The Island Where Time Stands Still Page 9

  ‘In 1889 he was given concubines, and Yehonala selected a niece of hers to be his wife; but he proved impotent so begot no children. On his marriage Yehonala formally gave up the Regency, but she reserved for herself the right to appoint and remove public servants; so the real power of government still remained in her hands. The young Emperor proved hopelessly incompetent. He attempted to introduce all sorts of reforms which threatened to disrupt the whole life of the country. For a few years things went from bad to worse, then Yehonala stepped in again. She arrested Kuang-hsu and his Empress and kept them as prisoners in the Ocean Terrace Pavilion of the Summer Palace. For a time she ruled through him. Then in 1898 she entered on her third official Regency. From then on, as the Great Empress Mother, she continued as supreme ruler to the day of her death.’

  ‘Where does the young Emperor Pu-yi come in?’

  ‘In 1908 Yehonala’s health began to fail. Her death might have enabled the morbid and dangerous prisoner of the Ocean Terrace to regain his rights as Emperor, and she would obviously have been most averse to leaving China at his mercy. Perhaps it was coincidence, but he also fell ill, and he died just before her. On the day after his death she appointed little Pu-yi as Emperor and his father as Regent, then she herself died.’

  Gregory nodded. ‘What an appalling story. But, unscrupulous as she was, Yehonala seems to have been the only strong character in it. Every one of the three Emperors she chose grew up either dissolute or unfit to govern. And if the Mandarins are determined to observe tradition it is from this decadent family that they must choose a ruler for this island. I don’t wonder that they’re worried.’

  ‘Yes. The Imperial Family is now scattered. The only Princes who might be worthy are too old. The others have either become dissipated through living an idle life in exile, or so Westernised that they might prove a menace to the ancient customs which it is the Council’s main object to preserve. How they will solve this problem I cannot think.’

  Nevertheless, solve it they did, and in a most unexpected manner. Two mornings later A-lu-te came out to Gregory and, her gold-flecked eyes shining with excitement, exclaimed:

  ‘I can scarcely believe it! Instead of an Emperor we are to have an Empress.’

  Gregory smiled at her. ‘I hope they have chosen you. I’ve seen nothing so far of the other ladies on the island, but I can hardly imagine that any of them are better suited to the job.’

  ‘No, no!’ she shook her head impatiently. ‘It had to be someone of the Imperial blood; and anyway I wouldn’t want to be. I’d prefer to remain free so that I can continue my studies.’

  ‘It is because you are so well-informed that I think you would do well in the part,’ he remarked. ‘But come and sit down and tell me all about it.’

  Madame Pan-chieh came bustling up behind her young mistress, and when the two ladies were seated A-lu-te went on with her news.

  ‘They have chosen a Princess who lives in the United States and was baptised into the Christian church with the name of Josephine.’

  ‘On the face of it she does not sound very suitable. What place does she occupy in the Imperial Family?’

  ‘You may recall that when I was giving you its more recent history the other day, I began with the Emperor Tao-kwang, who had nine sons. It was the eldest of them, Hsien-feng, who made Yehonala an Empress. The second son was Prince Kung, and it was his son that Yehonala passed over after her own son died, selecting instead the son of the Seventh Prince as the new Emperor. This Princess is the great-grand-daughter of the boy who was passed over.’

  ‘Since the eldest branch came to an end a week ago with the death of the Empress A-lu-te’s great-grandson, Prince Kung’s then became the senior,’ Gregory remarked, ‘so at all events the selection of his descendant has legitimacy to recommend it. Do you know how old she is, or anything about her?’

  ‘She is twenty, an only child, and lives with her widowed mother in San Francisco. It is said that she is very pretty but, poor thing, she is quite dumb.’

  ‘Dumb-stupid or dumb-no-talker?’ Gregory inquired.

  A-lu-te frowned at his levity. ‘I mean that she suffers from a terrible affliction. She was born in Saigon and while still an infant caught diphtheria. The tracheotomy was done by a doctor who was not properly qualified. He bungled the operation and injured her vocal cords. As she could still cry and gurgle the damage was not discovered until she was of an age when she should have started to talk, and by then it was too late to do anything about it.’

  ‘What a frightful thing! It seems extraordinary, though, that any member of the Imperial Family should have failed to secure the best surgeon available to operate on his daughter.’

  ‘Her father was both head-strong and eccentric. When his branch of the family went into exile they settled in French Indo-China. There he met a very beautiful woman. She was of Manchu blood but had become a courtesan. He insisted on marrying her and his family were so outraged that they publicly disowned him. He accepted their repudiation, became a Christian and took the name of Joseph Août. It is said that he chose it as a pun on the month in which he was born and the fact he was of “august” descent; although he never afterwards used his title or traded on his imperial connections. Later he managed to raise the money to take his wife and child to America, but for the first few years of his marriage he was desperately poor. That is why when the baby went down in a diphtheria epidemic he had to take it to a local hospital where only a student was available at the time to do the operation.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gregory thoughtfully. ‘Then her parents were not exactly patterns of virtue and filial obedience; but I suppose that is outweighed as far as the Council are concerned by her ancestry. All the same, I find it very surprising that your father and his friends should have decided to invite a dumb Princess to come and reign over them.’

  ‘Her affliction makes it more likely that she will accept,’ commented A-lu-te, and went on a shade acidly. ‘Any normal girl who has the luck to live in the United States would be crazy to do so. I would give this island and everything in it to get there.’

  ‘Perhaps; but quite apart from the girl being dumb, it astonishes me that the Mandarins should be prepared to kow-tow to any young woman.’

  ‘They are not, except as a formality. This is simply an expedient, and adopted only as a last resort rather than allow a situation to develop in which an open struggle for power would break out among them. The Princess is unmarried. If she accepts the throne it is intended that each of the Seven Families should put forward its most eligible bachelor, and that she should be asked to choose a husband from among them. Whoever she chooses will automatically become Emperor.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather a chancy way of choosing a ruler? She may quite well pick on the biggest fool or knave of the lot if he happens to be the most attractive physically.’

  A-lu-te shrugged. ‘You’re right, of course. But I don’t think that would make much difference in the long run. The Council would continue to do the real governing. The point is that they could regard her choice as in a sense a decree of fate; so they are willing to accept whoever she may choose. And by this means they hope to start a new dynasty; because, whoever she may take as her husband, through her their children will be of the Imperial Blood,’

  ‘Has this decision definitely been taken?’

  ‘Yes. Orders have been given to prepare the Imperial Yacht for a voyage to San Francisco. It is the first time for years that it has been used for more than a local pleasure cruise, so it will take some days to make ready; but as soon as it is, my Uncle Kâo is to leave in it and, it is hoped, bring the Princess and her mother back from America with him.’

  ‘From what you have told me of Tsai-Ping I wonder at his agreeing to that. As they seem to be rivals in most things I should have thought he would have gone to pretty well any lengths to prevent your uncle getting such a marvellous free field with the girl before anyone else has even had the chance to meet her.’

  ‘
They could not become rivals in that sense, because both of them are already married.’

  ‘I meant that the choice of your uncle to bring the girl and her mother here will give him a quite exceptional opportunity to get both of them under his influence during the voyage.’

  ‘That is true,’ she nodded, ‘and I don’t doubt Tsai-Ping would have much preferred that someone other than my uncle should be charged with this mission. But Uncle Kâo was such an obvious choice that Tsai-Ping would only have made himself look foolish had he stood out against it.’

  ‘What special qualifications has your uncle for the job?’

  ‘His knowledge of conditions in the outer world is far greater than that of any of the Mandarins, or of anyone else on the island. Until last year he was what I suppose you would call our Export Manager. During the past twenty-five years he has travelled in every continent, inspecting our depots abroad and assessing the value to us of old and new foreign markets. Without revealing the secret of the island, he has also kept in touch with numerous members of the old Imperial Family, among them the Princess Josephine’s mother. Alone amongst us he knows her personally. In addition he will succeed my father as the head of one of the Seven Families. He is, too, a man of cheerful disposition and great charm; so for this affair it would be difficult to conceive of a more suitable ambassador.’

  Later in the week Gregory had an opportunity of judging Kâo Hsüan’s personality for himself, as A-lu-te’s uncle called one afternoon and came out to see her in the garden. The Manchu nobility are generally well above average height and he was both tall and corpulent. Although his features proclaimed his relationship to Sze Hsüan he was the son of a different mother and very much younger, being a little over fifty. His face was round and cherubic with a full, sensual mouth and thick black eyebrows like inverted sickle moons. Like most Chinese he had an excellent sense of humour, and was by nature a very jolly man.

  He had already heard all about Gregory and spoke to him most pleasantly in excellent English. They were soon exchanging reminiscences about happy times they had enjoyed in various European capitals, and he said what a pleasure it was to have an educated foreigner to talk to in the island. He added that the journey he was about to make would deprive him of that pleasure for some weeks, but on his return he would greatly look forward to developing Gregory’s acquaintance.

  Although Kâo did not actually say so, Gregory gathered the impression that he regretted the days of his travels being over, was glad of the chance to go to America again and, like his niece, would have preferred to live there had not his duty to his family made that impossible.

  A-lu-te listened to their conversation with eager interest, particularly when it touched on the United States; and presently with an earnestness that was only thinly disguised as jest, she asked her uncle to take her with him, launching her plea on the pretext that the Princess should have at least one lady-in-waiting in attendance for the voyage; but he laughed and shook his head.

  ‘No, no, my dear. The Princess lives very quietly with her mother in a small apartment. It is quite pleasant, but so modest that it would embarrass them for another lady, who might afterwards describe it here, to see their home and learn that they fend for themselves with the help of only a daily maid. That is between ourselves, of course; for over their past a veil will be drawn so that they shall not suffer loss of face. It will be time enough when the Princess lands here for her to assume Imperial status. Then if you like her, and wish to give her your companionship, I have no doubt it could be arranged for you to become one of the new Emperor’s concubines.’

  ‘Thank you; but I have no wish to be anybody’s concubine.’

  ‘Then you should marry. It is against nature that a pretty young woman like yourself should spend the best years of her life without a husband. With all respect to my honourable brother, I think he acts selfishly in refusing to arrange a marriage for you.’

  ‘On the contrary, Uncle Kâo!’ A-lu-te threw up her firm chin. ‘I can never be sufficiently grateful to him for refraining. I have no desire at all to marry—as yet.’

  ‘Ah well!’ The big man shrugged good naturedly. ‘The time will come. But that in itself is a sufficient reason why I could not take you with me to San Francisco. The Council would never permit it. As you know, it is an axiom with them that no women should ever be allowed to leave the island, lest contamination with the outer world should unfit her for making a contented wife on her return.’

  It was later on the same day that Gregory met Tsai-Ping. An hour or so after Kâo Hsüan had gone, Ho-Ping arrived and asked A-lu-te’s permission to take Gregory to call on his brother. None too graciously, she gave it, and Gregory set off with the doctor. Two rickshaws carried them swiftly round the lake, then along half-a-mile of by-road to the Ping mansion, where the Mandarin was waiting to receive them.

  He was about the same age as Kâo Hsüan and nearly as tall, but much thinner. His face was long, thin, and pale for a Chinaman’s, and he wore old-fashioned steel-rimmed spectacles. After apologising for his English, which was only just sufficient for him to make himself understood, he told Gregory that he had attended the University of Bonn and asked if he spoke German. As Gregory spoke it like a native they were able to converse fluently in that language; but, all the same, very little spontaneous warmth animated their conversation.

  Gregory was still too occupied with his own morbid thoughts to care much about the sort of impression he made, and constrained himself to be polite only out of consideration for Ho-Ping; while the Mandarin, being of the cold intellectual type, unlike the jolly Kâo Hsüan, proved incapable of drawing him out. He decided that Tsai-Ping had asked to meet him only in order to form some idea whether he could be written off as a nonentity, or might as a member of the Hsüan household prove an asset to Kâo’s political aspirations.

  After bowing to one another over numerous tiny, fragile cups of tea, and some desultory talk about German literature and international affairs, Gregory excused himself, and was sent home in Ho-ping’s spare rickshaw.

  When the burial of the late Emperor had taken place, and Kâo Hsüan had departed in the small warship which had been converted to serve as the Imperial Yacht, the life of the island settled down to normal; but for Gregory it meant entering on a new existence.

  A-lu-te’s plan, that he should keep himself fit by working in the garden, met with only partial success. Work for the sake of exercise had never had the faintest appeal to him. To induce him to exert himself physically he had to be tempted by the prospect of some definite achievement. Once embarked on digging a swimming pool, building a wall, creating a new rock garden, or planting twenty-thousand bulbs to transform a glade into fairyland in spring, he would have laboured cheerfully from dawn to dusk for days on end; but according to Chinese standards the Hsüan garden was perfection already, and needed none of these things.

  In consequence he never did more than potter in it; removing the heads from flowering shrubs on which the blossom had gone over, pruning dead branches from trees, and cutting flowers for the house. He took a mild interest in watching the growth of the plants that the real gardeners tended, but his continued indifference to everything about him robbed him of the initiative to ask the gardeners’ names or even make an effort to identify them individually by memorising the differences in their features.

  His physical lassitude caused A-lu-te little concern as, from the beginning, it had been the possibility of exploring his mind which had intrigued her. In the gratification of this urge she spent never less than two hours a day, and often double that time, with him. During their sessions she displayed an insatiable curiosity about every aspect of life in the outer world; but he did not find her endless succession of questions at all trying. One was quite enough to set him off for half an hour or more, almost as though he was a penny-in-the-slot machine. She had only to mention such words as ‘divorce’, ‘caviare’, ‘guillotine’, ‘rhododendron’, ‘whisky’. Her reading, wide as it was,
had left her with only vague ideas about scores of such things, and he found that it took his mind off his own gloomy thoughts to describe and discourse upon them in a leisurely manner.

  As far as Europe was concerned she could not have hoped for a better instructor. He told her of Paris in spring and the Riviera in winter; of the Margit’s Insel at Budapest in high summer, and the gathering of the vintage on the Rhine in autumn; of the Acropolis at Athens in blazing sunshine and the Winter Palace near Leningrad under snow; of the Blue Grotto at Capri, of salmon fishing in Scotland, of the night life of Vienna; of Windsor, of the Escorial, of the Vatican, and of scores of other places.

  Upon the United States, which was her greatest interest, she found him disappointing, as, except for short spells in transit he had stayed only in New York, Washington and Florida; but he had travelled many thousands of miles in aircraft, in liners, in trains and in automobiles, none of which she had even seen. He knew far more than she did about ancient civilisations and modern warfare. His knowledge of science was sketchy, but he knew his way about most of the great picture galleries, had read or seen performed most of the finest plays from those of Aristophanes to Christopher Fry, comprehended the principles upon which architecture had developed, and was quite a passable cook.

  About all these subjects, and many more, he gave his views with the same lucidity as if they had already been inscribed on a gramophone record, but the one thing that A-lu-te could not persuade him to talk about was himself. It was not that he was now making a deliberate effort to forget his past. On the contrary, he continued to nurse his grief much as one tends to play with an aching tooth; but he felt greatly averse to saying anything about Erika to someone who had never known her.

  At the beginning of his acquaintance with A-lu-te he had quite naturally assumed that she was a typical product of her class in the island; but he soon found that was very far from being the case. In having reached the age of twenty-two unmarried she was unique, and only unusual circumstances had resulted in her doing so.