Work Text:
Giuseppe Castiglione, pious and wise Jesuit that he was, knelt only before the Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the eunuch bringing the emperor’s decree. It wasn’t even a particularly high-ranking eunuch, not that one would ever be sent for a domestic task like commissioning a portrait of the new emperor. Giuseppe accepted the commission on hands and knees out of politeness and studied it like his death warrant when the eunuch was gone, remembering how things had been the last time there was a new emperor. He had been a shy young thing back then, his Manchu so broken it took him five minutes to glue a single sentence together, and he’d still known what a lion’s den Beijing had been.
“Hey, be happy,” said a nosy lay brother, leaning on his broom handle as Giuseppe dithered. “And don’t you worry about the emperor--he’s as compassionate and warm-hearted as they come.”
Just as Giuseppe began to relax, an even nosier priest swept in and waved the lay brother away. “What would you know about the emperor? Brother Giuseppe, listen carefully and listen well: keep your mouth shut and your head down around the young emperor. He’s as cruel as any, with an especial hatred for Christians. Do you understand?”
Giuseppe understood. He hated these imperial games--who took orders from whom, who had taken bribes to whom, who married whose niece and so on. The Forbidden City was no place for a man of God. Or, rather, when a man of God had placed as much of the Lord’s good earth as he could between himself and Vatican City, it was too cruel to find himself in a place nearly as bad.
Fortunately, a humble painter proved more or less invisible to every more important person in the Forbidden City, even to the eunuchs assigned to escort him in. He set up his easel in silence, checked the lighting in silence, mixed his paints and inks in silence, kowtowed before the emperor in silence, and listened silently as a mid-ranking eunuch told the emperor who Giuseppe was. Giuseppe could tell from the position of the emperor’s golden silk shoe that his gaze was raking along Giuseppe’s spine. “Lang Shining,” said Qianlong’s voice, turning over each syllable of Giuseppe’s Chinese name like a counterfeit coin. “Our father liked your art well enough. Have your skills decayed, Lang Shining?”
Giuseppe shook his head against the ground.
“All right. Do your sketches now. In the meantime, we have some work that cannot be delayed.” Qianlong’s voice had both the clarity of youth and the magnetic gravity of his station, both coming together in a slight ironical point, something of the old Italian virtue of sprezzatura. Giuseppe climbed behind his easel and began drawing some basic guidelines hidden safely behind the paper. In the end, though, he could not avoid looking up at that cruel and warm-hearted emperor who hated Christians.
He could model for Madonna. This thought burst through Giuseppe’s mind like a static shock when he saw Qianlong’s lowered lids, his long, elegant nose and delicate hands clasped around a document. But then Giuseppe thought that he could never model for Madonna--with the domineering confidence he wore around his mouth and eyes like rouge, he could not be anything less than Mary Magdalene. And then he thought, What interesting shapes his eyebrows are. What kind of brush stroke could convey that?
Giuseppe nodded to himself and sank into the devotion of paper and brush. The curve of Qianlong’s cheekbone, the ruffled feathers of a bird, the spark of life in the eye of a fish--this was the way he served the Lord, the way he honored the Lord’s creation, the way he took a part in that creation himself. Perhaps that was a blasphemous thought, the subtle sin of pride. But the pleasure he felt from each careful line was so pure, so sweet, he could not believe it came from the Devil.
“What is a ‘pagan’?”
“Mm, a pagan is a person who has not yet received the light of Christ, who persists in traditions of worshiping false gods.” After three decades cloistered in the Society of Jesus, these words fell from his mouth like a physiological reaction. A pang of dread, equally physiological, followed, and he did not quite understand it until he looked up and saw Qianlong’s red lips curved up in amusement. A trap, he’d fallen into a trap! Blood filled his face as his mind clanged with the words, Giuseppe, you old fool!
But Qianlong’s even expression seemed to match what the lay brother had said, “as compassionate and warm-hearted as they come.” “And what shall be done with a ‘pagan’?” he asked, his tone genuinely curious.
“Jesuits believe that the evidence of the Gospel is in--is in every feature and facet of the world, and so by allowing the pagan to shed his ignorance through education, the pagan will naturally draw to Christ, of his own accord. Of course, there are those Christians who prefer to take up the Devil’s means in the name of the Lord’s ends.” A strand of ugliness passed through his voice at this as he thought of those Dominican and Franciscan missionaries who lived to meddle in the Jesuits’ work.
Qianlong leaned forward, quite ruining the perspective Giuseppe had been drawing from, and repeated, “The Devil’s means?”
“Carrying the monstrance in one hand with a flintlock in the other. Converting a foreign people like driving a herd of sheep to a new paddock--driving them with whips and dogs. Seize hold of the bellwether, drag him to move the flock, and if they won’t eat the unfamiliar grass, let them starve.”
“Ah. And we are simply the bellwether of the pagans.”
“Not to a Jesuit, your majesty.”
Qianlong smiled, and despite how much younger he was than Giuseppe it seemed to be the indulgent smile of an adult to a well-meaning child. “We understand that. But it won’t just be Jesuits, will it?” The emperor stood in a flash of golden silk and took a few steps away from his throne. “Do you know what is happening in India, Lang Shining? You might like it. Beautiful white churches to the Owner of Heaven, thousands of souls converted--to slaves. We have been studying this conversion. Already the missionaries and merchant ships of the West are making overtures to our Southern shores, and it is our private opinion that within our reign a Western envoy will enter our court, asking--with full courtesy and honors, of course--for our leave to begin converting this country the same way. And this is what they will see us as: the bellwether of the pagans. You have done us a great service, Lang Shining. Let us see how your portrait is progressing so far.”
Giuseppe nodded and hurried to remove the paper from his easel, but saw with a start that Qianlong had actually come up to stand behind him. “Your majesty,” he said, his voice a little strangled.
“Interesting!” Qianlong passed a hand over Giuseppe’s shoulder to point at the sketch. “What’s all that dirt you drew on our face?”
“Y-your majesty, those are shadows.”
Qianlong raised his eyebrows in a look not unlike mild alarm. “We didn’t realize the light here was so poor. Can someone find a spot with better lighting?”
“The--the lighting here is no problem!” Giuseppe said hurriedly as the silent cloud of attendants around the room began to buzz. “Really, there are very few shadows at all. This servant just, just exaggerated them a little. It’s a style of art popular in the West, called ‘chiaroscuro,’ that is, that is to say, clarity and shadows. It gives a greater sense of depth, and of humanity as well.”
With a slow nod, Qianlong’s lips moved in the shape of the word chiaroscuro. Once he had tasted the word to his pleasure, he clasped his hands behind his back and moved back toward the throne. “As a ruler we certainly seek to be humane,” he said, affectionately twisting Giuseppe’s words like a knife, “but there’s no need for this ‘chiaroscuro.’ Just the clarity, thank you.” He settled back on his throne, setting aside the memorial he had been studying and picking up a new one. “And don’t be so afraid. Hey, don’t. Eyes up, Jesuit, and make us look good.”
Qianlong sat for his portrait, read twelve memorials, reviewed the reports of three recent battles and the records of twenty-one historical ones, practiced archery, copied a passage of Wang Xizhi’s calligraphy until he found his work acceptable, ordered the drafting of two edicts and reviewed the latest drafts of five more, meditated on compassion, had intercourse with a concubine he was trying to get pregnant to assure her restless clan of their worth to Aisin-Gioro, and still he did not feel satisfied. He dismissed the concubine with a turn of his hand and began leafing through his memories of the day, looking for what it was that was still sticking. The Jesuit, he thought. Yes, it was the Jesuit Lang Shining, who had begun work on his portrait that day, and that Western philosophy of painting he had used. Clarity and shadows. That was it.
He kept his private chambers well-stocked with paper and ink just in case of moments like this. In just a few moments he had everything he needed laid out on his desk: white gouache, black ink in different thicknesses, tinted xuan paper, a comely Han dynasty urn lugged half into the lamplight as his model. First carefully, then freely, Qianlong put brush to paper and tried to replicate the light-and-dark interplay he had seen in Land Shining’s sketch. No, that wasn’t quite right. He tried again, then realized that this chiaroscuro philosophy had more in common with gongbi style painting than xieyi style, changed the paper type to match, started getting results. He drew about ten vases with increasing detail to the texture and shadows, the highlights and lowlights, until at last he found his work acceptable. So this was chiaroscuro, clarity and shadows.
He didn’t like it.
Oh, it was lovely for depicting vases and things like that. Peonies, jades, the glittering scales of carp, he would love to see those things in this style. But portraying living humans in the same mode as possessions was harmful to both the depictor and the depicted--not to mention that this slavish devotion to the illusions of the material world was beyond gauche. He would not encourage this behavior. Not when it came to his subjects, and certainly not when it came to his royal self.
The slight sense of tension that had built in him all day broke like a bubble when he came to this decision. Not that we’ll take it out on Lang Shining, he thought as he relaxed, spinning a brush between his fingers and sketching the Jesuit on an empty corner of paper.
The little Lang Shining took shape under Qianlong’s fingers according to his memory: curly hair disciplined into a braid, a small, neat beard, a nose like a mountain range, firm lines of sorrow and joy around eyes as round as a child’s. Qianlong exaggerated those exotic features a bit as something of a return favor, since Lang Shining had drawn him Manchu. Other Jesuits made him look Han. They were foreigners, and they drew what they saw, but it made people restless. It made the scheming pillars of his court nod knowingly as they thought about the thing they would not speak of to anyone, not even to him, and he still didn’t know what to do about it.
But Lang Shining’s portrait could help for a while. And the painter was simple and earnest, guilelessly devoted to his art. Qianlong laid down a few more delicate brushstrokes, trying to capture that in his sketch--that look of unsullied focus he almost exclusively saw on the faces of Jesuits and monks, with the washed-by-all-waters look that only coexisted with it in Jesuits. Even the Chinese name he had chosen spoke to that virtue: Shining, “Peace on Earth.” This was a man who traveled the world following only beauty and the guidance of his soul, like a leaf before the wind. Qianlong envied that. He envied it like he envied little else. Someday Qianlong would be an old man who had accomplished ten thousand things, brought tranquility and prosperity to the nation and all that, and then he would travel the world and engage in pure art without restraint. He knew this would happen. He had already promised himself so. But he wanted it now, wanted it so much it hurt, and the life he wanted so badly was already Lang Shining’s. He would like to possess him, maybe, but with Jesuits that could get tricky. He could think about it.
A glance at the Swiss clock revealed an alarming hour. Qianlong would have to set aside the rest of the plans he had had for the day, the way he did this late into every night. What a shame. He called an attendant to clear up his desk, but he rolled up the final paper he had worked on and brought it with him. A tension was building inside of him again, a restlessness. He would have to deal with that.
Qianlong’s thumbnail dug sharply into the knot between two prayer beads at the sitting, and Lang Shining kept looking at it in helpless concern. Qianlong could tell that the painter wished he would relax his hand. No one wanted a portrait of an emperor with a clenched fist, least of all Qianlong. But Lang Shining had no authority to berate the emperor, and Qianlong himself could not dispel the anger inside of him, no matter how he tried.
Five years after the barbarians destroyed Great Ming. These words writhed in his mind, flashing inside his eyelids and scratching the syllables of the mantra he tried to wield against them. They weren’t anything particularly important, just a phrase in some no-name merchant grandson’s biography of his no-name merchant grandfather, and yet, and yet… Qianlong’s late grandfather had trusted him with stewardship of a nation that resented its very existence, resented its very security and prosperity because it could not accept the multiculturalism that brought that prosperity and security about. Words like those, barbarians, Great Ming, they were worms in the orchard. They were the reeking parasites of a nation that would sooner die than be both Han and Manchu. It made Qianlong so angry, so angry he--
“Your majesty.”
Qianlong opened his eyes and saw an attendant eunuch before him, presenting him with a feathery green object--a leaf, from a potted chrysanthemum. Following the line down he found Lang Shining standing as close as the attendants would allow him, hand slightly outstretched, his eyes round and, yes, sincere in a face made spartan by middle age. He seemed so full of vitality even as he held so still. Those eyes flicked to the attendant and back, and Qianlong gave his leave for the Jesuit to speak.
“When this servant’s mind is care-worn,” Lang Shining said, his accented Manchu awkwardly careful, “contemplation of nature can restore a measure of peace.”
“Hm,” said Qianlong. He looked down at the leaf in his hand, slightly crushed from the thoughtless transfer, and traced his gaze along the complex fractal patterns of leaf and stem. A faint, bitter fragrance surrounded it. The deeper he poured his attention into this little scrap of greenery, the more its minute and infinite complexity seemed to leach peace into his mind. Those hateful words fell back. The mantra he had mumbled without meaning all morning suddenly blossomed into significance, and his rigid spine bent a comfortable fraction.
Lang Shining looked up at him with a radiant smile. Qianlong had never felt such an easy transition between restlessness and tranquility. He had never seen anyone slip from one to the other as fast as Lang Shining--like scales falling from the eyes, like a little child forgetting its skinned knee. It fascinated him.
He stood. The insulating cloud of attendants stirred to attention, trying to determine what their emperor wanted, but Qianlong didn’t leave them guessing. “We are a little tired. We will go for a walk in our gardens to recover our strength, and Lang Shining,” he added, “will accompany us.”
Giuseppe shifted his weight from his healthy knee to his knee that gave a metallic twinge every time he stood on it and back. A songbird he had never heard in his life was fiddling out a delightful tune in an exquisite camellia bush nearby, but its exotic song just made Giuseppe more nervous. He was a man of the cloth, a man of God, and the little tattoo of excitement beating through him made him feel dirty. It was pride, the sin of pride, he knew it. It was pride in the rewards the works of his hands had brought, the subtle, serpent-like desire to treasure all these rewards as his own instead of dedicating them to the Lord, through whose grace and glory all things were wrought. When the emperor--his patron!--appeared, that pulse of desire spiked like a pagan drumbeat, and he turned from it, tried to turn from it, like Eve from the Tree.
Qianlong had changed from his heavy, stiffly shaped dragon robes to a closely fitting dark vest and sky-blue robes of light, gauzy fabric, perfect for enjoying the late summer day. With this clothing hugging the lines of his slight figure and his taller, more official headdress traded out for a simple black skullcap under which his long queue merrily swung, Giuseppe realized with a shock that the great emperor was not quite as tall as he. It was a shock his mind could barely comprehend, because despite the evidence of his senses Qianlong’s aura of mastery still made him seem to tower nine chi tall.
“No other Jesuit has been as honest with us as you have,” Qianlong said as he led Giuseppe along the garden boardwalk, his guards following a discreet distance behind, “so we’d like to impose on that honesty a little. Does the Christian really believe he’s bringing the pagan happiness by converting him?”
Giuseppe glanced from Qianlong to a lotus pond, from a willow to Qianlong. He was surrounded by so much beauty, hundreds of little things he wished to sketch, and they were moving too, too fast. “The, uh, the venerable Bede says that the life of a pagan is like a little bird who happens to fly through a room on a stormy winter’s night,” he said, hoping the response that came most naturally to his overwhelmed mind was at all correct. “For a brief moment, the bird experiences the warmth of the hearth, the fragrance of the banquet, the light of the candles, all the beautiful and passionate pleasures of life, and then just as quickly it is all gone, and the little bird must fly through the darkness and chill of the night forevermore. The, uh, the winter night is all the life after this one, you understand, the eternal torment and great loneliness of Hell.”
“Yes, we deduced that part.”
“So your majesty understands that--”
“We don’t like Christians.” These words fell lightly and naturally from Qianlong’s mouth, but they sent a horrible pang of dread, of rejection, through Giuseppe’s chest. “They separate people from their ancestors. You spoke of loneliness. Can you imagine a greater pain than not being permitted to venerate your father and mother? To not be able to offer incense to your grandparents, to have no choice but to let their names fall to dust? Your Christian emperor, your ‘Pope,’ believes that your Owner of Heaven is the father of ourself and all our people, and he will be offended if we give that veneration to anyone else. Will our father not be offended, then?”
Giuseppe felt he had an obligation to speak up for his order here. “Jesuits don’t believe that,” he said righteously.
“We know,” said Qianlong, and the kindness, the clarity and the ironical point in his voice was enough to make Giuseppe blush.
They watched the lotus pond for some time, Qianlong and Giuseppe: the pale blossoms stirring toward each other and inevitably away with the breeze, silver carp rising and vanishing in the jade-green depths like half-remembered dreams. Giuseppe wondered how he might draw them. A wash of thin green ink over the top might do it, layered up so and so for the impression of the fickle depths, with of course the flash of light on the ripples done in white, but the more he thought about it, the more he wished he could draw the carp alone--draw them up out of the dream, imagine what could not be seen with all the conviction he entrusted to his senses.
The slight sound of a smile caught at Giuseppe’s attention, and he looked up to see Qianlong watching him instead of the pond. His red lips curled upward while his eyes remained gentle and relaxed--sprezzatura, Giuseppe thought as his thoughts scattered like startled fish. The red lips parted. “The world passes through you as though through Venetian glass,” Qianlong said.
“Th-- This servant is Tuscan,” Giuseppe said, lamely, “not Venetian.”
These words broke a peal of laughter from Qianlong. His relaxed eyes lifted into happy crescents, shoulders shaking slightly until an uncertain smile crept along Giuseppe’s face as well. Qianlong spoke: “That story from Venerable Bede, the bird in the room--we fear it sheds some truth on our life.”
Giuseppe startled mid-smile as, in a brief moment of vertigo, he peered down a future where Qianlong was the next Constantine the Great. But Qianlong atomized that future with a wave of his hand.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Jesuit. We meant that this story may illustrate the fate of our country.” He began to walk, restlessly, Giuseppe trotting after. “This country’s prosperity is almost impossible to describe, like a bird seated at a banquet. But we fear that this discontent nation will flap on and shed its own prosperity in a wingbeat. Or perhaps… perhaps a better metaphor would be an orange tree.” Qianlong indicated a tree laden with blossoms, his smile entirely replaced by a look of deep sorrow. “When a tree blossoms so much the boughs begin to bend, death will surely follow. The branches grow, but the roots do not; the population grows, but the land does not. We cannot let it perish. So even as we care for the roots and improve the soil, we graft branches of this tree onto others to preserve the crop. But--once we have grafted a branch of our orange tree onto a, a plum tree, then that plum tree is ours just as much as the orange tree. How can we not labor wholeheartedly to ensure its leaves are as healthy, and its plums as lush as our oranges? How can we not adore oranges and plums alike?”
Giuseppe clasped his hands wonderingly: “Then your majesty rules with more Christian charity than all the kings of Christendom!” Standing in delicate profile with his tender, upturned eyes, Qianlong seemed to glow--all clarity, no shadows at all.
Qianlong’s eyes lowered and his sprezzatura returned, as cool and opaque as the lotus pond. “Don’t insult us,” he said. A moment’s thought passed, and, with another arch look at Giuseppe, he stepped off the path, Giuseppe watching silent and wide-eyed as though transfixed. Hiking his skirt with one hand, he grasped the end of a long, subtle vine with the other and pulled. Dirt smeared on the imperial fingers, and his brow shuddered with concentration as the weed fought back, but in the end Qianlong ripped up the filthy thing roots and all and threw it at Giuseppe’s feet. “We’re not so tender-hearted,” he told Giuseppe, cheeks flushed and eyes cold. Giuseppe shivered in that cold. Those eyes did not let go of his, would not let go, a greater intimacy than he… It was violating. It was so violating, to him, and the next words were the death-blow that closed up his throat for good. “Tell us that you understand, mm?”
Giuseppe nearly dashed his simple wooden bed to pieces when he threw himself out of it in the dead of the night. He nearly broke his knees when he tumbled onto the stone floor, but he got himself up and got himself to the chapel, got himself on his knees in the chapel, clinging to the church walls all the way. The Blessed Virgin rested her mild eyes on him. “Hail, Mary,” he said, terrified the words would stopper up his mouth, but the next fell from his lips more easily than the first, “full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”
Gradually his old heart slowed from its frantic pace. Venial sins did not need confession, he recalled, and his was only a venial sin. Only the weakness of flesh tainted by the original sin. “Blessed art thou among women--” But what sin, what heinous, grievous…
He had dreamed. He had had a dream, and in that dream he stood in a fine and airy Chinese house in the Tuscan countryside, and he belonged to the house and the house was his. He cared for the house, and he loved to do it, and when the door opened--when the door opened-- “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners” --when the door opened, the emperor of China walked into the house, for it was his, and so was Giuseppe and everything in it. And he took Giuseppe in his arms and kissed him, as a man kisses his wife, and Giuseppe loved to be kissed, loved the feel of those careful hands and those clever red lips… “Pray for us sinners, pray, pray now and at the hour of our deaths.” He looked up at the Virgin Mary in supplication, then looked down as though struck by a whip, because that elegant downturned face looked like another one.
“He isn’t in his cell? Then perhaps the chapel.” The voice of the priest, the very priest who had told him Qianlong was cruel, reached Giuseppe in the sanctuary, and he clutched at the Blessed Virgin’s feet when the sound of armor and swords grew near.
“And the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,” Giuseppe mumbled, horror-struck to realize that he had forgotten a line from the Ave Maria. Was this unforgivable? Had he lost the will to be forgiven? “The fruit of thy womb, yes pray for us sinners, Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners in the hours of our deaths, amen!”
“Lang Shining?” Soldiers’ boots had entered the sanctuary, but the voice belonged to a eunuch.
Giuseppe stood, tremblingly. He did not know what fate awaited him--heaven or hell, purgatory or the Emperor’s bedroom--but what could he do but go? Perhaps it had been a vision he had seen. “Forgive me,” he said. “You caught me in my prayers.”
Qianlong had decided what he wanted.
He wanted Lang Shining.
He wanted Lang Shining’s sincerity, to peel away his restlessness like a lychee shell and eat the sweet tranquility beneath. He wanted Lang Shining beneath him, gazing up at him with purity and adoration in those exotic, round eyes. He wanted Lang Shining near him, the world streaming through him as though through Venetian glass. He wanted Lang Shining, and he could have him. He had considered the wider situation very carefully and reached the conclusion that, if he could seduce Lang Shining fair and square, nothing bad would come of Qianlong having him.
Lang Shining entered Qianlong’s private study, escorted, as shy as a new concubine while still retaining the dignity of his age. Innocence without ignorance. Experience and purity in one. True tranquility. Qianlong breathed in. Like a little boy passing by the candy store with his first purse of cash, he found himself possessed of a powerful urge to spend extravagantly just to buy a smile. Luckily, he was not so starved for sweetness that he couldn’t resist.
“Sit down, sit down,” he said, beckoning Lang Shining with a languid hand. “We were practicing your ‘clarity and shadows’ style, and we would like some guidance from the expert. Please sit down. We will draw you--” He indicated the lamp already positioned to one side of the desk, casting dramatic shadows in the thick nighttime-- “and you will guide us as we work. Is that agreeable to you?”
Lang Shining swallowed and nodded. Qianlong couldn’t help but see the guilty motion of his eyes, straying to Qianlong’s figure and hurrying away. “Very agreeable, your majesty.”
“Good. Then let’s begin.”
After waving over Lang Shining’s shoulder to disperse the guards and attendants, Qianlong wet his brush and began. His own skill with the brush was more given to calligraphy than to portraiture, and he found himself even a bit embarrassed as Lang Shining looked at the growing collection of lines that did not quite resemble the model, but Lang Shining’s features, worn as soft as the pages of an old book, never looked disapproving or harsh. They looked… surprised, and as Qianlong watched, that surprise gradually became… gratitude, and just as slowly that gratitude became… helplessness, and a little of something else. Qianlong wished that he could capture all of the complex changes of Lang Shining’s tranquil, sincere face, but that was no more possible than capturing the rising and falling of silver carp in a jade-green lotus pond. Qianlong simply built up triangles of darkness under the eye and within the hollow of the cheek and temple. That darkness really did look so dirty on the page.
“Move your head a little,” Qianlong murmured. The shadows on Lang Shining’s face moved in such fascinating ways. “Eyes up,” he said, “look at us,” because the gleam on Lang Shining’s pupils fascinated him too. Lang Shining obediently lifted his eyes. Qianlong spoke softly, softly, putting down his brush and rising just enough to move around the desk: “Wait, wait now. Let us look at you.”
Lang Shining did not move.
His body did not move, that is, but his lips did, forming the clumsy words of a Latin prayer. Cruel disappointment flared inside of Qianlong, as though one of his territories had risen in restless rebellion. But then Lang Shining unconsciously opened his posture a bit as Qianlong came close. Qianlong smiled when he saw that, and the sweetness went right down to the bone.
As Lang Shining prayed, Qianlong began reciting the Great Compassion Mantra, slipping the words beneath the Jesuit’s patter. The two spoke their prayers together, Qianlong’s words growing stronger and Lang Shining’s faltering, his breath growing humid on Qianlong’s fingers, until at last their words fell into silence together. “Finished?” he asked softly. Each face stood half in clarity, half in shadow--Qianlong looking wolfishly down, Lang Shining looking lambishly up. Light glittered on Lang Shining’s eyelashes as his eyes fluttered closed. Qianlong had won. He bit down on a smile and leaned in for the kill.
Surely the Jesuit wouldn’t be a Jesuit after this.
The thought casually sauntered in. Qianlong did not know why it rocked him so much. The Jesuit wouldn’t be a Jesuit after this--he was surrendering his god to Qianlong, and he had given up his ancestors for that god’s sake. Lang Shining wandered so freely, but he had no ancestors but his god, and now he was about to lose that pale substitute as well.
Compassion struck Qianlong’s heart, violently. It was a terrible blow. His heart raged against it, but it was the compassion of a bodhisattva, as coldly resolute as an iron wall. Self-abnegation grew in him like a fever. The Jesuit had no mother anymore, no father, no grandparents or children, his Owner of Heaven had seen to that, and perhaps he thought he understood what he was giving up by closing his eyes and opening his body, but… But Qianlong couldn’t take it.
He wanted to talk. He wanted to speak about himself so he could trade out the royal pronoun for “this lonely one,” or even his own wretched name, Hongli. He wanted Lang Shining to open his eyes as though shaken from a dream and see some motherless, twice-fatherless thing standing over him, feathers soaked and icy as he flew through the stormy night without the first sign of a lighted room. He wanted to rage, he wanted to conquer, he wanted to curl up on Lang Shining’s chest like a bedraggled stray animal and never feel cold again, and every change in feeling was reflected a hundred times in the harsh clarity and stark shadows of his face, but Lang Shining did not see even a glimmer of it. The Jesuit only opened his eyes, half-opened his eyes, when the emperor gently ran his thumb over the vein in his neck. The imperial face was as smooth as jade. Those red lips looked like a buddha’s, painted in cinnabar with a compassionate curve.
“Lang Shining, you will paint many people in your life,” the emperor said.
The Jesuit looked up in a daze.
“But promise you’ll never paint anyone the way you paint me.”
For a moment those words clung to the air like crystals of honey.
Giuseppe nodded at last, and Hongli’s unpainted face shattered into a smile.