Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823) Read online

  “You’re quite a hit!” Polly had whispered to him before he left. “Barely two seasons in China and they think you’re as good as a seasoned wolf!”

  Feeling the heat of Peking’s notorious summer, Antonio thought about the biggest mystery of the party, the mystery of the “Horseman.” He was struck most by the fact that everyone seemed to know all about Xu, and open to sharing their gossip with others. Is it simply gossip or the truth? He wondered if indeed his teacher was a friend of the Boxers, or if it was just a story made up by anxious officers. Does he really have a hospital full of patients? Perhaps he should’ve stayed back and found out more about Xu, collected enough facts and gossip to challenge him when he reappeared at his pavilion. He wondered too what Ricardo would’ve said if he had heard him resisting Polly Hart’s invitation to spend a night at the Legation. You’re dying for your Fumi! Rogue Ricardo would’ve teased him. It’s her exotic ivory skin and slanted eyes, the strangest that you’ve had. Lips you’ve never had the pleasure to kiss. It’ll pass, like the infatuation with mulattas or Arab women.

  Fumi had told him the same, the morning he left for the Legation. “You’ll be among your own.” She had risen from bed and was gazing out at the scorching sun, filling their courtyard with light. “You’ll forget me.”

  He watched her slip on her robe, trying to shred it with his eyes. Like a phantom she floated around him, peered through the rice paper panes to see if his sedan had arrived. Even with eyes shut, he couldn’t keep her out of his sight.

  “Once you’re among foreigners, you’ll see me the same way they do.”

  “See you as what?” He made a vain attempt to catch her as she wafted past him.

  “As a Chinese. Just another one of them, like your eunuchs.” She shrugged. “You’ll have your own friends there, you won’t miss anything. Might even decide to stay back, and have Xu visit you at the Legation for your lessons.”

  He picked up her string of pearls and threw them at her. “Come with me then.”

  “To the party?” She raised an eyebrow. “What will you tell them if they ask about me?”

  “You’re my teacher, a Nei ching master.”

  “And?”

  “A bird catcher.”

  She feigned a look of surprise. “You won’t tell them everything, will you?”

  “The one who kills with poison.”

  He remembered the look of surprise on Tian and Wangsheng’s faces when they’d found him with Fumi at his lodge the night before. He had left the door open by mistake, and they feared an intruder had come with evil intentions. Entering, they had expected to see a battle scene: broken vases and upturned chests; goose-feather from the bloodstained beddings floating in air like clouds. A battlefield they had found; gusts through the open window had smashed the celadon bowls filled with burning camphor. The ant army had drowned and floated on rainwater in a shallow pool under the window. At the center of the storm, they had found the two of them fast asleep like a pair of dead swans.

  The older eunuch had draped a robe over the lovers and bade his junior leave with a stern flick of his head.

  Returning on the sedan, Antonio imagined Fumi’s arms entwined with his. “Not a bird catcher, but a goose killer!” She had told him about her life growing up among peasants, learning to keep house, to weave and sew her own clothes, living far from palaces and foreigners. Like Antonio she had come to Peking on a barge with her husband, her worthless husband who had failed to please his mandarin master. “He collected more demerits than merits, and left a year later without me to go home.”

  “What happened to you then?”

  “I had no choice but to stay back in Peking. The Ladies Society saved me from the wolves. A kind Dutch lady took me into her home for abandoned wives.”

  “Was she the printer’s wife?”

  Fumi had shaken her head. “No, his sister.” Miss de Graff knew nothing about printing. She gave me and twelve others room and board, and taught us to read and write English.” Her teacher, she said, scared them with her blond hair and deep-set blue eyes, but she was motherly toward her wards although she had never had children of her own. What she taught them was good enough to find them work in foreign shops, teach Chinese to Western wives, or help missionaries at their field hospitals, even join the empress’s service to keep her apprised of the happenings of the world. The opium wars had just ended and Peking was full of travelers – diplomats, reporters and petty merchants – and the society’s students were much in demand.

  “Why didn’t you go back to look for your husband and help him with his merits?”

  “Because Miss de Graff sent me off to her brother to learn to work with my hands.”

  Reaching his pavilion, Antonio searched for his two friends but the kitchen was empty. He wondered if they’d return to serve him his late rice. The brazier’s wick had died, and the plum wine tasted cold. He remembered Fumi’s words.

  “I’d have gone wherever she sent me, but with Jacob I stopped worrying over my daily rice.”

  The mad printer had become her teacher and friend. He came to China, the birthplace of printing, with his European gift, a Koenig’s machine capable of churning out hundreds of pages daily. Jacob de Graff dreamed of producing the Bible in numbers large enough to fill the appetites of the traveling missionaries. He had taught Fumi everything he knew about the secret recipes of ink and the magic art of making pictures by lithography.

  “Did you love him?”

  Antonio didn’t know what to make of her reply. “How do you love someone who has no need for love?”

  You’re dying for your Fumi! He smiled, nodding his head and agreeing with his absent friend. How quickly she had become his, barely a month after they had met in the early days of summer, which was now reaching its peak. He knew of men who suffered from love and went into profound depression as they floated down the currents of hell. At the hospital they’d be bled, especially if the patient was delirious, then dispatched to an asylum as there was no cure for heartaches. His teachers hadn’t taught him a cure for lovesickness, a disease no less mysterious than the rarest of female disorders. The symptoms alarmed him, whenever he was alone without Fumi. He felt hardly more alive than the stone animals on days when she failed to meet him at the pavilion or in the palace gardens as planned, as lonely as on nights when he’d stay awake hoping to see his dead mother, filled with a strangeness that matched his surroundings. Watching the royal sedan rush past the palace gates, he wondered if the empress had decided to take Fumi away with her, if he’d ever see her again before he left Peking.

  She cured all his symptoms, became the empress, the invisible revealed in flesh, turning him into a willful prisoner. They’d been lovers for just a short while, and it puzzled him to think how quickly he had fallen into suffering for Fumi; how much he sought the relief of her simple cure.

  Back from the Legation he recalled the very first day when he had faced her in the courtyard and listened to her birdlike voice. He’d had to draw his mind back from his daydreaming to answer her sharp questions. It was Fumi who had brought the courtyard into the lodge soon after the night of delicious poisoning. Now he woke to her voice as she scolded the attendants for delaying his morning tea, for forgetting to empty the vats and refill them with warm water for his bath. She’d pull down the sheets, and rub his feet to circulate blood in the veins. Like a morning bird, she talked to him incessantly about things he could hardly remember. He’d trap her in an unguarded moment, draw her under the covers. They’d puzzle the eunuchs, staying indoors for hours, scare Tian with their cries, and the deathly silence that followed, turning the bath-water cold in the vats.

  She taught him how best to please her, how to regulate his breath and keep still, how to read her without even touching. “A woman’s right pulse indicates disorder; her left, order.” She slipped her right hand into his palm one morning after the lessons. “Tell me what’s suffering, which organ?”

  “The organs are healthy.” He playe
d along, reciting her words back to her. “It’s the extreme heat in the fourth channel that has woken the yin, causing fever, thirst and sweating.”

  She gave him a worried look. “Heat?”

  “Like fire.” Antonio nodded gravely.

  “What should the Nei ching master do then?”

  He feigned alarm. “It’s the severest of troubles, and requires the boldest treatment.” Then he traced her fourth channel with his fingertip, from the heel of her right foot up the snowy calf and the silken thigh, paused at the base of her hips and made her squirm, changing course suddenly to explore yet another mysterious channel.

  “Wait! Let me show you. …” She drew him out of the lodge after the attendants had left, and made him lie on the bed of leaves under the bare trees, pulling off his robes and mounting him like a horseman, determined to ride her charge through gusty winds and the blinding sun. She shut his mouth with her palm, and stroked him with her pointed fingers, holding him as firmly as she’d hold the staff of a sword, stretching her arm behind her back and whispering words of consolation that grew into a continuous flow of nocturnal sounds. A dead leaf fell on his forehead as she kissed his eyes and eyebrows, his lips, kissed his heart and the hollow under his neck, holding the throbbing vein between her teeth. As she started to gallop, he thought he’d die of the heat that burned every channel and set fire to the bed of leaves.

  He didn’t remember how and when Fumi had turned into his lover, the memory of his sickness holding no clue to that single episode that had changed everything since his arrival; how quickly she had melted his resolve, how easily the barrier had been broken between the courtyard and the lodge, drawing in the pond and the flowering plum that turned the pavilion into a secret garden within the walls of the Summer Palace.

  Tired after his journey, Antonio drank the cold wine out of habit and slumped on the bed that still smelled of his absent lover. He imagined her teasing him with kisses like the solitary beetle that climbed up his toe.

  “Do you know what they’re saying?” Fumi nudged Antonio, and pointed at Tian, who was feeding the birds.

  “What?”

  “They’re talking about us.”

  Antonio thought his attendants were complaining over his morning habits made worse by Fumi’s visits. He knew they were being watched, because the kitchen fell silent as they emerged from the lodge. Two pairs of eyes burned their backs; the birds too stopped twittering in their cage. Calls for tea brought Wangsheng and Tian scrambling back to life. They filled and refilled the bathroom vat with warm water, ignoring the fact that their guest preferred to take a dip in the pond to keep cool in the hot mornings. Modesty prevented them from entering his bedchamber, and they rushed about to finish their errands as swiftly as possible to leave their guest alone with his teacher.

  “They can stop worrying over my bath.” Antonio spoke gruffly.

  “They’re saying we are the only lovers in the thousand pavilions of the Summer Palace. Wangsheng is telling his young friend what to expect.”

  “To expect more trouble?” Antonio guessed.

  “With lovers no one knows anything for certain. Not even they know themselves. He’s telling Tian to be prepared for nothing, just like in a circus. Don’t expect to see an elephant, for you might see the clown instead!”

  “What if they don’t like what they see? What if word reaches the …”

  “You mean the empress?” Fumi stopped to think for a moment, then went on. “She was once in love too, betrothed to her cousin before she entered the palace as a concubine.”

  “And Xu?” He had avoided bringing up the Chinese doctor. How long would it be before he returned from the North and resumed his lessons with him? He thought he’d tell Fumi about the festival of insects, about catching sight of him in the singsong. Was he really away? He hides the rebels in his hospital. … He wondered if he should ask Fumi about Yohan’s remark.

  “Xu shouldn’t mind as long as you’re busy with your lessons.” She dismissed his worries with a shake of the head. “He’ll be proud to know how much you’ve learned in such a short time.”

  “Unless, of course, he’s too busy himself to care about his student.” Antonio quipped.

  Fumi gave him a surprised look. “Too busy with what?”

  He thought he should confide fully in Fumi about what he’d heard at the party. “With the patients of his hospital. Maybe others even.”

  Fumi gave him a questioning look. “Which others?”

  “He’s known to be friendly with the rebels. Maybe he’s left to help them fight foreigners.”

  “Rebels! You mean the Boxers? Is that what your friends have told you?” Fumi scoffed at the thought. “To foreigners every Chinese is a rebel. Have they told you I’m a rebel too, that you’re in love with a Boxer?”

  Antonio burst out laughing. “Yes, they’ve advised me to escape with her before trouble starts.”

  “Escape?” She exclaimed. “Escape where?”

  He made the sign of a sailing ship riding the waves, and a captain peering through his telescope.

  “You want to take me back with you?” Fumi looked out of the window. “Why don’t you live here, become a Nei ching master and treat your friends at the Legation?”

  Antonio shook his head. “They don’t want to know.” Lying back on his bed, he started to tell Fumi about the Legation characters, the men and women “of his own kind” who had appeared even stranger to him than the Chinese. “There’s a merchant who pretends to know more than a doctor, a champion archer who thinks he’s a scholar, a banker who’s really a soldier, and a spy who can’t keep a single secret to himself.”

  “And your hostess? Was she pretending to be someone else too?”

  “No, she’s more than what I thought she was, surrounded though, as she is, by her masquerading friends.” He smiled at Fumi. “Not even your Nei ching could cure Casanova’s itch, straighten Cedric Hart’s spine or turn Mr. Itami into a bird!”

  Fumi sighed. “All the foreigner wants is rhubarb to soften his bowels.”

  It’d be far better taking her back with him than suffering the Legation’s garden parties, Antonio thought. Dona Elvira would approve, he was certain, her Tino turned at last into a proper Eastern gentleman. “You aren’t a real casado until you’ve taken a native woman as your wife,” he could hear her say – feel her hand on his cheek as she mothered him with her delicacies. “She’ll be more than a “sleeping dictionary,” more than a “traveling woman” made of soft goat leather. She’ll be mother to the mongrels who’ll carry your name!” Even Dom Afonso wouldn’t object, used as he was to sailors jumping ship to marry fiery Malabar women, and lowly paid officers paying back their debt to kind Chinese merchants by tying the knot with long-suffering spinsters of their household. “The future belongs to mongrels.” He’d bless Antonio and Fumi with his tired eyes then return to his cartographic readings. Antonio’s face clouded as he thought of Dona Elvira’s counsel that’d surely follow her blessings. “Whatever you do, don’t take her back home. Even your friends will sneer at her, disapprove of her looks and the cut of her evening dress. She’ll kill your reputation the minute you step off the boat.”

  “Why don’t you then teach the Chinese how to use your tools?” Fumi pointed to the surgical box. “Just like Jacob taught me how to work the printing press.”

  He looked at her closely at the mention of Jacob de Graff. What else did the printer teach her?

  “You can teach Xu how to use a knife. Do you know what the Chinese say about a wounded soldier? Why save his life when he’ll eat a full man’s meal and live like a cripple? Maybe you can …”

  “Tell me about Jacob. What did he want from you for saving your life?”

  Fumi smiled. “To be a good student like you, and learn as fast as I could. He was in a hurry to teach me everything, as if he knew what was going to happen, that there was no time to waste.”

  Jacob, Fumi said, was more a linguist than a pastor. A linguist and en
gineer who believed in the power of science to quicken the spread of the gospel. Living among villagers, he had formed his own system for learning the local dialect and devised a script to teach the Chinese their own language. “He taught grandmothers to read for the very first time, taught illiterate peasants and their children, wanted to convert their minds along with their souls.” Fellow pastors complained over his neglect of church work, as he devoted himself to translating Western books to Chinese, starting with mathematics, the mother of all knowledge. “Mechanics, optics, chemistry, astronomy … he wanted to teach everything to the Chinese, but printing the Bible got him into trouble.”

  “Is that all he wanted?” Antonio asked.

  “It took me seven years to understand what he really wanted, but his enemies weren’t prepared to wait that long.”

  His preaching drew fewer converts than his mathematics, she said, but aroused bitter opposition from the mandarins. “They accused him of damaging China with the West’s vulgar knowledge. Even his friends thought he had crossed the line.”

  “Did the mandarins kill him in the end?”

  A shadow passed over her face, and she shook her head. “There were more rumors than facts about his killers. It was easy to blame the Boxers, but they hadn’t warned him with the sign of the bleeding hand. It wasn’t the work of a riotous mob, but men he may have known. Maybe …”

  “Were you there when he died?”

  “No, he’d sent me away from the Press to my hovel nearby. He gave me his favorite books to keep. I thought he wanted to save them from rats that raided the ink vats drawn by the sweet smell. Maybe he knew what was to happen that night.”