Six Lives of Fankle the Cat Page 8

  The banquet was spread in the great hall, overlooking the garden.

  The Emperor sat at the head of the table, the Minister of Commerce sat at the foot. A hundred lords and ladies ate and drank. Stylish words were spoken across the table. It was as if an intricate web of wit and delight was being woven.

  In the middle of the third course – young eaglets soused in strawberry wine – grains of spice got into the Emperor’s nostril. He sniffed, he grew rigid, there was no breath left in the royal nasal passages for a full half-minute. The idle elegant chatter around the board ceased. Mouths gaped. The minister made agitated signs to one of the flunkeys. The flunkey picked up a silk napkin from the sideboard and rushed with it to the Emperor and thrust it into his hand. It was not a moment too soon. The Emperor’s head shattered, twice. His royal nose exploded into the silk napkin.

  Then all around the light laughter and chatter broke out again. The minister called on the musicians to play a piece of music to unleash the digestive juices.

  “You keep pungent spices in your kitchen,” said General Wo, the Emperor’s aide-de-camp.

  Little fountains of laughter leapt up here and there around the table. The next course, pears and apricots chilled in mountain ice, was announced.

  Why was the Emperor so preoccupied? Ever since his sneezes, he had been gazing at the crumpled silk in his hand. He said at last, “How comes it, minister, that you have a better silk-weaver in your house here than I have in the Imperial Palace?”

  “It is a matter of chance, your majesty,” said the minister.

  “I have never handled silk like this,” said the Emperor, “of such purity and softness, of such incomparable artistry. What is the name of your silk-weaver?”

  “She is called Girl of Tulips,” said the Minister of Commerce, and bit his lip.

  “I wish to see this silk-weaver,” said the Emperor.

  “Alas,” said the minister, “Girl of Tulips is not here. Girl of Tulips has been sent away. Girl of Tulips has woven her last silk.” The Emperor drew his brows together. It was as if a thundercloud had settled there.

  “Where is she?” he said. “Tell me where this girl is. I will send out horsemen. She must be brought here as soon as possible. I delight in fine silk.”

  The Minister of Commerce began to stammer. “Majesty ... The truth is ... This Girl of Tulips is a very common person. Her true name is Bat-ye, which means ‘poor river girl’ ... That is exactly what this person is. When I first saw her she was in rags, she was smelling of brine ... She is nothing ... I would not have your eyes insulted ... Her behaviour is as common as her appearance ... She is ignorant, impudent ... For certain things she did recently here in this house, I got rid of her ... Think no more of Bat-ye, that common, filth, your majesty.”

  The musicians hung breathless upon their flutes.

  “I want the girl for my looms,” said the Emperor at last. “Minister, you will produce the girl, wherever she is, within a week. Otherwise, there will be a certain rearrangement of personnel within my council of state.”

  The household had never seen such woe begone looks on the face of their master – not even on the morning of his wife’s death.

  At last he crooked a finger at the chief flunkey, and whispered in his ear. He pointed downwards, through the floor, into the darkness under the foundation stone.

  The next course was announced: sharks’ fins and honey sauce. The minister ate nothing.

  ***

  Girl of Tulips was free! There was a sudden torrent of light and fresh air into her cell. At first she thought they had come to summon her to the stake.

  It was not the ferocious guards. It was her two handmaidens who stood, smiling, on each side of the door. They drew her along a corridor that rang like an evil bell, and up iron stairs smelling of rust and pain and blood, and out at last into the garden. (The garden was a miracle of light and leaf, bee and shadow, blossom and scent, to the freed girl.) She was not allowed to linger in the garden. She was taken inside, the clothes smelling of earth-damp were stripped from her, she was laid languorously in a warm fragrant bath. Then the fine clothes she had worn before her imprisonment were, newly laundered, arrayed on her.

  “What is happening?” said Girl of Tulips. “Where will you take me now?”

  The handmaidens could not say. They touched their fingers to their lips. They kissed her. They put delicate smiles on her.

  Upstairs, downstairs, through a long corridor with music at the end of it, a confusion of voices, and such aromas of food that it was like an emerald sword entering her stomach. (She had not eaten for three days.)

  She saw, seated at the long table, all the beauty and valour of the region. At the far end, like a man sentenced, slumped the Minister of Commerce.

  A stranger more splendid than any peacock rose to his feet as she entered. A single trumpet was sounded.

  “Kneel,” whispered one of the handmaidens. She went down on her knees. How was she to know who he was? He was so handsome and richly attired he could have been one of the gods from the snow mountain.

  He spoke. She dared to take her eyes from the floor. Her heart thumped erratically. He had the kindest, sweetest face she had ever seen on a man. If he had been a brine-smelling fisherman from the delta, with such a face she would have loved him ... His words, till now, had been only a confused music in her ears. She strove to understand; “... command you therefore, Girl of Tulips, to return with us at once to the Imperial Palace. The sight of you pleases us. A place will be found for you, suitable to your beauty and talents.”

  “Speak to the Emperor,” whispered one of the handmaidens. “Answer.”

  “Of course I’ll go with you,” said the honest girl from the river. “But not because you’re an emperor and can give me whatever I desire. No. I will go with you because I love you.”

  She said these last words with her eyes on the ground.

  The Emperor was suddenly kneeling beside her. He took her by the hands. He whispered, so that only she could hear, “It is not only the silk. I would love you, Girl of Tulips, if you patched rags in a garret.”

  Then he kissed her.

  All the guests shouted and clapped their hands. They drowned the music of the flutes. The ladies laughed falsely. “All happiness to your majesty!” shouted the guests. “Happiness – prosperity – peace.”

  The Minister of Commerce, at the foot of the table, buried his face in his hands.

  The Emperor raised Girl of Tulips to her feet. He kissed her fingers that still smelt faintly of rust and earth mould.

  In the heart of all that pageantry and excitement, a small black cat strolled nonchalantly under the table, and began to devour the scraps and fragments of food that had fallen from the feast. (Remember, he had not eaten for three long days.) Afterwards he gave his face a lick, yawned, and curled up at the entangled feet of his new master and mistress.

  Before he dropped off to sleep, the black cat heard the Emperor say sternly, “As for you, Minister of Commerce, my impulse is to have you executed at once. Impalement, disembowelling – a death like that seems suitable. She who is to be Empress has spoken on your behalf. You have suffered much, she says, and most of the time you are a just man. She has mentioned a fragrant ghost, your wife. You will therefore be left in peace. Let this be sufficient punishment – the knowledge that once you came within a few days of starving the future Empress to death.” So it happened. The Emperor and Girl of Tulips were married with great state in the Imperial Palace. The celebrations went on for a month. The fisher people of the river heard at last that there was a new Empress, but they did not know that it was their friend Bat-ye.

  The last dead firework lay in the imperial garden, one summer dawn.

  It was time for the Emperor to return to his arduous duties.

  Arduous they were – far more difficult than the tasks of a fisherman beside the river, or a fowler, or a hunter of tigers, or a silk weaver.

  One morning, a month after the w
edding, the Emperor came into his wife’s chamber, after a council-of-state meeting, wringing his hands.

  “A whole fleet of merchant ships!” he cried. “Scattered in a storm! Half of them sunk. It was a very precious cargo, tea and jade and spices! Two merchants in the sea port will be ruined!”

  The Empress stroked her black cat, and said nothing.

  The Emperor went out again. Who expects advice from a woman? He went to consult this maritime adviser and that.

  The black cat stopped purring. It spoke to the Empress for the first time. It laid its head on her shoulder and whispered things into her ear.

  When the Emperor returned to his wife’s chamber, for a glass of tea and a few consoling kisses, she said, “I wouldn’t worry about the merchants so much. They’re well insured against storm and shipwreck. They make a hundred times more than they ever lose. There will be sailors’ widows now in all the little villages along the coast. Winter is coming on. See that the women and the children are all right. They are the ones who really suffer, after a disaster like this.”

  The Emperor looked at the Empress with astonishment. He had never looked at the situation from this particular angle.

  “I think there’s truth in what you say,” he said.

  The black cat slept, or pretended to sleep, on his favourite stool that was patterned with flowers and peacocks.

  That weekend the families of the drowned sailors were given silver and an imperial guarantee of food and shelter until the following spring. The great merchants grumbled and said it could not be afforded. But they were not noticeably poorer themselves.

  Five or six weeks later the Emperor came into his wife’s chamber clasping his head in both hands. The council of state had just finished an emergency sitting. “Terrible!” he cried. “A revolt! My own people, that I love dearly, to take up swords and catapults against me! They will suffer for this. There will be heads rotting in the wind along a hundred miles of mountain road. Those gentle people from the mountains – goatherds, falconers, timbermen – who would have thought they would rise against their Emperor!”

  The Empress stroked the black cat and was silent.

  The Emperor went out, to consult a few generals. What does a woman, however beautiful and good, know about treason and force of arms?

  The black cat murmured certain words into the ear of his friend.

  When the Emperor returned, to forget his worries for a while in his wife’s arms, she pushed him away, gently, and said, “There are no finer people than the mountain tribes. No people have shown you more loyalty and love. But people will do desperate things when they have a dragon for a governor. If I were you, I would make enquiries – urgent enquiries – into the character and behaviour of the mountain governor. He is an evil man. Examine the account books. Of every six trees felled on the mountain, the governor takes four for himself and one for you. It’s the same with the falconers and the goatherds. The governor has set up a flogging post in every village. The fine house of the governor is teeming with slaves – girls that were, until last year, the happy daughters of the mountain men.”

  The Emperor looked long into the indignant eyes of his wife. Then he went out of the room.

  The black cat stretched himself on the silken stool.

  Next morning the wicked governor, who had of course returned to the capital at the first stirring of revolt, was executed in the city square. An embassy, carrying a cage of doves, was sent into the mountains. Words were spoken across a torrent. That night the mountains rang with joy and loyalty.

  More than a year later the Emperor entered his wife’s chamber; a star of astonishment had exploded across his forehead.

  “Barbarians!” he said. “Out of the west, in the strangest ship you ever saw! How can such a ship sail at all? It is so clumsy it should sink. But it has come ten thousand miles. Such ugly men too. Their faces are as lumpy and white as dough. The gods only know what kind of gibberish they speak. Their eyes are blue as ice, and they stick out. They walk like bears. They showed me what passes for a book with them. Queer, incomprehensible letters, and the pictures crude and garish – nothing like the work of our artists, with their delicacy and endless suggestiveness. I think we cannot have such creatures in our land. I never saw such naked greed on faces – it frightened me! – when they stared at our golden statues and fountains. Obviously they want to trade with us, across thousands of miles of sea and desert. How their greedy eyes opened wide when the bales of silk were spread out before them! We don’t need, or desire, the produce of barbarians. I think the best thing to do, in the circumstances, is cut off their ugly ears and tell them to turn round and go.”

  The black cat cried out once.

  “That cat of yours startled me then,” said the Emperor. “It was like a cry of warning.”

  “Listen carefully, my dear,” said the Empress. “This is the gravest moment of your entire reign. I agree with you. Send these men back the way they came. Here our government and our way of life are exquisitely balanced. It is attuned to the mountains and seas and stars and grains of dust that have shaped and nourished our people for thousands of years. Now the stranger has his foot among us. This is no isolated coming. He is the first of thousands and tens of thousands. They will overthrow everything that we hold to be precious and good. Give them a gift, to show that we entertain no evil against them, then let them go.”

  The black cat was stalking from wall to wall in a very agitated manner.

  “Of course you are right, as always,” said the Emperor. “The Europeans will be sent away at once.”

  “It is not so simple as that, alas,” said the Empress. “We like to think that we are alone under heaven, a great and powerful and wise people, very favoured by the gods. But there are other peoples. We have seen a man from India and a man from the islands in the south. They have their own wisdom, which is different from ours, but equally precious to them. There are thousands of such nations over the broad rich cloth of earth and sea. Can we shut our gates against them forever? We cannot. We are all children of the sun. It is our nature to seek each other out. It is desirable that we seek each other out, and try to understand each other. It could be that in the end, in this way, all the world will be one. Think of the richness and happiness and peace then, when all the diverse cultures of the world meet and mingle! Then we will be that much nearer the serenity and wisdom that the gods desire for us. Bid the strangers come in. Accept their gifts. Prepare rooms for them. It may be the greatest day of your entire reign.”

  The black cat huddled, a shape of misery, in the furthest corner of the room.

  The Emperor went out to see to the silver trumpets of reception.

  The Europeans stayed for many years in the houses that the Emperor gave them. The people in time got used to their ugliness and uncouthness; also to the graceless inquisitiveness with which they pried into every object and circumstance. They had hardly more knowledge of ceremony than baboons. They wanted to experience everything at once, like ignorant children in a cake shop.

  Suddenly one morning they said they wanted now to return home. They were growing old, they said. They wished to die in peace in their own lands.

  Gravely, and with many gifts, they were bidden farewell.

  “That is the last of them,” said the Emperor. “I got rather to like them in the end, in spite of all their barbarous ways. You see, my dear, it wasn’t really important at all, the coming of the Europeans. It neither helped us nor harmed us. It simply stirred our curiosity a little. They won’t come again.”

  The Empress sighed. The black cat growled in her lap.

  They grew old together, the Imperial pair. Never had the Empire known such happiness and prosperity. “The gods bless our wise Emperor and Empress!” the people sang outside the gate on each anniversary of their wedding.

  Troubles and difficulties came, of course. Whenever he was distracted by the jargon and vacillation and sheer stupidity of his council, the Emperor brought his beating pulse
s and flushed face to his wife’s chamber; and there, into that wise and patient ear, he poured everything. Then, when he came back an hour or so later, she had the cure ready – the only possible solution in the circumstances.

  And always the black cat lay curled on his patterned silk stool, as if nothing mattered in the world.

  ***

  One day, when the Emperor was fishing in the artificial lake in the high garden, the Empress gave secret orders to the chief ostler. Within an hour a very plain-looking coach was standing at the main gate, harnessed to a pair of strong horses, one black and one white. When at last the Empress climbed aboard the coach, she was very plainly clad, almost as if she was the wife of the tenth secretary’s underclerk. The black cat cried out of a bamboo basket. The Empress whispered orders into the coachman’s ear; then she put a map into his hand.

  With a cry and a whip-crack the carriage moved off.

  The Emperor dozed at the lake-side and was aware of nothing. (When he went in for his supper, of course, he found a letter under his plate on the table.)

  That coach journey lasted a full week. The horses had to be changed at this staging-post and that. The black cat hated travelling of all kinds. He complained often out of his bamboo prison. The Empress often bent down and whispered loving words through the bars.

  Night after night they stayed at ordinary inns, where sometimes they were received courteously and sometimes with indifference and coldness. At the hospitable inns the black cat always obliged by catching the rat that was the bane of the cook’s life.

  On the seventh day, at noon, the Empress began to take a great interest in her surroundings. “That little hill with the one tree,” she cried, “I remember it.” Then, later, “The pool in the river where the children bathed – how beautiful. There’s a boy wading in it now!” She tapped the coachman on the shoulder with her fan. “Turn left at the first crossroads. A village is down there, along the river bank.”

  The coach stopped in the village square. The Empress got out. The black cat trotted at her heels. The coachman sat in the coach and chewed leaves. He thought, “What a poor uninteresting place!”