“What if he tells the Green Gang we're here?” I asked anxiously as Mr. Jiang sat down and picked up a big piece of pork with his chopsticks.
“Oh, I don't doubt he will,” he replied pleasantly. “But not tonight; not now. So let's calmly have our tea, and I'll tell you what I found out.”
Biao, who had eaten in a back patio with the other servants, still dirty and smelly, appeared with a pot of hot water for tea. Everyone seemed content that night. Perhaps I was worrying too much.
A blind old Chinese man came in and sat down next to a pillar. He set a case on the ground and pulled out a sort of small violin with a long neck and a sound box made from a turtle shell. Holding it vertically, he pulled a bow across the strings and began to sing a strange, melancholy song in a shrill falsetto. Some of the diners banged the table in time to the music, delighted with the entertainment. Both the antiquarian and the Irishman had big, happy smiles on their faces as they watched the musician.
“Here's the situation,” Lao Jiang began, demanding our attention. “The names of most of the gates in the old Ming wall that circles the city have changed since they were built. That's why I didn't remember any Jubao Gate, as it's called in the Prince of Gui's message. The innkeeper doesn't know of one either, but he's sure it must be Nan-men, the City Gate, also known as Zhonghua Gate or Zhonghua Men. It's the oldest gate in all of China, and there's a small mountain called Jubao in front, across the Qinhuai River that used to be the moat around the wall. It would have been the main gate into the old city of Nanking, the south gate, built during the second half of the fourteenth century by order of the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuan Zhang.”
“How many gates are there?” Tichborne asked.
“Originally, there were over twenty. During the Ming era, Nanking was the largest fortified city in the country, and there were two walls, the interior and the exterior. Nothing remains of the exterior wall. The interior wall, the one we're talking about, was almost sixty-eight li,20 or twenty-three miles, long, of which only about thirteen remain. Just seven or eight gates are left. There were still twelve when I took my exams, but recent riots and uprisings damaged several of them. Zhonghua Men, however, is in perfect condition.”
“But we're not sure this Zhonghua Men is Jubao Gate, are we?”
“It must be, madame. The fact that it's across from a mountain called Jubao is very significant.”
“And what, exactly, did the Prince of Gui's message say? I'm sorry, but I don't remember.”
Paddy snorted. His face was pale, and he had big black bags under his puffy red eyes.
“The Prince told Physician Yao to ‘find the mark of the artisan Wei from the region of Xin'an, province of Chekiang’ in order to hide his fragment there. In China, bricks are the most common building material after wood, and the artisans who manufactured them for the government were required to write their name and province of origin on them. That way they could be found and punished if their bricks weren't of good quality.”
“And the Prince of Gui knew all the suppliers?” I asked in disbelief. “It seems strange that of the many artisans who must have manufactured bricks for the walls and gates in Nanking, the last Ming emperor would know this anonymous laborer Wei from the region of Xin'an, dead three hundred years before.”
“Obviously there's more here than meets the eye, madame,” Lao Jiang replied. “Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Everything will become clear once we solve the riddle. Right now it's important for you to learn to identify the Chinese characters for Wei, Xin'an, and Chekiang. We sons of Han use the same syllables to name many different things. Only our intonation differentiates them. That's why the yang kwei say our language has such an unusual musical quality to it: If they pronounce a syllable-word with the wrong intonation, the word means something entirely different from what was intended. The only way we can be precise is in writing; there is a different ideogram for every concept. We can understand one another in writing even if we're from different regions in the Middle Kingdom. We can even understand the Japanese and the Koreans, though they speak different languages, because they adopted our writing system many centuries ago.”
“That was quite the oration!” Tichborne mocked. “It took me three years to speak your damn language and learn what few characters I know.”
The antiquarian set our dinner bowls to one side and reached into his pocket for a small rectangular box covered in red silk, containing a smaller version of what Celestials call the “Four Literary Treasures”: animal-hair brushes, a block of ink, a mixing bowl, and paper. He unfurled the little roll of rice paper and secured each corner with one of our dinner bowls, then rolled up his sleeves and poured a few drops of water from the kettle into the mixing bowl. Next he took the block of ink and methodically rubbed it until the bright black emulsion acquired the appropriate density. Then he held the brush upright with all five fingers of his right hand. With his left he pulled his right sleeve back to keep it from dragging over the strokes and smudging them. He dipped the brush in the ink and held it over the white surface. Oh, the unction in his every move! It was as if he were a priest performing a sacred ritual. What he drew looked something like this:
“This is the character Wei,” he said, lifting his head and handing the brush to Paddy, who prepared to quickly copy it next to Lao Jiang's—though with much less confidence and grace. “Wei is our artisan's last name. It means ‘surround,’ ‘encircle,’ ‘enclose,’ which you can see by its shape. Memorize it. Drawing will help you to remember it better. In any event, I'll show the character to you again, tomorrow, before we leave for Jubao Gate.”
I pulled out my Moleskine and copied it using my red hematite pencil. Fernanda watched me with a certain amount of envy.
“May I have a sheet of paper, Auntie?” she asked humbly. She knew that it was my only sketchbook and that she was asking me to make a great sacrifice.
“Here,” I said, pulling a sheet out gently, carefully, from top to bottom. “And here's a pencil as well. What about you, Biao? Do you want a piece of paper and a pencil?”
Little Tiger looked away. “No, thank you,” he replied. “I've already memorized it.”
Something provoked Lao Jiang, because he turned to look at the boy suspiciously.
“Do you know how to write Chinese?” he challenged. “How many characters do you know?”
The boy started. “They only teach us foreign handwriting at the orphanage.”
Sparks and flashes of lightning flew from Lao Jiang's eyes. He set the writing implements down in order to place his palms flat on the table, as if about to crush it.
“You don't know a single character in your own language?” he demanded. I had never seen the antiquarian so furious.
“I know this one,” poor Biao murmured, pointing to the artisan's last name.
Paddy placed a calming hand on Mr. Jiang's shoulder. “Leave him be. It's not worth it,” he said. “Teach him, and let that be the end of it.”
The antiquarian inhaled deeply and exhaled very slowly through his mouth. With a look that instilled fear, he again held the brush in that elegant vertical manner and dipped it in the ink. His face immediately changed and became serene. It was as if he couldn't write if he were angry, as if he had to remain calm in order to concentrate on those complicated ideograms that required slow strokes and fast, short and long ones, gentle and vigorous. Watching him, it was easy to understand why the Chinese had made their calligraphy an art form and, similarly, why we hadn't.
“This is how you write the name Xin'an,” he said, satisfied, “and this is how you write the province of Chekiang. Chekiang still goes by the same name, but Xin'an is now known as Quzhou. In any event, we have to look for its old name; that's the one that interests us. These two characters I've just drawn must be on the bricks along with the character for Wei.”
The four of us pupils in that impromptu school studiously bent our heads to diligently copy the new strokes. Even Biao, who had at first refused my offe
r of pencil and paper, now toiled with genuine interest. I felt sorry for Little Tiger. He was just a poor thirteen-year-old orphan caught between two cultures, East and West, that had been in conflict for ages. To him they were represented by Father Castrillo and Mr. Jiang, both of whom he feared.
Much to my delight, I was finally able to take a hot bath after our lesson. An old servant brought steaming buckets of water from the kitchen and poured them over my head, filling the big wooden washtub that also served as a bathtub. Luckily, the soap wasn't too horrible, despite its unpleasant appearance and the fact that it left my skin quite dry. And the rags they brought for me to dry myself with were clean—unlike my clothes, which went right back onto my body, dirt and all, for a few more days. Although much too short for my liking (the others were falling asleep waiting their turn), the bath left me feeling fresh and revitalized. My good mood quickly vanished, however, as soon as I saw the miserable room where Fernanda and I were to sleep. The ceiling was so low you could touch it with your hands, and the adobe walls were dirty and peeling, to say nothing of the squalid bamboo k'ang set on top of a brick oven—luckily, not lit—where I was to sleep.
Still, I was so tired I didn't even notice when my niece came back from her bath, and the night passed in the blink of an eye. Suddenly I was opening my eyes, wide awake, listening to the soft rustling of cloth on the patio. I got up carefully (it was still pitch dark) and half opened the wooden door, my heart beating madly, ready to scream like a banshee as soon as I saw the Green Gang assassins. But that's not who it was. That dark shadow was Lao Jiang, doing his tai chi exercises by the light of a small Chinese lantern hanging from a beam. I don't know what made me approach instead of going back to my k'ang, but I did. Not only that, I also suddenly heard myself say, “Could you teach me, Mr. Jiang?”
The antiquarian stopped and smiled. “You'd like to learn tai chi?”
“If you wouldn't mind…”
“Women can also practice tai chi if they want,” he murmured to himself.
“Will you teach me?”
“Not today, madame. It's late. We'll have our first class tomorrow morning.”
So there I stayed, sitting on a bench, watching Lao Jiang slowly move and turn until he finished the day's session. There was truly great harmony in that strange dance, a mysterious beauty. I felt it all the more because someone so much older could move so agilely and so slowly as well, making it all the more difficult. That tai chi must have been the secret to how amazingly flexible the Chinese people were, and I wanted to learn it. I was approaching fifty with dizzying speed and definitely did not want to end up like my mother and grandmother, sitting in an armchair all day, full of aches and pains.
We left the inn a short while later. Biao led the way, carrying a long pole with a lantern dancing on the end, projecting a faint circle of light. It was dawn. Roosters could be heard crowing on patios, and a few shopkeepers were sweeping the ground in front of their stores. We walked only a few blocks. Soon we crossed an arched bridge over a canal and were in front of Zhonghua Men. I couldn't imagine what it must have looked like from afar, but it was certainly impressive—overwhelming, even—up close. What enemy would have dared to so much as dream of taking that colossal fortress, which actually consisted of four consecutive gates, each one as impregnable as the last? In fact, according to what Mr. Jiang told us, Zhonghua Men had never been attacked. Invading armies preferred to try to storm Nanking from anywhere else rather than be massacred at that defensive post truly worthy of Goliath.
“The complex measures forty-five ren from east to west and forty-eight from south to north,” Mr. Jiang proudly told us.
“About three hundred and ninety feet long by four hundred and twenty feet wide,” Paddy clarified after some thought. “The ren is an ancient measurement of length equal to a little over eight feet.”
“It's enormous!” my niece blurted out, her head tilted back to take in the whole monstrosity. “How will we ever find Wei's bricks? There must be millions of them! And look at these walls—they've got to be fifty or sixty feet high!”
“We'll go to where the soldiers hid,” Lao Jiang proposed as he walked toward the hulking mass. “If I wanted to hide something behind a brick, I'd try to find somewhere as far away from people as possible, somewhere discreet, and as you can see, there is nothing discreet about these walls and gates.”
“Can't you just picture the physician Yao up on a ladder or hanging down from some ropes, removing a brick and hiding something behind it?” Biao asked before bursting out laughing.
The antiquarian turned and smiled at him.
“You're absolutely right, young man. That's why I think the underground tunnels in Zhonghua Men are the best place to start. Up to seven thousand soldiers could be hidden there, as well as food and weapons.”
Biao lit up like a lightbulb. I was furious at the way Lao Jiang ignored my niece yet didn't hide the fact that he'd taken a shine to Little Tiger. It wasn't fair. I was getting tired of the old man's derogatory attitude toward women.
“There are twenty-seven underground rooms in the Zhonghua Men complex,” Mr. Jiang continued as we followed him through a strange door in the wall, shaped like a squat little cross. “We'll have to examine them all. How many candles do we have, Paddy?”
“Don't worry, we've got plenty. I brought a good handful.”
“Give us each one, please. Biao's lantern doesn't give off quite enough light.”
Despite the pleasant morning temperature outside, it was terribly cold inside. Both the walls and the stairs leading down into the bowels of the earth were covered in a slick mold that could cause us to lose our footing if we weren't extremely careful.
With our candles lit, we started the slippery descent in single file, watching every step the person in front of us took. Tichborne snorted every now and then, Fernanda whimpered as we slowly descended, and I tried to contain the claustrophobia that was beginning to constrict my throat. Suddenly a happy thought lifted my spirits: How many days had it been since I'd had an anxiety attack? I could have sworn I hadn't had one since we left Shanghai. It was wonderful!
“Snakes!” Biao howled, raining on my parade. I thought I might die.
“Quiet!” Tichborne shouted rudely.
“Let me out of here!” Fernanda begged, turning to leave. I was left no choice but to give her a good pinch as soon as she came near.
“Calm down and be quiet,” I whispered to her in Spanish. “Or do you want Lao Jiang to look down on you even more? Let's show them we're not damsels in distress who faint because of a little snake.”
“But, Auntie … !”
“Keep going or I'll send you back to Shanghai on the first boat to leave Nanking.”
Fernanda had a very strong sense of pride and didn't say another word. Rubbing her arm to ease the pain where I'd pinched her, she swallowed her fear and her tears. Together, one after the other, the two of us continued descending until at last we reached the first of many long tunnels carved out in the basement of Jubao Gate. Now, this was more like it. Despite the extraordinary dimensions, the walls were normal height, so it and the ceiling, also made of bricks, could be examined without too much difficulty.
“Let's not waste any time,” Lao Jiang said.
The five of us quickly began to inspect every inch of that tunnel. The bricks were all quite different in terms of color (black, white, red, brown, yellowish, orangish, and gray), likely because of the different materials used to produce them. The ones on the floor were worn to varying degrees, having been stepped on by thousands of soldiers over the centuries. All of them, however, were exactly the same shape and size (about sixteen inches long by eight inches wide). I carried my notebook in one hand and the candle in the other, straining my eyes so as not to get confused by the jumble of characters that identified each brick. Although they all had long inscriptions that looked like chicken scratches engraved in the clay before it was baked, none of them contained the characters Wei, Xin'an, and C
hekiang.
We didn't find those characters in the second tunnel or in the third, not even in the fourth or fifth. The morning passed without success, and it was coming on noon when we were in the fifteenth tunnel. One of the smallest and best preserved, it looked as though it had been used more as a storeroom than a hiding place for soldiers.
Suddenly Paddy Tichborne cried out jubilantly. “Here! Here!” he shouted, hoisting his candle like a flag to get our attention.
Luckily, no one else was in those abandoned galleries.
“Here!” the Irishman kept shouting, even though we were all by his side, looking down at the bricks he was pointing to on the floor. “There are tons of them!”
He was right. Underneath our feet were ten, a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred—exactly 282 bricks bearing the mark of the artisan Wei and his place of origin, Xin'an in Chekiang.
“They're the only black and white bricks on the floor,” Paddy remarked, running his hand over the smooth skin on his head.
Lao Jiang startled, as if he'd had a sudden revelation.
“It can't be….” he murmured, walking into the center of the room. “That would be crazy. Bring all the candles! Look at this, Paddy. It's a game of Wei-ch'i!”21
“What?” Tichborne exclaimed, moving to join the antiquarian. Fernanda, Biao, and I rushed to bring light to the places Mr. Jiang indicated.
“Take a good look!” Mr. Jiang implored, more excited than we'd seen him thus far. “Nineteen rows by nineteen columns of bricks … no doubt about it, the floor is the board. Now look only at the black and white ones. It's a game! Each player has already made over two hundred moves.”
“Not so fast, Lao Jiang!” the Irishman objected, holding him by the arm. “It could be just a coincidence. The bricks might be laid randomly, that's all.”