Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823)

by Basu, Kanal

  Real China filled Antonio’s mind. Traveling by barge on the Grand Canal, which drew the Yangtze into the capital, he saw the treachery of silt damming up the river, with only short tracts left navigable at a stretch. Square sails floated over rice and millet fields. Men and boys towed the barges along the banks, earning a precarious living when the winds were favorable. Mules and women worked the fields side by side, hitched to the same plough. For the most part he was struck by the sheer frenzy of cultivation and the business of feeding so many mouths. Rivers teemed with boats that rushed about with their produce: rice boats and tea boats; dog boats bound for the butchers’ block; fishing boats and flower boats. The eel fishers appeared as dark specs on the horizon: men kneeling with one foot on their sledges, gliding over the soft and slippery mud on the lookout for bubbles rising from empty holes in the earth. Opium boats plied the inlets at night, scores of “fast crabs” chased by the mandarins in their “scrambling dragons” armed with sharp spears and large guns on the bows.

  Whenever he was awake on his journey, Antonio talked to Joachim Saldanha. Even as he dozed, he heard him speaking with the boatmen in a voice that had the power to draw a crowd to a pulpit. Antonio asked him about his travels, and he recited names of places that he didn’t know existed, like São Salvador do Congo, where he had been sent to preach to the slaves or to Fremona to fight Ethiopians who had banished the Brotherhood.

  “You can go very far with the Chinese but if you go too far they’ll chop your head off,” Joachim Saldanha said, when Antonio asked him about natives and foreigners.

  “Going so far as building a church and reciting the Bible?” A priest was scolding fishermen for setting their fish traps too close to the temple’s banks, and Antonio followed him closely.

  Scratching his beard, Joachim Saldanha observed the priest too. “They hate us for luring away their flock. Curse the Chinese who’ve converted to our faith, call them ‘rice Christians,’ for having heard the call of their stomachs, not that of the Lord!”

  “It’s no different than fighting over rice and fish, is it?” Antonio wondered if their boatmen were unhappy slaving for the two foreigners as they battled the river’s strong currents. His companion seemed to relish their company, sharing their meals without hesitation, even the dried fish that turned Antonio’s stomach. It would take them weeks to cross the maze of canals that sprang off the river, dock in fishing villages, sleep under thatched roofs if they spent a night on shore or under the sail covered from head to toe in mosquito nets. Could there be trouble on their way, he asked Joachim Saldanha, like that faced by the Tientsin mission?

  “The irony was that the Catholic Sisters had become Chinese.” Joachim Saldanha explained to Antonio. “Not Chinese simply in the way they ate and dressed, but started to act like their faith healers, handing out rosaries to the dying, or a sprig from the Madonna’s bouquet to the mother of a sick child. Their flock, of course, took them for miracle cures and were angry when they failed to bring back the dead and dying.” Joachim Saldanha gazed up at the horizon as if he could see the smold ering church of Tientsin. “Then the rumors started. The Sisters were poisoning villagers, sucking out the breath of babies by their black magic. The evil foreigners were claimed even to drain the milk of nursing mothers to make wine.”

  “How can anybody sane believe all that?” Antonio wondered if he was hearing yet another ships’ tale from the usually reliable padre. Joachim Saldanha kept silent then sighed. “It doesn’t take much for the sane to believe in rumors. Just like we believed that Jews killed Jesus.”

  “What happened to the Sisters?” Antonio was anxious for Joachim Saldanha to finish his story.

  “All but one of the thirty-nine were killed. Tortured brutally, then set on fire, with the church.” The remaining one was hiding somewhere, sheltered perhaps by a kind family, Joachim Saldanha said. He was traveling to Tientsin to bring her back to safety. Antonio hesitated asking him about the burnt church, whether he would try to recover the remains. The padre seemed lost in his thoughts, ignoring the sampan that had rowed up near their barge to sell fresh dumplings.

  “They are no worse than us, or savages as some foreigners make them out to be. There are bad people among us too, just as bad as these killers, those who pretend to be emperors themselves, and padres who’re no better than greedy traders. They want to take China away from the Chinese. And you …”

  Antonio gave Joaquim Saldanha a probing look. “And I?”

  “You’ve come to take their best, if you can find it.”

  He praised Antonio for trying to learn from the Chinese. “It’d be good for Europeans to know the real China rather than simply buy her tea and silk. Just like we learned from them about astronomy.” Antonio thought to seize his chance and ask Joachim Saldanha about syphilis, if he had heard rumors about unspeakable diseases and their farm remedies, or about drowned flower girls who had infected powerful customers and paid with their lives.

  The padre couldn’t tell him much about the pox, except that brothel owners routinely confided in him their fear of execution if a high official was struck with a “plum blossom disease” after spending a night with one of their girls. But the “treatment” they had mentioned was far from any sound medical practice.

  “What kind of treatment?”

  Joachim Saldanha’s face hardened. “I don’t know much about it. You’ll have to ask your teacher.” Then he drew Antonio’s attention to the yellowish brown thrush that had perched on their boat, making the boatmen call out its name–hwa-mei – attracting a flock of birds to descend on the mast.

  “If it’s here, it’s invisible, like their dowager empress,” Joachim Saldanha said, returning reluctantly to the topic of pox. “Just as feared perhaps as she is. She’s the real emperor rather than her nephew, who’s rumored to be sick.”

  “Sick with what?”

  Joachim Saldanha smiled. “In China a sick emperor means a dead emperor – deposed and thrown into jail!”

  “Why has his aunt imprisoned him?” Unable to follow, Antonio pressed the padre for more details.

  “I am sure everyone you ask in Peking will have their own opinion about that. She’s known as the Old Buddha, but she’s really all of Catherine de Médicis and Jezebel of Samaria rolled into one! Empress dowager rules China from the Summer Palace in the western hills more than twenty miles away from the imperial throne at the Tartar city in the heart of Peking. It’s the most beautiful palace in China, with more than a thousand pavilions and a lake large enough to drown them all. Europeans sacked it during the opium wars, but the soldiers were too dumbstruck by its beauty to loot all that was worth looting. They smashed priceless jade and porcelain, took bronze statues for gold and melted them down!”

  “A thousand pavilions just for the empress?” Antonio asked.

  “For the empress, her entourage and for her guests like you. Special pavilions have been built to be as comfortable as possible for foreigners who visit from time to time, such as artists from Europe and America commissioned to paint the dowager’s portrait, merchants who trade in sea pearls, silk gowns and white and amber Pekinese pugs. Even expert kite fliers from Japan with their enormous kites to fly at the harvest festival.”

  “I shall live with the empress in her palace?” Antonio thought the padre was joking.

  Joachim Saldanha nodded. “Dr. Xu has made arrangements to meet you there. You’ll be the empress’s neighbor at the Summer Palace, but she’ll be invisible. Only lesser royals and her eunuchs are allowed to enter her sight besides the occasional visiting dignitary. She let Prince Heinrich of Prussia see her because he’s the grandson of Queen Victoria, who she considers to be her soul sister!”

  “How can she be invisible?” Antonio was yet to believe Saldanha.

  “You might be able to hear her laugh, spot her bearers as they carry her away in her golden sedan. You’ll see her barge on Kunming Lake. Her dogs might become your friends, but you’d be lucky to catch her shadow.”

/>   For the last leg of their journey, they traveled by carriage, sad to lose their talkative boatmen. A camel train from the Mongolian desert followed them; half awake, Antonio listened to their bells and the thumping hooves that passed his window. Mules carried palanquins escorted by sword-armed men. The dust of the northern Gobi had turned them into ugly ducklings – the blackest dust of all that sticks to the hair and the eyebrows. Their carriage stopped for none but the water carriers, and the long-coated sellers of oven-baked bread. As they neared Peking, beggars crowded the streets, lame and blind, parading their deformities, ready to pounce on the visitors. The jolting carriage made a dash through them, and raised a cry that scared the horses into a gallop. He thought the wheels had trampled over the beggars, that they’d be taken for murderous foreigners.

  Finally, their carriage entered an arched gateway and into the Summer Palace. Twilight had turned its lofty red walls to a charming pink. The western hills hung low over the tiled roofs of gilded pagodas. There were palaces of lacquer and gold, and gardens within gardens. Children caught dragonflies on the banks of canals, and lakes brimmed with incandescent lilies. This was the China that he never knew existed, a place unlike the one he had conjured up on his journey on the Santa Cruz, or from Dom Afonso’s cryptic accounts. They crossed a marble bridge, and their carriage driver pointed with his whip toward a large stone carved with a pair of fighting dragons. Antonio knew it to be the imperial symbol. “Can you take us to the empress’s residence?” he asked. “She lives everywhere,” the man replied with a shrug. “She can’t live everywhere!” He chided the driver. “Not in each of the thousand pavilions set over seven hundred acres!” Spring blossoms had spread a canopy over a cluster of houses with a shallow pool at their center. Antonio wanted to jump off the carriage and visit the shaded grove, but Joachim Saldanha motioned to the driver to move along till they were almost on the banks of Kunming Lake. It shimmered like a mirror and stretched beyond their sight. A row of boatmen waited at the banks like a band of gulls. Antonio waved at them, and asked his companion if he wished to take a swim. Cooped up inside the carriage, he longed to plunge into the inviting water.

  “You can’t go everywhere or do everything you like.” Joachim Saldanha whispered to him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Why not?” Antonio snapped back.

  “Because the empress has set rules for her guests. Some parts of the palace may never be visited by a foreigner. Only a few are allowed into the temples and court chambers. You’d be told where you can go freely.”

  “A prisoner.” Antonio made a face. “Do I have to live like one?”

  “No, no, not a prisoner,” Joachim Saldanha hastened to reassure him. “Think of yourself as a student here, just like you were at the Faculdade Medicina.”

  Antonio chuckled. “Oh, no, you don’t want the dowager to have a rowdy student as her neighbor!” He teased the padre: “What if she invited me over for tea at her favorite teahouse?”

  Joachim Saldanha ignored his words, and told him about the arrangements he had made with Dr. Xu. “He’ll come here in a day or two after you’ve had a chance to rest from the journey. He can tell you all about Nei ching – the Yellow Emperor’s Canon – and you can ask him whatever question you like.”

  “How about the syphilitics? Where would I meet them?” Antonio had expected to be lodged near a hospital, for his teacher to take him there on regular rounds. “Does the dowager have a special pavilion here for her favorite poxies?”

  Joaquim Saldanha smiled. “Dr. Xu can tell you all about that.” He asked the carriage driver to take them to the pavilion that stood all by itself at the far corner of the lake. Then he spoke to Antonio as Brother to Brother. “You’ll have your own place here, and can stay as long as you like till you’ve found your answer. You’ll be on your own, but I will be near you doing my work, and might have to ask your help from time to time.”

  When he entered his pavilion, Antonio saw a neatly laid out lodge among the gardens. Red pillars held up a roof of majestic green tiles, and a pair of bronze lions stood on pedestals at the lacquered door. A covered corridor joined the lodge to smaller quarters for attendants. A flowering plum tree shaded the neatly swept courtyard, with a fan-shaped lotus pond at its center. He heard a dog barking, and the sound of feet rushing in.

  “Wait! You haven’t told me anything about your miracle doctor.”

  “Dr. Xu? There isn’t much to know about him, except that he’s trusted by the empress, and has dealt with foreigners before. He has read Dom Afonso’s letter, and is ready to help you.”

  “Will he teach me the prison rules too?”

  Joaquim Saldanha pointed at the two attendants who had entered the courtyard just then, red faced for being late. “For that you have your very own eunuchs. They’ll do your work, be your eyes and ears.”

  “What should I call them?” Antonio was wary at the thought of being left alone in the pavilion with his attendants, having to rely on the meager Chinese he’d learned at the Jesuit College.

  “You can call them by any name you like.” Joaquim Saldanha turned his unblinking eyes on Antonio. “You can call them Wangs– Little Wang and Big Wang!”

  In Lisbon, he needed no reason to sleep well. Here he slept lightly, waking several times during the night to chase away the beetles that had silently advanced to within striking range of the bed, scattering them with a stick like a broadside fired into the enemy’s flanks. A cloud of flies settled on the windowpanes, like grains of rice thrown at random on a clean-swept floor. Reaching for the stick again, he tapped on the panes and watched the grains take flight, crossing the courtyard and descending perhaps on another pavilion, one that was quiet and snoring.

  After a sleepless night, Antonio was tired. Joaquim Saldanha had arrived early morning to introduce him to Dr. Xu, and chatted away with the attendants as they waited sitting on stools in the courtyard for the Chinese doctor. He had finished inspecting the kitchen, and scolded the older eunuch. The meals might fail to fill Antonio’s stomach, he might have to nibble on a steady supply of food to keep his hunger at bay in between his early and late rice. The younger one rushed out to the market to fetch sweet sesame dumplings for everyone, while his senior kept talking to the padre in a low and complaining voice.

  “Your attendants are scared of you,” Joachim Saldanha told Antonio. “They don’t know why you left your late rice untouched, if they’d insulted you with too much or too little food.”

  Antonio yawned. His stomach was still full from the generous helpings of rice-flour pudding scavenged from the carriage driver that Joachim Saldanha had plied him with during their ride. He had risen to unfamiliar sounds, anxious about his meeting with Dr. Xu. One of his attendants had pointed to the vat of hot water, but he had shaken his head.

  “Our friends here are worried because you’ve refused to bathe even. In China that’s considered rude. They think you’re angry because they weren’t here to welcome you when you came to the lodge. They fear the empress will punish them, and are begging you to give them another chance.”

  “I’ve never met a Chinese before.” Antonio ignored the complaints and spoke to Joachim Saldanha about his worries. “Someone with whom I can talk as an equal. Will he say why he’s prepared to help a stranger? Does he know how much we suffer from the pox in Europe?”

  Joachim Saldanha tried to calm Antonio down. “He has his answers, otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed to meet you. You may not know much about him, but he does about you. That’s the way it is here.”

  The younger eunuch rushed in with a plate of dumplings, but before Joachim Saldanha could taste them they heard a sound, like a volley of shrapnel fired into the lodge’s roof. The padre ran for cover toward the lodge, leaving Antonio stranded on his stool. Cries rang out from the kitchen as round green fruits dropped down from the plum tree and littered the courtyard. Howls from the lion dog kept as a pet by the attendants set the bird fluttering in its cage, and a tall shadow fell at Antonio�
��s feet. Then the older eunuch started to laugh, and pointed at a man who was striding in briskly through the pavilion’s gate. He was wearing the ankle-length gown of a court official, but had the bearing of a tribal headman with his turban. Lobbing a stone to the young attendant, he headed straight to the tree and picked up a handful of fruits and brought them over to Antonio.

  “It’s the plum, the best fruit in China. I’ve struck them down for you. It’s what we give to our guests when they’ve come from far.”

  Antonio noticed a pair of animated eyes that seemed foreign to the thin and bloodless face, an elegant nose and a well-shaped head. Shamefaced at his hasty escape, Joachim Saldanha called out from the kitchen to welcome Dr. Xu. The eunuchs came over too, and kowtowed before the Chinese doctor. Sitting down on the stool facing Antonio, he kept on talking and took out a small knife from his robe to peel a plum.

  “It isn’t ripe yet. For that you must wait till summer. But the unripe fruit is best to make wine.” He offered a slice to Antonio and asked him to taste it. “If it’s sour, it means we’ll be friends for a long time. But if it’s untimely sweet, then our friendship will last as long as the taste remains on your tongue!”

  “His attendants are complaining that he hasn’t eaten anything since he’s arrived,” Joachim Saldanha said, sitting down beside the two of them. “They think he’ll fall sick if he starves himself.” The older of the two eunuchs appeared with a tea tray, and Dr. Xu poked him with his finger. “That’s because they’re gluttons themselves, trying to make up with their mouths for what they lack under their bellies.” Sipping his tea and looking a lot more settled after his dramatic appearance, he smiled at Antonio. “You’ve come to find the cure for a disease, haven’t you? Do you have the disease yourself?”

  Antonio shook his head. He speaks like an American, he thought, recalling Joaquim Saldanha’s words. “Ah, it must be a rare disease then. Only a few patients must suffer from it.”