The Chinese Alchemist (24 page)

I mentioned one I’d seen with five posts in the entrance gate, and said whoever lived there must have a truly beautiful home and be very important. She said she expected I was talking about the Zhang residence. I told her I’d seen someone in army uniform at the front gate, and asked if the army was guarding the place. She said no, the army officer lived there. I expressed surprise that someone in the army could afford such a magnificent home. “Zhang Xiaoling,” she said. She didn’t look as if she liked him. “Zhang Yi important man, much money. Zhang Xiaoling, the son, he spend money. Big car. He is no good.”

So there it was, the missing link, one word, Zhang. Dory Matthews, born Zhang Dorothy. Yes, I knew perfectly well that Zhang is one of the most common names in China, maybe even the most common and certainly in the top ten. I didn’t care. This was one coincidence too many. Satisfied, I paid the hip price for my wine and headed off to find a taxi at the Drum Tower. It was time to give George Matthews a call. He had a lot of explaining to do on behalf of both himself and his late wife.

I nearly made it. I really did. As I approached the Drum Tower, the drums began to beat loudly and rhythmically. There was a cab in the distance, I had my arm out, and then I felt myself being pulled roughly into the backseat of a car. I tried to call out, but with the din from the drums, I knew no one would hear me. The car pulled away the minute I was in it, the man who had grabbed me pulling the door shut as we careened away. In the driver’s seat was Mr. Zhang, Zhang Xiaoling if I had understood my informant properly, formerly known to me as the man in black. His henchman, in the backseat with me, had a gun. He fastened my seatbelt as the car screeched away.

I attempted the requisite protests to no avail. The two men spoke to each other in Chinese and said nothing to me. I tried to keep track of where we were. As far as I could tell, we were heading west. Soon we were in an area that looked a bit suburban, more small town than urban core. There were no signs on the roads that I could read.

A short while later, we were heading into hilly country. I’d seen the hills surrounding Beijing when I’d flown in, but still did not have any sense of where we might be. I looked for clues, but there were no highway numbers, just signs that said, in English, things like “Do not drive tiredly.”

Zhang obviously knew where he was. He was driving very fast, and there was no opportunity for me to release the seatbelt and try to
get
out of the car. Night was falling. I could see the dark outlines of hills, but very few lights now that would indicate a town anywhere near. The road to our left dropped off fairly precipitously, and there were no lights on that side of the road. There were a few cars out, but very few, and those that were soon disappeared behind us as Zhang aggressively passed them all.

It was on a curve that all hell broke loose. Zhang was once again trying to pass another car when a truck appeared on the curve in the oncoming lane. Zhang jerked the wheel hard, just clipping the bumper of the car he was attempting to pass. Our car’s right tire hit the shoulder and we spun out of control, first to one side of the road and then the other. We kept hitting rocks and trees near the shoulders, and I could hear and feel pieces of the car being ripped off. I thought we were dead.

The car spun one last time and then started sliding backward toward the drop on the lefthand side of the road, but instead of going over the side, the car slammed against a wall of stone and came to a stop, engine still running. Neither Zhang nor the man who was holding me captive had been wearing seatbelts. Zhang was slumped against the wheel, blood pouring from a head wound that I could not help but hope was fatal, and the man beside me had also hit his head on the roof of the car, I think, and looked to have been knocked unconscious. I couldn’t see his gun. Buckled in, I was dazed, but not hurt. It took me a second to pull myself together and move, but then I was out of the seat-belt, and out the door. The headlights of the car, still on, faced down the hill, so I headed uphill into the darkness. The oncoming vehicle and the car that had been clipped by Zhang had disappeared. I wondered why, but didn’t have time to think about it.

I tried to be quiet, but it was dark. I kept tripping on brush, and my breathing sounded very loud to me. I kept climbing, though, trying to put as much space between me and those horrible people before they came to their senses. I saw the headlights of another car, which stopped, its beam on the wrecked car. It was a police vehicle, at least it looked that way to me, and for a minute or two, I thought I’d made a terrible mistake moving away from the road. Zhang, who apparently was not badly hurt, got out of the car and spoke through the window to the occupant of the police car. In a minute, the car pulled away. Zhang had obviously pulled strings again. I heard him call out to the man with the gun, who by now had hobbled out of the car as well, and I was reasonably sure, even in the darkness, that he was looking up the hill. He may have been dazed, but he’d seen which way I’d chosen.

I kept climbing, trying not to crash around like a wounded animal, always on the lookout for some place to hide myself. At last I came to what I thought was a ridge, and staying down so that I wouldn’t show up against the dark sky, went over the top of it. I fell into a ditch or a small gulch of some kind. Something loomed above me, and I almost screamed. It took me a minute, but I decided what I could see above was the outline of roofs against the dark sky. There was even a very slight glow coming from one of the buildings. It was then I heard a shout from the road below, and the sound of someone coming after me.

I seemed to have found myself in a little town built on the side of a hill. I stumbled up stone steps wondering where I would hide. I tried a door or two that didn’t open, and then found one that did. There were no lights inside. I was in a little courtyard with buildings on three sides. There was a large cart of some kind, loaded with something I couldn’t make out. I heard someone cough nearby.

In my haste I banged against the edge of the cart, and let out an involuntary gasp. I could hear footsteps outsides whose I didn’t know. I tried one of the doors that led onto the courtyard, and it opened. In a second, I was inside. I was in a storage area of some kind, I thought, as I felt around in front of me, one that smelled of cat urine. It certainly wasn’t someone’s living room. There were sacks piled up and I crouched down behind them, only to feel something furry rub against my legs. I stifled a scream. There was a purr. Apparently I’d found the cat. A few minutes later, I could hear what I thought to be someone knocking loudly on doors. Whoever it was came closer. Then I heard steps in the courtyard, and then the ominous sound of a key turning in the lock of the building in which I’d hidden. I was trapped.

Zhang—I knew his voice well now—was in the courtyard a minute or two later. He called out in a loud and quite authoritarian tone, and a woman answered. There ensued a conversation that I could not understand. I held my breath as someone tried the door, rattling the handle. It was locked, as I very well knew. I thought I was doomed. The woman said something, and a few seconds later I heard footsteps moving away from my hiding place. Soon all was quiet.

I stayed there hardly daring to breathe for what seemed to be hours, absolutely petrified. I was cold, hungry, and scared beyond reason. Who had locked me in? Did they know I was there? Were they holding me prisoner for Zhang,-and if so, why hadn’t they just told him where I was? Maybe they had, and he was going for reinforcements. Then there were more footsteps outside my hiding place—or
my
prison, depending on circumstances I didn’t understand—and I heard a key inserted into the lock. The door opened. A woman spoke. I didn’t have a clue what she said, but I stood up. She couldn’t have been speaking to anyone else, and there seemed no point deluding myself with any pretense that I was safely hidden. My legs were aching from the climb and from having crouched down for so long. She took my hand in the dark and led me across the little courtyard and into another small building. This was the house. There was one lantern casting a pale light.

We looked each other over. I expect she saw a very large white woman with fair hair and pale eyes looming over her. I saw a tiny Chinese woman, someone who worked hard, judging from her worn hands. It was a one-room home, with one bed, on which a small child slept. I assume they slept together. She gave me a cup of tea, and even took me in the dark to the communal bathroom—after I said the word “toilet,” one she understood—a concrete structure with four holes in the ground cantilevered over a cliff. It was breezy, but what did I care? Then she took me back to the storage room, arranged some sacks as a bed and gave me a blanket. As I more or less collapsed on the makeshift bed, she locked me in again. Again I wondered whether I was a prisoner or a guest. At this point, it didn’t matter because I wasn’t going anywhere in the dark.

I didn’t think there was the slightest chance that I’d sleep, but I did. As the palest of light showed through the cracks in the walls of the house, I heard the key turn again, and the woman offered me a bowl of something. She signaled me to follow her, and I did, to a chair in the courtyard.

The home in which I had found myself was very basic. The cart in the courtyard against which I’d managed to bang my knee was loaded down with drying cobs of corn, dark gold against the green paint of the cart. Bunches of long, thin red peppers dangled from the rafters. A cat, perhaps my companion of the previous evening, was curled up beneath the cart.

The bowl contained congee, a soupy rice dish. To the rice were added some spring onions, and something a bit spicy I didn’t recognize. I ate every last bite. I kept saying
xiexie,
thank you, over and over again. Her child, a shy little boy, kept coming up and staring at me, before giggling and running away.

The woman prattled away to me for a while. I couldn’t understand a word. Finally I just said, and I believe there may have been a catch in my voice, “Zhang Xiaoling.”

The woman spat on the ground. I said it again, and she spat again. She obviously knew who he was, and she didn’t seem to like him.

After breakfast, she offered me a bowl of water to clean up a bit, and picked away at some straw that had attached itself to my jacket. “Lara,” I said, pointing to myself. She reciprocated. I think she said Ting, but I couldn’t be sure.

I pulled out my wallet, took out all the cash, the equivalent of close to two hundred dollars, and said “Beijing.” This elicited a stream of conversation. Ting left the house and came back a few minutes later with another woman, who introduced herself, at least that was what I thought she was doing, as Rong. The two of them talked away, and finally Ting took my watch arm, and pointed to two on my watch. I didn’t know what that meant, but I figured she must have thought that this was relevant in some way. It was now only eight.

I spent the next six hours in a state of barely controlled panic. I kept trying my cell phone, but of course it didn’t work. I was in the hills, and far from Beijing. I was fed regularly, and pots of tea were always available, but I didn’t know what was happening. I also didn’t know if Zhang Xiaoling was going to show up again. Every time I heard footsteps crunch against the stones of the lane, I ducked into the storage area.

Two o’clock came and went, and I was getting really frightened. Then, at about two-thirty, I heard a car horn sound several times. Ting gestured to me to follow her, and we carefully made our way down through the village toward the road. She went ahead at every corner, looking carefully about before signaling me to follow. High above the roadway we stopped, and I looked about me. We were in a narrow pass between two dark hills, their slopes brown with winter, in what looked to be a dead end. If so, this could very well be a trap. I tried not to think that way, to concentrate on what I thought had been some real human connection here.

The town clung to the slopes of both hills, with a road at the bottom between the two. The distance between the two hills at this point was just the width of a two-lane road. The town was spectacular. I think it had to be several hundred years old, Ming in style, with lovely rooflines, all gray stone and brick, with only two flashes of color, the red Chinese flag hanging high over the valley, and a red lantern swinging from a porch. Higher up the hill I could see one whitewashed building that looked like a tiny temple of some sort. I could not understand how a village like this got to be here, wherever here was, or how it had stayed like this for so long. The only modern touch was a truck at the bottom of the hill. Far, far below in another direction, on the main road, a white Lexus, at least what was left of it, sat on the shoulder. It was the car, and not the village, that seemed out of place in this setting. There was no one I could see near it. I was surprised how far I’d managed to climb in the dark.

It came to me that the villagers must surely have heard and most likely seen the accident. In a cut in the hills like this, the sound had nowhere to go but up. They may even have seen or at least heard me running away. Ting knew I was in her home. She could have exposed me, but instead she had protected me by locking me in. When Zhang came to her place, he had called her out and tried the door. Finding it locked, he assumed I couldn’t have been in it. His tone in speaking to her had been so harsh, and yet she had saved me. She’d waited until she was sure he’d gone, perhaps watching in the darkness from a little open porch I’d seen on the back of her house, a porch that afforded the same view of the road that I now had, and then she had come to make sure I was all right, and to make me tea, and to fashion some sort of bed with a blanket, something that was probably in pretty short supply in this place, to keep me warm. I wanted to cry.

Rong was talking to the driver of the truck, which was loaded down with all kinds of merchandise. There were plastic washbowls, running shoes, towels, sweaters, jackets. It was a kind of moveable general store and several people were gathered ‘round it checking out the wares. Others were standing at various places on the slopes of the town. They looked like sentries in a way, and perhaps that’s what they were. It seemed possible to me that the whole town knew I was there.