by Elsa Hart
“I understand Pan was at the party also,” said Sun.
“Yes, yes, he was. I didn’t know him well, but I must admit that I am not entirely surprised to hear he fell into immoral behavior. There was something in his affect, you know, a certain unseemly arrogance. But what young man isn’t arrogant when the world is before him? It is a sad story. But yes, if you are ready, I am ready. I have carved time from my own schedule to come. The examinations are in only ten days, and the questions this year, I can assure you, are of the highest quality. We’ll challenge the minds of the rising generation of officials as they have never been challenged before. Only the greatest will advance to lend their intelligence to the government of the empire.”
He started back to the reception room. Sun, looking harassed, addressed Mi in a whisper. “Have a horse ready for me to go to the offices of the magistrate as soon as this is over.”
Li Du thought of the stack of papers and books on his desk. “Am I to accompany you?”
“No. Use the day to finish composing this month’s lecture to the borough. But tomorrow morning, I want you to go to the South Church. You know how to speak to the foreigners. Find the man who visited the factory this morning and ask him to account for his presence. A thorough investigation never ignores a foreigner, especially one who roams so far from where he belongs.”
Chapter 7
Upon his return from exile, Li Du had refused offers of accommodation from his relatives. Politely, and to their evident relief, he had declared an intention to live alone. Solitary travel, he said, had inclined him toward a meditative existence. He had given the same explanation to the clerics responsible for the maintenance of Water Moon Temple, and they had agreed to rent him a room. The situation proved satisfactory for all involved. The clerics had a quiet tenant and a reliable supplement to the meager income they received from incense sales and charitable gifts. Li Du had regular meals, a sufficient supply of coal when winter froze the city, and privacy.
But privacy was never guaranteed in the imperial capital, and this evening, Li Du entered the first courtyard to find one of the clerics sitting on the veranda outside Li Du’s door. Recognizing the always voluble Chan, Li Du altered his course and made his way past the incense cauldron into the Hall of Buddhas Past, Present, and Future. The setting sun threw heavy light across the floor, mocking the tiny candle flames with its might. Li Du stepped quietly, in deference to the silent visitors who had come to pray and make offerings, and exited on the other side into the temple’s second courtyard.
Behind one of the small side halls were three drooping clotheslines. Li Du’s pale robes were easy to identify amid the red and yellow that belonged to the clerics. The cotton, after a day of sun and city dust, was stiff to the touch. Li Du gathered his clothes and held them bundled in his arms. He remained there, comforted by the cool shadows and drifting aromas of clean cloth and incense.
Ever since he had seen them, the two corpses in the Black Tile Factory had exerted gruesome authority over his thoughts. Li Du’s assignments for the day, while numerous, had required little concentration, leaving his mind free to wander. He saw again and again the open, staring eyes of Madam Hong, the outstretched limbs and crumpled waves of orange silk evocative of movement, yet motionless. And he saw again Pan’s neck, torn open with a single, unhesitating purpose.
Chief Inspector Sun had not returned to the North Borough Office from the Inner City, and in the warm, slow hours of the afternoon, Li Du had found himself thinking about what the chief inspector had said to Hong. There are statutes to protect a husband. Li Du knew of the statute to which Sun referred, though crimes of that nature were rare among the wealthy. In his two years at the North Borough Office, Li Du had never needed to consult the violent crimes section of the penal code. Today, he had done so for the first time.
The provision appeared in Article 285. When a wife or concubine commits adultery, and her husband, or a close relative of her husband, catches her at the place and in the act of adultery, and immediately kills them both, there will be no punishment.
Sun was right. If Hong had stumbled into his factory that evening, found his wife there entwined in a lover’s embrace, and killed them both in a frenzy of rage, it was possible that the law would excuse him. But was that what had happened? Had it truly been love—or desire—that had brought the victims together under cover of night? Had another purpose drawn them to the dark factory? And, if so, did someone other than Hong have a motive to kill them? Li Du had closed the heavy volume of statutes and returned it to its place. The task of answering these questions did not belong to him, and the corners of his mind reserved for pursuing secret truths had already been claimed by questions that did.
Taking care not to allow a clean sash or sleeve to drag in the dirt, Li Du made his way back to the temple’s main courtyard, and the final, harsh streaks of golden sun. Chan had not moved and, resigned to conversation, Li Du greeted him.
“Put those clean robes away before they are stained,” said Chan, gesturing with a thin, blackened hand at the white cotton. He was sitting amid a collection of plates piled high with powder. Beside him was a basket bristling with thin sticks. In front of him, he had positioned a block coated in thick black paste.
Li Du entered his room, deposited the clean laundry onto his bed, and started to close the door. Chan’s voice stopped him. “It will be dark soon. Are you going to sit inside shuffling papers in the gloom until dinner? I know you are. You clerks and your papers. Come back and see what I found in the market today.”
With a rueful glance at the space that was neat, and quiet, and his own, Li Du stepped outside. “I see you are making incense,” he said. He knelt. One plate was heaped with sawdust, another with sandalwood powder. He pointed to a third. “Agarwood,” he said. “That is a rare ingredient.”
“Not so rare as this one,” said Chan, indicating another powder. “Can you identify it?”
Intrigued, Li Du examined it. The powder was white, tinted with opal iridescence. He leaned closer, inhaled, and gave an involuntary shudder. A bitter odor filled his nostrils and burned all the way down his throat to his chest. He drew back and reflexively covered his nose with one hand. Temporarily overcome, he shook his head, blinking tears from his eyes.
“They call it dragonbrain camphor,” said Chan. “Or ‘icicle flakes’—touch your fingers to it.”
Li Du took a pinch of the powder. It coated his fingertips with the same sensation, simultaneously hot and freezing, that it had inflicted on his throat, only more acute.
“You’ll want to wash your hands,” said Chan. “And be careful not to touch your eyes, or you’ll burn them. It comes from the southern islands. We hardly ever find it at the markets these days, and when it appears, all the temples rush to buy it before it is all sold out. It’s expensive, but we’ll make a good profit from these incense sticks. The examination candidates want to burn whatever will please the gods the most, and what god would not be pleased with such a rare fragrance? With the vendor rent for the temple market in our courtyard next month, we’ll have enough money for a new image of Guanyin by the end of the year.”
Chan pattered on about his various schemes to raise more money for the temple. Li Du half listened, watching the thin fingers deftly roll the sticks one by one through the dark paste and dip them once more into powder. Darkness fell and Chan lit a lantern. Illumination within the temple walls was placed without design, and was dictated each night by the activities of the monks. Light puddled beneath swaying lanterns, shone through latticework panes, and glowed from the tips of incense sticks above an unseen cauldron. Where there was no light, doors and rooms disappeared into black emptiness.
Li Du helped Chan put away his supplies and prepare for dinner. His mind was wandering through pages, as it always did at the end of the day, through ministry records and statutes, and, added to them now, the words scrawled across a bloodied slip of paper. The moon shines on my beloved in the old pavilion, green with moss
.
Chapter 8
Li Du rose early the next morning and arrived at the gate of the South Church well before the bells tolled the hour of the snake. Lacking instruction to the contrary, the builders who had been tasked with erecting a temple to an unfamiliar god had modeled the stronghold of the Jesuits after the temples they knew. A high wall enclosed a wide courtyard, on either side of which were two long, single-story buildings in the Chinese style. Only the church itself had been designed according to the priests’ specifications. Instead of a roof sloping low over a polished veranda, a flat edifice of stone towered skyward. To Li Du, it had always seemed stretched out of proportion, perpetually strained in its vertical quest.
This morning, he found the church altered. The smooth vertical lines were broken. A corner of the main body of the roof had fallen in, destroying the symmetry of the façade, and leaving a jagged indentation like a wound. In the courtyard beneath it, shattered stone and tile had been consolidated into a heap. A man in a black robe was trying to sweep away grit and debris into the pile, but a gusting wind carried dry leaves and glittering dust away from his broom and pulled his long white beard into tangles.
Li Du crossed the courtyard, pausing for a moment at its center to look at the three stone stelae arranged there. Two he remembered from his last visit, but that had been almost a year ago. The third was new since then, and far more splendid than its companions. It stood on the back of a stone turtle. Attached to the top was a miniature roof of glazed yellow tiles.
“Li Du! Is that my old friend Li Du?”
The words, spoken in Latin, came from a figure who stood in the doorway of the church, waving a cane with teetering enthusiasm. Fearing the man would tumble down the stairs, Li Du hurried forward. He had known Father Calmette for more than twenty years, ever since the French Jesuit had first arrived in Beijing. Unlike most of the others who had come, Father Calmette had never once returned to his native country. Now an old man with round pink cheeks framed by curling white hair and a snowy beard, he spoke the language of his hosts with proud fluency, and seemed to have every intention of ending his days in China.
“It is Li Du,” said Father Calmette, switching to Chinese. His weak voice, infused with an inherent cheerfulness, turned chiding. “But how I recognized you, I cannot say, since we never see you anymore! It’s been two years since you returned from your exile in the lonely mountains, and you haven’t visited above three times. How I miss those days when I would find you drinking tea in the antiques market, professing opinions on poems and paintings.”
“I think often of those pleasant hours,” said Li Du. “But my work at the North Borough Office keeps me very busy. Are you well? What tasks has the palace set you this month?”
“Too many!” said Father Calmette happily. “We are treated just like your own palace scholars. Up at all hours of the night to chart stars at the whims of princes. No sooner is one clock made than a more elaborate one is requested. One of the Emperor’s own consorts wishes to learn to play the organ, but a decision cannot be made as to the propriety of such an endeavor. Meanwhile the Emperor would like a new map of the city, and the thirteenth prince has commissioned the fashioning of a scepter that Father Gaillard fears would be blasphemous to craft. But all this in service of our mission. You saw the newest addition to our courtyard?”
Li Du nodded. “An Emperor’s affirmation is the greatest honor a temple can receive.”
Father Calmette nodded enthusiastically. “I understand better why the yellow tiles are only allowed to be used for the rooftops of the palace. To see them here in our own courtyard is like seeing the Emperor himself come to visit every day. He wrote the inscription, you know. He had no beginning, and will have no end. He has produced all things from the beginning, and it is He that governs them and is their true Lord. You can read it there on the stone. How can the Dominicans say we have failed to communicate the message of the church to this city, when the Emperor himself writes poetry in honor of the Lord?”
Beijing has many gods, thought Li Du. But he had never challenged Father Calmette’s optimism, and he didn’t now. Together, they entered the church. Limited to the resources and craftsmen of a city that was not their own, the Jesuits had been unable to reproduce the arches and columns that gave depth to their houses of worship. To compensate, they had turned to illusion. Every surface of the church’s interior was painted. False columns supported false walls. False sunlight pooled on floors of false rooms. Only the cascade of shattered tile and broken stone compromised the deception.
Father Calmette heaved a sigh. “Observe what the storm has done to our church. And we only completed construction last year. But what are broken tiles compared to the very grave matter that brings you here? Yes, yes, I have guessed why you have come.”
A man was just emerging from a door near the altar. He came forward, stepping gingerly over shards of stained glass and broken tile. “Father Aveneau,” said Father Calmette. “We must be very grateful, for out of all the officials and soldiers and secretaries in the city, they have sent us Li Du, one of the first scholars I ever met in the capital. He was a librarian in the palace library, a magnificent library, now sadly forbidden to outsiders. Such a collection of books and community of scholars I have not seen since I was last in Rome.” Sighing at the memory, Father Calmette touched the other man’s shoulder and addressed Li Du. “This is Father Aveneau, whom you have not met, and who was, through unfortunate circumstances, brought into proximity with a terrible act of violence yesterday morning.”
Father Aveneau was younger than Father Calmette, hollow-cheeked, with large, deep-set eyes that were a shade of cloudy gray-green, like flawed jade. His brown beard was streaked with strands of white. Seeing that he was preparing to bend his knees to the floor in a formal bow, Li Du spoke quickly. “It is not necessary. I am only the secretary at the North Borough Office. I have been sent to take a statement from you about your presence at the Black Tile Factory yesterday. It is only a formality.”
Father Aveneau straightened. “When I told Father Calmette what had happened, he said that we should expect someone. I am prepared to answer any questions you have, but I doubt I will be able to tell you any more than you have undoubtedly learned from the manager, and from the poor laborer who made the discovery.” He spoke in careful Chinese, inserting small pauses between his words.
Li Du pulled out his notebook. Shafts of blue and green light from the glass windows played across its cover. “I will begin by writing down your full name, in your own language and in mine.”
“Of course. My name is Louis Aveneau. I am recently gone—” He halted, and corrected himself. “I am recently arrived from France—”
Father Calmette interrupted. “He and I hail from the same part of that country, the fair city of Lyon, where silk is made using our own European methods.”
Li Du wrote the name in neat Latin letters. Watching him, Father Aveneau commented, “You are educated in our language.”
“Father Calmette was one of my teachers,” Li Du said, bringing a smile to the older priest’s face. “If I may ask you to explain to me in your own words, what brought you to the Black Tile Factory yesterday morning?”
“As you can see, our roof sustained damage during the recent storm. I went to the factory to commission new tiles.”
“Can you describe what happened from when you arrived there until you departed?”
Father Aveneau drew in a deep breath. “I was conveyed to the factory by a sedan chair. When I entered, I spoke to the manager. Our conversation was hampered by my limited understanding of your language, and by his accent, which I believe was less refined than those to which I am accustomed. I had only just begun to explain my purpose when I perceived that the manager was no longer attending to my words. I searched for what had arrested his attention. He was staring at a building on the other side of the courtyard. Its door had been flung open, and a man—one of the laborers—seemed to have been propelled from within. He w
as on his knees in the dirt, obviously very distressed.”
“What happened then?”
“The manager—Hu—apologized, and hurried to see what was wrong. I followed.”
“Did you go into the room?”
“I did. I will not soon forget what I saw within.”
“Did you recognize either of the two victims?”
“I could not see the woman’s face, but as I am not acquainted with any women in this city, I am sure I would not have known her.”
“And the man?”
“I did not recognize him, but his face did look familiar. Perhaps I had encountered him. It is difficult to know. I might have recognized him if I had seen him living, but as it was, no, I cannot say. Did he reside near our church?”
Li Du looked up from his notebook. Father Aveneau was watching him. “He lived in the Outer City,” Li Du said. “But he was employed by the Ministry of Rites. Perhaps you saw him there.”
“Ah, yes. That is possible.”
“While you were in the room, did you shift any item out of place? Did you remove any object?”
“Certainly not. I left as soon as I understood what had occurred. The man who discovered the bodies—I do not know his name—was very upset. I instructed him to find assistance, thinking the chore would facilitate his recovery.”
“And then?”
“Then I departed. I did not think there was any reason to stay. Under the circumstances, it was no longer appropriate to discuss the repair of our roof, however anxious we are to protect the frescos now exposed to wind and rain.”
Li Du considered this. “I understand your sense of urgency,” he said slowly. “But I am surprised you went directly to the factory, rather than submitting a maintenance request through one of the ministries, or through the Gendarmerie.”
