Page 73 - Vol. VII #7

The soldiers drop their ceremonial spears and pick up bolt-action rifles. They march to the other side of the platform and look up at Zhang, waiting for a signal. Lady Xiu moves her head around. Strands of hair hide her forehead. Her head is hunched over, weighed down by the torn headdress. She tries to keep it up and press it against the pole, but it keeps falling back. Eventually she gives up and her head falls almost to her shoulders.
sorghum field, but they don’t seem to recognize him anymore. As he approaches, they draw back. They ask
“After all, what is a man without a woman?” Zhang says. Once Pei Pei crosses over he will understand. He only needs a push in the right decision. He is still my cousin, Zhang thinks, someone who needs my help. “Except,” Zhang continues, “a better, more inde- pendent, and clearer-thinking man.”
The young emperor returns from Inner Mongolia triumphantly. His armies have now pushed back the Communists to upper Mongolia and are laying siege to Ulaanbaatar. It should be a matter of weeks before the communist leaders surrender. To celebrate the thor- ough defeat of his enemy, the emperor has decreed that he will double the number of concubines in his court. In order to represent the people of New China thoroughly, he states, he will need two concubines for every province: just like how it is in America!
“You should wait until the emperor comes back be- fore you take any action.” Pei Pei says.
Some of his eunuchs, including Zhang, advise the em- peror against having more concubines. While it’s true the incident with Lady Xiu has shaken the emperor, he believes that the quick and thorough actions of Zhang have proven the court can handle more. From now on, he will no longer accept any girl with a college educa- tion. Whereas gong-gongs must be intelligent, concu- bines serve only as a median between the emperor and the people. Any girl with a college education, the emperor reasons, has already separated herself from the general mass, and therefore cannot represent the people accurately. He will choose more girls like Lady Jing, who everyone in the court considers a model concubine. ~
“Pei Pei,” Zhang says. “You misunderstand what New China is about. The emperor is not New China. His time is limited. We are its future.”
“Zhang, you can’t do this. She is a good woman. She cares about China.”
Zhang nods to the soldiers below. They count down from ten. On five, the soldiers shoulder their rifles. On two, they take aim. On one, Lady Xiu’s headdress falls to the ground and rolls to the other side of the platform, by the feet of the soldiers.
“Do you understand?” Zhang continues, his long rab- bit ears quivering. “We are its future. We will be the ones in power once the emperor loses control. These concubines—they’re nothing. They’re puppets. It’s going to be men like us, eunuchs, the most intelligent and most ruthless and most loyal to each other, who will be at the top.”
In order to support these additional concubines, the emperor has to recruit additional gong-gongs. There will be a new entrance exam. It will look for intelli- gence above all else. College graduates are preferable. The emperor instructs his current line of eunuchs
Pei Pei feels dizzy, listening to Zhang’s voice. It slides into his ears like a rusted knife and then down into his pants. He can feel everything coming off, every- thing dropping. He can see the future of New China: thousands of men in his likeness.
to begin development of this eunuch exam. Sitting high up on his throne, he claps his hands twice. His eunuchs walk in small, mincing steps, and stand hunched before him. He scans them one by one, nod- ding his head, inhaling and exhaling like a meditating Buddha. He takes pride in all of his gong-gongs, who consider their current station in New China to be most fortunate.
“Becoming a gong-gong,” Zhang says, “is the only path there is.”
Pei Pei sees children smiling and clapping their hands twice, sees men of his likeness taking care of them. New China doesn’t need more people; it needs to take care of what it already has. It doesn’t want him back in the countryside, creating more prob- lems. The country folks watch him. They are counting on him. They chant his name and stare at him with awe. He walks near them, striding like someone in a
Wang’s fiction has appeared in The New England Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Cimarron Review, among others, and they have won an AWP Intro Award and been featured in the Best American Short Stories’s Distinguished Stories List. He is currently an Assis- tant Professor of Creative Writing at Arkansas Tech University, revis- ing a novel that is set during the Chinese Communist Revolution. 66
him: Who are you?
~