My Last Empress

My Last Empress by Da Chen

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Authors: Da Chen
Tags: General Fiction
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I?”
    “Suit yourself,” said S, busy with his move, swiping a horse and a pawn with one leap of his chariot.
    Umbrella in hand, I rushed across the dimpled courtyard to her side. Rising to meet me, Q leaned against my chest,a wet child. With a towel, I tenderly dried her sweet cheeks, puddled dimples, matted hair, reddened earlobes, and angelic neck—Oh, my heart!—then her pet, which beaked back and cooed defensively.
    Q’s giggles vibrated the thready rain pelting the oil-papered umbrella. “You tickle, big man.”
    “Shall we go inside?”
    “No.” She pouted. “Lookie … I’m bleeding.” Skin was broken on her hand, a tincture of red forming, nipped by a timorous twig.
    “I know just the cure. May I?”
    “Cure it then.”
    I lowered my lips onto her pale palm, licking her cut with the quivering tip of my tongue, one eye glancing at her sideways. Her palm coiled in a fist then relaxed. She blushed before letting fly a series of curses in German or some other Balkan lingo, faking anger.
    “It is a Cherokee Indian’s favorite remedy. Manly saliva.”
    “You savage man.” She kissed me on my left cheek on raised toes, minty breath, leafy tobacco.
    “Your neck is bleeding, too.”
    “Really? You twit.” She pushed me away with a throaty chuckle, then slipped away from my arms, my heart, ankle thin, slender calfed, child slick. “Awful man!”
    Oh, my dearest Annabelle, is she the one you pledged? Is her arrival your departure? Who is she to you, to me, to us, to your dying, to your sustaining within me? Am I to be her savior or ruin?
    Faltering, I followed her back to my living room. Barely did I pay attention to him, preoccupied with the image ofQ curled up in my sofa, wet as a drowned cat. Her pigeon flew tentatively from bookshelf to desk to armchair, then to my bedroom and back, in transit dropping her poop whitely on the chessboard.
    “You ruined our game!” exclaimed S.
    “All you care about is your chess game and yourself, Husband!” Q admonished. Seeking her cigarettes and finding them wet, her anger rose.
    “I am inviting Pi-Jin as our night guest. It is settled.” He looked at me with the confidence of one who is rarely contradicted. “Tonight, six p.m. sharp. Isn’t that joyous, my dear?” he asked.
    She shrieked back, “Give me a cigarette or something. I’m freezing to death, can’t you see?”
    “I am not your servant,” replied S mildly, “and you should quit smoking, among other things.”
    “You are the virtuous one, huh?” Q lunged at S, who nimbly dodged out of the way.
    I caught her, falling, in my meddling arms.
    “What can I get for you?” I asked, not knowing what was amiss.
    “Big wolf, you don’t have what I need. He hides it! He is the one who has to pay. Get out of my way.” Q picked up an inkwell and threw it at S, missing him but knocking down my collection of history books. The jade well, undented, fell on the posh carpet.
    The crisis only ebbed when eunuchs, without warning, as is the rule herein, appeared and carried her away, with S sinking diminished into his chess chair. Onward he complained in a manner that was remorseful and teary, generous on thepart of his wife but critical of himself. “One day,” he said, “this would all be over. She will be undone. And I don’t know what will become of me.”
    Here was the tale that flowed out of S’s mouth.
    Q had been a lively child bride who had caught S’s eyes in their first encounter when she had been presented to Grandpa upon return of Q’s father’s foreign service. No one had been more enamored by Q’s easy charm and quaint beauty than the dowager herself, who fancied herself an arbiter of all arts and tradition and who daily surrounded herself with talented and artistic personages. Among the dowager’s close companions was a noted Peking opera singer named Yu Fang, a diminutive man who played a woman’s part (singing and dancing being the rarefied trade of men), winning the hearts

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