He was no more anxious than I. If my darling Hui-sheng were in the least difficulty, I wanted to be beside her. Now she was in the worst possible trouble, and I was unforgivably far away. In consequence, this crossing of the Bay of Bangala seemed excruciatingly slower and longer than the first traverse, outward bound. The captain and crew did not find me a very agreeable passenger to be transporting on their ship, and my two fellow passengers did not find me a very agreeable companion. I snapped and snarled and fretted and paced the deck, and I cursed the mariners every time they did not have every single scrap of sail stretched to the mast top, and I cursed the uncaring immensity of the bay, and I cursed the weather every time the least cloud appeared in the sky, and I cursed the unfeeling way time was behaving—passing so slowly out here, but elsewhere hastening Hui-sheng toward the day of reckoning.
And mostly I cursed myself, because, if there was one man in the world who knew what he was inflicting on a woman when he made her pregnant, it was I. That time on the Roof of the World when, under the influence of the love philter, I briefly had been a woman in the throes of childbirth—whether it was fancy or reality, a drug-caused delusion in my mind or a drug-caused transfiguration of my body—I most definitely had experienced every ghastly moment and hour and lifetime of the birthing process. I knew it better than any man, better even than a male physician could know it, however many births he had attended. I knew there was nothing pretty or dulcet or felicitous about it, as all the myths of sweet maternity would have us believe. I knew it to be a filthy business, nauseous, humiliating, terrible torture. I had seen a Fondler do vile things to human Subjects, but even he could not do them from the inside out. Childbirth was more terrible, and the Subject could do nothing but scream and scream until the torment ended in the final agonizing extrusion.
But poor Hui-sheng could not even scream.
And if the groping, raging, tearing thing inside her could not ever get out … ?
I was to blame. I had neglected, on just one occasion, to take the proper precaution. But actually I had been more culpably neglectful than that. Ever after my own horrendous childbed experience, I had said, “I will never subject any woman I love to such a fate.” So, if I had rightly loved Hui-sheng, I would never have lain with her and never have put her even remotely at risk. It was hard to regret all the lovely times she and I had engaged in the act of love, but now I did regret them, for even with precautions there was no certainty, and she had every time been in danger. Now I swore to myself and to God that if Hui-sheng survived this peril, I would never lie with her again. I loved her that much, and we would simply have to find other ways of mutually demonstrating our love.
That bitter decision made, I tried to bury my apprehensions in happier recollections, but their very sweetness made them bitter, too. I remembered the last time I had seen her, when Yissun and I rode away from Pagan. Hui-sheng could not have heard or responded to my calling as I went, “Goodbye, my dear one.” But she had heard, with her heart. And she had spoken, too, with her eyes: “Come back, my dear one.” And I remembered how, bereft of ever hearing music, she had so often felt it instead, and seen it, and sensed it in other ways. She had even made music, though unable to do it herself, for I had known other people—even dour servants engaged in uncongenial labor—often to hum or sing happily, just because Hui-sheng was in the room. I remembered one occasion, one summer day, when we had been caught outdoors in a sudden thundershower, and all the Mongols about us were quaking uneasily and muttering their Khakhan’s protecting name. But Hui-sheng had only smiled at the displays of lightning, unafraid of the menacing noise it made; to her, a storm was only another beautiful thing. And I remembered how often, on our walks together, Hui-sheng had run to pluck some flower my unimpaired but duller senses had failed to perceive. Still, I was not totally insensitive to beauty. Whenever she dashed away on one of those forays, I had to smile at the awkward, knee-tied way a woman runs, but it was a fond smile and, every time she ran, my heart went tumbling after … .
After another eternity or two, the voyage was done. As soon as we raised Akyab on the horizon, I had my packs ready and said my farewells and thanks to the Lady Tofaa, so that Yissun and I were able to leap from the deck to the dock even before the ship’s plank was down. With only a wave to the Sardar Shaibani, we vaulted onto the horses he had brought to the bayside, and we put the spurs to them. Shaibani must also, as soon as our vessel was sighted in the distance, have sent an advance courier riding hard for Pagan, because, as swiftly as Yissun and I covered the four-hundred-li distance, the Pagan palace was expecting us. The Wang Bayan was not waiting to be the first to greet us; no doubt he had decided he was too gruff for such a delicate duty. He had posted instead the old Hakim Gansui and the little maidservant Arùn to receive us. I got down from my mount, trembling, as much from inner palpitation as from the muscular strain of the long gallop, and Arùn came running to take my hands in hers, and Gansui approached more sedately. They did not need to speak. I saw from their faces—his grave, hers grieving—that I had arrived too late.
“All that could have been done was done,” said the hakim when, at his insistence, I had taken a bracing drink of the fiery choum-choum. “I did not get here to Pagan until well along in the lady’s term, but I could yet have easily and safely made her miscarry. She would not let me. Insofar as I could comprehend her, through the medium of this servant girl, your Lady Hui-sheng insisted that that decision was not hers to make.”
“You should have overruled her,” I said huskily.
“The decision was not mine to make, either.” He kindly refrained from saying that the decision should have been made by me, and I merely nodded.
He went on, “I had no recourse but to await the confinement. And in fact I was not without some hope. I am not one of the Han physicians, who do not even touch their female patients, but instead let them modestly point out on an ivory figurine the spots where they hurt. I insisted on making a full examination. You say you have only recently learned that your lady’s pelvic cavity was constricted. I found that its oblique diameters were diminished by the sacral column’s forward intrusion and the pubic extremity’s being more pointed than rounded, giving the cavity a triradiate instead of oval shape. That is not usually any impediment to a woman—in her walking, riding, whatever—until she contemplates becoming a mother.”
“She never knew,” I said.
“I believe I managed to convey it to her, and to warn her of the possible consequences. But she was stubborn—or determined—or brave. And in truth I could not tell her that the birth was impossible, that it must be terminated. In my time, I have attended several African concubines, and of all races the black women have the most narrow pelvic passages, but they have children nonetheless. An infant’s head is quite malleable and pliable, so I was not without hope that this one could effect its egress without too much trouble. Unfortunately, it could not.”
He paused, to choose his next words carefully. “After some time of labor, it became evident that the fetus was inextricably impacted. And at that point, the decision is the physician’s to make. I rendered the lady insensible with oil of teryak. The fetus was dissected and extracted. A full-term male infant of apparently normal development. But there already had been too much strain on the mother’s internal organs and vessels, and bleeding was occurring in places where it is impossible to stanch. The Lady Hui-sheng never awoke from the teryak coma. It was an easy and a painless death.”