by Nicole Mones
The next day Stanley Pao opened the door to Bai, the man who had brought in the shipment. He had been a bit surprised, an hour before, to get the man’s phone call. But after speaking with him for a few minutes he had agreed to receive him. This ah chan seemed both careful and intelligent. Sometimes the ambitious ones made good allies. But sometimes they were the very ones a man should not trust.
“Jinlai, jinlai,” Come in, Stanley said in Mandarin, for Bai knew neither Cantonese nor English. To get ahead he’d have to learn. Stanley led him into his back room, climate-controlled, carpeted and shelved like an English den, crammed with pots of all shapes and sizes. He noted with satisfaction the widening of the man’s eyes. “You said you had something tasty for me?”
“Yes,” said Bai. He touched the box under his arm, his gaze roving the room. So many pots, and horse races on the computer monitor. “I have this piece,” he said, and extended the box.
Pao eased back the lid with his wrinkled, age-blotched hands. His first reaction was to gasp, for it was a chicken cup, a shockingly good one, and his first impression was all visceral—It can’t be! But it is. Then he looked closer. Of course it wasn’t. But it was almost identical to the chicken cup in today’s cargo! Naturally, he’d gone directly to that one the minute he’d seen it on the manifest, as soon as Bai had walked out of the warehouse. He knew it was fake, for there was a small notation at the end of the document referring back to it—Modern fang gu, included at buyer’s request—and yet it was so hoi moon he himself had been almost swayed by it. And he was never, never fooled.
This was also a fake, but so very good. He turned it in his hand, held it to the light. Even the color of the clay was correct, the warm off-white of the Chenghua reign, so rare to see it done right. Oh, it was fine. “It’s a wonderful piece,” he told Bai. “One of the best reproductions I’ve ever seen. How much do you want for it?”
Bai snapped his head around a little too fast.
Ah! Pao watched him, fascinated. He hadn’t known. He’d thought it was real. Interesting. Now Pao saw it. The ah chan had switched one fake for another, thinking he was taking out a real, Ming Dynasty cup and not a fang gu at all. “Ask another dealer if you don’t believe me. It’s a copy. But fine. Very fine.”
But the ah chan had believed him. It was as if he had known, underneath, that the cup was too good to be true, too much to expect after all the money he’d made. So he shrugged it off with a gambler’s resignation. He accepted a thousand U.S. dollars for the reproduction, protesting that this wasn’t his line of work but taking the money, folding it, and putting it in his pocket. “I hope we meet again,” he told Pao. “Maybe we can work together.”
“Of course, of course,” Stanley answered unhurriedly. “Let us keep in touch.” Stanley was always polite. But in fact he was too careful to ever do business with this ah chan again.
“So then he came back, and brought me the cup—your fang gu from the collection,” Stanley Pao said to Lia Frank later that afternoon. She had arrived in Hong Kong the night before. Now they were in his back room, looking at pots, having taken an instant liking to each other. “He’d switched them. I realized it as soon as I saw the one he brought me here, for I had read your most excellent description in the inventory. I switched them back. This is his copy. Yours is in the collection.” He peered at her eyes. “Am I right? This is his copy?”
“It is,” she said, noting a softer, more translucent quality to the glaze in this cup. No less perfect—only different. This was the one she’d seen Bai purchase from Potter Yu.
So this meant Bai had transported her collection. It was strange, but not unheard of. Ah chans were experts at shipping, after all.
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” She held it up to the light and felt a full smile form on her lips for the first time since she had left Michael behind in Beijing. Don’t think about that. She couldn’t control the future. This was happiness, this cup. “Stanley.” Her eyes shone. “Will you sell it to me?”
“Not on your grandmother! How could I let go of this?”
“Oh.” She looked down. “So I don’t even get to say that I’d double whatever you paid? I understand, though. I do. I’d never let go of it either.” And she smiled at him through her hair, which she had decided to leave down today. It felt strange. She had it tucked behind her ears but it kept slipping out.
“What do you say, Lia?” Stanley asked. He gave her a thoughtful look as if he’d been considering the subject for some time. “The repacking will take hours and hours. Shouldn’t we go to Central and look at some pots?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
Another pair of colleagues would have repaired to a restaurant to enjoy a leisurely meal, but Lia and Stanley went instead to Hollywood Road. They started at the top, where the road twisted most tortuously and where the most discriminating, most exclusive shops held court, and worked their way down to the bottom where the shadows were deeper and the deals more murky.
In most of the galleries the owner would lock up, if they were alone, and take them to some back chamber, through a side door or up some narrow set of stairs. In this world there was always the interior room, the private admittance, the exclusivity shared by friends. There were small sofas grouped around a low table specially designed for handling porcelain—felt-padded, with a low lip shielding its edge all the way around. There were hours of shared enjoyment over the perfections that man, in his finest moments, had made of clay. It was a balm to Lia’s heart. It made whole stretches of minutes go by in which she felt the glory of pots, the shared pleasure of connoisseurship, and managed to forget that a part of her felt like it had been torn away.
That night he called her, not knowing quite what to say to her but not able to go any longer without connecting. He went back to his room after work, where it was quiet, and dialed her cell.
“This is Lia,” she said when she picked up.
“It’s me.”
“Hi.” Her voice changed for him, opened, softened.
“How are you?” Already he felt back in her nexus.
“Okay. And you?”
“Not good. I don’t like it here without you.”
“I know,” she said. “I feel the same here in Hong Kong. It'd be better if you were here.”
He felt a wave of pleasure inside him when he heard this. “Then come back,” he said, simple, quick, straight out.
“But I can’t. I have to see the pots off.”
“And then?”
“Then I have to go to New York. Immediately. They’re all waiting for me. This was a big thing for us, this deal.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.
“I know. Me too.”
He felt his longing start to skid. While she was in Hong Kong they were still close, or it seemed that way. They could talk and things could shift in a moment; she could turn around. Going back to New York would change things. Then they’d have to go to lengths. Then if they were going to see each other again they’d have to start climbing that long and arduous ladder of intention.
This was what he’d said he wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t do. But he kept thinking about her. She was always in his mind. “I have to admit I was hoping it would be easy, it would just happen. You’d come back.”
“I could,” she said. “Not right away, but I could. Michael. What happened meant a lot to me. I would really like to get to know you. I mean that.” She was enunciating. He could tell she was speaking from her center. “I really, really would.”
“I was hoping that too,” he said. “I’m sorry it took so long for things to happen.”
“Never mind that now,” she said.
He knew it was his turn. It was time for him to say, let’s try it. Let’s meet again and see. It was up to him.
But he couldn’t walk out on the plank just like that. He had to have a little time to think. And so he hesitated. He held the silence.
On her end, she felt hope draining away from her as
he said nothing. While she waited, she unlatched the sliding glass door and stepped out on her balcony. The damp, briny air made her feel clearer. “Think about what I told you,” she said softly. “Let me know if you feel the same. If you want to see me again, you know, I’ll figure something out. Call me. If that’s what you want, call me.” She was putting the ball firmly in his court. “I’m not leaving for a day and a half.”
She closed her eyes. Had she done right, or wrong? She had opened her heart and shown her willingness. She couldn’t do any more. She waited.
“You know all about me,” he said.
She knew he meant his illness. “I know all about you.”
“All right, Lia,” he said, with such gentleness in his voice that she felt for a yearning instant everything was going to be okay, “I’ll call you.”
So he wanted time to think. There was nothing else she could say. She looked out over the harbor, crowded with its descending mass of white towers. Night was falling and the water glowed up from beneath, bathing the sampans and junks and massive cargo vessels in pure aquamarine light. “So, then,” she said after a moment. “Even though I don’t want to hang up, even though I want to talk to you all night and do a million other things to you, with you, I guess I should say good-bye.”
“Okay,” he agreed again. He didn’t try to hold her. They hung up.
The line was dead, a blank space ringing down a cold stone floor in an empty hall. She felt her stomach twist. Now she could only wait. She couldn’t let this reduce her. She had work to finish. Some other time, when she had the space and peace, if necessary, she would cry. Not now.
Lia and Stanley saw the crates lifted into the underbelly of the jet and then drove back into Central, weak with satisfaction. “What shall we do?” he asked her.
Lia smiled at the white-haired man. She liked being with him. And it helped keep her mind off Michael. Don’t think, don’t want. Expect nothing. Let go. The car was twisting and veering down along the curving, banana-leafed, terraced two-lane road, down toward the heart of Hong Kong. But how could she let go? After what they had done, how could they just forget? In a minute the car came out in Central, just above the business district. “You know what I’d really like to do?” she said. “Let’s go back to Hollywood Road.”
Pao’s face lifted in a gradual grin of agreement. He spoke in Cantonese to the driver, who turned the car around.
When Michael finished that day, he stopped at the ward on three south. His friend Little Chen had recently been readmitted. Chen had come to Michael’s attention some months before because his levels of lead were so high. He had a high-risk profile; his family lived on a corner of two of Beijing’s busiest streets, and their apartment windows opened on to the intersection with all its exhaust fumes. Little Chen had already been ill from lead poisoning. But then he had also been diagnosed with leukemia. He’d been in for a while, very sick. He’d improved and been discharged. Now, after being home for many weeks, he was back. Michael had stopped and seen him that last day—the day he had met Lia after work. The day they became lovers. The day she left. And now he had to decide whether to risk everything again, or not.
He had hurt her by hesitating on the phone. He didn’t want to hurt her—the opposite. He wanted to make a bed for her to lie on. He didn’t think he would ever feel that again, but now he did.
He pivoted lightly through the door at three south, his footsteps soft on the tile, and strode past the small beds toward the end where his young friend would be waiting.
Suddenly disoriented, he stopped and rocked his weight from side to side. Here was the door to the bathroom, here the wall against which he’d stood the other day when he talked to the boy. He was sure of it. Yet now there was only a row of empty steel carts. He’d missed it. He turned back.
He walked more slowly and looked into the face of each little child. Little Chen was very distinctive, with a triangular face and a wide, thin mouth. Or was he on the wrong aisle? No, Michael was sure; this was right. This had been his bed. Maybe the staff had moved him.
A female worker polished the bed table. “Where’s Little Chen?” he asked her.
She started and turned to look at him, then started again because he was an outsider.
“Little Chen,” he said again, and pointed to the bed.
“Gone,” she said.
Michael frowned and shot back a different word. “Discharged?” he asked.
Color went out of the woman’s face. “No. Gone away.”
Gone away. That meant dead, when they said it.
Tears came up out of him and spilled right over from his eyes before he even knew they were coming, before he could think about stopping them. He wrapped his hand around the spindly bed frame.
The woman looked at him with direct Chinese kindness. “It’s too pitiable.” She handed him a clean square of cloth.
He wiped his face. “Thank you,” he said.
“Go home, sir.” She patted his arm. “Go home to your wife.”
He looked at her.
“Go home to your wife,” she said again, as if it were obvious.
“All right,” he said, as if he could simply do that, do what she said. He could walk out of here and go to her. Now the hurt he had caused Lia by hesitating, by not stepping over the line right away, tugged at him more than ever. It was almost a physical pain in the center of him. He never wanted to hurt her. Good-bye, he thought to Little Chen. And with an effort he walked back out of the ward.
He felt his cell phone in his pocket. He could dial her. Tell her. Make it right. He kept walking, right out of the hospital. But calling her didn’t seem like enough, not now.
He should go to Hong Kong.
He took a taxi to the head of his hutong and walked in, under the soft-speaking lindens. There, over his worn limestone lintel, in his tiny room, he clicked on the Internet and looked at airlines. There was nothing available to Hong Kong tonight, not in confirmed seating. But he was adept at navigating margins. Two of tonight’s flights had standby potential. He’d go out to the airport and try. He had to leave instantly. And he’d take his cell phone with him. If in the end he couldn’t get on a plane, he’d call her.
It felt right to him to go now. It was the correct seed to plant. Qian yin hou guo, he had heard his friend An say. It’s on the basis of what comes before that what follows bears fruit.
After a long day of studying bank reports, of weighing the life and viability of various loans, some made by him, some borrowed by him, all part of the frighteningly spit-supported structure that was Chinese banking, Gao Yideng went home to his private study. There he logged on to his personal computer, and through a series of proprietary portals brought up a string of accounts one by one. Even his most trusted advisers did not know everything he had. In the United States, on deposit, he now had one hundred twenty-six million dollars. For a moment, he could enjoy this triumph. He had ninety days to make certain delicate decisions about declarations and taxes. In the meantime he had taken at least one substantial asset and turned it into accessible cash, outside China.
He didn’t feel any tugs of remorse over so much treasure leaving the country. In fact he believed it was better. Before he got it, this had been buried in the ground. Let the rest of the world see it. Let it end up preserved and be forever protected from chaos.
A soft knock sounded at his study door. His wife. “Everything’s ready,” she said, and he knew she meant his two sons, his daughter, their evening meal. They would never know the privations he and Peng had endured. He wondered where Peng was tonight. He was certain the other man was alive, on earth; he had faith that he would know if Peng had passed through the gate and gone away. “Wo jiu lai-le,” he told his wife.
And he stood up, turned off his computer, followed his wife down the long wainscoted Shanghainese hallway to the stairs, curving down, and around, to the hallway and the dining room and the eyes of his children waiting under the bright crystal-dripping chandelier. For them
, he accumulated. For them he built a future. He met their faces with a smile.
At the airport, Michael was lucky enough to clear standby on a flight that would land in Hong Kong before midnight. That was okay. They’d have some hours together, at least. And they’d go from there.
He kept his cell phone on until they fastened their seat belts on the plane and the order came to turn them off. The crew strapped down, but the plane did not move. They waited, and then they waited some more.
Finally the pilot made a long announcement in Chinese, which was followed by a confusingly brief translation into English. “Because of the crash of China International Flight Sixty-eight, all the flights now are frozen for a new list of safety checks.” Michael rearranged the scrambled words in his head. How many safety checks? How long would it take? All planes? He sank. The crew got up and moved around. The lights flickered up. The passengers sat belted in, and the jet did not move.
An hour ticked by, every minute digging at him. He tagged a stewardess. “Would I be able to use a cell phone?”
“No!” She looked at him sternly. “No cell phone now.”
He had to laugh. Fate always displayed such incredible irony. Belted upright, head back, eyes closed, he laughed silently until his body shook and his seatmate inched away from him.
In Jingdezhen, Bai walked along Jinhua Lu at the bottom of the park with its small, picturesque bridges and gazebos. He passed men hauling back empty carts, old women taking slow, duck-footed steps, clots of children giggling, racing home for the night.
