The Chinese Alchemist (14 page)

So where was this sacred Western Mountain? It is now called Hua Shan or Flower Mountain, and it is about seventy-five miles east of Xi’an. I called Dr. Xie. Thirty minutes or so later, Dr. Xie and I were hurtling through the darkness toward Hua Shan in his Mercedes.

The train from Xi’an had come and gone. It was dark, though, so I was almost certain Burton would not yet have headed up the mountain. In the village of Hua Shan, there were a few not-so-choice hotels. That had to be where he was staying.

You wouldn’t think hotels would reveal whether they had a guest by the name of Burton Haldimand, but Dr. Xie is a persuasive, indeed imposing, man. It was at the third cheap hotel near one of the entrances to the route up the mountain that we found Burton. There were no phones in the room. Dr. Xie spoke sharply to the man at the desk. “I’ve told him it is a patient of mine who has called for assistance. As soon as another staff member comes to accompany us, we will go up.”

Burton did not answer to our knock. The hotel employee was persuaded with cash to open the door. We found ourselves in a tiny room with only a cracked sink and two small
cots.
To find someone like Burton in a tiny room with toilets down the hall, a room that would never come even close to passing his standards of hygiene, was somehow really disturbing in and of itself. But that was by far the least of it. Burton was dead, curled up in the fetal position on a tiny
cot.
If he
met
someone, there was no indication of it. If he saw the Jade Women as he passed to the great beyond, we would never know. Most terrifying of all, his face was a horrible dark blue-gray color.

Six

In addition to serving Lingfei, I was going about acquiring considerable wealth. So disturbed had I been by Wu Peng’s revelation of what I saw to be my father’s perfidy in selling me to pay his gambling debts, I had overlooked for a time the other piece of information the man had offered me. He told me that his position in the royal household, which I might well take over on his death if I showed true merit, presented many opportunities for profit, that the access eunuchs had to the emperor was a highly valued commodity that I might exploit with care. I decided that I would not wait until Wu Peng died to take advantage.

There was a very good reason why eunuchs inclined to do so could enrich themselves, and that was that all was not well in the Imperial Palace. The Son of Heaven was revered as a wise and just ruler. Early in his reign, he stabilized the food supply throughout the Empire, thus bringing terrible famines under control. A benevolent leader of his people, he distributed government lands to the common people, and ended taxation for the poorest amongst us. He was strict in his insistence upon law and order, making the Empire safe hr his subjects, yet merciful in the administration of justice, approving executions only for the most heinous of crimes, and finally abolishing the death penalty. He was a patron of the arts, but also a man of enormous personal accomplishment, a gifted musician, an artful poet and calligrapher, an outstanding sportsman. He was a ruler of cosmopolitan tastes, having introduced the music, the costumes, and some of the customs of the peoples of the Silk Route to Chang’an.

But the Son of Heaven was spending very little time on the business of his empire. He was, you see, enamored of his Number One Consort, a young woman of the Yang family, one Yang Yuhuan, now known as Yang Guifei. Number One Consort brought her family to the palace, most notably her sister and her cousin Yang Guozhong, who rose through the ranks of power with incredible speed. More and more, affairs of state were left to people like Yang Guozhong, and First Minister Li Lin-Fu, a most unpleasant man according to my confreres, as the Son of Heaven spent most of his time with Yang Guifei, indulging her every whim and his. While the Son of Heaven and his Yang Guifei wiled away the hours at the imperial hot springs outside the city, other men were quietly flexing power. And it was into this void that those of us within the palace who wished to do so moved.

There was another man of much interest to Chang’an. That was the Sogdian, an accomplished soldier from the north, one An Lushan. Despite his bravery and tactical prowess in dealing with troublesome incursions on the northern boundaries, he was out of his element in Chang’an. He was uncouth, enormous in size, voracious of appetites of all sorts, and yet he was a favorite of the Son 0f Heaven. Perhaps the emperor enjoyed teasing this barbarian; I cannot tell. But the barbarian was named prince, was given a huge estate in Chang’an, and generally enjoyed access to the emperor that was the envy of many a minister and senior mandarin. An Lushan also seemed to enjoy the favor of the Yang family, except perhaps Yang Guozhong. That might well be because both An Lushan and Yang Guozhong were ambitious to a fault. It was perhaps inevitable they would clash, but who would have guessed the outcome of that political battle? I most certainly did not. A storm was gathering, but most of us were unaware of it.

“Argyria, almost certainly,” Dr. Xie said the following morning after he’d managed to extricate us from the police in both Hua Shan and Xi’an. “Completely preventable.”

“What’s argyria?” I said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“It’s a condition resulting from excessive intake of silver,” Dr. Xie replied.

“You mean Burton once worked in a silver mine or something?”

“Minute silver particles in suspension in distilled water,” Dr. Xie said.

“He drank it?” I said. “Are you kidding?”

“I regret to say I am not,” Dr. Xie replied. “He ingested it in some form.”

“You said preventable. He drank silver on purpose?” I said, aghast.

“There are those who believe it to be an extremely effective antibacterial, antibiotic agent,” Dr. Xie said. “Silver was used for centuries in the treatment of disease.”

“But an antibiotic that kills you, obviously,” I said.

“Not in my experience, no. Under certain circumstances, it does color the skin, as you now know, especially the nails and sometimes the eyes.”

“Is there a cure for this argyria?”

“The color of the skin, you mean? Again, not in my experience. I would have to consult the literature, and I believe there are those who claim it is reversible, but I have not seen any indication it can be done.”

“But it did kill Burton?” I insisted.

“We’ll have to wait for the autopsy,” Dr. Xie said. “It could have, but I repeat I do not know of any cases where ingesting it has killed someone.”

“Where do you get silver you drink?”

“You can buy it on the Internet, or you can make your own. All you need is distilled water, silver, and a battery, really.”

The things you learn! “Maybe it was a combination of things,” I said. “He was always dosing himself up with something or other: special teas, pills, tonics. Maybe they interacted in a fatal way. He was very big on traditional Chinese medicine, the Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor, disharmonious or blocked qi, that kind of thing. He seemed to know a lot about it.”

“Burton talked a good line about traditional Chinese medicine, but clearly he did not understand it,” Dr. Xie said, with an impatient gesture. “It is possible that he took something in a lethal combination, or merely took a lethal dose. You recall I told you that poisons are used in treatment of illness all the time, but in minute and controlled quantities. Perhaps he just took too much of something. It is also possible that he had an underlying condition, and that condition got out of hand. You see the body would regard silver as an invasive agent.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“I’m simplifying here, you understand, but the body would attempt to rid itself of this foreign substance, and in doing so, neglect, as it were, the other condition, which might then run rampant, get the upper hand. That might kill someone.”

“An underlying condition like what?” I said.

“HIV/AIDS? I shouldn’t speculate, nor should you. We will wait for the autopsy results. There is no question in my mind, however, that the blue-gray color of his face and chest is argyria.”

“Potable silver,” I mused. “Do you remember that recipe for the elixir of immortality in the T’ang box? It had potable gold in it. I thought… I guess I don’t know what I thought. That it was just silly, maybe?”

“I believe it did mention potable gold,” he agreed. “That might have meant the mysterious yellow, though, the
hsuan huang,
which was the material from which the elixir was made, the starting point. Many alchemists tried to make potable gold from other substances. Some claimed to have been successful. Silver could also be used. You are not saying, are you, that our colleague Burton was trying to join the Immortals?”

“No, but he did want to stay young and healthy,” I said. “Maybe that’s the modern equivalent of wanting to become immortal.”

“Philosophically speaking, I suppose it is. At the heart of alchemy is the process of transmutation. In Europe, it was the transmutation of base metal into gold by means of the
prima materia,
the starting point for the process. Others saw it as a spiritual transmutation of some sort. The idea of an old body transmuting into a young body would not seem out of place in the study of Chinese alchemy. There are recipes for substances that if taken for a short period make you weigh less, look younger. Take enough of it and you float away, literally. You became an Immortal. Yes, in ancient times, there were people fixated on the idea of becoming immortal, of either preserving their existing body beyond death, or actually living forever in some state or another, but how different is that, I ask you, from botox injections and plastic surgery, liposuction, and everything else we do to try to hold back time?”

“Not very,” I said.

In truth, if Burton had to go, I was relieved it was something like this. I hoped he hadn’t suffered, but when I got his last phone message, I had feared something much more violent. Because the message from Burton, left, according to the time recorded by the voice-mail system, at 9 PM on the day I’d found him, and delivered in a panicky tone that I can attest was contagious, went as follows: “Lara! Get out of China right away! Please believe me, it is very dangerous for you here, for both of us. Do not look for the silver box. You must leave immediately. I’ll be back in Xi’an tomorrow. I can’t get a direct flight to Hong Kong, so I’m flying to Beijing, and transferring to the international terminal. I’ll sleep there if I have to. I’ll get on the first flight anywhere that I can. I’ll call from the airport in Beijing to explain if you’re there, but please don’t wait for me. Get out of the country as fast as you can. I’ll tell you everything when we get home.” There was a pause, during which I heard the sound of a door slamming nearby. Just before he hung up, he said in a shaky voice, “This is not a trick, Lara. Please do what I say.”

“Does this argyria make a person delusional or anything?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” Dr. Xie replied. “Why do you ask?”

“Burton left a message for me in which he sounded frightened by something. I just wondered if he was out of it.”

“What did he say?”

“He just said it was dangerous here, that he was going to fly back to Beijing as soon as he could, and then proceed directly to the international terminal to wait for any flight out. He said I should do the same. He told me to stop looking for the silver box.”

“Who knows what was going on in his body and his head?”

“But didn’t you tell me that the desk clerk mentioned to the police that Burton had had an earlier visitor? Jackie said Burton was planning to meet someone. Could it have been someone who threatened him? Perhaps even killed him? Who could he possibly know in Hua Shan?”

“I wouldn’t believe a word that clerk said,” Dr. Xie replied. “Let’s wait for the results of the autopsy, all right? We shouldn’t leap to any conclusions.”

“Of course. You’re right. It was exceptionally good of you to come with me, Dr. Xie. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been with me. I shouldn’t have called you that late I know, but I didn’t know where else to turn. I have imposed on you. I’d still be in the police station if you hadn’t been there. You are obviously much admired and indeed revered here.”

“Nonsense,” he said, waving that off as if I’d said something preposterous, but it had seemed clear to me that everyone was practically bowing and scraping in his presence, even kowtowing, a form of obeisance that had been outlawed by the Communist Party and rightly so. “Why wouldn’t I help you? We’re both Canadian residents, after all, and you are a guest in the country of my birth. I gave you both my home and mobile numbers so that you could call me at any time. As you know perfectly well, I was here. It was no inconvenience whatsoever. As it turned out, regrettable though it might be, you were quite right to worry about Burton. I wish we had managed to get there in time to save him, but I suspect that perhaps at that stage, even if he were still alive, there would have been little that could have been done.

“I’m glad I could help,” he added. “Not just because you are a friend of Dory’s and George’s, but also because I have enjoyed your company here. I should tell you that I have given the authorities my word that you will not leave China. You will have your passport shortly and can travel in the country, but should not attempt to leave just yet. We will work on that part of it, Mira and I.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t make a run for it. I wouldn’t dream of it, given that you have been so kind.”

“That is why I have no hesitation speaking on your behalf. Now I think you should get some rest, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid to go to sleep. I know I’ll dream about Burton. He looked terrible, Dr. Xie.”

“Yes, he did. It was an unpleasant sight even for someone trained to deal with it. I think that if we find that Burton died trying to stay young and healthy, that will be a very tragic end, indeed.”