Everything Under the Sky (28 page)

Biao and I had some time before dinner, so I asked him to pose and quickly sketched a portrait of him that he adored. It didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, partly because the light was terrible but mostly because the boy wouldn't stop fidgeting, scratching his head or his ears, coming over to look, and asking me questions.

“I'd like to learn how to draw,
tai-tai,
” he commented, turning his head toward the door where the light came in.

“You'll have to study hard,” I warned as I let my wrist sweep to draw the part in his hair. “Tell Father Castrillo when we get back to Shanghai.”

He looked at me worriedly.

“But … I don't ever want to go back to the orphanage!”

“What nonsense is this?”

“I don't like the orphanage,” he grumbled. “Besides, I'm Chinese and should be learning about my own country, not about the
yang-kwei.
”

“I don't like you using that expression, Biao,” I protested. Lao Jiang's nationalist pride appeared to be bearing fruit. “I don't think Fernanda or I deserve to be called ‘foreign devils.’ We've never offended you in any way as far as I recall.”

He blushed. “I wasn't talking about you,
tai-tai.
I was talking about the Augustines at the orphanage.”

I changed the subject and kept drawing.

“By the way, Biao, what happened to your family? I've never asked you about them.”

Biao's face contorted strangely and he began to nervously chew on his lower lip.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “You don't have to tell me anything.”

His lanky body seemed to want to fold in on itself until it disappeared.

“My grandmother died when I was eight,” he began to explain, staring straight at the door. “I was born in Chengdu, in the province of Szechwan. My parents and siblings were killed during the riots of 1911, when Dr. Sun Yat-sen overthrew the emperor. The neighbors took our lands and threw my grandmother out. She managed to save me by hiding me in a basket of clothing and boarding a sampan to Shanghai at night. We lived in Pudong. My grandmother begged, and as soon as I learned to walk, I …”

He paused for a moment, unsure. I couldn't imagine what he'd say next, and my hand hovered in the air, pencil in hand, above my sketchbook.

“Well, like all children in Pudong, as soon as I learned to walk … well, I had to work for the Green Gang, for Pockmarked Huang,” he murmured. “I was one of his messengers until Father Castrillo found me.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. In fact, I was speechless. What sort of life had the boy lived?

“We'd wait in the alley behind the teahouse
³⁹
where Huang did business,” he went on. “He'd call us when he needed something picked up or delivered. He paid well, and it was fun. But my grandmother died, and one day, when I was ten, I ran into this huge foreigner who asked me where I lived and if I was alone. When I told him, he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me across Shanghai to the orphanage run by the Spanish Augustines. It was Father Castrillo.”

Images of Biao jumping like a monkey over the Green Gang assassins in Yuyuan Gardens flashed through my mind, as if this memory might somehow be important to the boy's history. Poor Little Tiger, I thought. What a difficult life.

“Don't be ashamed of having worked for the Green Gang,” I said with a smile. “We've all done things that hurt to remember, but it's best to just carry on and not make the same mistakes again.”

“Are you going to tell Lao Jiang?” he asked worriedly. “No, I won't tell anyone anything.”

The servants arrived with dinner not long after I had finished sketching Little Tiger's big eyes. The poor boy hadn't said another word while he posed but got quite excited when I showed him the drawing. That was when I realized that my niece wasn't back yet and that not only was it dinnertime, but it was pitch black outside. I gave Biao the drawing, which he accepted with a smile and put away, and sent him to find Fernanda. If we were going to stay in Wudang, I'd have to speak with her teachers about sending her home at a decent hour. It was obvious she didn't know when it was time to stop her marvelous exercises.

The two came back drenched, and Fernanda was covered in mud up to her ears. Who would've guessed two months ago that my prim, proper, snobbish niece would become a splendid, athletic young woman who wasn't afraid of a little dirt? The change in Fernanda was spectacular, and for the sheer fun of it, I so wished my mother and poor sister could have seen her right then.

That night turned out to be rather strange. Something woke me in the wee hours, and I couldn't determine what it was until I was fully awake: It had stopped raining. Total silence enveloped the house, as if nature had exhausted itself and sunk into a peaceful slumber. Since I didn't think I'd be able to fall back asleep, I got up quietly so as not to bother Fernanda, wrapped myself in a blanket, and went out to the patio to sit and look up at the sky for a while. Much to my surprise, I saw Biao coming out of Lao Jiang's study, carrying a lantern and walking sleepily toward the stairs.

“Where are you going, Biao?” I whispered.

The boy jumped and looked wide-eyed in every direction.

“Down here,” I said.

“Tai-tai?”
he asked fearfully.

“Of course! Who else? What are you doing up at this time of night?”

“Lao Jiang asked me to wake you. He wants to see you upstairs.”

“Now?” I asked, perplexed. It must have been two or three in the morning. The only possible explanation was that the antiquarian had found something important in his texts.

Little Tiger waited for me at the top of the staircase, holding the light high so I could splash my way up the wet stairs in my sandals. He then lit the way to the study. I peered in cautiously to see what the antiquarian was doing and saw him in the candlelight, absorbed in whatever he was reading. He didn't even notice when I came into the room and stood behind him. It was only when I pulled the blanket tighter around my frozen shoulders that he lifted his head and turned around, startled.

“Elvira! That was quick! I'm glad you got here so fast.”

“I'd already been woken up by the silence. Why haven't you gone to bed?”

He didn't reply. There was a look of contained excitement on his face.

“Let me read you this,” he said, gesturing for me to sit down.

“You've found something important?”

“I've found the answer,” he burst out with a nervous laugh, pulling one of the many candles on the table closer to the book in front of him. Biao brought a stool and set it next to Lao Jiang, then withdrew into a corner of the room. I sat down, my stomach in knots. “This book is a bibliographic gem that would be worth a mint on the market. It's called
The True Secrets of the Kingdom of Pure Enlightenment,
and it was written by a Master Hsien during the reign of the fourth Ming emperor in the mid–fourteenth century.”

“Just tell me the answer to the abbot's puzzle!” I cried out impatiently.

“Your dear Ming T'ien has been telling you the truth. This book has only four chapters, and I bet you can guess what they're called.”

“‘Happiness,’ ‘Longevity,’ ‘Peace,’ and ‘Health’?” I ventured.

Lao Jiang laughed. “No. You would have failed the test.”

“‘Happiness,’ ‘Longevity,’ ‘Health,’ and ‘Peace’?”

“Exactly,” he said. “Let me summarize: According to Master Hsien, Taoists are to be happy first and foremost. This happiness will lead them to wish for a long life in order to enjoy that well-being and satisfaction for a very long time. Using Taoist techniques to attain longevity, some of which you already know, they also attain good health. This is very important, because they can't be happy if they're in poor health. Therefore, when they're happy and they know that they're going to live a long, healthy life, thanks to their daily efforts to develop certain physical and mental qualities, then and only then do they aspire to peace, an inner peace that allows them to cultivate the Taoist virtue of
wu wei.
”

“
Wu wei
?”

“Inaction. It's a difficult concept for you Westerners to grasp. It means not acting in the face of life events.” He softly stroked his forehead, searching for a way to explain that wasn't as simple as just calling it idleness. “
Wu wei
isn't the same as passivity, although it might seem that way to you now. Given that his mind is at peace, a wise Taoist lets things happen as they will, without interfering. By renouncing the use of force, heightened emotions, and ambition for material things, he discovers that trying to affect destiny is like stirring up the water in a pond and muddying it. If, on the other hand, his action consists of not stirring up the pond, leaving it be, the water will remain clear or will clear up on its own. The inaction of
wu wei
doesn't mean not acting, but rather always doing so with Taoist moderation, withdrawing discreetly once the job has been done.”

“That bit about moderation, did you throw that in for any particular reason?”

He looked at me, amused, and shook his head. “The extent of your distrust is truly amazing, Chang Cheng,” he said, using the nickname I'd been given on the Mysterious Mountain. How had he heard it when he'd been shut up in the study all day long? “So says the
Tao Te Ching,
as you know, in a beautiful piece that was offered to you as a gift. Well now, we'd better send word to the abbot and ask for a meeting to see whether or not we're correct.”

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” I asked, horrified, realizing then that control over emotions and
wu wei
would never be a part of my life.

“It's nearly dawn,” he replied. “The abbot will have been performing the morning ceremonies for hours already.”

“I've had absolutely no sense of time since we arrived in Wudang,” I admitted. “Those double Chinese hours with animal names just confuse me.”

“That is the true Chinese way of telling time. The only place it's no longer used is in territory occupied by you Westerners,” Lao Jiang replied as he got to his feet. “Biao, go to Purple Cloud Palace and ask for an audience with the abbot. Say we've solved the puzzle.”

“Perhaps I should visit Ming T'ien to confirm the last two ideograms before we speak with the abbot,” I proposed.

“Do,” he agreed, stifling a yawn. “I think I'll be able to sleep for a while, knowing we have the answer. I wouldn't have been able to do it without your help. I'm glad you encouraged me to leave feng shui and look in Taoist texts from Wudang. Soon we'll have the third and final piece of the
jiance.
”

Surprisingly, my niece was absolutely indifferent to the news. Perhaps, deep down, her transformation had merely been one of self-interest.

“So we'll be leaving Wudang soon?” she asked, furrowing her brow. “I'm not ready to leave my classes yet.”

During breakfast the sun struggled to break through layers of thick clouds on that first morning without rain.

“Biao and I could stay here,” she stubbornly proposed. The boy's eyes lit up, but he didn't dare say a word. He'd just come back from the abbot's palace with the news that a servant would come to accompany us to the meeting at the hour of the Snake.
⁴⁰

“You will go where I go, Fernanda,” I declared, mustering patience. I was the one who had wanted her to stay in Shanghai with Father Castrillo to keep her out of harm's way, and she was the one who had fought not to leave my side. Now she was willing to watch me leave with Lao Jiang and the soldiers just so she could stay in Wudang. “How can I leave you all alone in this Taoist monastery out in the middle of China?”

“Well, I don't know why not, Auntie. We're safer here than anywhere else. Besides, you don't need Biao and me to find the tomb of that darned Emperor Ti Huang … whatever.”

“The case is closed, Fernanda,” I said, raising my hand in the air. “I will not allow you to stay here. Off you go to your classes, but you're to return with Biao as soon as he comes to get you.”

She didn't hesitate and strode out of the room without finishing her breakfast. A sleepy-looking Lao Jiang appeared just then. That was the first morning I'd done tai chi on my own, and although I'd made one mistake after another, the solitude in those serene mountains was magnificent.

“Ni hao,”
the antiquarian said. “What news have you got?”

“In an hour—a Western hour, that is—one of the abbot's servants will come to take us to Purple Cloud Palace.”

“Ah, perfect!” he exclaimed happily, sitting down to breakfast. “Didn't you want to visit Ming T'ien first?”

“We were just leaving, weren't we, Biao?” I replied as I got out of my chair. I wasn't sure the old nun would be on her satin cushion that early, but I had to try. It might be the last time I saw her.

We walked down the still-wet cobbled streets, puffs of steam coming out of our mouths. Monks dressed in long black tunics were sweeping the corridors, bridges, patios, palaces, and steps of Wudang, trying to get rid of all the accumulated mud. The cold was revitalizing, and the views after so many days of rain were positively intoxicating. As we passed a path along a cliff, a carpet of white clouds lay several hundred feet below us. Ming T'ien's temple was visible in the distance, across a bridge, on a slope. Wudang was so enormous that the scenery changed each day. This was a city, a mysterious city, in which peace filled your lungs with every breath of fresh air. Deep down, my niece was right: I wouldn't have minded staying awhile to reflect calmly on everything I'd seen and heard, but above all to reconsider the things I'd learned and dismissed perhaps a bit too quickly and with too many built-in prejudices.

Just then my heart leaped with happiness when I saw the little figure of the old nun sitting on the portico.

“Hurry!” I urged Biao, and we both quickened our pace.

As soon as we reached her, much to my surprise, Ming T'ien gave us a stern reprimand.

“Why are you always running from place to place?” she spit out angrily. Biao's soft tone when interpreting was far from the foul-tempered one she had used to address me.