A Cup of Light

13

She walked down the main street in Jingdezhen, her mind shimmering with excitement. She had part of the story now, at least. Her pots were the Wu Collection, forgotten, discovered, sold, and the center of local rumors since. This felt real to her; it clicked with the little she’d heard from Gao. Not only that, now she knew the Master of the Ruffled Feather… a teenage girl. She still couldn’t get over that one.

Her walk was giddy through the drifting clots of people on the sidewalks, past the open storefronts with their goods stacked up, mostly pots, pots of every size, quality, and description. Nothing great, most of it crude and cheap, much of it fang gu. This alone was enough to awaken the thrill in her. She scanned the stalls, a predator. When she saw a row of Chenghua chicken cups, she stopped and bent to look.

Unfortunately they were poor copies. She’d seen much better ones for sale in other places.

“You have good eyes,” the proprietor said approvingly from his chair. He touched his thick glasses for emphasis, a cigarette smoldering in his hand.

She looked up at him through the crowded forest of pots on the counter. “Yes, Chenghua chicken cups,” she said. “After the Ming prototype.”

“Well.” He made a small laugh. “They’re not Ming, exactly.”

“No,” she said, and thought, that’s an understatement. She picked one up and turned it over. It did have a reasonable facsimile of the Chenghua reign mark.

“Still, they’re old,” he assured her, “just not quite that old.”

“Old?” she said, playing along. “Let’s see. They’re not Kangxi using Chenghua marks-“”

“No. They are a little later than Kangxi. You have good eyes!”

“Not Yongzheng-“”

“No. But, xiaojie, they are nineteenth century. They are copies made in the nineteenth century. Trust me on this, they are.”

“Well. I could concede that they might be a few months old. Or maybe just a few weeks.”

“Good eyes,” he said again. This time they both laughed. She waved and stepped out of his stall and back into the flow of the sidewalk. Her cell phone went off and she flipped it open. “Wei.”

“It’s me.”

“Hi,” she said. Michael. The sound of his voice wrapped around her.

“I was wondering whether you were finished with work.”

She grinned, weaving through the crowd. “I am finished, actually. For today. But I’m not in Beijing. I had to leave for a few days. I’m down south. In Jiangxi Province.”

“Where?”

“A town called Jingdezhen. Near Nanchang. South of the Yangtze.”

“Are you on the porcelain trail?”

“I am.”

“Why there?”

“Oh, but this is the place.” She looked around at the honking, hill-climbing downtown, the cluttered jumble of little concrete buildings, the profusion of pots, all colors, all sizes, piled up, multiplying everywhere. “This is our holy city.”

He couldn’t hold in a joyful little toot of laughter. “Oh, really? Have you met the Maker?”

“Yes! As a matter of fact I have. And it turns out the real master is his granddaughter, who’s fifteen at most. God. She can really paint. One day she’ll be my undoing.”

“And why is that?” In a flicker his voice had dropped its bantering humor and now put out the warmth of wanting to know.

“Because what she makes looks so real,” Lia said.

“And what’s real and what isn’t could undo you?”

“Oh yes,” she said, meaning it. And then she thought, you too could undo me. If I crossed the line with you, and learned it was not real.

“Are you coming back?” he said.

“Yes, late tomorrow. I have more work in Beijing. I’m not done.”

“Good news for me,” he said.

“And for me. I’d love to see you. But not the minute I get back, if that’s okay. I have to go see the collection first. The next day, though-should I call you?”

“Just come find me,” he said.

“Okay, then.” She could feel that sneaky grin of interest in another person tugging at her face. She felt a rising sense of lightness in her midsection. “I think I know where you are.”

The Jingdezhen Airport opened only when there was a flight, and when Lia stepped out of her taxi there the next afternoon it was still locked up. In time, though, workers arrived and unlocked the flimsy glass door. Forty minutes later it could have been any little wood-benched airport, anywhere. Families sprawled, young women bounced babies, businessmen carried boxed porcelains and briefcases.

She sat down and watched a woman opposite her share one set of mini-headphones with a teenager, each with a plug in one ear. They were whispering along with a Cantonese pop tune. There was something sweet about them. They sat with their legs splayed out and their toes tapping. Sisters? Lia thought. Aunt and niece? They were so unconscious of themselves in the middle of the crowd, eyes far off, bonded to each other. She couldn’t stop looking at them.

“Miss Fan?” said a voice from her right.

It was the ah chan. “Mr. Bai,” she said. “How surprising.”

“Not really,” he said half ruefully. “There’s only one flight a week.”

“True,” she said. She could guess from his stacked lash-up of brocade boxes what business took him north, to Beijing. He had eight or nine of them in a twine-knotted net, with a handle he’d improvised on top. She wondered if he had the chicken cup.

“You return to Beijing?” he asked.

“Yes. This was just a quick visit for me. And you?”

“Business,” he echoed, and smiled.

“Good luck,” she said.

On the plane she saw him sitting some rows ahead of her with his friends. They were full of swagger, laughing, enjoying one another.

She slept for a while. When she awoke it was to the sound of the muddy intercom system, the voice speaking Chinese through waves of static. She tuned in to it. They’d be late in landing, and something about the situation on the ground in Beijing.

Now she was awake. Situation?

“What situation?” she asked the man sitting next to her.

“Bu da qingqu,” he said, I’m not clear. He had been sleeping too, his mouth open, his head collapsed on his shiny pinstriped shoulder, and had just jerked back to consciousness. He rearranged himself with a series of small, staccato throat-clearings and fumbled in his briefcase.

The ah chan Bai turned from the front of the plane and met her eyes with his, a simple nod of acknowledgment. She nodded back. He probably didn’t know anything either.

The plane landed and taxied normally but then stopped a few hundred yards from the terminal. First fifteen minutes, then a half hour, then forty-five minutes, everyone nervous and shifting in their seats. She could feel the fear. These days, anything during air travel that carried even the hint of strangeness plunged people into trembling alarm. Lia listened, eavesdropping on the Mandarin around her, and realized that no one knew what was going on. Whatever it was, it had happened after they left Jingdezhen.

Finally the engines roared up again and they rolled to the gate. Lia spilled out into a cavernous hall with the others, pouring through the crowd, hurrying over the mirror-polished faux-stone floors. All around she heard a rolling, burry wash of Mandarin spotted with pockets of English and other foreign languages, everything bouncing off the gleaming surfaces up to the high metal rafters above. Why were there so many people? In the press of faces she read agitation, fear, anger. She wished she didn’t have to hear. She wanted to take her hearing aids out. It was too much.

To the right she saw the sign EXIT AND BAGGAGE CLAIM. When they passed through the security doors they hit an even bigger crowd. The massive hall where people customarily came to meet arrivals was jammed with Chinese. She threaded through them in a thin line of exiting passengers, ducked through the doors, and ran outside.

Taxis were in a snarl. She picked one outside the hive and circled to it. A head taller than everyone else, obstinately Caucasian, she cut through the traffic at a sprint. The driver was too surprised to say no when she yanked open the door to his cab.

“Qu nar?” he said to her, Where are you going?

“Jiaodaokou Nan, Gulou Dong, neige lukou,” she said, Corner of Jiaodaokou South and Gulou East. He pulled out. They came to the airport exit, he paid the toll, and she waited until they were flying along the Jichang Expressway to speak again. “What is it, this thing that’s happened?” she said. “What’s going on?”

He looked at her in the mirror.

“At the airport.”

His eyes went back to the road. “A flight coming to Beijing crashed.”

“Oh. But that’s terrible.” She sat back like she’d been pushed. Phillip, she thought. Phillip had been bound for Beijing. “What airline?” she said.

“China International.”

“Oh. Awful.” To herself she was thinking: China International. A Mainland company. Phillip would never take a Mainland airline unless his flight had been canceled and he had no other options. However. Such things happened. She would call the office right away. “Did it crash on landing?” she asked, because she had seen no indications at the airport, no lights, no blinking chaos of emergency. Just all those people.

“No. It exploded over the ocean.”

“Oh. That’s very bad,” she said quietly, fearing the worst kind of scenario. “What happened?”

“Do I know? How can I know? No one says yet.” He pointed to the radio. “But some boats in the area saw a light streaking up. So people are already saying it was shot down.”

“Shot down?” She leaned forward in her seat, trying to tick through the possibilities in her mind. Which terrorist organization? A domestic insurgent group? “Who would have shot it down?”

“The U.S., is what people say.”

“The U.S.!” That is not remotely possible, she thought. How could it be in the interests of the U.S. to shoot down a passenger jet? Not the U.S. Not deliberately. She was sure of it. She looked up at the man behind the little Plexiglas partition so many of the taxi drivers used in hopes it would protect them from assault and theft. She could tell by the narrowing of his eyes and the tight look he threw into the mirror that he didn’t agree.

Well, she thought, he wouldn’t; there were deeper tides at work. Whenever U.S.-China relations got rough, the well of China’s nationalistic resentment seemed to open up again. It was always there. And even though there were times when the government encouraged such sentiment for its own reasons, the sentiment itself was real, a true net of memory under everything, memories of slights and wars and victimization by foreign governments-despite the manifest greatness of the civilization. Despite that. So galling. Yes, and wasn’t this one of the very things she had always so loved about this place: that historical memory was so long, so widely held. It was one of the ways art and culture had endured. Yes. And here was memory’s flip side, the chronic remembrance of guochi, national humiliation. “Whatever happened, it’s terrible,” she said.

He was looking at her in the mirror. “Are you American?”

“No,” she said.

“What then?”

“Me?” She bristled, covered it. “Xin Xi Lan ren.” New Zealander.

“Ei.”

“It’s a tragedy.”

“Jiu shi le ma,” he answered, Isn’t that so.

Talking to him had become uncomfortable and she leaned against the window, staring out at the walls and overpasses and buildings, the construction sites. Probably the crash was an accident. The Chinese government would investigate and they would find out and they would make an announcement saying so. At least that was what she hoped. She looked back at the line of the driver’s jaw, the hardness in his eyes.

It had better happen soon, because Phillip was on his way and they had to finish. Phillip. Her mind went back to its whirling. Phillip would never fly China International. Would he? Ten to one he was waiting at the guesthouse.

The driver took her to the mouth of Houyuan'ensi Hutong. She got out there and paid him, walked quickly away from the roaring boulevard and down the lane to the guesthouse.

She stopped at the front desk. “Phillip Gambrill from the U.S.? Has he checked in?”

The clerk’s expression told her he had not. “Would you look?” Lia said, and the woman flipped through the register and confirmed it: No, he had not arrived.

So Lia went to her room, put down her things, and called. She got Zheng’s voice mail. She listened to his beautifully modulated recorded greeting and then, when she heard the beep, experienced a moment of panic because she was afraid even to articulate what it was that she so feared. “Hi, just calling to double-check what airline Phillip was on and when he is due to arrive. I’m back in Beijing. Call me.”

She hung up and sat for a moment, just long enough to catch her breath. It didn’t matter when he was going to arrive, she couldn’t wait. She had to go to the pots. She still had a few good hours left.

She took a taxi along the willow-lined edge of Houhai Lake to the compound. The taxi driver was listening to the radio, a talk show on which people were pouring out feelings about the plane crash. People sounded wounded and resentful. “Aggressive acts by foreign countries should be opposed,” one man said. “China should not permit this. We should take a firm stand.”

But how do you know it’s a foreign country? she thought. How do you know it’s not an accident?

“Hegemony must be resisted,” said another caller.

Hegemony, hegemony, she thought, the powerful nation bullies the weaker; definitely a memory-marker word here. Once it had seemed like a catchphrase of the Communist era, but it still had lightning-rod power today.

“The issue is a national one! Eight members of the Chinese women’s Olympic team were on the plane!” said a woman caller.

Oh. Lia started forward. Had she heard that right? That was very bad.

People continued to cut in over each other, louder.

She wondered how the government was going to contain all this. Public opinion could no longer be ignored in China. That was the magical thing that had slowly happened. It was not like the old days when the government could control most of the flow of information. Now the government had to please its constituencies, now the government had constituencies, because people knew more, they had phones and faxes and the Internet and a media of sorts. Public debate was here, whether the government liked it or not. And it didn’t sound like the public was happy. They had already decided who was at fault and they wanted action.

“The government shouldn’t be so soft on foreign powers!” Now the voices were heated and broken up with static.

She got out at the villa, paid the driver, and ran across the humped bridge, along the stone paths, and into the building, through the rooms and the corridors and across the inner courtyard. She clattered in through the glass doors and snapped on the lights. It was all here. She felt completed just to be back with it.

Her phone rang.

“Wei,” she answered.

“Miss Fan.” Gao Yideng. “You have returned? Your trip was suitable?” She could hear the wire of consternation in his voice.

“My trip was most interesting, thank you. I found answers to a few questions. As for my return, it was only a little delayed.”

“You had no problems?”

“No. I’m with the collection now.”

“And you progress well? You are close to finished?”

“Not quite,” she said. “Almost.”

“Ah. One had hoped-“”

“Yes,” she said. “But my colleague Phillip Gambrill is due to arrive at any time, and we must look at about fifty pieces together. Then we’ll be ready. We’ll submit.”

“Good. Oh, and in case you have been wondering, Mr. Gambrill is at this moment arriving in Vancouver, British Columbia, to change flights.”

“Oh!” she said. She let herself go to a quick fall of relief. “Thank you! I had not heard from him.” She counted forward. So he’d be in Beijing in the morning.

“It’s nothing. Please. I must not keep you from your work.”

Gao hung up and turned to the man standing next to him in his office. It was Bai, the ah chan, hands deep in the pockets of his pleat-front pants. “The schedule is delayed,” Gao said. “The load’s not ready.”

“Ei, the appraiser is slow.”

“Not so slow.”

“But he’s a foreigner, right, the appraiser? That’s why he’s slow.” Bai gave a small, self-satisfied laugh.

Irritated, Gao looked sideways at the ah chan. The southerner presumed, he imagined he knew every corner of the situation, when he actually knew nothing. Above all he knew nothing about the American woman. So far she had surpassed what Gao had expected. Not just her knowledge-her will. He was impressed. Each time he had challenged her or placed an untruth in her path she had risen to him, easily, and never without a pleasing cover of courtesy. A worthy opposite. In another life she’d have been an ally or a friend. He’d have liked that.

He still needed Bai, so he gave voice to only a narrow refraction of what he thought. “You are mistaken.” He looked down to check his watch. “This art expert is highly knowledgeable.”

“Of course,” Bai said. He knew at once he’d stepped wrong. “So if not tonight, when do you calculate I shall load and leave?”

“Two days,” said Gao. “With luck.”

The ah chan showed nothing, but inside he frowned. He did not like the mood in Beijing just now, since the news had come out about the plane. He knew all the things that simmered underneath. Dao shan huo hai, hills of knives and seas of fire. Best to be gone from the capital as quickly as possible. “What about the vehicle?” he said hopefully.

“Ah! The vehicle is ready.”

“It’s so? Where is it?”

“Nearby. Would you like to go and see?” Gao Yideng said.

“Yes, through a thousand li of crags, if I had to,” he said, and Gao laughed.

They went out into the street, which faced the rear gate of the Forbidden City. The avenue streamed with cars, the ancient moat shone with still water and clumps of lotus, the thick red palace walls rose up. The basement of Gao’s little satellite office building held a contemporary art gallery; the top floor, a Thai restaurant.

Bai’s heart sang with the well-deserved sense of being at the center of things. He was here. He had arrived. Gao’s driver brought up the car. To Bai’s pleasure, Gao dismissed the driver, saying he would drive and they would go alone. The two of them climbed in front with a satisfying slam of steel doors.

From behind the wheel, Gao Yideng looked over at his grinning passenger. In the provincial man’s soft-lipped smile Gao saw everything: skittering joy, fierce ambition. Good, he thought, satisfied with this ah chan from the south, sure under his skin and in the center of himself that this man would take his eight hundred pots successfully out to Hong Kong.

Phillip Gambrill pressed his body as close as he could to the inadequate alcove of a pay phone in a large, roaring, open-domed atrium at the Vancouver airport. Between the stalls selling Vietnamese noodles and boxed planks of smoked salmon, across from the plazas selling fake native art and polyurethaned totems, he applied himself, straining against the noise, to the receiver. “I said, the flight’s canceled.”

Dr. Zheng was on the other end of the line. “What time’s the next one?”

“There is no next one,” Phillip told him. “Not now, anyway. All flights to Beijing are canceled. Shanghai too.”

“All flights?” Dr. Zheng repeated.

“All flights.” Phillip turned, twisted the cord under his arm, looked into the crowd. People standing, walking, sitting, sleeping. Families making islands with luggage and dozing children. Faces full of fear; it was back again. Something bad had happened. There were the relentless booming announcements, the flight numbers, the static names of other world cities, the white-peaked, evergreen-carpeted postcard prettiness of western Canada.

“Let me talk to our travel people. I’ll call you back.”

“I’ll keep my phone.” Phillip knew the Hastings travel people wouldn’t tell Zheng any different. Right now no one could get him from anywhere in North America to Beijing. Hanging up, shouldering his bag, he gave up on it and walked back into the crowd.