Shanghai (82 page)

But now this. A request to kill the present Emperor so that she should not be outlived by the little snot.

He approached her chamber and waved both her doctors and young “chamber men” aside. He wanted to speak to her alone, and no one at court dared risk his wrath so they obeyed him.

“Majesty?”

Her yellow, glaucoma-clouded eyes turned toward the sound of his voice.

He repeated himself.

Her twisted, swollen, arthritic hand moved slowly along the silk sheet and touched his leg—up by the thigh. She applied a bit of pressure and something resembling a smile came to her lips as she said, “Eunuch.”

He sighed. So she'd be rude to the end. “Yes, Majesty, your faithful eunuch—if you must.”

She opened her mouth but no words came. He leaned forward and placed his ear close to her lips. Her breath was foul. “My note. Did you get my note?”

“Yes, Majesty.”

“And?”

“And it will be done, Majesty. Rest now. Be assured, the young Emperor will not outlive his Dowager.”

She smiled. It was an awful thing to see. Several teeth were missing. Those that remained were clearly rotted. Her gums were almost black. Then she surprised him by kicking one foot free of the silk sheet, exposing an ancient bound foot to the air. Her lips moved, but once again no sound entered the still air of the bedroom. Then she tried a second time, and this time a whistle of sound came from her.

“Kiss my foot.”

* * *

CHESU HOI MADE SHORT WORK of the Emperor. He was a silly boy, and the girl the Head Eunuch had secured for him was riddled with smallpox. So the race to death was on, and everyone in the Forbidden City knew it. There were bets being placed at the highest and lowest levels of Manchu society. Even kitchen help placed wagers. The betting odds were that the Old Buddha would outlive her Emperor—and they proved to be right, by some twenty-six hours.

Unnoticed by the betting audience in the Forbidden City was another death in their midst. Less than an hour after Tzu Hsi finally died, Chesu Hoi, her faithful Head Eunuch, slipped into a little-used room down a long corridor and approached a beautiful wall hanging depicting the Hua Shan, the Holy Mountain upon which the First Emperor had given up his life. Pulling the wall hanging aside, he—for the second time in his long life—faced the beautifully concealed door. He reached into the pocket of his purple robe and took out the last communication he had received from his oldest friend, the Carver. It said simply, “We work and we work and when we can no longer work—we rest, old friend.” Chesu Hoi smiled at that thought, then he pushed the door. It slid smoothly open and he passed through it and down the long spiral staircase.

At the base of the staircase he walked toward the slender entrance. The sun was setting over the far mountain. He stood and watched the clouds move in the fading light. Then he leaned back against the cool wall and took the poison from his sleeve. He had lived long enough—and it was so beautiful here, a fine place to die.

He had somehow taken the poison, he didn't remember if it was before or after he thought how beautiful this place was. Then he thought, why should that matter? Then he thought no more as the beautiful vista in front of him seemed to enter him and he became part of it—or it part of him, he didn't know which. His last thought was,
What would the Carver do with such a vision? How would he capture it?
Then the answer came to him, and it calmed him.
In ivory, naturally. Narwhal would be best.

1908

Even as the Dowager Empress was breathing her last breaths, Jiang shooed the doctor away. “Enough. It's enough, old friend.”

The doctor, who had attended to her health for almost forty years, bowed slightly and left her alone with her three daughters. Her girls helped her into a beautiful white robe that her eldest daughter had made for her. Following the Jiang tradition, it was not made of silk, since, as the History Teller told, “silk comes from women's tears.” As Jiang lay on her bed and spread out the pure cotton robe, she remarked, “We've all had enough of women's tears now, haven't we?”

Her eldest daughter took it as a kind of rebuke for the tears in her eyes, but Jiang shook her head and said gently, “No, my dear, you honour me with both the elegance of the robe and your sorrow. You do me much honour, daughter.” She kissed her eldest on the forehead, then sent her away.

Next she turned to her youngest, Yin Bao, now a mother five times over but still a sassy girl with a lewd smile. Jiang held out a hand to her. The girl minced her way over on her bound feet.

“Silly, those,” Jiang said, pointing to Yin Bao's tiny, deformed feet.

“Perhaps, Mother, but much adored. Much adored.”

“Yes, yes,” Jiang said, “but I don't want any of my granddaughters to follow this foolishness.”

“They won't, Mother. My feet are of the past—my girls will be China's future.”

Jiang nodded. She had no doubt that with Yin Bao as their mother and the immensely wealthy Charles Soong as their father, these girls, whom she had first seen in the back of the Tusk's second portal, would have a serious role to play in Shanghai's future. Perhaps a crucial role.

“Five children is more than enough,” Jiang said.

“Perhaps, Mother. Perhaps.”

There was a silence between them as each recognized herself in the other. There were no tears between mother and daughter this time.

“Lives end,” Jiang said.

“Then others take their place,” Yin Bao answered.

For a moment Jiang felt slighted by the didactic nature of this thinking, then she chastised herself for such foolishness. “Go now.”

As Yin Bao left the room, Jiang's elegant middle daughter stepped forward and bowed low in the old
fashion. She was aging with extraordinary grace. Still thin and erect, her graceful carriage seemed to add a sense of history to her every step.

“Does your husband treat you well?”

“You know he does, Mother.”

“And are you happy with him?”

“He is a good husband. Thank you, Mother.”

Neither woman spoke, then Jiang said, “Your two daughters are lovely. They will make it hard for you to choose which should assume my name and enter the Ivory Compact.”

“No doubt, Mother, as Yin Bao made it complicated for you to choose.”

Jiang smiled briefly. It had ultimately not been a hard decision. “But answer my question, Mai Bao. Are you happy with your husband?”

“Happy? Yes.”

“But not in love, as you were with your scholar?”

“We were young, Mother.”

“Ah, yes, young,” Jiang said wistfully, and glanced at the wall hanging Yin Bao's father had given her, when she was young. Then she grimaced as the pain swelled in her belly.

“Mother?”

“Just pain, Mai Bao, just pain.”

“Can I get you something?”

“Soon. But not yet. First we need to talk. You have one great task left to do.”

“For the Compact?”

“For the Black-Haired people. The Sacred Tusk must be moved to safety once and for all. As the Manchus falter, people will be anxious to have some sign that they have been chosen by the heavens to rule. There are many parties competing to replace the Q'ing Dynasty, but
none of them in their own right are strong enough. None of them have the support of the people of the Middle Kingdom. But if one of those groups were to have the Narwhal Tusk, it could claim direct descent from the First Emperor and demand the right to rule. This must not happen! It must not. Gangster Tu is still in search of the Tusk, and we know that Tu has already met with Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek. Yin Bao's husband bankrolls Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the foolish man. All would value the Tusk. None must be allowed to possess it.”

“Agreed, Mother.”

“The Tusk must leave Shanghai. It must be taken far away.”

“How? There are eyes everywhere in Shanghai. It's so large—how could we move it without drawing attention?”

“As we did last time, with a diversion. Use your husband, Mai Bao. He is a powerful man—with a book.”

Mai Bao nodded slowly, then asked, “Where is the relic, Mother?”

Jiang told her daughter and the younger woman smiled. All those games of Go she had watched as the old man squirmed uncomfortably on the box bench, and it had never occurred to her.

“How soon should this be done, Mother?”

“Within three moons of my passing.”

“That won't be for years.”

Now it was Jiang's turn to smile. She touched Mai Bao's face gently and said, “Nonsense. Now take the stopper from that small flask on the table for me, please.”

Mai Bao did.

“Now give it to me.”

Mai Bao hesitated, then stepped forward and handed it to her mother.

“Now leave me. Even a whore has a right to a little privacy at the end—remember your promise to get the Tusk to safety.”

“I will remember, Mother.”

“Don't cry. It's time for me to go.” She tilted the viscous contents of the bottle into her mouth. Then she began to laugh.

“What could possibly be funny, Mother?”

“I said, ‘Even a whore has a right to a little privacy at the end.' I should have said, ‘
Especially
a whore has the right to a little privacy at the end.' Now leave me, Mai Bao. It is my time.”

Mai Bao joined her sisters in the anteroom. The eldest daughter was sitting on the box bench beside the ancient Go player. They rocked gently together. Then Yin Bao came and put her arm around Mai Bao and they too began to rock—and as they did, the poison took Jiang—and the world changed.

Mai Bao insisted that Silas not attend the final rituals of her mother's elaborate funeral. “I must do this alone, husband,” she said as she put on her white mourning robes.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because my mother was special. Her passing has been noted by everyone of importance in our city. There has been no privacy. My mother was, in the end, a private woman. And she would not wish you to be at my side, attracting the attention of yet more newspapermen. Do this for me, husband. Go to the synagogue you had built here and pray for her. But do not appear at the New Hundred Flowers Cemetery at my side.”

He agreed to the latter but not the former. Since he'd had the synagogue built in the Garden he had never
entered the building. Like his father, he felt a deep revulsion for what Richard referred to in his journals as the “ancient desert thinking” that drove all three of the major western religions. Silas remembered his father saying, “If the men who wrote those books could have thrown a pit from a plum onto the ground and in a short time had a plum tree, they would not have thought the way they thought. Toss a plum pit in the Yangtze and a plum tree will grow downriver. China is fecund. Even with its enormous population it is not an importer of food. The ground is rich. The people are practical. They are not fools lost in deserts.”

While Mai Bao attended the final interment rites for Jiang, Silas retreated to his study and took out the journals his father had penned so many years before. If he had looked up and to his left he might have seen the corners of the final three pages peeking over the edge of the uppermost bookshelf. But he did not look in that direction. Instead he opened the earliest of the journals and reread the first entry of a twelve-year-old Baghdadi boy upon arriving in the great city of Calcutta. Silas was once again surprised by the intelligence of the writing, but it was its lyricism that amazed him. His father had a way with words, and although Silas's Farsi was rusty, he was enchanted by his father's use of the flowing language and his insights into the crumbling majesty of Calcutta.

Silas flipped through the entries about his father and Maxi in the opium works. Silas had moved his company completely out of the opium business but still found it complicated to believe that the fortune he had inherited owed much to the intoxicating drug.

The newest Hordoon enterprise was banking, and because of Shanghai's questionable international
reputation Silas had decided to name his bank after both Shanghai and another Chinese city. He was still pondering which one and was presently thinking of calling the business The Shanghai Macao Bank.

He flipped forward and reread his father's account of his trip to China and meeting the dwarf Jesuit, Brother Matthew. When he finished reading the section he was struck by something else.

He pulled out the other journals and searched through them. Naturally there was no index, and Silas had never bothered to annotate the texts since his memory was so good, but he thought he remembered another mention of Brother Matthew in his father's writings. It took him several hours, but he finally found it. In his father's recollection of being millstoned there was the unusual mention of a dark dwarf figure offering him water in his agony.

Silas put down the journal and had a strong impulse to shove it aside, but he resisted it. He knew that he was in the presence of something important. His father, Richard Hordoon, as profoundly agnostic as any man Silas had ever met, had been “visited” twice by the squat figure of Brother Matthew. Silas realized that his father had probably been delusional with pain and dehydration while being millstoned, but nonetheless, the dwarf Jesuit made two appearances in his father's journals—and neither was during his opium voyages.

Silas took his noon meal in his study after a brief conference with his right-hand man, MacMillan. When he dismissed the large-boned Scot, he recalled his own problems with another Scot, his father's right-hand man. Now Silas understood why such men were valuable—no,
necessary
—for the running of a large business. They got things done. They were not particularly interested in
the niceties of interracial or even interhuman relations, so they bulled their way through problems that would have stopped most others in their tracks. They would have stopped him, Silas knew. Stopped him cold. These men were bulldozers, they moved the earth itself to get projects finished. For the briefest moment Silas wondered if there would be a time when men like MacMillan might be unnecessary to men like him. Then he sighed and put the thought aside. He lived in China. He thought like a Chinese man, a practical man, and every practical man knew that the Silas Hordoons of the world would always need the Evan MacMillans of the world.