by Kien Nguyen
Above the royal chamber was a large hall, covered with elegant copper plaques and reserved for the ladies of the palace. Lady Chin recalled a secret staircase in the back that led to it. From behind a finely carved grille, the ladies could watch without being watched.
She closed her eyes and allowed her senses to absorb the surrounding revelry. She thought of the tinkles of laughter that had echoed down the hallway, and the lingering taste of sweet rice wine. It had been a long time since she had been part of such festivities, but the impressions in her mind were still vivid.
She opened her eyes as the porters descended a long bridge. The faint lotus fragrance wafted through the air, and the view opened before her—the shimmering landscape of the Golden City, which in turn enclosed the Purple Forbidden City.
She gasped. In the deepening evening, the Imperial Palace was aglow with thousands of light bulbs, sparkling in hues from pastel pink to gold to purple. Here and there, she could distinguish glittering candlelight and illuminated lanterns, mere pinpricks of light in comparison to the splendor and power of electricity. This was the first time the palace had been lit by electrical current, installed in honor of the king's return.
Over a vast area outside the palace, landscapers had built a royal golf course. Green grass, trees, and shrubs were brought in, and artificial ponds and barren sand fields were now being added, the eunuch explained. Nearby, a stable housed the latest in modern automobiles. Her entire life, she thought, she had known this place as well as she knew her own countenance. Yet so much had changed in the past few weeks, she could hardly recognize the face she saw in the mirror, let alone the sights around her.
At the entrance to the Purple Forbidden City, the heart of the citadel, where the royal family lived, Lady Chin and her escorts were stopped by a troop of soldiers. The porters could proceed no farther. Here, outside of the Great Golden Gate, sat a red-lacquered and gilded altar bearing the traditional five offerings to the Buddha in water, incense, flowers, rice, and candles, along with His Majesty's ancestral tablets and other objects of worship. Lady Chin and Ung joined the guests performing the five ritual prostrations at the altar, while the non-Buddhist French and the younger Vietnamese mandarins left their cars in a field behind the Hall of Supreme Harmony and simply strode inside.
Lady Chin reflected that since the young king had gone to his boarding school in France, the Purple Forbidden City—perhaps the whole citadel—had begun to fall apart. Although many mandarins held on to the ancient traditions, the Court at Hue was overrun by Frenchmen. Most of the older officials had left their positions and joined revolutionary troops, such as the Indochinese Communist party led by the socialist Ho Chi Minh. Rebellions fomented in many regions in spite of the severe consequences—punishment by guillotine. The regions outside of Hue were beset with thieves, robbers, whores, and other malefactors. Every time a nobleman abandoned the safety of the citadel, he, like her husband and son, risked his life.
Lady Chin and Ung watched hordes of foreigners walk past the place of worship, ignorant of what it meant. She wondered how a young emperor who had spent his adolescence in a far-off land and was not attuned to the politics of the Royal Court could prepare to govern a crippled system such as this. She was far from educated, but it seemed to her that the way her glorious past had been interrupted by the murders of her husband and son was a microcosm of what was happening to her country.
Crossing into the inner palace, she had to cling to Mr. Ung for support, lest the arriving guests knock her down in their rush. The King's Chamber, the first building behind the Great Golden Gate, was a place that only a four-hundred-year tradition of architecture could have constructed. Multicolored lights led the guests across a rectangular esplanade and into a colossal hall.
On either side of the hall's entrance, glass partitions revealed a pair of bronze lions—the gatekeepers, side by side in their crouching stance. The intricate carving that made up their pensive features represented the passionate art of a bygone era.
The ballroom was slowly filling up. The traditionalists were clad in colorful silk ceremonial robes with headdresses, cummerbunds, and boots. The colors of their gowns denoted their station and rank in the court. Sky-blue royal robes embroidered with a large dragon were for the highest ranking, mandarins of the second tier wore orange jade, and the third rank sported green jade. Lower-ranking courtiers were not allowed to enter the main ballroom. They twirled and mingled in the front hall with men in suits and ties and women in long, slinky dresses. The royal family was also here, but presumably inside and on the top dais.
Lady Chin found herself awestruck by the display. The blazing lights reflected off the gold in the walls to spin kaleidoscopic images before her dazzled eyes, while the loud foreign music made her knees weak. Being a lady-in-waiting and accompanied by a eunuch, she knew that she could gain access to almost every room in the palace. The armed guards assumed that she was here on behalf of the Queen Mother. Her ivory pass and the blue of her uniform put her in a category far above the other courtiers and mandarins.
But that knowledge did not make her feel any better.
Lady Chin searched for an empty space to stand in the crowded hall. Without looking back, she was aware of Ung's presence, his warm body supporting her. She could barely hear his voice, even though he seemed to be shouting over the music.
“We must go toward the back and reserve a private room behind the bamboo partition, so that you can be comfortable watching the festivities away from the crowd. But I warn you, you will not leave until we catch at least a sight of His Majesty.”
“Would you lead the way, then?” she asked, grabbing his arm.
They walked through a series of corridors that wrapped around the ballroom in the form of dragon's claws clutching a jade ball. She could see a portion of the sky above the walled garden; the yellow moon, sallow compared to the brilliant light on Earth, floated over a hedge of tall areca palm trees. The apartments neighboring the King's Chamber radiated the heat of the electric lights. Around her, the odors of perfumes and exotic cooking competed with the evil-smelling fumes of cigarette smoke, gasoline, and burnt gunpowder from the firecrackers.
Never had the Imperial Palace seemed so chaotic, so contemporary, and so congested. Even with gentle breezes drifting now and then from the Ngu Binh Mountain, her lungs were starved for air. A middle-aged Frenchwoman with marcelled hair and a powdered face drew in a mouthful of smoke from the tip of her long ivory cigarette holder. She looked incredulously at Lady Chin and the eunuch as they walked by. They ventured up to the second floor. A few hallways guarded by the palace soldiers led them into a private rectangular box, which was furnished with a row of armchairs.
Lady Chin strained to keep up with the old man. Her strength was ebbing, but she was not about to collapse inside this sanctuary. If she expired here, her death would be seen as a wicked omen for the royal family, whom she had served faithfully over a thirty-year span of her life. She would not want to cast such a shadow over them.
She sat. Her chest hurt. Her knees wobbled. A bitter, burning fluid rose to the back of her throat; still, she began to relax in this safe surrounding. From this booth she could spy on everyone in the ballroom without feeling like a small duck that was about to be crushed by the overzealous dancing feet of the guests.
“Well,” the eunuch said to her once they settled on their seats, “what do you think of all this? “
She swallowed the acidic fluid. “It strikes me suddenly that I have become too old to appreciate the flood of Western culture. The world has changed so rapidly. There was a time I could smell the sweet smoke of incense and opium anywhere in the fortress, but that has long passed. I have only sympathy for the two Queen Mothers, who no doubt must have suffered a great deal with these changes, especially at their age.”
“Shush! Shush!” said the old eunuch, pointing to the window. From a raised platform at the end of the hall, partially obscured behind a series of bamboo screens, the recogniza
ble shape of her employer, Lady Thuc, came into view. The emperor's mother, Queen Huu Thi, and two other ladies were accompanying her in a game of mah-jongg. Their shimmering, wide-sleeved robes matched the gold in the furniture.
The emperor sat on a throne a few feet away from his mother. He had grown tremendously from the mental picture she had of him: a tiny boy in a dark school uniform and white knee-length socks. The new king Bao Dai was a handsome young man of nineteen, dressed in a gray Western suit. His hands, unlike those of his father, King Khai Dinh, were free of jewelry. His short crop of dark hair was combed back with pomade, and his full lips bloomed with the vigor of youth.
“How handsome His Majesty is,” she said, studying him. “However, he is not what I envisioned as royalty.”
“All I can say,” the old man replied in a hushed voice, “is that the emperor is the new image this country so desperately needs. But look over there,” he said, pointing at a stout stranger in a single-breasted blue jacket with a thin, carefully trimmed mustache that ridged his upper lip. Next to him was the same Frenchwoman she had seen earlier outside the ballroom, with the powdered face and soft, wavy hair. “That couple is Madam and Monsieur Charles, the ex-ambassador.”
“His Majesty's adoptive parents,” she added. She had heard their names mentioned repeatedly during her long years of serving the Queen Mother.
“Indeed. In Paris, they have an elegant building on Bourdonnais Street, where His Majesty has spent the past ten years learning political science—”
“At le Lycee Condorcet puis sciences politiques,” she interrupted.
The old man raised an eyebrow. “How do you know its name, madam?”
“That was the very school my husband and I planned for Bui to enroll in, once he passed their admittance examination. We were planning a career for him in politics.”
A wave of grief brought along the never-ending realization of her loss. What had she done in all the years they had been gone? How did she get here, unclean and disheveled like a discarded rag? She struggled for air, feeling as though she were drowning amidst the strange music. She was swept by nausea as she thought of her son.
This was the place where her destiny had taken its tragic turn. There, on the front steps of the palace, her husband had notified her of the proposed union between their Bui and the daughter of the mayor of Cam Le. And there, a few days later, Magistrate Toan, the angel of death, had come to deliver the news of her family's last days on Earth.
She thought of the young girl who might have been her daughter-in-law if only fate had not been so cruel. It gave her a bittersweet pleasure to contemplate what her son's future could have been. During the years when she was still in good health, Lady Chin had tried to attend as many opera concerts as she could to spy on one particular dancer. Her friend the eunuch had informed her that this was Magistrate Toan's only granddaughter, the girl her son might have married. In the wake of the scandal surrounding the death of her son, the girl's family sought to restore its honor by giving her to the palace. She was her son's widow before she was even betrothed to him. Because of the tragedy, no proper suitor would ever consider asking for her hand in marriage again.
To Lady Chin, the fact that Magistrate Toan had sent his only grandchild to the palace seemed strange. She sensed that more dark deeds were hidden behind the deaths of her husband and son. This girl might have held the key to her unanswered questions. She wanted to believe that Bui's last days had been joyous, but the expression of sadness on the dancer's face troubled her. She wondered if the loss of Bui's life had caused this young concubine to lose all happiness in herself and enter this chaste existence in order to venerate him.
Lady Chin became obsessed with the girl. One night after a performance, she approached the dancer, summoning all of her courage. When their eyes locked, she fought the urge to flee. After the grace of a lady returned to her, she pushed a proud chin forward and said, “I am Bui's mother. I want you to tell me everything you know about my son's last days.” Her voice broke into a sob. “I want to know how he died.”
The dancer cried out as if she had seen a ghost. “Leave me alone,” she wailed. “I am not the reason for your losses. I have vowed never to speak of that incident for as long as I live. Please do not ask me to relive the horror of that night.” She ran off into her dressing room. After that brief encounter, they never met again. Lady Chin could only watch her from a distance. The girl's singing had grown more distressed with time, like the cries of a wounded nightingale.
Beside her, the eunuch had resumed the conversation, but now his voice seemed a thousand miles away.
“I assure you, madam, for you, being a mother, would understand. These foreigners have many plans for our young king, including a secret engagement that is about to be announced this evening.”
Her head, which rested against the railing of the mezzanine, felt like a sack of stones. The emperor got up from his throne and stood over his grandmother's shoulder, studying her mah-jongg tiles. “How on Earth did you learn this information, Mr. Ung?” Lady Chin asked.
“We eunuchs have ways to gather intelligence,” he said, “but you and I are having a confidential conversation that should not be heard by anyone else. Also, the rapid development of journalism in Da Nang has opened my eyes to the world beyond our citadel. There are many facts about the emperor that we, the ultraconservatives inside this closed fortress, are not aware of. The French would like to see the royal family lie around and smoke opium while they run the country.
“This morning, while waiting for King Bao Dai at the Da Nang Harbor, I read an article in the Nam Phong newspaper. It reported that a romantic encounter between our lord and Mademoiselle Mariette Jeanne Lan Thi Nguyen nourished into a liaison while they were onboard the D'Artagnan for their return trip to Vietnam. They left the Marseille port and drifted across the Pacific Ocean, which took several months at sea. During this time, they met each other in an incident that was carefully orchestrated by His Majesty's guardians. She is a Catholic who has just finished her baccalaureate at a convent in Paris, la Couvent des Oiseaux, run by the nuns of Saint Augustine.
“Also, in the same article, it said that the French government has eagerly approved this relationship and viewed it as a positive step for the young emperor, a union that would help improve his image. But in my opinion, the conflict between the two cultures, Vietnam and France, may have unforeseen repercussions on politics.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, madam, the Vietnamese people were hoping that our new king would abolish the French influences from Vietnam. However, it does not seem likely. A young boy is sent off to France, raised by a French ambassador to think and behave like a Frenchman. Do you think he would rebel against a culture that he was made a part of? His future wife, who is a Catholic, will also play a crucial role in his career. I doubt that her religion will allow him to have more than one wife. By contrast, his ancestors, by this age, would have had several concubines and established many families. Mademoiselle Nguyen's parents have been active in their religion. The fact that they were responsible for the construction of the first three cathedrals in the south of Vietnam has proven their wealth and power among the Christian community.”
“What rank is her family in the court?” Lady Chin asked.
“I am afraid that they are not royalty, madam.”
She sucked at her teeth. “That might pose an extreme barrier to the acceptance of the girl's relatives in the court, Mr. Ung. After all, it has been our tradition and prerequisite for the queen to derive from noble blood. No doubt this young woman belongs to a horrible class of businessmen. Oh, is it not bad enough that she is a commoner, does she have to worship the missionary god instead of the Buddha like the rest of us? I imagine that the councilmen and the Queen Mothers would refuse to grant their approval, and the king might have to look for his new queen somewhere else.”
“Quite the opposite,” the eunuch replied. “They have all approved of her. The mere
fact that she is Vietnamese instead of some French girl is enough to make the royal family heave a sigh of relief. Just this afternoon, I learned that Lady Thuc has given her permission for the emperor to take a trip to Dalat, where he will have an intimate rendezvous with Mademoiselle Nguyen's family. I entreat you not to leave this social gathering yet, because tonight you are witnessing the making of history, Madam Chin.”
“I still do not understand what the French want from us. Why can they not leave us to govern our country in peace?”
“Money, madam,” the eunuch said. “Also, the missionaries see us as barbaric and heathen. They want to save our souls by persuading us to worship a popular Western god, and therefore civilize our people into the modern world. To them, we are just a colony, not an independent country that has any rights.”
Lady Chin felt as if she had awakened from a long sleep. The eunuch's explanations had opened her mind to a world that was shut down when her family died. However, his voice was beginning to sound incoherent to her, as though he were speaking in another language.
Something else had caught her attention—a vision that emerged from a corner of the platform. For a second, her son seemed to appear in the crowd. Suddenly, she was very tired. She laid her head back against the railing and closed her eyes. Through her eyelids, she could still feel the intense heat from the lights overhead.
Below her, the emperor announced his early departure from the party, and some of the excitement seemed to leave with him. Something heavy crept up her chest. She must have drifted away, because when she opened her eyes, she was looking straight up at the ceiling. Against its white stucco dome-shaped lining, Ung's face was hovering like a moon. He wore the same helpless expression she had seen years ago, when he had found her teetering on the ledge of her apartment window.
He was shaking both of her shoulders. She responded by blinking her eyes while remaining perfectly still, no longer fearful, but in utter disbelief. Then she smiled, feeling herself float like a fully expanded balloon.
