Mother was happy. With a nod of her head, she ordered for a carpet of silk to be unrolled in the middle of the banquet, for me to be freed of my swaddling and to be seated. The servants laid a dozen objects out around me. I forgot this gathering of pale women in all their finery, caught hold of an ice-cold toy and tried to lift it. There was a general murmuring and one woman said: “She chooses neither the makeup box of Beauty, nor the jade of Nobility, nor the flute of Music, nor the book of Wisdom, nor the quill of Poetry, nor the abacus of Commerce, nor the rosary of Spirituality. My dear cousin, your daughter’s future will be singularly unusual. It is truly a shame that she is not a boy.”
“Indeed, your Highness, it is a great shame,” agreed another.
“Ah well, we must not let this distress us,” exclaimed a sonorous voice, ringing with pride. “In our time women can demonstrate prowess in a thousand ways. Long ago the great Princess Sun of Ping fought for her father, the August Sovereign. At her funeral, His Majesty called for the trumpets and drums to be sounded, an honor reserved for men. Your daughter has a curved forehead to accept the celestial breath, she has luminous eyes, a strong jaw, generous lips; she has touched of her father’s sword. Excellent! My dear, from this day you must dress her as a boy. Give her an education worthy of her own determination. The daughter of a general likes commandment. I can see her as the mistress of a noble warrior household!”
Soon I felt the need to venture out into the world rather than receiving it from my cradle. Unable to stand upright on my feet, I crawled.
One step toward the unknown meant coordinating all my muscles. Pinning my eyes on an object, keeping my ears alert and my mouth open to roar silently, I raised an arm, a leg, I crawled my way through the universe.
A bearded man leaned toward me. He was wrapped in a silk coat lined with sable, and seemed to have come from far, far away. When I saw him, I heard the thundering of hooves, the wailing of the wind, the unbridled moans of the courtesans. The bestial smell of him made me shiver. His gruff kisses tore my cheek.
There was a little girl watching me. I was fascinated by her pink complexion, fine features, sturdy legs, dark eyes, and the wooden duck she trailed behind her. After looking carefully up and down, she put a finger in my hand, and I squeezed it until she flushed red and began to cry. “You must not hurt your sister,” my wet nurse told me. She did not know that later, as she had in those days of innocence, Elder Sister would beg me to be her torturer.
In the ninth year of Martial Virtue, the Emperor abdicated in favor of his son. Twelve moons later, the new sovereign recalled Father from the noble province of Yang where he had been sent on a quest, and named him Governor Delegate of the province of Li where an insurrection under Prince Li Xiao Chang had just been repressed.
I was two years old. I stumbled around among the wooden cases and the carriages covered in oiled drapes, unaware of the suffering of a father exiled from Court. The horses and the oxen trod the endless road that dissolved into the horizon. I devoured the world through an opening in the carriage door. Outside, the colors jostled and furrowed, spreading out and contorting. We shall see each other again, Long Peace, my native town!
The wheels’ rattles over the stony track kept me awake. We crossed a vast plain where the arid soil had been cracked and crazed by the sun. Hordes of children in rags came and prostrated themselves as we passed by. I was astonished that such thin, dirty creatures existed at all. Mother asked for food to be handed out to them: biscuits, bread, and rice meal, which they swallowed while it was still scalding hot.
I was tormented by questions. I kept asking them all day long: “What is hunger? Why do the fields need to be cultivated? What is wheat? How is bread made?”
After a month of traveling, the caravan embarked into the misty mountains. The track was carved into the cliffs and, further down, the Jia Ling river roared as it hurled itself against the tormented rocks. Forts rose up from the peaks; military outposts opened their barriers for us. The imperial soldiers were brutish men who drank from chipped bowls and ate haunches of beef with their bare hands. In the evenings, around the camp fires, they beat their drums and sang. The moon rose, and I fell asleep listening to the roar of tigers. When the first hint of dawn appeared, birds launched themselves in pursuit of the sun, while monkeys fled the light, screeching as they swung from one strand of creeper to the next. “Why is the sky going red? Why are the trees so still? Why do the boatmen slash their own faces?” Streaming with blood, they raised anchor and threw themselves into the torrents.
I HUNG THE birdcages under the awnings. The robins, orioles, and canaries started to sing. I let the ducks out onto the pond, the cranes into the long grass, and the peacocks into the camellia bushes. Inside our new home, the furniture was taking root, the curtains were growing, and the cats and dogs scrapped over their territory.
Nurse dressed me as a Tartar boy. In my blue turban, leather boots, and emerald-green tunic with its fitted sleeves and cuffs embroidered in gold thread, I tottered like a drunken man, bellowing military songs.
Four years old, the age of diamonds. Free. There, with my arms in the air, I could fly. The new garden was a vast expanse of parkland, a whole continent. The summer was on its way: the hills oozed, the sky evaporated, life slowed down. I crouched down and watched the caravans of ants at the foot of trees. I shook off my servants by running through the bamboo forests. In the evenings, I would refuse to sleep and asked questions till the early hours: “Why does the frog have such a fat belly? Why do mosquitoes flee the herbs burning in bowls? Who do the stars play hide-and-seek with? Why is the moon sometimes round and sometimes thin? Who are the fireflies bearing their tiny lanterns for?”
Mother was afraid of my capacity to think. She called for a wandering monk known for the truth of his predictions. The man assured her there was absolutely no evil in my soul, praised my intelligence, and decreed that I had a spiritual vocation.
In the fourth year of Pure Contemplation, maternal Grandmother left this world. Mother asked me whether I would like to be the family delegate to observe mourning in a monastery and to pray for the salvation of the honorable deceased. I was five years old. I accepted the suggestion with joy: Father was my idol, so the word “delegate” filled my heart with pride, and I would at last have the same degree of importance as the governor of six districts and forty thousand souls.
The river flowed at the foot of the fortified town. The torrents propelled sailing boats toward the skies. From the harbor we could see the mountain of the Black Dragon. Along its sheer cliffs thousands of pavilions sheltered the entrances to Buddhist caves filled with statues and decorated with frescoes. After the boat crossing, I was carried on a servant woman’s back up the steep steps and over the bridge of plaited rope that swung across the middle of the valley. I was engulfed by the Monastery of Pure Compassion, which hung between the earth and the sky.
I LOST MY family name and my own name, I was now known as Light of Emptiness. I did not even know how to untie my belt. I would wake in the night calling for my wet nurses. I missed their breasts. I would finger my bedclothes and suck on my blanket, but in these I found neither the satin of their skin nor the wrinkles of their nipples and I wept. Mother did not come to see me. She had abandoned me to Buddha. Every day I watched and waited for a familiar face at the entrance to the monastery. On that gently rising path, the leaves fell with the dusk.