I was proud, and I was disappointed; I was happy, and I felt guilty. Through these hundreds of lives, I was trying to find an answer to all the sorrows and pains of this world, but the solution melted away like water on sand. The root of these evils was still impenetrable.
During one of these sessions, the Council of Great Ministers brought me a petition in which my imperial officials begged me to suspend the public audiences in the interests of my own health.
“Supreme Majesty,” said the Great Chancellor, prostrating himself, “no other sovereign has deigned to receive the people. And yet the Scholarly King of Zhou, the Emperor Lordly Forebear of the Han dynasty, the Scholarly Emperor of the Wei dynasty, and the Emperor Eternal Ancestor were all able to fulfill their celestial duties successfully and gloriously. A good sovereign knows the suffering and the joy of the people, but also knows how to delegate concerns to servants. That is why the ancient Zhou dynasty created the position of inspector and disguised these men as beggars before sending them out to every province. Her Supreme Majesty’s health is the Chinese people’s most precious resource. If she were exhausted, the entire world would be deprived of every joy. She must save her strength and her energy for the most important decisions.”
“When I introduced the Urn of Truth,” I replied, “and opened the Forbidden City to the people, this act was not intended to mock previous emperors, but to warn future sovereigns. Shut away in his palace and surrounded by courtiers dressed in brocade, the Master of the Empire knows nothing of hunger, poverty, and the trials of life. If he is the motionless center of the hub, then let the world come to him! The public audiences over the last few months have shown me the truth: As I treat each successive case, my power seems to diminish. Every act of kindness is a drop of water added to a constantly moving river. By granting my favors to some, I have withheld them from others who dared ask me for nothing. I must not take the place of the gods by handing out the fates of men. A sovereign’s power is an illusion and a promise. Only Buddha’s compassion can turn suffering into perpetual joy. I now accept your request, and I shall suspend the public audiences. But the Urn of Truth will continue to receive the complaints of the people. Politics can heal, but it cannot cure. Only a spiritual force can overcome ailing flesh and aching souls. He who is in the light forgets hunger and thirst. Let us pray that our empire will know religious bliss and be lifted up to the heavens.”
TEN
I, the wandering child, I, the shaven-headed nun, I, the concubine who preferred the power of separation to the weakness of attachment, I, the Empress who was both in and out of life here and elsewhere-I noticed with stupefaction that a miracle had come to pass: I had laid down roots at the city of Luoyang.
Since my husband had joined the heavens, I had never returned to Long Peace. The seething metropolis of a million inhabitants had swept aside all the illusions of a provincial Talented One. I did not miss its markets and rows of little shops, its avenues of jostling horses and pedestrians. That town had forged me and perverted me. Away from it, I could at last forgive its feverish debauchery, its easy wealth; I no longer criticized its gleeful dissipation, its titillating exuberance. I had freed myself once and for all from a Forbidden City built by the emperors of Tang, haunted by the ghosts of murdered princes and poisoned concubines. Long Peace, which had robbed me of my youth, would be punished by my absence.
Specialists in genealogy had proved that my clan, the Wus, were descended from the lineage of the King of Peace from the ancient Zhou dynasty. Twelve hundred years previously, this Great Ancestor had moved his capital from Long Peace to Luoyang, lying on its fertile plain and surrounded by steep mountains on three sides. The wide, peaceful River Luo flowed through the city where it was joined by many other rivers. Geomancy experts had seen happy prosperity in the configuration of the surrounding countryside, and strategists, liked its central location, protected it from Tatar invasions. Emperor Yang of the overthrown dynasty had raised millions of peasants to dig the Great Canal, setting off from the Eastern Gate and linking the five rivers of China.
In Long Peace there were sweat and dust and the heavy ruts left by carts. In Luoyang there were green canals, red sails, and the grinding of oars. Luoyang did not move, and the world came to it on the waves. Boats laden with grain, precious woods, bolts of silk, packages of tea, and jars of wine set off from the provinces and unloaded their wares before the imperial palace.
Luoyang had welcomed me as a triumphant empress. The city had been destroyed by war and had surrendered itself, naked, to my imagination. I had exercised my thoughts over every restored quayside, every new stretch of canal. I had redesigned the ramparts of its rectangular fortifications. I had reinstated its ten avenues bisected by ten wide boulevards and its 130 separate districts. I had planted the double row of scarlet grenadine trees and pink peach trees in the middle of the boulevards and constructed stone bridges shaped like rainbows and wooden bridges that opened to allow boats to pass with their sails filled with the wind. I had restored and enlarged the Forbidden City and the Imperial Park. I had built the three imperial temples to the east of the Palace to house the spirits of the Emperor Lordly Forebear, the Emperor Eternal Ancestor, and the Emperor Lordly Ancestor, called there from Long Peace. I had erected the Temple of Adoration where my forebears now received offerings on a par with those given to the three sovereigns of the dynasty.
Long Peace was banished. In Luoyang the wind blew over crimson peonies. From the top of the Pagoda of Contemplation, I could see the River Luo glittering in the middle of the Imperial Park. The Palaces of Spring and Autumn appeared in the depths of the forest where pavilions of cherry blossoms and terraces of orchid melted into the shadow. Galleries wound their way along the banks of rivers and became bridges launching out toward little islands, discs of emerald in the water. To the south, the low-lying city spread its panorama. Sailing ships glided across the sky. It was no longer clear where boats were setting out and where birds were flying off; tiled roofs and thatched roofs were smudges of turquoise and yellow between the canals. In the gap between blue and green on the horizon, a thread of black hovered. I could just make out the sacred valley through which the River Yi flowed. Devout Buddhists had dug thousands of caves along the cliffs on its right bank and had erected their idols in them over the centuries. My childhood wish had been granted there: A mountain had been sculpted and transformed into Buddha Vairocana of the Great Sun, accompanied by his bodhisattva servants. I had lent the giant statue my oval face, the thoughtful curve of my brow, my long slanting eyes, and my full-pouting lips, now immortalized in a distant smile.
Further away, there were forests and rivers, endless fields, and busy little towns. The golden and purple banners I had designed blew in the wind throughout the land of China. Men were dead. I was mistress of this eternal world.
LITTLE PHOENIX, HIS sickly cheeks and wan smile, was gradually erased by images of the Emperor Lordly Ancestor. Astride his horse, with his bow in his hand, he was a haughty and invincible warrior. On his throne, with his hands on his knees, wearing his ochre-yellow tunic and his cap of lacquered linen, he was dazzling in his majesty. At the top of Tai Mountain, wearing the crown with twenty-four tiers of jade pearls and the scarlet and black cloak embroidered with symbols of sovereignty, holding up the goblet of libations in his hands, he was the great priest of this earthly world.