Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823)

by Basu, Kanal

  “You won’t mind the winter when the Chinese New Year comes around,” Joachim Saldanha told him. “It’s much grander than Christmas. Even our Legation brothers and sisters observe it with much pomp, dress up as emperors and empresses, or the mischievous red-tailed monkey of the Chinese legend.”

  For a whole month Antonio and Fumi examined their patient. They read his pulse and went over the symptoms, discussing the twelve channels, the five viscera and the eleven organs, to cure the padre’s lingering conditions.

  “Of the nine kinds of needles,” Fumi explained, “those made of yellow metal have the power to stimulate the body, while the white ones have a calming effect.”

  Antonio examined the arrow-headed, blunt, and spear-pointed needles, testing them for sharpness and drawing a drop of blood on his forefinger. Joachim Saldanha gave him a fearful look.

  “You must know when to use which needle. The one made of cold silver is best whenever the patient suffers from an excess of yang.” Fumi drew out a long silver needle and warmed its head in a lamp’s flame.

  “When the yang subsides, it’ll restore yin, balancing the two,” Antonio was quick to recite the principle, drawing a look of satisfaction from Fumi. He was excited by his first practical lesson in China, helping his teacher treat a patient.

  “But you mustn’t drain the yang during a new moon.” Fumi looked out through the window at the bright crescent, and called Joachim Saldanha over to lie on his side on the bed. He looked nervous, as if he was being summoned to yet another bout of torture, then obeyed meekly. Tian yelped with excitement.

  “One must start by feeling with the hand.” She ran her fingers up Joachim Saldanha’s ribs, tickling him on purpose and making him laugh. “Then trace the whole body to mark the three sections and nine subsections to insert the needles.”

  “What if there was a mistake?” Antonio asked. “What if a needle pierced a vein and caused bloodshed?”

  The padre looked alarmed, and tried to get up. Fumi stopped him, pushing him firmly down on the bed. “To guard against that, you must raise the skin like a piece of silk and hold it between your thumbs. Then wait for the patient to inhale before you puncture the skin.”

  Joachim Saldanha drew in a sharp breath as Fumi inserted the first of the needles, and waited for him to exhale before she turned it with her fingers and drew it out slowly.

  Lying on his side with a dozen needles stuck into him, the padre recovered his humor to tease Fumi. “The Boxers could learn a trick or two from you. With torture such as this, I’d have told them anything, including the most important secret of the Summer Palace!”

  At the end of his treatment, Joachim Saldanha gazed fondly at Fumi as she draped a woollen wrapper over her peasant’s smock and left.

  “What did you mean by the ‘most important secret’?” Antonio asked him. His friend sighed, then patted him like a kind uncle and said quietly, “If only you were one of them, or she was one of us.”

  With Tian as his guide, Antonio set out for Xu’s village home. But they lost their way after they’d traveled just a few miles from the palace. A steady stream of peasants herded water buffaloes to their fields as his guide stood in the middle of a bamboo bridge and scratched his head. He had expected the Chinese doctor to live in a pavilion within easy reach of the empress. Wangsheng looked uneasy when he’d brought up the matter of visiting his teacher.

  He needed Xu more than ever, Antonio had concluded after speaking with Joachim Saldanha. He wished the padre could come with him, but he had recovered just enough from his wounds to set off once again to an important mission. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.” He had hugged Antonio and the eunuchs before he left. “Just pray that I don’t return in worse condition than last time.” He had left a gift for Fumi, a lucky charm made of jade and shaped like a peony, to wear around her neck.

  Antonio wanted to surprise Xu with his visit. He was taken aback by the modest home set among rice fields and chicken farms. Sitting on high stilts, it resembled a fisherman’s hut. Only a sedan chair on the courtyard marked it out from its neighbors. A Nei ching master living like a peasant! Xu came out to meet him in the courtyard. He looked as if he had just returned from his field with his buffalo.

  “You’re a master already!” Xu smiled broadly, praising him for treating Joachim Saldanha “just as a Chinese doctor would. It was right of you to have relied on the pulse. A patient is bound to imagine things, while the doctor must trust his own readings.” Calling Antonio inside, he offered him a high-backed royal chair that was the only mark of luxury.

  “I was expecting you earlier, but you were away.” Xu spoke kindly. “Fumi went over to fetch you. We had found a sick man for you to examine, a man who showed symptoms of Canton rash.”

  Antonio expressed his regret at the missed opportunity, but Xu brushed it aside. ‘Your chance will come again. At the end of winter there’ll be many more to examine.’

  “Many more?” Antonio showed surprise. “Do you expect a higher rate of infection in the cold season?”

  “No, no … not higher.” Xu corrected him, pouring a cup of tea for his guest, and lighting up his pipe. “In spring we round up the victims from all parts of China and bring them to Peking. It tells us how many have been struck by the disease. You can come and see how we treat the patients, if you’re willing to wait a little longer.”

  Surely he doesn’t mean treating all patients the same way? Antonio was confused. Syphilis didn’t strike two victims alike. For some it lay dormant for years, while for others it spread at a gallop from the very onset of the infection. It was just as common to find the grave of a young victim who had barely reached his prime, as that of an old man who had lived to a ripe age with syphilis.

  Sipping tea, his host seemed more interested in Antonio’s visits to the Legation than the pox. “You’re the most popular doctor among foreigners in Peking, I hear. With you around, they must feel less worried than they did before.”

  “Worried about Boxers, you mean?” Antonio shrugged. “I can’t save them from bullets and rusty spears. No doctor can.”

  “Why would they be afraid of Boxers? With British warships in Tientsin barely a few miles away, they must feel safer than everyone else in China!” Xu dismissed his concern.

  “A few battleships taking on a million spirit soldiers?” Antonio heard voices across the walls of Xu’s mud-thatched home. The power of China lay with the peasants who fed her millions, he recalled Joachim Saldanha telling him.

  “Why not? Last time the foreigners fought the Chinese over opium, English and French soldiers came over from their ships and brought the emperor to his knees. They looted and destroyed the Summer Palace too.”

  Antonio kept quiet. Marcello Valignoni’s vivid accounts of the sacking of the Summer Palace went through his mind.

  “Perhaps Mr. Mckinsey has already sent a telegram to the English captain to ready his troops.” Xu looked searchingly at Antonio. “Maybe the soldiers are on their way to Peking to protect the Legation. There’ll be war when they come, between the Boxers and foreigners, maybe even with the empress’s army.” He stopped drawing on his pipe and cleared his throat. “You are free to leave the palace and go to the Legation if you like.”

  Antonio shook his head.

  “No? Wouldn’t you feel safer among the foreigners?”

  Xu watched Antonio closely, taking his silence as a mark of doubt. “You don’t have to decide now. You can make up your mind when you hear more about the Legation’s plans. You’ll know before us. You can tell me then.” He smiled kindly. “We must do everything to keep you safe.”

  “I’m willing to tell you what I know about foreign soldiers, if you tell me everything you do about treating pox.” Antonio finished his tea, and rose. “We can be friends, helping each other out.”

  Xu looked surprised. “You mean …?”

  “Why don’t you teach me how to cure syphilis right now? That way we can save us both a lot of trouble.” Antonio persi
sted. “You must know how to deal with the symptoms, don’t you?”

  “Ah! the cure.” Xu nodded, as if he understood Antonio perfectly. “That’s why you’ve come to China. Pox is your enemy, and you want to kill it. The human body is pure, you think, the disease an evil intruder. And the doctor must act like a soldier, learn the secret of winning.” He moistened his lips, and lit his pipe again. “Pox to you is what Boxers are to your foreign friends, isn’t it?”

  “But there must be cures for both.” Antonio spoke firmly. “Boxers or the pox, ultimately they will be defeated the same way.”

  “Same way?” Xu raised an eyebrow.

  “By force.” Antonio waited for Xu to speak, but he remained silent. With a final glance at his teacher, he rose and climbed down the steps of the house on stilts.

  On his way back to the palace, Antonio went over Xu’s prodding about foreign soldiers and the Legation’s plans. He wants my help, but isn’t prepared to help me just yet. He recalled Joachim Saldanha’s warning to keep clear of Chinese and European intrigues. Wangsheng stopped him at the pavilion’s gate and pointed to a visitor waiting for him inside the lodge.

  Antonio was surprised to see Ferguson at the Summer Palace. He was dressed formally in a black suit, very different to the Jesuit gown he’d worn when they’d last met. The older eunuch had served him tea, and he raised his cup to toast Antonio’s arrival.

  “Ah! The dowager’s prisoner!” He sneered at Antonio’s muddy boots. “Has she turned the Portuguese doctor into a peasant?” He was visiting the palace to negotiate the sale of a precious vase, he said, one looted by the allies from the Summer Palace only a few decades back, now offered back to its rightful owner by an anonymous collector for a small price. “I came to leave the item with the chief eunuch and thought to pay you a visit.”

  Antonio knew Ferguson was lying. He was certain the gypsy had come to meet him unannounced just to surprise him. It wasn’t the simple matter of selling him the palace copy of Nei ching that he had shown him, but something more important, and he expected the usual volley of gossip before the real business started.

  “Pinchback may have to leave soon. It’s a pity given all the good work he’s done with the Hong Kong Bank. His bosses have got wind of his mischief! As long as Casanova frolicked with the domestics it was fine, but not with a Legation minister’s wife!” Ferguson waited for Antonio to egg him on then continued. “The Italian minister has threatened to kill him for making a pass at his wife.” He chuckled, adding on the juicy bits, “I bet the bugger will describe his tête-à-tête with the signora in the smutty memoirs that he’s been writing for years. Bet you, though, he won’t mention his ‘French’ problem, the same one that has brought you here!”

  “He shows no outward sign of syphilis,” Antonio said coldly.

  “He’s been seeing Chinese doctors in private, my sources tell me.”

  Antonio called out to Wangsheng to bring him his early rice. Ferguson changed tack and told him about the head eunuch of the Summer Palace and his escapades with the palace maids. “He’s a eunuch only in name, whereas …”

  “You haven’t come to see me about Pinchback or the eunuch, have you? Nor to sell me the manuscript. You’re too good a dealer to know I’m not a collector. Why don’t you tell me why you’ve come?”

  Stung by Antonio’s reaction, Ferguson stuttered. “It’s Polly. She’s worried about you. She thinks you might be in danger, and has asked me to warn you.”

  “What sort of danger?”

  Ferguson shrugged. “Could be anything really. It has to do with your ‘judgment’,” he explained. “Not your medical judgment, of course,” Ferguson hastened to add. “In that you’re superb, everyone knows that, but your judgment about people. She thinks you might make mistakes when it comes to those that are around you here.”

  “You mean my two eunuchs? My judgment about them was accurate the very first day we met, that they’re good for nothing!” Antonio offered to share his early rice with his visitor, but he declined.

  “And how about your teacher’s assistant? Do you know much about her? Has she told you about her foreign lover?” Ferguson took advantage of Antonio’s full mouth. “She has printer’s ink in her blood from sleeping with the Dutch printer, the weirdest foreigner to have come to Peking.” He lit his pipe as Antonio ate his meal. “No one can tell you more about Jacob de Graff than me. Ask anyone and they’ll say he was a priest. Priest! My foot! At best they’ll know him as a Bible printer, the one to have introduced China to modern printing. But if you ask me …”

  He’s lying again. … Fumi never slept with Jacob. Antonio felt angry at Ferguson for spreading lies about her, but decided to keep calm and hear him out.

  “How did you know Jacob?” He asked the gypsy.

  “From Oxford. He was a Balliol man like me. Read mathematics and did nothing else. No girls, no boys, no drinking, no cricket. If ever there was an egghead, he was one. One would expect him to end up at some university in Europe and drive his students mad, but wonder of wonders he ended up in China.”

  “Maybe his sister brought him over.” Antonio recalled Fumi telling him about Miss de Graff.

  “Margaret? She was your typical spinster, doing penance for the sins of Europeans. What she didn’t know was that her brother was neither priest nor printer but a pure mathematician.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He thought like one. Always demanded proof for everything. Argued for the love of arguing. But in China the arithmetic was too messy for him to solve. He was a proud man, it wasn’t easy for him to take anyone’s help, not even from his old Balliol friend. But he surprised everyone with his golden lily.” Ferguson let out a cloud of smoke. “She had run away from her husband, and Margaret was her savior. She passed on her little gem to her dear brother. It didn’t take long for our Jacob to forget his maths and lose his mind.”

  “What happened then?”

  “His troubles started to grow as he fought with both Chinese and foreigners. The mandarins hated him for printing the Bible, and the foreigners for the secret bulletins of the rebels. Harassed by both, he became a recluse and then …”

  “Then?” This time Antonio showed interest in Ferguson’s gossip.

  “Bad stories have sad endings. Our priest and printer finally threw in the towel and died by his own hand.”

  “Own hand?”

  “He set fire to the chemicals stored at the printing press and was gutted with the machine, blocks, paper … everything.” Tapping his pipe Ferguson looked around the lodge suspiciously. “I don’t know how she met Xu and entered the palace, but only she could tell you more about Jacob than I.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “Jacob’s golden lily.”

  Antonio controlled his urge to slap Ferguson and throw him out of the pavilion. Instead he called out to Tian to bring him tea. “And so you’ve come to warn me about Fumi.”

  “She’s had the taste of a foreign man, but doesn’t fit the role of the typical Chinese mistress. She, not Jacob, is the mystery of the story. Perhaps she had as much to do with his sad ending as he did himself.” Rising, Ferguson cast a final glance around. “We wouldn’t want anyone to misjudge her character as our poor Jacob did, would we?”

  “What does Polly recommend as cure for my ‘misjudgment’?”

  “I shall let her tell you all about that. She’ll have more time on her hands, now that Linda Harris has usurped her role as the queen bee! The Chinese New Year will be celebrated next week at the American minister’s mansion rather than at the Harts’. Linda will call you to her fancy dress ball. There’ll be singing and dancing through the night, and fireworks imported from Hong Kong by the lecherous Pinchback.” Leaving, Ferguson returned to his favorite theme, “Damn foreigners know nothing about Chinese astrology. If they did, they’d be afraid of celebrating the year of the rat, which is the year of death!”

  Tian came running in with the rumor that was on everyone’s lips. The
dowager empress was leaving the Summer Palace. It wasn’t her annual pilgrimage to the temples in the high mountains, but to some place unknown. No one knew why she was leaving and for how long. Among shopkeepers of Suzhou Street the word had spread that she was fleeing yet another invasion by foreigners. “They’ll kill her this time,” they whispered among themselves as they boarded up the shops fearing an outbreak of looting. Those who remembered the opium wars spread gory tales of the sacking that had followed the allied victory. “They won’t repeat their mistake. This time they’ll take the whole of China not simply her treasures.”

  Even the head eunuch didn’t know where she was going, a puzzled Wangsheng confided in Antonio. Her attendants have been told to be ready to leave at short notice, carrying nothing but precious jewels with them.

  “Is it foreigners or Boxers she’s afraid of?” Antonio asked him.

  “It could be neither. Maybe she’s afraid of someone inside the palace, someone who’s close to her nephew, the emperor.”

  Antonio asked him if Xu would leave too, but the eunuch had heard nothing about that. He waited all morning for Fumi to come, then left with his attendants to join the crowds that had gathered outside the Temple of Clouds. The empress always visits the temple before leaving the palace, the guards were telling those who had come to catch a glimpse of her. Some of them were crying. With all the talk about war that was going around, it could only be an evil omen. An old man started to kowtow before the temple’s deity, followed by others.

  Antonio searched for Fumi among the throng. Passing quickly through the temple gates, he looked for her in the gardens; poked his head into private courtyards and tearooms. What if she’s left already with the empress? He entered halls and towers, ran from one pavilion to another along the winding galleries, and came up to the Great Opera. The empress’s seat facing the stage was vacant. He parted the curtains to take a look inside. There were no signs of the actors and singers. Only the opera masks hung from the racks like a row of severed heads.