Everything Under the Sky (32 page)

“Auntie? How are you?”

My niece's sad face, all swollen and teary, appeared in my reduced field of vision. I was about to ask rudely what in heaven's name had brought on all those tears, when I realized it was extremely difficult for me to speak. I couldn't move my jaw; it refused to open.

“Auntie … ? Can you see me, Auntie? Do you see me?”

Something was seriously wrong, and I couldn't understand what it was or why. I began to feel frightened. Finally, after an incredible effort, I was able to part my lips.

“Of course I see you,” I croaked.

“She can see me!” Fernanda rejoiced. “Don't move, Auntie. You've got a bump on your head as big as a bullring, and half your face is black and blue.”

“What?” I asked, trying to sit up but failing.

“Don't you remember what happened last night?”

Last night? What happened last night? Hadn't we gone to bed after dinner? Speaking of which, where were we?

“The Green Gang attacked,” my niece said.

The Green Gang? Oh, right, the Green Gang! Yes, of course, they had attacked. Suddenly I remembered everything. The assassin had a knife to my throat, I kicked the pitcher over, there was a horrific blow to my temple—and then little bits of a dream: a blanket, a straw mat….

“Yes, now I remember,” I murmured.

“Good,” Lao Jiang's voice said from nearby. “That's a good sign. How are you, Elvira? Or should I call you Chang Cheng?”

I heard Biao laugh somewhere nearby, and my niece did, too.

“Don't call me Chang Cheng,” I grumbled.

“She's back!” the antiquarian exclaimed.

One of the identical twins, Red or Black (I still couldn't see well enough to make out whether he had a mark on his cheek), appeared before me and examined me carefully, touching the left side of my head. It hurt so much I screamed.

“You were hit very hard,” the master explained, “most likely with an ‘Iron Fist.’ Some of the attackers knew secret Shaolin techniques. It could have killed you.”

“It was quite a fight,” Lao Jiang declared.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It was a surprise attack. They snuck into our rooms without the soldiers’ noticing.”

“Too much sorghum liquor,” I growled angrily.

“Don't worry,” he said somberly. “They paid a high price. Not one of them survived.”

“What?” I asked, alarmed, trying to sit up again. My entire body hurt, so I didn't persist.

“Masters Red Jade and Black Jade were the first to get out of their room. The assassins attacked all of us at once. There were over twenty of them. I think Biao counted twenty-three bodies, didn't you, Biao?”

“Yes, Lao Jiang. Plus the twelve soldiers.”

What a pointless massacre, I thought. Why do men always resolve problems by means of war, slaughter, or assassination? If the Green Gang wanted the
jiance
or the entire contents of the blasted hundredtreasure chest, then all they had to do was capture us, make us give it to them, and let us go. But no, they had to attack, kill, and be killed. Such absurd violence.

“We came here as soon as you knocked the
lien p'en
on the floor,” the monk said. “We knew you must be in danger. The noise woke the soldiers, and the fight began.”

“At first,” Lao Jiang continued, “we shot several of the attackers, but those who remained at the end, when our soldiers were on their last legs, were trained in Shaolin like the one that attacked you. Masters Red Jade, Black Jade, and I managed to eliminate four or five of them, but there were still others who, even though they were hurt, finished off the last of the men in Shao's group. It was a strong, wellorganized attack. They didn't want to take any risks this time. They came fully prepared to seize the
jiance,
but thanks to you we didn't give them time to even look for it. Master Black Jade has several serious injuries, and I've got quite a bit of bruising and some cuts. Master Red Jade fared the best; he has only a few cuts on his hands and back, none of them serious.”

“What about Biao?” I asked worriedly.

“I'm fine,
tai-tai,
” I heard him say. “Nothing happened to me.”

“How did they know we were here? Did they follow us?”

“Undoubtedly,” Lao Jiang agreed. “Wudang Monastery was the last reference they had with respect to the three pieces of the
jiance
. Remember, they'd already visited the abbot. This was their last chance to find us.”

“So why here? Why in this city?”

“We don't know. They may have been late finding out we left the monastery. The martial-arts experts who attacked us most likely come from the Shaolin temple in Songshan, in the nearby province of Henan, to the west. It's the most important place for Shaolin in all of China. I don't think they were monks, but you never know. This city, Shanghsien, is the best place for a group of assassins from the south to meet up with fighters from Henan. The Green Gang must have spent a fortune organizing this attack.”

“Now what?”

“Now we rest. You're in no shape to move for at least a couple of days, and we have to arrange for Master Black Jade to return to Wudang. He won't be able to accompany us on the remainder of our journey, and we can't leave him here.”

“Is he that bad?”

“Both arms are broken, and he has a very deep gash on his right leg. He fought courageously and took the worst of it, but he'll certainly recover.

“Now that we've no soldiers,” Lao Jiang went on, “and Master Black Jade is going back to Wudang, we'll never survive another attack like last night's.”

“Can't you ask the Kuomintang or the Communists here for help?”

“Kuomintang in this part of China? No, Elvira. There are no Kuomintang or Communists here. We're at the top of the Qin Ling massif, remember? It's essentially cut off from the rest of the world, except for a steep, narrow mountain trail covered in snow. However, the good news is that if we stay off that trail and take another route, they won't be able to catch up to us, and if they lose our trail now, they won't be able to find us again. They don't know where we're going.”

“We're going to Xi'an,” Fernanda replied.

“Xi'an is very big, young Fernanda, as big as Shanghai, and we're not actually going to the city,” Lao Jiang said, ruining my plan to leave the children there. “The Green Gang has no idea what our destination is. Why do you think they wanted the
jiance
? They don't know where the mausoleum is.”

“But, Lao Jiang,” I objected—without blinking, so my head wouldn't explode—”how are we going to cross the mountains alone? Don't you remember what it took to get here? How will we survive if we don't follow the trail?”

“It's not far now, Elvira. Even in the worst possible weather, we're a week away from Xi'an at most, and it's all downhill from here. We have to prevent them from following us no matter what. It's all they can do, their only way of finding the tomb. I'm sure they've left spies in Shanghsien, people willing to follow us to the very entrance of the mausoleum. Do you want them to attack us there? Can you imagine? We have to take every possible precaution.”

“So there's someone out there waiting for us to set off once again,” I said. A strange exhaustion was closing my eyes, but I was afraid to fall asleep.

“This final stretch is the most important for them, because they don't have any other references. It's all over if they lose sight of us now, and I don't think they're that stupid. On the other hand, I don't suppose they thought last night's assault would fail, but we'd better watch ourselves very carefully just in case.”

“And how will we do that?” I asked. I was falling fast asleep and couldn't do anything to stop it.

“Well, we thought we'd do the following….”

I don't remember another thing.

I awoke that afternoon but didn't feel any better. I was barely able to take a sip of water. My niece told me Lao Jiang had paid the owner of the
lü kuan
for our lodging as well as for all the damage and had hired six expert porters to take Master Black Jade back to Wudang. In order to avoid problems with the Chinese authorities in Shang-hsien, he had also purchased a small plot of land on the outskirts and made arrangements with some peasants to bury the dead there as soon as it was possible—the ground was still frozen at this time of year. Meanwhile, the bodies would be kept on Mount Shangshan, in caves, which Lao Jiang also had to rent.

While she spoke, Fernanda tried to feed me as if I were a small child, but I simply couldn't swallow a thing. Out of curiosity I passed my hand lightly over the bandage that covered the swelling on my head, and not only did I see stars, but I got quite a fright when I discovered that the bump was exactly as big as the broad side of an egg. What a knock that beast of a Shaolin, mandarin, or whatever he was had given me. He had, of course, paid a high price for being an idiot. Well, too bad for him. If he'd only chosen a more peaceful profession he would still be alive.

The next morning, however, I woke feeling much better. My head still throbbed, but I was able to get up out of the
k'ang.
I had to be extremely careful washing my face, because the whole left side hurt, and then at breakfast every mouthful caused me to cry out in pain. Later I wandered through the
lü kuan,
watching the servants try to repair all the damage that had been caused during the battle—it was a great deal. It looked as if a tornado had blown through or, worse, as if there'd been an earthquake like the one that had destroyed Japan three months earlier, when Fernanda and I arrived in Shanghai. It was amazing to think we'd been traveling through China in search of the lost tomb of some ancient emperor for that amount of time, but as hard as it was to believe, my callused feet and strong legs left no doubt. I continued to wander around the
lü kuan
until, unexpectedly, I found myself in front of a large octagonal mirror with a trigram carved on each side of the frame—the
I Ching
hexagrams consisted of six lines, while these had only three, but they seemed closely related. I couldn't help but yelp in horror when I saw my reflection. The bandage made me look just like the wounded soldiers who came back to Paris during the war, but even worse was the blue-black swelling that distorted the left half of my face (eye, lips, and ear included). I'd become a monster. If the much-talked-about Taoist moderation was ever going to do me good, it was undoubtedly now. It had nothing to do with being ugly, beautiful, or deformed: It was the realization that he could have killed me with that blow called an “Iron Fist.” My face was absolute proof of it. I could be dead, I kept repeating to myself as I examined myself carefully. I knew that as long as that enormous bruise was still there, I'd best make use of moderation,
wu wei,
and moderation again.

New guests started arriving at the
lü kuan
that afternoon. At first it was just two or three men, but within a short while entire families streamed in as if it were a celebration. By night the inn was full; in fact, there weren't enough tables for everyone and hardly enough chairs. It must have been an avalanche of unexpected visitors or a large group of merchants traveling with their wives and children.

As soon as the servants had brought us our dinner, Lao Jiang cast a satisfied look around the dining room and exclaimed, “Well then, here are our protectors. I don't think anyone's missing.”

Fernanda and Master Red seemed to know what was going on, because they smiled and kept eating, but I didn't have the faintest idea what Lao Jiang was talking about.

“You fell asleep when I started to tell you our plan,” he said, diving heartily into his rice soup. “We invited all these peasants from the surrounding areas for dinner. Do you see that man there?” he asked, pointing to a tall, thin, elderly man. “He'll be me, and that woman over there is you, Elvira. The innkeeper's daughter will cut her hair to look like yours. That man will be Master Red Jade, and the tall boy on his right will be Biao. I still haven't decided which of those two girls will be Fernanda. Who do you think looks more like her? Don't pay any attention to their faces; that's the least of it. Look at body shape and height. They'll all leave Shang-hsien in about three hours, in the middle of the night, heading toward Xi'an, with a few of our horses.”

“So that's the plan. Doubles will take our place while we remain safe inside the
lü kuan.
”

“No, we won't stay in the
lü kuan.
We'll leave as soon as Biao tells us the spies have followed that group or, if that doesn't happen, a few hours after they've gone.”

“But what if these people have talked? What if the supposed spies already know what we're planning?”

“How could they?” he replied happily. “Our own doubles don't even know yet!”

The man never ceased to amaze me. I must have had a blank look on my face, although because of my swelling, you might not have been able to tell the difference.

“All these people are very poor,” the antiquarian explained. “Master Red Jade and I invited the neediest of the peasants. There's no chance they'll refuse when I show them what we're willing to pay.”

And indeed they did not refuse. While Fernanda and I finished our dinner and Biao came back from the kitchen, Lao Jiang and Master Red went from table to table closing deals and making payments. They also gave money to everyone else who was present, so no arguments would arise and no one would decide to rob us. Our impersonators followed us to our rooms, and less than half an hour later they were dressed in our clothing, had their hair combed like ours, and were wearing our hats, sheepskin coats, and boots (magnificent leather boots we'd been given in Wudang, lined with heavy wool and a thick leather sole for the snow). Luckily, we had extras of almost everything. Our doubles looked so good that even I might not have noticed the difference if I didn't look at their faces. They seemed very willing to do their well-paid work: to walk all night long and all the next day, not even stopping to eat. Then they could go back to their homes. By that time we'd have gotten far enough away that the Green Gang wouldn't be able to catch up to us.