“They're tai chi exercises,” Biao explained very seriously. “They help your chi, your life force.”
“What nonsense!” Fernanda burst out contemptuously.
“It's not nonsense at all, Young Mistress!” the boy exclaimed nervously. “Wise men say chi is the energy that keeps us alive. Animals have chi. Rocks have chi. The sky has chi. Plants have chi,” he chanted passionately. “The very earth and the stars have chi, the same chi is in every one of us.”
Fernanda was not so easily persuaded.
“That's just silly superstition. If Father Castrillo heard you, he'd give you a good whipping!”
A shadow of fear crossed Little Tiger's face, and he immediately fell silent. I felt sorry for the boy and thought I should defend him.
“Every religion has its beliefs, Fernanda. You should respect Biao's.” Lao Jiang, who hadn't seemed to be listening as he did his strange tai chi dance, slowly lowered his arms, put on his glasses, and stood still, looking at us.
“The Tao is not a religion, madame,” he finally declared. “It's a way of life. You people have a hard time understanding the difference between our philosophy and your theology. Taoism was not invented by Lao Tzu. It has existed for a very long time. Four thousand six hundred years ago, the Yellow Emperor wrote the famous Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen, the most important Chinese medical treatise on human energy still in use today. In this treatise the Yellow Emperor says you are to go outdoors when you rise in the morning, let your hair down, relax, and move your body slowly, with attention. In this way you will attain health and longevity. That is Taoism: meditation in movement. The external is dynamic, while the internal remains static. Yin and yang. Would you consider that a religious practice?”
“Of course not,” I replied respectfully, while inside I was thinking, Looks like I've followed the Yellow Emperor's advice my whole life, because all I can do when I get up in the morning is slowly drag myself around for a good long while!
Lao Jiang waved his hand as if to say he was done with his tai chi that morning and certainly done explaining Taoism to a couple of foreign women.
“I think now is a good time,” he said, “to finally take a look at our piece of the jiance. What do you think?”
What did we think! Sadly, Paddy was sleeping off a hangover under a straw roof two boats ahead, but Lao Jiang didn't seem to care. He strode over to his bag and carefully pulled out the box we had found in the lake, then came and sat down in front of me. (Fernanda was beside me and Biao to her right, a little ways off, but as far as the antiquarian was concerned, neither warranted widening the circle to include them.) He lifted the heavy, rust-encrusted lid. A beautiful bright yellow silk scarf was wrapped protectively around a bundle of six fine bamboo slats, about eight inches long, held together by two faded green threads.
Lao Jiang pulled off the yellow cloth and set it back in the box after carefully studying it. He held the bamboo pieces in the palm of his hand with the utmost reverence and attention, using his body to protect them from the sun. Then he unrolled the bundle and set it on the tails of his tunic over his lap. He looked at it impassively for a minute and then, perplexed, turned it around so I could examine it, too. The three slats on the right were covered in Chinese characters. The other three, however, simply looked dirty, as if the scribe had shaken an ink-soaked brush over them. With a long, bony finger, Mr. Jiang pointed to the ones with writing on them.
“It's a letter and quite hard to read because it's written in a very complex form of classical Chinese. The old zhuan style, as I told you in Shanghai, was used until the First Emperor ordered that the writing system be standardized across the empire. Luckily, I have a good deal of experience working with ancient documents, so unless I'm mistaken, it's a personal message from a father to his son.”
“And what does it say?”
Lao Jiang turned the pieces back to face him and began to read out loud:
“‘I, Sai Wu, send greetings to my young son, Sai Shi Gu'er’ “—The antiquarian paused. “There's something very strange here. Sai Shi Gu'er, the son's name, literally means ‘orphan of the Sai clan,’ so Sai Wu, the writer, must have been either very ill or condemned to death. There's no other explanation. Further, the words ‘orphan of the clan’ suggest that the Sai lineage is ending, that only the boy is left.”
“What a shame.”
“‘I, Sai Wu, send greetings to my young son, Sai Shi Gu'er, wishing him health and longevity. By the time you read this letter’ “—Lao Jiang stopped yet again, lifted his head, and looked at me desolately. “These characters are very hard to read, especially because some of them are smudged.”
“Do the best you can.” I was too curious to accept the fact that the antiquarian might not be able to translate the message.
“‘By the time you read this letter,’ “he continued, “‘many summers and winters, many years, will have passed.’ ”
“All that is written on those three bamboo slats?” I asked in disbelief.
“No, madame, just in these first few characters,” he said, pointing halfway down the first slat. It was obvious that the Chinese wrote from top to bottom and from right to left (two thousand years ago, at least) and that their ideograms expressed much more than our words. “‘You are a man now, Sai Shi Gu'er, and I grieve that I will never know you, my son.’ ”
“The father was going to die.”
“Most certainly. ‘All three hundred members of the Sai clan will soon cross the Jade Gates and journey beyond the Yellow Springs because of me. Only you will be left, Sai Shi Gu'er, and you must avenge us. I am thus sending you to safety with a trusted servant, to far-off Chaoxian17 and the home of my old friend Hen Zu. He recently lost a son your age, and you will take his place in the family until you reach adulthood.’ ”
“I gather that to ‘cross the Jade Gates’ and ‘ journey beyond the Yellow Springs’ means they're all going to die?” I asked, horrified. “Three hundred family members? How can that be?”
“It was common practice in China until not that long ago, madame. Remember what the Prince of Gui said in the legend: Eighteen hundred years after this letter was written, the Ch'ing dynasty had nine generations of the Ming family murdered. The number of dead could have been similar, or even higher. Not only would a criminal be killed in punishment, but also every last one of his relatives, no matter how distant. A clan would thus be pulled out at the root, like a bad weed, preventing new shoots from springing up.”
“And what crime had this father, Sai Wu, committed to warrant such punishment? You just said he felt responsible for this misfortune.”
“Patience, madame.”
I was an adult and could contain myself, but Fernanda and Biao, their eyes popping out, weren't going to wait much longer before pouncing on Lao Jiang and demanding that he continue reading. My niece was about to burst with impatience. I think the only reason she held back was that the antiquarian frightened her a little. If I'd been the one reading, she would have already clawed my eyes out.
“‘According to a good friend of the unfortunate General Meng Tian, the eunuch Zhao Gao said that Hu Hai, the new Ch'in emperor, intends to bury every one of us who worked on the Original Dragon's mausoleum now that he has crossed the Jade Gates. I, Sai Wu, was responsible for this magnificent, far-off project for thirty-six years, ever since Minister Lü Buwei charged me with this task. My entire clan must therefore die in order to keep the greatest secret of all, the one I will reveal to you now so you can avenge your family, your relatives. Our ancestors will not rest in peace until justice is served. My son, what torments me most at this time of adversity is that I will not even be afforded the consolation of resting in the family vault.’ ”
Mr. Jiang paused. Not one of us said a word. The extent of the punishment imposed on an innocent family because one of its members had faithfully served the First Emperor was unbelievable.
“You must be almost at the end, aren't you?” I finally asked. I was still stunned by h
ow much could be written in such a small space using those strange Chinese characters.
“This piece is very revealing,” the antiquarian mused, ignoring me. “On the one hand, it mentions Meng Tian. He was a very important general in Shi Huang Ti's court, responsible for many of his military victories, and the First Emperor placed him in charge of building the Great Wall. The general and his entire family were sentenced to death in a will forged by the powerful eunuch Zhao Gao, who is also mentioned in the letter. Zhao Gao had worked for the First Emperor and wanted to take control when he died. This same forgery also forced Shi Huang Ti's oldest son to commit suicide and named Hu Hai, the weaker second son, as emperor. As you can see, our jiance must have been written at the end of 210 b.c., when Shi Huang Ti, otherwise known as the Original Dragon, died.”
“So it's”—I did a quick mental calculation—“a little over two thousand one hundred years old.”
“Two thousand one hundred and thirty-three, to be precise.”
“Then what happened to Sai Wu?”
“Don't you remember what I told you in Shanghai about Shi Huang Ti's royal mausoleum? I said that everyone who knew where the mausoleum was located was buried alive with him: hundreds of childless imperial concubines and the seven hundred thousand workers who'd been involved in construction. This is confirmed by Sima Qian, the most important Chinese historian of all time.18 All the more reason, then, for the man who was foreman on that great project to die. Sai Wu was the very person responsible for thirty-six years, as he explained to his son.”
“Which makes Sai Wu the best engineer and architect of his time.” It was Fernanda who blurted out this comment, surprising us all. However, before I had time to respond, Mr. Jiang was speaking again. What he had to say was not very nice at all.
“Too much knowledge in girls is pernicious,” he declared. “It ruins their chances of finding a good husband. You should teach your niece to be quiet, madame, especially in the presence of adults.”
I opened my mouth to tell the antiquarian in no uncertain terms how absurd his assertions were, but—
“Auntie Elvira, please be so kind as to tell Mr. Jiang on my behalf,” Fernanda said, her voice dripping with resentment, “that if he would like his traditions to be respected, he must also respect the traditions of others, especially as regards women.”
“I agree with my niece, Mr. Jiang,” I added, staring straight at him. “We're not used to the way you treat the other half of your population, those two hundred million women who aren't allowed to speak. Fernanda didn't mean to offend you. She simply made a valid contribution to the conversation we were having, exactly as she would have done in Europe.”
“Pa luen.19 I'm not going to discuss this matter with you, madame,” the antiquarian declared, so coldly that the blood froze in my veins. He immediately rolled up the bamboo slats, wrapped them in the yellow silk scarf, and placed them back in the box. Then he stood with his usual agility and walked away. It was unbelievably rude.
“Well, Biao,” I said, standing up as well, though not quite as easily as the antiquarian, “what's to be done in a situation like this, where two cultures have unintentionally offended one another?”
Biao looked at me forlornly, more like a small child than ever.
“I don't know, tai-tai,” he replied, apparently unwilling to take a stand.
“I didn't do anything wrong!” Fernanda fumed.
“Calm down. I know you didn't. Mr. Jiang is going to have to get used to us, whether he wants to or not.”
I'd had a magnificent idea once when I was young. I was sketching a little vase the teacher had set on a table as a lesson in how to work with light and shadow, when I suddenly decided that I not only wanted to be a painter when I grew up, but I wanted my own life to be a work of art. Yes, that's exactly what I thought: I want to make my life a work of art. Much water had passed under the bridge since then, and when I looked back on that childish goal, I was proud of myself for having achieved it. True, I didn't earn much as a painter, and I was still far from realizing my dream; my marriage hadn't exactly been exemplary, because, like Rémy, I wasn't predisposed to married life; I had never been close to my family; the men in my life had always been deplorable (Alain, that idiot of a pianist; Noël, the opportunistic student; Théophile, my lying colleague); and, above all, my youthful courage had disappeared with age, leaving me defenseless when faced with the simplest of setbacks. But regardless of these many deficiencies, I was still proud of myself. My life was different from that of most women of my generation. I had learned how to make difficult decisions. I lived in Paris, in my very own home, and painted in my studio, where the perfect southeast light streamed in the windows. I had pulled myself out of many a slump and had known how to preserve my friendships. When all is said and done, if that wasn't creating a little work of art, let God come down and judge for himself. I was confident it was. Looking on the bright side, perhaps this miserable trip through China was just another brushstroke in a picture that was acquiring beauty, errors, pentimenti, and all. At least that's how I felt the morning of the day we arrived in Nanking, as the breeze off the Yangtze caressed my face and fishermen dressed in black sent their cormorants out to explore the river.
The Chinese have a very unusual way of fishing, without poles or nets. They train those big aquatic birds with vibrant necks to catch the fish and regurgitate them into baskets on the boat, alive and undamaged. That morning I painted several cormorants along the margins and in the corners of already used pages in my notebook, intending to include them in the picture I wanted to paint of the whirring fan blades in my cabin on the André Lebon. I hadn't yet decided on all the elements for the composition, but I knew there would be cormorants and fans.
We arrived in Nanking before sunset on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 5. By this time I could hardly believe I'd been in China for only a week. It was as if I'd been there for months, and my departure from Paris began to feel like a distant memory. New experiences and journeys can exert a powerful, amnesiac influence on you, like painting one color over another, making a third that's even more vivid than its predecessors.
The Yangtze was so wide in Nanking that it could easily have been mistaken for an ocean. At some point we lost sight of the northern shore and never saw it again. The slow passing of muddy water in one direction was the only indication that this endless expanse was actually a river. Massive steamers, cargo ships, tugs, and gunboats moved up and down the river or remained docked, while barge caravans like ours and hundreds of family sampans—true houseboats—filled with men, women, and scantily clad children amassed, tacking back and forth in search of a clear stretch of water. The smell of fried fish was overpowering.
We left the river, crossed a wharf crowded with people, boxes, baskets, ducks and geese in cages, and headed into the city. We needed to find somewhere to stay that night and, though I didn't say it, somewhere to bathe as well—some of us stank like oxen. But Nanking was no Shanghai, with its modern hotels and night lights. It was a city in ruins; a big city yes, but in ruins. Nothing remained of its former splendor as the old Southern Capital (which is what Nanking means, as opposed to Peking, which means “Northern Capital”), founded in the fourteenth century by the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. The crumbling walls of the old city were visible here and there as we walked through wide, filthy streets in search of an inn. Paddy stumbled along with puffy, red eyes, waking up slightly in the somewhat-less-than-torrid night air.
Mr. Jiang walked confidently, happily ahead. Nanking brought back good memories of his youth; it was here he had taken his literary exam and gotten the highest possible mark. It seems the Southern Capital was a little like one of our European university cities, and scholars who studied here were viewed in much higher regard than were those who studied anywhere else in China. There were still huge Ming monuments in the city, mostly on the outskirts, since it had once been a metropolis of considerable political and economic importance with a large, edu
cated population.
“Nanking,” the antiquarian proudly commented, “is where the most beautiful books in the Middle Kingdom are published. The quality of the ink and paper made here are unrivaled.”
“Chinese ink?” Fernanda asked distractedly as she stared at the poverty and desolation on the streets.
“Well, we're not in India,” Paddy replied disagreeably, obviously still suffering from a hangover.
We finally found lodging in a sad lü kuan (a sort of cheap hotel) between the Catholic Mission and the Confucius Temple in the western part of the city. It was nothing more than a square patio that looked as if it had once been a pigsty, partially covered by a thatched overhang with rooms around four sides. In the back, faintly lit by lanterns and oil lamps, was a dining area crammed with tables full of people eating or playing a strange board game I'd never seen before.
Mr. Jiang soon struck up a conversation with the owner, a stocky, young Celestial with a high forehead and an old-fashioned Qing queue. The antiquarian stood next to a big wood-fired stove gathering information from the owner in an attempt to supplement what little we knew about where the physician Yao had hidden the second piece of Sai Wu's jiance over three hundred years ago. Meanwhile, the rest of us ate rolls stuffed with shrimp and pieces of seasoned meat, and a dish of sweet and sour pork. I had gotten much better at using chopsticks, kuaizi, over the last few days on the barge, and it was as if Fernanda had never eaten with anything else in her life. Just as we were finishing, the owner of the lü kuan said good-bye to Lao Jiang with a nervous smile, and the antiquarian came back over.