Murder on the Silk Road

by Stefanie Matteson

  On the terrace, which was covered by a grape trellis, Charlotte ended up sitting next to Ned, and decided to use the opportunity to find out what she could about the Oglethorpe sculpture. Deciding on the direct approach, she explained that she was a friend of the sculpture’s owner, and had been asked to look into its disappearance.

  “It’s not here,” said Ned, cutting her off in mid-sentence.

  Charlotte hadn’t even gotten around to suggesting that it was. “You’re one step ahead of me,” she said, surprised at his familiarity with the situation.

  “It wasn’t difficult to figure out what you were leading up to. You’ve found out about the other thefts of Dunhuang artworks, and you suspect that the Oglethorpe sculpture may have been stolen by the same party. Having learned that some of the stolen material has been returned to Dunhuang, you thought the same might be true for …”

  “Exactly,” said Charlotte. “But how did you know?”

  “Did Mrs. Oglethorpe show you a letter she had received from the director of the Academy asking for the sculpture’s return?”

  “Yes,” said Charlotte.

  “I wrote it. One of my assignments here has been to track down the owners of Dunhuang artworks and write them letters. It hasn’t been as difficult as I thought it would be. A lot of the artworks were sold to Westerners in the twenties and thirties through a Hong Kong dealer who kept very good records, and in many cases they’re still in the same hands.”

  “Have many been returned?”

  “Voluntarily, you mean?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Only one: the head of a Buddha I traced to an Englishman who’s been living in Beijing since the Revolution. One of those Party sympathizers who refuses to acknowledge that the dream has failed. He still keeps a portrait of Chairman Mao hanging in his living room. He said he would be more than happy to restore the head to its rightful owner.”

  He said the words “rightful owner” scornfully; apparently, he didn’t approve of the job to which he had been assigned.

  “Any prospects that the others will be returned?”

  Ned shook his ponytail. “None that I can see, though Chu has his hopes. He keeps thinking about the Icelandic manuscripts.”

  “The ones that were returned to Iceland?” she asked, remembering Tracey’s mention of them.

  “Yes. By a Danish museum. It was a cause for national celebration in Iceland. It was also the first time that a national treasure had been returned to its country of origin. It’s what put the bee in Chu’s bonnet about repatriating Dunhuang’s artworks. But it’s not going to happen. Legally, anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well … The Oglethorpe sculpture is unusual in that it’s in private hands. The majority of the artworks are in museums—the Louvre, the Hermitage, the British Museum. The museums aren’t about to establish a precedent by returning the artworks to Dunhuang. If they did, they’d have the whole world down on their backs demanding the return of this and that.”

  It was just what Tracey had said, Charlotte thought.

  A small orchestra dressed in exotic costumes was setting up at the front of the two rows of benches that comprised the informal auditorium.

  “Besides,” he went on. “It’s too complicated. Who’s to say to what culture an art treasure belongs, anyway? Though I wouldn’t say this in front of Chu, a case could be made that the Dunhuang artworks aren’t Chinese treasures, but Buddhist treasures, and, if they are returned at all, should be returned to a country in which the Buddhist faith is still widely practiced.”

  He had a point. “What about illegally?” she asked. “How many of the artworks that were stolen from western museums have been returned to Dunhuang?”

  “All except three: the Oglethorpe sculpture, a temple banner from the Cleveland Museum of Art, and a Bodhisattva from the Fogg Museum. But the last two were stolen within the last four weeks. The Oglethorpe sculpture was stolen ten weeks ago. The Oglethorpe sculpture baffles me. All of the other stolen artworks reappeared here within three or four weeks of the theft.”

  “In the places that they were originally located?” asked Charlotte.

  “Yes. I keep checking Cave 206 to see if the Oglethorpe sculpture has turned up, but it hasn’t. Not in the past two days, anyway. That was the last time I checked. I’ll tell you, it’s really something to go into one of these caves and find that something which was removed seventy-odd years ago has mysteriously been returned.”

  “But how do the person or persons who stole the artworks get into the caves to put them back? Aren’t the caves locked?”

  “Yes. There’s a chance that someone could have replaced the manuscripts, anyway—some of the repatriated material has been manuscripts—during a tour. Some stolen manuscripts reappeared in Cave 17 a couple of weeks ago.”

  “We’re going there tomorrow,” said Charlotte. Cave 17 was the cave where a British explorer named Sir Aurel Stein had discovered a cache of tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts during the early part of the century. Stein’s discovery was considered one of the archaeological high points of the century, comparable to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  “It’s the chief tourist attraction,” said Ned. He continued: “But although the manuscripts could have been returned during a tour, that certainly isn’t true of the sculptures. And some of the artworks were returned to caves that aren’t on the tours. Only about forty caves are open to the public, out of a total of four hundred and ninety-two.”

  “Which means that the person or persons who stole the artworks has to have access to the keys,” said Charlotte.

  “Or is collaborating with someone who has access to the keys.”

  “Is anyone here looking into the thefts?”

  “Are you kidding? If their national art treasures suddenly start reappearing, the powers that be certainly aren’t going to question it. And you can bet Chu is going to be the first one to turn a blind eye to whatever’s going on. If he knew what I’ve been up to, he’d probably have me shipped out on the next camel caravan to Afghanistan.”

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing much, really. Keeping my eyes and ears open, mostly. I can’t help it. Every time I send out one of these letters, I start wondering when the object in question is going to be reported stolen. Then, when it is, I start wondering when it’s going to reappear in Dunhuang.”

  “Any ideas?”

  He shook his head. “Some zealot who wants to prove himself to his country. But beyond that …” He shrugged.

  The orchestra was stringing a backdrop between two apricot trees; it was a crudely-drawn rendering of a camel caravan on the Silk Road.

  “The irony is that ten years ago, during the height of the Cultural Revolution, ideologues earned points for destroying ancient artworks,” Ned continued. “They were considered relics of a feudalistic past, symbols of bourgeois decadence. Now the Party extols ancient artworks as products created through the efforts of the laboring peoples of the past.”

  “Were many artworks here destroyed?”

  “Not too many, fortunately,” he replied. “Some sculptures were tipped over, but that’s about it. One reason that the art here has survived for nine centuries is that it’s so far off the beaten track. But other places around here got it. Have you been to Crescent Lake yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Charlotte. “We’re scheduled to go there on Saturday.”

  “There used to be a cluster of exquisite little temples and pavilions there, also centuries old. But they were burned down by the Red Guards.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the appearance at Ned’s side of Emily, the pretty young Chinese guide who had delivered the welcoming speech that afternoon. As she passed him by on her way up the aisle, she gave him a discreet little squeeze on the shoulder.

  At the front, Victor introduced her to the audience. “During her working hours,” Victor said, “Emily is a guide at the caves, but this evening she will
be serving as mistress of ceremonies for the show that the service workers are putting on in honor of the new arrivals.”

  By now, the benches were filled. In addition to their group, there was a party of Germans who were advising the Chinese on the conservation of the cave paintings, and a group of Japanese Buddhist monks. The staff stood around at the edges, or leaned up against the columns supporting the trellis.

  Ned explained that the staff had dreamed up the little show mostly as a diversion for themselves. “It can get pretty boring out here in the desert after a while,” he said.

  At the front, Emily whispered in Victor’s ear.

  “Emily asks me to remind everyone that the staff is putting on this show in their spare time, as a tribute to their guests.”

  Ned translated in a whisper: “In other words, tips please.”

  Emily went on to explain that there would be three acts: dancing, acrobatics, and guitar music. Then their “honored guests” would be invited to participate in the entertainment.

  Charlotte commented on her beautiful English.

  “Educated at Beijing University,” Ned explained. “Plus a year at London University. She got this job because of her English, but she really deserves a much better one. But”—he sighed—“this is Communist China. The Party decides where one can best serve the people.”

  “Was it in London that she acquired the name Emily?”

  “Yes. She took the name in honor of her two favorite authors—Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson. I think she’s memorized every poem that Emily Dickinson ever wrote. Her favorite lines are ‘I’m nobody! Who are you?’ Which is not surprising in a country where nobody has a chance to be anybody.”

  Charlotte returned her attention to Emily. Even in pigtails and the ubiquitous blue drill Mao suit, she was lovely, with a grace and dignity that was lacking in most Chinese women.

  The homeliness of the Chinese women was a mystery to Charlotte. The Taiwanese women she’d seen had been beautiful, so it wasn’t a racial thing. Nor did she think it had to do with diet, clothing, or makeup. It was as if the constrictions on their freedom had somehow been imprinted on their features.

  The fact that Emily was an exception to the rule was obviously not lost on Ned. Or rather, she thought with a smile, Heathcliff.

  Emily proceeded to introduce the first act. It was a traditional dance set to rousing music played on folk instruments: a snakeskin drum, a bamboo flute, and an assortment of oddly shaped stringed instruments made out of gourds. The music had a strong Middle Eastern flavor, the heritage of Dunhuang’s location on the Silk Road. The performance met with enthusiastic applause, and was followed by several other dances performed by young women wearing brightly colored embroidered gowns. They danced with restrained dignity, arms swaying and wrists twirling like the figures in an ancient Chinese painting.

  The dancers were followed by an acrobatic act put on by a young man whom Charlotte recognized as their waiter from dinner. He was quite good, turning handsprings, walking on his hands, and executing flying somersaults with apparent ease. He even managed to juggle some plates.

  Ned explained that he was a failed candidate for the People’s Acrobatic Academy who’d been shipped out to Gansu Province.

  “You seem to know a lot about what’s going on here,” said Charlotte.

  “After eight weeks you get to know this place pretty well. Every time a new group of guests arrives, I get to see this show. It’s pretty boring after you’ve seen it half-a-dozen times, but it’s the only show in town.”

  “Now I would like to introduce one of our foreign guests, Ned Chee,” said Emily. “Mr. Chee is a visiting scholar at the Dunhuang Academy.”

  “Sometimes it gets so boring that you have to take part yourself in order to keep from falling asleep,” he added with a self-deprecating smile as he stood up to take his place in front of the audience.

  When he reached the front, Emily handed him a guitar.

  “I’m going to play a piece from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, which I adapted for the classical guitar,” he announced as he took a seat on a bamboo stool. He proceeded to play the rapid, complex music with stunning virtuosity.

  When he had finished, Emily again stood up before the audience. “Now we would like to hear from our foreign guests,” she said.

  The first to perform was a Japanese monk, who played Mozart on a bamboo flute borrowed from one of the local musicians. Next came a German who sang a Schubert lied. Finally, Dogie took the stage. He sang cowboy songs, accompanying himself on the harmonica: “Git Along, Little Dogies,” “Home on the Range,” and “The Cowboy’s Lament.”

  For a finale, he explained, he had chosen a song called “John Chinaman, My Jo.” With Emily translating, he explained that the song was about the problems encountered by Chinese immigrants to California in the mid-nineteenth century.

  “My ancestors,” commented Ned.

  After Dogie had sung the first stanza, Emily translated the words for the Chinese. They were: “John Chinaman, my jo, John,/You’re coming precious fast;/Each ship that sails from Shanghai brings/An increase on the last;/And when you’ll stop invading us, I’m blest, now, if I know./You’ll outnumber us poor Yankees/John Chinaman, my jo.”

  He continued with other stanzas, about pigtails, about washee shops, about an almond-eyed wife. Charlotte suspected that the original tone had probably been derogatory, but if it had been, Dogie was choosing only the most innocuous stanzas. Each stanza was translated by Emily for the Chinese, who were obviously amused at seeing their culture portrayed from such a different angle.

  Between the stanzas came a chorus of Chinese-sounding gibberish, in which Dogie invited everyone to participate: It went, “Ching ching chow, chingee ringee roo,/Chingeeroo was a Chineeman,/Ring chingee choo.”

  The Chinese held back at first, but by the fourth go-round, they were belting out the words. It was a rousing finale to a pleasant evening, and a fitting celebration of their arrival in Dunhuang.

  5

  After breakfast the next day Charlotte and Marsha met Bert, Dogie, Lisa, and the others in the lobby for the hike out to Larry’s camp. Charlotte had covered her exposed skin with SPF 30 suntan lotion, and was wearing big sunglasses and a coolie hat she had bought at the No. 1 Department Store in Shanghai. If there was a reason she still looked much as she had when she was younger, it was the care she had taken over the years to protect her delicate complexion. Marsha also wore a hat, a big floppy sunbonnet. In fact, as a group, they represented quite a variety of headgear, and must have looked odd indeed to the clerk behind the desk. Bert wore an Australian bush hat, Peng a pith helmet, Lisa a flowered baseball cap, and Orecchio, looking as neatly pressed as he had on the train, a porkpie hat right out of the L. L. Bean catalogue. In addition to his usual Stetson, Dogie wore a T-shirt that bore the legend “So many dinosaurs, so little time.” They all wore substantial shoes: Bert had warned them that sandals weren’t sufficient protection in the desert, where midday temperatures could reach a hundred and twenty in the shade.

  Although Larry had offered to pick them up, Bert and Dogie had declined his offer, preferring their introduction to the terrain to be on foot, and the rest of the party had gone along with them. The camp was only a mile and a half away. After crossing over the bridge spanning the stream, which was only a trickle at this time of year, and passing through the poplar grove lining the banks, they joined the main road, which they followed north for about a hundred feet before turning off on the rutted track leading out to Larry’s camp. The turnoff was marked by the twisted corpse of a dead donkey, a lesson on the hardship of the desert. Its skin had mummified in the dry desert air.

  Though it was hot, the going was easy and it took them only about ten minutes to climb the series of terraces that led upward from the road to the spot where the pair of tall stupas framed the Cave of Unequaled Height. Though they looked small from the road, the stupas were actually twelve or fifteen feet high—multistoried pagodas in miniatu
re. Unlike the stupas lining the stream bed, these weren’t reliquary stupas, but rather a kind of good luck monument for travelers, Marsha explained. From the stupas, it was another seven- or eight-minute walk across fairly level ground to the base of the foothills.

  Unlike the deserts of the Southwest with which Charlotte was familiar from the mercifully few Westerns in which she had appeared, this one was devoid of vegetation: no saguaro, no barrel cactus, no sagebrush—only the occasional patch of a scrubby bush called camel thorn. Nor was the ground dusty, but rather a gravel that crunched beneath, your feet. It was a little like walking across a huge sheet of coarse sandpaper. The only signs of wildlife were the big black birds that hung in the air over the foothills, and the terns that skittered across the sand like sandpipers on a New England beach. Bert and Dogie took the lead, followed by Orecchio, Peng, and Lisa. Charlotte and Marsha brought up the rear. The paleontologists all walked the same way—slowly, with their torsos bent over, their eyes glued to the ground, and their heads swiveling from side to side, as if they were looking for a lost wallet. Occasionally they would squat down to look at something on the ground, and then get up and move on again. “The paleontology stoop,” Lisa called it.

  At the foothills, the terrain abruptly became steeper and rockier, and the color of the ground changed from gray-yellow to the rusty red flecked with glittering minerals that produced the illusion in the last rays of the setting sun that the mountain ridge was bathed in flames.

  It was here that Dogie made his first find. He had wandered off the track to investigate a little knoll off to one side.

  “Pijiu!” he yelled as he bent over one side of the knoll, the word “beer” being the agreed-upon signal for a fossil find.

  “Looks like Dogie’s sniffed out a bone again,” said Bert as they rushed over to see what he had discovered.