The Yellow Emperor’s Cure

IVORY SKIN AND SLANTED EYES

Name of the Book: The Yellow Emperor’s Cure

Writer: Kunal Basu,

Publisher: Picador

Price: Rs 499

For some reason, early modern China is one of the most wanted countries among authors today. They are ransacking its history for details of the opium trade, which is in danger of having its glamorous rainbow fumes unwoven, given the intent researches on the subject. Kunal Basu, of course, had found his muse in China long before Amitav Ghosh had ventured into the country with his River of Smoke. Basu’s first novel, The Opium Clerk (2001), had dealt, among other things, with the link forged between Calcutta and Canton through opium.

In The Yellow Emperor’s Cure, he returns to China, though thankfully not to the opium trade per se. But opium is inevitably there in the background, invisibly controlling events like the Boxer Rebellion, through which the Chinese sought to vent their frustrations against the foreign traders and evangelists. Yet there is a vital difference between The Opium Clerk and The Yellow Emperor’s Cure. While the former dealt with the exotic, it did not exoticize — and this is what the latter does. So the Boxer Rebellion, the mysterious empress, her Summer Palace, the gossiping foreigners in Peking, all become part of the atmospheric effect, and, as such, are never felt as reality.

This is perhaps an ill-effect of the (moderate) success of the film, The Japanese Wife, which was adapted from Basu’s short story of the same name. In The Yellow Emperor’s Cure, we have Ming vases, rosewood furniture, roasted duck and plum wine alongside “ivory skin and slanted eyes” —which would surely create another visually pleasing, vapid film like The Japanese Wife.

Basu starts in Portugal, in late 19th-century Lisbon, with the Don Juan-like doctor, Antonio Henriques Maria (yes, the author has Johnny Depp in mind for this role, although he seems to be aiming too high here). The progress of Antonio’s escapades is impeded by the sudden news of his father’s illness, and Dr Maria Junior comes to know that Senior has been afflicted with syphilis. Since Western medicine offers no cure for this deadly disease, Antonio must travel to China to master the Yellow Emperor’s canon, which might suggest a remedy. If a tad too dramatic, this is fine, especially since all this happens in 19th- century Lisbon, which is associated in popular imagination with excesses of all sorts. The problem arrives midway in the novel, when Antonio’s father gives up his ghost while the son is still lodged in China, trying, without much success, to tease the cure out of his teachers. Antonio takes the news of his father’s death with baffling equanimity, and makes no attempt to return, although it would have been logical of him to go back to Lisbon at this stage.

Perhaps he remains stuck in Peking because of Fumi, his teacher and lady love. As is the wont of such exotic creatures, Fumi works in rather mysterious ways. Dressed like a peasant, she is a doctor; appointed by the emperor’s physician, Xu, to teach Antonio, she won’t give up all her knowledge: she is revealed in flesh before Antonio, but remains invisible. As Antonio pursues her zealously, syphilis is forgotten, although the sympathetic reader may suggest that the disease is now present in its metaphorical form, as the malady of love. Basu wants Gong Li to play the role of Fumi, and he thinks that the duo of Depp and Li “could set fire to the screen”.

One hopes that Depp and Li will succeed in this task, for the novel lacks fire, notwithstanding the scenes of fervent lovemaking and the arsonists among the rebels. Perhaps it is a failure of the imagination that makes the novel what it is — pretty as a picture and insubstantial as an opium dream.

ANUSUA MUKHERJEE

Published on February 10, 2012

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