I was so young then and I am now so old!
The door hangings were drawn apart. Great ministers prostrated themselves and asked me to alight. I decreed the Great Remission and the beginning of a new era, the Era of Long Peace, in homage to the city that had been awaiting my return for twenty years. I made offerings and ceremony of prayers to my august parents, to the Emperor Lordly Forebear, the Emperor Eternal Ancestor, and to my husband, the Emperor Lordly Ancestor. Leaning on my cane, I walked slowly through the Forbidden City, followed by Gentleness, Simplicity, and Prosperity. I could see my sister sitting before her bronze mirror with her gold flasks of perfume. I stroked the yellowed scrolls of silk on which the Delicate Concubine Xu had written her poems. I stood in quiet contemplation in the pavilion where the Gracious Wife had lain naked in the scarlet glow of the setting sun. I envied all these women I saw before me, their beauty still intact. Life has its revenge of life. Untimely death is the secret of eternal youth.
After the fevered excitement of the first months, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion and my hands started to shake violently. My calligraphy, always a source of such pride, became tortured scribbling. I sometimes tripped when there was nothing in my way. I saw a succession of doctors and was deluged with their diagnoses: unhinged winds, warring hot and cold elements, internal disorders. Some prescribed herb teas, baths, ointments, whereas others would have me bled, counsel acupuncture, and breathing exercises. The morning salutation was a challenge that I renewed daily. I should get out of bed, walk, get into a carriage, and endure the difficult journey to the Outer Court.
But I myself had found the best remedy against old age: never stop working, continue to invent. Amid the affairs of state and celebrations, I forgot the trembling of my body. I set up the military Imperial Competition and I myself corrected the papers on strategy and arbitrated the tournaments. I received ambassadors from Japan who, after a thirty-three-year hiatus, had crossed the boiling seas once more to prostrate themselves before the sovereign of the Celestial Empire. I sent my son Miracle to command my forces in war against the Tatars who had rebelled once again in the northwest. I arranged a marriage between a princess and a Tibetan king. When the King of Sinra died, I quickly sent an emissary to help his younger brother take the throne. The judicial mistakes made in the days of the torturer-prosecutors were corrected and the condemned rehabilitated. I reclassified the books in the Imperial Library. My nephew Spirit oversaw a hundred archivists and scholars compiling the annals of the overthrown Tang Dynasty.
TWO YEARS HAD passed since I left Luoyang when a terrible winter cold confined me to bed. It took me longer than usual to recover; I had to suspend the morning salutation for a month. Even when I was well again, I could no longer walk without help. I was horrified by this deterioration, convinced that I had fallen prey to the evil spirits of my rivals. Fifty years after their death, the Empress Wang and the Splendid Wife had surged suddenly in my dreams, accusing me of having ordered the murder of my own daughter. I hastily fled Long Peace. Luoyang welcomed me with acclamation and tears.
THE COURT WAS like a merciless mirror, reflecting my decline: The Supreme Son grew more stooped every day-so much waiting for the crown had turned him into an old man. Moon was nearly forty, and she was a grandmother herself. The kings, my nephews, who were still involved in endless intriguing, had to dye the hair black at their temples, and their foreheads were ravaged with creases. The great voice among my ministers had fallen silent: The chancellor Di Ren Jie had died. The government had lost its soul and I my right hand man.
The Empire continued to flourish, although I had less energy to bear the weight of prosperity. My judgment had slowed, and it took me twice as long to study a dossier. I was no longer a wizard of solutions. I secretly longed to retire, leaving Luoyang with my lovers. I dreamed of spending my last days in the Palace of Solar Breath far away from earthly matters: In the spring, there would be the cruise along the River of Rocks; in the summer, open-air concerts; in the autumn, poetry competitions would be washed down with chrysanthemum wine; in winter, my palace would be surrounded by snow, and puppets would act out plays that I had written.
I accepted when the Court offered the Zhang brothers the title of Great Lord, but refused my children’s hypocritical suggestion that they be raised to the rank of kings. Favorites should be kept far from the circle of power. But my rigorous attitude failed to reassure my anxious ministers. Some leagued against the two brothers and queued before me, trying to convince me of their ambition. I took note and made no comment. I left my government to its worrying. I left my sons, daughter, and nephews to their hateful jealousy. I left my favorites to pursue their pleasures in torment. My loneliness was bleaker than ever. Paralyzed by fear and despair, I watched my eightieth birthday draw nearer and nearer.
How could I abandon my empire, my lovers, and my descendants? How could I leave Luoyang, its peonies, canals, and bewitching loveliness? How could I exchange the comfort of my bed for a coffin, my sumptuous palace for an underground chamber? How could I close my eyes, stop hearing, or let myself forget? How could I stop breathing, stop existing? What would my next life be? Would I be a beggar having been a sovereign? Would I change into a bird to fly away from the very pinnacle of humanity or into a stone thrown down from the summit having fulfilled my destiny?
I called exorcists to my palace. Monks in monasteries recited purifying sutras and prayers in my name. I offered up my sacred veins to leeches, my divine scalp to the acupuncturists’ silver needles. I braved snakebites and suffered in hot mud and iced baths. There were brief periods of improvement, occasional miracles, but evil continued to make its progress through my body. I could no longer walk; two sturdy serving women carried me in a litter. My words became confused and Gentleness served as my interpreter. The most simple tasks and gestures became personal battles. Something stronger than my own will was triumphing over me. The gods punish men in their arrogance and pride. Little Phoenix, so indolent and offhand, had ended his days in a morass of pain. I who had held the reins of my destiny so firmly, I who had commanded the greatest Empire beneath the skies, was robbed of authority over my own flesh.
Every day I lost a little more control over myself. My deterioration bewildered the high-ranking dignitaries so accustomed to my energetic authority. There was talk of the Supreme Son and his wife growing impatient, of my nephews adjusting their strategies, of more and more courtiers abandoning Simplicity and Prosperity to join the heir’s camp. Terrified by the slander, my favorites sought more privilege and fortune to insure their future.
The internal conflicts that had been kept secret burst out into the open one day. The prosecutors from the Lodge of Purification opened the hostilities by accusing Prosperity’s and Simplicity’s three brothers of corruption. My lovers rested their heads on my pillow, sobbing, and pleading their family’s innocence. The ensuing investigation attracted further complaints: more and more people came forward as witnesses with various forms of proof. I was unable to act against the rulings I myself had imposed and was forced to exile the guilty parties to distant provinces. But I also banished two of my eminent ministers who had lead the hostilities against Prosperity and Simplicity. These judges were insisting-on the grounds that the law saw all close relations of condemned men as guilty of a comparable crime-that my favorites be stripped of their positions and their nobility. I had to be very wily to extricate myself from the situation. Under my instructions, Great Minister Yang Si Jian stood up indignantly, exclaiming, “The Lords Zhang have helped ensure the Emperor’s longevity, and for this the Empire is deeply indebted to them. They are, therefore, protected from crimes committed by their relations.”