A Cup of Light

7

Lia worked through eighty pots that day. By now she had found a table and pushed it over to the window under natural light and covered it with extra felt. She had her lights set up, her camera on its stand. She had everything she needed to appraise treasure from heaven.

Only she was alone. There was no one she could whisper to, no one she could call, no one with whom she could exult.

If she could tell anyone she would tell her friend Aline. She looked at her watch. In L.A. it was three in the morning now. Aline would finally be asleep in her secluded place in Coldwater Canyon. She would have drunk too much, smoked too much, and stayed out with her friends too late, then driven home to her true friends, her Ming jars and her Song plates and her Qing jardinieres, not to mention her collection of masterfully faux Etruscan statuary. Aline had a wonderful eye for fakes. Her prize was a knockoff Stradivarius, which she liked to leave out, on the sideboard, its bow carelessly across it as if its owner had just left off playing for a moment. Oh yes. The very thought made Lia shiver with pleasure. Aline would have the breath knocked right out of her if she heard about this. She would get on a plane and fly to Beijing instantly. Lia would be unable to stop her. What fun it would be to call her, to dial her number and wake her up and tell her how many drop-dead pots were in this room, in Beijing, right now, right in front of her.

But she couldn’t call Aline. She couldn’t call David. “David is doing well,” Zheng had told her. “The Tokyo staff is with him. You concentrate.” Okay, she thought. And took a deep breath and lifted the lid on the twenty-third crate.

Bai made it out of bed at noon. The damp heat of his studio decided for him in the end. The sheets were twisted around his legs when he finally climbed out of them, his face puffy and creased. He dressed and walked in a gravel-crunching rhythm down the hill to town. It was cool, where he was going. It was dark.

He pushed open the door of the Perfect Garden Teahouse. “Ei,” he said to the proprietor, and passed through the next set of doors, to the tearoom.

His friends, his circle of smoking, serpentine men, were already there, talking in a mix of Mandarin and local dialect. He crossed to them. Bai loved to wake up at the Perfect Garden. He liked to be in this dimness when it was past noon and the hot sun was shimmering the sidewalks. To drink tea here, to smoke. To talk about the pots coming in and going out. To lounge on the leather-seated chairs around the tables, to smell the dank, sour note of beer from the night before.

They also liked to be here at night. Often they’d be waiting for the shipment of one man or another to arrive. There was always an agreeable gamble in it. One never knew exactly what the piece would be-how fine its condition, how rare its pedigree. Each time was like the first, a new chance, starting over.

They would drink and smoke through the waiting and the wagering and the laughing banter, then like a clap from heaven it would be time and they would roam outside, milling together. Cars would be waiting. They’d go to the river dock, or the back of the train depot, or to any one of the many warehouses down bumpy dirt-track roads out of town where they waited late at night to meet trucks.

Pots came from all over China. Some had been bought from families who had saved them as heirlooms, or zu chuan. Others had been robbed from graves, especially the more ancient pieces-but never by the ah chans themselves. Plundering tombs was low work. Men like Bai would never do it. It was with reluctant distaste that they even did business with the men who did. Whatever the source, when the goods came into Jingdezhen they would ride out that dusty track at night to meet them, bumping down between the red loam fields, the rice paddies, and the muddy river.

The truck might be small and the load light. Sometimes those cargoes were the most precious. The lid would come up, and then one of them, say Qing-Enamel Kan, would lift out the wares for which he was known: a snuff bottle in the shape of a gourd, painted in overglaze enamel in a curling design of leaves and vines and smaller gourds.

“Hoi moon,” someone would breathe.

Someone else: “Mark and period?”

And Kan would turn it over. A four-character Qianlong mark in seal script.

Who would know, who would be able to connect it? It might be Old Zhang, the most erudite among them. Zhang might say: “See the form of it-the double gourd, covered with a design of smaller double gourds. See the color, the midpoint between tea and gilded gold. Both these aspects are like to a much larger piece, much older, a bronze double gourd inset with jade. It was in the collection of the Shenyang Palace. And in the reign of Qianlong this sort of tribute to it was made.”

“Jiu shi,” they would say, admiring, Just so.

But on this day in the teahouse, they all sat in a circle, slouched low with their feet spread out. All the phones were on the table. Bai ordered tea, five-spice eggs, and preserved cucumber. Old Zhang shook a cigarette from his pack and extended it, along with a relaxed monosyllable of welcome. Bai took it and uttered the briefest, most implicit thanks. They were friends. Most things had already been understood between them.

He took a drink of tea, lit his cigarette, drew in from it. “Any news?” he said.

Old Zhang shook his head. He knew Bai was talking about Hu and Sun. “They aren’t there yet.”

“No one has heard from them?”

“No one.”

“Maybe by the end of the day,” Bai said.

Old Zhang tightened his mouth. He knew, they both knew, it was really too late already. Their two friends should have been in Hong Kong by now, celebrating, having passed their pair of four-foot famille-rose vases down the line to the next owner and pocketed the substantial difference.

But they hadn’t. No one had heard from them. The men around the table passed silent prayers up.

Two younger men from Ningbo went back to paging through a catalog from an art auction house in Shanghai. “See this fine oxblood plate, Xuande reign-“”

“That! You call that fine? That’s only the midrange of fine.”

“Blow gas.”

“It’s so!”

“He’s right,” put in Han Fengyi from across the table. “I’ve seen that plate! I had the chance to buy it five years ago. I turned it down!”

“Suck pustules! You did not!”

They all laughed.

“I did! It was too expensive!”

“Yes, and in Sichuan dogs bark at the sun,” Bai retorted, which was a way of accusing Han of being afraid of his own shadow. They were merciless with Han. He was one of the few among them who attached himself slavishly to one dealer, supplying him as faithfully as a dog. The rest of them freelanced. Their business was fluid. They carried greater risks but their wins were fine, sometimes superb.

“Listen now,” Bai said quietly to his friend Zhou, seated next to him. The others were talking. No one else was listening. Zhou put down his polished wooden chopsticks.

“I have a big job coming up,” Bai said. “Transportation.” He turned his teacup to swirl the last few drops. “I’m going to need help.”

Zhou refilled Bai’s cup.

“I’m going to Hong Kong tomorrow,” Bai said. “Carrying a few things and picking up some cash. Then when I come back-“”

“Call me,” said Zhou. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“I will,” said Bai. He would pay Zhou a few thousand ren min bi to do the overnight driving so Bai could save himself for the ordeal of crossing the border. That final gauntlet he would run alone. Zhou knew this. It didn’t need to be said.

Bai smiled. This deal was brilliant, bright as the sun, that bright. He saw the avidity on Zhou’s face. The plan had that streaking, powerful feeling, the unmistakable scent of luck.

“Good,” he said after a minute. He liked the way it was growing around him.

There was one other person Lia was longing to tell about these pots, and that was her former stepfather, Albert. He loved porcelain. He didn’t have much money, but he knew to buy wonderful things in less than perfect condition. During the years he’d lived with Lia and Anita, two pieces stood in the dining room: a globular water pot with a mottled tea-green glaze, Kangxi period, and a chrysanthemum-shaped bowl in celadon from the reign of Qianlong. They were miraculous. They shone with their own light. And Albert made her feel that it was all right to sense a connection to objects, because objects in their perfection resembled love. And when they were imperfect, you loved them for their flaws too. As it was in life. She remembered holding the pale chrysanthemum-shaped bowl, with its curving ribs, to her cheek and feeling its diamond-clean glaze on her skin.

She’d looked him up again as an adult. He lived overseas most of the time now, but they’d managed to meet in New York six or seven years before.

Typical for Albert, he’d wanted to meet at the Met. There was an exhibit of Chinese scholar-objects he thought they ought to see. As she ran up the stairs she saw him standing at the top, his suit as shapeless as ever and he more corpulent within it. His face was ruddier and his eyes more pouched with age. But his brushy mustache was the same, as was the kind smile in his eye.

“Lia!” he said happily. “Look at you.” He took her in, her rangy height, her same long hair, only now she was a woman, grown-up and graceful.

She raised her brows ironically and made some joke of it. Now, looking back, it was clear she’d been younger and more attractive then, though at the time she hadn’t thought so at all. Then she never thought she looked good enough. Always it seemed she could only appreciate herself in arrears. She was never happy to be exactly what she was at any present moment.

They walked together into the exhibit, past brush rests and water pots and scholars’ rocks, calligraphy and table screens and vases, paperweights, boxes for seal vermilion, and inkstones. Walking beside Albert, talking, sharing memories of Anita and her things, Lia felt a sense of family love completed. It was only for a minute, and it was only a wisp, but she felt it. Why couldn’t you have been my father? she thought, the way she often had as a child.

“Tell me about your work at Hastings,” he said.

She could see the pride in his eyes. “Best job in the world! I don’t know how it happened. I get to look at pots all the time. I mean, that’s actually what I get paid to do.”

“And who could deserve it more?” he said. They had paused in front of a brush holder made of zitan wood, burled and rolled like rushing water. Seeing it brought the past to life: the smell of charcoal in the brazier, the propulsive movement of the scholar’s brush on silk. It was just one facet, only an instant, but it was a world. And now it was in her memory.

“Are you married yet?” Albert was asking. She saw him looking at her hand, which bore no ring.

“No.”

“No one?”

She made a rueful twist of her mouth. “I’m waiting. You know.”

“You have time,” he said kindly.

“I know.”

“You’re unique, Lia. The right person will come.”

He meant it nicely, but she felt a sad thud at the well of perceptions she knew was behind it. She was not beautiful in the traditional way, though she had her own grace, a sort of serene allure that was the meeting point of intelligence and physicality. Still, she had no glamour. And so many men, even smart men, wanted beautiful women above all. Not women like her, not obsessive, hyper-internal women with thoughtful eyes and tightly pulled-up hair who lived in alternate mental worlds.

She couldn’t think about this now. She had been pushing feverishly all day and she had to keep going. She put her hands into the crate, sank them into the pliant little wood spirals, and felt for the next box.

She tried to change her clothes before going out to eat in the evening, but it degenerated into another joust of self-doubt. Lia wasn’t much good at her appearance. Even the hipper, more attenuated look practiced by worldly women of her generation didn’t work for her. Most things she tried just looked wrong.

So she’d settled into layering knits to reasonably flatter the straight line of her body and carry her through all situations. It worked, even if it was only an accessory or two away from a uniform.

Tonight, though, she didn’t like anything she had brought. She should be creative. She rooted through the drawer. She should buy something else. She stood in front of the mirror in her underwear, plain cotton, because when she was alone she wore only the most comfortable things, and undid her hair. It fell past her waist. She generally hated going out with it down; there was too much of it, it was too loose in the world, it attracted attention. Sometimes she clipped it at the back of her neck. She did that now.

For the rest, she would compromise. She settled on a close-fitting knit vest and a narrow bias-cut skirt. It almost didn’t matter what she wore or what she did, she thought as she darkened her mouth with lipstick. She was still going to look dry and old-fashioned. Or maybe not. Her eyes were big and gray, not bad at all. She smiled and saw how it transformed her. And she picked up her purse and went out.

Curator Li was on the Internet, scrolling through museum sites and reading newsletters. He was searching for some mention of this thing about which he was still hearing whispers, this movement of a large number of pots. Nothing stayed hidden forever. If it existed he’d find it. Maybe here, in the electronically webbed art world.

Li jumped from a London-based art magazine to a Hong Kong auction house and watched the screen fill up with images. Nothing. Frustration hooked into him and gave a sharp, cynical pull. Was the story real or false?

He quit the server and turned away from the screen to a newspaper article. Their museum seemed to draw mixed public reaction no matter how much good it did. Last week they had bid on and failed to win an important piece of Tang ceramic statuary, more than a thousand years old. In the eyes of the public, they had failed to bring the piece home. What could they do! They had bid to the limit of their budget this time.

But there might be these pieces, on the move. Maybe he could stop them, though he wasn’t sure how. All he could do was keep looking. And keep asking.

Michael Doyle walked out into the hutong the next morning to go to work and saw an American woman with a satchel and computer bag waiting at the gate. She had a long braid. Her back was turned to him. “Are you staying here?” he asked her.

She jumped. She hadn’t heard him. He was used to this; people were startled by him. They said he moved like a cat, big as he was. But then he also saw she wore hearing aids. “I didn’t mean to walk up on you,” he said.

“It’s okay.”

And he saw her wary expression relax into one of bright-eyed humor. He liked her smile. She was nearly as tall as he was, though slighter. He smiled back.

“Yes, I’m staying here,” she said.

“I haven’t seen you.”

She had seen him. “I haven’t been here long.”

He looked her over, all her bags, her quirky work clothes. “What’re you doing in Beijing?”

“I’m here to look at art.” This was her standard answer; it was truthful but limited. “I do pots.” She took out a card and handed it to him. The card was the quickest way to convey everything, her credentials, her affiliation. Most people didn’t know anything about porcelain, or what it meant to “do pots,” but Hastings was a well-known name. People’s faces always notched with understanding when they glanced at her card.

“Lia Frank,” he read. He slipped a card out of his back pocket and held it out to her. He was broad but she saw his hands were fine, and the hair down to his wrist soft and sand-colored. She took the card. Michael Doyle, Biochemist, Chongwen Children’s Hospital. On the other side the same thing in Chinese. “Are you a doctor, or a researcher?”

“Researcher. On a fellowship. I’m studying children’s lead levels in Beijing.”

“Oh! That’s important. Good for you.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Sounds depressing, though.”

“It is, if I let it be. At the end of each day I try to forget. You know?”

“I do know,” she said in a soft voice, thinking: Remembering? Forgetting? You have no idea.

“What’s in your duffel?” he said.

“Tools. Everything for looking at pots.” She touched the leather in a note of protection.

“And with all your tools, what is it you look for?”

She looked at him, her big eyes brimming with amusement, long quick fingers twined through her shoulder strap. Her hair was pulled up tight away from her face, and she could feel the faint pleasing weight of her silver hoops in her ears. “Fakes,” she said.

“Ah. You mean forgeries?”

“Exactly what I mean.”

“So forgery must interest you greatly.”

“It does.”

“I have a friend you should meet.”

“Really?” She could feel herself rising out of her long legs, chest against her shirt.

“He’s into fakes.”

“Is he a dealer?”

“No! But he does make money from fakes.”

“You mean that’s his job?”

“No. He works with me. This is a thing he does on the side.”

Her mouth was half open now, interest pulling it up at the corners. “What? Tell me.”

“I could. Or,” he said. He wore the bemused look of someone talking on his feet, half surprising himself. “Or you could come with me and find out.” He moved his weight lightly from foot to foot. “Come look at fakes with me and An. We’re going anyway. Day after tomorrow.”

She gave him a half smile. “How can I resist, if it has to do with fakes?”

“I’ll leave you a note, when and where. What room are you in?”

“Seventeen,” she said.

“Ah. Side court?”

“Side court.”

“I’ve got to go,” he said.

“And believe it or not”-she pointed down the lane to a far-off car whining toward them-“there’s my ride too. It was nice to meet you. Michael, right?”

“Doyle,” he said. “Call me Doyle.”

“Oh?” She turned her gaze on him. “Really?”

“That’s what people call me. See you,” he said, and still smiling, he turned and walked away. He could hear the car grinding to a stop behind him, door opening and slamming, the engine roaring up and then evaporating away down the hutong.

His mind went to the hearing aids. So she had hearing loss. But as soon as they’d started talking he’d forgotten about it. They had just clicked into conversation.

And he made a plan to see her again. That was odd, for him. Especially because he could tell she was smart and offbeat. She was interesting, and thus at the beginning the bar was already bumped up. She was also pretty, in a way. And serious. He saw this from her reserved, intelligent mien and the controlled light in her eyes, and her business card, even. The serious type. Probably looking for a good man. He couldn’t be anybody’s good man. Not in the foreseeable future, anyway.

Since his marriage ended he’d had his liaisons. He still needed to make love; that at least was intact in him. He still had to hold women, please them, and explode in vulnerability with them as much as he ever had. But caring was not something he could reawaken. So he limited himself to women who wanted lighter attachments. That was what he looked for now.

He touched the card in his pocket. There was no point in misleading her. He’d take her to meet his friend An Xing; they would look at fakes, the three of them, together. It would be fun and diverting and then it would be over. How lovely. Lovely to meet you. Good-bye.

He slipped his headphones out of his shoulder bag as he walked and turned on Cheb Khaled. He loved rai music. The Algerian singers were so brave, so irresistible to the part of him that just cockily believed he could do it, walk out on the gangplank and keep living. Rai was vital, secular, sexy, and just for singing it some of the musicians had been shot by Muslim fanatics. The rest of them kept singing.

Especially he loved listening to rai in China. Here he was already out of place. He was thick-bodied and pale in the sea of Chinese, arms swinging loose, the opposite of all the people around him. Yet when he was out in the hutong, if he had that sinuous, wavering voice in Arabic filling his head, everything seemed right. The world was foreign, he was foreign. It fit. He walked lightly over the stones, happy for a few minutes in his music and his otherness and the quality of the north China light.

The ah chan Bai leaned his head against the train window, rattling south on the rail line from Nanchang to Hong Kong. The red dirt walked away from the tracks in neat squares, dividing the rice paddies that terraced down to the river. From the froth of greenery on the other side rose the single tower of Fo Liang Temple, its roofs graduating one atop the other toward the sky.

With his ankles Bai squeezed the tied-together boxes of the few pots he had just procured in Yanjing. None were imperial wares but all were fine heirloom pieces. He had paid well for them-well for inside China, anyway. That sum was nothing compared with what they would fetch for him in Hong Kong.

His eyes followed the slow brown river as the rails clacked and the future spun out in his head. Down by the water, cattails waved in feathery golden clumps and morning glories, brilliant purple, twined up the red-dirt banks. It would take nine hours to reach the border. There would be a heart-pounding moment through Customs, but he had receipts showing that these were reproductions made by manufacturers in Jingdezhen. It was believable. The receipts looked right. The pots were good, though not breathtaking.

He carried the boxes exposed, wrapped in plastic twine. Sometimes the best way to do it was openly, brazenly, with some paperwork to make it look right and a crowd all around him to swirl him through. Stopping at the counter, handing over his passport, holding his breath. Undistinguished. One of the crowd. A stamp, a wave. Then he’d be through, with money, enough for a while.

It was enough cash to get himself a truly superb fake too. He knew exactly what he wanted. When he came back home to Jingdezhen he was going to see the man he considered one of the earth’s greatest living porcelain artists. And he was going to commission a replica of the Chenghua chicken cup.