The Courtesan (20 page)

Sie sind keine Christen,
she told her mother. They aren't even Christians. They don't go to church on Sunday.

Every day that she is here she looks more peaked than the day before,
Resi writes now about the new mistress, laboring over her script and spelling, not that her mother would know, writing in the smallest of letters so as not to be wasteful of the writing paper. She is careful not to smear the ink, and when she has written a whole page on both sides she turns the letter a quarter turn and writes the next lines crosswise.

There is so much to tell.

It is the lack of fresh air that ails my mistress,
Resi writes.
She
spends the days locked in these apartments like a creature in the jailhouse. She should go out into the clean, fresh air and take some exercise, take a ride in the carriage. Go to the Vienna Woods or the Prater. The snowdrops are out already. I am sure she would like to see them. But the arme Hascherl, the poor little thing, says her husband won't let her go out. It seems that proper Chinese ladies must stay always inside the apartments.

Did I tell you, Mother, that I am teaching her German? She is an excellent pupil and asks me all day long—was ist das? Und das? Und das?

Resi has to search to find a place to write—
From your loving and obedient daughter, Resi.
The letter will be hard to read with all this crossways writing and the small letters, and now there is a bit of a smear where the ink was not dry. She didn't mention Bastl, the chimney sweep with the black hat and the beautiful smile—and what a strong and handsome fellow he is. There isn't room, but soon she must approach this subject. Mother still has hopes for Sepp, the neighbor's boy who stinks of his mother's
Gulasch
and sometimes of her washing rags.

BETTER TO LIGHT A CANDLE

Jinhua

According to the Fourteen Points of Regulation of the Comportment of an Emissary—which Jinhua read once when Wenqing left it on the dining table—
no detail is too minute to be Observed, Considered, and Reported.

Jinhua opens the Diplomatic Diary that Wenqing is required to keep in accordance with one of the Fourteen Points. She has been reading the diary in secret. Wenqing is out today, away somewhere, visiting a school or a cannon factory or perhaps a church.

She cannot remember which it is.

It is the 10th Day of the Second Month in the Twelfth Year of the Guangxu Reign. Today the weather is cold and foggy. According to the Western calendar it is the 4th day of March and the year is 1887. I have spent the day in the Imperial Library at the Hofburg and have been reviewing documents and maps regarding the Russian seizure of Heilongjiang in 1858, the
Eighth Year of the Xianfeng Emperor. The region is known to the Russians as Amur Krai—

Jinhua turns to another bone-colored page filled with the perfect columns of Wenqing's writing.

The 11th Day of the Second Month—

Today I met with Graf Kálnoky, the Austrian Foreign Minister. We discussed the European system of treaty alliances, which includes the League of the Three Emperors. This is a complex and seemingly ineffective method of preventing wars. Graf Kálnoky said—You Chinese must open your doors to the West or else the English will come yet again with their battleships and force the taking of more and more of your territory and your sovereignty. And the French, the Germans, the Americans, the Russians will not be far behind, he said. He says he regrets to mention that the Austrians too, for reasons of trade and strategy, may wish to participate—

My response to the Foreign Minister was that he and his Counterparts from other European nations might be wise to consider Other Possibilities, by which I meant, and I do believe that Graf Kálnoky understood my meaning, that the Foreign Intruders might one day be forcibly expelled from the domains of the mighty Qing—

Another entry reads—

Today in Vienna snow has fallen to the depth of the sole of my boot. For the edification of my Esteemed Colleagues in the Foreign Office, I will write about the nature of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. It is comprised of many smaller lands
inhabited by people of many races, some more civilized, according to the European standards, than others. In the southern region there are the Latins who speak the Italian language. In the north are the Teutons, who speak German, and in the east are the Slavic and Magyar peoples—it is not clear to me what it is that binds these lands together in a so-called Empire—or how they mutually understand one another.

Jinhua keeps reading. Wenqing would not allow this, of course, but the diary in her lap is a window into the outside world that Wenqing visits but that is forbidden to her. And so she reads when he is not at home and when no one is looking, and she reads with great appetite.

Not even Resi knows that she is doing this.

The most important aspects here are religion and trade and the desire for material and military progress. I observe this daily in my efforts to understand the ways of the Europeans.

In Europe, to elevate themselves in wealth is what all men strive for. From this way of thinking comes competition—and war—and nothing that is civilized to our way of thinking.

Sitting curled in a chair by the window, Jinhua has lost track of time. The chair is fat and thickly upholstered. It swallows her up, and it swallows up time, and she is the way Wenqing is when he writes in the diaries; his concentration is perfect; he sits straight-backed and quite still, and so does she as she reads.

I believe that there is much we each do not understand of the other, we Chinese and the men of Europe. Each side has a way of thinking that is reasonable only to those of their own kind.
The Europeans speak of Blut und Eisen, blood and iron, and this they think of as the language of peace. I do not yet understand the nature of their quarrels with one another, but everyone is afraid of war from this side or that side or both sides—and still they speak of blood and iron.

She finds the note tucked underneath the chair cushion. The paper is red, and it is creased and crumpled. She spreads it flat, and the characters written on it are very, very small, and this note has traveled a great distance.

Jinhua reads and knows she should not.

To My Husband on the Day of My Death,

When She died you were Chaste. Think of this.

The note is signed,
Your First Wife, Who Loves and will never Betray You,
and Jinhua says,
“Ò,”
aloud and only to herself, and as she reads the note that is not hers to read, Madam Hong's dusky, staring eyes have returned to watch her.

Today Wenqing is traveling. North to Berlin, which is in Prussia. He left just moments ago—Herr Swoboda is taking him to the train—and when she can no longer see the carriage from her window, Jinhua goes back to the room with the deep green walls—his barbarian library, Wenqing calls it; he says that overbearing color spoils his mood,
something must be done.

The invitation to Berlin came several weeks ago. Interpreter
Ma had written a translation on a fine piece of paper, rimmed in gold. The original was a card, also fine, and it had a black bird on the front that looked more like a dragon than a bird, with frayed wings and clawed feet and a tail shaped like a spear. “It is an eagle, a ferocious-looking creature,” Wenqing said. “The symbol of the German Empire of Wilhelm I.”

On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday,
Interpreter Ma's translation read,
His Imperial and Royal Majesty Wilhelm the First, by the Grace of God German Kaiser and King of Prussia, will grant a diplomatic audience to His Excellency Hong Wenqing, Emissary of the Second Rank of the Emperor Guangxu of China. The audience will take place in the Stadtschloss in Berlin—

The eagle on the card had a golden crown above its head. “Will I be allowed—?” Jinhua asked, and Wenqing didn't let her finish the question.

This happens often now. He interrupts what she is saying.

“Of course you will stay here,” he replied on this occasion, leaving no room for discussion or pleading or changing his mind. Jinhua remembers the taste of her coffee that morning, and how it was sweet but not sweet enough; how she reached for another spoonful of sugar to sweeten it more. She remembers the crystals sliding so easily into the cup and then vanishing, and how the spoon jangled when she stirred the coffee—and how Wenqing first frowned and then looked unsure.

What she wanted to say was,
I can help you see a thousand things if you allow me to come.
And then she said it, just like that, out loud.

Wenqing didn't answer right away.

“Remember,” he said, and his tongue made small, dry sounds in his mouth, and about this he sounded very, very sure. “We are Chinese, descended as we all are from the great and glorious Huangdi—the Yellow Emperor. We are the children of the sages.” He paused,
and then he said, “Do not forget decorum,” and Jinhua thought of the note that Madam Hong had left for her, but only for an instant, and she wanted to go to Berlin more than anything.

“Perhaps Madam Ma can visit you again while I am gone. She is a suitable friend for you,” Wenqing said, “and she, too, is lonely. The two of you can sit and chat and do embroidery to pass the time, and then I will return to you.”

Madam Ma is Interpreter Ma's concubine, and she, too, has come to Vienna to live—for a while. This morning as he was preparing to leave, Wenqing said, “It is a calamity of enormous proportions.” What he meant is that the birthday gifts for the German emperor had not arrived. There are fifty trunks at sea filled with treasures of the Qing and Ming and Tang and Sung and all the other less momentous dynasties. It was to have been a display—
a spectacle,
Wenqing said—of five thousand years of Chinese culture, with gifts of porcelains from the imperial kilns, and bronzes from the time of the ancients, ivories carved more finely than the finest European lace; precious jades of every color and design; cloisonné and paintings, ceramics and calligraphy and lacquerware, all of unsurpassed beauty.

But the trunks have not arrived. Wenqing's face was patterned by worry as he prepared to leave. His eyes were anxious, diminishing the dignity of his traveling robes, his official badges, and his mandarin's hat, all of which shape the man he needs to be on this journey to Berlin to see the German emperor.

The task is wrong for what is inside him. It is another shift in the ground beneath his feet, Jinhua thinks now. She is happy that he has gone. Wenqing's lips brushed against her forehead, as light as falling petals, when he came to say good-bye. She reminded him, “Knife in the right hand, fork in the left,” and he nodded almost
meekly. Then he said, “When I return from Berlin”
—
and his hand lingered on her arm.

“When you return—” she began. She allowed the thought to wait, unfinished. It was bed business and a son that were on his mind, and she sensed it then and knows it now. And now Wenqing has gone, and she is thinking that it was the ghost of Madam Hong who stopped both him and her—and perhaps it is time to forget her dusky eyes and her face and the notes she left behind, and yet—
Jinhua does not want a child. She does not want Wenqing in her bed, even though she is his wife.

She will think about this later. Jinhua is obsessed, now that Wenqing is not here, with reading what he has written. Some entries interest her more than others. He has written about railways and weapons—and about the weather, always about the weather in the greatest of detail. He has described the imposing place called Stephansdom, and how the building is built of stone and is as large as a hill, and was built during the time of the Southern Sung dynasty.
It is a vast and quiet place inside,
he writes—and Jinhua wants to go there to see what he has failed to see—
where people enter to ask Forgiveness from their Number One God for the Evil Things that they have done.
The Europeans worship only one god for all matters,
Wenqing has written,
for all Prayers and all Purposes,
and it sounds so simple, this worshipping of one god and this asking for forgiveness when one has not been virtuous
. They call us Heathens,
Wenqing notes,
because we do not believe as they do, and it is the firm conviction of most of them
that we Chinese as well as the people of Afrika and other Parts must be coerced into Christianity. Which is the reason,
he writes in his careful script,
for the multitude of Missionaries they are sending to the Middle Kingdom.
And then he writes,
We must take note. We must beware of these People and the harm they may
inflict. They see great virtue in what they do, and there is nothing more dangerous than a man who believes fully and completely in his own virtue.