Imperial Woman Read online

  “Yehonala!” Again the chief tiring woman shouted and still she did not answer. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

  “Has Yehonala escaped?” the old woman called.

  A serving woman answered. “Mistress, she lies in bed.”

  The chief tiring woman was shocked. “Still abed? And can she sleep?”

  The servant went to the bed and looked. “She is sleeping.”

  “What hard heart is this?” the old woman cried. “Waken her! Pull away the quilts, pinch her arms!”

  The servant obeyed, and Yehonala, feigning to wake, opened her eyes. “What is it?” she asked drowsily. She sat up, her hands flying to her cheeks. “Oh—oh—” she stammered, her voice as soft as that of a mourning dove. “How could I forget?”

  “How indeed!” the chief tiring woman said, indignant. “Do you not know the Emperor’s command? In two hours from now you must all be ready in the Audience Hall, every virgin at her best—two hours, I tell you, in which you must be bathed and perfumed and robed, your hair coiled, your breakfast eaten.”

  Yehonala yawned behind her hand. “How I slept! The mattress is much softer here than on my bed at home.”

  The old woman snorted. “It can scarcely be imagined that a mattress in the palace of the Son of Heaven would be as hard as your bed.”

  “So much softer than I imagined,” Yehonala said.

  She stepped upon the tiled floor, her feet bare and strong. The virgins were all Manchu and not Chinese, and their feet were unbound and free.

  “Come, come,” the chief tiring woman said. “Hasten yourself, Yehonala! The others are nearly dressed.”

  “Yes, Venerable,” she said.

  But she did not hurry herself. She allowed a woman to undress her, putting forth no effort to help her, and when she was naked she stepped into the shallow tub of hot water and would not lift her hand to wash her own body.

  “You!” the woman said under her breath. “Will you not help me to get you ready?”

  Yehonala opened her large eyes, black and brilliant. “What shall I do?” she asked helplessly.

  No one should guess that in her home there was no servant except Lu Ma in the kitchen. She had always bathed not only herself but her younger sister and brothers. She had washed their clothes with her own and she had carried them as babies on her back, strapped there with broad bands of cloth, while she went hither and thither helping her mother about the house and running often to the oil shop and the vegetable market. Her only pleasure was to stop on the streets and watch a troupe of wandering Chinese actors. Yet her uncle Muyanga, always kind, allowed her to be taught with his own children by the family tutor, although the sum of money he gave her mother went for food and clothing and provided little luxury.

  Here all was luxury. She glanced about the vast room. The early sunlight was creeping over the walls and brightened the opaque shell-latticed windows. The blue and the red of the painted beams overhead sprang into life, and the reds and greens of the long Manchu robes of the virgins responded. Scarlet satin curtains hung in the doorways and the cushions of the carved wooden chairs were covered with scarlet wool. Upon the walls the picture scrolls showed landscapes or wise sayings brushed in black ink upon white silk. The air was sweet with perfume of soaps and oils. She discovered of a sudden that she loved luxury.

  The serving woman had not answered Yehonala’s question. There was no time. The chief tiring woman was pressing them to hurry.

  “They had better eat first,” she was saying. “Then what time is left can be spent on their hair. A full hour is needed for their hair.”

  Food was brought in by kitchen maids but the virgins could not eat. Their hearts were beating too fast in their bosoms, and some were weeping again.

  The chief tiring woman grew angry. Her fat face swelled. “How dare you weep?” she bellowed. “Can there be a better fortune than to be chosen by the Son of Heaven?”

  But the weeping virgins wept on. “I had rather live in my home,” one sobbed. “I do not wish to be chosen,” another sighed.

  “Shame, shame,” the old woman cried, gnashing her teeth at the craven girls.

  Seeing such distress, Yehonala was the more calm. She moved with accurate grace from one step to another and when food was brought in she sat down at a table and ate heartily and with pleasure. Even the chief tiring woman was surprised, not knowing whether to be shocked or pleased.

  “I swear I have not seen so hard a heart,” she said in a loud voice.

  Yehonala smiled, her chopsticks in her right hand. “I like this good food,” she said as sweetly as a child. “It is better than any I have eaten at home.”

  The chief tiring woman decided to be pleased. “You are a sensible female creature,” she announced. Nevertheless after a moment she turned her head to whisper to one of the serving women. “Look at her great eyes! She has a fierce heart, this one—”

  The woman grimaced. “A tiger heart,” she agreed. “Truly a tiger heart—”

  At noon the eunuchs came for them, led by the Chief Eunuch, An Teh-hai. He was a handsome, still youthful figure, wrapped in a long pale-blue satin robe, girdled at the waist with a length of red silk. His face was smooth, the features large, the nose curved downward, the eyes black and proud.

  He gave orders half carelessly for the virgins to pass before him and like a petty emperor he sat in a great carved chair of blackwood and stared at each one as she passed, seeming at the same time to be only contemptuous. Beside him was a blackwood table upon which were placed his tally book, his ink brush and box.

  From under her long eyelids Yehonala watched him. She stood apart from the other virgins, half hiding herself behind a curtain of scarlet satin hung in a door way. The Chief Eunuch marked with a brush and ink the name of each virgin as she passed.

  “There is one not here,” he announced.

  “Here am I,” Yehonala said. She moved forward shyly, her head bent, her face turned away, her voice so soft it could scarcely be heard.

  “That one has been late all day,” the chief tiring woman said in her loud voice. “She slept when the others rose. She would not wash or dress herself and she has eaten enough food for a peasant woman—three bowls of millet she swallowed down! Now she stands there stupid. I do not know whether she is a fool.”

  “Yehonala,” the Chief Eunuch read in a high harsh voice, “eldest daughter of the dead Bannerman Chao. Guardian, the Bannerman Muyanga. She was registered at the Northern Palace two years ago, aged fifteen. She is now seventeen.”

  He lifted his head and stared at Yehonala standing before him, her head drooping modestly, her eyes fixed on the floor.

  “Are you this very one?” he inquired.

  “I am she,” Yehonala said.

  “Pass on,” the Chief Eunuch commanded. But his eyes followed her. Then he rose and commanded the lower eunuchs. “Let the virgins be led into the Hall of Waiting. When the Son of Heaven is ready to receive them, I will announce them myself, one by one, before the Dragon Throne.”

  Four hours the virgins waited. The serving women sat with them, scolding if a satin coat were wrinkled, or if a lock of hair were loosened. Now and again a woman touched a virgin’s face with powder, or painted her lips again. Twice the virgins were allowed to drink tea.

  At noon a stir in distant courtyards roused them. Horns sounded, drums beat and a gong was struck to the rhythm of footsteps coming nearer. An Teh-hai, the Chief Eunuch, came again into the Hall of Waiting and with him were the lesser eunuchs, among whom was one young and tall and lean, and though his face was ugly, it was so dark and so like an eagle’s in its look that Yehonala’s eyes were fixed upon him involuntarily. In the same instant this eunuch caught her look and returned it with insolence. She turned her head away.

  But the Chief Eunuch had seen. “Li Lien-ying,” he cried sharply, “why are you here? I bade you wait with the virgins of the fourth class, the Ch’ang Ts’ai!”

  Without a word the tall young eunuc
h left the hall.

  The Chief Eunuch then said, “Young ladies, you will wait here until your class is called. First the F’ei must be presented to the Emperor by the Dowager Mother, then the P’in. Only when these are reviewed and the Emperor’s choice is made may you of the third class, who are only Kuei Jen, approach the Throne. You are not to look upon the imperial face. It is he who looks at you.”

  None answered. The virgins stood silent, their heads drooping while he spoke. Yehonala had placed herself last, as though she were the most modest of them all, but her heart beat against her breast. Within the next few hours, within an hour or less, depending on the Emperor’s mood, she might reach the supreme moment of her life. He would look at her, appraise her, weigh her shape and color, and in that little moment she must make him feel her powerful charm.

  She thought of her cousin Sakota, even now passing before the Emperor’s eyes. Sakota was sweetly simple, gentle and childlike. Because she was the sister of the dead princess, whom the Emperor had loved when he was prince, it was all but sure that she would be among the chosen. That was good. She and Sakota had lived together since she was three years old, when, her father dead, her mother had returned to the ancestral home, and Sakota had always yielded to her and leaned upon her and trusted her. Sakota might even say to the Emperor, “My cousin Yehonala is beautiful and clever.” It had been upon her tongue, that last night they slept together, to say to her, “Speak for me—” and then she had been too proud. Sakota, though gentle and childish, had a child’s pure dignity, which forbade advance.

  A murmur fluttered over the group of waiting virgins. Someone had caught a whisper from the Audience Hall. The F’ei were already dismissed. Sakota had been chosen from among them to be the first Imperial concubine. The P’in were few in number. Another hour—

  Before the hour was ended the Chief Eunuch returned. “It is now the time for the Kuei Jen,” he announced. “Arrange yourselves, young ladies. The Emperor grows weary.”

  The virgins arranged themselves in procession and the tiring women put the last touches on hair and lips and eyebrows. Silence fell upon all and laughter ceased. One girl leaned fainting upon a serving woman, who pinched her arms and the lobes of her ears to restore her. Inside the Audience Hall, the Chief Eunuch was already calling their names and ages, and each must enter at the sound of her name and her age. One by one they passed before the Emperor and the Dowager Mother. But Yehonala, the last, drifted away from her place, as though forgetfully, to pet a small palace dog who had come running through an open door. The creature was a sleeve dog, one of those minute beasts that Court ladies keep half starved in puppyhood and dwarfed enough to hide within a wide embroidered sleeve. At the door the Chief Eunuch waited.

  “Yehonala!” he called.

  The tiring women had already scattered and she was left alone, playing with the dog. She had almost deceived herself that indeed she had forgotten where she was and why. She held back the dog’s long ears and laughed into the wrinkled face no larger than the palm of her own hand. She had heard of these little dogs that looked like lions, but no commoner was allowed to keep them, and she had never seen one until now.

  “Yehonala!” An Teh-hai’s voice roared into her ears and she stood up quickly.

  He rushed at her and seized her arm. “Have you forgotten ? Are you mad? The Emperor waits! He waits, I tell you—why, you deserve to die for this—”

  She wrenched herself loose and he hurried to the door and shouted out her name again. “Yehonala, daughter of the Bannerman Chao, now deceased, niece of Muyanga, of Pewter Lane! Her age, seventeen years, three months and two days—”

  She entered without noise or affectation, and walked slowly down the length of the immense hall, her long Manchu coat of rose-red satin touching the tip of her embroidered Manchu shoes, set high on white soles and center heels. Her narrow beautiful hands she held folded at her waist, and she did not turn her head toward the Throne as she passed slowly by.

  “Let her pass again,” the Emperor said.

  The Dowager Mother stared at Yehonala with unwilling admiration. “I warn you,” she said, “this girl has a fierce temper. I see it in her face. She is too strong for a woman.”

  “She is beautiful,” the Emperor said.

  Still Yehonala did not turn her head. The voices fell disembodied upon her ears.

  “What does it matter if she has a temper?” the Emperor now inquired. “She can scarcely be angry with me.”

  He had a youthful petulant voice, thin and boyish in its quality. His mother’s voice answering him was full and slow, wise with age.

  “It is better not to choose a strong woman who is also beautiful,” she reasoned. “There is that other one, P’ou Yu, whom you have seen, in the class of P’in. A sensible face, good looks, but—”

  “A coarse skin,” the Emperor said rebelliously. “Doubtless she had smallpox as a child. In spite of the powder on her face, I saw its marks.”

  Yehonala was now directly in front of him. “Stay,” he commanded her. She stopped, her face and body in profile, her head lifted, her eyes gazing into distance as though her heart were somewhere else.

  “Turn your face to me,” he commanded.

  Slowly, as though indifferent, she obeyed. In decency, in modesty, in all that she had been taught, a virgin does not fix her eyes higher than a man’s breast. Upon the Emperor she should not look higher than his knees. But Yehonala looked full into his face and with such concentration that she saw the Emperor’s eyes, shallowly set beneath youthful scanty eyebrows, and through her own eyes she poured into his the power of her will. He sat immobile for a long instant. Then he spoke.

  “This one I choose.”

  “If you are chosen by the Son of Heaven,” her mother had said, “serve first his mother, the Dowager Mother. Let her believe that you think of her day and night. Learn what she enjoys, seek out her comfort, never try to escape her. She has not many years to live. There will be plenty of years left for you.”

  Yehonala remembered these words. On that first night after she had been chosen she lay in her own small bedroom, within the three rooms given her to use. An old tiring woman was appointed by the Chief Eunuch to be her servant. Here she must live alone except when the Emperor sent for her. That might be often or never. Sometimes a concubine lived within the four walls of this imperial city, virgin until she died, forgotten by the Emperor unless she had means to bribe the eunuchs to mention her name before him. But she, Yehonala, would not be forgotten. When he was weary of Sakota, to whom indeed he owed a duty, he might, he must, think of her. Yet would he remember? He was accustomed to beauty, and even though their eyes had met, could she be sure that the Son of Heaven would remember?

  She lay upon the brick bed, made soft by three mattresses, and considered. Day by day she must now plan her life and not one day could be wasted, else she might live solitary, a virgin forgotten. She must be clever, she must be careful, and the Imperial Mother must be her means. She would be useful to the Dowager Empress, affectionate, unfailing in small and constant attentions. And now beyond this she would ask to be taught by tutors. She knew already how to read and write, thanks to her uncle’s goodness, but her thirst for real learning was never satisfied. Books of history and poetry, music and painting, the arts of eye and ear, these she would ask to be taught. For the first time since she could remember she had time to possess for her own, leisure in which to train her mind. She would care for her body, too, eat the best meats, rub her hands soft with mutton fat, perfume herself with dried oranges and musk, bid her serving woman brush her hair twice daily after her bath. These she would do for her body, that the Emperor might be pleased. But her mind she would shape to please herself, and to please herself she would learn how to brush characters as scholars do and to paint landscapes as artists do, and she would read many books.

  The satin of her bedquilt caught on the roughened skin of her hands and she thought, “I shall never wash clothes again, or fetch hot wate
r, or grind meal. Is this not happiness?”

  Two nights she had not slept. In the last night in their home, when she and Sakota had lain awake talking and dreaming and she comforting the gentle one, and again in the last night with the waiting virgins, who could sleep? But tonight all fears were over. She was chosen and here in these three rooms was her little home. They were small but luxurious, the walls hung with scrolls, the chair seats covered with red satin cushions, the tables made of blackwood and the beams overhead painted in bright design. The floors were smoothly tiled and the latticed windows opened into a court and upon a round pool where goldfish shone under the sun. Her woman servant slept on a bamboo couch outside her door. She had no one to fear.

  No one? The narrow evil face of the young eunuch Li Lien-ying appeared suddenly against the darkness. Ah, the eunuchs, her wise mother had warned her of the eunuchs—

  “They are neither men nor women. They destroy themselves as men before they are allowed to enter into the Forbidden City. Their maleness, stemmed and denied, turns evil in them. It becomes malice and bitterness and cruelty and all things vile. Avoid the eunuchs from the highest to the lowest. Pay them money when you must. Never let them see that you fear them.”

  “I will not fear you,” she said to the dark face of Li Lien-ying.

  And suddenly, because she was afraid, she thought of her kinsman, Jung Lu. She had not seen him since she entered the palace. Then, always bold, she had moved aside the curtain of her sedan chair an inch or two as it approached the great vermilion gates. Before them the imperial guardsmen stood in yellow tunics, their broad swords drawn and held upright before them. At the right, next to the central gate, Jung Lu stood tallest among them all. He gazed straight ahead into the swarming crowds of the street and not by the slightest sign did he let her know that to him one sedan was different from another. Nor could she make a sign. Half wounded, she had put him out of mind. No, and she would not think of him, even now. Neither she nor he could know when they might meet again. Within the walls of this Forbidden City a man and a woman might live out their lives and never meet.