Finally he was admitted to my presence.
“Why, Mr. Liu,” I said, “what brings you here?”
I must say, he was looking very old and tired and bent, and really quite beaten. Not at all the old Mr. Liu I remembered.
“I thought you might know,” he said. I wonder how many people he’d already been forced to say that to.
“There’s a rumor going around that you have suffered a great loss,” I told him. “A terrible loss.”
“Terrible, indeed. I do not need to tell you what it means.”
“Quite,” I said. “But I don’t see how I can help you.”
He looked at me. His eyes were pleading. “If there is anything…” he offered. “I would pay…”
“When I heard about this,” I said, “I was curious. Either someone bears him a grudge, I thought, or there is ransom money involved. Has anyone asked for ransom money?”
“Nobody. I thought of that. But there has been no demand.”
“All the same,” I continued, “that doesn’t mean that someone wouldn’t be prepared to part with your balls—having made you suffer—for a sum of money.”
“How should I go about finding them?”
“Inside the palace, you knew everything. Outside, you know very little. But I am a merchant. Give me a little time and I will make some inquiries. I promise nothing, but come back in a month.” Then I dismissed him.
—
He came back in a month. The moment I was told he was waiting outside, I sent a servant with a message to a certain young fellow whom I trusted to run discreet errands for me. Before Mr. Liu was ushered in, the young fellow was on his way to the Temple of Prosperity, where he left the package containing the jar with Mr. Liu’s private parts with the abbot, to be given to Mr. Liu on his return. Before they even had time to ask who he was, he’d disappeared into the street.
Mr. Liu looked quite unwell, I must say. He was all in. He gazed sadly at my face, and seeing no encouragement, he seemed quite to shrivel up.
“No news, then?” he said, as if he knew the answer.
“There is news,” I answered. “I believe your jar will be returned.”
“You do?” He brightened. “Truly?”
“I hope so. It will cost money.”
“Tell me how much.”
I shook my head. “You can’t afford it.”
He didn’t like that.
“I assure you…” he started.
“I know you have money, Mr. Liu. But I am a merchant and a rich man. Your problem and its price are not significant to me.”
“If there is anything I can do…” he began again.
“Yes,” I said. “There is. For old times’ sake.” I savored the moment. “Get down on your knees and kowtow.”
“Kowtow?”
“You remember how to, I’m sure. As you did to the emperor. Kowtow.”
“This is sacrilege,” he cried.
“Do you want your balls back? Yes or no? Kowtow.”
Slowly he went down on his knees. He looked up. There was a flash of the old Mr. Liu in his eyes now. “You want to humiliate me,” he hissed.
“There is no one to see,” I answered blandly.
He made the first kowtow.
“It was you,” he cried. “You all along.” His instincts were still good.
“No, it wasn’t,” I replied calmly. “I have no idea how I could have accomplished such a thing if I’d even thought of it. This is an opportunity that fate has unexpectedly thrown in my way. But when I think,” I went on, “of all you have done to me in the past, it’s a very small penalty that I’m exacting. Had I actually planned all this,” I added for good measure, “you’d never have got your balls back at all.”
That shut him up.
“Kowtow again,” I said.
AFTERWORD
Students of Chinese history will be aware of a problem: What was really going on in the court during the long years of Cixi’s effective rule? The confusion has been made worse by one man in particular. I refer of course to Edmund Backhouse. His accounts of the court and his scandalous memoirs make vivid reading, and were used in popular histories for decades. But are they total inventions of his imagination, gossip from the city street, or partly reliable? Nobody knows. He was an extraordinary linguist and bibliophile, certainly. Some of his stories I personally do not believe. But as a novelist with a sense of duty to history, what was I to do?
My solution was technical: I employed a third person, my character Lacquer Nail, to be the narrator of the Forbidden City and Summer Palace sections of the story. A narrator who had his own distinctive point of view and who might or might not be totally reliable. I had fun with this most useful character, and I hope that both general readers and students of China’s history will feel that my efforts were worthwhile.
And since Edmund Backhouse was indeed present during the siege of the legations, I gave him a part to play as well, based on things he actually did, together with a few imagined interactions with my fictional characters. I also could not resist giving him a small, entirely fictitious part in my final chapter. After all, I thought, if he can invent things, then I can invent things, too!
There remain a pair of mysteries. How did the emperor, Cixi’s nephew, die? There seems to be a general consensus nowadays that he was probably poisoned by palace eunuchs. I have allowed my fictional eunuch, Lacquer Nail, to claim the honor for himself.
And what of Cixi during her final years: Had she a plan? What was she trying to achieve? There has been some controversy recently, following the publication of Jung Chang’s biography of Cixi. Through the mouth of my narrator, Lacquer Nail, I have offered my own best guess, for what it is worth.
