Everything Under the Sky (47 page)

Biao finished in the meantime and smiled from ear to ear.

“I must have misread some numbers,” he explained in relief. “This time I got three hundred sixty-nine.”

“Do the diagonals,” I encouraged.

Lao Jiang couldn't wait any longer. Seeing that we had the solution in hand, he quickly stood and walked over to the pile of stone cylinders.

“Master Red Jade,” he called. “Since you and I are the only ones who know how to read Chinese numbers, you pass me the cylinders and I'll put them in their place. You, Elvira and Fernanda, stand them all up so Master Red Jade can find them quickly. Biao, take your book and read the numbers aloud.”

“Could you hold on just a second?” I spit out. “We haven't finished yet.”

“Yes we have,” he parried. “The Magic Square is complete, and as an old Chinese saying goes, ‘An inch of time is an inch of gold.’ We have to get down to the First Emperor's mausoleum right away.”

Please! It's not as if we were being chased by the Green Gang! What was his hurry? And yet we all obeyed like simpletons. Biao and Master Red rose and walked over into the middle of the tables. The boy stationed himself in front of the board with his book open as if he were an altar boy ready to recite psalms in a church. Meanwhile, Fernanda and I stood the stone tubes so that the Chinese characters were visible.

“Read the numbers by row, starting at the top,” the antiquarian ordered.

“Thirty-seven,” Biao began.

Master Red found that cylinder and handed it to the antiquarian, but Lao Jiang didn't move.

“What's wrong now?” I asked.

“Where should I put it?”

“What do you mean, where should you put it?” I asked. “Put it in the first square in the first row of the grid.”

“Yes, but which is the first row?” he replied uncomfortably. “There are four sides, and not one of them is marked with anything that says ‘Top’ or ‘Start here.’ ”

Well, that was a conundrum. However, as with everything else, there had to be a logical solution. Staying within the area flanked by the tables, I walked over until I was in front of the seat of honor, with the identically carved stone slab hanging behind it. Vertically, it was quite clear which was the top row and which the first square in that row. I began to walk backward, careful not to run into the cylinders, and kept going until the square on the floor was in front of me. I then pointed to the top line.

“There. Facing the seat of honor, that must be the proper orientation.”

Lao Jiang did as I said, placing the cylinder marked with the number thirty-seven in the top right-hand corner.

“Seventy-eight,” Biao intoned, reminding me of the children from San Ildefonso school in Madrid who'd been singing the winning national lottery numbers for two centuries.

Fernanda and I stood the cylinders on end as fast as possible so Master Red could find the one Lao Jiang needed. The antiquarian grew impatient. Master Red was going too slowly, and Biao wasn't speaking clearly, and the two of us, who weren't doing anything, were getting in the way. It was impossible to please him. Everything was wrong as far as he was concerned.

After some time we reached number forty-one in the middle of the square; all that work, and we'd gotten through only four and a half lines. I consoled myself with the thought that things would go much faster as we went on, because Master Red would have fewer and fewer cylinders to look through.

And indeed we made up for our slow start during the second half. My niece and I formed a chain to pass the cylinder with the number that Biao sang out from Master Red to Lao Jiang. Before we realized it, the last stone roll had passed from my hands into the antiquarian's.

“There,” I said with a triumphant smile. “We've done it.”

He smiled, too; hard to believe, but he'd actually smiled. It was the first time in a long time, and so I smiled happily back. Lao Jiang, however, was determined to finish the job and turned indifferently around, dropping the cylinder in the last hole.

As had happened in the chamber with the Bian Zhong, there was a metallic click followed by the grinding of stone on stone. The floor shuddered, and we all looked at one another a little frightened. We knew where the sound was coming from but couldn't see any means of access to the next level. Then the floor behind the stone slab began slowly, gently lowering, becoming a ramp that landed with a thud on the floor below, shaking the entire banquet hall.

We all walked over, tentatively, expectantly, after silently picking up our bags. Some mysterious mechanism had already lit the lamps on the lower level, because light shone up through the enormous hole without our having done anything.

We descended cautiously, ready for whatever might happen, but nothing did. We reached the bottom of the ramp and found ourselves in a huge, frigid esplanade, even bigger than the one we'd seen up above and best described as gleaming. Everything glowed as if the servants had just finished cleaning or, better yet, as if a speck of dust had never found its way in there. The floor was made of forged, polished bronze, like the mirrors Fernanda and I had taken. Thick, black-lacquered columns held not only receptacles that were already lit but a ceiling as well, also made of bronze that stretched away from our heads the farther we walked. The floor was on a slight incline, barely perceptible, causing the space to expand until it was colossal, truly magnificent. We continued walking, following an imaginary straight line. The air was very cold. At some point I turned back to look at the ramp, but couldn't see it anymore. I did, however, discover a town, or something that looked like a town, on our right, with its walls, towers, flagpoles, and the roofs of its houses and palaces. It was just like a real one, only smaller, as if little people or children lived there. A bit farther on, to the left, I saw another, and then many more. After a while we crossed one of those arched Chinese bridges over a small river whose waters were actually liquid mercury, brilliant silver, flowing smoothly within its banks. The children rushed to reach into the current and touch the strange, fascinating metal that slipped through their fingers, forming little silver balls in the palms of their hands, but I wouldn't let them dawdle, and they reluctantly rejoined the group.

Lao Jiang bent over a small stone stela on the floor to read the inscription.

“We've just left the province of Nanyang and are entering Xianyang,” he said, chuckling. “It can't be far, then, to the prefecture of Hanzhong.”

“We've crossed Everything Under the Sky already?” Master Red asked, using the expression commonly used among the Chinese to refer to their country.

“Well,” Lao Jiang said quite enthusiastically, “they likely put the ramp near the capital, the center of power for both the real empire above as well as this little Zhongguo, Tianxia or Everything Under the Sky. This is an exact replica. It's like a giant map with magnificent models and these astonishing rivers of mercury.”

“It's missing the mountains,” my niece replied.

“Perhaps they didn't think they were necessary,” the antiquarian commented, passing through the walls of the town across the bridge in front of us. He suddenly let out a hearty laugh. “All that traveling for nothing! Do you know where we are? We're back in Shang-hsien!”

I couldn't help but break into a big smile.

“So will tiny little assassins from the Green Gang attack us here?” my niece joked.

“Lao Jiang,” I begged, “please don't make us cross the Qin Ling mountain range to get to the mausoleum. Could we take the main road to Xi'an?”

“Of course,” he replied.

We crossed through little Shang-hsien, which, despite its size, was more elegant and lavish than the actual town, and left through the western gate to follow the route to Hongmenhe, a scant hundred and fifty feet away. We walked along enthusiastically, noting every detail in that marvelous reconstruction. Along the shiny bronze paths were scale statues of carters pulling their oxen, peasants with hoes raised in an eternal gesture of cultivation, covered wagons filled with fruits and vegetables heading to the capital, lone gentlemen on their mounts, and farmyard animals such as chickens and pigs. It was a country in miniature, industrious and full of life, a life that became increasingly intense the closer we got to the heart of that world: imperial Xianyang. None of us could believe our eyes. You couldn't imagine a place like that even in your wildest dreams.

“Shouldn't we head toward Mount Li and find the hill that marks the mausoleum?” Biao suddenly asked.

“I don't think the emperor would reproduce the funeral palace inside his burial mound,” Lao Jiang said. “Logically, he'd have wanted to be buried in his imperial palace at Xianyang. If he's not there, then we'll look where you suggested.”

We passed through beautiful cities, crossed bridges over streams that sparkled like silver in the light of the whale-oil lamps, and had to swerve around the increasing numbers of statues that were incredible representations of everyday life in that long-lost empire. Finally, when we were beginning to feel as if we were part of a strange world where everyone and everything had been frozen in time, we found ourselves in front of huge walls that protected what Lao Jiang said was Shanglin Park. This was an exceptional place built south of the river Wei for the Qin kings’ enjoyment and was later enlarged by the First Emperor.

“In fact,” Lao Jiang said, “shortly before Shi Huang Ti died, he decided he was tired of the noise, filth, and crowds in Xianyang, north of the river Wei, and ordered that a new imperial palace be built inside this park, amid the lovely gardens. Sima Qian said that the new palace of Epang, which was never finished, would have been the biggest of any palace ever built, and yet it was simply the entrance to a monumental complex that, according to the project, would have covered hundreds and hundreds of miles. However, work stopped when Shi Huang Ti died, and the only part that had been completed was the great front hall, which could hold ten thousand men and flagpoles that were sixty feet high. If I'm not mistaken, Sima Qian said there was a path in the lower part of this great hall that led directly to the top of a nearby mountain and an elevated, covered walkway that went from Epang to Xianyang, over the river Wei. The First Emperor had several palaces in the capital, so many that the exact number isn't known. All his residences were connected by tunnels and elevated walkways that allowed him to move from one place to another without being seen. Epang was his last palace, his great dream, and he put hundreds of thousands of convicts to work on it. I think he would have ordered that a replica of Epang be built down here so it could be his final resting place.”

“But if the one up above wasn't finished …” I commented.

“The one down here wasn't either,” Lao Jiang agreed. “Both Epang and the mausoleum were being built at the same time, so I suppose the two also stopped at the same point. If I'm right, the First Emperor's real tomb has to be in the underground copy of that magnificent front hall.”

We crossed through a great bronze door richly tooled and decorated with what I didn't dare think were enormous precious stones and found ourselves in a splendid garden where the trees were normal size, as well as the paths and small rivers of quicksilver. The bronze sky was now blue—painted, undoubtedly—and no longer reflected the light from what were now lanterns hanging from branches or set on stone pillars alongside the path.

“How can the mercury still flow after two thousand years?” Biao asked, truly perplexed by the question.

None of us knew the answer. Lao Jiang and Master Red wove a thousand and one explanations, each one as far-fetched as the last, about the possible types of automatic mechanisms that could operate the rivers from some hidden part of the mausoleum. Meanwhile, we continued walking through those incredibly beautiful gardens that would have put Yuyuan Gardens in Shanghai to shame even at their height during the Ming era. All the trees and other vegetation were made of baked clay, like the statues we'd found throughout the mausoleum, but the colors remained vibrant and strong. I couldn't understand how certain much more recent artistic works (various Renaissance frescoes, for example) could be in such terrible condition while the pigments in this clay were as fresh as the day they were painted. Perhaps it was because they'd been enclosed down here with no changes in humidity, out of the wind, and safe from passersby. Surely if any of these statues were taken outside, they'd lose their color forever. The bronze floor was engraved to give it the texture of earth, sand, or grass, and the natural stones that decorated every nook and cranny had the strangest, most elegant shapes imaginable. It was my niece who discovered something else in the rivers of mercury.

“Good Lord, look at this!” she exclaimed, leaning over the handrail on a bridge, pointing straight down with her arm.

We all hurried over to examine that liquid silver surface transporting strange floating fish that seemed to be made of iron. In reality, the actual shape of a fish had been lost long ago, and they now looked like the frames of sunken ships: deformed, eroded by rust, wrecked.

“They must have been lovely aquatics made of high-quality steel when they were placed in the mercury,” the antiquarian commented.

All right, then: first historical error, and one I was not about to let pass unnoticed.

“I believe, Lao Jiang, that steel was invented by an American in the nineteenth century.”

“I'm sorry, Elvira, but steel was invented in China during the Warring States Period, prior to unification by the First Emperor. We discovered cast iron in the fourth century b.c., although you Westerners insist on claiming these advances for your own many centuries later. We've always had good clay for building ovens and foundries.”

“It's true, madame.”

“So why did they make these fish out of steel and not gold or silver?” Fernanda asked, watching the sad remains float away downriver.

“Gold and silver would have alloyed with the mercury and disappeared, while iron is resistant, and steel is nothing but tempered iron.”

We continued through the gardens, discovering ever-more-amazing things—beautiful birds lined up on tree branches, geese and cranes pecking on the ground amid flower beds and stands of bamboo, deer, dogs, strange winged lions, lambs, and, appropriately, a large number of those ugly animals called
tianlu
s, mythical beasts with magical powers whose mission, like that of the winged lions, is to protect the soul of the dead, defending it from devils and evil spirits. There were also buildings with the typical upturned eaves in the middle of little rivers, tables of refreshment and orchestras of musicians with ancient instruments. We passed a small dock with rusted steel skiffs moored to it. An army of life-size servants was all along the way; you'd turn a corner and suddenly come upon someone, nearly jumping out of your skin until you realized it was a statue, and then nearly jump out of your skin again. There were pavilions where groups of acrobats or athletes like the ones we'd seen in the banquet hall were performing, trays with exquisite jade glasses and jugs to satiate the emperor's thirst, baskets of fruit made of pearls, rubies, emeralds, turquoises, topazes, and so much more. I couldn't take my eyes off that immense wealth, that exaggerated opulence. True, everything here would pay off my debts and give me back my freedom, but why, for what purpose, would the First Emperor have accumulated so much? It had to be some sort of sickness, because once you have everything you want and need, what's the use in accumulating, for example, baskets of fruit made of precious stones or innumerable palaces where you live in hiding from the world?