Empress Orchid - Anchee Min [81]
The other man whose opinion Emperor Hsien Feng valued was Prince Kung. The Emperor once painfully admitted to me that his own talent was nowhere equal to Prince Kung’s. His other half-brothers, Prince Ts’eng and Prince Ch’un, were no match for Prince Kung either. Ts’eng was known as “a loser who thinks himself a winner,” and Ch’un as “honest but not too bright.”
I disagreed with my husband at first. Prince Kung’s seriousness and argumentative nature could be alienating. But as I got to know Kung, my view of him gradually changed. He thrived on challenges. Emperor Hsien Feng was too delicate, sensitive and, most of all, deeply insecure. Not everyone saw this, though, for he usually hid his fear beneath a mantle of arrogance and decisiveness. When it came to dealing with loss, Hsien Feng’s mind was rooted in fatalism. His brother looked down a more optimistic path.
It was strange spending time with both men. Like millions of other girls in China, I had grown up hearing stories of their private lives. Before Big Sister Fann filled in the details, I knew the general outlines of Empress Chu An’s tragic death. When Hsien Feng described it to me in his own words, it sounded flat and even false. He had no memory of a farewell scene with his mother. “No eunuch stood outside holding the white silk rope to hurry her on her way.” His Majesty’s tone was plain and undisturbed. “My mother put me to sleep, and by the time I woke they said she was dead. I never saw her again.”
To Emperor Hsien Feng the tragedy was a way of life, while to me it was a sad opera. The child Hsien Feng must have suffered grievously, and he continued to suffer as a man. But he would not allow himself to truly feel this; perhaps he no longer could.
The Emperor once told me that the Forbidden City was nothing more than a burning straw hut in a vast wilderness.
The palanquin bearers climbed the hills slowly. Behind us, eunuchs carried a cow, a goat and a deer tied up with ropes. The path was steep. Sometimes we had to get out of the chairs and walk. After we arrived at the ancestral site, the eunuchs set up an altar and laid out incense, food and wine. Emperor Hsien Feng bowed to the sky and spoke the same monologue he had delivered many times before.
Kneeling beside him, I knocked my forehead on the ground and prayed that his father would show mercy. Not long before, Hsien Feng wanted to use An-te-hai’s pigeons to send messages to his father in Heaven. He had his eunuchs replace the whistle pipes with notes to his father, which he had carefully composed himself. Naturally nothing came of it.
I hoped that the Emperor would be able to redirect his energy in more practical ways. Returning from the temple, he told me that he would like to visit his brother Prince Kung at the prince’s residence, the Garden of Discerning, about two miles down the path. It almost made me think that his father’s spirit was at work. I asked if I could continue on with him. When he said yes, I was excited. I had seen Prince Kung but had never spoken with him.
Hsien Feng’s palanquin was as large as a room. Its sides were made of satin the color of the sun. Inside we were bathed in soft yellow light. I turned to His Majesty.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
I smiled. “I wonder what’s on the Son of Heaven’s mind.”
“I’ll show you what’s on my mind,” he said as his hands groped between my thighs.
“Not here, Your Majesty.” I pushed him away.
“Nobody stops the Son of Heaven.”
“The bearers will know.”
“So what?”
“A rumor will be born and walk off on its own legs. Tomorrow morning Her Majesty the Grand Empress will spit when mentioning my name at her breakfast table.”
“Didn’t she do the same with my father?”
“No, Your Majesty, I am not going to do it with you.”
“I’ll make you.”
“Wait until we get to the palace, please?”
He pulled me to him. I struggled and tried to get away.
“You don’t want me, Orchid? Think about it. I am offering you my seeds.”
“Are you talking about those cooked seeds? The seeds that you told