Everything Under the Sky (13 page)

“If you say so,” the journalist replied disagreeably, “but it's a disgusting garbage dump now.”

“Now,” Lao Jiang objected, “it's where the poorest of my people live.”

That phrase reminded me of the rousing Marxist speeches during the Bolshevik revolution, but I refrained from commenting. It was best not to get involved in politics, because it seemed people in both China and Europe had become quite sensitive since the events in Russia. Even in Spain, as far as I knew, the powerful, uncompromising, landholding oligarchy, consisting mostly of the noble class, was allowing small improvements in their tenant farmers’ living conditions in an effort to prevent worse problems. When your neighbor's house is on fire, throw water on your own, they must have been saying. I thought a certain amount of panic was good; maybe then things would start to change a little.

“The lake!” Paddy suddenly shouted. Before there was time to react, a threatening roar rose up out of four or five throats behind us. I barely had time to turn around when I saw a group of assassins flying through the air toward us with their feet outstretched.

What happened next was one of the most extraordinary sights I've ever seen. With lightning speed, Mr. Jiang pulled a large fan, at least double the usual size, out of his tunic and hurled Fernanda, Biao, Tichborne, and me onto the ground, a good distance away. The force was the same as if we'd been hit by a Parisian bus—luckily, we weren't hurt. The most incredible thing of all was that by the time we hit the ground, Mr. Jiang was already fighting all five thugs at once, barely moving, his left arm held casually behind his back as if he were having a pleasant conversation with friends. One of the assassins lifted his leg to kick Mr. Jiang. With the fan held calmly against his stomach, the antiquarian kicked back so that the assassin's leg rebounded, hitting one of his cohorts straight on and throwing him against a pile of garbage. The one at the rear of the group must have been knocked unconscious, because he didn't move, while the first had been thrown off balance and tumbled through the air, waving his arms until he crashed against a large rock, his head bouncing off it like a ball. Meanwhile, a third henchman had picked up speed and was attempting to kick Mr. Jiang on the left in midstride. But the antiquarian, who remained calm, stopped the kick by smashing his fan into the henchman's instep. I hope I'm getting this right, because it all happened so quickly I could barely follow it (I was still trying to get on my feet again). In any event, I believe that right then, as the henchman was pulling his leg back, he reached out to punch Lao Jiang in the stomach. Mr. Jiang calmly hit his wrist with the fan, then moved it up to strike him in the face. The man let out a horrible cry as his left cheek began to bleed profusely, his right hand and foot hanging limp, like the limbs of the slaughtered animals we'd seen on hooks in the butcher shops. Meanwhile, two other assassins ran toward Lao Jiang with fists outstretched. Mr. Jiang's fan caught the first in the ribs with a tremendous blow, winding him, and the second was struck on his upraised arm, such that both men faltered for a moment. Mr. Jiang took advantage of those brief seconds to crack one on the head with his fan, making him collapse like a rag doll, while brutally kicking the other in the stomach, catapulting him backward folded in two. All the assassins were incapacitated.

“Come. Hurry,” the antiquarian urged, turning back toward us. We were all on our feet again, frozen with astonishment.

Biao was the first to react. Leaping like a cat, he confronted the two thugs who were moaning on the ground, causing them to flee, staggering weakly. At the same time, Mr. Jiang leaned over the three who were still unconscious, his fingers dancing quickly over their necks, pressing mysteriously. Then he stood with a satisfied sigh and smiled.

Fernanda, Tichborne, and I remained statues. It had all happened in less than a minute.

“You … you never told me you'd mastered the secret arts, Lao Jiang,” the journalist stammered, pushing his unruly mop of gray hair back and setting the straw hat firmly on his head.

“As Sun Tzu
¹⁵
says, Paddy, ‘The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.’ ”

I wanted to know more about what I'd just seen but my mouth refused to move. I was so perplexed, so shocked, that I couldn't react.

“Come, madame,” the antiquarian prompted as he walked toward the lake.

Fernanda had remained just as immobile and silent as I. When Biao came back over, sporting one of those dazzling, contagious smiles so typical of the Chinese, my niece held him by the arm.

“What just happened?” she breathlessly asked in Spanish. “What kind of fight was that?”

“Well, it might have been what they call Shaolin, Young Mistress. I'm not sure. All I know is that's how the monks in the sacred mountains fight.”

“Mr. Jiang is a monk?” Fernanda asked in astonishment.

“No, Young Mistress. Monks shave their heads and wear robes.” Biao didn't seem entirely sure about the latter, despite the assurance in his voice. “Mr. Jiang must have been taught by an itinerant master. They say there are masters who travel incognito throughout the country.”

“And they use fans as weapons?” my niece asked, even more astonished, pulling hers out of one of the many pockets in her Chinese pants, looking at it as if for the first time.

“They use anything, Young Mistress. They're known all over China for their skill. People say they have mental powers that make them invincible. But Mr. Jiang's fan isn't like yours. His is made of steel, and the ribs are sharpened blades. I saw one once when I was little.”

I couldn't help but smile at this last comment. Did Biao think he was already a grown man? In any event, I watched the antiquarian with renewed interest as we walked toward a lake with murky green waters and a large, two-story building with a black roof and exaggerated upturned eaves set on a man-made island. Mr. Jiang had just stepped onto a strange zigzag bridge, followed by Paddy, who bent his head slightly to examine the floor, made of solid blocks of granite. The antiquarian looked ahead at the lone, run-down kiosk. My eyes had begun to get used to Chinese forms, and I could see how original this structure was. There was a certain beauty to it, something deeply sensual and harmonious, as elegant as the antiquarian himself.

“This bridge has four corners, Lao Jiang!” Tichborne shouted so we could all hear.

“No. You're wrong. It has seven.”

“Seven?”

“It continues on the other side of the island.”

“It's so long!” the Irishman complained. “How will we know where to look?”

Shortly after that, the five of us walked up and down the footbridge in search of anything that might catch our eye. A few elderly men and women watched us from the balustrades of nearby houses, while two or three people had gone over to the unconscious assassins and were laughing at them. I wondered what Mr. Jiang had done to their necks. Finally, we all met in front of the building's closed doors and had to admit there was nothing out of the ordinary along the bridge except for the large number of shiny carp whose backs rose up out of the greenish water underneath. Some were as long as my arm and as fat as a barrel, and there white, yellow, orangish, even black ones, all of them sparkling like diamonds.

“Why would they build a bridge like this?” I asked. “It takes much longer to walk from one end to the other.”

“Because of the spirits!” Biao exclaimed, a frightened look on his face.

“The Chinese believe that bad spirits can only go in a straight line.” Paddy grunted, walking back toward the bridge on the right.

“We'll have to go into the water to check under the bridge,” Lao Jiang announced. “As Prince Gui said, ‘The best place is undoubtedly beneath the famous zigzag bridge.’ ”

“Is he crazy?” I turned in horror to ask my niece, who'd been standing beside me just a moment before. But along with Lao Jiang and her servant, Biao, Fernanda was already walking toward land, apparently with every intention of going into that green lake. Paddy was on his way back from the other end and looked at me with tired eyes.

“I hoped it wouldn't come to this. Maybe he wants us to jump in from here?” he asked ironically, following the three lunatics who were now walking onto the island.

I didn't move. There was absolutely no chance I was setting foot in that filthy water full of fish bigger than a toddler. Who knows how many microbes they hosted, how many illnesses you could catch in there? Dying of some fever was most certainly not part of my plan.

“Fernanda!” I yelled. “Come here right now, Fernanda!”

However, while my shout caused an entire neighborhood of almond-eyed locals to come out onto their balconies to see what was happening, my niece turned a deaf ear.

“Fernanda! Fernanda!”

I knew she could hear me, and so, with an ache in my heart, I was left no choice but to capitulate. One day, I told myself with a smile, one day I would hang that tubby body of hers from a meat hook.

“Fernandina!”

She stopped and turned to look at me. “What is it, Auntie?” she asked.

If looks could kill, the girl would have dropped dead that instant.

“Come here!”

“Why?”

“Because I don't want you to go into that noxious lake. It could make you sick.”

Just then there was the sound of a body hitting the water. Biao, living up to his name, had jumped into that verdant soup without a second thought. After the antiquarian took off his tortoiseshell glasses and set them on the ground, he walked down a few small steps carved into the rock and was soon up to his knees. His beige tunic floated up around him. The two were either crazy or ignorant fools. Countless people had died from drinking contaminated water during the war, and doctors had tried to keep the terrible epidemics in check by requiring that liquids be boiled before consumption.

“Don't worry, Mme De Poulain!” Lao Jiang shouted as he continued to wade in up to his neck. “We'll be fine!”

“I wouldn't be so sure, Mr. Jiang.”

“Then stay where you are.”

“My niece will be staying here, too.”

Fernanda, obedient in spite of it all, stood beside the lake, watching Biao swim from side to side. After taking off his oiled hat, Tichborne went down the steps and followed the antiquarian, who was calmly walking toward the underside of the bridge. At some point he stopped wading and started swimming. Soon all three were paddling beneath me. Seeing that I was in a better position to watch the goings-on, Fernanda came and stood next to me, and we looked down over the railing.

“See anything, Lao Jiang?” we heard Paddy ask, huffing and puffing.

“No.”

“And you, Biao?”

“No, me either, but the carp are trying to bite me.”

The boy was over by the rocky island, and we saw him jump out of the water, pursued by bulldoglike orange and black carp.

“Fish don't bite, Biao. Their mouths are too small,” Paddy commented, his breath once again calm. “We'd better examine the other side, the one with three corners.”

Fernanda and I followed them from above and waited patiently as they finished inspecting each and every one of the stone pillars that supported the bridge.

“I don't think there's anything here, Mr. Jiang,” Biao said, sputtering as his head came up out of the water. A green twig hung from his hair.

The antiquarian seemed quite angry; from up above I could clearly see the scowl on his face.

“It has to be here. It has to be here….” he droned, and plunged back into the soupy lake.

Little Tiger lifted his head until he could see Fernanda, giving her a doubtful look, then disappearing again.

Paddy swam wearily toward the steps. It was obvious he was worn out and had conceded defeat. He emerged from the water with his clothes plastered to his body and flipped back two locks of wet hair— actually, long strands on either side that he used to cover his bald dome. As soon as he was up and out, he flopped down on to the ground and waved at us without moving another muscle.

Lao Jiang and Biao continued to search under the bridge. The sun was rising higher in the sky, and the light was getting stronger, whiter. The antiquarian and the boy passed near the rocks that formed the base of the artificial island several times, and every time they did, a shoal of fiercelooking carp rammed into them until they moved away. The third time this happened, Lao Jiang stopped. Fernanda and I couldn't see him, but the expression on Biao's face as he swam away like a mouse being chased by a pack of wild cats made it clear something bad was happening.

Fernanda couldn't contain herself. “What about Mr. Jiang, Biao?”

The boy shook the water off his head and looked in the antiquarian's direction.

“He's in among the carp!” he shouted in fear. By then the fish that had followed Biao had turned back to join the ones that were smashing into Lao Jiang. “He's not moving!”

“What do you mean, he's not moving?” I asked, startled. Had something happened to him? Was he drowning? “Help him! Get him out of there!”

“Bu! Bu!
¹⁶
I can't. But it's okay. I think he's okay. He's just not moving.”

Startled by all the shouting, Tichborne had gotten up and was running as fast as he could to get down the steps and into the water.

“He's gesturing at me with his hands,” the boy explained.

“What's he saying?” I screeched, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“He's telling us to be quiet,” Biao explained, still treading water. “He's telling us not to make any noise.”

I looked questioningly at Fernanda.

“Don't ask me, Auntie. I don't understand what's going on either. But if he's telling us to be quiet, we'd better listen.”

The next few minutes were truly worrisome. Together, Biao and Tichborne watched the scene that was unfolding outside our field of vision, under the bridge, near the rocks. Neither spoke nor moved except to stay afloat. After what seemed like an eternity, they swam back a few feet, not taking their eyes off what was happening in front of them. Just then the antiquarian's head—more precisely, his head and a hand with something in it—appeared calmly in the middle of a ring of fish that moved along with him, crowded so close he hardly had room to breathe. The school was like a besieging army that wasn't about to let the enemy escape. The antiquarian glided very slowly, and the fish glided along with him. The Irishman and the boy began to swim furiously toward the steps, racing away from what was bearing down on them, while Fernanda and I held back a shriek of horror as we watched the hair-raising spectacle. We ran to where Paddy and the boy were coming out of the water, pushed by the horde of carp still surrounding Mr. Jiang as he moved ever so slowly toward the stairs. The water began to boil as soon as he put his foot on the first step. The fish began thrashing about, charging Lao Jiang as if they were bulls, but the antiquarian impassively continued his ascent until he was finally out, smiling triumphantly. He, Tichborne, and Biao stank, but I was undoubtedly getting used to the putrid smells in Shanghai, because I wasn't too bothered by it. Lao Jiang happily displayed an old bronze box covered in verdigris.