Everything Under the Sky (20 page)

We weren't able to say good-bye to Tichborne, because the doctor was still operating on him when we left the barracks. Not much of his right knee remained, we were told. Even if it healed, he'd always limp. I had the impression it was extremely unlikely that he'd meet up with us later on our trip; his situation seemed quite dire. In any event, and even though I had always found him repulsive, I had to admit he'd been very brave during the confrontation, and the children and I would always be thankful for his protective gesture.

Our sampan was an authentic houseboat that, compared to the barge we'd taken to Nanking, could almost be considered a luxury hotel: It was big and wide, with two enormous sails that opened like fans, a couple of rooms inside the cabin—covered by a beautiful red roof made of sagging, woven bamboo—and a deck flat enough for Lao Jiang and me to do our tai chi. The only problem was the river current, which at times was quite rough. The skipper was a member of the Kuomintang, and the sailors under his command were two of Captain Song's soldiers, charged with looking after us until we reached Hankow. There, another military detachment would take care of our security. Lao Jiang was afraid the Green Gang might attack us on the river, so he had the soldiers watch the riverbanks day and night while he studied all the boats we passed, whether Chinese or Western, with an eagle eye. He hoped that heavy traffic on the river would make us invisible or that Pockmarked Huang's men would have thought we'd taken the Nanking-Hankow Express. For my part, whenever we passed a large city, I was afraid he'd say, “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,” and off we'd go, carrying our bundles, leaving the sampan to take some other, much less comfortable, means of transportation. But days passed, and we arrived in Hankow without any difficulty.

I remember one night of that trip in particular as I sat in the bow, engulfed by the incense the skipper used to ward off mosquitoes, watching the oil lamps sway to the rhythm of the current. In the distance you could hear the water as it lapped up on shore. I suddenly realized I was tired. My Western life seemed far, far away, and everything of value there seemed absurd here. Traveling has that magic power over time and reason, I thought, forcing us to break the habits and fears that have become thick chains around our necks without our even noticing. I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else right then, nor would I have exchanged the breeze off the Yangtze for the air in Europe. It was as if the earth were calling out to me, as if, all of a sudden, the immensity of the planet was begging me to explore it, to not lock myself up again in that petty little circle of trickery, ambition, and jealousy that is the world of painters, gallery owners, and art dealers in Paris. What did I have to do with all that? Now they were mandarins in the original sense of the word: pedantic officials who decided what was art and what wasn't, what was modern and what wasn't, what the public should like and what it shouldn't. I was sick of it. I just wanted to paint, and I could do that anywhere, without competing with other artists or having to fawn over gallery owners and critics. I would search for the First Emperor's tomb in order to settle Rémy's debts, but if it all turned out to be nothing more than madness and we were unsuccessful, I would never be afraid again. I would start all over with nothing. Surely the nouveau riche in Shanghai, so snobbish and chic, would pay well for a Western painting.

That very special night for me was September 13. Two days later we arrived in the port of Hankow. Shortly after disembarking, Fernanda and I learned from the international cables they received at Kuomintang headquarters that General Primo de Rivera had led a coup d’état in Spain on that day. Backed by the far right and with King Alfonso XIII's blessing, he had dissolved the democratically elected constituent assemblies and declared a military dictatorship. Martial law, censorship, political and ideological persecution now reigned in our home country.

W
e hadn't even arrived, and the antiquarian was already anxious to leave Hankow. He said that it was a dangerous, violent city and we weren't safe there. Indeed, not only were there sampans, junks, tugs, and merchant steamships crowding the river, there were also a good number of huge warships from various countries, a sight that both terrified me and also convinced me we had to leave as soon as possible. However, it seemed we had to wait until the Kuomintang provided us with a detail of soldiers for protection. The captain of our sampan was clearly nervous, gripping the wheel and maneuvering through the fog, steering clear of those enormous metallic hulls.

Hankow,
²⁶
located at the confluence of the Yangtze and one of its largest tributaries, the Han-Shui, was the last port upriver from Shanghai, over nine hundred miles away, before the great Blue River became impassable. For commercial reasons, Western powers declared the city a free port and built magnificent Concessions. Unfortunately, these had experienced nothing but bad luck: The city was practically razed to the ground during the 1911 revolution to overthrow Emperor Puyi, and just seven months before we arrived, there had been serious clashes and killings between members of the Kuomintang, the Kungchantang (the Communist Party, founded just two years prior in Shanghai), and the military troops that controlled the area.

The two soldiers who had accompanied us from Nanking, dressed as sailors, ran barefoot alongside our rickshaws to Kuomintang headquarters, their hands on the revolvers hidden beneath their clothes. I was beginning to dislike being in the hands of a militarized party more than attacks by the Green Gang and would much rather have found lodging in some insipid
lü kuan.
Still, I was well aware that we needed their protection. Now that we were back on dry land in Hankow, how much longer until the thugs who'd had been chasing us since Shanghai attacked again?

We passed crumbling old walls and were leaving the once-elegant British Concession when a superb Victorian building caught my eye, its façade destroyed as if by gunfire. This beautiful, Colonial-style architecture was everywhere, and everywhere it had been blanketed in an unfathomable destructive hate. As had happened in Europe not that long ago, the war in China had forced people to revert to vandalism, vulgarity, and barbarism. Hankow was a powder keg. We definitely needed to leave this place as soon as possible.

Luckily, everything was already prepared at the barracks. The commander had received a telegram, and our transportation, gear, and escorts had been ready and waiting for several days. It was then we heard of the coup in Spain, and I had to explain the scope of the disaster to my ignorant niece. Seeing that there was a phone, Mr. Jiang asked if he could call headquarters in Nanking to check on Paddy Tichborne. Unfortunately, the news was not good.

“There's gangrene in his right leg, and they're going to have to amputate,” Mr. Jiang said when he joined us in the back patio, where the horses were stabled. “They transferred him to a hospital in Shanghai just yesterday, because he refused to be operated on in Nanking. It seems he created quite a ruckus when they gave him the news.”

“That's awful,” I murmured, deeply saddened.

“Let me give you your first lesson in Taoism, madame: Learn to see the good in the bad and the bad in the good. They're both the same thing, like yin and yang. Don't worry about Paddy,” he recommended with a smile. “He'll have to forgo alcohol for a while, and later, when he's better, he can write about the experience in one of those insufferable books of his, and it will do very well. Europeans love stories about the dangerous Orient.”

He was right. I loved them, too, especially the ones by Emilio Salgari.

“But what if he says something he shouldn't about the First Emperor's tomb?”

Lao Jiang narrowed his eyes and smiled mysteriously. “We still don't have the third piece of the
jiance,
and no one really knows where the mausoleum is. Besides, our friend Paddy has many months of painful recovery before he can even begin to think about writing,” he added. “Are you ready, madame? We've a long journey ahead of us overland to the Qin Ling Mountains and the ancient Taoist monastery of Wudang. I estimate it'll take about a month and a half to cover the eight hundred
li
between here and there.”

A month and a half? How long was a
li
? I wondered. A mile? Half a mile?

“It's about two hundred and fifty miles from Hankow to Wudang, heading westnorth,”
²⁷
the antiquarian clarified, reading my thoughts. “But it's not an easy route, madame. We'll cross a valley for several days and then have to climb to the top of Wudang Shan.
²⁸
That's where the Prince of Gui sent his third friend, the master geomancer Yue Ling, with the last piece of the
jiance,
remember?”

Unexpectedly then, the antiquarian wrapped the fist of one hand in his other, held it at face height, and bowed low before me.

“However, madame, I must apologize before we leave,” he declared, remaining in that humble pose. “You were right in Nanking when you said I was using you to achieve my goals. Please forgive me. Nevertheless, I would also like to take this opportunity to ask your forgiveness in advance, since this is something I will continue to do. I appreciate your company, your Western point of view, and the things you are trying to teach me.”

Despite my doubts about his sincerity, “I accept your apology,” I replied, imitating both hands and bow, “and I thank you for all that you are teaching me. However, I would also like to take this opportunity to ask you to rise above your disdain for women and treat my niece with the same consideration you give our young servant. This is very important to us and would place you in a position more befitting the world we live in today.”

Lao Jiang gave no indication of being upset by this—just the contrary, perhaps. We thus left Hankow in good spirits, with a new understanding that ultimately made the long, grueling trip a little less disagreeable.

Our convoy consisted of ten horses and mules loaded with boxes and bags, five soldiers dressed as peasants, and the four of us who walked alongside. Neither Fernanda, Biao, nor I knew how to ride, and Lao Jiang did but preferred to walk. Walking, he said, increased your energy, blood flow, and resistance to illness. It also allowed you to study the elegant, internal architecture of nature up close, and therefore study the Tao. While they were not the same, one was a reflection of the other. We had just left Hankow through Ta-tche Men Gate when I realized that my niece was no longer the chubby, unattractive girl in a prissy black bonnet who'd shown up at my house in Paris that day. She was swimming in her blue servant's outfit and now wore a Chinese hat. Fernanda had lost several pounds, and her figure, though hard to discern under the cotton clothing, seemed much more girlish. Just like her mother's and grandmother's, Fernanda's weight was a result of gluttony, a sin she was completely safe from on the trip, because our Chinese meals were quite frugal. The sun had also darkened her face, giving it a healthy glow and making her disguise that much more believable.

Not wanting to draw attention to ourselves, we took everything we needed in the boxes loaded onto the horses and mules: dried food, bricks of pressed tea, barley for the animals, fur hats, heavy coats for the mountains, woven soft bamboo mats for sleeping, blankets, rice wine, something called “tiger liquor” for the cold, and spare canvas sandals. There was also a first-aid kit—a Chinese first-aid kit! It of course contained nothing known in the West, but instead things like ginseng, reed tisanes, roots, leaves, dried begonias for the lungs and respiratory problems, Six Harmonies pills to fortify the organs, and an elixir called the Three Immortals to treat stomach and indigestion ailments. We hoped we could avoid the towns along the way, skirting all of them by means of endless detours. The Green Gang had presumably lost our trail after being defeated in Nanking, and we were unlikely to see them again, but it was best to go as covertly as possible, just in case. There was always a chance they might already know our next destination and be there, waiting to attack as soon as we reached the monastery. Mr. Jiang was convinced we'd be out of danger as soon as we reached Wu Tang: There wasn't an army in China that would dare attack a group of Taoist monks who were masters in the martial arts.

“Shaolin?” I asked the antiquarian as we walked on a wide embankment between terraced plots one afternoon, the setting sun in front of us. We were approaching a little village called Mao-ch'en-tu in the middle of a small valley.

“No, madame. Shaolin is a very aggressive, external style of Buddhist martial art. The monks in Wudang practice internal, Taoist styles intended for defense. These are much more powerful and secret, based on strength and flexibility in the torso and legs. The two techniques are completely different. According to tradition, the tai chi they practice at Wudang Monastery—”

“They practice tai chi in Wudang?” I interrupted excitedly. I'd been studying these exercises with Lao Jiang over the last few weeks while my niece played Wei-ch'i with Biao. Not only had I discovered a love for it, but the required concentration calmed my nerves and the physical effort was conditioning my poor, out-of-shape muscles. The slow, gentle, fluid movements—which had names as exotic as “Grasp Bird's Tail,” “Strum the Pei Pa” or “Wild Stork Spreads Wings”—were much more exhausting than any normal exercise. What I found most difficult, however, was the strange philosophy surrounding each and every one of the movements and the breathing techniques that went along with them.

“In fact,” Lao Jiang explained, “tai chi as we know it today originated in Wudang with Zhang Sanfeng, one of its most famous monks.”

“So then it didn't come from the Yellow Emperor?”

Lao Jiang smiled, holding on tightly to his horse's reins. “All tai chi comes from the Yellow Emperor, madame. He gave us the Thirteen Essential Postures that Zhang Sanfeng worked on at Wudang Monastery in the thirteenth century. Legend has it that one day Zhang was meditating out in the countryside when he suddenly saw a heron and a snake begin to fight. The heron was futilely trying to impale the snake with its beak while the snake was unsuccessfully trying to strike the heron with its tail. Time passed, and neither of the two exhausted creatures had managed to vanquish the other, so they each went their separate ways. Zhang realized that flexibility was the greatest strength and could be beaten by gentleness. As you know, the wind cannot break the grass. As of that moment, Zhang Sanfeng devoted himself to applying this discovery to the martial arts and dedicated his life as a monk to developing the Tao, achieving incredible martial and healing abilities. He studied the Five Elements, the Eight Trigrams, the Nine Stars, and the
I Ching
in depth, all of which allowed him to understand how human energy works and how to attain health, longevity, and immortality.”