Part 11 (1/2)
I hadn't opened any doors since becoming an empress. In a dream I opened a door. I was surprised to see that red and pink flowers covered my entire courtyard. A heavy rain had fallen. The flowers were whipped down, but they still appeared full of vitality. Their wet heads drank the water from puddles. One by one the flowers began to rise like court officials. Their fragrance was strong, a mixture of gardenias and rotten vegetables.
Li Lien-ying brought in a dream interpreter, who asked what else I had seen in my dream. I told him that I had seen windows.
”What is inside the windows?” the interpreter asked.
”Red- and pink-faced women,” I replied. ”They squeezed into the windows like a bunch of poison poppies competing for suns.h.i.+ne. Every one of them had an extraordinarily long and thin neck.”
The interpreter's hand moved quickly in the air as if taking notes on an invisible pad.
”Whose window was it?” The interpreter closed his eyes.
”I don't remember.”
”I am getting to the bottom of it. I am ready to unlock the meaning of your dream, but you must provide that last detail. Let me ask you again: whose window was it?”
”It is my husband's window, I think.”
”Where is it located?”
”At the Hall of Spiritual Nurturing.”
”That's it! And then you summoned a fruit picker.”
Shocked, I said that he was right.
”And with that fruit picker you took down the poppy heads one by one.”
”Yes, I did.”
”You then gathered those poppy heads in a basket, put them in a grinder and made soup.”
I admitted that it all happened as he described.
”The problem is the soup. You should not have drunk it.”
”But it was only a dream.”
”It interprets truth.”
”What truth?”
The man paused.
Quickly Li Lien-ying placed a bag of taels in his hand. The interpreter resumed, asking whether it was safe to utter what he knew.
Li Lien-ying a.s.sured him. The man drew in a breath and said, exhaling, ”My lady, you have been poisoned by your own sickness.”
I asked what kind of sickness. The man was reluctant to answer, but said that it contained elements of jealousy, resentment and secret yearnings for intimacy.
It was then that I asked him to stop.
”What would you advise?” Li Lien-ying said, grabbing the man's sleeve.
The interpreter said that he knew of no effective treatment. ”We'll try anything,” Li Lien-ying begged.
”Wait until autumn is deep. Leave Her Majesty's door open from evening until dawn. The purpose is to invite crickets in. The crickets will do the labor of suffering for her-they will sing themselves to death.”
”How many crickets should I invite?” Li Lien-ying asked.
”As many as you can. There is a trick to luring them. You must place fresh gra.s.s and sh.e.l.led soybeans in the room. Also lay wet bricks in each corner. The crickets will come to eat and then look for mating partners. They will sing throughout the night. Consider your treatment a success if you find dead crickets under your bed the following morning.”
By the time I got used to the singing of crickets and waking up to find their dead bodies in my shoes, my dreams began to change. They became less frightening, more about my being tired and trying to escape.
I was again able to appreciate the beauty of the turning seasons. Walking along the garden paths had never meant so much to me. I would watch a worm-damaged plant swing in the wind and marvel at its way of surviving. I would feel the force of life and experience rapture at the simple sight of insects sucking nectar from flower hearts. I would find myself breathing freely, and I would feel the spirit of Tung Chih and An-te-hai.
I still missed Yung Lu terribly, but had the strength to bear it.
17.
I had been sitting in front of the mirror since three in the morning. I opened my eyes and saw that the wide board that held my hair made my head look like a giant mushroom.
”How do you like it, my lady?” Li Lien-ying asked.
”It's fine. Let's finish as quickly as possible.” I rose so that he could get me into the heavily layered court robe.
I hardly paid attention to how I looked these days. My mind had been dealing with Russia to the north, British India to the west, French Indochina to the south, and j.a.pan to the east.
A number of countries and territories-including Korea, the Ryu-kyu Islands, Annam and Burma-that had sent representatives and tribute to us during Tung Chih's reign, sent them less frequently, and soon not at all. The fact that China was unable to claim back its privileges showed that our standing was diminis.h.i.+ng. With every defection, our outer defenses were further weakened.
I now wished that Tutor Weng would quit his pointless displays of sincerity and get on with preparing Guang-hsu for the business of rule. Lacking flexibility and cunning, Nuharoo and I were unable to adopt a line of conduct when problems threatened to overwhelm us. No one seemed to understand that our country had been heading downhill for centuries. China was like a diseased and dying person, only now the rot of the body had become visible.
Like a hungry tiger, j.a.pan had been hiding in the bushes, waiting for the moment to attack. In the past we underestimated the degree of its hunger. We had been too kind to our small and resource-poor neighbor from ancient times. Had I known that j.a.pan's Meiji Emperor had stirred up his nation to swoop down and rob us, I would have encouraged the court to concentrate solely on defense.
Ten years earlier, in 1868, while I was concentrating my energy on establis.h.i.+ng elementary schools in the countryside, j.a.pan's Emperor had set in motion a full-scale reform, transforming its feudal system into a powerful modern capitalistic society. China had no idea what it meant when j.a.pan began pressing to expand in a bracelet extending from its main islands in the north to Formosa in the south. Formosa, which the Mandarins called Taiwan, had been an island state paying tribute to the Chinese throne for centuries. In 1871, when some sailors from the Ryukyu Islands were murdered there by what most likely were local bandits, the j.a.panese seized on the incident as an excuse to interfere.