior who had never removed her armor, I, who considered men to be dust and who conversed with the stars. On that night I betrayed Little Phoenix, for whom my heart still mourned. I allowed myself that one weakness by revealing myself, without shame or regret, to a stranger.
My couplings with the Emperor of China had been a conscientious duty. By the time I was thirty, I had become obsessed with perfection and hygiene. I had had my genitals massaged for fear that they would lose their firm outline. I had abstained from spicy food and had drunk infusions to perfume my breath and my sweat. My body had been anointed with oil of peony and rubbed with cedar bark before being delivered, plucked and powdered, to my husband.
When Little Treasure parted my legs, my genitals were neither combed nor perfumed. I had the same nudity, the same lack of artifice as an ordinary woman. It was nearly twenty years since I had felt a phallus in my belly. The stranger tore me in two. For the first time I let myself neglect the man’s gratification to concentrate on my own pleasure. Little Treasure moved his hips with masterful skill. He listened to my shivers and conducted the music of my sighs. Where had he learned the art of copulation? It mattered little; the following day I would send him to his death.
Suddenly my body began to boil. A scream was torn from my lungs. With great assurance and little effort, the stranger had just delivered me an orgasm, a firework of ten thousand dazzling sparks.
I SPENT A feverish night.
One moment I dreamed that I had tied him up in a sack and thrown him into the river in the grounds; the next I saw him lying poisoned. I was suddenly afraid that I would not wake in time to receive the morning salutation. Then I wondered how I would look my servants in the eye and whether I should have all their eyes gouged out and their tongues cut off.
I woke with a start. In the half light, the stranger was sleeping naked on the crumpled sheets. His bronze skin gleamed. Filled by this giant frame, the bed looked narrow as a cradle. He was very young with a hint of a moustache on his lips. Quite suddenly he opened his eyes and smiled at me.
I had never seen such a happy smile. I was so surprised by it that I forgot my dark thoughts and let him draw me to him. He made love to me again. This time I realized that, in the distant past, Little Phoenix had never granted me such intense pleasure. Unlike my husband, who thought only of his own gratification, the young man guided my body and steered it till it folded on itself, stretched out, and executed contortions. I became his zither, and he made my every string hum, discovering resonances I had not known until then. Dawn was growing lighter. I realized that my muscles were almost intact, that my firm breasts were those of an adolescent. My belly that had brought forth six children had kept its vigorous round outline. Little Treasure’s dark eyes betrayed his furious passion and reflected this flattering truth: I was still beautiful and desirable.
GENTLENESS SCRATCHED AT the door and announced that I was late for the morning salutation.
“The Supreme Empress is unwell,” I replied. “She will not go to the audience. Tell the officials to withdraw and return to their ministries. Tell the Great Ministers to prepare written reports. There will be no meeting today.”
Little Phoenix had often announced this decree while in the grips of a short-lived passion for a young favorite. I remembered finding it irritating, but now how I regretted battering him with my moralizing! For the first time I could appreciate that, beyond the interests of the Empire and my duties as sovereign, I had an obligation to the impetuous demands of my body!