Empress Orchid

bit about pa kua? You can find out whether your child is a mountain type or an ocean type.”

As always, An-te-hai sensed just what it was I needed. He brought in an expert, “the most reputable in Peking,” my eunuch said. “He got past the gates because I disguised him as a garbage man.”

With the three of us shut up in my chamber, the man, who had one eye, read the sand paintings that he drew on a tray. What he said confused me and I tried hard to comprehend. “Pa kua will not work once it is explained,” he said. “The philosophy is in the senses.” An-te-hai was impatient and asked the man to “cut the fat.” The expert was turned into a village fortuneteller. He told me that there was a very good chance that my child would be a boy.

I lost interest in learning more about pa kua after that. The prediction set my heart racing. I managed to sit still and ordered the man to continue.

“I see the child has everything perfect except too much metal, which means he will be stubborn.” The man flipped the rocks and sticks he had spread out on the tray. “The boy’s best quality is that he is likely to pursue his dreams.” At this point the man paused. He raised his chin toward the ceiling and his eyebrows twitched. He squeezed his nose and blinked. Yellowish crust flaked from his empty eye socket. He stopped talking.

An-te-hai moved closer to him. “Here is a reward for your honesty,” my eunuch said, putting a bag of taels into the man’s large sleeve.

“The darkness,” the man immediately resumed, “is that his coming into the world will place a curse on a close family member.”

“Curse? What kind of curse?” An-te-hai asked before I could. “What will happen to this close family member?”

“She will die,” the man replied.

I drew a breath and asked why it was a she. The man had no answer for that and could tell me only that he had read the signs.

I begged him for a clue. “Will the she be me? Will I die in childbirth?”

The man shook his head and said that the picture was unclear at this point. He was unable to tell me more.

After the one-eyed man was gone, I tried to forget about the prediction. I told myself that he couldn’t prove what he had said. Unlike Nuharoo, who was a devoted Buddhist, I was not a religious person and never took superstition seriously. Everyone in the Forbidden City, it seemed, was obsessed with the idea of life after death, investing all their hopes in the next world. The eunuchs talked about coming back “in one piece,” while the concubines looked forward to having a husband and children of their own. The afterlife was part of Nuharoo’s Buddhist study. She was quite knowledgeable about what would happen to us after death. She said that after reaching the underworld, each person would be interrogated and judged. Those whose lives had been stained with sin were sentenced to Hell, where they would be boiled, fried, sawed or chopped to pieces. Those who were considered sinless got to begin a new life on earth. Not everyone came back to live the life he or she desired, however. The lucky were reborn as humans, the unlucky as animals-a dog, a pig, a flea.

The concubines in the Forbidden City, especially the senior ones, were extremely superstitious. Besides making yoo-hoo-loos and chanting, they spent their days mastering various kinds of witchcraft. To them, belief in the next life was itself a weapon. They needed the weapon to place curses on their rivals. They were very ingenious about the various fates they wished upon their enemies.

Nuharoo showed me a book called The Calendar of Chinese Ghosts, with vivid, bizarre illustrations. I was not unfamiliar with the material. I had heard every story it contained and had seen a hand-copied version in Wuhu. The book was used by storytellers in the countryside. Nuharoo was especially fascinated by “The Red Embroidered Shoes,” an old tale about a pair of shoes worn by a ghost.

As a child I had seen fortunetellers make false predictions that ruined lives. However, An-te-hai wanted to take no chances. I knew he worried that the ill-fated “she” would turn out to be me.

For the next few days his worry grew. He became melodramatic to the point of silliness. “Each day could be your last,” he mumbled one morning. He served me carefully, observing my every move. He sniffed the air like a dog and refused to shut his eyes at night. When I napped, he left the Forbidden City and came back to report that he had spent time with older village bachelors. Offering money, he asked the bachelors if they would like to adopt my unborn child.

I asked why he was doing so.

An-te-hai explained that since my boy would bear a curse, it was our duty to spread the curse to other people. According to The Book of Superstition, if enough people were to bear the curse, it would lose its effect. “The bachelors are eager to have someone carry on their family name,” my eunuch said. “Don’t worry, my lady. I did not reveal who the boy was, and the adoption is an oral contract only.”

I praised An-te-hai’s loyalty and told him to stop. But he wouldn’t. The next day I saw him bowing to a crippled dog as it passed by the garden. On another day he got down on his knees and kowtowed to a bundled pig on its way to the temple to be sacrificed.

“We must undo the curse,” An-te-hai said. “Paying respect to the crippled dog acknowledges that it had suffered. Someone had beaten it and broken its bones. Such animals serve as a substitute, reducing the power of the curse, if not transferring it to others.” After the pig was slaughtered, An-te-hai believed that I would be released, for I, in the spirit of the pig, had become a ghost.

Early one morning news broke throughout the Imperial household: Grand Empress Lady Jin had passed away.

An-te-hai and I couldn’t help but conclude that there must be something to pa kua. Another strange incident took place that morning. The glass housing of the clock in the Hall of Spiritual Nurturing shattered when the clock struck nine. The court astrologer explained that Lady Jin’s death was brought on because she had been too eager to invest in her longevity. She loved the number nine. She had celebrated her forty-ninth birthday by draping her bed with red ropes and silk sheets embroidered with forty-nine Chinese nines.

“She had been sick but was not expected to die until she got weighted down by the nines,” the astrologer said.

By the time my palanquin arrived at Lady Jin’s palace the body had already been washed. She was moved from her bedroom to lin chuang, a “soul bed,” which was in the shape of a boat. Her Majesty’s feet were tied with red strings. She was dressed in a full-length silver court robe embroidered with symbols of every kind. There were fortune wheels, representing the principles of the universe; seashells in which one could hear the voice of the Buddha; oil-paper umbrellas that protected the seasons from flood and drought; vials that held the fluid of wisdom and magic; lotus flowers representing generations of peace; goldfish for balance and grace; and finally the symbol, which stood for infinity. A golden sheet printed with Buddhist scriptures wrapped her from chest to knees.

A palm-sized mirror with a long handle was placed beside Her Majesty. It was said to protect the dead from being disturbed by mean-spirited ghosts. The mirror would reflect the ghosts’ own images. Because most ghosts had no idea what they looked like, they would expect to see themselves as they were when alive. Instead, the evil things they had done in the past would have transformed them into skeletons, grotesque monsters or worse. The mirror would shock them into retreat.

Lady Jin’s head looked like a big pile of dough from all the powder on her face. An-te-hai told me that in her last days boils had erupted all over her face. In the record, her doctor wrote that the “buds” on Her Majesty’s body “bloomed” and produced “nectar.” The boils were black and green, like a rotten potato sprouting shoots. The whole Forbidden City gossiped that it must have been the work of her former rival, Empress Chu An.

Lady Jin’s face had been smoothed and patched with powder from ground pearls. If one looked closely, however, one could still detect the bumps. On the right side of Her Majesty’s head was a tray with a golden ceramic bowl. This contained her last earthly meal, rice. On the left stood a large burning oil lamp, the “eternal light.”

I went with Nuharoo and Emperor Hsien Feng’s other wives to view the body. We were all dressed in white silk gowns. Nuharoo wore makeup but without the rouge dot on her lower lip. She burst into tears when she saw Lady Jin. She pulled a piece of lace from her hair and bit it with her teeth in order to hold back her emotions. I was moved by her sadness and offered her my hand. We stood shoulder to shoulder before the dead Empress.

A mourning troupe arrived. They cried in various styles. The sound was more like singing than crying. It