Читать книгу The Color of Jadeite - Eric D. Goodman - Страница 16

8

Dragon Lady

About six miles northwest of Beijing, Yiheyuan, or the Summer Palace, sprawled out all around us. The emperor’s summer retreat covered more than 700 acres of wooded land and tranquil lake. At a hurried pace, we took in the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, the Garden of Harmonious Pleasures, Hall of Jade Ripples, and Hall of Happiness and Longevity, Salvador complaining all the while about the elaborate naming conventions. We strolled restlessly, aimlessly along the long corridor, an outdoor path with thousands of scenic paintings along the wooden beams above us.

Salvador limped behind us. “What are we in such a hurry to get to?”

“We haven’t figured that part out yet,” I snapped back.

Salvador grunted. “If it wasn’t for my bum knee, I’d be leading the pack.”

Wei Wei threw him a glance, then looked at me, her face melting into a smile. “Somehow I doubt that.”

Men played chess and Go at stone and wood tables outside the corridor. But we weren’t here to take in the surroundings. When Wei Wei read the clue chiseled on the stone tablet in the Vault of Heaven, we both knew where we needed to go. The greedy dragon lies beneath a veil. The remains of her greed live here.

“The greedy dragon,” I explained to Mackenzie and Salvador, “was Empress Cixi. This was her favorite place.”

Wei Wei added, “This was the retreat of emperors long before Cixi was in power. But it’s associated with her because of how much of the peoples’ money she poured into it. She had it completely rebuilt twice: once after the French and English destroyed it in 1860, and again in 1902, after it was damaged during the Boxer Rebellion.”

As we continued along the wooden corridor, I glanced back at Mackenzie and Salvador. “Since this is where the Dragon Lady spent most of China’s money, her greed lives here.”

Mackenzie looked around as we raced along the corridor. “And I thought 9,999 rooms was a lot to cover.”

We walked up a modest hill, off the main wooden corridor, and stopped at the Garden of Virtue and Harmony. A troupe of retired singers, dancers, and band members were just finishing up in the pavilion as we came, so the tail end of an old Communist hymn—complete with swaying and dancing and smiling faces—served as background music before we were left to the silence of the breeze through the willows, cut only by the birds and crickets and rippling lake water. The smell of pines and flowers filled the air, but no clues. We returned to the corridor and continued strolling along the walkway, the gardens to one side and the lake to another.

I took in a breath of fresh air. “Nice place to rest, if we weren’t in such a rush.”

“Empress Cixi loved this place,” Wei Wei said. “She starved the nation and drowned the Imperial Navy, spending all the taxes on extravagant embellishments for her enjoyment. She controlled the Empire’s purse strings.”

“Surprised there wasn’t a coup,” Mackenzie said.

“No one dared go up against her,” said Wei Wei. “Cixi held the nation’s power strings, as well.”

Salvador called after us; he’d fallen about ten feet behind. “I gotta take a breather.”

“This is as good a place as any,” Mackenzie said, stopping to lean on the corridor banister overlooking the lake. Off in the distance, we could see the seventeen-arched bridge crossing the lake, and across the lake on Longevity Hill we could make out a pagoda through the fog. “Beautiful.”

“That’s the Tower of the Fragrance of the Buddha Pagoda,” Wei Wei said.

“Lotta fancy names over here,” Mackenzie said.

“What’s wrong with Buddha Tower or Pine Garden? Salvador huffed. “Instead of all this Temple of the Smell of the Monk’s Cricket bullshit.” He plopped down on a stone bench.

Wei Wei glared at him. “Bench of the Fat Complaining Mexican?”

Salvador’s face hardened. “That’s getting personal, China doll.”

I smirked. Mackenzie stepped in the middle of their staring contest and said, “Simmer down.”

Wei Wei tapped her peek-a-boo-toed shoe impatiently. “How long do you need to take your load off?”

Salvador shot back, “Just let me catch my breath, Bonita.”

Wei Wei turned and walked out of the corridor. “If we’re taking a break, I might as well meditate on our clue for a few minutes.”

Mackenzie rolled her eyes and Salvador mumbled beneath his breath, stretching his leg.

Wei Wei sat on a rock at the bottom of a huge slope, closed her eyes, and took in an enormous breath like a woman going underwater. I kicked a stone and looked at Mackenzie and Salvador. The lake in the distance was peaceful enough, but I felt as restless as a gull hunting for fish at a stagnant lake. Without opening her eyes, Wei Wei asked, “Is anyone going to join me?”

I hesitated. “No, you go ahead.” I think she almost budged an eyelid—squinted just enough to see me without showing that her eye was peeking.

As Wei Wei sat on her rock and meditated and Salvador sat on his bench, huffing, Mackenzie and I moseyed further along the walkway. She nudged me. “Not our typical case.”

“None of them is ever typical,” I said.

“This isn’t following a cheating husband and finding out that he has a second family in Guatemala, or discovering that the reason a woman left her husband was because she murdered his sister,” Mackenzie said. “You’re romping around China with a young girl hunting for treasure. Aren’t you a little old for a mid-life crisis?”

To our right, in a garden area off the corridor, a gentleman sat on a stone bench studying the chess table before him. Nobody sat across from him—he was playing himself in a perfectly matched game. To our left, the lake and the hills beyond it gleamed like a postcard I might have sent my parents back when they were still living.

I looked at Mackenzie and offered her a quote. “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.”

“Shakespeare?”

“Tolstoy. Anna Karenina.”

I did an about-face. Mackenzie followed my lead. To our left, the player studied the chess board intently, trying to solve a puzzle as surely as we were. We slowly made our way back to where we started.

Mackenzie sighed. “What are we doing here, Clive?”

I took in a few deep breaths of the moist lakeside air and looked up at the tree-filled expanse of Longevity Hill. “Quite possibly the most important thing I’ve done in decades.”

“How so?”

I decided to let her in on it. “This isn’t the first time I’ve crossed paths with Emperor Xuande’s jadeite tablet. Before you were even born, Mackenzie, I knew someone—a very close someone—who was a student of Imperial China. She specialized in the Ming dynasty. She was infatuated with the jadeite tablet. I spent a lot of time with her, helped her with her research. It was all academic—we didn’t actually venture out to look for it—but I was fully prepared to go on an idealistic crusade if we’d been able to find the clues to lead the way.” I stopped and looked intently at Mackenzie. “Now, I’ve got a second chance.”

Mackenzie gasped. “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”

I hadn’t meant to reveal that much. “Well, I … yes.”

“You know you can never go back, right?”

“Thanks for the sage advice, kid.”

“I’m just saying. If you’re looking for what you had when you were a puppy, you won’t find it etched in jade.”

“No.” I resumed our walk. “But I can fulfill an aspiration that I thought died long ago.”

We walked back through the long corridor of wood beams, painted dragons and phoenixes, and mosaic floor, until we got back to Salvador, who now leaned his butt on the corridor banister, looking out across the lake in his own meditative state. “You good?” I asked.

“Good as I can be with this bum knee. Helluva lot of things would be good if it wasn’t for that.”

I smirked. “Mark always said that about you.”

“Said what?”

“Said that any time you slip up, you blame it on the knee.”

Salvador grew red as a beet and looked like he was ready to break one of the wooden beams in half. “Mark’s an asshole. And he’s wrong.”

Mackenzie smiled. “I’m inclined to agree.”

I nodded. “I’ll leave you two to discuss your admiration for Mark while I go rustle up Wei Wei.”

I strayed again from the corridor and found Wei Wei still meditating on her smooth stone, the Garden of Virtue and Harmony as backdrop. She looked exquisite, a peaceful expression on her flawless face. If she was the most captivating sight in a place like the Summer Palace, I figured she must be the most captivating sight anywhere she went. I could’ve stood there and gazed at her for hours.

It was only a minute before she acknowledged my return. She opened her eyes and they appeared already focused on mine, as though she’d been able to see me when they were closed. She caught me staring at her and failed to contain the pleasure in her smile. That brought me a little pleasure of my own. I asked, “Well? Come up with anything?”

“Perhaps.” She began to stand from her seated position and I extended a hand to help her. “I think I’ve figured out what the ultimate symbol of Cixi’s greed could be.”

“What? The tower on the hill?”

“No.” She didn’t dwell to explain—she darted toward Mackenzie and Salvador in the Long Corridor. “Marble that floats.”