Everything Under the Sky (24 page)

Although the master spoke quite slowly and Biao had to think hard about some of the words, I don't believe I've ever drawn, scribbled, and covered a page as fast as I did during that class in Wudang. I was actually fascinated by the theory; it opened up a world of possibilities to paint, create, and use in my future compositions, and I couldn't let a single detail slip past. However, as incredible as it might seem, the speech about the Five Elements wasn't over yet, because not only did they have an intense, complicated life of their own, they were also related to one another in the most original ways.

“The Five Elements are subject to the creative and destructive cycles of yin and yang,” the master calmly explained. “Each one can nourish another if they are similar and obliterate it if they are different. In the creative cycle, Metal creates Water, Water creates Wood, Wood creates Fire, Fire creates Earth, and Earth creates Metal. In the destructive, Metal destroys Wood, Wood destroys Earth, Earth destroys Water, Water destroys Fire, and Fire destroys Metal.”

I had such a mishmash of concepts in my head that I could no longer understand anything Biao was translating, but I could go over my notes later. One day, in Paris, all this would bear fruit, and people would never know the source of my inspiration. Just as few knew that the cubism invented by my fellow countryman Picasso was born out of an African mask exhibit he went to several times at the Museum of Mankind in Paris. All you had to do was look at his famous painting
The Girls of Avignon
to know just how much Pablo owed to African art.

In any event, seeing the pained look of boredom on poor Biao's face, I decided that was enough of Taoist philosophy for one day. It was time to head out again in search of a monk who'd be willing to chat with a young boy and a foreign woman about the objective of his life. I put my notebook—now my most treasured possession—in one of the many pockets in my Chinese pants, and with wet feet we picked up our dripping, oiled-paper umbrellas off the stone floor. The weather was absolutely dismal, and it looked as if the rain wouldn't stop for days.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, we didn't have much better luck. Near midday the boy and I sat down next to a little old nun contemplating the nearby mountain peaks, sitting with her legs crossed on a pretty satin cushion at the entrance to a temple. She was so tiny and old that her eyes were barely visible among the wrinkles on her face. Her gray hair was pulled back into a bun, and her fingernails were extraordinarily long. The poor woman was delirious. She said she was born during the heavenly mandate of Emperor Jiaqing
³⁵
and that she was 112 years old. She wanted to know where we were from but couldn't understand what Biao told her about me. To her there was nothing beyond the Middle Kingdom, and therefore I couldn't be from such a place. She waved her hand in contempt as if to tell me I was a liar and she wasn't about to listen to my tall tales. Before the conversation went completely downhill, I wanted Biao to ask her, with absolute respect and emphasizing that at her age, with all her experience, surely she could help resolve my doubt, whether it was more important to attain longevity or good health.

The old woman turned on her cushion, revealing milky eyes before snapping, “You don't understand a thing, poor fool! What a question! The most important thing in life is happiness! What's the use of health or longevity if you're unhappy? Aspire always and above all to happiness. Whether your life is long or short, healthy or ill, try to be happy. Now, leave me be. I'm tired of all this talking.”

She dismissed us with a flick of her hand and concentrated again on those nearby mountains she mustn't have been able to see at all: It was plain that the white curtain pulled across her eyes had blinded her long ago. Nevertheless, she was smiling as Biao and I walked away toward our house. She truly did seem happy. Might happiness be the first ideogram we could put in its place?

I found Lao Jiang in the study upstairs, reading next to the heat from a brazier. We both agreed it was a good place to start. The principal aspiration of all humans was undoubtedly happiness, and however difficult it might be for us to understand, that was what the monks of Wudang wanted with their quiet, withdrawn life, too.

“The trouble is, we have only one chance,” I commented. “There'll be no way to get the third piece of the
jiance
if we're wrong.”

“No need to remind me of the obvious,” the antiquarian grumbled.

“If you were truly happy, what would you want next? Health, peace, or longevity?”

The antiquarian groaned, letting a hand fall on one of the volumes open on the table. “Look, Elvira, it's not just about discovering what the Taoists of Wudang consider vital priorities. That old nun may indeed have given you the first of the four ideograms, but what matters most is that we have proof to support that position. There is no room for error. The abbot will not allow a single mistake. We need proof, do you understand? Proof that the characters go in a certain order.”

For lunch, which Fernanda missed, we had chickpea noodles, vegetables, and a type of bread that looked and tasted very unusual. The little novices came midafternoon to collect our bowls and sweep the house again (they swept twice a day), as well as to fumigate the study using glasses of water perfumed with herbs that supposedly helped protect the books from being eaten by worms. Biao and I didn't go out that afternoon because of the torrential downpour, so Lao Jiang told us a little about one of the classical texts he was reading. It was called the
Qin Lang Jin,
written during the Qin dynasty, the time of the First Emperor, and it spoke of something called
K'an-yu.
This very important thousandyear-old philosophy had changed names over the centuries and became known as “wind and water,” or feng shui, and dealt with the harmony between man, nature, and his environment. Lao Jiang hadn't had time to finish reading it, of course, because, apart from its being difficult to understand given the book's archaic, obscure language, he also wanted to make sure he read it very carefully. He was certain he'd find some clues, since the four concepts were mentioned many times.

Fernanda still wasn't back by the time we left the study, so I worriedly sent Biao to find her and bring her straight home. It was late, and the girl had been out all day. Besides, she'd been angry and sad when she left, and I didn't want her to do anything silly. Biao ran off in search of his Young Mistress, and I was left on my own on the covered porch, listening to the hammering rain and watching as it soaked the plants and flowers. Suddenly my heart leaped in my chest and my palpitations went wild. It had been so long since I'd had any cardiac trouble that I was terribly afraid. I began to pace back and forth like a madwoman, fighting the notion that I was going to die that very instant, struck down by a massive heart attack. I tried telling myself it was just one of my spells, but I already knew that, and knowing didn't help a bit. The healthy effects of our journey certainly hadn't lasted long! No sooner had I set myself up in a house than my hypochondria took hold once again. Silenced by the distractions of the last few months, my old enemy rose up full force at the first opportunity. Luckily, Biao and Fernanda soon came through the door, causing a commotion and distracting me from my dark thoughts.

“It was wonderful, Auntie!” Fernanda exclaimed, shaking off water like a dog. The girl was absolutely drenched, and her cheeks and ears were flushed. Little Tiger was looking at her enviously. “I spent the whole day in a huge patio with all the other novices, doing exercises quite similar to tai chi!”

Lao Jiang leaned over the second-floor balcony, a sour look on his face. “What exactly is going on?”

“Fernanda was thrilled with her first day as a novice at Wudang,” I commented jokingly, still looking at my niece. It was good to see her so happy; this certainly wasn't the norm.

The antiquarian, suddenly quite pleased, came down to join us. “That's marvelous,” he said, smiling.

“It
will be
marvelous,” I interjected quite seriously, speaking to my niece, “but right now you'll go dry off and change before you catch pneumonia.”

A shadow fell over Fernanda's face. “Now?”

“Right now,” I ordered, pointing to our room.

The rain was quite loud so we moved into Biao's room, where visitors were received, and sat on beautifully embroidered satin cushions to wait for Fernanda. Lao Jiang was smiling at me.

“I think you and your niece will find this journey quite enriching,” he said.

“Do you know what I learned today?” I replied. “I learned about the theory of yin and yang, and the Five Elements.”

He smiled from ear to ear, obviously proud. “You're both learning many important aspects of Chinese culture, the main ideas that gave rise to our major philosophies and served as the basis for our medicine, music, mathematics—”

Fernanda burst through the door like a whirlwind, drying her hair with a fine cotton cloth.

“So,” she said as she came in and took a seat, “I obviously wasn't going to understand a thing, right? All of them were Chinese and spoke Chinese, and I thought the whole thing was stupid. Plus, it was pouring rain, and I just wanted to come back here. But then the teacher, the
shifu,
came over and patiently repeated the names and the movements until I could copy them quite well. The rest of the novices followed along, laughing at me at first, but they got down to work when the
shifu
ignored them and only paid attention to me.”

She threw the long towel on a little tea table and jumped up to stand in the middle of the room.

“You're not going to give us a demonstration, are you?” I asked, horrified. A look of fury crossed her face, but the antiquarian's presence kept her in check.

“I want to go with Young Mistress tomorrow,” Biao then remarked.

“What did you say?” Lao Jiang asked, staring harshly at the boy.

“I said I want to go with Young Mistress tomorrow. Why can't I learn the martial arts, too?”

He might have been tall, but the boy was only thirteen years old, and he'd been terribly bored on our outing that day.

“Absolutely not. Your job is to interpret for your Mistress Elvira.”

“But I want to learn to fight,” Little Tiger protested, so angrily that I was taken aback.

“Well?” the antiquarian bellowed as he stared at me. “Are you going to let a servant take such liberties?”

“No, of course not,” I stuttered, not quite sure what I should do. Lao Jiang stood up and walked over to a lovely vase on the floor in a corner and pulled out a long stick of bamboo.

“Shall I proceed on your behalf?” he asked when he saw the apprehensive look on my face.

“You're going to cane him?” I asked, shocked. “Most certainly not! Put that bamboo down!”

“You are not Chinese, Elvira, and do not know how things work here. Even the highest officers in the imperial court admit there's nothing wrong with a few lashes when deserved. It's an honorable punishment that is to be accepted with dignity. I beg you not to intervene.”

It goes without saying that Fernanda and I cried our eyes out as we listened to the whistle of bamboo as it sliced the air out in the patio before smacking Little Tiger's behind. Every crack pained us through and through. The boy certainly deserved to be punished, but sending him to bed without any supper would have been sufficient. In China, however, it was a long-established tradition for servants who overstepped their bounds to receive a good thrashing. Fortunately, the consequences of that calamity were simply that Biao had trouble sitting for a few days. As for the rest, he came into our room the next morning to open the windows and air out the
k'ang
s as if nothing had happened.

The rain continued to pour down, and it was impossible not to feel just a little melancholic in such unpleasant weather. Things only got worse when Fernanda wasn't able to get up for breakfast and I found she had a raging fever. Lao Jiang immediately sent Biao for one of the monastery doctors, who quickly came with all his strange Chinese instruments. Fernanda was shivering under the mountain of blankets we had piled on her, and my worry went through the roof when I saw the monk crush some (not terribly clean) herbs that he dissolved in water and had her drink. I was about to shriek and rail against the witch who was trying to kill my niece with his poisonous, alchemical concoctions, but Lao Jiang held me back, gripping my arms mercilessly as he whispered that the doctors in Wudang were the best in China and that the most respected physicians purchased their herbs from here on the Mysterious Mountain. I still wasn't convinced. I was overcome with guilt that I hadn't thought to bring Western medicine. I'd never be able to forgive myself if anything happened to Fernanda. She had no one else in the world but me, and now that Rémy had died,
she
was all
I
had. At my age and with my heart condition, losing the two most important people in my life in less than a year would undoubtedly be the end of me. I simply wouldn't be able to stand it.

I spent the whole morning sitting by Fernanda's side, watching her sleep and listening to her moan as she tossed restlessly. Lao Jiang and Biao had to take care of both of us. They brought me cup after cup of steaming hot tea—I didn't want anything to eat—and gave Fernanda the herbal infusion the doctor from Wudang had prescribed for her. Once, when I couldn't stop the tears streaming down my face, the antiquarian pulled a cushion over and sat next to me.

“Your niece will be fine,” he declared.

“But what if she caught that pulmonary bug that's killing millions of your countrymen?” I objected desperately. I was finding it hard to talk, because I could barely breathe.

“Remember the abbot's words from the
Tao Te Ching
?”

“No. No, I don't,” I blurted out angrily.

“‘Because one is moderate, one may be said to follow the way from the start. / Following the way from the start, one may be said to accumulate an abundance of virtue. / Accumulating an abundance of virtue, there is nothing one cannot overcome. / When there is nothing one cannot overcome, no one knows his own limits.’ ”