Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823)

by Basu, Kanal

  He nodded. “As long as they’re within reach.”

  “Silly! And what if they’re not? If they spread lies behind our backs?”

  She kissed him where the cross would’ve hung, and parted the robe to stroke his chest and tickle the sides. A breeze blew in through the coupe’s curtains. She loosened her hair, leaned forward to press down on him, reached with her hand to hold him between the legs and match the trot of the bearers as they bumped up and down along a ragged path.

  “Wait!” She stopped him as he tried to rise. Light from passing lanterns turned her into a shadow. He could hear the rustle of silk freeing her undulating form turning and twisting to perch herself over his waist, resting her weight on her feet. He waited for that infinite moment of aching to pass as she lowered herself, settling down like a butterfly on her stalk, holding him still as they sped along.

  The bearers grunted even louder crossing a bridge, and they entered a village glowing with lamps. The sound of screaming children followed them. The flash of a firecracker lit up the two shadows – now turned to one – inside the coupe, moving to keep pace with the bearers. Changing from butterfly to dove, she asked him to imitate the ox, the force of his fury almost shattering the sedan’s weak planks.

  By the time they’d left the village, the ox had turned into a spider folding its mate firmly into its legs.

  Reaching the pavilion, the bearers left, setting the sedan down in the courtyard with the two of them fast asleep under the weak moon of winter.

  IV

  FRAGRANT HILLS

  The pulse of spring

  “I’ve come by ship, rice boat, rickshaw and mule cart, by chair and by foot to see you, Tino.”

  Ricardo’s unexpected visit caught Antonio by surprise. Seeing him arrive at his pavilion, he thought he was still dreaming after a long night with plum wine. Why didn’t Dona Elvira write to Polly, announcing her godson’s visit to Macau, and to tell her that he was on his way to Peking? He noticed the usual marks of long travel on his friend, and his awkwardness in the new surroundings, just as Antonio had felt himself when he arrived at the Summer Palace. Without the wise companionship of someone like Joachim Saldanha, China and the Chinese seemed to have left an unfavorable impression on his friend during his journey. He noticed a shadow in Ricardo Silva’s eyes.

  “It’s a land of ditches and swamps. If you’ve seen one village, you’ve seen them all, just dustbowls and morgues for dead animals, hardly the oriental paradise it’s made out to be. Everyone’s a liar when it comes to China – sailors, merchants, even my own godmother! There’s no treasure here, but the sight of walking ghosts.”

  Antonio said nothing.

  “They’re ugly as none other! If it isn’t goiter, it’s a squint! A bump on the forehead. Eagle’s claws for nails!” He took a sip of the tea and made a face. “A day here is like a season in hell.”

  Antonio took a good look at his dearest friend. Rogue Ricardo– the one who drank hard, slept well and ate like four men. The friend who always disagreed with him, but ended up helping him all the same. The man who held the memory of himself, of his mischief, his extravagant bets at the bullring, his late nights and late mornings, and of his many indecisions. Ricardo opened his traveling case and took out a letter for Antonio. He hesitated for a moment or two before handing it to him. Antonio recognized the familiar hand of Rosa Escobar. It came in a different envelope to her previous letters, without the address of Peking’s British mission, with simply his name written on it. He held it in his hand without opening it.

  “You can read it while I wait outside.” Ricardo spoke to him in a low voice. Antonio gestured him to stay.

  Your father had to be taken away to Lisbon’s Jesuit asylum before his death, Rosa had written. Then she went on to describe his last days. It wasn’t his health that worried doctors, as much as his sudden spurts of vigor. After months of crushing pain and dizziness when he couldn’t even stand upright without Rosa’s help, Dom Alexander had displayed the strength and madness of a young bull. It was hard to keep him indoors. He’d jump out of the window and escape to the woods before Rosa could grab him and pin him down. He roamed about like a mad man, raided the markets to steal freshly slaughtered animals, scared the children by hanging from branches like a ghost. He had cleared the cottage to fill it with new things that they’d need once he married Rosa Escobar. He had reduced the poor woman to tears by announcing that she was none other than Tino’s mother reappeared in flesh decades after her death.

  “I am sorry, Tino.” Ricardo Silva stole a quick glance at Antonio after he had finished reading the letter. “In the end there was nothing that could be done except to keep him in chains. Death, fortunately, came soon after.”

  Antonio’s face hardened and turned rigid, as if he was wearing a mask. Ricardo stopped, seeing his reaction, then spoke gently. “He’d be buried like a prince had he died any other way. Maybe a statue would’ve been built in his honor, or a street named after him. But now …” His voice trailed off as Antonio rose and paced the lodge, then continued. “We know he wasn’t to blame, no matter what others say. It must’ve been an accident. It might not even have been the pox, but something else more dreadful.” He came up to Antonio and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m glad you didn’t have to see his end.”

  Antonio could smell his father dying. Leaving Ricardo back in the pavilion he went for a walk in the gardens, and climbed up the hill to the temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas. Smoke from the incense burners carried the stench of rotting flesh mixed with the whiff of juniper berries that burned in the scuttle of his father’s cryptlike chamber. The lotus at the feet of the deity had shriveled up, and the bronze peacocks arched their graceful necks away from the flame that sputtered on. The curtains on the arched windows were stained in the color of blood. The sun glared on the thawing lake. He thought about the face that had given him nightmares; how easily it had turned from father to patient on the feast of St Anthony. He hadn’t written to his father about his journey. Did he wait for me in his cell? Did he weep for his Tino?

  He felt empty like the temple, robbed of its Buddha. Walking around the vacant altar, he tried to imagine the moment when it was unseated. It must’ve taken a dozen soldiers to lift up the stone idol, and carry it over to the open window. How quickly would it have fallen from the hilltop to the lake, sunk to the bottom without leaving any trace? He wondered why the empress hadn’t filled up the empty spot with something else. Even without the offerings, he could imagine the Buddha as if it were still there, eyes dancing in the flame of the incense burner.

  Sitting in the temple, his mind rose from the gloom of Rosa Escobar’s letter. His stomach growled for early rice, and he wondered if Wangsheng had been brave enough to serve Ricardo his favorite shrimp eggs. On his return to the pavilion, he found his friend sleeping, tired after his journey, covered from head to toe in a blanket to ward off insects.

  “Why didn’t you write to me from Lisbon and save yourself the trip?” Antonio asked Ricardo when he woke, the two sitting in the courtyard.

  “Because a letter wouldn’t have brought you back.” Ricardo smiled. “I know you, Tino. You’re not the one to give up easily. You’d rather die than fail. A letter would’ve done no more than sadden you. Then you’d have pressed on just as before.”

  Antonio was surprised at his friend’s words, at his clear view of his character. He knew Ricardo to be quick and headstrong in judgment, pliable to robust arguments, especially those of a friend. In the end he’d give in, accept a contrary view if only to be faithful to his friendship. You never really win with Ricardo, he had thought, simply bend his will by appealing to his love.

  “How much longer are you planning to be here?” Ricardo asked him gently.

  “I’ve agreed to spend four seasons, of which one and a half are remaining.”

  “That long?” Ricardo looked surprised. “But it isn’t necessary anymore, Tino. The pox is dead now. There are doctors in Austria who’ve fou
nd a cure. The miracle has been tested on hundreds. The Pasteur Institute in Paris is close to announcing a vaccine.”

  “Rubbish!” Antonio waved aside his friend’s arguments.

  “Not rubbish. You’re wrong. Let me tell you about Sebastian Heller, the famous German chemist, and what he’s saying about the poison.”

  “No, let me tell you about the Sebastian Hellers, about the rascals!” Antonio cut him short. “Let me tell you what they do to their patients, bleed them and feed them the witches’ brew that kills them even before pox can finish its job.” He stopped to catch his breath, and gave Ricardo an angry look. “You treat me as if I’ve lived here all my life, as if I don’t know what’s going on in the world. I’m no idiot … syphilis isn’t dead. It’s still winning against us all.”

  The two sat quietly, leaving their plum wine untouched. Then Ricardo resumed. “So what have you learned in the three seasons here?”

  What can I tell him about Nei ching? Antonio thought for a moment, then asked for Ricardo’s hand, placing it on his pulse reading cushion. His friend looked on suspiciously. Antonio applied three fingers to the wrist and listened carefully.

  “I can hear the Sumai. It’s beating like a hammer, and warns of excessive blood in your heart channel. That’s why you find it hard to fall asleep, and sweat like your horses after they’ve run a race. It has caused you to faint after heavy meals.” He smiled reassuringly at his friend. “It’s your condition. You’ve been born with it, just as every man is born with health and sickness.”

  Ricardo wetted his lips and searched for words. “Is that what the heretic has taught you?” He took a quick look at Tian sitting in front of the kitchen, sharpening a knife for slaughtering ducks and chickens. “Has your teacher taught you the cure for pox too?”

  Antonio shook his head.

  “No?” Ricardo seemed surprised. “I thought that’d be the first thing you’d learn.”

  “It takes a lot more than reading pulse to cure a disease.”

  Ricardo rolled his eyes in apparent disbelief. “But you’re the best, Tino. Nothing’s too hard for you. Why must it take so long?”

  Antonio shrugged. “Because my teacher doesn’t think it’s time yet. I must wait till I’m ready.”

  They were distracted by shrieks coming from the kitchen, and watched the young eunuch run out with a basket of ducks’ heads.

  “What if you don’t find the cure in China?”

  Antonio sighed. “Then I shall return knowing there’s no hope. That there’s no point being a doctor.”

  Ricardo tried to soothe his friend. “Only a child thinks like that. Maybe there’ll be a cure in a hundred years. Why must you abandon those who haven’t been as unlucky as to have contracted the pox? You should return and do what a good doctor does.”

  “You mean get rich by selling lies? Tell a tottering fool that he’s young enough to father a child; promise a dying spinster that she’ll live a hundred years?”

  Ricardo laughed. “No, my friend, you must go back and help young mothers give birth to babies, and father some yourself!”

  The two spent a strange night lying awake in the lodge with Ricardo smoking his opium pipe–“the only good thing to be found in China!”–having acquired the taste from his godmother. Along with the sad letter he had brought two gifts for his friend: a box of cinnamon cookies and a daguerreotype of Arees dressed as a gypsy in a feathered cap.

  “Who’s the nurse?” Ricardo asked him next morning, spotting Fumi as she chatted with the attendants in the courtyard.

  “I’m not a doctor here, and she isn’t my nurse.”

  “So what is she?”

  “My teacher.”

  “Ah! Is she the one who teaches you to read pulse?” Ricardo grinned at him. His godmother had told him all about Chinese doctors and their tricks while he was in Macau. “Dona Elvira swears by their smelly herbs for every imaginable disease on earth, but her husband doesn’t believe in them at all.”

  Antonio smiled at Dom Afonso’s stout opposition to all things oriental that his wife found so fascinating. “But he has taken to opium, the most potent of all Chinese medicines.”

  “Is she just your teacher, or?” Ricardo kept an eye on Fumi through the latticed window of the lodge as they talked.

  “Not just a teacher but a demanding one too. And the very best I’ve had from the days of the Faculdade.”

  “Let’s hope she’s not too demanding.” Ricardo sighed. “I don’t know whether the Chinese have the cure for syphilis, but only God can cure you, Tino.”

  He found it hard to confide in Ricardo. For months, he’d craved his company, dying to tell him everything he’d seen in China. The friend whose voice he heard in his head whenever he was alone, the one he laughed and argued with in his mind, shared all his secrets. I’ll have to tell him the whole story or nothing at all, he thought. A story that seemed at once clear and unfathomable. He’d have to tell Ricardo about Xu, the rumors about the Horseman and about his own suspicions. Undoubtedly, his friend would want to know about Xu’s assistant. How could he tell Ricardo about Fumi without mentioning Jacob and his mysterious death? How could he argue in her favor, without confessing his love? Even without saying a word, Ricardo might suspect something between him and Fumi if he saw them together. It’d be hard to fool Rogue Ricardo. He’d know what was going on, and blame Antonio for lying to him. You aren’t staying back for pox but for your Chinese lover. I knew she was more than your teacher. He’d blame him for hiding in China, for misleading him, his godmother and his sister.

  With Ricardo sleeping, he reread Arees’s letter that she had scribbled on the back of her daguerreotype. She had started in her usual mocking way, then confessed to her boredom, dying among the meek and weak-hearted, among dreamers who are simply happy to dream. It was strange to read her praise him… The seas around your new world must be choppier than our calm European seas, and you must be sailing bravely along, my dear Candide. … Come back soon and wake us up! She had added a postscript: More than a year has passed since you left; it’ll be time soon to fulfill my promise.

  He wondered what he’d say to Arees, if he wrote back to her or confided in her brother about his choppy seas.

  Polly saved him by inviting them both to a snipe shoot. Her favorites would join them – Yohan and Chris Campbell – but not the gypsy, who was busy foraging old manuscripts. Traveling from the Summer Palace to the Legation, Ricardo ignored the street sights to fill Antonio in on the latest from Lisbon, prattling on about their favorite sports and friends. The royals were at their last gasp, he said glumly. Sinister plans were being hatched against them. Antonio resisted asking about Arees, but his friend brought her up unexpectedly.

  “My sister has decided to become an abolitionist, even after slave trading has been outlawed, claiming that our merchants have been secretly flouting the ban in Brazil.”

  “She’d have a lot on her hands if she were here,” Antonio mentioned, recalling the coolie traders arriving in Macau on the Santa Cruz.

  Ricardo gave him a quick look. “I’d rather she were here than in the Amazon, that she threatens to visit. Mind you, it isn’t safe here either. Not with the Boxers, who my godmother hates.”

  Antonio was relieved to move on from Arees, and impressed his friend with stories about the spirit army. By the time they reached the Legation, words had started to flow again between the two.

  “I’d love to see a Boxer fight a bull with his bare hands!” Ricardo said.

  “It must be a foreign bull then, and a Christian as well!”

  Ricardo reminded him of the Alfama Arabs who considered themselves to be true natives of Lisbon and every Portuguese a foreigner, charging them a tax by robbing them blind.

  The hunting party got off to a good start with Cedric passing on to the guests rifles and cartridges from his personal collection. Chris Campbell made everyone pose with their weapons and took photographs. Reaching the western hills in their sedans, they left in two
groups of three to trudge through the fields awash with spring rains. Ricardo had struck up an instant bond with Cedric and Yohan, and the three of them marched ahead of the others sharing their hunting tales. Meeting him for the first time since Fengtai, Chris Campbell seemed a bit overawed by Antonio, having witnessed his medical skills firsthand. He had had trouble with the Pascals after Antonio had left with Joachim Saldanha on the litter, with Simone insisting that they return to the Boxer-occupied orphanage to collect a few more of her belongings. Jean-Paul had managed to stop her after hours of pleading.

  When Chris fell back to take pictures of spring blossoms, Polly whispered to Antonio. “Has your friend met Fumi yet?” Antonio nodded.

  “But he doesn’t know who she is, does he?”

  “She’s my teacher, I’ve told him,” Antonio replied stiffly.

  “But not your lover.” She looked at him knowingly. “That could complicate matters, raise a few problems for you back home, couldn’t it?” They walked in silence, neither of them looking for snipe to shoot, till Polly returned to the subject. “Why don’t you and Ricardo spend a few days with us? It might help you avoid talking about touchy matters with your friend. He doesn’t need to see how you live in the palace among your eunuch friends and your lover, does he? He can keep Cedric company, given how well they’ve hit it off. You can go back when he leaves Peking.”

  “He has come to take me back with him,” Antonio said with a look of resignation.

  “Back?” Polly exclaimed. “But you can’t leave now. Not with Helga about to go into her confinement!” She patted him encouragingly. “You just have to think of a good reason to stay here, Dr. Maria.”

  The party returned empty-handed from the hunt but in good cheer. The news of the Portuguese friends staying back at the Legation made everyone happy. True to form, Ricardo had won over his host and others with his stories of crazy bullfights and hunting rabbits in the Algarve.