Everything Under the Sky (15 page)

During the first three hours of our trip, Lao Jiang and Paddy chatted about the antiquities business; Biao, embarrassed, had disappeared after vomiting; and Fernanda, bored, stared out the window. Even more bored, I wound up following her lead. I would much rather have read a good book (the trip to Nanking took twelve to fifteen hours), but it was an unnecessary weight to carry in my bundle. Outside the window huge fields and rice paddies separated small, thatched-roof villages. I didn't see a single inch of uncultivated land other than roads and the many large clusters of graves that were everywhere. I remember thinking that in a country with 400 million inhabitants, where ancestral tombs are never forgotten, the graves of the dead could one day take over all the land that supported the living. I had a feeling that thousands of years of tradition in a primarily agricultural people who still followed their ancient customs were going to be far too steep a mountain for Sun Ya-sen's fragile young Republic to climb.

Four hours after we left Shanghai, the train pulled in to the station in Suchow with a long screeching of brakes. Lao Jiang stood up.

“We're here,” he announced. “It's time to disembark.”

“But weren't we going to Nanking?” I protested. There was a priceless look of surprise on Tichborne's face as well.

“Indeed, that is where we're going. A sampan's waiting for us.”

“You're crazy, Lao Jiang!” the Irishman bellowed, grabbing his bundle.

“I'm prudent, Paddy. As Sun-tzu says, ‘Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest. In raiding and plundering be like fire, in immovability like a mountain.’ ”

Biao, who it seemed had spent the whole time sitting on the floor just outside the compartment, opened the doors and looked at us in astonishment.

“Fetch the bags,” Fernanda ordered with mistressly determination. “We're getting off here.”

There were no rickshaws in Suchow, so we had to rent litters. Once inside mine, I pulled the curtains and steeled myself to spend the next while bouncing around in that confessional-shaped box. Oh, how comfortable the rickshaws in Shanghai now seemed! We didn't go into the city of Suchow itself but skirted around the north until we came to a river I initially thought must be the Yangtze. Its perfectly straight banks did seem odd, however, and it turned out to be the Grand Canal. Construction on this, the world's oldest and longest man-made waterway, which crossed the entire country from north to south and was nearly two thousand kilometers long, began in the sixth century b.c. By the looks of it, our train had veered south, and we now had to go back north to continue our journey to Nanking.

I think it was on the Grand Canal, shortly after we boarded the flat-bottomed barge where we would spend the next three days, that I realized just how crazy our undertaking was. We were on one of a row of boats held together with thick ropes, transporting salt and other products to Nanking. Enormous water buffalo hauled the whole convoy as dozens of men toiled in front of them to clear any sediment that may have accumulated to impede their progress. And all the while, insane hordes of mosquitoes sucked our blood twenty-four hours a day, without respite even during the cool nighttime hours. Fernanda and I slept on the last boat, the one that swung from side to side the most. At times the canal seemed to sink into the earth, so high were its artificial banks. The food was disgusting, the sailors’ shouts unbearable as they ran from bow to stern of the caravan all day and night, the smell nauseating, and the hygiene nonexistent. Not one of those hardships seemed to make any sense at the time. What were we doing there? What god had disrupted the natural of order of things such that my niece and I, born into the bosom of a good family from Madrid, had smeared our eyes with ink to make them look oblique and sat hour after hour on a smelly boat heading up the Grand Canal as mosquitoes bled us dry and passed on who knew what fatal illnesses?

Since I couldn't cry unless I wanted to ruin my disguise, just before we came to Chinkiang (where the Grand Canal and the Yangtze meet) on the second day of our trip, I decided that the only way to stay sane would be to draw. I took out a small Moleskine notebook and a red hematite pencil and jotted down everything I saw: the barge's wooden planks— the knots, the joints, the cracks—the water buffalo, the sailors working, and the piles of raw material. Fernanda used her time to torture poor Biao with tedious Spanish and French lessons. Tichborne went on a rice-wine binge that honestly lasted from the first night until the very day we arrived in Nanking. Lao Jiang, meanwhile, sat strangely still, contemplating the water unless it was time to eat or sleep and every morning when he did these strange, slow exercises. I was quite impressed as I secretly watched him: Completely absorbed, he would lift his arms as he picked up one leg and turn very slowly, in perfect balance. The whole thing took little more than half an hour and was really quite funny.

“They're tai chi exercises,” Biao explained very seriously. “They help your chi, your life force.”

“What nonsense!” Fernanda burst out contemptuously.

“It's not nonsense at all, Young Mistress!” the boy exclaimed nervously. “Wise men say chi is the energy that keeps us alive. Animals have chi. Rocks have chi. The sky has chi. Plants have chi,” he chanted passionately. “The very earth and the stars have chi, the same chi is in every one of us.”

Fernanda was not so easily persuaded.

“That's just silly superstition. If Father Castrillo heard you, he'd give you a good whipping!”

A shadow of fear crossed Little Tiger's face, and he immediately fell silent. I felt sorry for the boy and thought I should defend him.

“Every religion has its beliefs, Fernanda. You should respect Biao's.” Lao Jiang, who hadn't seemed to be listening as he did his strange tai chi dance, slowly lowered his arms, put on his glasses, and stood still, looking at us.

“The Tao is not a religion, madame,” he finally declared. “It's a way of life. You people have a hard time understanding the difference between our philosophy and your theology. Taoism was not invented by Lao Tzu. It has existed for a very long time. Four thousand six hundred years ago, the Yellow Emperor wrote the famous
Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen,
the most important Chinese medical treatise on human energy still in use today. In this treatise the Yellow Emperor says you are to go outdoors when you rise in the morning, let your hair down, relax, and move your body slowly, with attention. In this way you will attain health and longevity. That is Taoism: meditation in movement. The external is dynamic, while the internal remains static. Yin and yang. Would you consider that a religious practice?”

“Of course not,” I replied respectfully, while inside I was thinking, Looks like I've followed the Yellow Emperor's advice my whole life, because all I can do when I get up in the morning is slowly drag myself around for a good long while!

Lao Jiang waved his hand as if to say he was done with his tai chi that morning and certainly done explaining Taoism to a couple of foreign women.

“I think now is a good time,” he said, “to finally take a look at our piece of the
jiance.
What do you think?”

What did we think! Sadly, Paddy was sleeping off a hangover under a straw roof two boats ahead, but Lao Jiang didn't seem to care. He strode over to his bag and carefully pulled out the box we had found in the lake, then came and sat down in front of me. (Fernanda was beside me and Biao to her right, a little ways off, but as far as the antiquarian was concerned, neither warranted widening the circle to include them.) He lifted the heavy, rust-encrusted lid. A beautiful bright yellow silk scarf was wrapped protectively around a bundle of six fine bamboo slats, about eight inches long, held together by two faded green threads.

Lao Jiang pulled off the yellow cloth and set it back in the box after carefully studying it. He held the bamboo pieces in the palm of his hand with the utmost reverence and attention, using his body to protect them from the sun. Then he unrolled the bundle and set it on the tails of his tunic over his lap. He looked at it impassively for a minute and then, perplexed, turned it around so I could examine it, too. The three slats on the right were covered in Chinese characters. The other three, however, simply looked dirty, as if the scribe had shaken an ink-soaked brush over them. With a long, bony finger, Mr. Jiang pointed to the ones with writing on them.

“It's a letter and quite hard to read because it's written in a very complex form of classical Chinese. The old
zhuan
style, as I told you in Shanghai, was used until the First Emperor ordered that the writing system be standardized across the empire. Luckily, I have a good deal of experience working with ancient documents, so unless I'm mistaken, it's a personal message from a father to his son.”

“And what does it say?”

Lao Jiang turned the pieces back to face him and began to read out loud:

“‘I, Sai Wu, send greetings to my young son, Sai Shi Gu'er’ “—The antiquarian paused. “There's something very strange here. Sai Shi Gu'er, the son's name, literally means ‘orphan of the Sai clan,’ so Sai Wu, the writer, must have been either very ill or condemned to death. There's no other explanation. Further, the words ‘orphan of the clan’ suggest that the Sai lineage is ending, that only the boy is left.”

“What a shame.”

“‘I, Sai Wu, send greetings to my young son, Sai Shi Gu'er, wishing him health and longevity. By the time you read this letter’ “—Lao Jiang stopped yet again, lifted his head, and looked at me desolately. “These characters are very hard to read, especially because some of them are smudged.”

“Do the best you can.” I was too curious to accept the fact that the antiquarian might not be able to translate the message.

“‘By the time you read this letter,’ “he continued, “‘many summers and winters, many years, will have passed.’ ”

“All that is written on those three bamboo slats?” I asked in disbelief.

“No, madame, just in these first few characters,” he said, pointing halfway down the first slat. It was obvious that the Chinese wrote from top to bottom and from right to left (two thousand years ago, at least) and that their ideograms expressed much more than our words. “‘You are a man now, Sai Shi Gu'er, and I grieve that I will never know you, my son.’ ”

“The father was going to die.”

“Most certainly. ‘All three hundred members of the Sai clan will soon cross the Jade Gates and journey beyond the Yellow Springs because of me. Only you will be left, Sai Shi Gu'er, and you must avenge us. I am thus sending you to safety with a trusted servant, to far-off Chaoxian
¹⁷
and the home of my old friend Hen Zu. He recently lost a son your age, and you will take his place in the family until you reach adulthood.’ ”

“I gather that to ‘cross the Jade Gates’ and ‘ journey beyond the Yellow Springs’ means they're all going to die?” I asked, horrified. “Three hundred family members? How can that be?”

“It was common practice in China until not that long ago, madame. Remember what the Prince of Gui said in the legend: Eighteen hundred years after this letter was written, the Ch'ing dynasty had nine generations of the Ming family murdered. The number of dead could have been similar, or even higher. Not only would a criminal be killed in punishment, but also every last one of his relatives, no matter how distant. A clan would thus be pulled out at the root, like a bad weed, preventing new shoots from springing up.”

“And what crime had this father, Sai Wu, committed to warrant such punishment? You just said he felt responsible for this misfortune.”

“Patience, madame.”

I was an adult and could contain myself, but Fernanda and Biao, their eyes popping out, weren't going to wait much longer before pouncing on Lao Jiang and demanding that he continue reading. My niece was about to burst with impatience. I think the only reason she held back was that the antiquarian frightened her a little. If I'd been the one reading, she would have already clawed my eyes out.

“‘According to a good friend of the unfortunate General Meng Tian, the eunuch Zhao Gao said that Hu Hai, the new Ch'in emperor, intends to bury every one of us who worked on the Original Dragon's mausoleum now that he has crossed the Jade Gates. I, Sai Wu, was responsible for this magnificent, far-off project for thirty-six years, ever since Minister Lü Buwei charged me with this task. My entire clan must therefore die in order to keep the greatest secret of all, the one I will reveal to you now so you can avenge your family, your relatives. Our ancestors will not rest in peace until justice is served. My son, what torments me most at this time of adversity is that I will not even be afforded the consolation of resting in the family vault.’ ”

Mr. Jiang paused. Not one of us said a word. The extent of the punishment imposed on an innocent family because one of its members had faithfully served the First Emperor was unbelievable.

“You must be almost at the end, aren't you?” I finally asked. I was still stunned by how much could be written in such a small space using those strange Chinese characters.

“This piece is very revealing,” the antiquarian mused, ignoring me. “On the one hand, it mentions Meng Tian. He was a very important general in Shi Huang Ti's court, responsible for many of his military victories, and the First Emperor placed him in charge of building the Great Wall. The general and his entire family were sentenced to death in a will forged by the powerful eunuch Zhao Gao, who is also mentioned in the letter. Zhao Gao had worked for the First Emperor and wanted to take control when he died. This same forgery also forced Shi Huang Ti's oldest son to commit suicide and named Hu Hai, the weaker second son, as emperor. As you can see, our
jiance
must have been written at the end of 210 b.c., when Shi Huang Ti, otherwise known as the Original Dragon, died.”

“So it's”—I did a quick mental calculation—“a little over two thousand one hundred years old.”

“Two thousand one hundred and thirty-three, to be precise.”

“Then what happened to Sai Wu?”