The Last Empress - Anchee Min [38]
Beneath Alute's shy manners was a strong and willful mind, an unquiet character with a monstrous ambition.
My opponents made good use of Alute. It disgusted me to look at her father, who appeared to be harmless. I couldn't forgive a man who would encourage his daughter to kill herself. If this was how Alute was raised, it might be fortunate that she didn't have a child.
In Alute's imagination I had posed a great threat. She might have fantasized about her life as regent, and I was the only obstacle she needed to overcome. The way Alute worded her letter sounded confident. The fact that she had no doubt she was carrying a male child was in itself evidence of a mental disorder.
Grandchild or no grandchild, the possibility would continue to haunt me. What saddened me was that the death of her husband had aroused no sympathy in Alute. If she had truly loved Tung Chih, she wouldn't have murdered his child.
It hurt me to think of the possibility that my son was cheated out of his only love. The thought led me to other possibilities, such as the reasons behind Tung Chih's addiction to whores. Was it because he was denied affection? Tung Chih was no angel, but he was a child who had always been hungry for love.
I tried to stop my thoughts from dwelling on guilt. I told myself that Tung Chih and Alute were once true lovers and that should count and continue to count.
Before spring, an official accused me of "precipitating the Emperor's relapse." I paid no attention to this; the idea was ridiculous. What I didn't expect was that the story made its rounds and was picked up and published by a respected English journal. It made me the center of an international scandal—the prime suspect of Emperor Tung Chih's "murder."
"The loving Alute was visiting Tung Chih on his sickbed," the article read. "She complained about her mother-in-law's interfering and domineering ways, and she was happily looking forward to the day Tung Chih would be well again. It was at that moment the raging Dowager Empress Lady Yehonala entered. She rampaged through the room, seizing Alute by the hair and hitting her while Tung Chih suffered a terrible nervous crisis, which caused the fever to return and eventually to kill him."
13
I dreamed of ice floating on a lake in the midst of its melting, thin and fragile. The ice didn't look like ice but pieces of rice paper. Tung Chih had no idea what southern China's winter looked or felt like. He was used to the solid ice of Peking winters. He was never allowed to skate on the frozen palace lake; instead he watched his cousins play all day long. The most Tung Chih was allowed was to tie straw strings around his shoes so that he could walk on the ice with the help of his eunuchs.
In my childhood memory, winter was always cold and damp. When the northwest wind blew strong against the windows and made the panes rattle as though someone were knocking, Mother would announce that the coldest part of winter had arrived. Because the temperature never really dropped below freezing in the south, few of the houses had heaters.
I remember Mother taking out all of our winter clothes from cases made of sandalwood. We put on thick cotton jackets, hats and scarves, and everyone smelled of sandalwood. When it was cold in the house, people went out into the street to warm themselves under the sun. Unfortunately, most southern winters were sunless. The air was damp and the color of the sky remained gray until the season passed.
Today I woke in a well-heated room. Li Lien-ying was so grateful when I didn't push away my breakfast that he was almost in tears. He served me a southern-style meal: hot porridge with preserved tofu, root vegetables and peanuts, with roasted seaweed and sesame seeds. He told me that I had been ill and had slept around the clock.
I looked up and my neck felt stiff and achy. I noticed that the red lanterns in the room had been changed to white. Thoughts of Tung Chih returned, and my heart suffered a stabbing pain. I pushed to get myself up. My eyes caught a pile of documents lying