The Empress Lover

by Linda Jaivin

  ‘Why do they call him the Sage?’ I asked Dr H. They seemed to know one another. For all my burning desire to discover what lay inside the leather folder now on Dr H’s lap, I couldn’t contain my curiosity about our host.

  ‘Because he is the direct descendant, forty-third generation to be precise, of Zhuangzi.’

  ‘Really?’ I absorbed this information. ‘But I don’t think that’s possible. Once, in Taiwan, I met a direct descendant of Confucius of the seventy-fifth generation and here in Beijing, selling Japanese-style French toast on Nanluoguxiang, a seventy-third-generation direct descendant of the philosopher Mencius. The first was an old man, the second in early middle age. How can the Sage be of only the forty-third generation when his ancestor was of more or less the same vintage as Confucius?’

  Dr H’s gaze floated away and anchored itself on the table lamp. For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard the question. Then I twigged. Chang’E and the elixir of eternal youth – the Daoists were renowned for their alchemic potions for longevity and even immortality. The world tilted a few degrees towards the fantastical. Unsure how to respond, I reached for my wine.

  Taking that as a signal, Dr H lifted his scotch and toasted me Chinese-style, with both hands and a bow of the head. I toasted back, bowing that little bit lower. He offered me a Panda-brand cigarette from a tarnished silver cigarette case that he had extracted from his coat pocket. I wasn’t much of a smoker, but I’d lived too long in China to say no. The odd cigarette hardly made a difference when the air was so thick with God-knew-what that on the worst days it adhered to your face like some unholy PM2.5 mudpack. I inhaled, stifled a cough and waited.

  He glanced up at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s time,’ he said. The clock, I saw now, had stopped at nine minutes past eight. There were other clocks, it struck me now, each one stopped at a different time. I felt as though I had landed at the centre of the Beijing time machine, or perhaps a Tardis, for this tiny space seemed capable of infinite temporal and spatial expansions.

  As Dr H’s fingers fumbled with the leather thong on the document case, the rest of the world fell away. Or perhaps it was me falling: given that things had genuinely become ‘curiouser and curiouser’ I wondered if I had not tumbled down some rabbit hole and drunk the potion waiting for me there. Q seemed as distant as the moon. The Sage dropped over the horizon. For the first time in years I found myself in a place without fear, panic, history or regret – only breath.

  With the slow precision of an archaeologist, Dr H extracted a rectangular parcel wrapped in threadbare and faded silk. He held it as though weighing it and then, on the verge of handing it to me, placed it on his lap. The silk fluttered and exhaled a sigh of fine dust. The old man fixed me with his snow-cloud regard. ‘You must understand. Sir Edmund was …’ His lower lip trembled slightly. On a horse, it would have signified contentment; Dr H was harder to read. ‘… what he was. Sir Edmund was what he was.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I don’t know that you do yet.’ His tone was matter-of-fact. ‘But you will.’

  Subconsciously, I touched my bracelets. Dr H raised his scotch to his mouth. He dabbed at his moistened lips with a handkerchief.

  ‘I … I have a theory,’ I said.

  ‘About Sir Edmund?’ He leaned forward in his chair.

  ‘Sort of. About foreigners in China.’

  His eyes, which never left my own, widened slightly. ‘Do go on.’

  ‘There are eight principal archetypes of the foreigner in China. There is the storyteller, who is also a seeker – Marco Polo in the court of Khubilai Khan, every journalist, China scholar and English teacher or traveller compelled to write a book about their experiences. Second is the missionary: the Jesuit Matteo Ricci winding clocks for the court of the Ming emperor Wan Li, the artist Rauschenberg preaching post-modernism in the 1980s.’ Dr H was smiling. ‘Third,’ I ploughed on, ‘is the emissary: Lord Macartney in the court of Qianlong, Kissinger in the court of Mao. Then there’s the imperialist: Lord Elgin burning down the Yuanmingyuan, the yobbo smashing up a bar in Sanlitun. Fifth is the fellow traveller: Edgar Snow awed in the caves of Yan’an, any economist or neo-liberal with a hard-on – pardon my language – at the monotheistic altar of growth. Sixth is the profit-seeker: the British pushing opium in the nineteenth century, the purveyors of surveillance equipment to the dictatorship today, the traders and manufacturers, Vuitton and Bulgari in the court of the National Museum on Tiananmen Square and Gucci and Prada in the malls. Number seven is the desperado, the whore, the dogsbody – the pimps, hookers, gamblers and drinkers of Peking’s Badlands on the eve of the Japanese invasion or their equivalents today, the Russian pole-dancers in the clubs of little Vladivostok over by Ritan, the Nigerian drug-pedlars of Sanlitun, the Mongolian prostitutes and other economic refugees. Finally, number eight is the lover who, like the hero or heroine of every China book by a non-Chinese author under the sun, is the one foreigner who truly understands China and who, overcoming obstacles, blah blah blah, falls in love with a beautiful or handsome Chinese, and is recognised in the great court of Chinese public opinion as being not like the other foreigners and therefore wonderful: any protagonist in a James Clavell or Nicole Mones novel.’ (Me.)

  ‘That’s quite a theory. I like it very much. Where do you think Sir Edmund fits in?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘Perhaps there is a ninth archetype?’

  ‘I believe he might have been beyond archetype.’

  ‘Think about it.’

  I did. ‘The trickster?’

  As if I’d produced a password, and without another word, he handed me the parcel. It was lighter than I expected. In what was probably just a consequence of the flickering light, for the goddess of immortality appeared to have a loose filament, my companion seemed in that instant to become less substantial himself, to lose mass, even to rise incrementally on the cushion of his seat.

  Feeling a little dizzy, I tried to anchor myself back to reality with words. ‘It couldn’t possibly have been true, what he wrote in Décadence Mandchoue, could it? He wasn’t really the lover of the Empress Dowager … Was he?’

  ‘He loved her well enough.’ He smiled distantly. ‘You wrote a novel about it.’

  I blushed. ‘That was just fiction.’

  ‘It’s true. He loved her well enough.’ He tilted his glass and stared into it, as though at another world. ‘Though not, of course, as well as he loved Cassia Flower.’

  ‘The catamite in the employ of the Hall of Chaste Joys.’

  ‘Or Zhan Baochen.’

  ‘The young Manchu nobleman.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Whose love,’ I added, like a girl swot trying to curry favour with her teacher, ‘he won by first sneaking him into the palace so that he could make love to the Empress’s handmaiden. When the Empress Dowager caught the pair in flagrante delicto, he interceded on their behalf. But, and I don’t mean any disrespect –’ I wasn’t quite sure how to put this ‘– I always thought, you know, all those things he wrote about in Décadence Mandchoue were in the nature of erotic fantasy.’

  ‘Do you remember the chapter entitled “The Vampire Prince”?’

  ‘Yes. It was about one of the sons of Prince Ching, wasn’t it?’

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘Who got a sexual thrill from drawing and sucking blood?’

  ‘Well done. Do you remember how it began?’

  ‘With some quotations probably, but I can’t recall …’

  ‘Judith Gautier, Thomas Moore. Tennyson. Then he wrote these words, which so impressed me on first reading that I have never forgotten them: “Memory and imagination; the first counts as nothing without the second …” You see?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Here,’ he said, placing the leather folder on the table. ‘You’ll want this to protect the manuscript.’ He leaned forward. The chair springs creaked. The black cat, which was rubbing itself against my legs, looked up accusingly. ‘One more thi
ng,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You’ll find that it is –’ a pause, a flash of teak and ivory ‘– somewhat obscene.’

  I tugged at the disintegrating tissue of silk, as loosely threaded as reality seemed to be at that moment. It fell away to reveal a rectangular box of stiff board. This was covered with pasted-on blue cotton that had faded to the colour of winter sky and was marked by a single stain like a teardrop, the colour of tea. A teadrop. The box was toggled in the Chinese manner with smooth, slender points of polished bone. Easing the toggles out of the tight screws of cloth with which they were secured, I gingerly lifted the cover. Within lay a thick sheaf of quarto paper, curling at the edges, yellowed to the colour and crispness of autumn leaves in the Fragrant Hills. Typed by an old-fashioned manual typewriter, it began:

  My dear _____, What follows may strike you as a wild tale, far-fetched and fantastical …

  … I do not ask that you mourn me. I only implore you: know and remember me as I present myself to you here, without ornament, without pedantry, without guile. And understand this truth – stories are the only things that defy death. Stories are truth. I hereby give you mine, yours – and Hers.

  P.S. The story that this manuscript contains is yours and yours alone, to do with as you please. I cannot know how this finds you, in what situation. I can only pray that it is a good one. Whilst I should be gratified if pride in what you discover leads you to crow, I also must accept in all humility that you may find the revelations contained within confronting, even shocking, so much so that you choose to keep them to yourself. My hope, of course, is that you have been born into an age unlike my own, one of enlightened, liberal views. An age when such stories are, if not commonplace – for this one will never be that – at least not any cause for unpleasant scandal or outcry.

  I have asked the devoted H——— to arrange for the publication of my memoirs once we are both gone from this world that so delights in scandal and persecution. I should not wish for the opprobrium that those writings will inevitably attract to fall upon his dear head. Whether it attaches itself to yours will be your choice. One doesn’t get to choose one’s ancestors any more than one gets to choose the rest of one’s family, but one can own them or not as one pleases.

  P.P.S. Carpe diem! Carpe noctem! Carpe vinum!

  Seize the day. Seize the night. Seize the wine. Well the last was easy, anyway. Confused and intrigued, I looked over at the old man who had brought me this extraordinary missive. His eyes were closed. The white cat had climbed onto his lap, and his hand rested on her fat purring belly. A glass of pinot noir had magically replaced my mug of mulled wine, though my mouth still tasted of cinnamon and cloves. I still had no clue as to what this was all about or what it had to do with me. At the same time, I felt like an accidental crusader who’d stumbled upon the Holy Grail. For it was clear to me that what I held on my lap was the never-before-seen last will and testament of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse.

  The old man’s eyes opened a crack. ‘You are wondering, perhaps, why I had not waited, as Sir Edmund had urged, to publish the memoirs after my death.’

  I wasn’t sure what to say. It didn’t seem very diplomatic to speak of death to a man so apparently tottering close to its edge. His milky eyes fluttered open and twinkled under their asymmetrical hoods. ‘The truth is, I could not resist.’

  ‘Resist?’

  ‘Observing the response. I was deeply curious as to how they would be received. And then, of course,’ he continued, indicating the manuscript, ‘there was this. I had done my best to get this to your father, for whom it was originally intended, but that proved impossible. The relatives who took him in after he was sent away had been so scandalised – and they didn’t know the half of it! – that they would have nothing to do with anyone who had even known Sir Edmund. They even changed your father’s name and refused to pass on any messages. Until I found him – or his progeny; that is, you – I could not rest. And so I chose to prolong my life.’

  Each time he said ‘your father’ I felt an electric shock. I was confused too. I knew my mother had scandalised her family and had been sent away, but my father? I didn’t get it. And then there was this strange claim: ‘Prolong your life?’ I blurted. ‘How …’

  He shrugged, the soft mounds of his shoulders rising and falling like geological eras. ‘Many years ago, I was travelling in the southwest of China. I was studying a parasite of medical interest particular to that part of China. We ended up in a small and charmless nondescript town that did have one place of beauty, a Daoist temple. It is a long story, and some of the details, including the name of the town, are lost to memory. But I met a Daoist master there, a remarkable man, a wise man, a man of arcane knowledge – even if he struck me at first as appearing less a holy man than a vulgar peasant dressed in town clothing, even a snake-oil salesman. He asked me no questions, but gave me advice that struck me at the time as perceptive and amusing. Then he gave me a pouch with pills of his own devising which he claimed I would need later in life. He said that I would want to extend my natural lifespan and that these would help; he said that immortality was difficult but a long life not so much. I am a man of science. I took the pouch, and back in Beijing I analysed the contents of one of the pills. It contained what seemed to me for the most part to be perfectly ordinary herbs, but for one ingredient which I could not identify. I never had the chance to return, and forgot about him and the pills for a long time – until the long and difficult search for your father caused me to recall that they were still in my possession. I did not actually believe they would do anything, and considered that, in any case, the years had probably rendered them useless, but as a man of science, I am ever open to the testing of hypotheses. To make a long story short, the medicine worked. So I faked my own death.’

  I reeled, struggling to comprehend.

  ‘I’m not the first to do so, and I won’t be the last, though I like to think that my motives were perhaps more honourable than many others who have taken this path or will take it in the future.’

  ‘Was it hard?’ was all I could think to say.

  ‘It’s easier than you’d think, especially if you have left no, what do you call it, digital footprint. In fact, I’ve barely left any footprints at all. The Weibo account I use to follow Mrs Jin is registered under the name of a kindly neighbour, who trusted me not to abuse it. You see, I have always valued two qualities that, from what I understand, are quite out of fashion these days – discretion and privacy. I was never the absolute master of these, of course, that dear Sir Edmund was. But I do believe that his life makes an excellent case for the way in which discretion provides the greatest possible space for its opposite, and privacy enables the sort of absolute freedom that those who live in the public eye could only dream of, if they only knew to dream of it. This is something that I fear the, what is it, Facebook generation will never understand.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said, and asked after a brief pause, ‘Was the reaction to the publication of Décadence Mandchoue what you expected? What you hoped for?’

  Dr Hoeppli’s face collapsed a little around his smile. ‘The Daily Telegraph called it “outrageous”, the South China Morning Post “remarkable”, and the New York Times wrote up its publication. This was gratifying. And yet none appears to have taken it as seriously as I had hoped on his behalf. It would have been impossible to publish earlier; even Lady Chatterley’s Lover only just squeaked past the censors in 1960, and not without a massive trial of the publisher for obscenity. Besides, Hugh Trevor-Roper rather soured people on Sir Edmund, I fear. You do know his brother was gay, don’t you?’

  ‘Backhouse’s brother?’

  ‘No, Hugh Trevor-Roper’s brother Patrick, the philanthropist, eye surgeon and art historian. He outed himself in 1955. There may have been some issues there for him. Perhaps it was the issue. It sometimes is for people. I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘I didn’t know about Trevor-Roper’s brother. But
what, if you don’t mind my asking, does this –’ I gestured at the letter and the manuscript ‘– all this, what does it have to do with me? How did Backhouse know my father?’ Maybe it was the exhaustion of a long day compounding my confusion, but I felt impatience and emotion gritting up my voice.

  Dr Hoeppli reached for his glass. ‘You have seen those carved balls of ivory and jade, I presume, in which concentric spherical shells, each capable of independent movement, surround a solid centre?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Keep reading.’

  So I did. In the periphery of my gaze, Dr H appeared to fade away like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, leaving behind not a grin, but that hoary, glittering gaze and the submarine clink of ice on glass like the bells on the necks of camels in a distant caravan.

  A burst of gunfire crackles somewhere outside the hospital as I write. Battles are fought daily within the hospital, too, between the septic and the antiseptic. The reek of wounds festering under plaster brawls with the tang of rubbing alcohol, and the animal fetor of the hot wet blankets used on patients in the respirator ambushes the crisp starchiness of the nurses’ freshly laundered uniforms. Through the noisome air comes a continual chorus of cries and groans.

  The excess of bleach in which the bedclothes are boiled causes them to scratch against my thin and sensitive skin, and bruises appear out of nowhere, dressed in the imperial colours of yellow and purple – surely an irony of cruel Nature! These sad buttocks of mine, that once craved to passer par les verges, are now plagued by bedsores, welts of a rather less enjoyable type than those inflicted by a lover’s lash. Once I believed that I had first acquired this particular perversion in that sanctum of Uranian thought that was Winchester. (You may be familiar with Betjeman’s “The Wykehamist” – “Broad of Church and broad of mind, Broad before and broad behind, A keen ecclesiologist, A rather dirty Wykehamist”.) Yet, one also recalls Juvenal: Nemo repente fuit turpissimus, “No one becomes debauched overnight.” One is, one supposes, born this way. Besides, I am in good company. Among the many great and famous men who have shared this predilection is J.J. Rousseau, who wrote in Confessions of the thrill of his governess’s fessée.