The Trail to Buddha's Mirror (6 page)

She stared at him sympathetically.

“What kind?” she asked.

“Black.”

She pointed at a blackboard behind her on which about a dozen brands of coffee were written.

“Uuuuhhh,” said Neal, “Mozambique Mocha.”

“Decaf?”

He felt a sudden burst of courage and defiance.

“Caf,” he said. “Double caf, if you have any.”

She came back a few moments later and handed him a Styrofoam cup.

“You really should drink decaf,” she said as she looked pointedly at his attire. “Really. You looked wired.”

“I
am
wired.”

“See?”

“I
like
being wired.”

“It’s an addiction.” “It is.”

“Try herbal,” she said with great sincerity. It was clear to Neal that she was convinced he was dying.

“Herbal
coffee?”
he asked.

“It’s so good.”

“And so good for you?”

“You should meditate,” she said as she poured him his poison. “Unwind.”

“Nah, then I’d just have to get all wound up again.”

He took his black, caffeinated Mozambique Mocha and sat on a bench in the square. He sipped at his coffee and wondered what to do next. He had been in Mill Valley for at least five minutes and neither Pendleton nor Lila had shown up yet. Didn’t they realize he was on a tight schedule? Oh, well, he thought, when in Mill Valley…. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his collar, set his coffee down, and leaned back, raising his face to the late-afternoon sunshine. Maybe I
should
meditate, he thought. Maybe if I meditate hard enough I can make Pendleton appear. Better yet, Lila.

Her name wasn’t Lila, it was Li Lan. She wasn’t a prostitute, she was a painter. And she wasn’t as beautiful as she was in the snapshot. She was far more beautiful.

Neal stared at the two photographs of her on a poster at the Terminal Bookstore. The poster promoted a showing of her paintings at a local gallery called Illyria. “Shan Shui by Li Lan,” it read, and included black-and-white photos of several paintings: large, sprawling landscapes featuring mountains mirrored in rivers and lakes. The photos of Li Lan were arranged so that in one she appeared to be contemplating her work, while in the other she stared out at the viewer. It was this image that captivated Neal. Her face was open and unprotected. All the lines of sorrow and happiness were there for him to read. Gentleness lit her eyes.

We never learn, he thought. We assumed she was a hooker because of who
we
are.

He had only seen the poster because he had quickly become bored with meditating and wandered over to the bookstore to entertain himself. The bookstore turned out to be also a café and cabaret and who knows what else, and it had a bulletin board announcing local events, one of which was Li Lan’s show.

The Illyria Gallery was right across the street, three doors down from the coffee shop. He had been looking right at it as he sat on the bench.

He didn’t dick around browsing for books or consuming java or eating. Instead, he bought a copy of Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night,
found a phone booth with a directory, and called the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. He got put on hold several times before he got a staffer who was willing to have a phone conversation with a student doing a research paper.

The bleached wooden door to Illyria was set back between two plate-glass display windows that featured large acrylic landscapes by Li Lan. The interior was a large, whitewashed, open room in which canvas partitions had been hung at strategic angles to display paintings and prints. A few bleached wood stands held small sculptures, and brightly colored printed textiles hung from the high ceiling like sails in a low breeze. A larger version of the poster he had seen was set on an easel just inside the door.

A woman sat behind a desk writing in a ledger book.

“‘And what should I do in Illyria?’” Neal asked her.

“Buy something, I hope,” she answered. She was small and maybe in her early forties, with thick, shiny black hair pulled back severely from her face. Her blue eyes were also shiny; she had a small, aquiline nose and thin lips. She wore a black jersey dress and black ballet shoes.

Neal couldn’t tell whether she was impressed with his erudition, but she sure did notice the “I Left My ♥ in San Francisco” bag.

“Can I show you something?” she asked.

Like the door, maybe?

“Are you the owner?”

“I am. Olivia Kendall.”

“Olivia … hence the gallery’s name.”

“Not many people who walk in here make the connection.”

“Twelfth Night
might be my favorite Shakespeare. Let me see…. ‘When my eyes did see Olivia first—Methought she purged the air of pestilence….’ How’s that?”

She stepped out from behind the desk.

“That’s pretty good. What can I do for you?”

“I came to see the Li Lans.”

“Are you a dealer?”

“No, I just have a strong interest in Chinese painting.”

Since about an hour ago.

“Good for you. We’ve sold several. Tomorrow is the last day of the show.”

“I’m not sure I’m buying.”

“You’ll wish you had. Two of the purchases were museum buys.”

“May I look at them?”

“Please.”

Neal didn’t know a lot about art. He had been to the Met twice, one on a school trip and once on a date with Diane. He didn’t hate art, he just didn’t care about it.

Until he saw Li Lan’s paintings.

They were all mirror images. Steep, dramatic cliffs reflected in water. Swirling pools in rushing rivers that showed distorted images of the mountains above. Their colors were bright and dramatic—almost fierce, Neal thought, as if the paints were passions fighting to escape … something.

“Shan Shui,” he said. “‘Mountains and Water,’ a reference to the Sung Dynasty form of landscape painting?”

Like the nice lady at the museum told me?

Olivia Kendall’s face lit up with surprise. “Who
are
you?” she asked.

I don’t know, Mrs. Kendall.

“And she certainly shows a
southern
Sung—
Mi Fei
—influence,” Neal continued. He felt like he was back in a seminar, discussing a book he hadn’t read. “Very impressionistic, but still within the broader frame of the northern Sung polychromatic tradition.”

“Yes, yes!” Olivia nodded enthusiastically. “But the wonderful thing about Li Lan’s work is that she has pushed the ancient technique almost to its breaking point by using modern paints and Western colors. The duality of the mirror images reflects—literally—both the conflict and harmony between the ancient and the modern. That’s her metaphor, really.”

“China’s metaphor, as well, I think,” Neal said, grateful that Joe Graham wasn’t there to hear him.

Neal and Olivia slowly examined the paintings, Olivia translating the titles from Chinese:
Black and White Streams Meet; Pool With Ice Melting; On Silkworm’s Eyebrow
—this last showing a narrow trail up a steep slope beneath the reflection of a rainbow.

Then they came to
the
painting. A gigantic precipice was shown reflected in what seemed to be the fog and mist of the bottomless chasm below. On the edge of the cliff sat a painter, a young woman with a blue ribbon in her hair, looking down into the chasm, and her mirror image—the saddest face Neal had ever seen—stared back up from the mists. It was Li Lan’s metaphor: a woman sitting serenely with her art and at the same time also lost in an abyss.

The face in the mists was the focal point, and it drew Neal’s eye down and in, down and in, falling off the precipice until he felt as if he were trapped in the abyss, looking back up at the face of the painter, up the impossibly steep cliff. In the cool of the northern California dusk his hands began to sweat.

“What’s this one called?” he asked.

“The Buddha’s Mirror.”

“It’s incredible.”

“Li Lan is incredible.”

“How well do you know her?”

Yeah, lady, how well? Well enough to tell me where she is? Who she’s with?

“She stays with us when she’s in the States.”

Careful, Neal, he told himself. Let’s be nice and careful.

“She’s not a local, then?”

“To Hong Kong, she is. I’d say she comes over here every couple of years or so.”

“Is she here now?” he heard himself ask, wondering as he said it if he was moving too quickly.

He felt more than saw Olivia Kendall’s curious stare and kept his eyes focused on the painting.

“Yes, she is,” Olivia said carefully.

What the hell, he decided, let’s roll the big dice.

“I have a great idea,” Neal said. “Let me take all of us out to dinner. Mr. Kendall, as well.
Is
there a Mr. Kendall?”

Olivia looked at him real hard for a second and then started to laugh.

“Yes, there is definitely a Mr. Kendall. There is also a Mr. Li, so to speak.”

“I’m afraid I don’t catch your drift.”

Okay, okay. Just tell me that she’s otherwise engaged, all right?

“Are you interested in her paintings or in
her?
Not that I blame you—she’s drop-dead gorgeous.” She reached out and patted his arm. “Sorry. You’re a little young, and she’s very involved.”

Bingo.

Okay, Neal, he told himself—think. How about
The Book of Joe Graham,
Chapter Three, Verse Fifteen: “Tell people what they want to hear, and they’ll believe it. Most people aren’t naturally suspicious like you and me. They only see one layer deep. You make that top layer look real, you’re home free.”

He looked Olivia Kendall right in the eyes, always a useful thing to do when you’re lying.

“Ms. Kendall,” he said, “these are the most beautiful paintings I’ve ever seen. Meeting their creator would make me very happy.”

She was an art lover, and he was counting on that. She wanted to believe that a young man could find art so moving that he had to meet the artist. He knew it had far less to do with her perception of him than with her perception of herself.

“You’re very sweet,” she said, “but I’m afraid we have plans. In fact, Lan is making dinner tonight. Some Chinese home cooking.”

“I’ll bring my own chopsticks….”

“Seriously, who are you?”

“That’s a complicated question.”

“Shall we begin with an easy one? What’s your name?”

That’s not as easy as you might think, Olivia. My mother gave me the “Neal,” and we just sort of settled on the “Carey.”

“Neal Carey.”

“Now that wasn’t so hard. And what do you do, Neal Carey, when you aren’t inviting yourself to dinner?”

“I’m a graduate student at Columbia University.”

“In …”

“New York.”

“I meant what’s your major?”

“Art history,” he said, and regretted it as soon as the syllables were out of his mouth. That was a really stupid mistake, he thought, seeing as everything you know about art history is scribbled on a spiral pad in your pocket. Joe Graham would be ashamed of you. Oh, well, too late now. “I’m writing my thesis on the anti-Manchu messages encoded in Qing Dynasty paintings.”

Oh, God, was it Qing or Ming? Or neither, or all of the above?

“You’re kidding.”

Oh, please, don’t let that be “You’re kidding” as in, “You’re kidding, that’s what I did
my
thesis on.”

“No.”

“That’s hopelessly remote.”

“People often say the same thing about me.”

“How
did
you come to be interested in something so obscure?”

“I revel in the obscure.”

Which is true, he thought. My real thesis is on the themes of social alienation in Smollett’s novels. So feel sorry for me and invite me to dinner.

“Listen,” Olivia said, “tonight really is a private sort of evening. But I’m sure Lan will come in tomorrow to help close the show down. Could you come back then? Maybe we could have lunch.”

Yeah, and maybe you’ll tell Li Lan and Dr. Bob about the interesting visitor you had in the shop and they’ll take off. Maybe you’ve already seen through my act.

“I’m going home tomorrow morning.”

“Sorry,” she said. Then, as if offering a consolation prize, she warbled, “Did I give you a brochure? It has photos of the paintings.”

She reached over to one of the pedestals and handed him one of the slick, four-color catalogs.

“Thank you. Do you think you could ask Li Lan to sign this for me?”

“You can ask her yourself. Here she is.”

I didn’t even hear the door, I’m so out of shape, Neal thought.

Then he stopped thinking altogether and fell in love and it was just like falling off the edge of a cliff into the clouds. Falling toward Li Lan in the mists.

Olivia said, “Li Lan, Neal Carey. Neal Carey, Li Lan. Neal is a big fan of your work.”

It took her a moment to work out the slang, then she flushed slightly, struggling to set down the two grocery bags she was holding. She put them down on the floor and then bowed her head ever so slightly to Neal. “Thank you.”

Neal was surprised to feel himself also blushing, and more surprised to notice that he bowed back. “Your paintings are beautiful.”

She was small, and a little thinner than he would have thought from her pictures. She was wearing a paint-stained T-shirt and black jeans, and still looked elegant. Her hair was pulled back into a single ponytail tied with a blue ribbon. Those gentle brown eyes sparkled like sunshine on autumn leaves.

“I went to the city,” she told Olivia, “to do some special shopping for dinner tonight.”

“You should have had Tom or Bob bring you. I’ll call Tom to come pick you up.”

“I can walk,” she said. “It is a beautiful day. And they are busy speaking about garden.”

“I’m calling them.”

Li Lan nodded her head. “According to your thought.”

“Neal is a student of Chinese art history,” Olivia said.

Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. Shit.

“Truly?” asked Li Lan.

Well, no.

“He is doing research on Qing Dynasty painting. Something political.”

Had he been alert, had he been in true working shape, he might have noticed Li’s slight wince on the word
political.
She turned those eyes to him as she said, “Ah, yes … Chinese paintings can mean many different things at same time. Picture of single flower is picture of single flower but also picture about loneliness. Qing picture of—what is word?—goldfish … shows just fish, not fish in water. Perhaps is about Chinese people with no country. Perhaps is about just goldfish.”