The Chinese Alchemist (5 page)

“Please,” George said. “I would be very grateful.”

“I’ll do it, yes,” I said.

“How about we get out of town?” I said to Rob about an hour later. “You know, go back to being our real selves for a few days, far away from the bad guys?”

“Okay,” he said. His enthusiasm was distinctly underwhelming.

“I have to go to Beijing.” I told him about Dory’s project. “Beijing,” he said. “Do I want to go to Beijing?”

“Probably not,” I said. “But you do want to fly to Taiwan.”

“Jennifer!” he said, his face brightening for the first time in about a month. “Brilliant idea! She’d like to see you, too, though.”

“And she will, once I get my work done in Beijing. But wouldn’t it be nice for the two of you to have some time to yourselves, just father and daughter?” By which I meant, of course, that Rob and I had been spending way too much time in the same room, and for all his talk about the two of us getting married, all this togetherness was putting a strain on our relationship. Not that this was a fair test exactly, given that under normal circumstances he’d be at work every day, not sitting around a tiny apartment that wasn’t even ours, getting more depressed by the minute. Still, we would definitely benefit from some time apart. I said none of this.

There isn’t much that gets past Rob, however. “You’re getting a little tired of life with the less-than-cheerful Herb Krahn,” he said. “You’re thinking it’s like living with a caged lion.”

“I won’t comment,” I said. “As long as you promise not to point out that Charlyn Krahn has not been the poster child for the perfect roomie herself.”

“Deal,” he laughed. It was good to hear him do that.

The next ten days were a flurry of activity. There were visas to be obtained, packing to be done, and shopping, too, given we couldn’t go back home to get what we needed. Fortunately we’d both taken our passports. It was not until the night before I left that it all caught up with me, the enormity of what I was undertaking. I sort of slumped on the bed beside my suitcase. “I don’t know about this,” I said.

“What’s bothering you?” Rob said.

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. I know we haven’t been talking much, even though we’ve been spending way more time together than usual, but let’s give it a try. You haven’t been sleeping well, and you’ve been a little cranky. It’s not like you. Usually you look forward to trips. Talk to me.”

“I am unsure about going back to China. I was there twenty years ago. I loved the people, I loved the sights, but I got out into the countryside and I saw how poor and oppressed the people were. I saw the ravages of the Cultural Revolution still affecting people years later, and I was upset, afterwards, about the massacre at Tian’anmen Square. I wondered if some of the young people I met had been injured or killed.”

“I expect things have changed a lot since then. You need to go and reassess.”

“True. I’m apprehensive about everything, though. I don’t know how to handle auctions in Beijing, particularly in Chinese.”

“I can certainly understand that. But they’re going to get you help with the language, aren’t they? The lawyer in Beijing?”

“Yes. I won’t know my way around, though, after all these years.”

“There will be maps, and you’ll have help. What else?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

“I really don’t know. I just feel anxious about the whole thing. There is something wrong about this, an obsession of a dead woman. Yes, Dory was right in wanting to return the box to China, but if the Chinese government wants it to stay there, they can purchase it. George isn’t entirely comfortable with this, either. I can tell, even if I don’t know him at all well. He should just send the box he already owns, tell them about the other one on auction, and suggest there might be a third. Case closed.”

“They were married a long time, did you not tell me, thirty-five years or something like that? It would be difficult not to respect the wishes of a partner of thirty-odd years, and a dead one at that, even if you thought the idea was completely ridiculous. Relax. You’ll do fine. Everything will work out as it should,” he replied. “I’m anxious, too, you know.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know how I’ll manage without having you underfoot constantly.”

That’s one of the best things about Rob, the way he can make me laugh. The next morning we were on our way, Rob to Taiwan, and I settling down in business class en route to Beijing.

Despite my misgivings, I was looking forward to the flight, a little pampering in business class that I don’t normally enjoy, and a full day of no phones and no Clive. What more could I ask? Well, I could ask that Burton Haldimand be on another flight. Unfortunately, I heard his voice almost immediately upon boarding. He was asking for a blanket that had been sealed in plastic and some fresh orange juice.

“Hello, Burton,” I said as I walked past his seat to mine. He had already put a little sign up on the top of his seat to indicate he didn’t want to be interrupted for anything during the flight. Personally, I thought that would be a shame, missing the champagne.

“Lara! A pleasure to see you again. How are you feeling today? Over that cold?”

“Quite over it, thank you, Burton.” I had looked up the Yellow Emperor, not prepared to let Burton tease me about it again. The Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor, or
Huang Di Nei Jing,
is the theoretical basis for traditional Chinese medicine, and is supposed to have been compiled something like two thousand years ago. The Yellow Emperor is one of the mythical founders of China, and the book expounds on medicine through a conversation between this mythical emperor and some wise men and doctors. Just so you know.

“That’s good. Now you can begin to work on good health.” That was no doubt true, but Burton himself wasn’t looking quite as perky as he had been the last time I saw him. Too bad the auction wasn’t the day after we arrived, because I would be in better form than he.

“I plan to rest for the flight,” he said, indicating the sign at his seat. “But I look forward to seeing you in Beijing. Perhaps we’re going to the same place?”

“Perhaps we are,” I said.

“Your first visit to China, is it?” he said, sticking one earplug in, but holding the other for my reply.

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “Although it has been a number of years since I’ve been there.”

“You’ll find it changed,” he said.

It had changed all right. The truth of the matter is, if I hadn’t been told Beijing was the destination of my flight, I could safely have assumed, except for the racial homogeneity of the people, that I was in a large city almost anywhere. When I’d been there two decades previous, no one except high Communist Party officials were allowed to have cars, people all wore the same uniform, the so-called Mao jacket in either grey or navy, and while there were some high-rises to be seen, Beijing was still a city of little neighborhoods and thousands upon thousands of bicycles. I’d heard about China’s headlong rush to modernize, of course. Who hadn’t? But nothing prepared me for what I saw. Office towers loomed over expressways and wide avenues. The whole city seemed to be one large construction site. I kept looking for the neighborhoods, the
hutongs
or lanes, and the street markets that I had loved. I couldn’t see them.

And the cars! I had never seen anything like it anywhere in the world. I suppose, given that cars had only been allowed a few years before, that I was looking at an entire nation of new drivers. It was one of the scariest experiences I have ever had.

Burton hadn’t arranged for a limo and driver at the airport. We were, it seemed, staying at the same hotel, chosen I suppose for its proximity to the auction house, which made it difficult for me not to offer him a lift in the car Mira Tetford had sent for me. I was beginning to realize I was destined to spend way too much time with Burton, a thought only slightly less terrifying than the traffic.

Burton might worry excessively about his health, but the traffic didn’t seem to bother him. He chatted away amiably to a young woman by the name of Ruby who had accompanied the driver, and who introduced herself as Mira’s assistant. It was only as the Mercedes hurtled through a red light, narrowly missing a woman pedaling a three-wheeled cart loaded with persimmons across what was clearly a deadly intersection, and coming inches away from being’t-boned by a bus that was making an illegal left turn, that Burton reacted. “One has to wonder if they have to take a drivers’ test here or if they just buy a car and drive it off the lot,” he said in a disapproving tone.

“Of course we do,” Ruby said, giggling into her hand. “You are not the first foreign visitor to mention the driving. You will get used to it soon enough.”

“I don’t want to get used to it,” Burton said. “I just want to survive it. You’ll be happy to hear, Lara, that except under rather limited circumstances, foreigners are not allowed to drive in China.” I guess he thought I might still have germs, because he tried not to look at me even though he was addressing me. “A good thing, don’t you agree? Those of us who think traffic lights, turn signals, and lanes are a useful concept would be squashed like bugs within minutes of venturing forth.”

If the driving wasn’t to my liking, the hotel room certainly was. It was not all that large, but it had an absolutely spectacular view over the golden roofs of the Forbidden City, wave after wave of them, now glowing in the late afternoon sun. If I stood on tiptoe I could see the large plazas that separated the various palaces in the huge complex, and even pretend that the tourists flocking along the streets on either side or crossing Tian’anmen Square to the south were servants of the emperor, or perhaps foreign delegations paying their respects. It had been home to emperors, “forbidden” to almost everyone else. From this viewpoint, Beijing was absolutely enchanting.

Mira’s office was atop another tower, this one just a little east of the hotel, in the foreign embassy section of Beijing. After the usual pleasantries and a cup or two of Chinese tea the next day, we got down to business. Mira was maybe forty, and struck me as very competent in a quiet, unassuming way. She appeared to be fluent in Mandarin, although I was no judge on that subject, and she clearly knew what she was talking about. Joining us was her assistant Ruby, the young woman who had met me at the airport the previous day.

“I’ve done some research on the art auction scene here with Ruby’s help,” Mira began. “Let me digress a little to say how much I’m enjoying this. For some reason I’m finding it more interesting than yet another joint venture between Chinese and North American companies wanting to manufacture plastic widgets here. To summarize my findings: One, art auction houses are a new concept here in China. We don’t have the experience of, say, Hong Kong.

“Two: auction houses are supposed to be licensed by the Cultural Relics Bureau of China. My conclusion is that most are not. In other words, there are many more auction houses than licenses. Three: if you asked four people the number of licensed facilities here, you’d get four different answers, meaning it is difficult to tell which are licensed, and which are not. Four: this may be because Beijing Municipality also licenses auction houses. Its standards are reputedly lower than that of the CRB. Five: even licensed auction houses have, because of the infancy of the profession, no prior experience in art auctions. Six: there are probably only five auction houses in Beijing that are truly licensed by the Cultural Relics Bureau to conduct auctions, and seven: Cherished Treasures House is not one of them. So, in conclusion…”

“Caveat emptor,” I said.

“Caveat emptor, ”buyer beware,“ in spades,” she said. “The art market here on the Chinese mainland is pretty much unregulated. Under those circumstances, you cannot assume any appraisal is accurate…”

“Tell me how this is different from anywhere else. You can’t assume that at home, either. All kinds of stuff is labeled ‘as found.” In other words, no guarantees.“

“Of course. But at home you have reputable auction houses with expert staff…”

“That still doesn’t guarantee anything, I can assure you. Some top auction houses have been implicated in various scandals rocking the art and antiquities market. I’m not comparing established European and North American auction houses with the ones here, because I wouldn’t know, but I am saying that you should be careful anywhere.”

“I doubt you’ve seen anything like this. One quite reputable auction house here has been rocked by an allegation that it has been selling stolen paintings. They are contemporary paintings, and as it turns out, the artist is still very much alive and has accused the auction house of selling stolen work. Now, who knows what the real story is. I mean we don’t know who actually put the paintings up for auction because in China, as elsewhere, the auction house is obliged to protect the name of the seller and buyer if requested. But it does not inspire great confidence.

“As for Cherished Treasures House, it’s new in the field. In a sense, it came out of nowhere. I tried to find out who owns it and got the name of another corporation that I didn’t know either. Cherished Treasures House did, however, have an amazing inaugural auction a few months ago.

There was a small drawing by a Ming emperor for which they managed to fetch a rather breathtaking price, so it has established itself quite quickly. As for the T’ang silver box, I’ve been told by my partner Eva Reti that you know what it looks like, and that you should be able to identify a forgery if indeed that is what we have here.“

“I know what it looks like. I went over it with a fine tooth comb in New York. I have the photograph from the Molesworth and Cox catalog, and I also have very good photographs from all angles of the box already in Dory’s possession, or her estate’s, that is. I think I’ll be okay on that score. I’m worried about language, however.”

“Both Ruby and I will be there with you to translate.”

“You may have to translate fast,” I said. “These things can really move along if there’s a lot of bidding.”

“We’ll manage,” she said. “We’ve translated for some pretty big deals here. We know what’s at stake. I’m fairly fluent, but I can’t read Chinese. Ruby, of course, can. So she’ll help with any text we need to deal with, and she’s faster than I am on the numbers. Now, once you get the box, in the happy event that you do, we will take it from there. We’ll see it is properly presented to the museum in Xi’an. You can’t take it out of the country, anyway, given that it’s much older than what’s allowable. You probably know that China is clamping down on exports of antiquities.”