Imperial Woman

by Pearl S. Buck

  Yet why had she thought of him suddenly when she remembered the dark face of the eunuch? She sighed and wept a few tears, surprised that she did, and she would not inquire into herself to know the cause of her tears. Then being young and very weary, she slept.

  The vast old palace library was cool even in midsummer. At noon the doors were closed against the outdoor heat and the glittering sun shone dimly through the shell lattices. No sound disturbed the stillness except the low murmur of Yehonala’s voice as she read aloud to the aged eunuch who was her tutor.

  She was reading from The Book of Changes, and absorbed in the cadences of its poetry, she did not notice that her tutor was silent too long. Then, glancing upward as she turned a page, she saw the old scholar asleep, his head sunk upon his breast, his fan slipping from the loosened fingers of his right hand. The corner of her mouth twitched in a half smile, and she read on steadily to herself. At her feet a little dog slept. It was her own, given her by the Imperial Keeper, when she sent her serving woman to beg for a pet to mend her loneliness.

  Two months now she had been in the palace and she had received no summons from the Emperor. She had not seen her family, not even Sakota, nor had Jung Lu come near. Since she had not left the gates she had not passed him as he stood on duty. In this strange isolation she might have been unhappy except for her busy dreams of the days to come. Some day, some day, she might be Empress! And when she was Empress she would do as she liked. If she wished, she could summon her kinsman into her presence, for a purpose, any purpose, such as the bearing of a letter to her mother.

  “I put this letter into your hands myself,” she would say, “and you are to bring back a letter from her in reply.”

  And none but they two would know whether the letter was for her mother. But her dreams waited upon the Emperor and meanwhile she could only prepare herself. Here in the library she studied each day for five hours with her tutor, the eunuch who held the highest degrees of scholarship. In the years when he was still a man, he had been a famous writer of eight-legged essays and poems in the T’ang style. Then, because of his fame, he had been commanded to become a eunuch in order that he might teach the young prince, now the Emperor, and after him the ladies who were to become his concubines. Among these some would learn and some would not, and none, the old tutor declared, learned as Yehonala did. He boasted of her among the eunuchs and gave good reports of her to the Dowager Mother, so that one day, when Yehonala waited upon her, the Dowager Mother even commended her for industry.

  “You do well to learn the books,” she said. “My son, the Emperor, wearies easily and when he is weak or restless you must be able to amuse him with poetry and with your painting.”

  And Yehonala had inclined her head in obedience.

  At this moment, while she mused upon a page, she felt a touch upon her shoulder, and turning her head she saw the end of a folded fan and a hand that she had come to know at sight, a large smooth powerful hand. It belonged to the young eunuch, Li Lien-ying. She was aware and had been aware for weeks that he was determined to be her servant. It was not his duty to be near her, he was only one among many of the lesser eunuchs, but he had become useful to her in many small ways. When she longed for fruits or sweets it was he who brought them to her and through him she heard the gossip of the many halls and passageways, the hundreds of courts of the Forbidden City. Gossip she must hear, for it was not enough for her to read books, she must know also every detail of intrigue and mishap and love within these walls. To know was to acquire power.

  She lifted her head, her finger on her lips, her eyebrows raised in question. He motioned with his fan that she was to follow him into the pavilion outside the library. Silently, his cloth-soled shoes noiseless upon the tiles, he led the way and she followed until they were beyond danger of rousing the sleeping tutor. The little dog, waking, followed her without barking.

  “I have news for you,” Li Lien-ying said. He towered above her, his shoulders immense, his head square and large, his features roughly shaped and coarse, a figure powerful and crude. She might have been afraid of him still except that now she allowed herself to be afraid of no one.

  “What news?” she inquired.

  “The young Empress has conceived!”

  Sakota! She had not once seen her cousin since they entered the gates together. Sakota was Consort in her dead sister’s place, while she, Yehonala, was only a concubine. Sakota had been summoned to the Emperor’s bed, and she had fulfilled her duty. If Sakota bore a son, he would be heir to the Dragon Throne, and Sakota would be raised to the place of Empress Mother. And she, Yehonala, would still be only a concubine. For such small price would she have cast away her lover and her life? Her heart swelled and all but burst against her ribs.

  “Is there proof of the conception?” she demanded.

  “There is,” he replied. “Her waiting woman is in my pay. This month, for the second time, there was no show of blood.”

  “Well?” she asked. Then her lifelong control took hold. No one could save her except herself. Upon herself alone she must now depend. But fate might be her savior. Sakota might give birth to a girl. There would still be no heir, until a son was born, whose mother would then be raised to Empress.

  And I might be that mother, she thought. Upon the glimpse of sudden hope her brain grew calm, her heart grew still.

  “The Emperor’s duty to his dead lady is done,” the eunuch went on. “Now his fancy will wander.”

  She was silent. It might fall upon her!

  “You must be ready,” he went on. “My reckoning is that within six or seven days he will think of a concubine.”

  “How do you know everything?” she asked, half fearful in spite of her will not to fear.

  “Eunuchs know such things,” he said, leering down into her face.

  She spoke with dignity. “You forget yourself before me.”

  “I offend you,” he said quickly. “I am wrong. You are always right. I am your servant, your slave.”

  She was so solitary that even though he was frightening, she compelled herself to accept his assurance. “Yet why,” she now inquired, “do you wish to serve me? I have no money with which to reward you.”

  It was true that she had not a penny of money. Daily she ate of the most delicate dishes, for whatever the Dowager Mother left was given to the concubines and there was abundance of every variety of food. The chests in her bedchamber were filled with beautiful robes. She slept between silken quilts and she was waited upon day and night by her woman. Yet she could not buy so much as a handkerchief or a packet of sweets for herself. And she had not seen a play since she entered the Forbidden City. The Dowager Mother was still in mourning for the dead Emperor, T’ao Kuang, her son’s father, and she would not allow even the concubines to enjoy themselves in a play, and this lack made Yehonala more lonely than the loss of her family. All her life, whenever her tasks were heavy, her mother scolding, her days without joy, she had escaped to watch the actors playing on the streets or in the courtyard of a temple. If she had a penny by chance, she saved it for the play, and if she had none, then she slipped away before the basket was passed among the crowd.

  “Do you think I ask for gifts?” Li Lien-ying said. “Then you misjudge me. I know what your destiny is. You have a power in you that is in none of the others. Did I not perceive it as soon as my eyes fell upon you? I have told you. When you rise toward the Dragon Throne I will rise with you, always your servant and your slave.”

  She was shrewd enough to know how skillfully he used her beauty and her ambition for his own ends while he knit the ties of obligation between himself and her. If ever she reached the throne, and surely she would some day, he would be there to remind her that he had helped her.

  “Why should you serve me for nothing?” she asked, indifferently. “No one gives without thought of return.”

  “We understand each other,” he said, and smiled.

  She looked away. “Then we can only wait,” she said.


  “We wait,” he agreed, and bowed and went away.

  She returned to the library very thoughtful, the little dog padding after her. The old tutor still slept and she sat down in the chair she had left, and began once more to read. And everything was as it had been before, except that her heart, in this short space of time, was no more the soft heart of a virgin. She had become a woman, bent upon her destiny.

  How could she now consider the meaning of ancient poetry? Her whole mind was playing about the moment when she would be summoned. And how would the summons come? Who would bring the message? Would she have time to bathe and perfume her body, or must she hasten as she was? The imperial concubines gossipped among themselves often, and when one had gone and come back again, the others questioned to the last shred of memory to know what had passed between her and the Emperor. Yehonala had not questioned but she had listened. Better to know!

  “The Emperor does not wish you to talk,” a concubine had said. Once she had been the favorite, but now she lived forgotten, in the Palace of Forgotten Concubines with others whom the Emperor had not loved for long, or else who were the aging concubines of his dead father. Though she was not yet twenty-four years of age this concubine had been chosen and embraced and rejected. For the rest of her life she would live neither wife nor widow, and since she did not conceive she had not even the solace of a child. She was a pretty woman, idle and empty, talking only of the one day when she had lived in the private palace of the Emperor. That brief story she told again and again as the new concubines waited to be chosen.

  But Yehonala listened and said nothing. She would divert the Emperor. She would amuse him and tease him and sing to him and tell him stories, weaving every bond between them of mind as well as flesh. She closed the Book of Changes and put it aside. There were other books, forbidden books, Dream of the Red Chamber, Plum Flower in a Golden Vase, White Snake—she would read them all, commanding Li Lien-ying to bring them to her from bookshops outside the walls if she could not find them here.

  The tutor waked suddenly and quietly as the old do waken, the difference for them between sleep and awakening being so slight. He watched her without moving.

  “How now?” he asked. “Have you finished your portion?”

  “It is finished,” she said. “And I wish for other books, story books, tales of magic, something to amuse me.”

  He looked stern and he stroked his hairless chin with a hand as dry and withered as a dead palm leaf. “Such books poison the thoughts, especially of females,” he declared. “You will not find them here in the Imperial Library, no, there is not one among all the thirty-six thousand upon these shelves. Such books ought not even to be mentioned by a virtuous lady.”

  “Then I will not mention them,” she said playfully.

  And stooping she gathered the little dog into her sleeve and went away to her own chamber.

  What she had known in the afternoon of one day was by the next day known everywhere. Mouth to ear, the gossip flew from courtyard to courtyard and excitement rose like wind. In spite of his Consort and his many concubines, the Emperor had never had a child, and the great Manchu clans were restless. If there were no heir, then an heir must be chosen from among them, and princes watched each other closely, guarding themselves and their sons, jealous of where the choice might fall. Now, since Sakota, the new Consort, had conceived, they could only wait. If she had a daughter instead of a son the strife would begin again.

  Yehonala herself belonged to the most powerful of these clans, and from her clan three Empresses had already risen. Should she not be a fourth? Ah, if she were chosen, if she could conceive immediately, if she had a son, and Sakota but a daughter, the path of destiny would be clear indeed—too clear, perhaps, for who had such good fortune that one step could lead so swiftly to another? Yet all was possible.

  In preparation she began from that day on to read the memorials that came from the Throne, studying every word of the edicts the Emperor sent forth. Thus she might inform herself concerning the realm and so be ready if ever the gods willed to send her forward. And slowly she began to comprehend the vastness of the country and its people. Her world had been the city of Peking, wherein she grew from child to maiden. She knew her ruling race, the Manchu clans who from their invading ancestors had seized and held the power over a mighty people who were Chinese. Two hundred years the northern dynasty had built its heart here in the imperial city, its red walls four square inside the capital. The Emperor’s City, it was called, or the Forbidden City, for he was its king, its solitary male, and he alone could sleep here at night. At twilight the drums beat in every lane and cranny to warn all men to depart. The Emperor remained alone among his women and his eunuchs.

  But this capital, this inner city, so she now comprehended, was but the ruling center of a country eternal in its mountains, rivers, lakes and seashores, in the endless numbers of its cities and villages, in the hundreds of millions of its various people, its merchants, farmers, scholars, its weavers, artisans, smiths and innkeepers, men and women of every sort, craft and art. Her bright imagination flew from the gates of her royal prison and traveled everywhere that her eyes led upon the printed pages of her books. From the imperial edicts she learned yet more. She learned that a mighty rebellion was rising in the south, the hateful fruit of a foreign religion. These Chinese rebels called themselves T’ai P’ing and they were led by a fanatic Christian, surnamed Hung, who imagined himself an incarnated brother of the one called Christ, son of a foreign god by a peasant woman. This birth was not strange, for in the ancient books were many such stories. A farm wife could tell of a god who came before her in a cloud while she was tilling the field, and by magic he impregnated her so that in ten moon months she bore a godly son. Or a fisherman’s daughter, though still a virgin, would tell how a god came up out of the river while she tended her father’s fishing nets, and by his magic she was impregnated. But under the Christian banner of T’ai P’ing rebels the restless and the discontents were gathering themselves, and unless they were quelled, these men might even overthrow the Manchu dynasty. T’ao Kuang had been a weak emperor and so now was his son, Hsien Feng, whom the Dowager Mother commanded as though he were a child.

  Through the Dowager Mother, then, Yehonala must find her access, and she made it her daily duty to wait upon the elder lady, appearing with a choice flower or a ripe fruit plucked from the imperial gardens.

  It was now nearly the season of summer melons, and the Dowager Mother loved very well the small yellow-fleshed sweet melons that grow on dung heaps, where in the spring the seeds are sown. Yehonala walked daily in the melon rows and searched for the first sweet melons, hidden under the leaves. Upon those most nearly ripe she pasted bits of yellow paper brushed with the name of the Dowager Mother, so that no greedy eunuch or woman servant would steal them. Every day she tested the melons with her thumb and forefinger and one day, seven days after Li Lien-ying had told her of the news concerning Sakota, she heard a melon sound as empty as a drum. It was ripe, and she twisted it from its stem and, carrying it in both hands, she went to the courtyards of the Dowager Mother.

  “Our Venerable Mother is asleep,” a serving woman said. She was jealous of Yehonala because the Dowager Mother favored her.

  Yehonala raised her voice. “Is the Dowager Mother sleeping at this hour? Then she must be ill. It is long past the hour when she wakes—”

  She had, when she wished, a thrush-clear voice that carried through several rooms. Now it reached the ears of the Dowager Mother, who was not sleeping but sat in her bedroom embroidering a gold dragon upon a black girdle which she wished to present to her son. There was no need for her to do such work but she could not read and she liked to embroider. She heard Yehonala’s voice and since she was growing weary of her needle, which she soon did, she put it down and called.

  “Yehonala, come here! Who says I am sleeping is a liar!”

  Yehonala made a coaxing smile for the serving woman who frowned. “No one s
ays you sleep, Venerable,” she called, in reply. “It is I who heard it wrong.”

  With this courteous lie she tripped through the rooms holding her melon until she reached the bedchamber of the Dowager Mother, where the old lady sat in her undergarments because of the heat, and to her she presented the melon with both hands.

  “Ah,” the Dowager Mother cried, “and I sat here thinking of sweet melons and wishing for one, and you come at the very moment!”

  “Let me bid a eunuch hang it in one of the northern wells to cool it,” Yehonala said.

  But the Dowager Mother would not allow this. “No, no,” she argued, “if this melon falls into the hands of a eunuch he will eat it secretly and then when I send for it, he will bring me a green one or he will say the rats have gnawed it or it has fallen into the well and he cannot get it up. I know those eunuchs! I will eat it here and now and have it safely in my belly.”

  She turned her head and shouted to any serving woman who was near. “Fetch me a large knife!”

  Three or four women ran for knives and in a moment they were back and Yehonala took a knife and sliced the melon delicately and neatly and the Dowager Mother seized a piece of it and began to eat it as greedily as a child, the sweet water dripping from her chin.

  “A towel,” Yehonala said to a serving woman and when it was put in her hand she tied it about the old lady’s neck to keep her silken undervest from soiling.

  “Save half of it,” the Dowager Mother commanded, when she had eaten as much as she could. “When my son comes to present himself this evening as he always does before I sleep, I will give it to him. But it is to stay here beside me or one of those eunuchs will snatch it.”

  “Let me—” Yehonala said.

  And she would not allow a serving woman to touch the melon. She called for a dish and placed the melon into it, and then she called for a porcelain bowl and this she placed over the melon, and the dish was set into a basin of cold water. All this trouble she took that the Dowager Mother might mention it to the Emperor when he came and so her name would fall somewhere into the Emperor’s hearing.