Everything Under the Sky (12 page)

The Prince of Gui's message must have made complete sense to Mr. Jiang and Tichborne, because as soon as the antiquarian stopped reading, both of them smiled so happily, so exuberantly, that they looked like small children with a new toy.

“Do you understand, madame?” the Irishman jabbered. “We know exactly where the pieces of the
jiance
are hidden and can go after them whenever we want.”

“Well, to be quite honest, I didn't understand much of the message, but I gather that the two of you do.”

“Indeed, Mme De Poulain,” the antiquarian concluded. “And the first fragment, the one that Wan the scholar hid, is right here in Shanghai.”

“Go on!”

“According to the message in this book, Wan's fragment is underneath a bridge that zigzags in some Ming-style gardens in a place called Tung-ka-tow, at the Yangtze delta. We're at the delta. Tung-ka-tow was the name of the old Chinese citadel that gave rise to what is now Shanghai and still exists within what is known as Nantao, the old Chinese city. In the heart of Nantao, in what was Tung-ka-tow, there are indeed some old, abandoned, trash-filled gardens, Yuyuan Gardens, which they say were built by a Ming official to imitate the imperial gardens of Peking. There's almost nothing left of them now. They're in a very poor, dangerous area, and only a few curious
Yang-kweis
ever visit the teahouse on an island in the center of what must have been a beautiful lake.”

“And can you guess what the bridge that leads to that island is like, madame?” Paddy asked.

“It zigzags?”

“Precisely!”

“How lucky the first piece is here in Shanghai,” I pointed out. “That way, if we don't find it, it means the text isn't true and there'll be no need to take that trip, right?”

The two of them exchanged another complicit glance, clearly unwilling to give credence to my assertion. But another, more worrying thought was filling my head by the time they turned back toward me.

“How am I going to slip past the Green Gang's lookouts? If they really are following me everywhere, I'll never escape without their noticing. It's one thing to leave them waiting at the door, like now, and another to depart Shanghai right under their noses.”

“You're right, madame,” Mr. Jiang admitted. He remained lost in thought for a few moments, then looked back at me with a gleam in his eyes. “I know what we'll do. Talk to Mrs. Zhong and ask her to discreetly find some Chinese clothing for you and your niece. It shouldn't be too difficult for her to get a few things from the other servants. Your big feet will go a long way to making you both look the part. Try to do your hair in the Chinese style, although that may be difficult with your short, wavy hair, and be sure to make yourselves up so your Western eyes aren't too obvious. Finally, leave the house in a crowd of servants so you'll blend in with the group. If you do all this, I'm certain you won't be discovered.”

I must admit, I wasn't a bit pleased with the idea of dressing as a servant, but I kept my tongue.

“What do you say we end this meeting?” the fat Irishman bellowed from deep in his seat. “It's nine o'clock, and none of us have had dinner yet.”

He was right. I tended to follow the Spanish custom of eating late (never having gotten used to the European way), and I was getting hungry, so they must have been famished.

“Expect to hear from me, madame,” Mr. Jiang concluded, standing up energetically. “We've a great journey ahead of us.”

A journey of thousands of miles through an unknown country, I thought. A bitter smile appeared unbidden as I remembered my plan to buy our tickets on the first ship to sail from Shanghai in the coming days. I could still hardly wait to leave China, but if everything worked out, I'd be able to settle Rémy's debts and forever go back to my quiet life in Paris, my Sunday walks along the Left Bank. Fernanda's safety was what worried me most. When she found out she'd have to dress as a Chinese servant to travel by boat up the Yangtze in order to recover pieces of an old book, fleeing the same murderers who'd killed Rémy, she would protest vigorously, and rightly so. What could I say to convince her that she'd be in much more danger if she stayed in Shanghai? Then I suddenly thought of a solution: She could stay with Father Castrillo at the Augustinian mission while I was gone! It was perfect.

“Oh, no! Never!” she exclaimed, offended, when I proposed this to her. We were in the small study next to Rémy's office (there, as elsewhere in the house, everything was symmetrical and balanced), sitting in two chairs with high, slightly curved backs beside a folding screen that hid a
ma-t'ung.
I had gotten her out of bed when I arrived, and she was wearing a horrid nightgown under an even more hideous robe, her hair out of its usual ponytail. She looked like a specter from hell in the candlelight. As I ate a piece of duck quiche with mushrooms and kite eggs on the side, I outlined the legend of the Prince of Gui and the secret of the First Emperor's tomb, leaving out all those complicated Chinese names.

“There's nothing more to say,” I replied resolutely. “You'll stay at the mission under Father Castrillo's protection. I'll go to Mass with you tomorrow morning and ask him to do me this favor.”

“I'm going with you.”

“I said no, Fernanda. This discussion is over.”

“And I said I'm going with you.”

“Insist all you like, but I've made up my mind, and we're not going to spend the whole night arguing about it. I'm exhausted. I've had only one moment of peace since we disembarked, and that was this afternoon in the garden. I'm ready to drop, Fernanda, so let's not fight.”

She jumped up and stomped out of the building, her eyes filled with tears of rage, but I'd made my decision. I couldn't carry that weight on my conscience. The girl would stay in Shanghai with Father Castrillo. However, with a run of bad luck like I was having, I should have known that everything would change just so I wouldn't be given a moment's rest. My plan was ruined at five o'clock that morning when I was awoken by the light of a candle glowing in Mrs. Zhong's hands. The fish vendor had just arrived with the first catch of the day, and he brought an urgent message from Mr. Jiang:

“‘At the hour of the Dragon at the North Gate in Nantao.’ ”

I sighed, sliding my feet out of bed. “What is the hour of the Dragon, Mrs. Zhong?”

“At seven a.m.,” she whispered, using her hand to shield the flame and leaving me in the most ominous darkness, “at the old northern gate to the Chinese city.”

“And where's that?”

“Not far from here. I'll explain how to get there as you dress. Here's the clothing you asked me for last night. I'll go wake Mademoiselle Fernanda while you wash.”

I could hardly believe my eyes half an hour later when I looked at myself in the mirror: Wearing old pants, a faded blue cotton blouse, and a pair of light felt shoes, I looked like a complete stranger. Thanks to newly straightened bangs, cheekbones emphasized by makeup, and eyes lined using fine cotton swabs dipped in ink, I could easily have passed as a native servant or peasant. Mrs. Zhong added a few colorful necklaces that were actually amulets and brightened my pale face a little. I had an even harder time believing the vision of that robust Chinese girl who slipped into my room, similarly dressed and made up, although with a long ponytail down her back and canvas sandals on her feet. Fernanda's face shone with satisfaction, just as it had when we disembarked from the
André Lebon.
It was obvious that the girl truly needed freedom and excitement. My sister Carmen and I may have been opposite sides of the same family coin as far as temperament was concerned, but her daughter had most certainly inherited some of each.

We left the house at six-thirty that morning in the middle of a group of servants that Mrs. Zhong sent to the Chinese city to shop. We carried large, empty baskets on our shoulders to hide us even further in case anyone was watching. The street seemed deserted, although early-morning sounds could be heard from the nearby boulevard de Montigny. Strangely enough, I thought I saw the same slender, ragged old women who had been outside the Spanish consulate the night of the reception. It scared the living daylights out of me: Were
they
the Green Gang spies? If those were the same women—and they seemed to be—there was no doubt of it. I became increasingly nervous but didn't say a word to Fernanda, who was walking next to her lanky servant Biao, the boy who spoke Spanish. I didn't want her to do anything that might attract the old women's attention. Until we reached L’École Franco-Chinoise on the corner of Montigny and Ningpo, I kept casually turning my head to see whether they were following us, but I didn't see them again. We'd done it.

Soon we were in front of what used to be the so-called North Gate—that is, the rear entrance to the old walled Chinese city. Celestials believe that south is the principal cardinal point (the direction in which their compasses point, unlike ours), and thus the front doors of their houses and cities face that direction. The north, therefore, is the back in the Chinese concept of space. There was no gate anymore, nor were there any walls; it was simply a slightly wider street that led into Nantao but kept the old name. To one side, similarly dressed as humble Celestial serfs, were the nearly unrecognizable Lao Jiang and Paddy Tichborne, the latter wearing a broad, cone-shaped hat. I recognized them only because of the intent way they were looking at us. I later learned they didn't know us either. It was no wonder!

The servants from the house left without making a fuss or saying good-bye, taking the baskets from our hands and passing us the bundles containing our belongings, calmly continuing on through the narrow, humid, winding streets of the old city. That was when I realized that Biao was still standing next to Fernanda.

“What's he doing here?” I barked at my niece.

“He's coming with us, Auntie,” she calmly explained.

“Send him back to the house right now.”

“Biao is my servant, and he'll go wherever I go.”

“Fernanda!” I exclaimed, raising my voice.

“Don't shout, madame,” Mr. Jiang said as he started down the street. It was odd to see him without his gold nails or his lovely bamboo cane, dressed in that shabby beige tunic and Western hat.

“Fernanda!” I whispered, following the antiquarian as I held my niece by the arm so I could give her a pinch she wouldn't soon forget.

“I'm sorry, Auntie,” she whispered back without even flinching, “but he's coming with us.”

One day I would kill that girl and happily dance over her dead body. Right then, however, there was nothing I could do but apologize to Mr. Jiang and Paddy Tichborne.

“Don't worry, madame,” Lao Jiang calmly replied, surreptitiously scanning in all directions. “A servant who knows how to make tea will come in handy.”

Biao said something in Chinese that I couldn't understand. To me, Chinese phrases sounded just like the shriek of a butcher's steel as it passed over the teeth of a saw: a bunch of monosyllables that rose and fell and rose again in pitch and intonation, creating a strange tune made of conflicting notes.

Lao Jiang replied in his excellent French, “Very well, Little Tiger. You'll make the tea and serve the meals. You'll help your young mistress, obey orders from us all, and remain humble and silent. Is that understood?”

“Yes, venerable one.”

“Let's go, then. Yuyuan Gardens are just over there.”

We moved on, elbowing our way through the crowded, smelly streets filled with miserable little shops that sold everything imaginable: birdcages, used clothing, bicycles, goldfish, unrecognizable meat, chamber pots, spittoons, fresh bread, aromatic herbs, and so much more. I saw a couple of workshops that made both lovely furniture and coffins. Beggars, lepers without hands or noses, merchants, street musicians, tightrope walkers, peddlers, and regular customers haggled, begged, sang, or shouted, resulting in an awful pandemonium beneath the bright, colorful, vertical signs that hung down from on high with gold, vermilion, and black Chinese ideograms. I listened as Tichborne amused himself by translating the signs out loud: “Serpent Potions … Benevolent Pills … Tiger Tonic … Four Literary Treasures.”

The high walls of Yuyuan Gardens suddenly appeared as we rounded a corner. Two large dragons with open jaws and twisting mustaches protected the door, which was open and almost off its hinges. It was not until I passed through the entrance, right underneath them, that I discovered that they didn't have mustaches but in fact it was smoke billowing from their nostrils.

There were no longer any gardens inside. The land had been taken over by squalid little houses, huts made of sticks and cloth, crammed one next to another until not an inch of space was left. Dirty, naked children ran back and forth while women bent over to sweep the ground in front of their homes using bundles of straw. The smell was nauseating, and swarms of black flies buzzed frantically in the heat above piles of dung in the nooks and crannies. Everyone looked at us curiously, but no one seemed to realize that three of the five in our group were Big Noses, foreign devils.

“You
Yang-kwei
call this the Mandarin's Garden,” Lao Jiang commented as he walked confidently down sidewalks littered with garbage. “Did you know that the word ‘mandarin’ doesn't exist in Chinese? When the Portuguese arrived on our shores a few centuries ago, they used this derogatory word to refer to the local authorities, the government employees in charge, and the nickname mandarin has stuck ever since. But we sons of Han don't use it.”

“Still,” I pointed out, “Mandarin's Garden is a very pretty name.”

“Not to us, madame. To us the Chinese name Yuyuan is much prettier. It means ‘Garden of Peace and Health.’ ”

“Well, it doesn't seem very peaceful or healthy anymore,” Tichborne grumbled, kicking a dead rat onto a pile of garbage. Fernanda put her hand over her mouth to stifle a yelp of disgust.

“Pan Yunduan, the Ming official who ordered its construction four centuries ago,” the antiquarian proudly continued, “wanted to give his aging parents a garden just as beautiful as the imperial gardens of Peking, where they could enjoy peace and health in their final years. It became famous throughout the Middle Kingdom.”