Everything Under the Sky (36 page)

“Is it a statue?” I asked. It was a silly question, because it obviously couldn't be a human being, but it seemed terribly real, as real as any of us.

My niece laughed. “Of course it's a statue, Auntie!”

“Yes, but not just any old statue. It's magnificent,” Lao Jiang affirmed, truly impressed. He moved closer and called Biao over. The boy took a few hesitant steps. The antiquarian passed him the torch and held Biao's arm up as high as he wanted it. Then he set his glasses on his nose and bent over to study the piece. “It's a young servant in the Qin dynasty, made of baked clay. It's extraordinary; you can still see the paint. Look at the color of his face and the red scarf tied around his neck. Incredible.”

“He was placed looking south,” Master Red noted, “toward the burial mound.”

“We'd better keep going,” I proposed. I'd never been fond of statues, especially ones in human form like that, so realistic. Whenever I went to a museum in Paris, I always felt as if the sculptures were looking at me and that those were human eyes that followed me.

But that young servant wasn't the only statue we came across. Every few columns there was another, all facing south, the same direction we were heading. There were also imperial officers, standing tall, dressed in thick jackets and wide black pants, their writing instruments hanging from eye-catching ribbons around their necks. We found skeletons of animals that could have been deer or some other wild species next to ceramic troughs, the rings that held them to the columns still around the vertebrae of their necks. They were only bones and skulls, but quite a sight in that darkness. We discovered many other equally strange things as well. There were compartments with ornately decorated stone altars containing a variety of bronze receptacles (pitchers, vases, kettles, three-legged caldrons) covered in verdigris; rooms that must have housed beautiful silk curtains and cushions; a few large repositories of weapons; others containing thousands of
jiance
s; kitchens filled with clay animals such as game birds, pigs, or hares next to a wide variety of butcher's implements; even stables where the floor was littered with the bones of horses, practically reduced to dust. But by far the most beautiful of all were the chambers filled with sumptuous ceremonial outfits made of silk and pieces of jade. We didn't dare go into those rooms, afraid our mere presence would damage the delicate, two-thousand-year-old fabrics. We walked for a good while, impressed and also a little shocked by the things we were seeing. The closer we got to the burial mound, the higher the ceiling rose up over our heads, until it was disproportionately high. We soon discovered the reason for this: a long, earthen wall, plastered and painted red, prevented us from going any farther. The wall was so high that we couldn't see the top (although it must be said that Lao Jiang's torch wasn't exactly the best, casting a circle of light no more than ten or twelve feet).

“Now what?” I asked. “Left or right?”

Master Red pulled his
luo p'an
out of his pocket and consulted it. I don't know what those strange calculations were, but he kept running the nail of his index finger over the signs and characters on the wooden plate. He was extremely focused.

“The ‘Dragon's Veins’—” he finally murmured, lifting his head, satisfied.

“Chi energy lines,” Lao Jiang interrupted by way of explanation.

“—flow toward the south, but there is another, much weaker, that flows from east to west. If my Nine Star calculations are correct,” Master Red said, “we'll get to the main entrance sooner if we go to the right.”

“Don't ask me about the Nine Stars,” Lao Jiang warned the rest of us when he saw us all open our mouths to draw a breath and speak. “It has to do with feng shui and is so complicated that only the great experts can understand it.”

We thus continued walking and reached the corner of the wall about ten minutes later. We turned and continued our descent. There were large chips in the wall that exposed the packed earth behind. Much to my delight, we were stepping on pieces of red plaster as we walked, creating an ominous rasping noise in that dark solitude.

After quite some time—half an hour or a bit more, perhaps—we reached the end and turned left again. It couldn't be much farther to the door. My senses heightened: with a little good luck (or bad luck, depending on how you looked at it), we might see the remains of those servants who'd been speared by the crossbows, warning us of the danger. But when we finally got there, we saw nothing to indicate that an arrow had ever flown through that air. It was obvious, however, that someone had been there before us, because the doors of the monumental entrance were wide open. Nearly fifteen feet high, each door was adorned with an enormous rusted iron ring that hung from a door knocker in the shape of a tiger's head. We passed through them carefully, looking in all directions, entering a sort of vaulted tunnel some thirty feet long that looked like the ideal place for a surprise attack. It was a massive building of colossal proportions. No European king had ever had such a grandiose burial. Not even the pyramids in Egypt could compare.

The other end of the tunnel opened up onto a patio, or rather a huge corridor, white and gray tiles forming spiral and geometric patterns on the floor. By this point I was wishing there were some of those lamps with great quantities of whale oil that Sima Qian's Basic Annals said would never burn out. I was growing tired of the dark that filled the spaces around us, and I couldn't picture the magnitude of the structure with any clarity.

After crossing the enormous patio, we arrived in front of another wall identical to the first. The mausoleum was protected, it seemed, by two barriers capable of stopping any army in the world, however large it might be, even a modern army with its tanks and Big Bertha cannons. All that to protect a dead man? The First Emperor had undeniably been an extreme megalomaniac. There was another door of gigantic proportions in the second wall, although this one was a sliding door and the entire surface was covered in dangerous spikes. It had been left propped open with heavy bronze bars that the servants of Han must have put there; it was a wonder they'd withstood all that pressure for such a long time. Passing between the two, we came into another vaulted tunnel at the end of which were stairs leading up to an enormous black space. We walked up slowly, paying attention to every sound or sign of danger. Once we reached the top, quite simply, we saw nothing. The light from our torch was lost in the most lugubrious, empty silence.

“What do we do now?” my niece asked, her voice melting into that vast space.

No one spoke.

After a moment's hesitation, Lao Jiang walked over to the wall on the left and lifted the torch as high as he could. Then he walked over to the right and searched for something there, finally seeming to find what he was looking for.

“Come here, Biao,” he called.

The boy walked over to him, and the antiquarian knelt down. “Get up on my shoulders.”

Biao looked puzzled but obeyed, and before standing, Lao Jiang passed him the torch.

“Hold on tight,” the antiquarian said. “Master Red Jade, help me stand up, please.”

Master Red walked over and took him under the arm, pulling up as Lao Jiang struggled to rise with the boy on his shoulders, balancing precariously.

“Do you see a receptacle attached to the wall?”

“Yes.”

“Put your hand inside and tell me what you feel.”

Biao's face contorted on hearing those instructions, and he looked toward Fernanda and me in search of help but couldn't see us in the pitch black. Horrified, I watched him reach into that receptacle as if it were a snake pit.

“It's like … I don't know, Lao Jiang. There's a little metal stick stuck in something. It might be dried wood or something else that's grooved.”

“Smell the wood.”

“What?” the boy asked, appalled.

“Bring your hand up to your nose and tell me what the wood smells like.” The antiquarian's legs were shaking. He wouldn't be able to hold Biao much longer.

I was absolutely revolted as I watched the poor boy sniff whatever he had touched with his fingertips. Who knows how much filth had collected there over two thousand years?

“It doesn't smell like anything, Lao Jiang.”

“Put your hand back in!”

Biao obeyed. “I don't know….” He hesitated. “A bit rancid, I guess. Like rancid butter. I'm not sure, though. It's dry.”

“Put the flame up to the little metal stick.”
⁴⁸

“Put the flame where?”

“Bring the flame to the whale oil!” Lao Jiang shouted, unable to take any more. He was leaning heavily on Master Red, whose face grimaced with the effort.

Biao tipped the torch over the receptacle and, after what seemed like an eternity, lifted it back up and jumped down off poor Lao Jiang's shoulders. Fernanda and I watched the scene intently, in part because we couldn't see anything else. Our jaws dropped when a little gleam appeared in the receptacle and grew brighter until, with a splutter, a beautiful light appeared. Our eyes being so used to the dark, it was as if a powerful electric bulb had been turned on. We all let out a few oohs and aahs of admiration watching the fire run along a little channel on the wall, lighting other wicks every thirty or forty feet. We turned around, following the path of the flame with our eyes, when our gaze suddenly came upon the silhouette of an enormous building, a gigantic palace that blocked our view of the flame's advance. An interminable esplanade opened up before it, with a grandiose stone staircase divided into three levels and defended by two huge tigers sitting on pedestals. Somewhere out of our sight, the flame's path must have split into several branches, because as we looked at what was still the vague shape of a palace, two tongues of fire crept up on the left and right of the building, turned toward the tigers, and, once there, ran back toward us along the gray tiles that outlined a wide avenue bordered by pilasters.

We were spellbound, to put it mildly. The tops of the pilasters also lit up as the flames licked past, illuminating the middle and sides of the plaza, where there were two giant ponds. Both were so deep you couldn't see the bottom and must once have been filled with water and fish, undoubtedly connecting to the pentagonal pipes in the funeral chamber's drainage system. As soon as I saw them, I knew that's where we'd have come out if the dam on the Shahe River had still existed. The crossbows couldn't be far away. As the esplanade lit up like a fair, the flame returned to its starting place on the left side of the wall, having circled the entire area. It was an explosion of light, and now the palace was perfectly defined and lay stunning before us, with its three tiers of yellow walls and brown ceramic roof tiles. The only problem was the horrible smell of the whale oil as it burned. However, I did have to acknowledge the merit of its burning smoke-free.

Various other buildings stretched out on both sides of the palace almost as far as the eye could see. If the First Emperor had intended to fool everyone about the truth of his real burial place, he had undeniably achieved his aim. It went far beyond the scope of anyone's imagination.

Without uttering a word, we began the long trek down the gray-tiled avenue toward the palace. If anyone had been watching us from the roof, they'd have thought we were a row of ants marching down the middle of a great ballroom. Indeed, it took us quite a long time to cover the distance up to the terrifying gold tigers that guarded the staircase. Each was as big as a house and had enormous sharp nails and exotic scales down its back, making them rather repulsive-looking. From down below you had to tilt your head far back in order to see the building at the top of the last set of stairs.

“Are we going to climb up now?” Fernanda asked. Biao and Master Red startled at the sound of her voice; we'd been quiet for so long that it sounded like cannon fire.

“Is anything wrong?” I asked in concern.

Fernanda frowned. “I'm tired. It must be late. Why don't we have dinner here, where it's light, and sleep for a while before we go any farther?”

“I'd like nothing better, Fernanda,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders. “But this is no place to sleep, next to these horrible animals. We'll find somewhere better soon, I promise.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a mocking look on Biao's face. How mean adolescents can be, I thought, gathering patience. In any event, if we must reach the top of all those stairs, we needed to get started as soon as possible, so I walked over and led the pack. In order to boast about the incredible feat later, I decided to count each step: one, two, three, four … fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two … seventy-three, seventy-four … one hundred. First set completed. Everything was fine to that point, although my calf muscles did ache a little.

“Shall we carry on?” Lao Jiang encouraged, starting up the second set of stairs. Come on, let's go, I said to myself, and began to count again. But by the time we were nearing the end of that Chinese torture, I was ready to drop. It's one thing to walk and quite another to climb stairs carrying the weight of a travel bag. I was too old for this sort of thing. However proud I might have been of my renewed strength and newfound agility, my forty-something years were taking their toll: I sank down on the floor as soon as I reached the next landing.

“Are you all right, Auntie?”

“Aren't you
not
all right?” I groaned from that humiliating position. “You said you were tired before we started climbing.”

“Yes, well …” she replied. Her kind heart (in a manner of speaking) didn't want to hurt my pride.

“I'm fine. Just give me a minute to catch my breath, and I'll get up.”

“Will you be able to make it to the top?” Lao Jiang asked nervously. So I was the only one who thought I was going to die, is that it? All the others, including that old man with a white beard, were as fresh as spring daisies.

“I can help if you'll let me, madame,” Master Red murmured as he knelt in front of me.

“You can? How?”

“Allow me,” he said, taking one of my arms and pushing up the sleeve. With both thumbs he began applying light pressure to various areas. Then he moved over to the other arm and did the same thing. The pain in my legs disappeared completely. He continued, pressing spots near my eyes, on my cheeks, and finally he applied a slightly firmer pressure to my ears, using his thumbs and index fingers. By the time he stood up with a courteous bow, I was the freshest daisy in that garden. “What did you do to me?” I asked in astonishment, standing with the greatest of ease. I felt wonderful.