THE FALL OF THE AME EMPIRE or THE EMPEROR'S PLURALIFE
“We all have something to hide. Some dark place inside of us we don't want the world to see. So we pretend everything's okay. Wrapping ourselves in rainbows. And maybe that's all for the best, because some of these places are darker than others.”
— Jeff Lindsay
The Ame Empire (commonly known as G-AME) was shrouded in a queer ambience. On the outside everything appeared normal, inasmuch as the Emperor's posh dominion could be described that way. However, after spending a few days in the kingdom, one's initial impressions cooled and an elusive shade of gray incessantly caught the eye everywhere. The color of dusk and rain seeped even through the brightest of colors.
A whisper went around the subjects of the Empire that this was the surrounding world's reaction to the Empress' suffering. But such a beautiful, clever woman could hardly have any reason for sorrow. She had every reason in the world to hold her head up high and radiate blissful smiles to everyone around. Of course, as any human being, the Empress had her share of mundane cares. For instance, she was whole-heartedly in love with her husband—an ingenious madman. At times the Emperor was breathtaking, and at times he was terrible, but this wasn't the source of torment for his kind spouse. She was very sensitive to his mood swings and skillfully adapted to them, becoming a pale moon or a bright sun—sometimes cooling her quick-tempered husband down, and sometimes warming him up.
None of the subjects knew that the Emperor had taken to visiting the neighboring estate for reasons completely other than official matters. The Empress was the only one who knew about her husband's incurable mania: he went to the neighboring empire to seduce women, having grown utterly blind to his beautiful, alluring wife. He developed a fetish for “easy” girls, while his magnificent spouse captivated everyone around her with her spiritual force and charisma.
The Emperor entertained himself with ever-alternating adulteries, twisting and turning the female marionettes as he wished and then, like a wicked puppet master, putting them away into the doll box once the love games were over. But there were also times when the Emperor’s inner angel would awaken and he suddenly became a benevolent patron—helping the women rise above their daily struggles, discovering their talents and showering them with gold. There once was a time when he spread a ladder beneath the feet of his Empress. He took her by the hand, led her all the way up to the clouds and left here there under the custody of three delightful muses.
The Empress was a virtuoso with paints and a brush. Everyone in attendance at the court was in awe of her exquisite taste and vision of the world. Under the guidance of the muses, she perfected her talent to such an extent that her paintings became world-famous. Kings of various countries would send merchants to the G-AME Empire, offering enormous amounts of money for the paintress' masterpieces, but the Empress would not accept any reward for them. She gave the paintings as a gift because knowing that her pieces would ornament the castles and museums of many kingdoms warmed her heart.
When the Emperor became afflicted with his sexual mania, the Empress's paintings embodied images of the women with whom her husband “healed” his disease, one after the other. She tolerated the sadism, endless cheating and manipulation to avoid losing her status and to uphold her spouse's health and happiness. This all-forgiving kindness seemed like a strange sickness, but the Empress had learned an important lesson as a child: nothing was for free. And so she paid.
But the next trial became too much for the wise woman: the Emperor went mad. And not for a beauty of fairy tales with indescribable merits, a majestic queen or a sultry brunette, as all of his previous lovers had been. He fell for a blonde—an etiquette tutoress—and one who wasn't quite young or beautiful. Still, people thought well of her, especially of her erudition and kind heart. The Emperor suddenly lost interest in the delights of young women. He met a unique person and realized that when it comes to love, the things hidden to the eye are more important. He was attracted to the teacher's recalcitrance, although it held a hint of a cool calculation, albeit one veiled so artfully that it could hardly even be called mercenariness. In a word, it was all just as befits high society…
The poor Empress sensed that a storm was raging in her husband's heart. Agonized by envy, she found solace in the pure canvass. She transformed the white pieces of cloth into paintings full of bluish-red and black shades. But one day, the Empress was awe-struck as the endearing, attractive features on one of the canvases began coming to life. The face alternated between resembling the image of a goddess and the head of an ugly duckling, yet the Empress understood how intricately and deeply the threads connecting the Emperor and his new mistress were intertwined. The clearer she outlined the woman's features, the better she understood what was happening.
The tutoress possessed a trait that many women of the aristocracy lacked. She knew how to say “no” to the most influential and lustful man. Her coolness ignited a manic passion in the Emperor. When he was on his way to see this woman, the grass under his stallion’s hooves was aflame. All other dames before her would drop everything for the sake of love the minute the Emperor’s thumb would point at them. But once his lust was quenched, the abandoned “dolls”were left to envy the wicked puppet master’s wife, who, despite her suffering, nevertheless remained his lawful spouse and the mistress of the “theater”. For some reason, the marionettes thought they would be able to tolerate the puppet master’s whims for the sake of being able to stay by his side. They couldn't even fathom what kind of humiliation the Empress had to endure.
As soon as the snake of lust bit her husband's heart, he turned into a cruel despot and took everything out on the woman closest to him. A horrible disease took over the Emperor: he was torn between two polar women—a blonde and a brunette, one cool and one hot, one dependent and one self-sufficient, one feminine and one belligerent. The Emperor was slowly and unrelentingly conquering the North. He had subjugated the proud South a long time ago: his wife was dependent on him like on a hard drug. Agonizing jealousy, coupled with an irrepressible desire to subdue and bring back the love that once was—all this electrified her blood flow, embittered her and made her an interesting, reckless player.
The Empress was biding her time. As soon as her husband would get enough of his “tutorship” romance, a meager share of affection would come her way too.
But the Emperor was growing more and more distant, and one day he altogether turned away from the Empress when she approached him in a seductive, tender manner.
“Not today. Not now. Go away. I’m terribly tired,” he complained, waving his wife away.
The Empress was crushed by his rejection despite the fact that she had been settling for fantasies for a long time now, and contented herself in solitude with the things she was deprived of on her marriage bed. Incessantly suffering, she was losing her sleep and appetite. Her beauty was fading and her talent becoming dormant, like a river beneath an icy cover. But how great was her longing for spring, for life!
The paintress tried to awaken the “river.” She dipped her snow-white hands inside it and picked up the brushes, but the paintings came out dull and lifeless. No matter what the Empress did, nothing brought her any joy. She took aromatic baths, tried out different hairstyles, had new dresses sown, went out hunting, and threw Empire-wide feasts—but none of it gave her any consolation.
The Empress’ heart pained whenever she saw her husband’s eagerness to elope from the castle. When saddling his stallion, the Emperor suddenly became gallant, uttered kind words and smiled at his wife like in the good old times. But she was not happy about these metamorphoses. There was a very simple explanation to her husband’s goodwill: he was on his way to meet his beloved. Viva the king! Viva love! The other woman’s happiness pierced the Empress’ heart like a heathen’s spear.
For some reason, the Emperor returned ill tempered from his meetings with the etiquette tutoress. He spoke out of turn, locked himself up in the giant bedroom, and skipped dinners, as if he had come back from failed negotiations with world leaders rather than the tender embrace of his mistress.
2.
“If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.”
—George Bernard Shaw
Half a year later the situation in the Empire deteriorated completely. No one could recognize the Emperor. He became possessed, often screaming at the servants, beating his beloved dog and leaving the castle. The rumors going around the court were that the etiquette tutoress was not single. She had three children and a husband, whom the Emperor had raised in rank. He also relocated the family to a luxurious place and was waiting for the tutoress to leave her husband and elope with the Emperor to a separate castle, which was under construction. As fate would have it, the etiquette tutoress was succumbing to an incurable disease and the Emperor was in a rush. He wanted to spend the remainder of his mistress’ life with her.
One day the Empress found an open letter in her husband’s cabinet. The handwriting was even and neat, exuding the delicate aroma of perfume… The Empress couldn’t restrain herself. Her eyes frantically ran over the lines as her legs shook and buckled. She fell back into an armchair, unable to tear her eyes away from the letter.
“My Lord, your eagerness to sacrifice everything for the sake of love is astounding! But you should not even think about abandoning your Empire and your faithful spouse, who had absolutely no hand in wreaking the tempests breaking your heart. I have heard that the Empress is a wonderful woman. It would be unjust and even cruel to humiliate her publicly, to turn her into a laughingstock and separate her from her children. I insist that you uphold justice. I am willing to love your sons, but I am also a mother and I know how terrible it is to deprive a woman of the indescribable happiness of being with her children. Promise me that you will not do this! Otherwise we will never see each other again. I won’t be able to forgive you.”
“You swore that you would never again consummate your marriage with your wife. Do allow me to believe that. Keep your promise or never touch me again. This will be your punishment. And I am faithful to you, my Emperor. Even if I find out that you are lying to me, I will not let my husband come near me. For me, that would be the same as spilling the blood of murdered love onto the bed. I entreat you, my Lord, be kind to those who love you and who place their hopes in you. Yours, Lara Ju.”
Lara… The Empress’ lips began to quiver… Her name is Lara Ju…
A woman’s soul can feel the sorrows of others as her own. The Empress felt the weight of the stone that her husband bore in his chest, how it stifled his heart and constricted his breathing. She was on the verge of consent to a bigamous marriage. Her heart was filled with unjustified, absurd goodwill. The wretched woman was dreaming of saving Lara’s life, yet she understood how powerless people are in the face of death: if Lara is meant to go, then she will go…
The very thought of this made everything go black in the Empress’ eyes. No, her husband wouldn’t survive that kind of loss! Everything would collapse—his world, her world, and the entire Empire! Her fear of this pushed the poor woman to take on a part of the stone and bear it inside her heart. She no longer interfered with the Emperor’s trips away from the castle. She sent presents to Lara’s children under a false name and even toned down her stunning appearance to avoid annoying her husband with excessive allure. Around him, she wore modest, low-key dresses. In a word, she became a shadow next to her husband’s shadow.
Her good deeds, of which no one knew, helped the Empress bear her woe. She prayed for Lara to get well, for the Emperor to calm down and to shift his gaze to the home and the woman who loved him more than life itself.
This went on for half a year. The Emperor still went away, acting more and more despicably upon his return. Beating the dog was now a trivial form of entertainment for him. The tyrant’s vehemence gained momentum and he began abusing his servants and even his wife. But worse than being slapped in the face, the Empress was dismayed by her husband’s fake flirtation with the dames at court. He did this to evoke artificial envy in his wife, something he hadn’t dared to do before. Such acts of indecency humiliated the Empress in front of the whole court and thus, she began avoiding people, and later—the sun, because her wrinkles and bruises were more noticeable in the sunlight.
The Emperor stopped spending time with his sons. His hand no longer lingered on their curly-haired little heads. The boys couldn’t even remember the last time their father took them riding, had a heart-to-heart talk with them or, holding them in his arms, told them fairy tales about knights.
The Emperor instilled fear not only in his family members, but in the entire court, especially when he instituted the death penalty as punishment for grave offences. People knew that the Emperor’s sense of justice had gone awry a long time ago so he was prone to call any minor offence grave.
Nevertheless, sooner or later, even the most assiduous patience runs dry. The Empress could not bear the suffering. One night, she kissed her sleeping sons, whispered something to the nurse-maid, made her way into the stable, handed a golden coin to the horsekeeper and saddled her faithful Perry…