“I wouldn't exactly call them gentlemen….” the Irishman commented disagreeably.
“What are eunuchs, Auntie?” Fernanda wanted to know. For a moment I wondered whether or not to answer; the girl was old enough to learn certain things. Strangely, though, I immediately decided not to tell her.
“They're servants to the Chinese emperor and his family.”
My niece looked at me as if waiting for further explanation, but I was done.
“And because they're the emperor's servants, they speak in falsettos and walk with their legs together?” she insisted.
“Different customs, Fernanda, can be a mystery to outsiders.”
Mr. Jiang interrupted our brief dialogue. “I hope, madame, that you can understand how frightened I was when I realized just who my fellow countrymen in Western clothing were as they stormed out the door. I had dinner with Rémy that night and told him what had happened, warning him that the hundred-treasure chest could be dangerous. I thought it best to advise him to give it back to me so I could then sell it to the Old Roosters, getting us both out of a difficult situation, but he paid absolutely no attention to me. Since he hadn't yet paid for the chest, he thought I simply wanted to obtain a better price and so refused to return it. I tried to make him understand that someone very powerful from the imperial court, perhaps the emperor himself, wanted the chest back and that such people were used to getting their way. Until recently they could have killed us for it and not broken a single law. However, madame, you know what Rémy was like.” The antiquarian carefully adjusted his glasses, a serious look on his face. “He assured me he'd put the chest in a safe place and that if the eunuchs returned, he would personally come to my shop to tell them he wasn't interested in selling.”
“And he didn't change his mind after the Japanese and the Green Gang came to see you?” I couldn't believe how irresponsible Rémy had been; although, come to think of it, why was I surprised?
“No, he didn't change his mind. Not even when I told him that Huang Jin Rong himself, head of the Green Gang and the French Concession Police, warned me there might be an unfortunate accident if we didn't deliver the chest within a week.”
“They knew Rémy had the chest?”
“They knew everything, madame. Pockmarked Huang has spies everywhere. You may not know this, but Huang is the most dangerous man in Shanghai.”
“M. Tichborne told me about him last night.”
At the mention of his name, the journalist crossed and uncrossed his legs.
“Believe me when I tell you,” the antiquarian went on, “that I was truly afraid when I saw him walk through the door of my shop. Certain individuals don't deserve to be sons of this noble, honorable land called China, but there's nothing we can do about it. They are the result of the bad luck that plagues my country. Pockmarked Huang doesn't usually come in person, so the situation suddenly became much more dire than I had previously thought.”
“And what do the Japanese have to do with all this?”
“The answer to your question may be inside the chest, madame. In a way, I'm sorry I didn't hold on to it a while longer before offering it to Rémy. I didn't even examine it. Breaking the yellow imperial seals would have diminished its value, you see. But if I had, I might have a better understanding of what's happening today. I might understand why Pockmarked Huang came to my store with his deputy, Du Yu Shen, ‘Big Ears’ Du, and those two Dwarf Invaders who stood quietly by and stared at me with contempt.”
Mr. Jiang had by then succeeded in frightening me. I began to feel the uneasiness in my stomach that heralded heart palpitations. How could I not panic? I was in possession of this damn chest that was wanted by the imperial eunuchs, Japanese colonialists, and that Pockmarked Huang from the Green Gang!
“H-how can I get it to you?” I stuttered.
“Don't worry, madame. I'll send a completely trustworthy fish vendor. Wrap the chest up well in dry cloths and have a servant set it in one of the baskets while pretending to buy something for dinner.”
It was a good idea. Since wealthy women couldn't go out in public because tradition forbade it—and they obviously couldn't walk on those horrible, mutilated feet called “Golden Lilies” or “Golden Lotus Feet”— there were always vendors at the door, coming right in to the patio off the kitchen with fruit, vegetables, meat, spices, needles, thread, pots, or other household items for sale. Mr. Jiang's fish vendor would go completely unnoticed amid all the comings and goings.
When he finished speaking, the antiquarian stood up gracefully, and although he seemed to lean wearily on his bamboo cane, I noted that he rose with the same astonishing flexibility as displayed by Mrs. Zhong. It was odd the way the Chinese moved, as if their muscles required no effort and the older they got, the more flexible they were. Such was not the case with the much-younger Fernanda and Paddy Tichborne, both of whom had to push themselves up out of their seats. I also had a time standing, though not for the same reason. In my case it was the trembling in my legs that made it hard for me to move.
“When can I expect the fish vendor to come?” I asked.
“This afternoon,” Mr. Jiang said, “at about four. How does that sound?”
“Will it all be over then?”
“I hope so, madame,” the antiquarian hurried to say. “This nightmare has already cost one life, that of your husband and my friend, Rémy De Poulain.”
“Isn't it strange,” I murmured, walking toward the door, followed by Tichborne and Fernanda, “that they haven't tried to get into the house again? No one but the servants was there for over a month, and it's not as if they're exactly threatening.”
“They didn't find anything that first day, madame, so why go back? That's the reason I'm worried about your safety now. They're likely waiting for you to find the chest, and then they'll force you to hand it over. The Green Gang knows the financial situation Rémy left you in, and they know that sooner or later you'll have to get rid of everything you own to settle those debts. Logically, you'll take stock, or someone will on your behalf. You'll go through cabinets and cupboards, dump out all of the drawers, and sell off anything valuable. It's just a matter of time. As soon as they suspect that you have the chest, they'll come after you.”
The antiquarian remained standing in front of his chair in the living room, and we were almost at the door when suddenly the bottom dropped out of my world. I looked at my niece and saw her watching me intently, her eyes wide with surprise at hearing about Rémy's financial situation. I looked at Jiang the antiquarian and saw in his face sincere concern for our lives. Then I looked at Tichborne, and the Irishman pretended to be trying to find something in the pocket of his rumpled jacket. What was happening to me? Where was the painter from Paris who lived what now seemed like a carefree life, who taught classes and walked along the Seine on Sunday mornings? I had gone from being a completely normal person, faced with the usual difficulties that any struggling artist faces, to being financially ruined, my life in danger, and caught up in a terrifying conspiracy that could involve the very emperor of China himself. I could only think that these things didn't happen in real life, that no one I knew had ever been involved in anything as mad as this, so why me? And now, on top of it all, I would have to explain Rémy's debts to my niece, something I wanted to avoid at all costs.
“We're unlikely to see one another again, Mme De Poulain,” the antiquarian said as we were leaving Tichborne's rooms. “It was a pleasure to meet you. Remember to leave your servants on guard at night. And I'm truly sorry you're getting such a bad impression of China. It wasn't always like this.”
I gave a slight nod of my head and turned back around. I was more worried about breathing and staying upright than saying good-bye.
The hands on the clock in the Shanghai Club entrance hall said one-thirty when Fernanda and I, smiling spectacularly, bade good-bye to the stout journalist. My meeting with the antiquarian had lasted only half an hour, but it had been one of the worst half hours of my lif
e. Why on earth had I decided to come to China to put Rémy's affairs in order, I wondered, letting myself collapse despondently into the rickshaw. If I'd known what to expect, there's no way I would have boarded that damn André Lebon. The hot air along the Bund only intensified my feeling of suffocation, and the trip back to the house was absolute hell.
The afternoon sped past. While I wrote a note to M. Julliard, the lawyer, telling him to begin the necessary paperwork to sell the house and auction off the contents, Fernanda, much to my displeasure, insisted on visiting Father Castrillo, despite the danger involved in going out. The fish vendor came at the agreed-upon time to take the bundle Mrs. Zhong gave him.
It was the evening of Saturday, September 1, and I was in Shanghai. Perhaps I could have done something—I don't know, drawn or read—but I didn't feel very well. So, sitting on a bench in the garden, I watched the sun go down behind the walls surrounding the house and gazed at the flower beds and the soft, waving branches on the trees. A couple of servants attempted to keep the ground cool using water-soaked brooms. In truth, despite my apparent calm, inside I was waging all-out war against despair and anxiety. Everything seemed unreal, and not only because this house and this country were new to me. There are times when circumstances are so far from normal that the world becomes unfamiliar and it feels as if you'll never return to the life you once led. I couldn't quite orient myself in space or time, and I had the oppressive feeling of being lost, all alone in a vast silence. Staring at the white rhododendrons, I decided to leave Shanghai as soon as possible. I had to get back to Europe, leave this strange land behind and regain my sanity, get back to normal. I would go to the Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes offices on Monday to buy return tickets on the first ship to sail for Marseille. I didn't want to remain a minute longer than necessary in this country that had brought me nothing but misfortune.
Given the late hour, I was beginning to wonder where Fernanda was when Mrs. Zhong burst through one of the doors, running toward me and shaking a newspaper in the air.
“Tai-tai!” she shouted as she ran. “An enormous earthquake has destroyed Japan!”
I looked at her in confusion and snatched the paper out of the air as soon as she was near. It was the evening edition of L’Écho de Chine, and the front page bore an enormous headline announcing the worst earthquake in the history of Japan. According to preliminary reports, it seemed the number of dead in Tokyo and Yokohama was estimated at over a hundred thousand. Both cities were still engulfed in flames. It was proving impossible to extinguish the terrible fires caused by the quake because horrific hurricane-force winds were assailing the cities at nearly three hundred feet per second8 and water supplies had been affected by the catastrophe. The news was awful.
“People are taking to the streets, tai-tai! The vendors say they're all heading to the Dwarf Invaders’ colony. Huge waves of refugees will start arriving in Shanghai soon, and that's not good, tai-tai. That's not good at all….” Then she lowered her voice. “The boy who sells newspapers door-to-door brought you a letter from Mr. Jiang, the antiquarian from Nanking Road.”
I looked at her in surprise but said nothing. I had just seen my rather sizable niece come into the garden, and she was not alone: A very tall, very thin Chinese boy dressed in faded blue pants and shirt followed a bit behind, glancing around curiously but confidently. The two could not have looked more different, geometrically speaking.
“I'm back, Auntie,” Fernanda said, opening her black fan with a lovely, typically Spanish flick of her wrist.
“Here, tai-tai,” Mrs. Zhong insisted, placing the envelope in my hand before giving one of her exaggerated bows and heading back to the main building.
Though I hadn't moved a muscle, I was once again as taut as a violin string. The letter from Mr. Jiang was completely unexpected and burned in my hands. He was supposed to have given the Green Gang the chest. What could have happened in the last three hours for the antiquarian to feel the need—dangerous by any reckoning—to write me? Something must have gone wrong.
“Auntie, this is Biao,” my niece announced in Spanish, sitting down beside me on the bench, “the servant Father Castrillo found for me.” The tall, thin boy held both hands in front of his forehead and gave a respectful bow, although a hint of mockery seemed to belie the gesture. He looked like a street urchin, a crafty little ragamuffin. He was quite handsome; his eyes were big and round, only slightly almond-shaped, and his hair was cut European style, with a part down one side. I didn't entirely dislike him.
“Ni hao, señora. At your service,” Biao greeted me in his macaronic Spanish, bowing again. The Chinese must have iron backs, I thought, although this one was too young to suffer from such things.
“Do you know what Biao means in Chinese, Auntie?” my niece asked with a smile, fanning herself vigorously. “‘Little Tiger.’ Father Castrillo told me he'll work for me as long as I like. He's thirteen and knows how to serve tea.”
“Ah … very good,” I murmured absentmindedly. I needed to read that letter from Mr. Jiang. I was scared.
“With all due respect, Auntie,” Fernanda said, snapping her fan closed against her palm, “I think we need to talk.”
“Not now, Fernanda.”
“When did you plan on telling me about the financial trouble Mr. Jiang mentioned?”
I stood up slowly, resting my hands on my knees as if I were an old woman, and slid the antiquarian's letter into my skirt pocket.
“I'm not going to discuss the matter with you, Fernanda. Please don't ask me about it again. It doesn't concern you.”
“But I have money, Auntie,” she protested. At times my niece awoke something akin to tenderness in me, but it passed as soon as I looked at her: She was the spitting image of my sister Carmen.
“Your money is in trust until you turn twenty-three, child. Neither you nor I can touch it, so forget the entire matter,” I said as I headed toward the building that housed our rooms.
“You mean I'm going to suffer hardship and poverty for six years even though I have the inheritance from my parents?”
Now, that was more like it. There was the daughter and granddaughter who must have made them so proud.
Still walking away, I grimaced and replied, “It will only serve to make you a better person, Fernanda.”
I was not at all surprised to hear a dry thump as she stomped her foot on the ground. That was another well-known sound in our family.
Sitting at last in that Chinese bed, shielded from the world by those lovely silk curtains that let the lamplight through, with trembling hands I opened the envelope from the antiquarian, a shiver of fear running up my arms and legs. Yet the letter contained only a note, and a brief one at that: “Please come to the Shanghai Club as soon as possible.” It was signed by Mr. Jiang and written in an elegant, old-fashioned French script that could only be his…. Well, unless it were a forgery and the Green Gang had sent it, a possibility I considered carefully as I hurried to dress and asked Mrs. Zhong to give Fernanda her dinner. I was so terrified that, in all honesty, I was unable to judge anything clearly. The most absurd things were happening as if they were normal; the extraordinary had become part of the ordinary. Here I was on a Saturday night in China, heading for the second time that day—as if it were the most natural thing in the world—to a meeting that could put my life in real danger. This was merely the beginning, I supposed, of a mad spiral into insanity. Even if Pockmarked Huang, the imperial eunuchs, and the imperialist Japanese might be waiting for me in Tichborne's room, it was best that I go in case it really was the antiquarian who summoned me there. Something might have happened when the chest was being delivered, and so, at the risk of having the tendons in my knees severed, I went to the Shanghai Club.
The concierge grinned smugly as soon as he recognized me, thinking the fat Irishman and I had started some sort of intimate relationship. He maintained that arrogant attitude even when I stared coldly back at him as I got into the elevator. You can be sure he wou
ldn't have aired his suspicions like that if I'd been a man. Since Tichborne hadn't come down to meet me, I crossed the long carpeted hallway to his room on my own, frightened half to death. I was so nervous that when Paddy smiled as he opened the door, I thought I saw a crowd of people behind him. Luckily, the image disappeared after a quick blink. In reality, no one other than Mr. Jiang was there, dressed in his splendid black silk tunic and shiny damask vest. He was smiling, too; a sense of euphoria seemed to float in the air. This was very different indeed from what I'd expected, and it calmed my nerves almost immediately. The hundredtreasure chest with that marvelous, gold-colored dragon on the lid sat on the coffee table, next to a tea set and a bottle of scotch.
“Come in, Mme De Poulain,” the antiquarian urged as he leaned on his bamboo cane. If I hadn't seen him move as sprightly as a cat that afternoon, I'd have thought he was an old man on his last legs. “We have some monumental news to share.”
“Was there a problem with the chest?” I asked anxiously as the three of us sat in the easy chairs.
“Not at all!” Tichborne burst out happily. There was an empty glass in front of him and only an inch of whiskey left in the bottle, leaving no doubt as to the cause of his merriment. “Wonderful news, madame! We now know what the Green Gang wants. This little box is the key!”
I turned to look at the antiquarian and saw he was smiling so widely his eyes had almost disappeared in a sea of wrinkles.
“True, very true,” he confirmed, falling comfortably against the back of his chair.
“And this will save my life and my niece's life?”
“Oh, madame, please!” the fat Irishman protested. “Don't be so melodramatic!”
Before I could offer an appropriate reply to such rudeness, Mr. Jiang gestured to get my attention, the curved gold nail on his little finger dancing in front of my eyes.
“I doubt, Mme De Poulain,” he began as he bent over the table to pour a nearly transparent tea into the two Chinese cups on the table, “that you've ever heard the legend of the Prince of Gui. In this great country that we, the sons of Han, call Zhongguo, ‘the Middle Kingdom,’ or Tianxia, Everything Under the Sky, children fall asleep at night listening to the story of the prince who became the last and most forgotten of the Ming emperors and who saved the secret regarding the tomb of Shih Huang-ti, the first emperor of China. It's a beautiful tale that helps revive our pride in this immense nation of four hundred million inhabitants.”