Emperor Jiajing slowly revives on the bed, conceitedly muttering of his sexual prowess in your ear, prodding you there and dabbing his bloody fingerprints on your collar bone. He molests you in this way for a while, then calls to me from across the room.
‘See. You don’t compare to sweet young Bamboo. Confronted with your haggard body, my cock dies a whimpering death.’
I hang my head as though tormented, and the Emperor quotes from the Book of Odes:
‘Women with long tongues
Are harbingers of evil.
Disasters are not sent down from Heaven
But originate in the female of the species.
‘See how pale she is, my sweet Bamboo? The God-awful pallor of her lips and cheeks? I think we ought to rouge them for her, don’t you?’
He whispers in your ear and you giggle impishly. The Emperor smacks your bare bottom as you slide from the silk sheets. You scamper over to me, touch your finger to the bleeding palette between your legs, then smear the blood on my lips and rub your finger in circular motions on my cheeks. I stare into your traitorous eyes. You are blank as ever, though you turn to the Emperor to giggle every so often. The Emperor stands, walks away from the bed.
‘What do you think, Concubine Bamboo? Do you think her complexion has improved?’
You shake your head no. Emperor Jiajing walks to the dresser and opens a jewellery box of knives and other sharp instruments of torture. The Emperor removes a silver scalpel from the velvet-lined case. Acrid wine-tasting vomit spills down my chest. The Emperor laments, ‘Oh dear, she is paler than ever now! What do you think, Concubine Bamboo?’
He hands you the silver scalpel. You turn to me and treacherously utter, ‘More rouge.’
VII
Concubine Jasmine spoons herbal soup between my parted lips and I struggle to choke it down.
‘One more spoonful, dear sister Concubine Swallow,’ she encourages, dabbing my chin with lace cloth. ‘You need nourishment to strengthen and heal.’
Concubine Jasmine smooths the cotton bedsheet that covers my torso, bound tight by bandages. Her beauty and kindness contrast starkly with the portrait of the Emperor of Knives staring at me from the wall opposite the infirmary bed. Though I am no longer in the Leopard Room, my torture is ongoing, for every night the eunuchs unwind the gauze from my crudely stitched chest and douse my flayed skin with fiery medicinal concoctions. My teeth bite down on rags stuffed in my mouth and my hands claw the bedsheets, until a tide of darkness comes, sweeping the pallid, tittering eunuchs away.
Imperial Consort Jasmine, a high-ranking concubine like me, knows the monotony of the infirmary, has spent weeks convalescing there herself. So she smuggles in a Siamese kitten to amuse me by chasing balls of yarn, and some bamboo paper, ink-brush and ink, so this recuperating concubine can churn out imitation Song Dynasty landscapes. Puffing on the opium pipe together, we transcend into a giggling realm of lightness and ease as Concubine Jasmine reads to me from illicit, bootlegged erotic novellas (swearing me to secrecy, for if the eunuchs knew she was literate, they’d gouge out her eyes). She reads the tale of a cuckolding wife who romps with a gang of servant boys behind her master’s back, and she acts out each part with comic timing, changing her voice for each character, exaggerating carnal moans. Spellbound by her deft tongue moving behind her luscious lips and her eyes widening during climactic scenes, I reach and touch her lovely breasts. Concubine Jasmine ceases reading. She takes my hand in hers and kisses it tenderly.
‘O dearest beloved sister Concubine Swallow. Believe me, I wish I could. But it is my misfortune that I am not that way inclined.’
VIII
When I am pronounced well enough to return to the Palace of All Sunshine, Concubine Jasmine and I celebrate by wandering arm in arm about the Imperial Gardens. The spring thaw has begun. Many species of flowers are budding and numerous winged insects hover about the shrubs. Our little bound feet, three silk-cocooned inches peeping from under the hems of our robes, tap tap tap along the winding pebble-mosaic path as we admire the songbirds on the branches of the cypress, catalpa and scholar trees. Under my bandages, the stitched lesions protest movement with lacerating pain, but I hobble on. Concubine Jasmine has sought permission for us to enter the Emperor’s Menagerie to see the tributes from the kings of other lands: the elephant from Laos, the African zebras and the strutting ostriches with feathery bums and uppity beaks thrust to the sky. We stroke the zebras’ black-and-white-striped hides and laugh and clap our hands as the stable boy climbs astride the elephant and gets a backward hosing from the wrinkled grey trunk.
Back in the Imperial Gardens in the late afternoon we hear a tinkling of voices in the Pavilion of Melancholy Clouds.
‘Ah, who might that be?’ stage queries Jasmine.
On the circular stone bench within is a gathering of palace ladies, resplendent in shimmering robes, jewelled combs in their impeccably coiffed hair. They arise as we enter the pavilion. ‘Concubine Swallow!’ they cry, and flock to me.
‘O precious Concubine Swallow, we prayed to the Goddess of Mercy for your swift recovery. We requested permission to visit you, but the eunuchs wouldn’t allow it.’
They embrace me and caress my chilled early-spring cheeks. Fourteen of my harem sisters, each a faded beauty of more than thirty years with age-spun webs around her eyes. A stove blazes in the corner and on the table are porcelain teapots and cakes baked in the moulds of butterflies. The party is in my honour. They present me with gifts prepared during my convalescence: peony-stitched satin slippers, pouches embroidered with Buddhist emblems and a balm of crushed petals to perfume my wrists. Silly frivolities that show how limited in skill and artistic expression the harem women are, but I battle my inner contempt and express gratitude for the gifts. For years I have rejected my sisters, and superiority is a hard habit to break. We sit on the circular bench. Surreptitious breezes sneak through gaps in the wax-paper windows to stir the pavilion air. Concubine Jasmine begins, ‘We may speak without restraint, Concubine Swallow. Maidservants have been dispatched along the paths to look out for spies such as Hunchback Guo.’ She lays a hand on the carved gully where her bellybutton used to reside. The afternoon stroll has aggravated Concubine Jasmine’s wound.
‘We have news of a tragedy that occurred last week,’ continues Concubine Autumn Rains. ‘Imperial Consorts Tranquillity, Heavenly Orchid, Bamboo and Joyous Abundance were summoned by Emperor Jiajing to the Leopard Room. As the Emperor engaged in coitus with each in turn, he became convinced they were giggling at him. His Majesty confronted them with his paranoid imaginings, then handed them each a knife and ordered them to commit suicide. Tranquillity, Heavenly Orchid and Joyous Abundance successfully put themselves to death. But Concubine Bamboo survives in the infirmary.’
Under my bandages, the lesions on my chest scream as the maggots of ire writhe. ‘Bamboo is not dead? She survives? Indeed, that is a tragedy! I must go at once and finish the job!’