She whispered, “The use of living is the taste it gives. The emperor has made you the only free man in the world. You can taste anything you like.”
We entered a hall full of looms where thousands of women in coarse gowns were weaving rich tapestry. I was fascinated. The air was stifling, but not to me. Adoda and the chef plied their fans and the doctor refreshed me with a fine mist of cool water. I also had the benefit of janitors without kneebands, so our party was socially invisible; I could stare at whom I liked and they could not see me at all. I noticed a girl with pale brown hair toiling on one side. Adoda halted the janitors and whispered, “That lovely girl is your sister who was sold to the merchants. She became a skilled weaver so they resold her here.”
I said, “That is untrue. My sister would be over forty now and that girl, though robust, is not yet sixteen.”
“Would you like her to join us?”
I closed my eyes in the tolerant smile and a janitor negotiated with an overseer. When we moved on, the girl was beside us. She was silent and frightened at first but we gave her garlands, food and wine and she soon became merry.
We came into a narrow street with a gallery along one side on the level of my throne. Tall elegant women in the robes of the court strolled and leaned there. A voice squeaked, “Hullo, Bohu” and looking up I saw the emperor smiling from the arms of the most slender and disdainful. I stared at him. He said, “Bohu hates me but I must suffer that. He is too great a man to be ordered by a poor old emperor. This lady, Bohu, is your aunt, a very wonderful courtesan. Say hullo!”
I laughed and said, “You are a liar, sir.”
He said, “Nonetheless you mean to take her from me. Join the famous poet, my dear, he goes down to the floating world. Goodbye, Bohu. I do not just give people death. That is only half my job.”
The emperor moved to a lady nearby, the slender one stepped among us and we all sailed on down the street.
We reached a wide river and the janitors waded in until the throne rested on the water. They withdrew the poles, laid them on the thwarts and we drifted out from shore. The doctor produced pipes and measured a careful dose into each bowl. We smoked and talked; the men played instruments, the women sang. The little weaver knew many popular songs, some sad, some funny. I suddenly wished Tohu was with us, and wept. They asked why. I told them and we all wept together. Twilight fell and a moon came out. The court lady stood up, lifted a pole and steered us expertly into a grove of willows growing in shallow water. Adoda hung lanterns in the branches. We ate, clasped each other, and slept.
I cannot count the following days. They may have been two, or three, or many. Opium plays tricks with time but I did not smoke enough to stop me loving. I loved in many ways, some tender, some harsh, some utterly absent-minded. More than once I said to Adoda, “Shall we die now? Nothing can be sweeter than this” but she said, “Wait a little longer. You haven’t done all you want yet.”
When at last my mind grew clear about the order of time the weaver and court lady had left us and we drifted down a tunnel to a bright arch at the end. We came into a lagoon on a lane of clear water between beds of rushes and lily-leaves. It led to an island covered with spires of marble and copper shining in the sun. My secretary said, “That is the poets’ pantheon. Would you like to land, sir?”
I nodded.
We disembarked and I strolled barefoot on warm moss between the spires. Each had an open door in the base with steps down to the tomb where the body would lie. Above each door was a white tablet where the poet’s great work would be painted. All the tombs and tablets were vacant, of course, for I am the first poet in the new palace and was meant to be the greatest, for the tallest spire in the centre was sheathed in gold with my name on the door. I entered. The room downstairs had space for us all with cushions for the entourage and a silver throne for me.
“To deserve to lie here I must write a poem,” I thought, and looked into my mind. The poem was there, waiting to come out. I returned upstairs, went outside and told the secretary to fetch paint and brushes from his satchel and go to the tablet. I then dictated my poem in a slow firm voice.
THE EMPEROR’S INJUSTICE
Scattered buttons and silks, a broken kite in the mud,
A child’s yellow clogs cracked by the horses hooves.
A land weeps for the head city, lopped by sabre, cracked by hooves,
The houses ash, the people meat for crows.
A week ago wind rustled dust in the empty market.
“Starve” said the moving dust, “Beg. Rebel. Starve. Beg. Rebel.”
We do not do such things. We are peaceful people.
We have food for six more days, let us wait.
The emperor will accommodate us, underground.
It is sad to be unnecessary.
All the bright mothers, strong fathers, raffish aunts,
Lost sisters and brothers, all the rude servants
Are honoured guests of the emperor, underground.
We sit in the tomb now. The door is closed, the only light is the red glow from the chef’s charcoal stove. My entourage dreamily puff their pipes, the doctor’s fingers sift the dried herbs, the secretary is ending my last letter. We are tired and happy. The emperor said I could write what I liked. Will my poem be broadcast? No. If that happened the common people would rise and destroy that evil little puppet and all the cunning, straightfaced, pompous men who use him. Nobody will read my words but a passing gardener, perhaps, who will paint them out to stop them reaching the emperor’s ear. But I have at last made the poem I was made to make. I lie down to sleep in perfect satisfaction.
Goodbye. I still love you
Your son, Bohu.
DICTATED SOMETIME SHORTLY BEFORE THE LAST DAY OF THE OLD CALENDAR.
LAST LETTER
A CRITICAL APPRECIATION OF THE POEM BY THE LATE TRAGEDIAN BOHU ENTITLED
THE EMPEROR’S INJUSTICE
DELIVERED
TO THE IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF HEADMASTERS, NEW PALACE UNIVERSITY
My Dear Colleagues, This is exactly the poem we require. Our patience in waiting for it till the last possible moment has been rewarded. The work is shorter than we expected, but that makes distribution easier. It had a starkness unusual in government poetry, but this starkness satisfies the nation’s need much more than the work we hoped for. With a single tiny change the poem can be used at once. I know some of my colleagues will raise objections, but I will answer these in the course of my appreciation.
A noble spirit of pity blows through this poem like a warm wind. The destroyed people are not mocked and calumniated, we identify with them, and the third line:
A land cries for the head city, lopped by sabre, cracked by hooves, invites the whole empire to mourn. But does this wind of pity fan the flames of political protest? No. It presses the mind of the reader inexorably toward nothing, toward death. This is clearly shown in the poem’s treatment of rebellion: