The Courtesan (35 page)

“If I were the man that I am not, Jinhua,” he says, still looking at his hands, “I would love you desperately. And as for the boy, my darling girl, it shall be as you wish, of course. I cannot deny you that, or him. And neither you nor I can deny Suyin, who does not deserve what has
happened.”

THE FUTURE IS LONG

Autumn Begins Again

1905

Maple Bridge, Suzhou

Jinhua

I have come back to the Maple Bridge, Baba, to tell you the story that you asked me to tell you all those years ago, a story that you have never heard before. I have come here to tell you the affairs of my life. They have been like the five courses of a banquet served up one after the other. The five tastes have come and gone; there has been spicy, sweet, and sour; there have been tastes that were bitter and salty, and often the tastes have blended together. Some have been hard to swallow. Others have been delicious. All have lingered. They have changed me, and I go back to them sometimes, still. The spicy, the sweet, the sour, the bitter, the salty—the tastes will last for all of my life. And I have tried, Baba, to be curious and virtuous and wise. I have tried to do as you taught me. I have done good things: one or two of them. I have done harmful things as well—some of them against my will, and others—

But, Baba, I have come home to Suzhou, where the sound of water is never far away, and I have opened a cake shop on the canal, near the West Gate. It is a small place that makes children smile. And the best thing, Baba, the best thing in all of my life is here with me. His name is Xiao Shunzi and you would be proud; his spirit and his heart are alive, and he is curious, and the memories of terrible things have become pale in his mind—and I have done this for him. Xiao Shunzi is your grandson, Baba, and he is filial, and I tell him stories in just the way that you told stories to me. I tell him about Nüwa, who was curious and virtuous and wise, and I tell him that she was—just—like—Mama.

Overhead, geese with wide wings and rough, untidy honks fly across a dark sky in a not-quite-perfect skein formation, and Jinhua looks up. From far off in the distance she can hear the toll of the great bell at the Cold Mountain Temple. When it falls silent, she hears the crow of an all-knowing cockerel and says a final good night to her father.

Atlanta, Georgia

THE FIRST DAY OF OCTOBER 2014

There are confessions to be made. The facts of Sai Jinhua's life are mired in legend, and I have taken liberties with some of them in the service of this story, but also as a matter of necessity. Much of what is said and written about the woman known as Sai Jinhua conflicts, one version with another. Much is not known—or has been adulterated by other writers' efforts to fictionalize her life. She was born in 1872. Or was it 1874? She had an adulterous love affair with Count Alfred von Waldersee when she lived in Europe. Or did they never actually meet while she was there? They met for the first time—or became reacquainted—when he came to Peking. Or they did not meet at all, ever. The reader should know that I have displaced Sai Jinhua and her husband to Vienna from Berlin, where they actually lived for the duration of his diplomatic career; that over her lifetime, Sai Jinhua used several different names, and that I have elected to use just one of them to avoid confusion. Her husband was known officially by the name of Hong Jun.

To serve the telling of this story I have also caused Jinhua to
encounter several people of contemporary historic significance, all of them colorful—people who may not have crossed paths with her, but could have; people with stories of their own. Among them is Sir Edmund Backhouse. He was an Oxford-educated eccentric, a brilliant linguist, a homosexual with a not-so-private penchant for pornography, a China scholar whose credentials are tarnished with accusations of fraud and deceit, a man who claims to have had many sexual liaisons with the empress dowager Cixi, who was forty years his senior. He died in 1944 in China, a lonely and impoverished man. His bequest of books and manuscripts to the Bodleian Library at Oxford is substantial.

Count Alfred von Waldersee remained in Peking until 1901. He survived the huge blaze that destroyed parts of the Forbidden City in April of that year, escaping through a window in his nightshirt with only his field marshal's baton in his hand. Some say that Sai Jinhua was with him on that night. Waldersee's health was frail thereafter, and he died in 1904 at the age of seventy-two in Hanover, survived by his pious and ambitious American wife, Marie.

The empress Elisabeth of Austria has legends of her own. A free spirit who detested Vienna and the demands of its imperial court, a child of the outdoors who is widely thought to have been anorexic, she had a difficult marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph, and she lost her eldest son, Rudolf, to suicide at the Mayerling hunting lodge. She herself was assassinated in 1898 by the anarchist Luigi Lucheni on the shores of Lake Geneva.

This list of historic persons who appear in the novel would not be complete without mention of Prince Duan. Perniciously antiforeign and conservative, he was a powerful patron of the Boxer movement, and his name was prominent on a list of twelve senior Qing dynasty officials for whom the Eight-Nation Alliance sought a death sentence as part of the postwar settlement. Prince Duan
escaped execution but was exiled to a palace in Turkestan. He resurfaced in Peking after the fall of the Qing dynasty. It is important to note that the account of the rapes in this novel is entirely fictional.

The great question of Sai Jinhua's life, the question of whether she is or is not a Chinese heroine, hinges on whether she became acquainted—or reacquainted—with Count Alfred von Waldersee when he came to Peking as the Supreme Allied Commander of the Eight-Nation Alliance, whether she influenced him in the bedroom or otherwise to exercise leniency in the treatment of her countrymen after the siege of the legations. The most titillating stories revolve around Jinhua and the count frolicking in the bedroom, in the very dragon bed of the dowager empress Cixi. Her life was portrayed in the decades after the Boxer Rebellion in poems, novels, plays, and operas. Her story was used to make subtle—or sometimes not so subtle—political and literary points about such weighty subjects as treason, depravity in the final decades of the Qing dynasty, surrenderism, and bravery versus weakness in the face of imperialism. Renderings of her story were banned from time to time in China for allegorical finger-pointing at various actors on China's political stage, most recently during the Cultural Revolution. The actress Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao, allegedly coveted the role of Sai Jinhua in a 1930s play about her life, but she was thwarted by another actress, who later paid a price for her victory, also during the Cultural Revolution.

The story you have just read is the product of my imagination. I have tried to portray Sai Jinhua as a living, breathing child and then woman who lived in a fascinating time and place. I have allowed my imagination to create one possible answer to the mystery of her reputation. I owe a debt to others who have written her story before.

Mention must also be made of China's story in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion. The allied powers indulged in an appalling display of looting, plunder, rape, and murder that was at the time and later widely condemned. Some of the items taken from the palaces and mansions of Peking and elsewhere may be found today in museums and collections outside China. The Boxer Protocol, the peace treaty negotiated between China and the Eight-Nation Alliance, exacted yet another round of punitive reparations, and the treaty is known as one of the unequal treaties with which various Western nations, Russia, and Japan punished China during the Age of Imperialism.

For myself, I can only say that people are endlessly fascinating. History endures through the telling of their stories, and I am glad of that. I thank Sai Jinhua, Hong Jun, Count Alfred von Waldersee, the empress Elisabeth, Sir Edmund Backhouse, and Prince Duan for lending themselves and their stories to me. I have enjoyed my time with them.

I am eternally grateful:

Most of all to my husband, Kevin, for his steadfast belief in this story and my ability to tell it under the least likely of circumstances, for never once saying—
What on earth is taking you so long?

To Sebastian, who left no stone unturned in his campaign to cajole, nag, reward (with chocolate), and punish (by withholding it) as I worked my way to completion of this novel.

To Phillip, who graciously hosted me in his apartment in Suzhou as I walked in Jinhua's footsteps; who as a linguist gave honest opinions.

To my mother, Mrs. D. I. Ottilie Gambrill, for her invaluable assistance with the Palais Kinsky chapters, for her proofreading efforts, and for her company as I searched for the old Vienna.

To Emma, who is my constant companion, and who joined me in walking thousands of miles while I thought about words and sentences.

To Genevieve and Virginia Barber, for reading, advising, and ushering my manuscript onto Dorian Karchmar's desk.

To my agent, Dorian, who read so carefully and helped me find the story I had written but couldn't see; to Simone Blazer, who will make a fine doctor; and to Jamie Carr, who is so ably following in Simone's footsteps.

To my editors, Denise Roy and Adrienne Kerr, for helping me write a much better book, for the insights and advice that I am still savoring as I write this.

To James Harmon, who listened and encouraged for so many years, and who forwarded the fateful tweet that forced me to finish what would otherwise still be a work in progress.

To Carole Lee Lorenzo, who taught me, among many other things, to look for the patterns in life and in stories.

To Marene Emanuel, Jon Marcus, and Nora Nunn—for being the best critique group ever, and for generously sharing your own work with me.

To Patrick Arneodo, Kim Green, Kay Kephart, Elizabeth Knowlton, Linda Leclop, Connie Malko, Jim Pettit, Gillian Royes, Elizabeth Severence, Susie Sherrill, Brent Taylor, Mark White, Anne Webster, and Susannah M. Wilson, whose wisdom I see on every page.

To Alice Yen, for inspiration she never knew she provided, for proofreading my Chinese, and for searching tirelessly for the best word, name, or expression.

To my learned neighbor, Jim Abbot, for keeping me honest with Sir Edmund Backhouse's use of Latin.

To Dr. Elizabeth Pittschieler and Dr. Balász Schäfer, for assistance with the Hungarian language.

To Eddie Kim, for the gift of wedding ducks and for showing me the beautiful Korean
koutou.

To the many writers, poets, historians, and sinologues who have provided in their writings a wealth of information, insight, and inspiration. In particular—Sterling Seagrave, Gail Hershatter, Hu Ying, David Der-wei Wang, Diana Preston, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Sue Gronewold, Maria Jaschok, J. D. Frodsham, Kuo Sung-tao, and Helen H. Chien for her translation of the diaries of her great-grandfather, Hsieh Fucheng.

And lastly, I am eternally grateful to Sai Jinhua, for lending me her story.