Ben Soul

by Richard George

furtively met a slender Caucasian woman in the alley by the noisome trash dumpsters. The pale lamplight glittered in her eyes. Her eyes reminded Toy Boy of the rats whose glittering eyes he saw late at night around the dumpsters when he made his way home to his small room. He shivered.

  “Cold?” the woman asked. Her voice was chill.

  “Your tape,” Toy Boy said. “Where’s my green card?”

  The woman took the tape and handed him a plastic laminated card. He took it and hurried into the Palace of the Jaded Concubine. Toy Boy could not read English, and only a few ideographs of his native Chinese. The large red word “Specimen” across the card held no meaning for him.

  Consultation

  In the foyer of the Palace of the Jaded Concubine Mae Ling stopped Malcolm.

  “Mr. Drye,” she said, “I would like to consult my father and my grandfather about these statues. They are quite knowledgeable about late Chinese statuary, and the history of China.”

  “This will mean diluting any reward we get for the statues,” Malcolm said, “and the value of the contents.”

  “Consider me and my family as one unit, with a two-thirds share, since I have two of the three statues,” Mae Ling responded.

  “And I have the other third?” Malcolm considered. “Yes. Let’s consult your father and grandfather.”

  “Then come with me,” she said, and led him through another door behind a shabby tapestry. The door was ornately carved rosewood, but the light was too dim for Malcolm to make out details. Dragons and a phoenix dominated the scene. Intricate blossoms twined about the main panels. The door led to another small lobby, with an elevator at one side and a guard at a desk on the other. When they entered, Malcolm tightened his nostrils against the backwashed odor of mildew and ancient dust.

  “Good evening, Madam,” the guard said.

  “Good evening, Bai Lo,” she responded. “Is my father in?”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  “Thank you Bai Lo.”

  “Yes Madam.”

  Mae Ling pressed the button for the elevator. It came slowly. Malcolm could hear the cables squeaking and weights clanking as it traveled toward them. At least the elevator smelled of metal and some lubricant rather than mold. The door, when the elevator arrived, parted with a noisy sigh, as though the elevator was irritated at being disturbed. Mae Ling and Malcolm entered. Mae Ling pressed the button for the top floor, and the doors sighed shut. Slowly the elevator began to rise, complaining all the way like an arthritic elder climbing stairs. It was scuffed and scarred inside, and the dim bulb threw shadows that accentuated its blemishes.

  After a long wheezing jiggle up and down, it settled at the top floor, and the doors opened onto a short, poorly lit hall with a dusty carpet so faded its design was unclear. The ancient dust smell was strong here. It seemed to leap up out of the carpet. Only one door opened off the hall. Mae Ling went to the door and knocked three times. A small peephole opened, and closed. Malcolm heard bolts being thrown back; he counted three of them. Then the door opened. A gust of spicy incense blew out of the apartment.

  “Come in, Daughter,” a woman’s soft voice said. “Your father is in his office. Do you wish to see him?” The woman was a slightly older copy of Mae Ling; indeed, except for some very fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, she could have been Mae’s twin. She even wore a similar sheathe dress, blue, with matching pumps.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Go along, then. Oh, you have brought someone with you.”

  “Yes, Mother. Our guest is Mr. Malcolm Drye,” Mae said. “This is my mother, Fu Ling. We have some business to transact with Father.”

  “Do come in, Mr. Drye, and be welcome.”

  Malcolm followed Mae Ling into an opulent room appointed with Chinese jade sculptures in various shades of green and white mounted on black marble pedestals. Scrolls, softened with age, hung on the walls. The lighting was low, but accented the treasures in the room. At the opposite end, a corridor began. Mae Ling led Malcolm along this richly carpeted hallway, their steps lost in the carpet’s softness, to a black door. She knocked, and entered when a voice from within bade her do so.

  “Father,” she said, as she entered. “I come with a friend.”

  “Yes, daughter. I see you have a guest.” Mr. Ling had achieved an age where he appeared both old and young.

  “This is Mr. Malcolm Drye,” Mae said. “Mr. Drye, this is my father, Faw Ling.” Mr. Ling rose from his desk. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored black suit, with a pearl white shirt and a subdued yellow tie. His closely barbered hair bespoke skilled professional attention. His hand was cool and dry as he shook Malcolm’s hand.

  “Welcome, Mr. Drye. Will you take tea?” Faw Ling gestured at a pot and cups on his desk.

  “Yes, thank you, sir.”

  “Please, be seated. What brings you here, Daughter? Your visits are few, and precious.”

  “We come to ask your advice, Father.”

  “A wise child heeds her parents,” Faw Ling said. “How may I advise you?” Malcolm detected a carefully covered apprehension in his host.

  “We need your opinion of the value of these statues,” Mae Ling said, and put her two on the desk. She gestured for Malcolm to do the same. He did. He also saw his host relax. What had the poor man expected? That Malcolm was a suitor, or a loan shark?

  “I can tell you they are probably an amateur’s work, from the late Qing. The style is, I believe, Northern.” He lit a powerful lamp on his desk. He took one up and examined it under the lamp. “The clay is not usual for Northern China.” He pursed his lips, considering. He set aside the first statue, took up another, and looked it over. “These Kuanyins are crudely made. The detailing is coarse, and carelessly applied. I do not think they have any great value in and of themselves.”

  “Could they hold something inside that would be of value?” Malcolm asked.

  “Perhaps. We could have them X-rayed.” Faw Ling patted one statue gently with his carefully manicured hand.

  “Perhaps Grandfather Foy could help us?”

  “Yes, perhaps. I will see if he is willing to consider them. If you will excuse me, I will consult with him.” Faw Ling rose from his chair and went through a door at one corner of the room.

  “My Grandfather, Foy Ling, is very venerable,” Mae Ling said. “He is also fragile. Perhaps he is having a good day, and can assist us.” The door through which Faw Ling had gone burst open. A tiny man with many wrinkles and only a few wisps of white hair burst through the door like a cannon ball. He wore faded blue jeans, and a rumpled blue chambray shirt with rope sandals.

  “Welcome home, Little Cricket,” he said, and flung his arms around Mae Ling. “Your old Granddad loves to see you.”

  Faw Ling followed sedately through the door and closed it. “We have a guest, honored Father,” he said. His cultured tones were the opposite of his father’s piping voice.

  “I know, I know, I can see the fellow for myself. Not here to marry my grand-daughter, are you?”

  “No, Grandfather,” Mae Ling said.

  “Good. Don’t need any gwailo blood in the family. No offense, Mister, nothing personal. Just want to keep my descendants pure.”

  “I take no offense, Venerable Sir.”

  “Call me Foy, boy. Call me Foy.”

  “Foy, then.”

  “Grandfather, we have brought some statues for you to look at. A wicked woman, one Vanna Dee, has tried to buy them from us, and has even suborned one of our servants.”

  “Tell me of this false servant,” Faw Ling commanded, so Mae Ling told him about Toy Boy’s perfidy and her reprimand and punishment of him. “You are too lenient,” Faw said, when she had finished. “Toy Boy will return to his native Fukien.”

  While Mae Ling told her story, Foy Ling had been examining the statues under the bright lamp on his son’s desk. When she was through, he borrowed a dime from hi
s son and inserted its edge into the middle line of the character for three (≡) on the bottom of one statue. He twisted. The statue made a tiny cracking noise, and a plug fell out. He repeated the process with the statue marked with the Chinese character for one (–). A similar plug fell out. Bits of clay dust shone in the lamplight on the polished desk. For the last statue he borrowed a second dime, and put each dime into the one of the two strokes for the Chinese character for two (≈), and twisted. A plug fell out of the last statue.

  “There,” he said. “As your Father has no doubt already told you, these statues are amateur sculptures, made in a Northern, probably Ningwu, style, of Southern Chinese clay, probably from the Guangzhou region. Given the upset times at the end of the Qing Dynasty, not surprising a Northerner might be in the South. The maker has inserted bamboo sections plugged at each end with wax into the wet clay, and thus fashioned the plugs I have just removed. This was a common way to smuggle valuables in and out of various provinces and warlord territories. With tweezers, Son, I should be able to pull these loose.” Faw opened a desk drawer and extracted a pair of tweezers, ornately decorated with tiny cloisonné roses, and handed them to Foy.

  Foy delicately wedged the tweezers around a bamboo vial in the first statue. He squeezed and twisted. The vial came out. He laid it on the desk. He repeated the extraction operation with the other two statues.

  “Now,” he said, “let’s see what these saints have had blocking their bowels these past