The Chinese Alchemist (19 page)

I had to go to the police station to retrieve my passport. I had also received a call from a brother of Burton’s I’d never heard him mention, who asked me if I would have a look at the contents of Burton’s suitcase, and make a decision as to whether or not anything there was worth sending home. This brother had tracked me down through the Cottingham, Burton having apparently told his employers that I too was after the box for a client, and then to the Beijing hotel where I’d now left a forwarding number, and thence to Xi’an. I took the suitcase back to my hotel and after sitting around staring at it for about an hour willing myself to open it, got around to the unpleasant task.

It was an instructive little exercise, and very, very sad. Where the rest of us put clothes, Burton had a box of surgical gloves, his portable air purifier, disinfectant spray, a large economy-size bottle of hand sanitizer, and another box, this one of surgical masks. There were also two boxes of tissues. Hotels do provide tissues, but I guess Burton wasn’t about to risk the ones in the dispenser in a hotel bathroom. The police had told me they had kept the pills and other potions, a very large plastic bagful. Presumably they had kept the tea apparatus and the teabags, too, because there was no sign of them in the bag.

I figure I’m a good packer, and I travel light, but believe me Burton would have had to do laundry every night. If anything he had fewer changes of underwear than I did in my carry-on bag, which was all I’d brought to Xi’an. He also had five azure scarves, considering them more important than clean underwear, I guess. It was cold, yes, but somehow I’d managed to get along with only one scarf. If it hadn’t all been so awful, it would have been funny. I sent an e-mail to the brother saying there was nothing worth keeping, and I’d see to it that Burton’s clothes, what there were of them, went to a worthy cause. I told him I’d try to find out if Burton had checked any luggage at the hotel in Beijing when he’d flown to Xi’an. The surgical gloves, masks, air purifier, disinfectant spray, and the like I tossed in the waste basket.

Life went back to normal almost immediately. My capacity for self-delusion is as bad as the next person’s, and it must have been in high gear that day. All it took was a tentative finding of accidental death in Burton’s case, and I was prepared to believe all was well and that I should just get on with my life. I would forget the search for the silver box, I would do something appropriate to mourn poor Burton, and I would go to Taiwan as soon as they’d let me.

First order of the day was to deal with the demons. It was Wednesday, another antique market day at the Baxian Gong. I decided to go. I walked slowly through the park outside the city walls, and into the neighborhood beyond the ugly high-rises, telling myself over and over that I could do this.

I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to revisit the alley, but that wasn’t a problem because I was pretty sure I would never be able to find it. However, the person I did want to see was the antique dealer with the scar on her face. It was pretty clear that she wished me no ill. Indeed, she was my guardian angel. She’d dragged me out of that alley and got me to my hotel when my legs had turned to lead. I’d have been standing there for a long time if she hadn’t, maybe long enough that the police would have wanted to spend more time with me than they already had. Still, I really wanted to know how she knew where I was staying. There was always a possibility that she didn’t, that she’d just sent me to one of the closest tourist hotels to get me out of there. At the very least, I owed her a thank you.

Looking back on these thought processes of mine now, from a safe distance, I am amazed at how proficient I was becoming at rationalizing just about everything. I felt almost euphoric, as if this huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders with the news that Burton’s death was an accident. My life had never been in danger at all.

In any event, the woman with the scar on her face wasn’t there. I looked everywhere, including the shops that lined the little plaza. And then, given that I was having no luck with the task I’d set myself, I started doing what I said maybe an hour earlier that I absolutely would not. I began to look for the silver box again. I mean, I was there anyway, wasn’t I? Somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have been planning this, because I had put the copy I’d made of the photograph in the Molesworth & Cox catalog in my bag before I went out. It was ridiculously rash, of course, but having been told Burton had essentially killed himself by accident, the threat had receded from my mind. I got out the photograph and started negotiating the narrow aisles between the stalls, by which I mean sheets on the ground on which the items were displayed, asking each of the dealers in turn if they had seen such a thing. Some of them understood the question, others did not. All shook their heads.

In the middle aisle I came upon a dealer who had some very interesting objects on display, including a lovely jade disk that I thought, despite a crack, would make a truly unique piece of jewelry with minimal effort. I picked it up and then looked into the face of the dealer who had it on offer, planning to try to purchase it, and also to show off my photograph of the silver box.

The man was dressed in a rather scruffy-looking padded jacket against the cold, worn boots, and pants. He had a cap pulled down low, and his face was a little smudged with dirt. It was, however, Liu David, lawyer and business consultant from Beijing, the same man who couldn’t call me back because he was in Shanghai, or if not David, then his identical twin. I opened my mouth to say something, and he gave me just the very slightest of shakes of his head. I closed my mouth, set down the jade disk, and moved on.

This was perplexing indeed. I supposed there were several possible explanations for Liu David’s presence there, but there was only one I liked. Regardless, I’d obviously seen something I wasn’t supposed to, and the best course of action was to get out of there. Trying not to look too hasty, I made my way along the aisle stopping occasionally to look at something, on to the street, and then, at as stately a pace as I could muster when my inclination was to run, back to the city walls. I liked the idea of big, high city walls between me and the antique market at the Baxian Gong.

I didn’t get far, however. I was about a block or two away from the antique market when a man, one I recognized from the market, and to whom I had shown the photograph of the silver box, approached me. His English was such that we could make ourselves understood, if not exactly converse about the problems besetting the planet. He suggested he had some objects I would be interested in seeing. I asked him about the silver box.

“Yes,” he said. “T’ang. You come with me. I take you to box.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this when I asked?” I said, just a tad suspiciously.

“Too many ears,” he said. “Also police always watching us. They are corrupt,” he added. “They want money not to arrest me.”

I didn’t know whether that was true or not, although it was depressing to think it might be. Part of me assumed this was a variation on what I refer to as the tax-collector pitch, which goes something like this: dealer notices you admiring something, whispers in your ear that he will give you a very special price because the tax collector is over there, whereupon he gestures somewhere indeterminate, and he has to pay him or her off or he will be in trouble, and he is a man with a family, etc., etc. I’ve heard this one all over the world.

I wasn’t sure how far I was going with this man, my newly discovered confidence in my safety not stretching so far as to enter a blind alley with him, but I did follow along. He kept to well-crowded streets, which helped, and as he chatted away to me, I began to feel more confident.

He stopped at a tiny house on a very small street, opened the door and gestured to me to go in. I didn’t think that was a good idea, but I looked in, and saw a woman playing with a very young child. She, too, gestured me in. An older woman, the grandmother, I expect, immediately went to a pot over a fire and started to make tea. It seemed pretty harmless. In fact, it was playing out the way it so often did when I was on a buying trip, with the approach in the street, the ritual cup of tea at the home of the dealer, and then the unveiling of the merchandise, for a special price, of course, just for me.

The Chinese version of this time-honored and nearly universal ritual included excellent little pancakes with green onions in them that the grandmother made, something I thought added to the occasion considerably and might happily be picked up by salesmen elsewhere. The rather stilted conversation from the dealer, the only family member who spoke English, was sadly familiar, however. After the social niceties had been observed, I was led out a back door into a little courtyard, and then to a padlocked door in the building to one side of the courtyard. There was no way I was going any further with this man, and I said so.

He grabbed my arm. “Please,” he said. “Tang.”

I peered into the room, being careful to stand just in the doorway so I could run if I had to. There was T’ang all right, several pieces, in fact, including
sancai,
or three-colored glazed earthenware pottery, in this case four ceramic figures of musicians, all women, each about eight inches tall. The earthenware is called sancai but in fact it often employs more than three colors, as was the case here. The colors, red, green, blue, yellow, and a soft purple were faded, as were the facial expressions, but if anything this enhanced their beauty. They were undoubtedly authentic. There was a dusting of dirt on them, which is a pretty easy way to give the impression, to the uninitiated at least, that the objects were old. In this case, however, I was pretty sure they really were. They were almost as certainly looted merchandise. “T’ang,” the dealer repeated, as he whipped out a calculator. It was his favorite word. He keyed in a few numbers and showed the result to me.

Despite my conviction these were stolen artifacts, something of which it would be almost impossible to convince oneself otherwise in such a setting, I wanted them. I admit it. In fact, I would have given my firstborn for them. I could have bargained him down to something I was prepared to pay—of that I was sure, given his starting position—just a few hundred dollars for the lot. They were exquisite. The women were slim and graceful, the faces charmingly expressive, the little instruments perfect in almost every detail. Figures like this, I had learned from Dory, came in the slim variety and the well-rounded. Dory had told me the latter came into vogue because one emperor rather fancied a little excess flesh on his concubines. These women, though, followed the more traditional svelte lines.

Who would know I had these?
I found myself asking. There ate lots of T’ang tomb figures to be had on the open market in North America. Once out of China, they would look perfectly legitimate. Furthermore, if Burton had been right, I would have little trouble getting these out of the country. I was reasonably sure that any moment now my newfound friend would offer an export stamp as part of the deal. Reluctantly, I told myself to get a grip. What was I thinking? In the first place, I really enjoy not being in jail, most especially a jail in a foreign country. Furthermore, one can only imagine what my Rob would think if he found out. Not only that, but I rather fancied myself as an ethical antique dealer. Clearly my commitment to ethical behavior is not as robust as I like to think it is.

“Where did you get these?” I asked.

“Tomb,” the man said. “What you pay?” I told him I wasn’t going to buy them, as beautiful as they were. It was not easy to do so, and predictably he took this as my opening gambit rather than a firm decision on my part. “How much?” he demanded again. “T’ang. Very beautiful.”

“No,” I said, taking the photograph out of my bag. “Silver box.”

“T’ang,” he said again. He picked up one of the musicians. “T’ang. Stamp for export, yes. I will give you.”

“T’ang, yes, but not a silver box. I want this silver box.” I wondered what an export stamp would cost me in addition to the price of the musicians.

He continued to wave the musician under my nose. “Special price for you,” he said over and over. “You tell me what you pay.” In retaliation, I kept waving the photo of the silver box under his nose. There was a lot of arm-waving going on.

It was a fruitless gesture, however, on both sides. As lovely as these pieces were, it was pretty clear I’d been brought to this house under false pretenses. He didn’t have the box.

He’d have brought it out by now if he had. It was time to go. The man looked disgusted as I walked back through the courtyard and through his house, pausing only to say thank you to the two women and to smile at the child. I handed the wife a few coins, which I hoped she wouldn’t give to her husband.

It was only as I left the house that I realized that I was very near the spot where Song Liang had died, at the other end of the L-shaped alley in fact. When I turned right, I could see that the alley was blocked off with tape at the end. I took a quick look and, sure enough, it was almost certainly the same place where I’d witnessed the murder. There was a dark stain on the ground where he’d fallen. I’d just come at it from the same direction as the motorcycles, rather than the way I’d entered it before, which was probably just as well, because I would never have followed the man into the alley from that direction. Had that happened, I would not have learned what I had from the visit, which is to say that T’ang tombs were being looted somewhere nearby.

This proximity did lead to some interesting questions, however. Assuming Song Liang was indeed Mr. Knockoff and furthermore had stolen the box, and if he had had it in his possession the day he died, as I had surmised he might, was he bringing it to the man I had just met to sell for him? Did the man have the silver box even if he hadn’t shown it to me? Or had the men on the motorcycles stolen it from Song before he could get there? Did the dealer I’d just visited have an inkling of any of this, or was Song just trying to unload the box as fast as he could? There were many questions I would have liked to ask the dealer, but I didn’t think there was any way he’d answer them, and furthermore I wasn’t sure it was in my best interests, given that I wanted to get out of this country in one piece, to pursue it with him.