The Great Empire--Bilingual Edition

by Joaquim Augusto Ferreira Barbosa De Melo

  Two years later...

  The palace has returned to its near normality, influenced only by Li’s absence and the Empress Zizi’s death. During this period the Emperor changed his daily routine a little, giving more emphasis to his public life at the expense of the private. In the official acts, inside the palace, the Empress’ throne remained empty, as if to remind that one day it would be occupied again by someone. This particular one conferred serenity to the court, except among the concubines where a climate of tension was notorious, contrasting strongly with the calm that lived in the rest of the personnel. Among them, the climate of intrigue and envy ran high - on a level of almost explosion. The youngest girls recently admitted and the ladies-in-waiting, were, here and there, making their predictions of who would be in the most favorable conditions to access the favorite places of the Emperor’s preference. This speculative wave extended, however, to other situations of a more serious nature. Rumors began to circulate through the corridors of the palace that the death of the Empress, after all, had not been as natural as the doctors’ diagnosis had admitted. Behind the scenes, especially among the ladies, there was the version of a probable poisoning. This version began to have supporters when it became known of the death of a cat that had ingested liquid, spilled accidentally, from a teapot existing in the Empress’ quarters - since the death of the Empress that her quarters had remained closed. Among the doctors the version was another - according to them, the death of the animal was probably due to the existence of poison that, however, resulted from the long time of permanence of the tea in the teapot that was of metal and had many precious stones embedded.

  With the death of Empress Zizi and the absence of Li, the way was free for Xi, who took advantage of every moment to gain more and more influence with the Emperor. As time went by, that influence grew to such an extent that, in the eyes of the Emperor, it began to make sense to grant her a new status. At a certain point, in the corridors, there were talks of preparations for a new marriage. Shortly after, with the death of her father, Li returned to the palace. The first news, unwanted, to which she had to adjust, was precisely that Xi would soon be the new Empress. Among the concubines this event was already admitted, but for Li it was a brutal shock! The atmosphere of tension previously existing between Li and the other concubines had become lessened with time, perhaps because she now posed no threat to the others. The Emperor, busy with his political life, did not appear or claimed any of his concubines, however special they had been in the past. In the corridor conversations between concubines, the eunuch Zhu was now much talked about, both because of the circumstances of Empress Zizi’s death, and because of his influence with Xi. Among the eunuchs, the atmosphere was reserved and little given to corridor conversations. They didn’t externalize what was in their soul. There seemed to be total serenity among them. The concubines’ reading of this environment was, however, quite different, with the version that they were living another calm period before war.

  Xi, in the months leading up to her wedding, was coy in her chambers, wrapped in silence, as if preparing some or simply hibernating to renew her poisons, more suited to her future social condition. The beginning of preparations for the festivities now pointed to a modest marriage, without the pomp and circumstance of other times, either because of the Emperor’s age or because he revealed, in recent years, less appetite for social life - a reflection of declining health, far from the vigor of youth. The official invitations, strongly limited in the number of attendances, revealed that same lack of enthusiasm that seemed to be installed in the soul of the Emperor. Had it not been for the commitment and dedication of Zhu, now appointed as coordinator responsible for the arrangements of the imperial enclosures and rooms, the celebrations would have been reduced to a gloomy, almost effaced wedding. The bride’s dress, prepared under Xi’s direct guidance, stood out in contrast to everything else. In this particular, it exceeded all that was predictable. Among the oldest ladies in the palace, it was commented that there was no memory of such a meticulous and pompous dress preparation as that which Xi had just had executed. All the concubines were invited to give their opinion on the dress, with the exception of Li, who was even forbidden to enter those quarters. Xi knew she had to be cautious, now more than ever - her enemy Li had to stay at a distance, not only from the Emperor, but also from anything that might damage the image of the ceremony. Gradually, in the corridors, conversations began to be heard among the concubines, expressing fascination and amazement at the dress, so that at one point there was not a single conversation between them that did not have this subject as the main theme.

  - My friend Xi has a dress that matches her stardom, don’t you think?! – Observed the concubine Titi, perhaps to make it clear that the future Empress was her personal friend.

  - I have been around for many years and I can assure you that to this day I have never seen anything comparable!

  - She always knew what she wanted! I’m not surprised by all this.

  When the big day finally came, Xi got up much earlier than usual. For her the night had not been quiet at all, she had had restless dreams and nightmares, involving a lot of emotion. After a light and first meal in the morning, she met Zhu to find out once again that everything was ready and compliant. Then she headed to the room where the wedding dress had been made, having noticed, strangely, that the door was half-open. That circumstance made her nervous, as she had given express orders for that door to remain closed at all times. She had been careful, but “despite all the care and recommendations, the result is this” she thought, already a little irritated. Xi took a look around the room, but as everything seemed normal to her, she became calmer, reducing the importance of the incident and ensuring, when she left, that the door was well closed. At the agreed time and with the arrival of the ladies-in-waiting, it was initiated the dressing of the bride. All the women were able to confirm once again that the dress was a real work of art. All that remained was to apply the final part of the veil - a long covering mantle, with pearls and precious stones inlaid, which gave the ensemble an incomparable beauty. For security reasons, this final adornment piece was enclosed in a giant lockable trunk. The bride watched the padlock being removed and was already imagining the greatest compliments with the application of that wonderful cloak. However, with the opening of the chest, the surprise and indignation of Xi was total. The cloak was reduced to rags, torn into a thousand pieces by so many scissors. For Xi, that instant represented an unspeakable humiliation - it was like the dethronement of a feathered peacock to which they had cut off all the feathers of his tail and was reduced, in nonsense, to the insignificance of a hen with raised wings. The pearls and precious stones remained in the chest and, by the number, they made believe, that whoever did that had as his only objective to humiliate her as much as possible. In the first moments Xi was as if petrified, without a single gesture or word, only her expression was becoming disfigured at a dizzying pace. Briefly, she left the room running, deranged, towards Li’s quarters. The door was closed, but that was no problem for Xi, the latch burst, entering Li’s room completely furious. Before she could identify what was going on, she was bombarded by that dark figure just arrived, dressed in red and vociferous with all sorts of impropriety, cries of anger and curses. Xi had poured on Li all the hatred accumulated in recent years:

  - May the gods bring upon you and your offspring all sorts of curses! May you be cursed everywhere on earth! And finally when you feel despised by everyone and transformed into a human rag, serve as pasture for the vultures! Cursed, a thousand times!

  Before Li could intervene, a bang was heard again. It was the door closing, with all the violence, with the exit of that sinister figure. The moments that followed that Dantesque scene, laden with hatred, gave Li a vision of terror... She couldn’t think about how much she had just seen and heard. In the moments that followed, no matter how much effort she made with her memory, she could not find a single reason that could give rise to such a crazy
act. But whatever reason or motive Xi had, that was the drop of water that made the cup overflow. In her heart she pleaded to the gods to reverse all her enemy’s curses back to her, asking for justice for herself. She was fed up with all the intrigue and slander in which she lived. At that very moment she decided to leave the palace. It was time to return home. She wasn’t going to stay there another day! She immediately began to pack her personal belongings in her room, which she left moments later. As she left her quarters, she took the shortest way to the service gate so that no one would see her. On that day and at that hour the corridors and terraces of the palace were deserted. She had no difficulty in leaving the palace in anonymity. She didn’t said goodbye to anyone, for many reasons. That place was no longer hers. Without looking back, Li left with a confident step and decided not to return.

  When Xi returned to the room from which she had left untimely moments before, she was delivered a message from the Emperor that the ceremony was about to begin. Her first reaction was to look into a large mirror. Only then did she become aware of how horrible she looked! Her dress in total disarray and her face totally disfigured! Time therefore imposed urgent measures. She looked around the room looking for a last anchor to save her from that distressing situation. She noticed that in one corner, on one of the shelves, there were several silk rolls and embroidery - they were orders from noble merchants bound for the courts of Syria and Arabia. Xi, in a reflection of a wounded and distressed eagle, performing perfectly instinctive acts, approached the shelves and, with sudden gestures, removed all the rolls stretching them out on the floor of the room. Then, screaming, she ordered the ladies to join the ends of two of these silk rolls and fix them, one on each of her shoulders, doing the same with another roll, but this time of lace, demanding that they created with it a small veil and put it over her head to cover her face. With the rest of the rolls she had an extensive trail added as an extension of her dress (all done in a fraction of an instant) and always screaming, while the ladies, stunned, strictly followed all her orders. Time was overwhelmingly running out! The seamstresses had barely begun what Xi had ordered and a second message from the Emperor demanded her presence, reporting the bride’s delay. Some time later, Xi, recomposed in her image, began the bridal march on the way to the imperial hall. With her face half covered in lace and about twenty ladies holding her immense tail, Xi entered the hall with all her pomp. The Emperor, as well as the whole court, was surprised by all that apparatus. The bride entered with a majestic semblance, walking slowly and cadently, wearing a dazzling dress ending in an immense tail held by two rows of ladies.

  The wedding ceremony was brief, compared to others held in the palace in other times. The festivities, those lasted all day. In the late afternoon the newlyweds gathered at the palace of Earth Harmony, where they spent the night. In the morning of the following day they went to the summer palace, accompanied by a small entourage. With the departure of the bride and groom the imperial city returned to its almost routine, tranquil and bucolic condition, as in so many other exits of the Emperor. In the corridors, this time, a differentiating factor appeared, the strange absence of Li.

  Since the day before, no one else had laid eyes on Li. As the discussion between the two rivals was not witnessed by anyone, speculative versions began to emerge between the ladies and concubines. That mysterious disappearance of Li began to give way. For some, she couldn’t bear to watch the Emperor marry her main rival and ran away. For others, they were facing kidnapping or poisoning ordered by Xi. The mystery thickened. When the Imperial couple returned, there was no talk of anything else but Li’s disappearance. However, conversations between concubines and others were made with great care, fearing reprisals from the new Empress. As time went by the subject was becoming more and more reminiscent of the silence of consciences, now tortured by the growing influence of the new Empress in the management of personnel and generating an environment one could cut with a knife. Early on, Empress Xi realized that, in personnel management, Zhu could be very useful. So, gradually, the Empress delegated powers to her right arm. For some, this delegation was commented on as retribution for the organizational effort at her wedding, for others, she was favoring the eunuchs over the other hierarchies in the palace. Those times were now of transition, no one had any doubts. As the months passed and with the permanent changes dictated now by the new Empress, the uncertainty of the following day reigned among the staff. The times brought silence and bitterness. Hallway conversations were no longer possible, for one never knew which side the person one was talking to was on. A conversation, apparently innocent, could be interpreted by the Empress as opposition to her and this was not tolerated in any way. As time went by, there were strange absences of people whose whereabouts were no longer known. The period of insecurity was followed by another, where fear began to take place. With a growing influence of the eunuchs and a particular prominence in Zhu, terror set in among the smaller personnel. One now looked back to the time of the former Empress Zizi. At that time peace and joy also took place, in contrast to the present moment where there is only room for malevolent insinuation or destructive threat, building a daily life where everything is demanded in exchange for almost nothing. Smiles slowly disappeared to give way to grudges and silent hatreds.

  The Emperor, with the advancing of his age, far from the glow of other times, no longer sought the company of girls or concubines to awaken in him the pleasures of life. He lived in the palace ever more distant from everyday life and closed in on himself. In recent times, with the passing of the months, his health has been deteriorating markedly, increasing the protagonism of the Empress. The illness had been installing itself and to such a point that he had even stopped presiding over his own official acts. The entire imperial court was now wondering about the future. It was known that he had made a will, but its contents were unknown. When death finally came and the contents of this will were known, some of the old sages of the court left the palace quietly and definitively8.

  The funeral ceremonies took place without the apparatus of olden times. The tradition, greatly altered by the Emperor’s will, however, retained some of the rites and forms, among them the verticalisation of the body, unlike most culture in other countries, where the body is buried in horizontal form. His reign had come to an end and with it began a paradoxical time, in which his son, only four years old, ascended to the throne now represented by the widowed Empress, Xi.

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  6. .../... Page 51

  7. Men in the service of the Emperor who agreed to be castrated, voluntarily, so that they could exercise permanent activity in the palace.

  8. .../... Page 21

  The Decision of the Gods

  19th century

  Green fields of rice growing in the wind and bathed in the sun! It was with this landscape that Li found her home village again when she left the palace. Li’s youth had been spent in this paradisiacal setting. Relaxed and happy days! Fields full of farmers working under a burning sun, hidden in their straw hats, happy with themselves and with life, perhaps because from an early age they got used to appreciate what they had. Her sudden return did not arouse any great curiosity among family members, much less among the people of the village. No one had the courage to question her for having left the palace, not even her mother, who was used to reading her soul in the expressions of her face. With Li’s arrival, the idea of building a school in the village began to form in her mind. The aim was to put, alongside the basic and cultural teachings, contents of professional training. The school would have a private management, but would include free teaching for the children of the most deprived farmers. Li looked at the region where she was born, rich in rice production, with eyes of growth and prosperity. Often, she was assaulted by memories of her father, her uncle and the place where she lived her youth. Her father belonged to the small nobility and throughout her life developed a social concern for the poor and homeless, seeking to do good. He was an active person in society,
respectful of conventions, but not influenced by it, following his own thoughts. He had a positive attitude towards life, trying to transmit to his children a rigorous, intellectual education of great emotional balance. One of his lessons that would haunt Li for the rest of her life was: “the ultimate goal of every human being is to be happy” he said over and over again. Intervening, he considered that nations and their rulers had to do everything to achieve, in a peaceful way, a permanent state of development and well-being among peoples. He advocated that the path to reach this state of maximum development of nations should be based on a planetary government representative of all regions. Li also recalled that, thanks to her father’s action and influence, many of the current cultivation methods and fertilizers used in rice cultivation were included by him in agricultural practice, as well as new organized irrigation techniques, acquiring a determining importance for increasing productivity.