My Last Empress

by Da Chen

  “But how could you avoid the fingers of middlemen?” I asked, feigning concern.

  The farmer owner sneered, stroking his goateed beard. “I have the wherewithal to sell to anyone without any of them meddling with my business—about the only privilege that comes with selling at a discount to the royal kitchen.”

  “Selling at a discount?”

  “The chief eunuch there demands a deep discount so that his men in the city will keep their eyes and ears half-closed and let me trade freely. It’s a steady business, so I don’t mind.”

  “What is the price of a three-month-old goat then?”

  “I will quote to you the same as I do the royal kitchen, but you have to keep it a secret between you and me. Times are hard. The Boxers are still out here in the country driving away those who could afford my goats.”

  “How much then?”

  The goat farmer pulled out a ledger from the drawer and pointed at an entry that he had marked with red ink. “Two copper coins per goat at the tender three-month age of breeding. But I have to write him a receipt for three coins.”

  “Why?”

  “To make it worth his while.”

  “The chief eunuch’s while?”

  He nodded. “Exactly, and I could do the same for you so it’ll be worth your while if you guide all the foreigners to my goat farm.”

  “But what if my auditors come around to check on our dealings?”

  “I always keep two books, if you know what I mean. It’s done everywhere. It’s the only way of dealing with the palace. So how many goats do you need, and on which days do you want them delivered?”

  “I am the auditor from the palace. You will hear from the Royal Court soon,” I said, showing the gaunt man the emperor’s mandate. But he was neither surprised nor disturbed.

  “Get out, off my farm, you blue-eyed bastard! You don’t scare me with this fake mandate. It’s not worth my goats’ pebbly droppings. You could buy this forgery for five copper coins. Get out!” The man called on his hounds, those long-legged mountain dogs with sunken bellies and narrow hips. A pack of three leaped and pounced on me, baring their fangs. Luckily they seemed intrigued by the perfumed jacket I was wearing, tearing at it furiously. I took it off, throwing it into their midst, and they fought over it till it was all threads and rags. Jacketless I escaped holding tight to my flimsy carriage door.

  A quick stop at a pawn store where a green short-collared wool jacket of possible Austrian origin was bought and put upon my back, and I was ready to carry on the rest of this auditing, notwithstanding the chafing of my neck by the stubby collar.

  Next I poked my head into a cloth store with rolls of colorful fabrics covering the counters. The entire royal household, servants and palace women included, relied on this very store to replenish and upkeep their clothing. Thousands of bales of fabric were purchased from here, seasonably and annually. When asked about a possible discount to buy the fabric by the roll, rather than by the foot or yard, for the purpose of putting on a garden party to welcome a certain American dignitary, the bespectacled store manager puffed on his pipe and chuckled. “I don’t give a discount to anyone. Business is hard and getting harder by the day with these Boxers still out in the woods. Even ladies of means have stopped coming to my store, and this is supposed to be the busy autumn season, when silk and satin is switched to cotton, wool, furs, and leather. Even the most fashionable ladies have stopped coming over. I could not give a discount. The cheaper I go, the less they value me.”

  “How about the discount you give to there?” I tilted my head toward the formidable palace wall seen off in the distance.

  “The palace?” He shook his head with disdain. “Never.”

  “Never?”

  “If anything, I sell to them at a premium.”

  “But don’t you have to bow down to the eunuchs? You know, give them a ready discount to make it worth their while?”

  He chuckled, bemused. “You are the only ocean man who really knows how things work here, but you are still an ocean fool. This store will never have to give a discount to the palace or anyone else. No middlemen can control me; no local government tax man can tax me.”

  “Why is that so?”

  “Because this store is owned by the honorable Chief Eunuch Li, and I am his third cousin on my mother’s side.”

  “Does he own any other stores or businesses?”

  “Why do you want to know?” He put aside his pipe, suddenly wary.

  I reached into my pockets, fished out two shining silver coins, and placed them onto his palm. He smiled and bargained, “Three more silvers and you need not tell me why you want to know.”

  Grudgingly I parted with another three—the sum of the weekly expense for a well-to-do house of four—and he readily made me privy to all the treachery and corruption.

  “From north to south and east to west, there isn’t a store along this square that Cousin Li does not own, in part or in whole. The lumber-and-coffin store he bought five years ago for seventy silvers; the grain store on that far corner for ninety silvers six years ago; the tea company that imports and exports various precious varieties he gained a quarter share of by force and was stopped from owning more only by the other owner, the sheriff of Peking; the paper company that also deals in art and antiques as well as calligraphy used to be owned by a rich woman, a widow who was forced to sell so that her son might be spared a jail sentence for failing to pay a levy unreasonably imposed upon them. You see, the paper business wasn’t, still isn’t, taxed because in the spirit of Confucius it encourages people to read and write and be civilized. So Cousin Li made up a levy to drag them through the court. In the end it was sold to a middleman, for appearance’s sake, who in turn resold it to my cousin. I can give you tale after tale; it’s no secret. In one case he even coerced an old man, the owner of the jewelry store, to adopt him so he could ‘inherit’ legitimately from the old man.”

  “You seem unhappy about all this.”

  “Unhappy? No one is unhappy. It’s all right that I am telling you, a foreigner. If I tell anyone else, though, I will not be here for long. He would take care of me in a way one wouldn’t want to be taken care of, if you get my meaning. Why do you think I am here serving him, running his business?”

  “Yes, why is that?”

  “You want to know everything, don’t you? Here, have a drink of liquor.” He grabbed a jar and poured a splash into a tiny cup that he drained first before pouring again for me. His face scrunched into a painful knot, all nose and bushy brows. “This wine came from his store as well, around the corner. Now, when one is prosperous, he should take care of his own, but this cousin of mine takes care of us in his own manner and way.”

  Another cup was downed, this time more smoothly. “He bought our entire village—the farming land, the orchards, temples, rivers, the road, even the county administration and the sheriff. He rented the land out to others and drove all our clan to the city to serve him on his terms. Some of us are fools, pleased just to be here. They are cows,” he sneered. “They don’t read or write—just cows and pigs. But some of us do. I read and write. I came here as well, after my land was bought up. I came here to open the wine store, and it was good business. I bought, I sold, minding my own business. Business expanded. I was into wholesale instead of just cups and jars. People from all over the northern plain come to me for their liquor and wine. Why? Because I bought the best from the best, and I didn’t put water in my liquor or color it with dye. I was a good man minding my business. Then one day a man died in my store after drinking a jar of yellow wine, warmed as he liked it. He was a poet and a painter; his art was shown in the paper store. He used to sell, but not after he started drinking. He had quite a collection over there at Zhen’s. He just dropped dead, vomiting up everything he had eaten that day.

  “The sheriff came to the door accusing me of mixing poison in his drink. He was poisoned, but I knew I didn’t mix my wine with anything—it was the purest and best, and
I am a Buddhist. I don’t kill people for coin. I was to be condemned to be hung, when Cousin Li came to my rescue. What a gracious rescue that was.” He pinched up his wine jar and poured himself a long draught. “He laid out one hundred petty silvers to buy my company. In return, I would be a free man and he a new owner.” Slamming the jar on his table, he wiped his foamy mouth on his wide sleeve. “He didn’t even offer to allow me to run his store, my old business. I was a freed but bruised man. They beat me and hung me throughout my prison stay until I signed the deed over to Cousin Li. I could have used the silver to buy some land in another town or start a store somewhere else, but my wife fell ill, and the cost of the medicine and doctors took half of it. Then I had to spend the remaining half to keep my son from being drafted. In the end, my wife jumped into a well and my son went mad and soon died as well. All these misfortunes for what? It all began with my refusal to sell the wine store to him in the first place. I should have let it go. Now look at me, aged, hopeless, with nothing to call my own, working for the man. Have you seen his mansion? Bigger and mightier than any foreign legation’s mansion. It’s filled with old paintings and scrolls.” He paused to gaze at me with an inquisitive frown. “Do you work for the legation?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you know anyone who works for the legation?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you or your friends in need of some genuine treasures of art, fresh from the vault from the Deep Within?” He tilted his head toward the palace.

  “What kind of art?”

  “Any kind you could name, for a bargain. The kind that you won’t see in the front of that antique store. The rare kind from the earliest dynasties, by the grandest masters.” My feigned curiosity seemed to duly ease his pains and up his pecuniary acuity. “I could be your buying agent, helping you garner the lowest prices from the sellers.”

  “Who are the sellers?”

  “Surely not the palace itself, you know what I mean?”

  “But who?”

  “You don’t need to know. All items will be authenticated with legal documentation for your shipment through customs. You can be assured that you are dealing with legitimate merchants.”

  “Who steals from the palace?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way, ocean man. The palace is a mess. They are running on a deficit, and much coin needs to be raised to offset their expenditure. Things are tight in there. Each sect and division within has their needs and burdens. Taxes and levies have all risen, but they are still insufficient to meet demand, so everyone who is anyone who can lay their hands on hidden treasures is channeling things out to sell. There’s a saying around here: ‘Even the blind could rob the palace.’ There is another rather humorous one; you somber foreign devils will like this one. ‘What are you going to find in a eunuch’s trousers?’ ”

  The question didn’t amuse me a bit.

  “Say something,” he urged with a smirk.

  I decided to play along. “Nothing?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “A gold ingot and two jade balls.” He burst into uproarious laughter, resulting in a lengthy spell of breathless wheezing. “Isn’t that funny?”

  “Not in the least.” I rose up to take my leave.

  “Really, I could get ahold of some of the finest pieces in our history directly from the palace. I can show you a list of what they have there. You could pick what you wish. Look.” He proceeded to open his desk drawer and proudly unrolled a lengthy handwritten scroll full of minute descriptions of all the items that could be ill-gotten from within the palace. It only took two more silvers to buy this list of theft off the man’s grudging hands.

  “Remember,” he said, wrapping the scroll inside blue cloth. “Whatever you blue-eyed devils desire, it could be had for a price. There are few devils like you who can use our tongue and know the value of our treasure. You and I could really profit from it all. I am the insider, and you the outsider. We’ll split our gain half and half. What say you? Hey, don’t leave yet.” Before he could finish his scheming, I had rushed down the stairs and out into the bustling street.

  27

  Q and her spouse were somber. The day’s diagnostic audience with three doctors had produced three distinct illnesses, much to Grandpa’s delight and the emperor’s dismay. Any of the purported sicknesses, had he had them, would render him incapacitated by the year’s end, invalidating his claim to power and begetting a precarious retirement.

  As the wisdom of the medicinal trade would dictate, it was always better to find something than nothing. The first one called him a head case upon viewing his pale face, nearly bloodless, and he advised a serene isolation away from the vagary of daily Court affairs. The second one could find nothing wrong with him initially with much pulse feeling and needle pricking, only to later amend his diagnostic outcome with a severe case of impotency, which he claimed could be cured by strengthening his kidneys via the daily consumption of a set of pig kidneys to be supplemented with nightly spermatic exercise by pulling and massaging his testicular sac and tickling it with certain blackened spidery legs. The third physician declared that he had contracted a rare case of leprosy from his foreign-raised spouse, Q, that had duly sucked empty his basic masculine energy. The cure for it would come only from an excessive succession of lovemaking with the purest virgins, only after each woman’s first menstruation, until such libidinous leprosy was diluted and drawn away by those unfortunate virgins, who would soon die of his illness. Uncured, his potency would wither, and he would slowly lose his appendages to certain rotting that would eventually infect his entire body, causing a painful end.

  “Foreign leprosy,” S chuckled bitterly. “A medical novelty only Grandpa could invent. What a farce! It won’t be long before the order for retirement will be given to banish all of us, you included with your American leprosy.” The emperor glanced at me, his eyes dull and full of darkness. “Now what did you find that couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

  “The cause for the deficit in the palace finances no doubt falls on one culprit and one only: the chief eunuch, Li Liang,” I pronounced.

  “That’s a vague and vast summation,” said S, raising one brow disinterestedly.

  “The prices of all goods coming in daily to this Court have all been inflated to a great extent, sometimes by as much as quadruple the price.”

  “Is that because the goods commanded are singularly the rarest and of choicest quality?”

  “No, your highness. It can all be blamed on one fact only: they all come from one source. The businesses and stores are owned by Li Liang, in part or in whole,” I declared, presenting a list of merchants and businesses, familiar names dealing with the palace regularly.

  “It’s no news that Li Liang is prosperous and owns many of the businesses that supply the goods to us. It’s a guarantee that all that is supplied will be good in quality and that the supply will be smooth and unhindered.”

  “But he knowingly inflates the prices by creating layers of phantom middlemen, making it look right and sound proper, which in itself is fraudulent.”

  “All this might look onerous to you, the foreign lepers.” S smirked at his own humor. “But this could be argued away by the chief eunuch. He is as slippery as the mossy rocks inside a manure hole.” The emperor paused for effect, raising his other eyebrow this time.

  “That is a saying he gleaned from reading the popular newspapers,” Q murmured. “The newspapers that I bring in for him to read.”

  “Another offense on Grandpa’s list that won’t easily be forgiven or forgotten, you unrepentant ingénue,” S said lovingly to Q as she huddled next to him like a cat.

  “Slippery rock he might be, but he is evil to the core.” I slowly unveiled the treasure list I had bought off the shopkeeper. “Do you know what this is? Do you even want to know?”

  “Surely, what other shocking news could there be?” He reached out his hand for the scroll and casually glanced at the coarsely copied items. Perusing it more i
ntently with a deepening frown, he asked, “This is the list of famed treasures from our ancestors’ trove. How—?”

  “Bought it at the market …”

  “This is only known to a few,” S said, smirkless now.

  “… for two silver coins.”

  “But why is this list out there?” He waved the list angrily.

  “This is the list of treasures for sale. You no longer own those antiques.”

  “But I do. They belong to the Qing Empire.”

  “Not anymore. Someone has helped himself to all on the list. You, my emperor, have a big hole in your pocket. All of the men working here are minions of thievery with Li Liang as their head. This is your empire only in name. It is his empire in reality. The list was sold to me by his third cousin, one of many, forming a family of companies on his behest. The whole Tartar City commerce district is his empire reaching as far as customs in Tianjin and Shanghai. How do I know? Because his cousin told me. If I wanted to buy any of the items of treasure from this list, they could also sell me the proper legal documentation to go through customs without any complications. Either they have an alliance with the customs officers or with local government officials who can dole out the documents for coin. It seems the whole empire outside is working against you, with your mightiest opponent being the eunuch in your utmost confidence and trust.”

  “Now you are onto something, something vital to pin down that half-man. You foreign devils never fail, do you? Your tenacity!” The elated emperor landed a kiss on the left cheek of his spouse. Addressing her, he said, “You should take my teacher to the treasure vaults tonight and record the inventory, or more pertinently, the lack of which. Create for me a list of missing items. When confirmed, this will be our scepter to fight back the wave against me. All these faux diagnoses and these medical advisers will be swept aside once Grandpa finds me useful and vital again. This will show her that I have been right all along. The entire horde of eunuchs has been against me and more important, against her and this palace. Once she sees her new foe clearly, all ill feeling toward me will be swept away. Mr. Pickens, you have no idea what this will do for me, for you, for us. You will formally be appointed to the highest rank of royal counsel. You and your heirs shall forever benefit from the enjoyment of this titular privilege for eternity, in perpetuity.”