Chapter 16: From a long and arduous journey comes peace (VI)
“A Wan?” Li Shiyi asked, disbelieving.
Yue Niang nodded, the jut of her jaw showing a haughtiness of the descent from heavenly aristocrats, and said, “Zhongzong-zhaorong,[1] Shangguan Wan’er.”[2] Remaining in her slim-fitting Western-style dress, her proud sparrow’s neck adding to her resplendence, the worry deepening between her brows, it made her seem as if she had travelled for many years and become an extremely graceful and tactful person. She said, “From childhood, I was doted on by many, wearing foreign outfit, men’s clothes, with a belt and jade, and a gauze headcovering. I participated in my father and mother’s plans and gave comment, executing two Zhang and extinguishing the Wei clan, my authority overturning all levels of society, influential and prestigious. She was the daughter of a guilty official, born in the Lateral Courts,[3] and took record for my mother, knew poetry and literature, wielded imperial edicts over life, wrote reports to the emperor, and became known as the Female Prime Minister, weighing matters under the heavens.”
Speaking of A Wan, minute, weak beads of starlight arose in her eyes, like the reignition of an extinguished fire, contrasting with the the mask of her pursed lips, which, when gazed upon, was extremely graceful, detailed and fine. “I was the same age as her, and our inclinations were in agreement, and we accompanied each other in poetry and literature, our friendship incredibly sincere.” She raised her phoenix eyes, fixing on the pensive A Yin, and then meaningfully sweeping over a confused and closed-off Song Shijiu, and then, finally, falling to to Li Shiyi’s eyes.
With the singular motion of Li Shiyi’s lips, she understood the implication with ease. Yue Niang’s stubborn eyelashes drifted downwards, and she only lowered her brows, collecting her gaze for a moment, then walked to the front of A Wan’s coffin, reaching her hand out, and her four fingers hesitated, curling on themselves, and only after clutching her cuff did they stretch out again, firmly and confidently caressing the writing adorning the wood that held her body. She gazed at the coffin, pursing her lips, and only after a long time did she open them, saying, “The fourth year of Jinlong,[4] during the Tang Long coup, Longji[5] put Empress Wei to death along with her party, beheading A Wan under that banner.”
Her mild and composed tone seemed to break like the strings of a qin and a se,[6] carrying a tremble that made one feel unable to bear it; it was a good thing that that quaver was only for an instant, and when she closed the line of her mouth, it calmed along with her breath.
Like boiled water, there wasn’t time for properly give a rumbling echo before the fuel was removed from beneath the kettle. Recalling the boiling water, it was time for the fuel to be removed. She carefully and gently caressed A Wan’s coffin, and now understood why she had chosen to forget; originally, there had been some matters that had been engraved into her ribs, and there had been no way to leave her body without expelling them. Without A Wan, she was a purposeless wandering ghost; with A Wan, she was a vengeful ghost with a longing for what could never be brought back. Her tears fell downwards, moistening her eyelashes, making the coffin she gazed upon appear to have an unclear shape, and she made an effort to open her eyes wider, and although her eyes were incredibly fuzzy, she wanted to let her tears drop downwards, but the tears, at the end of it all, didn’t want to part with her—or, maybe, didn’t want to pollute A Wan; in short, it wasn’t clear whether her intentions had been fulfilled.
Life and murder seized her away, the towering pressure pressing down upon the princess; in that moment, powerless and helpless, there was no difference between her and the common people.
“I was entirely sorrowful, and bestowed five hundred silks, dispatched a worship ceremony, lead a funeral ceremony, and made an intimate inscription upon the memorial tablet.”
—The waters of the Xiao River were severed from the Xiang; Mount Wanwei inclined and toppled. She lived like a pearl hanging precariously in a turbulent whirlpool, like the jade Lin Xiangru threatened to shatter if cities weren’t offered. Now she can only gaze up at the pines and camellia tea shrubs, listening to the sounds of silence from her tumulus, yet for a thousand years, for myriad reasons, the strains of her “Pepper Flower Eulogy” will linger.[7]
“But,” Li Shiyi said, leaning against the wall, unable, in the end, to not remind her, “in this tomb, there isn’t the inscription you mention.”
“This tomb, who’s saying it’s that one?” Yue Niang said tearfully, and smiled silently for a bit, the pain that had been kept in her heart entering her expression and falling to her, and she said, shaking her head, “I used ox bones to fill her original tomb, and had her coffin moved to this place, wrapping her body jade clothes sewn with gold wire, protecting her body from decay for five years, only hoping that there would be one day when she could be brought back to life.”
With the last phrase, her expression became miserable and twisted, and in the wave of chilling wind in the tomb, it made the living A Yin and Song Shijiu shake all over, and Tu Laoyao went over to stand by Li Shiyi’s shoulder, not brave enough to lean against that extraordinary wall, only managing to move his throat and say, “Bright back to life?” He and A Yin exchanged a glance; if it were before, it would have elicited a scolding of “bullshit!”, but in front of this blue-blooded princess, unexpectedly, with soft knees, no rebuttal could be spoken.
“Yes.” Yue Niang raised her head, gaze fixing for a long time on the flickering kerosene lamp, then glanced at the skeleton on the floor, and continued, “You’ve surely heard before of the Hun Restoration Tree?”
Song Shijiu hesitantly glanced at Li Shiyi; Li Shiyi raised her back away from where it had been leaning against the wall, then leaned back against it, and said, “From The Ten Islands and the Inner Seas: above the Yellow Sea, at the centre of Jukouzhou island, stretching above the ground, there is a large tree, similar to a maple, but its flowers’ fragrance can be smelled from hundreds of miles away, known as the Hun Restoration Tree.” Seeing that Song Shiji was listening attentively with eyes as bright as lamp wicks, she continued, “By boiling its liquid in a jade kettle, an incense of resurrection can be made. By placing the incense beneath the nose of a corpse, when the corpse smells it, it will be brought back to life.”
“So there indeed is something as marvelous as this,” Song Shijiu said clearly, and then asked Yue Niang, “then, were you able to find this Hun Restoration Tree?”
Yue Niang drew back the hand that had supported her on A Wann’s coffin, and gently breathed through her nose, and said, “Three years. On the one end, I was collecting and preserving A Wan’s works, and on the other, I was overturning the entire nation with the effort to search for the Hun Restoration Tree, and finally, in the second year of Xiantian,[8] I found it.” She moved to the skeleton in front of her and crouched down, her fingertips reaching forward in counterpart to the skeleton’s joints, as if placating, but also, as if with a lament, and even more, a faint hatred; she reached between her own whitened bones with her index finger, the space completely bereft, a treasure that had overturned a generation having also become loess. She let out a soft sigh, and said, “In the second year of Xiantian, with my power flourishing, the emperor couldn’t tolerate it, and I was forced to commit suicide. With hatred, I drank the poison, and with the only matter in my heart left unfinished, I spared no efforts to escape to these wooded mountains, and on the passage leading to A Wan’s tomb, I used all my desire to hold the restoration incense beneath her nose.” She reached out and touched her own blackened skull, and with a laugh that vibrated her chest, said, “It was almost—but just almost.”
It was only with this that A Yin understood her unfinished words—so, this was the reason.
“The hardest to bear was that I had never disclosed half a phrase of my affection; I just wanted her to be brought back to life and hear that one phrase from the bottom of my heart. Two or three steps too few, just too few.” She held the skull in her hand tightly, as if wanting to use her strength to sink into it, but even having become a ghost, not even pain showed care for her. She sat down in front of A Wan’s coffin, her head gently pressing against the wood, and she said absent-mindedly, “That question you asked just now, whether A Wan still remembers me, even my skeleton, unexpectedly, recognises it. Like this, a wandering ghost without descendants for so many years, not even that matters.”
A Yin let out a heavy breath, and, at the secretive gaze in Li Shiyi’s eyes, forbidding her to speak of the matter, was startled and caught off guard. “Shiyi?” A Yin called softly.
Li Shiyi turned her hand over to press against the dry wall face, and shook her head, saying, “Since you already have the restoration incense, why don’t you use it yourself? If you used it, and lived a good life, what would there be to regret?” Her tone dropped, each word critical, and contrarily, Li Shiyi’s indifferent expression almost seemed to just be asking about the weather, and she walked over to Yue Niang’s side, crouching down to look her straight-on, and said, “That Hun Restoration Tree, it wasn’t real; you knew that from the start, didn’t you?”
Everyone was startled, and hearing that, Yue Niang quivered, staring with incredible alarm and grief at the person before her. Li Shiyi’s eyes were in clear contrast, with nothing within them at all, only reflecting the frenetic mask of the sorry figure before her, and she opened her mouth a few times, the disobedient tears finally falling, one massive drop after another, her tragic appearance incredibly hard to look at, her appearance entirely unlike the calm and collected emperor’s daughter of before.
Tu Laoyao’s greatest fear was a young woman’s tears, and he wanted to reach out and grab her, but he saw that her eyes and nose had become red through and through, eyes pursing up like cloth, the veins in her temples along with her ribs expanding and contracting, seeming as if making a supreme effort to restrain her misery and the spasmodic sobs of her heart, her own weakness exposed in every detail. She sobbed, “I…I…”
Li Shiyi’s brows furrowed; she was unwilling to prod at Yue Niang’s weak spot, but the misery beneath the facade, that was the real unbearable pain. The past few days, while flipping through the History of the Early Tang Dynasty, she had coincidentally come across the entirety of Princess Taiping and Shangguang-zhaorong’s life. “You used the false medicine to deceive yourself and others, saying that if you had managed to make that one last step, you could have brought A Wan back to life, and you could be saved from repentance. This obsession was unable to be despelled for a thousand years, but the A Wan you speak of, when it was all said and done, how did she die?”
Yue Niang’s bean-sized tears fell to the ground, scattering the dust in fragments, the veins in her temple pounding, the serpentine coils snaking behind her ears, and the physical exertion turned her skin pale and colourless, and she choked on tears, teeth clenched as she gazed at A Wan’s coffin, and finally said with a sob, “I assumed that I wasn’t within her heart.” Her and A Wan, both friends and enemies. Their friendship was that of the lady’s chamber, and their enmity was within the royal court hall as political opponents. She continued, “A Wan was skilled in establishing social relations, striking left and right and turning everything into gold; who could know what words she said were true, and which were fake?”
Yue Niang let out a wet breath, and said with a trembling laugh, “In the fourth year of Jinglong, during the Tang Long coup, both I and A Wan were suspicious, and drew up a pronouncement of Li Chongmao as the crown prince. Soon after, Empress Wei got involved in politics, and I formed an alliance with Longji to eliminate the Wei clan’s associates, and depose Li Chongmao. A Wan told me Li Longji was incredibly ambitious, and wouldn’t be willing to be subordinate, and we needed to get rid of him as soon as he had served his purpose, and he was still loyal to Zhongzong, and was seeking to protect Chongmao’s faction. She and I stood as bitter, irreconcilable adversaries, and she refused to say a soft word to me, and we quarelled endlessly, and I hated her cold and uncompromising inclination, and also desired to strengthen my oath to Longji, and with one word, caused Li Longji to take her as a party with the Wei clan, and behead her under that banner. I was so power-hungry, I ate my own bitter fruit.” Yue Niang raised her head and smiled, and knocked the back of her head against A Wan’s coffin heavily.
Li Shiyi let out a breath, and then raised her crooked legs, balancing her arms on her knees, and softly asked her, “Since you were in opposition and there was hatred, why still have an intimate inscription made, and lead a funerary ceremony, and insist on the act of resurrection?”
“Because, because…” Yue Niang’s lip trembled like an ice cave, even her teeth rattling, and she said, “When I was arranging her remnants, I found a book we had both studied as children. That book was placed above her writing desk, and it was obvious that it had recently been flipped through. A piece of note paper was pressed within it, and in fei bai calligraphy, eight characters were written.”
Li Shiyi’s heart slowed, and she heard Yue Niang softly say: “From a long and arduous journey comes peace.”
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Translator's notes:
[1]: The title 昭容 (Zhaorong) was an imperial concubine position instated under Emperor Wu Zetian.
[2]: Shangguang Wan’er was an imperial concubine during Emperor Wu’s reign, who had great influence and acted as a foremost advisor to the Emperor.
[3]: The Lateral Courts (掖庭, Ye Ting) was the court the concubines were housed in.
[4]: 710 CE.
[5]: Li Longji, Emperor Xuanzong.
[6]: 断线 (duan xian), literally “broken strings”, refers to the broken strings of the qin and the se, two instruments that epitomise marital harmony.
[7]: Taken from eulogy in the translation of Shangguang Wan’er’s funerary epitaph found in “‘Her Influence Great, Her Merit beyond Measure’: A translation and initial investigation of the epitaph of Shangguan Wan’er”, by Norman Harry Rothschild, published in 2015.
[8]: 713 CE.
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