The Chinese Alchemist (2 page)

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

“Good,” she said. “I was worried what you would think about that.”

“Why would you? I’m assuming you’re not trying to smuggle antiquities out of some country, or buy on the black market.”

She was silent for a moment. “Do you know how my stepfather made his fortune?” she said at last.

I decided I’d better stop stuffing my face with her lovely homemade sandwiches—such a nice change from hotel fare—and pay attention, as this conversation did not seem to be following a nicely logical path, and there were some undercurrents, possibly disturbing ones. “Didn’t you tell me he imported china and porcelain, some of it from Occupied Japan after the war? Or was it Hong Kong?”

“Both,” she said. “That’s how he made his living. He made his fortune by importing very high-end Chinese antiquities, by which I mean very old imperial treasures, sometimes even older than that, a lot of them smuggled out of China and into Hong Kong, where they joined his regular shipments. He used a contact of my mother’s to do so, a high party official in Mao’s regime, someone I have come to believe was my father. If so, my father had no compunction feathering his nest by selling whatever he could get his hands on, and in his position that was quite a bit, and my stepfather had no compunction expediting its passage out of the country, and making a good deal of money for himself as well.”

“I can understand why this would bother you for any number of reasons,” I said carefully. “I’m not sure, though, what you mean by ‘smuggled.” It really depends when the objects came out of China, as you know only too well. There was a period when a lot of antiques and antiquities were considered decadent imperialist trappings by the Communist Party, and nobody cared if they were taken out of the country or even destroyed.“

“It may have been legally acceptable, but it was never morally acceptable,” Dory said. “So is what I am about to ask you to do legal? Of course it is. Ethical? I suppose that depends on what I propose to do with what you get for me—if, that is, you agree to do it. I promised to show you something. Would you mind going over to the walnut cabinet? On the lower left side there is something wrapped in cloth. I want you to bring it here so that we can look at it together.”

“It” was an exquisite rectangular silver box with a hinged and rounded lid, of a shape sometimes referred to as a casket. Incised on the top was a bird, and a scene showing a number of women together in a garden wrapped around the four sides. “May I open it?” I asked. I believe I was whispering.

Dory nodded. Inside, along the sides and bottom, were Chinese characters. I couldn’t read them, but I thought perhaps Dory could. I closed it carefully.

“Beautiful,” I said. “Very old.” I waited for her to say something.

“T’ang dynasty,” she said. “You know when that was, of course.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “I’ll remember. T’ang dynasty is, just a minute, 618 to 907. Capital was Chang’an, essentially where the city of Xi’an is now. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty, and followed by the Five Dynasties Era and then the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties in that order. How am I doing?”

Dory smiled. “For a time I thought you would never learn! I know you regarded me as a stubborn old bat for making you memorize all the dynasties, but really, if you don’t know your dynasties, you don’t know your Chinese history, and for sure you don’t know your Chinese antiques.”

“Not so. I never thought you were a stubborn old bat, and furthermore, I like to think I’m your most accomplished student,” I said, and she actually laughed, something I hadn’t heard her do much lately.

“I think you may well be,” she said.

I looked at it a little longer. “Beautiful workmanship,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything remotely like it. But what is it exactly you want me to do, Dory?”

Rather than answering me directly, she slowly and painfully reached for something in a magazine rack to one side of her chair, and set in front of me the catalog for the annual Oriental auction at Molesworth & Cox in New York. A yellow sticky marked a page on which was shown another silver box.

“You’re selling it,” I said. “No, just a minute.” I eyed the box in front of me. It was about six inches long, four inches wide, and maybe six or seven inches high measured to the top of the domed lid. “The one for sale looks very similar, but I think it’s slightly smaller all ‘round.”

“Very observant,” Dory said. “And you are quite right. They are almost identical, although I believe the
text
inside is different, the scene depicted on the outside is as well, and mine is larger. I think there is a series of boxes designed to fit inside each other, like those Russian dolls. There will be a third in silver even bigger than this one, and possibly a fourth box in wood rather than silver—the largest, at least that is what my stepfather said—but of course the wood is unlikely to have survived. The silver, in the proper circumstances, would have.”

“You want me to go to New York next week to bid on this box for you,” I said. My heart soared. I’d still be staying in a hotel, of course, but it would be a different hotel. Even better, I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder for gangsters every time I left it, nor would I trip over Rob’s feet every time I turned around.

“Would you consider doing just that? I would pay your expenses of course, plus something for your time, and I would pay you a commission if we get it.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see if Alex will come into the shop to help Clive out for a few days. I’d like to go early and
get
a good look at this at the preview to make sure it’s authentic before we buy it.”

“You should go right away,” Dory said. “But is it authentic? Almost certainly. You see, this silver box in front of us is one of three that my stepfather smuggled to Hong Kong, and thence to North America where they were auctioned off one at a time in the mid—nineteen seventies. I expect my stepfather believed that he could get a better price if he sold them separately, although I’m not so sure he was right. George, my husband, bought it at auction about ten years ago. Have I ever showed you his collection? Please, have a look in the next room.”

The room was lined with built-in shelving divided into twelve-inch squares and fronted by glass doors. In each of the squares was a single object, lit from above. On one wall, which was dark, the objects were in sealed display cases, and the humidity and temperature in each was being monitored. “May I turn on the light on the end wall?” I called out to Dory, and did so when she agreed. These objects were really, really old, some old silver bowls, a couple of gold boxes, and a number of puzzling objects I couldn’t identify. It took me several minutes to figure out what this collection was all about. “Medical equipment of some kind,” I said finally.

“Correct,” Dory said from the next room. “My husband, as you know, is head of an international pharmaceutical company, and he collects objects related to that business. There are molds for pills, very old syringes, beakers, and boxes that would have been used for medicinal herbs. It is quite an extensive and unusual collection. Some of the objects there are over two thousand years old.”

“Maybe these should be in a museum,” I said.

“George has finally agreed that when he dies they will, indeed, go to a museum.”

“I hope you have a good security system.”

“Oh, yes. I turned it off just for you to see the collection. The door here is usually closed and locked.”

“So does this box have something to do with medicine, or did it just come in a lot with something your husband wanted?”

“Inside the box is a process for making something,” Dory said. “It tells you to heat the ingredients, unspecified, in a sealed container for thirty-six hours, and then to partake of the resulting substance for seven days. George interpreted it as a process for making drugs, and that is why he acquired it. It’s Chinese, so he didn’t discuss it with me for reasons I have already explained, I recognized it as soon as I set eyes on it, however. I saw the three boxes when my stepfather got them. I fell in love with them, but he sold them, over my protests. George found this one, a second has turned up in New York that I plan through you to purchase, and I hope to find the third before I die. George and I may be the only people, along with you now, who know that this is part of a nesting set. When I find all three of them, I plan to give them to the Shaanxi History Museum in Xi’an, China. I want them to go home.”

“That is very generous of you. This will not come cheap. You have to think about how much you’ll pay for it. We’ll get you registered as an absentee bidder and establish your credit worthiness through Molesworth and Cox here, and I’ll also arrange to be on the telephone with you for the bidding. I’ll book my flight as soon as I get back to the shop.”

She nodded. “Thank you, but I don’t want to register as a bidder, absentee or otherwise. I am going to transfer a great deal of money to your account, and you are going to be the bidder. I don’t want anyone to know I am attempting to purchase this.”

“I could head for Brazil with your money,” I said.

“You could, but I know that you won’t. It is possible, by the way, that Burton Haldimand, representing the Cottingham Museum, may be after this as well. I hope to outbid them. I would most particularly not want Dr. Haldimand to know of my involvement in this.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but then decided against it. What I wanted to ask was if this last stipulation was what her request was really about. You see, when Major Cottingham died and control of the board of directors went to his trophy wife, Courtney, a decision was made that new blood was required at the museum. In the case of Dory’s job as curator of the Asian galleries, that new blood came in the form of Burton Haldimand. It was all done rather lavishly, of course, in true Cottingham style, with an elaborate farewell dinner for Dory, and the gift of a watercolor by one of China’s leading nineteenth-century artists. There were hosts of speeches, including a very gracious one by Dory welcoming Burton to the position she was leaving. Only those of us who knew her well were aware that Dory was devastated. To her credit, none of us had ever heard her criticize the museum, or for that matter, Burton Haldimand for getting her job.

It took her awhile to get her equilibrium back, if she really ever did. At first, she would come and just sit in a chair at McClintoch & Swain, chatting away to my neighbor and sometimes employee Alex Stewart, who is getting along in years himself. Clive and I were glad to have their company, and it certainly didn’t bother the customers. In fact, the only member of the McClintoch & Swain team who seemed less than enthusiastic about Dory was Diesel, the orange cat who guards the store for us. That was undoubtedly because Dory insisted upon making a fuss over Diesel and kept trying to pet him, something this particular cat abhors. The minute Dory came through the door, Diesel would turn his full attention and his considerable talent for spotting shoplifters to the back room.

I don’t know whether the shock of being replaced had anything to do with it, but Dory’s arthritis, well under control while she worked, had been steadily getting worse through her forced retirement, and soon she had to abandon even those outings. It was a shame, really, not the least because I didn’t think Burton could hold a candle to Dory. It would be my pleasure to help outbid him.

It was unseasonably warm in New York when I got there. The Molesworth & Cox Oriental auction was the first of the season and had attracted a lot of attention. There were some wonderful objects in the show, and the people at the auction house were justifiably proud, managing to get some play in the
New York Times.
Unhappily, the silver box was one of the objects featured, almost certainly ensuring I would have more competition for it.

Consequently, there were a lot of people interested in the sale, some of them with major museums, and the usual suspects in terms of collectors. At the preview, the first person I saw was a curator from the Smithsonian. The second person I saw was Dr. Burton Haldimand.

Mention the name Burton Haldimand in certain circles, and you’re almost certain to be subjected to a wide range of opinion. To wit: Haldimand is exceptionally talented, perhaps even a genius, and he should be forgiven a few eccentricities. Or: Haldimand may be talented, but he is also the most ruthlessly ambitious person in the whole field of museology, and woe betide anyone who gets in his way. And finally: Haldimand is not so much eccentric as seriously disturbed.

All of these things were true. Haldimand came to the Cottingham with a reputation as an expert in Chinese antiquities, and I’d never heard anyone say he wasn’t as represented. I’d had few dealings with him, but I was certainly prepared to acknowledge that he was good at his job. There was no question he was ambitious. No sooner had he taken over responsibility for the Chinese galleries than he set his sights on the furniture galleries as well. So far the targeted curator had managed to fend him off, but I wasn’t sure for how long. Burton seemed to have a way of insinuating himself into good standing with the powers that be anywhere he worked, and generally got what he wanted.

More than anything else, though, few could deny that Haldimand was very odd. Haldimand, you see, had a thing about germs. Even in the warmest weather—and that day in New York was no exception—he wore a scarf, almost always an azure color, and gloves. True, museologists often wear gloves to protect the objects they are handling. This is not what I am talking about here. Haldimand wore gloves all the time, those plastic surgical gloves which he removed the way surgeons do, wiggling their way out of them so that they never actually touch the outside of them with their bare fingers. He wore them under winter mittens. He also, if Cottingham Museum staff were to be believed, sprayed his desk and all objects on it, including the phone, with disinfectant every evening when he left, and then again in the morning when he arrived. I have no idea why, other than he thought the cleaning staff must be running a business out of his office at night.

If you went to a meeting in his office—which wasn’t often given that you could hardly hear yourself think over the drone of the huge air filter he had there—he probably sprayed your chair after you left. He was always dosing himself with some remedy or prophylactic. His assistant, one Maria Chappell, said he had a cupboard full of medicines of all sorts, homeopathic and otherwise. She also maintained that he never used the toilets, either staff or public, at the Cottingham. Fortunately he lived close enough, and apparently had a strong enough bladder to wait until he went home at lunchtime, and then again after work. It probably explained why he was never seen with a cup of coffee in his hand.