by Lisa See
Hulan could almost hear her father grinding those words into her as a child. “I never thought that way about Chaowen.”
“No, because you’d been too corrupted by the West,” he said in a mocking voice. “You probably thought the whole world was open to her.”
Why didn’t he just kill her and get it over with?
“You’re a thoughtful person, analytical in your own way,” Michael continued. “Think about that night. Were you embarrassed that your daughter was sick?”
Each word he spoke smashed deeply into Hulan.
“Were you afraid people would think you weren’t a good mother?”
Her heart ached and she felt utterly defenseless, yet something strange was happening. She was beginning to relive those last days. She was seeing them as they were, not as her grief had warped them.
“Did you delay in going to the hospital because you didn’t want people to see you fail again?”
“That’s not what happened,” she said. And it wasn’t. Instead of tormenting her, the truth was beginning to feed her strength. “Everything that could have been done for my daughter was done.”
“But you could have done more,” he pressed. “You could have taken her to America—”
That thought had been looping in her head for a year. If only they had moved to Los Angeles earlier, Chaowen might never have gotten sick. If she had, she might have had better medical care. But here in this cave, at what Hulan supposed was the end of her life, she finally understood that those were only wishes that could never be known or fulfilled. She had done everything humanly possible to save her daughter.
Hulan noticed that Michael was speaking again.
“When she died, you got what you think you’ve always deserved—an empty heart.” He spoke his conclusion triumphantly, not realizing that he’d failed in his task. His ignorance was an advantage Hulan could exploit. “But it doesn’t have to be that way. Open yourself, Hulan, join me. Not as a follower, but as an equal. Think what we could do together.”
She almost had to laugh. How could he think that his flirting these last couple of days had meant anything to her? There was a big difference between being flattered by a man’s attentions and giving up her moral center to him.
“Some people deserve happiness. Some people earn it. You’ve earned it, Hulan.”
“Maybe living righteously doesn’t deserve a reward.” She knew the truth now, and it gave her the fortitude to fight for her life.
“But what about those who do wrong?” As he spoke, Hulan realized that, for all of his supposed awareness, Michael Quon was completely blind to the things he didn’t want to see. “Don’t you think Lily deserved punishment for the things she did?”
“She was not an honest person, but she didn’t deserve to die.”
“Mankind has come to believe in science and the exactness of math,” he offered thoughtfully. “For every action there is a reaction, and all that. But maybe the ancients had it right when they trusted in karma, fate, and getting your just deserts. Certainly you’ve seen people who deserved the worst but received no punishment.”
Hom was dead now. Within arm’s reach was the ax that Su had used. The thing was covered with bits of flesh and blood, but she could also see that the blade was made of some type of chiseled stone, which had been strapped to a wooden handle.
Quon answered her question before she asked it, just as he had last night at dinner. “It’s a chime,” he explained. “White jade is the strongest stone in the world, and it makes a clean cut. Every one that Brian stole and Lily put up for sale I bought and brought back to its rightful place.”
“But not for its rightful use,” she pointed out. “It was supposed to make music, not be an instrument of torture and death.”
He ignored the comment and asked, “Where’s the rest of it, Hulan?”
“What?”
“The chimes. I’ve been looking for the rest of the set.” His eyes glittered in anticipation.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I choose to believe you,” he said mildly. “In that case, give me the journal.”
“I don’t keep one.”
“But Brian did. Once I knew you had it, our path together was clear. You can help me find the rest of—what is it, Hulan?—a tomb or a treasure chamber?”
What had been right in front of her these last years as she’d tracked the activities of the All-Patriotic Society finally dawned on her. “Your travels, Michael, I understand them now,” she said. “You went to ancient sites along the Yellow River. Then you came to the Yangzi. The Society’s growth mirrored your journey and you used the watershed of the rivers to proselytize.”
He stared into her eyes, and she stared back, reading the calculation in his. Should he respond to her? A subtle shift deep within him signaled his decision, and her courage expanded yet again.
“You hear so much about the Yellow River as the birthplace of Chinese civilization,” he said at last, “but we know people traveled. We know that Yu came this far south. I first came here because I was following his legend—through poetry and art, then myth, and finally fact.”
“To see the nine provinces. To see the places where Yu stopped the floods. And you found more followers.”
“So much had to do with planting seeds,” he admitted, and Hulan felt another surge of hope. She could draw him out. She could distract him. He traced something that looked like a maze in the dirt between them.
“Do you know what this is?”
She shook her head.
“Ha!”
She looked at him squarely. “I never pretended to be anything other than ignorant.”
“I never lied to you, Hulan. You should know that. But I did omit a few things. I told you that I loved puzzles as a boy and that I liked Yu’s mathematical game. It was nothing special really, but I got hooked on the man. I even used his map as my company logo. When I came to China four years ago, I began searching in my own way to find my purpose. As I told you last night, I wasn’t going to fit in with organizations back home, not even the Committee of 100. I am a very rich man, yet I will always be seen as an outsider in America because of my race.” He leaned forward and confided, “You understand that. Being an outsider in your homeland is one of the things that binds us.” Then he relaxed and resumed his story. “But it’s all a process and, as you said, I began following Yu’s landmarks of the nine provinces. The next year I began making speeches as Xiao Da.”
“You began to believe your own propaganda.”
“Xiao Da has been an invigorating experience. He brought me closer to Da Yu.”
Quon spoke now of the transition from looking at arbitrary sites to something much more focused. “The most successful emperors understood the power of symbols. I knew that by bringing the past to the present I could consolidate the people, but what would our symbol be?”
He realized that the key to his grip on the multitudes lay in the mythology of the past. Mao Zedong had understood this very well when he’d said, “Make the past serve the present.” When Catherine Miller began talking about the missing ninth tripod, Quon was convinced he was following the right course, because even the conniving Lily had been caught up in its mythology, though all historical evidence said it couldn’t possibly be in the Yangzi. But Brian had tired of the game and, to avoid Lily’s nagging, found solace in caving.
“He invited me along, because I’m, well, I’m Michael Quon— inventor of VYRUSCAN. The first time we entered this cave it was like going back to the mother. You smell it, don’t you, how this place is alive?”
To Hulan these caves had always reeked of something moldy and rotting. Now she watched as Quon reached up, sank his fingers into the roof of the cave, and came away with a spongy mass, which he handed to Su. The officer took the blob, dipped it into one of the blood-filled buckets, then began coating Hom’s body with his own drained fluids.
“Last summer,” Quon went on, as though nothing had
happened, “Brian and I explored a lot of caves. I showed him this one.” He tilted his head deprecatingly. “I told him who I was. He became a convert, and I have to say he was very helpful. He did extra research on Da Yu, which I incorporated into Xiao Da. Brian gave me entire passages from the Shu Ching to use in my sermons, knowing they would speak to the people on an atavistic level. He came up with some of our better chants. ‘You can’t stop the river from flowing’ and ‘The river brings us life’ were his. Then the kid falls in love. I granted him religious power and he turned it down for a piece of ass.”
Hulan wished Xiao Da’s followers could hear him now.
“Maybe he had doubts about what you were doing.”
Quon shrugged off the idea. “I came back to Bashan this year after I bought my first chime from Cosgrove’s, because I knew Brian had hit pay dirt, so to speak. But Brian would no longer talk to me. He had a secret and he wouldn’t reveal it no matter what I offered him, not even money. I had to wonder why. So I kept exploring. I found the tunnel into the guesthouse and the life of this cave. While these things have served me well, they were not what I was looking for. Meanwhile, Lily continued to put up for auction some very interesting pieces. She also sold privately through Cathay Antiquities. I bought discreetly. Only I could see what the others didn’t—these pieces had all come from the same source, and her primary source within China was Brian.”
After Lily had gotten Wu Huadong to jump in the whirlpool, everything had changed. Which was a shame, because Quon had spent a lot of time with the boy, enticing him with spiritual and financial riches if he’d reveal the secrets of the earth. “He was ready to help me.”
“‘From the fist of the past to my fist to the fist of the future,’” Hulan recited Wu Huadong’s promise to his father.
But Lily had meddled and was fully responsible for what happened next. Two days after Wu’s drowning, Brian went to her with more of the chimes, the ruyi, and some other items, which were then listed in the Cosgrove’s catalog. Throughout it all, Quon kept an eye on Brian’s website. The photo addressed specifically to Angela—a mycologist—told him it was time to get back here.
“I went back and reread the Shu Ching and all of the other sources on Yu. I thought more about the ‘living earth’—the ‘swelling mold’—which Yu had used to stop the flood. Could this cave be the source of that living earth, and could the ruyi be somehow connected to it?”
Hulan understood only half of what Quon was saying, but the other half was transparent. He was trying to sound like a concerned scholar, but his real interest had been the growth of his political power. The dam might be a more monumental statement, but even the Central Committee would be in danger of losing its hold over the masses if Yu’s scepter could be found. But why hadn’t Quon gone to Hong Kong to buy the ruyi? His relaxed confidence told Hulan that he must have sent someone else to bid on it. He had to stay here and find the hidden chamber so that when he won the ruyi he could hide it again, then “discover” it in a place of great symbolic significance.
“There came a day when I found Brian coming out of one of the lower caves down by the river,” Quon recalled as he paced back and forth in the confines of the cave. “I demanded that he tell me the location of the tomb. We scuffled on the rocks, and Brian died. It was an accident, but how could I explain to the authorities the reasons behind our argument?”
Fortunately, one of the keys to the All-Patriotic Society’s success had been the conversion of local law enforcement through religion and/or money. In Bashan, Officer Su—a true religious convert—had been a great help in setting up Society meetings and keeping Captain Hom out of the way. Now Su suggested taking a bad situation and making use of it.
“As you noticed, Hulan, Su is quite clever,” Quon went on. “Brian’s nose had been broken in the fight, but it gave Su an idea. Cutting off the nose is the second of the ancient Five Punishments. I felt we couldn’t have the second punishment without the first, so we added the brand. I know you think this is cruel, but I was hoping to send a message to the other archaeologists: Don’t go digging into things that aren’t your business. But we didn’t imagine that Brian would wash so far away or that you would never mention these details.”
As Quon spoke, Hulan wondered why he hadn’t searched through Brian’s backpack when he killed the boy or why he hadn’t taken it later from Lily’s room. Had Lily been so avaricious that even as she’d been tortured she hadn’t revealed its whereabouts? Or had she gone into shock too quickly and been unable to respond? In both murders, had Quon, in his attention to the details of creating scenes that would send messages to anyone he considered a threat, simply overlooked the obvious?
“And Lily?” Hulan asked.
Lily had been far more forthcoming than Brian, admitting that she’d put together what he’d written in his journal with the stories she’d heard about the Wang compound.
“But she didn’t come through the tunnel,” Hulan said. “She left Bashan on the main road.”
“It turns out Lily was afraid of the dark,” Quon responded apologetically. “She was hoping to find another entrance. Imagine her surprise when she ran into my lieutenant on the road.” He’d said this as though Hulan would understand, but she had no idea why Lily Sinclair would have known anything about Tang Wenting. “She was even more surprised to see me when he escorted her here.”
Later they’d brought Lily’s body straight into the compound. Su, who’d appeared so shocked at the sight of Lily’s corpse, had played the perfect sycophant, even providing Hulan with a map showing the routes Lily and Catherine had taken through town. Now he went about his chores with methodical determination. She’d seen his kind so many times in her life. She should have known better.
Quon kneeled in front of her again and said softly, “I’d like that journal now.”
“I don’t have it.”
“But I do,” came a new voice to the chamber.
David processed the scene quickly. Hom and some other man killed by the Five Punishments. Officer Su aiming a gun at David’s torso. Michael Quon, possibly unarmed. The opening behind Quon, another opening on the far side of the chamber, and the opening David had come through. The look of great love and great fear that passed over his wife’s face when she realized he was there.
“But I have something more important to you than the journal,” David said, holding up the wrapped ruyi.
“What is it?” Quon asked, his eyes still resting possessively on Hulan.
When Hulan heard David’s voice, she didn’t want to believe it. Then she saw him—wet, covered with dirt and slime from crawling through the caves, Chaowen’s Band-Aids on his forehead. He’d come all this way for her. He always had.
“The ruyi.”
Hulan heard in Quon’s voice something entirely new—barefaced greed.
“The ruyi of Da Yu!”
She watched as David held on to the kerosene lamp with one hand and awkwardly began shaking the linen off the wrapped object with the other. Didn’t he understand what was going to happen if he gave Quon what he wanted? Michael motioned to Su to get the ruyi. Her husband would be dead as soon as he handed it over.
Hulan had been raised to be a martyr, but she’d denied her destiny at every step of her life. For the last thirty years, the knowledge of the consequences for others of her denial of her duty, obligation, and blood imperative had been almost too horrible to endure. Now in the dankness of this cave she understood what she needed to do. Her heart so long shielded had been battered and cracked by Michael Quon’s pernicious attacks. Now it shattered open, releasing wave upon wave of feeling. She would give Quon her life to save David’s because she loved him. She loved him in the way that the first Liu Hulan had loved her village.
With Quon and Su focused on David, Hulan reached for the jade ax. She glanced toward her husband one last time, hoping that when she made her move he’d know to get out of there.
“The ruyi for my wife!” David grasped the ruyi by th
e handle and held it aloft. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hulan leap up, reach for the ax that lay next to Hom’s body, and hack it into Su’s belly. In that same instant, David threw the ruyi and the lantern at Quon. The glass shattered against Quon’s chest, sending kerosene in flaming rivulets down his body. He glanced down in surprise and then, as the fire began to eat away at his clothes, he dropped and rolled.
David bounded across the cave, shoving his wife into the tunnel on the wall opposite the one he’d entered. He lurched blindly in the darkness, bashing into the rocky walls, fully aware of the unseen crevasses that might appear as traps beneath his feet but unable to do anything but press on. He hit something soft and giving. He recoiled instinctively.
“It’s me,” Hulan whispered.
They stood in the absolute midnight of the cave, listening to Su’s agonized screams and, below them, footsteps.
“This way,” she hissed. She held David’s hand, and they edged along the wall.
Behind them, they saw a flashlight beam.
“Are you armed?” David whispered.
“No,” she whispered back.
They would be caught by Quon’s light in a couple of seconds. Hulan picked up her pace, but without sight they were helpless. They rounded a corner, and the beam disappeared from view. David held Hulan back from going any farther, then he let go of her and clenched his hands into a sturdy interlocked fist.
He watched for the beam, trying to judge from the angle just when Quon would come around the corner. When the beam shone through at waist height, David swung his hands down on Quon’s arm, dislodging the flashlight, which clanged to the ground. As the chamber went black again, David brought his clenched hands up and bashed Quon’s chin. Quon grunted from the impact and fell away.
David felt Hulan reach for him and pull him deeper into the cave. But before they could get very far, she stumbled, bringing him down with her. In the deathly stillness he heard the three of them panting. He concentrated on slowing and quieting his breaths. Hulan and Quon did the same until there was nothing—no light, no sound.
