Picking Bones from Ash

by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

  “Let that be a lesson to you,” François said to me later, “never to be too conspicuous.”

  On the last day of the show, Snowden-roshi arrived with an older couple. The man had an aura of disinterested vagueness, but the woman had made every effort to ensure that she would spring to the foreground of any setting. She wasn’t very tall, but she was extremely thin and swayed back and forth, a cobra rising out of a basket, undulating, eyes alert. It was April, and she was wearing a bright-red coat that matched her scarlet wig. She removed the coat with her husband’s help and displayed her clavicle, ornamented with entwined amulets in ivory, coral, and a great deal of gold.

  “This is Mrs. Mack,” Snowden-roshi said to my father. “And her husband.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Mack,” my father bowed. “François des Rochers.”

  Mrs. Mack drifted between the cases. She asked many questions and even tried, at one point, to get my father to sell her a piece of jade marked with a red sticker, which meant that it had already been sold. Finally, she came to rest in front of Charlie.

  “Look familiar?” Snowden-roshi asked.

  At first, Charlie and Mrs. Mack did look very similar, with their unnaturally red coloring highlighted by bits of gold and black.

  “How old is he?” she asked.

  “Kamakura,” my father said. “You can tell just by looking. Stylistically, there is no other period he could be from.”

  “He’s in very good condition.” She began to peruse our catalog.

  “Obviously he was well cared for in the past.” My father smiled.

  “Minor repairs?” She quoted the text describing Charlie’s condition.

  “The paint has dulled with age,” my father said smoothly. “And you can see he’s missing one of his weapons. But otherwise, he’s intact.”

  Mrs. Mack knelt down to the floor and stretched out her palms toward Charlie’s feet. “Yes,” she said. “I can feel something from him.”

  Behind her, my father rolled his eyes.

  We arranged to ship all the unsold pieces from our collection back to California and, after much discussion, moved Charlie into our hotel room. François instructed Sondra to call my school and tell them I was still sick. Then we turned our attention to Mrs. Mack.

  “We’ll go to lunch. Where are you staying?” Mrs. Mack asked. “I’ll send my driver to get you.”

  “The Plaza,” François smiled, “but Rumi and I have morning engagements. It’s best if we meet you.”

  I hoped that this invitation to lunch would, at last, result in the chance to eat something other than food-by-the-pint. My hopes were only partly realized when François persuaded Mrs. Mack to eat in the cafeteria of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “One should be inspired by great works when one is contemplating an acquisition,” he said.

  We spent the afternoon wandering through the Met. In the Asia wing, vacant compared to the foot traffic that passed by the impressionist and modern paintings, we marveled over a display of embroidered Nō kimonos. A Japanese businessman examined the contents of the cases with an expression of deep attention and a clenching jaw that belied his discontent.

  “You see?” my father whispered to Mrs. Mack. “There is the kind of customer who, in perhaps ten years, will do everything he can to bring Japanese treasures back to his own country. China will follow. I have always maintained that the Chinese aren’t really communists. They are born merchants. And once their wealth begins to flower, they will want to reclaim their history.”

  “I know all about merchants,” Mrs. Mack said. “You’ve heard of my father?”

  “Airplanes, was it?”

  “Steel, to be exact. Which they used on the airplanes. Classic story. He worked all the time and was hardly home.”

  “But you must feel some pride seeing his name connected to this museum.”

  “He donated money to avoid paying taxes, Mr. des Rochers. I would like a little more out of life. You understand, I’m trying to connect with him. With the Buddha.”

  “Do you meditate?”

  “Every day. But I find I need a focal point. The three Buddhas at home haven’t been sufficient. Snowden-roshi suggested I find something more unique to help me.”

  While François, Mrs. Mack, Snowden-roshi, and the vague Mr. Mack circled the halls and floors of the museum, I took in the dizzying displays of Egyptian tomb paintings and Greek statues. I wondered at the forces that had conspired to bring these varied treasures into one location.

  “It is so sad to see these things here, instead of home in Athens where they belong,” Mrs. Mack sighed.

  “Modern Greeks have little genetic connection to the Greeks of Pericles’ kingdom,” my father said.

  “You think it is all right for wealthy nations to steal art?”

  “I think art belongs with the people who will appreciate it the most at any given point in history.”

  When we passed through the African section of the museum, François said, “It’ll be years before anyone notices that this stuff is missing from their country.”

  I looked at the dark, angular heads of ebony statues and thought briefly of the hands that had made them, wondering if the artists were mourning the loss of their creations.

  Unbeknownst to us, Mrs. Mack had asked her usual dealer to take a secret look at Charlie while he had been on display, and this dealer, no doubt concerned that my father was horning in on a favorite—not to mention wealthy—customer, had phoned Mrs. Mack to say he suspected Charlie was a fake.

  “My dealer said we should test the hand,” she said.

  François was horrified. “And cripple him?”

  “I just want to be sure.” Mrs. Mack stiffened. “It is my money I would be spending.”

  I could not tell if François’ display of inner struggle was real or fabricated, but he finally said, “If you wish, we can take a sample of wood from the Fudō’s base and perform a carbon 14 test. However, I want you to realize that we will, in effect, be defacing a statue that has already survived hundreds of years of natural disasters and wars.” He waited for these words to sink in and have an effect before he added, softly, “But I will be happy to pay for the cost of the test, if that would put your mind at ease.”

  That evening, when we returned to the hotel, we found Snowden-roshi waiting for us. He helped two Australian girls, just arrived from the airport, with their bags, then turned to say hello.

  “How did you find us?” François asked.

  “The old-fashioned way. It’s not too hard to follow people in New York.” He nodded toward a paper bag in my father’s hands. “Why don’t you let me take you out?”

  “We’ve already purchased our dinner.”

  “I all but guarantee you a sale, and you won’t eat with me?” Snowden-roshi took the bag from François’ hands and gave it to a homeless man sitting with his back against the hotel wall. Then we took a cab to a Japanese restaurant in the Village. A large Buddha, made of ice, sat underneath a red lamp, while red rose petals floated around him in a pool of water.

  Snowden-roshi gently placed his hand on the wrist of our cocktail waitress. “Can you tell me who’s here tonight, honey?” he asked.

  She blushed and whispered the names of a few actors and other people I did not recognize before drifting away to retrieve a bottle of sake.

  “Buddha is making you a wealthy man,” François observed.

  “Buddha didn’t believe in self-deprivation.”

  “Making up for lost time?”

  Snowden-roshi smiled. “Believe me, François, I know how to enjoy myself. That hasn’t changed.” He leaned forward. “But we both know that if all this disappeared tomorrow, I’d be the best equipped of all of us to deal with such a loss.”

  There was a fat silence between them and I wanted to puncture it. “How come you knew my mother?” I asked.

  The cocktail waitress returned, and we sat silently as she explained that our rare bottle of sake had been cured inside an ice cave north of Sap
poro, and that the cups were cut from a bamboo forest just north of Kyoto.

  “We generally don’t discuss Satomi,” François said, after the cocktail waitress had left. “Anyway, Rumi doesn’t remember anything.”

  “Not at all?” Snowden-roshi looked at me.

  Over the years, I had recalled vague impressions of someone I had earlier assumed to be my mother. A smell like baby ferns. A tanned wrist peeling an orange. Someone rolling down a hill beside me. But François had long ago insisted that these memories were not of my mother but culled from stories, poems he had read to me when I was younger.

  “Your parents met through me. In Japan. At a social event.”

  “Years ago,” François added.

  “Your father was already in the business of identifying beautiful things.” Snowden-roshi’s eyes narrowed. “Even if those things belonged to other people.”

  “If I remember correctly, I was also good at lending you a helping hand when you needed it.”

  Snowden-roshi relaxed a little. “Yes. You did the best you could under the circumstances. I do know that.”

  “And here you are now, torturing me with the company of this silly rich woman who has fastened onto Buddhism as an alternative therapy for her breast cancer.”

  “She’s not a bad person.”

  “I didn’t say she was bad. I said she was silly. First she’s not interested in money, then she won’t make a purchase till she knows its value. A true connoisseur would never behave this way.”

  “She’s rich.” Snowden-roshi smiled.

  “The Chinese say that wealth only lasts for four generations. After that, a family is like an overripe fruit. Too sweet. Good for nothing but birds and other scavengers.”

  “That is what I love about New York,” Snowden-roshi sighed. “You can see that fruit forming before your eyes. The first generation in a family makes money. Learns to smoke cigars and play golf. Their children hope to hold on to their legacy. Then their children stumble upon irony and think themselves clever and superior. So aware. This goes on until you reach the decadent generation—like Mrs. Mack—the final flowering of a family’s genetic potential.”

  “And here you are, ready to harvest their riches.”

  The waitress returned with a glass of pear juice, and all of a sudden the men were again conscious of my presence.

  François said to me, “You must not become a silly creature like Mrs. Mack, relying on other people to tell you what is valuable and what is not.”

  “Yes, François.”

  “Remember, the most important thing in life,” François continued feverishly, “is to be able to see things as they really are.”

  “Why, François,” Snowden-roshi all but purred. “Aren’t we both basically saying the same thing?”

  François and Snowden-roshi drank and drank and leaned back in their chairs, as though trying to escape a magnetic force pinning them to the table. My father became sick. Snowden-roshi took a cab with us to the hotel, then hoisted François over his shoulders and, as he walked brazenly into the lobby, said to the night clerk, “Nothing to worry about. Just a little too much fun.”

  In the hotel room, Snowden-roshi helped my father onto the bed. “In a way, it’s good this has happened. Gives us a minute alone together. So to speak,” he added, as François gurgled. “It’s a shame. Your father could be a great art dealer with his eye for beauty.” He parted the venetian blinds and winced at the restricted view. “How old are you?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Still a girl then.” He frowned. “Never mind. Your father will owe me a favor for this sale. This won’t be the last time we meet.” He put his hand on my cheek, and I trembled. “I wouldn’t hurt you.” He spoke sharply.

  “No.” I hoped this was true.

  “Is François kind to you? Do you like to study all these art objects?”

  “Yes.” I was too nervous to say otherwise.

  “Your mother loved them too. She was very talented.”

  I couldn’t contain myself. “Was she pretty?”

  His eyes softened. “Very. Very pretty. As you are.” He sighed. “I loved your mother very much. I always meant to find her eventually. I never really expected I might be too late. When we are young, we don’t know that we eventually run out of time.” Then the look in his eyes sharpened again. “At least there is you.”

  About a dozen labs in the United States perform carbon 14 dating for a fee. Most are affiliated with universities, which Mrs. Mack distrusted after having flunked out of Yale Law School. We wrapped approximately five milligrams of Charlie’s base in aluminum foil and sent it to be read by an accelerator mass spectrometer at Chrono Labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Because Mrs. Mack refused to pay for expedited service—as did François—we would return to California to wait out the dating verdict, with the promise to ship Charlie overnight and insured if the test came back favorable.

  “Why does it matter if something is old?” I said to François. “If it’s pretty and you like it, shouldn’t that be enough?”

  “Some people say that as long as you like something, that’s enough reason to buy. Those people who believe in the power of positive thinking, for example.” He patted his head, still stung by a hangover.

  “What if you are wrong? What if Charlie wasn’t made in the Kamakura period?”

  “I’m not wrong. I can see the age in his face.”

  “Would you still like Charlie if he turned out to be fake?”

  “He’s not.”

  “But if he were?”

  “I would be very disappointed. In myself and in him.” François paused. “Do you know who Charlie is in the Buddhist canon?”

  “He looks like a demon.”

  “Yes. That’s a very Western interpretation.” He sighed. “Charlie, or Fudō, looks angry because he hates illusions. He gets mad at all the little demons running around the world who make us sick and stupid. That’s the wonderful thing about Asia. So much angry art. People like to think that Buddhism is about inner calm. The truth is, sometimes it is necessary to be angry. Intolerant.”

  The day before we returned to California, François took me to a small store in Chinatown, where we bought a large white scarf with a print of bougainvilleas. Then we took the subway to Saks Fifth Avenue, where François spent a long time selecting a box of chocolates. At the gift-wrapping counter he said, “I’m sending this to a client in Japan. You know how they are over there.”

  The girl behind the counter smiled and wrapped the chocolates in a gift box. Later, at the hotel, François carefully unpacked the chocolates, folded the scarf, and placed it inside the box from Saks.

  When we got back to California, we presented the gifts to Sondra, who gushed over our generosity, immediately ate a chocolate, and wrapped up her hair with the scarf. “Was it wonderful? New York?”

  I looked at François. “I had oysters for breakfast. Every day.”

  “And the hotel?” she asked. “The man who answered the phone when I called had an accent.”

  “There was a doorman,” I said, thinking of the man who had stood outside the restaurant when we had eaten with Snowden-roshi. “He wore white gloves. And someone ironed our clothes each morning.”

  “What do you call him?” François prompted.

  “A valet,” I replied.

  Mrs. Mack told my father on the phone that she had always known Charlie to be a Kamakura piece. She was glad that the carbon 14 dating and the lab in Massachusetts had agreed with her. The check was in the mail, and she would expect Charlie at her apartment as soon as my father had deposited the funds.

  I made a small and completely ineffectual attempt to keep Charlie in our house.

  I said, “What if Mrs. Mack notices that one of Charlie’s feet is different from the other?”

  “If she couldn’t tell that Charlie was Kamakura just by looking, then she doesn’t have the proper faculties to see him clearly for what he is. If she can’t really see, then how on earth
can she tell where the repairs are?”

  “Aren’t we lying?” I asked bluntly.

  “You helped fix him, too. We’re in this together, you know.” He shrugged. “Anyway, if she ever notices that Charlie has been repaired, which I highly doubt, I can always claim that I had nothing to do with it.”

  Things were chilly between us until the check came a few days later. Then we packed Charlie in a wooden crate, with plenty of soft padding—Styrofoam and paper—to protect him on his journey as he scowled his way across the United States. When I came home from school, he was gone, and François insisted on taking me out for a steak to celebrate.

  For a while, I liked to look at the picture of Charlie on the cover of our catalog and glower at him. He would always grimace back. I liked the fact that our true natures were known to each other, that our ferocious exteriors concealed a hope that all true things could be known in time.

  CHAPTER 7

  Love Material

  People can live their lives with a tiny bit of hidden truth tucked away in a corner of the brain. It can trip up behavior over and over again, only to be revealed in full when an accident forces it out, like a splinter in your toe that has kept you limping for years and only exposes itself when you fall.

  Before my visit to New York, I expected people to tell me the truth and I expected objects to tell me the truth too. If a painting looked like it was done in the seventeenth century, I assumed that it was. After New York, François began to teach me that recognizing the truth was a far trickier endeavor than I had thought.

  “Don’t you see,” my father said to me, “how the ink is too black? The faces too flat? The lines not dynamic?” When he talked to me like this, my eyes and my brain connected more tightly, and the world was suddenly in sharper focus. It was an awesome power he had, the ability to stand on the other side of a secret and powerful lens. I longed to be on the other side of that lens with him.

  My wish came true around my thirteenth birthday. Only it didn’t come to me as I expected it would.