Chapter 2921: The Gramophone Box (2)

A few more lines of the words drifted, half-float, into his ears:

"I chased your moonlight, but the tears wet my eyes. How can the past blow away with the wind, how can it be forgotten..."

The voice went on singing — neither high nor low, neither hurried nor slow, like a river no eye could see, flowing soundless through the hall. And it stirred up in him ten thousand thoughts.

What did he think of?

Perhaps of the late Emperor — of "My brother shall be another Yao or Shun." Perhaps of long ago, when he was still Prince Xin and lived in his princely mansion outside the palace walls: trembling through every day, true, but with no such mountains of memorials to answer, no such affairs of war and state to gnaw at him. The nights were quiet then. There was only the wind in the bamboo leaves, and the watch-drums sounding from far away.

Perhaps of Empress Zhou. He thought of the year of the great marriage, of the face he had seen when he lifted the bridal veil, its brows and eyes still holding a shy smile. He had been young then, and had believed that the affairs of the world, if a man gave them his whole heart, could always be set right. Ten years and more had passed since. He was young still — yet there was white at his temples, and the world's affairs grew harder the more he did them, and muddier the more he set them straight.

Name after name rose up out of his mind and sank again, like leaves on water, wheeling a moment, and taken away at last by the current.

"...How can the past blow away with the wind, how can it be forgotten."

The last line sung, the xiao-flute rose again, like one long sigh, circling the hall a moment before it faded, little by little, into all that golden candlelight.

The hall was still for a long time.

The maids stood with hands at their sides, not daring to breathe. Noble Consort Tian stood beside the machine and stole one glance toward the imperial desk; Chongzhen sat there without a motion. "Your Majesty?" she called softly.

Chongzhen came back to himself with a start, like a man shaken out of a dream. He let his body fall back against the chair back and breathed out one long breath.

"The name of the song, at least, is apt. And the feeling in it rings true as well."

Noble Consort Tian started slightly, then said in a low voice: "Your Majesty's judgment is sacred. This Kun song has none of the gravity of the classical airs, yet it has the power that true feeling carries."

Chongzhen nodded — and then shook his head. "True the feeling is, but desolate past all need. Every day I read memorials, and it is starving people, roving bandits, the Jianzhou Tartars, the Kun bandits — item upon item, each one a fresh ache in the head. I get one song at last to listen to, and it is this bleak tune again."

At these words the consorts in attendance shot one another a single rapid glance — faces composed, but a shade of dread rising under the eyes. Mercifully, the song had been the Sovereign Lord's own choosing; had any other hand commended it, a scolding, at the least, would have followed. Noble Consort Tian let her eyelids fall, and privately thanked her stars that she had not gone on pressing His Majesty to hear a few more.

The hall was still an instant. Chongzhen, seemingly unaware of the fine tension around him, kept his eyes on the machine, sunk in thought. After a long moment he lifted the Huqiu tea a maid had newly offered and drank two slow mouthfuls; the warm liquor went down his throat, and only then did the nameless mood the song had summoned sink back a little way.

"The Kun, then, have their classical airs and these common songs beside," he set down the cup, a certain dry relish in his voice, "so that the common run of Kun music spreads through the marketplace while the fine kind walks straight into the temple of state — all of it packable into one little disc. Vulgar and refined hand in hand: their rites and music are rather better provided than our Great Ming's, it would seem."

As he spoke he pointed at the mother-of-pearl case that held the discs, and his voice went gradually lower and heavier. "One such disc, and five men may listen to it, or ten; a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand may listen to it. If the Kun set their songs and their music to bewitch men's hearts, it would be as easy as turning over a hand."

"Do you know wherein the Kun are strongest of all? Not in ships, guns, or engines — but in this very craft of seducing and disordering men's hearts. In the old years Kun books and Kun pictures were spread broadcast through both capitals, and — the Embroidered Uniform Guard reported it — even porters and runners who could not read one character were going into the tea-houses to spend three or five coppers hearing a man read the Kun books aloud. And now there is this disc box besides." Chongzhen paused. "This box — it was Commissioner Tian who sent it in, was it not?"

"Your Majesty—"

Chongzhen rose slowly, and fell into his habit of pacing in a circle, hands clasped behind his back. "The Eastern caitiffs are hateful enough, but they aspire to no more than a brigand hold on Liaodong and a stolen Korea — squatting on that strip of frozen ground waiting for My investiture and tribute. The Kun bandits are another matter: they have now seduced away even My own wife's kin. Give them another three years, five years, and the hearts that should be Mine will be theirs — and then how long could My rivers and mountains hold?"

The Emperor's gaze came round at last to Noble Consort Tian, kneeling on the floor, trembling, her face drained white. "Tomorrow, summon Left Commissioner-in-Chief Tian Hongyu to the palace. I mean to have a good long talk with him about raising silver to exterminate the Kun."

With that he squared his sleeves, lifted his foot, and walked straight out. The little eunuch at the hall door hurried the curtain up for him; Chongzhen crossed the threshold in long strides and was gone without a backward look. Behind him the glass palace lantern's light wavered, as if the wind had brushed it — and steadied again.

The hall doors swung slowly shut behind the Emperor with one muffled boom.

For a good while the hall kept its silence. Then a candle-flower cracked and spat, and Noble Consort Tian started so violently it was as if she had been woken out of a nightmare. She knelt where she was, both legs gone to water; for the moment she could not rise.

"My lady—" Selected Attendant Xue came knee-walking over from the side and took her arm, her voice pressed down to a thread. "My lady. The Sovereign Lord is gone."

Only then did Noble Consort Tian, leaning on the girl's arm, rise to her feet on trembling legs. Standing at last, she drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if striving to squeeze the lump blocked at her chest out, little by little. Her face was pale as ever, and the rouge on her lips stood out startlingly against it — a drop of cinnabar fallen on white paper.

"My lady should sit first." Consort Yuan came over too, dragged up an embroidered drum stool, and helped Noble Consort Tian into it. She was the steadier of the two; fright showed on her face as well, but her voice kept fairly level. "What the Sovereign Lord said just now was not necessarily aimed at Your Ladyship. As for the Left Commissioner-in-Chief's side—"

"You needn't console me." Noble Consort Tian spoke now, her voice a little harsh; she paused, as if steadying its pitch. "The Sovereign Lord's meaning I heard clearly enough. The Kun affair, my family's affairs — His old self has entered every item in the ledger."

Selected Attendant Xue and Consort Yuan exchanged a glance, and neither dared take it up.

The candlelight jumped, casting shifting light and shadow across the three faces. The machine still stood in its corner, the brass mouth of its trumpet pointing silently at the empty air — like a mouth that would not close; a moment since it had been singing "This parting, half a life — too desolate," and now it was dumb as any stone.

Noble Consort Tian's gaze fell on the machine, rested there an instant, moved away. She lowered her head and looked at the solid-gold nail guard on her finger, glinting cold in the candlelight.

"That disc," she said suddenly, in a voice as low as talking to herself, "who was it brought into the palace?"

Selected Attendant Xue started faintly, then answered: "To reply to Your Ladyship: it was Selected Attendant Zhang who got it from outside. She says a brother of her mother's family had it carried back from Hangzhou by a go-between — twelve altogether, and all were presented to Your Ladyship."

Noble Consort Tian nodded, and asked nothing further. She closed her eyes; her lashes trembled slightly, as if over some weighty matter. After a long moment she opened them, and her gaze had gone much cooler and clearer.

"Tomorrow, go and tell Selected Attendant Zhang, and say it is I who say it: hereafter, fewer of these things are to be brought into the palace. The Sovereign Lord does not like them, and we have no need to court the trouble."

Selected Attendant Xue hastened to comply.

Listening beside them, Consort Yuan could not help saying in a low voice: "My lady, that disc was the Sovereign Lord's own picking; it was not Your Ladyship who commended it. And just now, when the Sovereign Lord left, there was no thought of punishing Your Ladyship—"

"No punishment — that is the hardest kind of all." Noble Consort Tian cut her off, and there was a weariness in her voice past describing. "If His old self had burst out on the spot — cursed me a few rounds, docked a few months of my allowance — that would have been better. For him to say nothing at all and simply walk away like that: that is the account entered in the heart, to be paid later."

The hall fell quiet again. From far off came the watch drum, dull and muffled, as though it came through a wall very, very thick.

Selected Attendant Xue suddenly recollected something, and dropped her voice: "My lady, tomorrow the Left Commissioner-in-Chief enters the palace, and the Sovereign Lord spoke of raising silver to exterminate the Kun — then surely that will mean—"

She dared not finish. Noble Consort Tian gave her one look, a look cold as the icicles under a winter eave.

"Mean what? Mean making my father disgorge silver." Noble Consort Tian finished the sentence for her, and dragged a bitter smile out of one corner of her mouth. "'Raising silver' — how fine it sounds from the Sovereign Lord's mouth. What raising silver? It is confiscation, nothing else. How many mansions my father has bought in the capital, how much land he has hoarded at Tongzhou — can His old self be without the tally of it? That he never spoke before was face kept for me. Now the Kun business has driven him to the edge, and face is the one thing there is no longer time to keep."

Consort Yuan opened her mouth to offer some word of comfort, and found she had nothing to say. She looked at Selected Attendant Xue; Selected Attendant Xue's face too was blank with fright. And so the three of them sat in the candlelight, each with her own care at her heart, and none of them spoke.

Beyond the windows the night had thickened. From somewhere far away came the cry of a crow — raw and chill, like a dull knife dragged across a porcelain bowl — and it rolled on and on through the sunken stillness of the palace.

Noble Consort Tian rose abruptly.

"It is late. Go back and rest, all of you." Her voice had recovered its usual evenness; only her face was pale yet. "Tomorrow the Sovereign Lord sees my father, and I must settle early too — tomorrow there will be news to be gathered."

Selected Attendant Xue and Consort Yuan rose hastily, made their courtesies, and withdrew each to her own place. In the instant the hall door swung, a gust of night wind slipped in, pitching the candles every which way, and the brass trumpet of the machine in the corner gave out a low, moaning note, like a man sighing softly in the dark.

After the door had shut, Noble Consort Tian stood alone awhile; then she walked slowly to the machine, reached out her hand, and closed the mother-of-pearl case that held the discs.

"This parting, half a life." She murmured the words once, shook her head, and turned away toward the inner hall.

Behind her the candles went out one by one under the maids' breath, and the great hall sank into darkness inch by inch. Only the machine in the corner stood on, silent, the brass mouth of its trumpet turned toward the empty air — as if waiting for someone to come and crank it round again, and sing that desolate air one more time.