Page 62 - Vol. VII #7

New Work in New China (continued from preceding page)
her shoulders and moves them slowly down to her breasts and then down to her hips. He kisses her hair. Then he leans over and whispers into her ear, “Come to bed. You can do this in the morning.”
“Would that give them what they want?” Pei Pei asks. “Not if they want the impossible,” Zhang says.
She shrugs him off. She reaches over his shoulder and grabs the needle and fabric. “Not tonight,” she says. “We have more important things to think about.”
They pass through the outer rings and enter the pal- ace courtyard. Winter turns to spring. Pei Pei starts seeing everything as though through a curtain of green silk. Willows and peach trees fill the yard. Woman wearing traditional Chinese dresses walk past them holding umbrellas. Pink and orange petals fall from the dome.
He stops touching her. As he walks to the bed, he mumbles, “What’s more important than a woman’s duty to her husband?” He mumbles loud enough so she can hear.
They drive up to Zhang’s mansion. His chambermaids stand by the door to greet them. A girl takes Zhang’s hand and the other one carries Pei Pei’s bag.
He snuggles onto the hard bed and covers his face with his blanket.
“You’ve arrived just when the emperor has departed for the outskirts of Inner Mongolia,” Zhang explains. “The emperor is serving double-duty on this trip, both to check up on the situation of his forces at the front and also to find an Inner Mongolian concubine.”
“Pei Pei,” Song says, “you shouldn’t act like this. We can do it any time you want. Right now there are more important things. You have to think about your duties as well. A man needs to take care of his family.”
He doesn’t lift the covers. He whispers, and this time soft enough so she can’t hear, “What family?”
“What do I do now?” Pei Pei asks, looking around Zhang’s mansion. Antiques litter the room. Giant fans and unraveled paintings and coiled calligraphy cover the walls. Large decorated vases and tangled ginseng roots corner the floors. It’s as if he’s back in ancient times, in one of those pictures he has seen in history books.
“Young reformers,” Zhang says. “They’ve been pro- testing since the palace was built. Don’t mind them. The emperor is thinking about cleaning them out.”
“What do they want?”
~
The imperial palace is surrounded by three rings of walls. A shallow moat surrounds the outer wall. Poorer citizens use its waters to wash their clothes. Three drawbridges, each guarded by a pair of tanks, con- nect the city to the palace. The emperor understands that the moat and walls are not of any practical use. Rather, they are a symbol of power, rooted in tradition, something to make the Chinese people believe that the emperor has obtained the Mandate of Heaven.
“Don’t worry,” Zhang says. “There are still other people to see. But first we have to get you out of those clothes.”
“I’ve never once seen those drawbridges up before,” Zhang says to Pei Pei. They are sitting in his limo. Crowds of people swarm the car, holding signs. They are yelling profanities, demanding change. The driver gets out, shoves his way over to the tanks, and then ma- neuvers back to the car. A tank comes over and clears a path. They follow it through the outermost wall.
Pei Pei looks down at the shirt Song has made him: a cleverly designed shirt with alternating strips of blue and yellow fabric to make it look like a striped sweat- er. He thinks about the time it took Song to make it, the time wasted, the time he could have helped her conceive. This shirt might have cost me a son, he thinks. And then he blames himself. If he hadn’t been such a coward she wouldn’t have wasted that time on something so useless.
“Who are those people?” Pei Pei asks.
That entire night, he can’t sleep for, thinking about Song. Around two in the morning a chambermaid walks in and sees his naked body. Pei Pei quickly covers himself. “Tea?” the girl asks, and he suspects she might have forgotten someone was in the guest room. “No, thank you,” he says, and she leaves, smil- ing coyly. He lies back down, feeling pleased that he had such an effect. It’s obvious that she hasn’t seen a real man for months. If he becomes a eunuch, he will no longer have this effect on any woman. No amount of handsomeness or cleverness can save a man who doesn’t have it where it counts.
“Democracy mostly. They’re not satisfied with the concubine system. They don’t see that the concubine system is democracy. Instead of asking for more, they should embrace what they have, and make grievances to their provincial concubine.”
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