Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823) Read online

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Japanese Wife

  Racists

  The Miniaturist

  The Opium Clerk

  Copyright

  This edition first published in the United States

  and the United Kingdom in 2011 by Overlook Duckworth

  NEW YORK:

  The Overlook Press

  Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

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  Copyright © 2011 by Kunal Basu

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

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  ISBN 978-1-59020-882-3

  for

  Philippa Brewster

  Those who haven’t had the pox in this life,

  will get it in the next.

  –RABELAIS

  Contents

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Copyright

  I: LISBON 1898 - The Feast of St. Anthony

  II: PEKING - The Yellow Emperor’s Canon

  III: LITTLE EUROPE - The price of knives

  IV: FRAGRANT HILLS - The pulse of spring

  V: WARRIOR QUEEN - The bleeding hand

  I

  LISBON 1898

  The Feast of St. Anthony

  No one sleeps the night before a festa. In June, when the days are long and the sea luminous, no excuse will keep the crowds from the squares or lovers dancing to the fado. The night is short before the feast of St. Anthony, with the solstice hot on its heels. It is an easy night for the beggars, fed with cups of arroz doce – sweet rice pudding with cinnamon – in return for favors from the saint, and a hard one for sardines, waiting to be grilled by the sidewalk and munched by revellers at the midday parade. Sardines on bread, spicy pork and chicken – as tempting as the festival queen blowing kisses in the air under the lilac jacarandas of Lisbon.

  Women and sardines were on his mind as Dr. Antonio Henriques Maria left the All Saints Hospital after a sleepless night. He was hungry and cross with his undeserving patient – a man who had accidentally shot himself hunting pheasants on hilly Santa Catarina – for having wasted his superior surgical skills. It was the curse of doctors to save a man’s life when it would’ve served the fool better to let him bleed to death. He blamed the matron for refusing to send the patient over to the bazaars of Alfama, for the Arabs to rob him of his gun before they dispatched him to his grave. In a city full of quacks, she had brought him back from the gates of hell to be saved through the miracle of Antonio’s hands.

  As he wielded the bone saw, stopping every now and then to unclog its teeth with a squirrel brush, he had an eye on his watch. It was to be a night with old friends – rascals and whore mongers – fans of the bullring and dance hall dandies, shedding their respectable gowns to relive their student days at the Faculdade Medicina. Doctors dressed up as pirates, drinking at taverns and singing bawdy songs, on the lookout for the merry brides of St. Anthony.

  “He stumbled on a rock.” The elderly matron whispered, cupping the man’s eyes with her palm to stop him from seeing his blood. Antonio gave her a look of disdain.

  “He’d be dead by now had it not been for the dog that stayed by his side and kept on barking.”

  Holding the Catlin knife like a painter’s brush, he drew a circle around the crushed knee to cut it open. A stifled sob passed the matron’s lips when she saw the bullet gleaming like pearl in an oyster.

  “Pity the dog wasn’t in heat. Maybe she was, but there weren’t any males to lead her astray!” Prising out the conical lead piece with forceps, he dropped it into a pewter bowl. “There – feed it to the dog.”

  In moments, he changed from painter to embroiderer, taking care to sink his needle into the man’s skin in a way that was least likely to leave a mark, looping the fine thread drawn from pigs’ intestines over his thumb like a diligent bridesmaid. Ah, the miracle of Dr. Maria! The young lion! The pride of the Faculdade; for all of his coarse mouth and roving eye, the most precious pair of hands in Lisbon.

  He sewed up the man and turned his attention to the night nurse who was standing beside him. There was something about Maria Helena’s farm-sweet face and lithe Castilian frame draped in nurses’ whites that had caught his eye as he sawed and scraped. Their hands had touched as she passed him the forceps, and Antonio had sensed a nervous flutter like a moth around a spider’s web. He was used to fluttering women, the heat they exuded as they prepared to be trapped, responding to accidental touches with flushed necks and frozen eyes. Like a beggar pretending to be blind she kept her eyes down, but met his outstretched palm with unvarying regularity like clockwork.

  The matron frowned at the give and take. She rolled up her eyes as he shot Maria Helena his lady-killer looks. In her haste to bring the patient back to his senses by warming his feet with a coal scuttle, she had missed the most scandalous bit: Doctor Maria wiping the blood off his hands on the folds of the nurse’s tunic, leaving the paw marks of the predator on its prey.

  Maybe I’ll see her at the festa, Antonio thought, as he left the hospital, jumping over a shallow pool. Morning showers had scattered the jacaranda blossoms on the dusty avenues and added an unexpected blush to the century-old gray buildings with their balconies sprouting pots of basil – the customary gift offered by the young to their lovers at the feast of the saint. He felt his mood lifting, and imagined meeting Maria Helena at the parade. He wondered if she too would dress up as a bride, marching with the veiled horde, giving him a shy glance as she passed him. Maybe he’d meet her at a tavern, still wearing nurses’ whites, breath smelling of sardines. They could disappear into the lanes and climb up the spiral stairs of a whitewashed home in the city’s old quarters to watch the parade and resume their give and take.

  He thought about his friends on his way over to Rossio Square, where a giant tent had been built to house the fadistas. They’d be cursing him for being a spoilsport. He could imagine Ricardo Silva, Rogue Ricardo, regaling everyone with stories of his friend’s escapades. He’d be reminding them too of their teachers at the Faculdade Medicina and their verdict on the young Antonio Maria: Talent – Exceptional; Temperament – Sound; Judgment – Rash; not yet fully mature. Still drunk from the night before, they’d be laughing themselves hoarse over his judgment – the last surviving bachelor among them, guilty of letting beauty queens and wealthy heiresses slip through his fingers at more than an alarming rate. “He treats his lovers like his patients … cures them quickly!” They’d agree with Ricardo and puzzle over the riddle that was their friend Antonio Maria – rock steady with the scalpel, but a prize idiot when it came to women.

  “What was she like?” Ricardo Silva asked him when they finally met at the grandstand in the afternoon.

  “Who?” Antonio eyed the fancy dressers.

  “The one who kept you sober last night.”

  He could smell the salted codfish in the stalls of Praça da Figueira and smell the girls p
erspiring as they waited impatiently for the parade to start. Everything about the festa was as it should be, about showing and watching, chasing and lechery. The young hopefuls had shed the latest walking dresses from Paris and dressed up as dolls, buxom spinsters like whores, the nuns, severe as ever, holding up statues of the saint upside down to remind him of his promise to cleanse the sinners of their sins.

  He owed Ricardo an answer. There were many reasons for Antonio to feel grateful to his loyal friend, who was always prepared to throw his might behind him. Failure to succeed at the Faculdade Medicina had been a blessing in disguise for Ricardo: it had helped to secure his place among the aristocracy by simply affording him the time to spend in their company. It wasn’t just that he happened to be related to every fidalgo family by a mixture of his lies and conjectures, his power to make friends out of perfect strangers made him a welcome guest at mansions that lined the glittering boroughs of Lisbon. Antonio teased his friend:

  “A fool who thought himself a pheasant and put a bullet through.”

  “A man!” Ricardo recovered quickly from his shock. “Ah … the doctor was busy doctoring. You couldn’t have been alone with the pheasant though.”

  “The matron was there.”

  “The owl!” Ricardo chuckled to himself. “Just a whiff of her armpits would’ve knocked the poor man out!”

  The parade wound its way into the square, where pyres had been lit in the past to burn heretics, and the two of them waved lustily at a group of cute trumpet players dressed up as dolphins. Spotting Antonio in the crowd, the girls almost fainted. Dr. Maria. …! A doctor so handsome! So young and so famous! They’d have heard the scandals, the tittle-tattle, taken a moment to thank their luck and wave back.

  “The pheasant, the matron and …?”

  “A nurse.”

  Ricardo Silva praised himself for knowing his friend so well.

  “What did she have under the whites?” He nudged Antonio. “Go on, tell me.”

  “A pair of kidneys, a healthy liver and …”

  Ricardo laughed. “You mean you had to cut her open to take your baby out?”

  Antonio wished he had indeed filled Maria Helena’s belly. She’d be far superior to the dolphin girls, he was certain. It’d need just a little tact to prevent their secret from turning into gossip at the All Saints. The festa had begun to come alive, making it hard for him to spot the farm-sweet girl with a Castilian frame among the crowd milling into the square. The matadors had arrived to a loud cheer, and the first bets of the evening were about to be placed at the bullring. Coaxed by their fans, lazy fadistas had started to tune their guitars as fireworks would soon light up the sky and the Manueline shores of the Tagus, setting the stage for a memorable evening. It was time for a quick meal of sardines, and the two made their way over to the stalls lining Avenida da Liberdade. Smoke from the ovens stung their eyes, and Antonio cursed as he spotted the hospital matron. She was waving frantically at him over the crowd. What’s the old cow doing at the festa! He hoped it wasn’t yet another case of a half-dead pheasant. “I’ll shoot her before she finds one of those again.” He cocked his arm and feigned taking aim. There was a look of relief on the elderly woman’s face, as if she had expected to spend the whole night looking for a truant Dr. Maria. Making her way through the throngs she reached him and passed on a letter, which he read quickly then prepared at once to break free of the crowded stalls. Ricardo tapped him on the back with a puzzled look. “Leaving so early?” he called out to his friend, unable to keep pace with his quick strides. “Wait! Don’t you want to swim with the dolphins?”

  Rogue Ricardo couldn’t have guessed the reason for his sudden exit, or known about the unexpected letter written in the neat hand of a doctor jotting down his patient’s medical history in just a few lines. More a note than a letter, it had come from his father, calling him over to his retreat at Cabo São Vicente. Antonio knew his father well, knew the true weight of his short notes. He regretted missing his chance to examine what lay under Maria Helena’s whites and to listen to the fadistas who’d whip up a storm as the evening progressed. It was sad for the dolphin girls too because it had started to rain – a summer rain that was wasted on the crops, drenching everyone. The carnival’s clown looked like a crab wriggling its way into a hole; the monks like bunched sardines. The brides turned into grieving widows. The crowd fled into cafés and pastelarias as if a shark had invaded a shoal. Those who’d come prepared to shed their clothes afterward made fists at the clouds for forcing them to begin so soon. “You missed it, my friend!” Ricardo would tell him later about this unintended disrobing. By the time he left the city, the waterlogged square resembled a shallow pond crawling with a bunch of ugly drunken bathers.

  Antonio Maria spent the night in a carriage listening to the wheels creak, echoing the lament of the farmlands and virgin forests that had been cleared for the road and thrust back onto the horizon. His mind didn’t stop for a moment. Why has he called me back from the feast of St. Anthony? He had a whole night to examine the letter and decipher its secret. Why didn’t he come to Lisbon for his sardines? It took him back to the time when they’d both be on the grandstand to watch the fancy dressers, when his father would hoist him onto his shoulders at the bullring or join the crowd at Belém to catch the fireworks as grand caravels sailed out of Lisbon harbor. His destination reminded him too of the day when he had seen his father weeping among the cedars of Cabo São Vicente. He had followed him out of the house to ask about his mother, about her trip under the earth in a wooden box, tugged at his sleeves, run around him in circles, shouted into his face without an answer.

  “Come, Tino, we’ll visit your mother in her new home.” His father would say at every anniversary of her death, as if she might still wish to return to her old home, the air in the house still heavy with her breath, waiting for her to give form to her spirit. Even during his years in Coimbra at the Faculdade Medicina, he’d get a note from Dr. Alexander Henriques Maria to come home for his mother. Growing up, he was the father Antonio never missed, even though he was already a household name, doctor to the royals and to those who could pay only with their blessings. His father took him wherever he went – to the quintas of his rich patients, or riding in Sintra’s forests – the imposing Dr. Maria and his boy, both immaculately dressed like aristocrats.

  He’s his father’s replica, friends would say, both blessed with the very same dashing looks and the air of sweet insolence. Between the two, it had been a friendship of lonely men bonded by an absence. Ever since he had understood the irrevocable journey of the box carrying his mother, an unspoken partnership had taken root in the imagination of what might’ve been if she was alive. If they laughed out loud while sharing their raivas, it was in the knowledge that no one could better her cinnamon cookies or her pastéis de coco or the heavenly toucinho do céu for that matter; none replace her in their thoughts when they heard a clip-clopping hearse go by on frosty mornings.

  It was a friendship that had ripened with mischief. Teachers at the Faculdade treated the young Antonio with caution, reserving their complaints to give them to the senior doctor on his visits to see his son. He was too precious to be punished in ordinary ways, for brawling at the fencing ring or shouting down the lodge’s warden or shooting the principal’s pet pigeons. Their awe of his father meant that Antonio escaped the severest of punishments that were meted out to his friends, who’d wake the town at the crack of dawn on Festa das Latas, slamming on tin cans tied to their legs and marching down the thoroughfares of Coimbra to the surging Mondego for a mandatory splash. With the seriousness of a doctor noting his patient’s complaints, his father would listen to the nervous principal, then leave without prescribing a treatment.

  When Antonio was back for holidays, his faher would embrace him – an embrace he wouldn’t exchange for those of the world’s greatest beauties.

  His mind returned to the festa and to the matron holding out the letter. Did she know who it was from? Ther
e’d been gossip about his father’s absence from Lisbon. Why did the celebrated doctor abandon the All Saints where he was no less revered than Dom Manual and Dona Maria carved in stone on their pedestals? There was no shortage of lies spread by the wicked and the envious. He hadn’t paid much attention to rumors. He knew his father too well. Never one to complain, perhaps the weight of his patients had at last made him weary; he has grown tired of being a doctor, he thought.

  Arriving at their country home, Antonio slammed the carriage door behind him and felt his pulse quicken. He’d have his answer now, the mystery of the note solved in an instant by a pair of twinkling eyes. A light shone from a window, the rest of the house still as dark as the fields he had passed on his way. He marched down the corridor to the parlor, and heard the sound of breathing that came from inside.

  By the light held aloft by the housemaid Rosa Escobar, Antonio saw the room had been turned into a bedchamber and a study: a desk fitted in to allow the completion of everyday tasks with minimum effort; the medicine cabinet within easy reach, a porcelain bidet, a washstand, and a dresser with knickknacks. His father was resting, and he smelled the sweet smell of juniper berries burning in a coal scuttle. Wafting smoke formed a screen around the bed, making the room seem like a crypt in a monastery. Why has he turned his house into a hospital? Aware of his visitor, his father shifted on his side and turned to face him, the gas lamp lighting his face. A rosebud bloomed on his temple, tumescent, a drop of milk-white dew oozing from its heart and trickling down. His lips were skewered with sores and teeth blackened like soot. Lifeless eyes stared back from the face of a skeleton dug out from its grave.

  “What’s wrong?” Antonio shouted at the waxen Rosa Escobar. The elderly woman started to shake.

  He ripped open his father’s tunic in his haste to examine him. A field of roses blinded him, the red rash that covered the body from head to knee, sparing no part except the eyes. In places the buds had dried out into ugly scabs, like leopards’ spots, chafed and shriveled. Hideous lumps flattened the balls of his feet and his palms, joined his neck to his chin and sent a ripple across the chest. Pus oozed from fiery cysts. His back resembled a field of millet. A deep lesion on his forehead gaped like a dead crater. Eyebrows had disappeared, along with hair from his head and limbs; the nose turned into a one-holed flute. Saliva drooled through his gumless mouth, a tooth falling out when he parted his jaws to let out a howl. Antonio removed the covers fully and saw an abscess on the genitals resembling a flowering cactus, and testes that were far too swollen to hold in both hands. The stench of rotting flesh made him cover his nose.