Empress Orchid - Anchee Min [135]
This time I decided not to give in. I insisted that he attend his classes. I told Nuharoo that I would check with the tutors regarding Tung Chih’s homework. But I was disappointed. The head tutor begged me to release him from Tung Chih.
“His Young Majesty threw paper balls and knocked off my glasses,” the rabbit-toothed tutor reported. “He will not listen. Yesterday he made me eat a strange-tasting cookie. Afterward he told me that he had dipped the cookie in his own waste.”
I was shocked at the way Tung Chih ruled his classroom. But what concerned me more was his interest in Nuharoo’s ghost books. He stayed up late to listen to her stories of the underworld. He got so scared that he would wet his bed at night. Yet he was so drawn to those stories that they became an addiction. When I interfered by taking the picture books away, he fought with me.
Tung Chih was willing to do anything to get away from me. First he pretended to be sick in order to avoid his classes. When I caught him, Nuharoo would come to his defense. She even secretly ordered Doctor Sun Pao-tien to lie about the “fever” that kept him out of school.
If this was the way we prepared Tung Chih to be the next emperor, the dynasty was doomed. I decided to take the matter into my own hands. In my eyes, the situation was of national significance. All I knew was that my time was running out.
Every day I escorted my son to his tutors and then waited outside until the classes were over. Nuharoo was upset that I didn’t trust her, but I was too angry to worry about her feelings. I wanted to change Tung Chih before it was too late.
Tung Chih knew how to play Nuharoo and me off each other. He knew that I couldn’t deny his visiting Nuharoo, so he went as often as he could, to make me jealous. Unfortunately I fell into his trap. And he continued to cause trouble in school. One day he pulled out the rabbit-toothed tutor’s two longest eyebrow hairs. He knew full well that the old man regarded them as his “longevity sign.” The man was so crushed, he was seized by a stroke and sent home for good. Nuharoo saw the incident as a comedy. I didn’t agree, and intended to punish my son for his cruelty.
The court replaced the old tutor with a new one, but he was fired by his student the first day on the job. Tung Chih’s stated reason was that the man farted during lessons. He charged the tutor with “disrespect for the Son of Heaven.” The man was whipped. Upon hearing this, Nuharoo praised Tung Chih for “acting like a true ruler,” while I was shattered.
The more I pressed, the worse Tung Chih rebelled. Instead of supporting me, the court asked Nuharoo to “watch over” my “outrageous behavior.” I wondered if Su Shun was behind it. Tung Chih now had no problem talking back to me in front of the eunuchs and the maids. He was good with words. Sometimes he sounded too sophisticated for a five-year-old. He would say, “How low of you to deny my nature!” or “I am an endowed animal!” or “It’s wrong for you to put me to sleep in order to play the tamer!”
I had heard the same from Nuharoo: “Allow Tung Chih to journey forth, Lady Yehonala” and “He is a traveler who understands the universe. He thinks not of himself, but of the voyage, of dreams and of the soul of the Buddha’s spirituality” and “Throw your keys to the winds, and leave his cage open!”
I began to doubt her intentions. There had always been something perverse about her approach to Tung Chih. No matter what he did, she was always the loving one. I realized that unless I stopped Nuharoo, I wouldn’t be able to stop Tung Chih. For me the struggle had turned into a battle to save my son. I spent days thinking about how to talk to her. I wanted to be firm about my intentions without injuring her pride. I wanted her to understand