The Chinese Alchemist (17 page)

After almost an hour of pondering all this, one ear cocked toward the hall outside my room, my heart leaping into my throat every time a door opened or closed, I had a “Don’t Know” list that covered the entire column and then some. The “Know” side of the ledger was distressingly short, only one entry in fact: a number of people associated with this silver box were dead.

Along with that came the unwelcome conclusion that I too was now inescapably linked to the silver box. It was not a pleasant thought. Here I was in a country where I didn’t speak the language, didn’t understand anything that was going on around me, and therefore didn’t stand a chance of getting out of the place in one piece unless I thought of something fast. Where to start? Given the hour and the fact that I was afraid to leave my hotel room, it had to be something I had with me. That was the file on the silver box that I had put together an eternity before. I had made a copy of the photograph of the box in the Molesworth & Cox catalog, and had several photographs that Dory had given me of the silver box George had purchased some time previously. I had also kept the translation of the box up for auction that Justin at Molesworth & Cox had given me at the preview in New York, and I had gone to both New York and Beijing with a translation of the box already in Dory’s possession.

I had not paid any real attention to the file, because I hadn’t needed to. Dory was certain the box on offer at Molesworth & Cox was authentic, and once I’d taken a good look at it myself and chuckled at the recipe for the elixir of immortality, I’d shoved the pages into the file. Now I needed to revisit the file.

I got out a small magnifying device I always carry with me in case I need to examine some antique or another closely, and looked carefully at the photographs of the two boxes. George Matthews’s box was lovely. On the sides and the top were a group of women musicians in a gazebo. They were all beautifully dressed, and their instruments were quite discernable—a lute, a flute, chimes of some sort, and so on. The workmanship was very fine. The smaller box showed a woman in a garden talking to another woman while a line of women waited. Once again, they were all well dressed.

It was very clear these went together. The rounded tops of the boxes were the same, both in shape but also in what was depicted on them, unlike the sides of the boxes, on which the scenes were different. I had at first seen only the bird on the lids, a crane, but when I looked more closely, I realized there was another scene, or perhaps more accurately, three of them, one on top of the other. At the bottom was a Woman who looked to be laid out in a tomb of some sort, or perhaps she was sleeping. In the middle there was a woman seated in a pavilion while other women stood in line in front of her, and at the top, yet another woman floated above the rest of them, hovering over a mountain. The woman in each scene wore an identical robe, and could quite possibly be the same person. Woven into the design were flowers, possibly chrysanthemums, but more likely roses or peonies. What was also very interesting to me was that fact that it was quite possible these boxes had been done by different artists, even if they depicted the same thing, or at least something similar. There were variations in the strokes, tiny deviations really, but discernible nonetheless. I’d want to see the originals again and examine them closely, but I thought I was right. I wondered why there would be two artists working on these boxes if they were meant to fit together.

I decided that these three vignettes were of the same woman, in life in the middle, dead at the bottom, and floating above us all, as an Immortal at the top. Justin at Molesworth & Cox had said the box belonged to someone named Lingfei, a person of some importance in the court of Illustrious August. Could I safely assume that the woman on the box was Lingfei? I hadn’t given much thought as to the gender of Lingfei before this moment. I’m not really familiar with Chinese names, so that hadn’t been a clue, but there wasn’t a single man depicted on either box that I could see. It wasn’t absolutely conclusive, but from now on, Lingfei, at least in my mind, was a woman.

Next, I read the translation carefully. There was the recipe for the elixir of immortality and instructions for its preparation as I already knew. A more thorough reading of the translation of the text convinced me that someone had cared very much for Lingfei and was perhaps drawing some consolation from the thought that she wasn’t really dead. This conclusion seemed to rest on the fact that her body had not been found, which is to say that she was one of the lucky ones who had made the leap to immortality. I wasn’t prepared to accept these immortal leaps, so what, I wondered, had happened to her body? Had it been stolen along with treasures that had been buried with her? Or had her body not really been buried where the author of the text thought it had? The text did, however, make it pretty clear there was a tomb somewhere with, if not Lingfei’s body in it, then something else.

I then looked at the measurements of the two boxes. The one at Molesworth & Cox and again at Cherished Treasures House in Beijing would fit into the box that George owned, as Dory had predicted that it would. However, because of the tight fit, only the smaller box could have contained something. Burton had called the box a coffret a bijoux, or jewelry box, but I didn’t think that was right, or if it was, then there was some very special piece of jewelry in the smallest box. It wasn’t big enough to contain a great deal of anything.

Dory had said there was a bigger box that she remembered. She had not hesitated at all on the subject. Now, I think relative size is a difficult thing to remember over many years, particularly given how close in size the two I’d seen were, so despite what she said, the missing third box could have been either larger or smaller than the ones I had seen. I wondered how long there had been between the auction at which George Matthews had bought the silver box he had, and the second one coming up in New York. Dory had implied that George had had his box in his collection for many years. Could I safely assume that was true? I wasn’t sure the answer to that was relevant in any way, but I had so little information that it seemed to me I just had to go on a data search and see what came up. I could simply phone up George and ask him, I supposed. I wasn’t sure yet whether or not I wanted to do that.

Dory had also said there would probably have been an external wooden box, although it was long gone. How did she know that? Was there something about these nesting boxes that required such a thing? Were there other nesting sets like this I might learn from? I wasn’t going to find that out in my hotel room.

I wished I could hold Dory’s box again, or the one that was stolen, to study more carefully the tableaux carved on the outsides. Having concluded that one of the women depicted there—women I’d once just glanced at, being more interested in the workmanship than the content—had been Lingfei, I suddenly wanted to find the missing box even more than I had before. Somehow this had gotten very personal, not just because of Dory, but because of the mysterious Lingfei herself. I suppose, like Burton, I was hooked.

As I contemplated all this, the telephone rang, a sound that jangled right through me, and caused me to jump up in dismay. I stared at the ringing phone, willing it to tell me who was calling, and finally picked it up. I said nothing, however.

“Lara? Are you there?” Dr. Xie said.

“Yes, Dr. Xie,” I replied.

“I woke you up, didn’t I?” he said. “That’s why you’re having difficulty speaking to me. I am truly sorry.”

“No, I’m awake,” I said. “I can’t sleep.”

“I was afraid of that. I am in the lobby. May I come up, or would you like to come down?”

“I’ll come down,” I said. There were two reasons for that decision: I wasn’t going to be in my room alone with anybody, even the lovely Dr. Xie, and I suddenly realized I was really, really hungry. I thought maybe food would settle me down a little.

I met Dr. Xie in the bar. He had a scotch, I had a hamburger and a glass of wine. I’m a firm believer in eating what the locals do, and have been known to make fun of tourists who insist upon eating their own food no matter where they go, but right now what I needed was a hamburger and fries—lots and lots of fries. Having said that, when the food came, I couldn’t eat it.

“Have you slept at all?” Dr. Xie asked in a disapproving tone.

“Not really, no.”

“Then I have a plan, one I hope you will agree to. First of all, let me tell you that Mira thinks she will have your passport by tomorrow evening, or the following morning at the latest. They are holding it only until the preliminary autopsy results are known, and we believe that should be late tomorrow. Of course, it will show death by some sort of misadventure, and you will be able to go. But I can see you are in some distress. First, you must get some sleep. I have brought you,” he said, pulling a small plastic bag out of his pocket, “some of Xie Homeopathic’s finest. You have a kettle and a mug in your room, no?” I nodded.

“Good. There are five or six teabags here. One teabag per cup, please, and one cup should do it. It will help you sleep. It smells a little strong when the boiling water first hits it, but let it steep for three minutes. It is all natural, no narcotics. You will find it tastes quite pleasant, and it will help you sleep. As for tomorrow, while we wait, I don’t want you sitting around thinking about Burton. I repeat my earlier offer. Jackie will pick you up tomorrow morning at, say, nine-thirty after the traffic settles down a little, and take you west of the city to see Famen Si, a quite extraordinary Buddhist temple, and some of the T’ang and Ming tombs.”

Tombs,
I thought.
There might be some merit in this excursion.
Burton had found this trip educational. Perhaps I would as well. I’d be safe with Jackie. He’d already shown himself to be a good man in a crisis. “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate the tea, and the offer of your car and driver. I accept both.”

“Good,” he said. “Now eat. I may not approve of your choice from the menu, but you need to eat something.” I did the best I could.

Later, door barred, I took out a teabag and did as I was directed. Dr. Xie was right. I drifted off to sleep fairly quickly and slept much of the night. It was a disturbed sleep to be sure. Inevitably, I kept dreaming about Burton. He was dead in my dream, dark blue of face, but he was still wearing gloves and making himself cups of tea.

Jackie was waiting for me at nine-thirty the next morning. He handed me a copy of
China Daily,
the English-language newspaper. One of my questions was answered right on the front page where, in addition to a story about a peasant demonstration not far from Xi’an where poor farmers were protesting corruption in government, and a mining disaster that had killed hundreds of workers, it was reported that a man had been murdered in Xi’an. This man, who had been identified as Song Liang, was an employee of the Cultural Relics Bureau. It was not known whether Song was in Xi’an on official business or vacation. Some vacation! The police believed he had been murdered by two men on motorcycles. The police had a good description of the perpetrators, and the investigation into this brutal crime continued and was expected to be brought to a speedy conclusion.

I was glad the article didn’t mention they were looking for a female foreigner. At least the people who had talked to the police about the crime knew who the culprits were. If Song Liang really was an employee of the Cultural Relics Bureau, then his presence in New York could be explained. He was attempting to purchase the silver box for the people of China. Governments indeed do such things. It certainly did not explain why he’d steal it, unless he’d been given a limit on how much he could spend and despaired of being able to purchase it at the price it might fetch, and just grabbed it on impulse, thinking he was doing his country a favor. Then what would he do? Take it to his employer and beg forgiveness? I didn’t know enough about how this all worked to say. If he had the silver box with him in Xi’an, then he had certainly not ‘fessed up in an expeditious fashion. The other possibility was that he was basically corrupt, had been in New York just to see who purchased it, and then planned to rob the purchaser. If you think that sort of thing never happens, you kid yourself. He’d certainly been unhappy when the object was withdrawn from sale, as unhappy as Burton and I had been.

This put me in something of a dilemma. There was no photograph of Song Liang in
China Daily.
If there had been, I could tell Mira or Ruby to call the police and tell them that the person I thought had stolen the box might be the employee of the Cultural Relics Bureau who had been killed in Xi’an. But there was no photograph, so if I said that, they might quite rightly wonder how I knew of it, and I would have to say I was there, something I was extremely reluctant to do, not the least because I thought being linked in some way with two suspicious deaths was going to keep me in China for the rest of my life.

Our route took us past the statues that mark either the beginning or the end, depending on your geographic and political point of view, of the fabled Silk Route, through the burgeoning modern city that spreads outside Xi’an’s old city walls, thence past miles of farmland to the place where the emperors and their families centered in that area went to spend eternity.

The tombs were interesting to be sure. We visited T’ang Princess Yongtai’s tomb, a young woman who may have been executed by a rather nasty piece of work named Empress Wu Zetian, or may, as her tombstone related, have died in childbirth. Perhaps Empress Wu had the tombstone carved with her version of events. Princess Yongtai was the granddaughter of the Emperor Gaozong. She was also the granddaughter or Empress Wu, the woman who may have ordered her killed.

These were dangerous times to be a princess, it seems. Was Lingfei a princess? That might explain why her body had disappeared, stolen by an unpleasant rival.

To reach the sarcophagus, you descend a long ramp sloping quite steeply downward, past a few badly faded frescoes depicting the princess’s maids in lovely gowns and elaborate hairstyles, little niches filled with terra-cotta figures of servants and so on, infinitely smaller than the life-size warriors the first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi had formed for himself, and past a shaft that had been cut by tomb robbers at some point in the distant past. The air was unpleasantly damp, almost fetid, at the bottom where the sarcophagus stood, and there was nothing much to see other than a large stone sarcophagus, but at least I knew what a T’ang tomb looked like.