A Cup of Light

by Nicole Mones

  An touched the wad of cash in his pocket. “And now let’s go out to dinner. You’ll give your choices, yes or no?”

  “Jinyang,” Michael said at once.

  “You always want to go to Jinyang,” An said.

  “You’re right, I do, I’m hopeless. But it should be what our guest wants.” Michael turned to Lia. “What do you feel like eating?”

  “What’s Jinyang?”

  “A Shanxi place. They use a brown vinegar on everything.”

  “Is it good? Is it authentic?”

  “Authentic?” said An. “Oh! Very. They are bringing that special vinegar all the way from Shanxi in gourds.”

  “Well then.” She looked around her for a second, at the imported cars, the fast-food chains, the towering Western-style buildings. “Sure.”

  “Wonderful!” An was giddy from having made so much money so quickly. “Miss Fan. I know you are a master of porcelain.”

  “A student,” she corrected him.

  “Don’t be polite. I have a pot you must see. It’s a Kangxi bowl, damaged, but special. From my family’s collection. Will you see it and have tea?”

  “With pleasure.”

  “An Xing,” Doyle joked. “Are you pressing my social schedule?”

  An turned in a show of surprise. “Did I invite you?” he said. “Did I hear myself? However”—he was so magnanimous—“you may come along if you like. If you’re nice to me.”

  “Enough,” Lia said. “Let’s go eat.”

  9

  The next night after work Lia took a taxi downtown and found that when she got out, at the top of Qianmen, she didn’t really feel like eating. She walked south instead through the press of Chinese, some shopping, some brisk in suits with cell phones clapped to their ears, some young and louche and provocative in low-slung pants and platforms. Out of an elementary school’s iron gates poured a river of parents, clutching purses and briefcases and the hands of their children. But mainly Qianmen was a commercial district, with more stores and restaurants packed in along the sidewalks than she’d have thought possible. Their jutting vertical signs made a barrage of overhead characters. She read them easily, without thinking or silently translating, just scanning as she walked.

  This was the one thing she was good at in Chinese, reading. Her spoken Chinese suffered not just from insufficient use but from her imperfect hearing. Pronouncing the tones never felt natural, and as a result she tried too hard, she always tried to fill in when she didn’t feel sure by letting the sound of the language slide a little. It was sloppy, especially for her. She didn’t like it. On the other hand, she was not on the Mainland very often.

  Just then she caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window and for an unfortunate second looked older and harder than her thirty-two years. Her body was too long, with too many angles. And she seemed to be missing some pliant, feminine element of invitation. Other women had it. In the glass she saw Chinese women passing behind her. They had it. They were softer-faced, more quietly built; their arms were rounded and their eyes gentle.

  She turned right into a venerable alley called Dashanlan, or Dazhalar, as the word was locally pronounced. It meant “great wicker barrier” street, and the name came from the screen that had once been there to shield its entertainments of the night from the eyes of the respectable passersby on Qianmen. Lia smiled at the memory. It was still a stretch stuffed with thronging commerce, the gray overhanging buildings dark with age and looped with phone and electrical wires. She stopped in front of a window displaying bolts of iridescent silk-satin, electric blue, scarlet, jade. She could never wear anything like that. She reached around and took her long plume of loose hair and brought it around to the front, smoothed it with her hands. It was dark copper, long, like her face. She had her palette. She looked again at the brilliant row of silks. Well, something in here might suit me, she thought, and she pushed open the door and went in.

  “I’m thinking of having a dress made,” she said to the salesgirl.

  “Hao-de,” the girl said crisply, and gave her a clipboard of styles from which to choose.

  Lia flipped through the pages. All the models were Chinese, and the lines and shapes of the dresses were those that flattered the Asian body.

  It must have shown in her face. “Ni kan qipao zenmoyang?” the clerk said, What about the qipao?

  Lia looked at the old-fashioned high-necked garment, slit up the leg. It was a cliché. She’d never wear it. “Too Chinese for me,” she said.

  “But change to a square-cut neckline,” the woman said, tracing what she meant with her finger. “No cross-button.”

  Lia looked at it.

  “Side slit. Good for long legs.”

  Lia did have long legs; this was one reason she wore clinging, close-cut skirts and pants. “Shorter length,” she said, pointing to a spot a few inches above her knee. “No slit.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows at first, then stepped back and eyed Lia critically. “Not qipao anymore, no relationship, but you’re right.” Her expression had migrated to one of interest. She went down the row and picked a sage-green silk, soft, not shiny, with a design of falling leaves in gold and russet.

  Lia was amazed at the vitality that suffused her face when she held the fabric up against her. Things might be possible in this dress. “I love it,” she said, surprised at herself.

  In the fitting room the girl reached out and plucked the clinging vest away from Lia’s body. “Shirt off,” she said. “Skirt off.”

  Lia stood up in her underwear while the Chinese woman pinned muslin pieces expertly against her. The clerk’s hands were forthright, professional, remote. “What’s your name?” Lia asked the clerk.

  “Xieli.” The word was slid around a mouthful of pins. “You?”

  “Luo Na.”

  “Pleasure’s mine,” the woman said, and the politeness was jangled by the pins, which made them both laugh. “Enough!” Xieli said, and slapped Lia’s leg lightly. “Stand still.”

  She found she liked the feeling of the muslin soft as air on her. This dress would make her lighter and kinder, more female. That was how she wanted to be.

  Xieli finished around the hem at the bottom. She took a long look under the fitting-room light, then picked up a charcoal pencil and drew a clean line on the muslin across Lia’s chest. “Where do you think?” she said. “Here?” She drew another line lower down. “Or here?”

  Lia looked. The second was about as low as her comfort level went. But she had seen the American man looking at her. “This one,” she said, and touched it with her finger.

  They finished the fitting and Lia paid a deposit. “Wednesday,” the woman said. “Don’t worry. I think he will love it.”

  Lia let out a surprised laugh. “Thanks,” she said.

  And Xieli waved her away.

  Jack Yuan awoke to the sounds of movement in the bathroom, to the rush of water, to Anna stepping into the shower and the muffled clank of its glass door closing behind her. He knew what she looked like. He could see her in his mind’s eye, her black hair plastered flat to her head, her skin streaming. He had seen her like that so many times.

  Jack knew what day it was. He had known it deep in his cells before he even opened his eyes. He turned to the left, to the bedside table gleaming in Balinese teak beside him. There it was, the flat white stick. They had a deal, he and Anna. She left it here, on these days. She brought it out of the bathroom and put it here and did not return to look at it. He took care of it. If he had anything to tell her, he would tell her. They both knew that. It seemed better this way than always to hope, to discuss. If nothing came of it he would tuck it into the garbage can and say nothing. That was what he did every month. She was a little irregular and, always, she hoped for the possibilities.

  After a while he heard the water go off. It had to be gone when she came out. She would come out naked, or maybe with a towel; the damp heat would make tendrils of hair cling around her nape and the intelligent dom
e of her forehead. She would look, only once, at the bedside table to see that it was gone, then walk into her dressing room. He would watch her lucid beauty from behind. She was his ideal. He rolled over and picked up the stick.

  Nothing.

  He heard the bathroom door opening. He slipped it under the pillow and closed his eyes. Anna came out.

  The next day she found another fake. It was a putative pair of Daoguang wine cups, beautifully painted, thin-walled, but with one giveaway—an overly calibrated texture along the base rims. Of course, these were copies of much less valuable originals. If actually from the Daoguang reign, 1821–1850, the real pair would be worth only twenty thousand U.S. dollars. That was a far cry from more expensive pieces like the chicken cup, worth millions. But its very modesty set off alarm bells of its own. There was a certain class of fakes that seemed to pass muster by appearing more common, inviting less scrutiny. The forger counted on the appraiser to look at such a piece quickly.

  She packed them up and moved on. Every additional fake was a greater disturbance in the pattern. She didn’t like it. The game board wasn’t supposed to shift.

  But she had to go ahead. She went on to the next piece, which was real, and the next one after that, and a string of others. No more fakes that day. But the fear didn’t leave her. This was different. This was a pattern of fakes. When the car dropped her off in the evening at the guesthouse, she didn’t even go out to eat. She went right inside and set her computer up and returned to work, scrolling back over the inventory.

  Because if she’d found two fakes, there had to be more.

  At the same time, while Michael Doyle was preparing to leave work for the night, the lab results came back on Xiaoli’s tooth. He didn’t read Chinese, but he knew the characters for her name, and the layout of the lab report was a thing with which he was intimate. He scanned it until he found the number he was looking for, the lead level in the child’s tooth, in parts per million. At birth, Xiaoli’s cord-blood levels had been eight micrograms per deciliter—an entirely different measurement, apples and oranges; lead concentrations in solid tissue were much smaller and reflected prolonged exposure. Now her solid-tissue reading was twenty parts per million. Not good news. This was a very bad lead level for a seven-year-old child. And lead poisoning was so endemic here that only the sickest kids got chelation therapy.

  So record it, he thought, and he made his mind a blank as he had learned to do. He pulled up the forms on screen, entered the data, recorded this little girl’s current reading. Click, enter, send. It was done.

  He went out and took the subway up to Andingmen and walked to Jiaodaokou Nan, then turned on Houyuan'ensi Hutong. The noise of the city fell away. Down the lane he was grateful to see, small and far ahead, the green sign of the guesthouse. One reason was her. He had caught himself wondering where she was, what she was doing. Thinking about her. So when he stepped through the gate, he walked into the courtyard where she was staying instead of the one on the other side where he lived.

  He could see she was there. The light was on. Pausing by the door, looking through the thin cotton curtains, he could see her cross-legged on the bed. She was curved over her computer, concentrating. Her legs were bare, just her long shirt.

  There was a pressure on his chest, he was afraid to breathe, afraid even the sound of air filling his lungs might alert her to the fact that he was there, looking at her. On the desk by the window he saw her hearing aids, delicate little bumps of plastic. Her attention was on the screen. He stepped back, and this made a small scritch on the stones. He stiffened, waited; still she didn’t look up. She couldn’t hear.

  He turned and walked quickly out again, to the lane. She had not eaten; that much he knew. He could tell by looking at her. He knew that manic, overworked look. The mania that hides fear. The fear that hides aloneness. The aloneness that leads to more work.

  So he went down the hutong, west, curving south. Down this way there was a big food intersection. He would buy something to take back to her. It was dinner, he told himself. That was all. He was taking her dinner.

  He found the food bazaar vibrant with people, bright with lights strung around the overhanging branches. Cooks called out to him from behind sizzling griddles. People hurried with stacked steamer tins to take home. Young girls cruised in tube tops, skintight pants, high heels. Older men sat on the steps, at their leisure, in undershirts; cotton trousers rolled up to their knees and legs planted wide apart.

  Doyle moved past the griddle-masters to the little enclave of people who made soup dumplings and noodles. They were big-voiced and dramatic with their frothing tureens and their boardloads of noodles, fresh-pulled, soft and clunky. This was what he wanted.

  He picked out a square-shaped man with receding hair and big square hands and asked for a broth with dumplings. The man brought the broth to an instant and furious boil, ladled in steaming square-folded dumplings with skins like see-through pearls, and then filled the container to the brim with hot soup. “Man man chi,” the man said politely, Take your time in eating, and Michael paid him and walked back.

  By the time he got to the guesthouse, to her room, the thin cardboard soup container felt like it had burned all the skin off his fingers, and he’d long since wrapped the bottom of his T-shirt around it. He knocked gently. She didn’t respond. He could see her on the bed with her computer, still working. He knocked again, hard enough to make the wooden door vibrate. This time she looked up in a start. He waved, then stepped back and turned away to let her get into her clothes and her hearing aids. A few seconds later she yanked open the door. “Hi!” she said, surprised.

  “Hi.” He held out the soup in both hands. “I brought you something.”

  She shook her head in disbelief, a smile spreading across her face.

  “Take it, it’s hot.”

  “Sorry!” She took it. “You are so kind. I can’t believe you did this. Please.” She reached down and scooped a pile of papers off the desk chair, wiped the bare wood with her hand. She smiled back up at him. “Come in.”

  He took the chair. “You’re working too hard,” he said.

  “You’re right. I am. I’m over the edge. But—my God, Michael. I can’t believe you brought me this.”

  He liked the softness in her eyes. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I was happy to do it.”

  “No. You don’t know what it means to me. It’s just one of those things for me, you know? Chicken soup.” She smelled it and her smile welled up again.

  “Man man chi,” he said in Chinese, just as the man who’d sold it to him had said, and laughed.

  She sat back on the bed, the only place left. She took a spoonful. “Oh,” she said, “it’s wonderful. Thank you.”

  “Enough,” he said. “Eat.”

  “Okay.”

  He watched her approvingly. “Your Chinese seems very good,” he said after a minute.

  “Somewhat. My spoken Chinese is okay. I never use it. I don’t live in that—you know—that vernacular world, which is basically only here on the Mainland when it comes to Mandarin, here and Taipei. Most of my work is in Hong Kong, New York, and London. I mean, there are always Mandarin-speaking clients, but . . .” She shrugged. Clients were by their nature rich, cultured, globalized people. The final language of all the biggest transactions tended to be English. “With Chinese I read and write. I have to for my job.” She bit into a dumpling and got a spill of hot savory ground pork. “Do you speak Chinese?”

  “I’m trying. I’ve learned a little. I took six months of classes before coming here. Basically I’m pathetic.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “And don’t give me that casual 'I read and write' stuff,” he said. “I know how much it takes to read and write Chinese.”

  “But that’s what I majored in.”

  He was watching her. “Your hair is down,” he said.

  It was true, her hair was loose from the nape of her neck. She had twisted it back out of her way while ea
ting. “I can’t braid it up all the time. I have to take it down and let it rest.”

  “It’s nice.”

  She let go of a laugh and touched her mouth with the back of her hand. “It’s not a fashion statement.”

  “I like it.” Watching her, the clarity of her skin, her fingers, he reminded himself to apply the brakes. “What is it you’re working on?” he asked.

  “I’m logging some of the things I saw today.”

  “Don’t you do that as you go along?”

  “I create an inventory for the job, sure. But at night I make sure I’ll remember the pots. That I’ve committed them to memory.”

  He leaned his body forward, balancing himself on his elbows against his knees. “You want to remember them?”

  “It’s a thing of mine, memory. A sort of world. I put all the pots I see in their places and that way I’ll always have them.”

  “Personally, I try to forget as much as possible.”

  “That’s like most people.” She smiled, and went back to eating.

  He watched her, watched her mouth, a wide thin mouth. He liked how it changed when she smiled. “How'd you come up with this? The memory thing.”

  “It’s nothing new. People did it for thousands of years, up to the advent of the printing press. Before that it was a big part of intellectual life. And I still do it the way people did then.”

  He let her eat for a moment. “And what way is that, exactly?” he said.

  “I use an imagined structure.” She put down the spoon and shaped a square, fingers jointed like the bare tips of trees. “In my case I use the old imperial examination grounds—do you know the ones I mean? They had all these brick cubicles.”

  “Oh yes, they were over by Chaoyang. Thousands of cubicles! And what, you put what you’re remembering in the cubicles?”

  She looked up in faint surprise. “That’s right.”

  “Amazing.” He stood up and stretched and, with just a few steps and a soft feline thud, came to stand over her. He was looking down at her computer. “And this is one of the things you’re memorizing?”