Michel Benoist sat at the end of his bed overlooking Kunming Lake in the Summer Palace of the Emperor. It was autumn of the year 1774, which was to be his last season on earth, and when the old Jesuit felt the cold wind flush upon his cheek he knew it. He had been praying but now sat watching the water and thinking of how far he had come seeking some strange new heaven. For a time he thought he had found it here in the capital of the Chinese, in their exotic gardens and fragrant streets, but finally those streets arrived nowhere better than the streets of Paris or Nancy or any other city.
He had been home once, to the rolling fields of wheat on the outskirts of Nancy, the land of his boyhood. But he walked the cold woods one morning and did not recognise the people. He realised that the home he sought there had fled him. Perhaps he had left it back in the Orient. When he returned to China he received some littoral land from the Emperor and designed the place he dreamed. This place became the Summer Palace. But for all the beauty of his water clock that rendered the twelve hours in the animals of the Chinese zodiac, each spitting water through its designated hour; for all the beauty of the palace and its engravings, he realised he had failed here, too. He stopped building when he realised his happiness even amidst these beautiful buildings was perishable. In the evenings he took to teaching the Emperor astronomy with a French telescope, which was novel in China then. And late into the evenings the pair looked far into the stars.
The Emperor walked with a courtier through the palace, past the Cloud Dispelling Hall toward the Jesuit’s simple dwelling. The sun began to set and he felt the first breeze of autumn rise over the water of the lake. He commented that it would not be long now and the court would move back to the Forbidden City.
‘And yet, it is a shame to leave here,’ said the courtier. ‘This Frenchman is a wonder. What he has done for our little Garden of Clear Ripples outreaches the word “beauty”.’
‘Indeed. But he has grown old. I do not think he will build much more. The stars are his concern now, and, I think, he even begins to lose interest in those.’
‘It is strange,’ said the courtier.
‘What is?’
‘An old man like him. His holy books transcribed. Your majesty’s palace complete. The stars inexhaustible, but what we can see accounted for …’
‘Yes?’
‘Why doesn’t he go home?’
The Emperor furrowed his brow.
‘That is a thing I did not want to pass. So, perhaps I have not thought of it.’
But when the Jesuit greeted the Emperor at the door the Emperor did ask.
The wind came in a flourish through the doorway and Benoist felt an aching in his bones and an inexplicable cold thrill and he huddled into his habit.
‘Before that wind goes I will be on my way.’