Murder on the Silk Road

by Stefanie Matteson

  There were also clothes, yard goods, and jewelry. Charlotte was especially taken with the silks: bolt after bolt of exquisite brocades interwoven with gold thread. She was tempted to buy some, but what would she do with it? Then there was the food, which reminded her a little of New York City’s Ninth Avenue. A vendor of shashlik, the local version of shish kebab, juggled his skewers on a smoky charcoal grill. Noodle sellers in white caps kneaded long, thick ropes of dough. But the most interesting were the vendors of services. It seemed as if almost any everyday need could be accommodated on the sidewalks or in the open-fronted kiosks. One enterprising tailor had set up his sewing machine on the sidewalk. He could mend a shirt or sew on a button on the spot. Another entrepreneur sat behind a workbench repairing watches. Blacksmiths hammered out farm implements and horseshoes; barbers shaved their customers’ stiff black hair into bristle cuts; carpenters turned out table legs and dresser knobs; knife grinders sharpened daggers with silver hafts inlaid with polished stones at grindstones turned by bicycle wheels; porcelain menders fixed cracked and chipped plates and cups; bootmakers made boots; dentists even pulled teeth.

  Charlotte found it fascinating.

  They stopped to window shop at the kiosk of an old herbalist with a mouthful of shiny metal teeth. On his shelves were arrayed an assortment of jars of various sizes which reminded Charlotte of the jars that had lined the shelves in her high-school biology lab, with their slimy-looking contents pickled in formaldehyde. Equally disgusting were the tidy rows of dried snakes and lizards that hung from the ceiling. Dried bats that had been mounted on cardboard with their wings outstretched were tacked to the rough board walls. In addition there were collections of various kinds of antlers, dried birds’ heads, and other, unidentifiable, items.

  “Not a bottle of aspirin in sight,” said Marsha.

  Charlotte was rummaging through a cardboard box on the counter. “Look at this!” she said. “A boxful of dragon bones.” They were large and small. Some were incised with Chinese ideographs; others were not. “I saw one of these at Larry’s camp. Lisa told me they were dinosaur bones.”

  “Some of them probably are. The powder is sold as an aphrodisiac. I’ll have to tell Bert that they’re for sale here,” she added with a little smile. “I’m sure he’ll have a professional interest.”

  Charlotte laughed, provoking a shiny smile from the herbalist, who was taking a customer’s pulse—not a Western pulse, Charlotte knew from friends who’d had acupuncture, but a reading of the body’s energy patterns.

  “I’m going to ask if he has anything for my rash,” said Marsha. Since arriving in China, she had been plagued by a poison-ivy-like rash on her arms and legs. When the health-seeker had left, Marsha explained her problem.

  For a minute, they talked. Charlotte presumed that the herbalist was asking Marsha questions about the rash. Then he looked at her tongue and took her pulse. Finally, he gave her his pronouncement.

  “He says he has an herb that will cure my rash in three days,” said Marsha as the herbalist mixed up a lotion from the jars lining the shelves.

  As Marsha waited for her prescription, Charlotte took in the market scene. At the end of the row of stalls which included the herbalist’s kiosk was an open, dusty area that appeared to be a parking lot for donkey and ox carts. The animals rested on the ground near their carts, sleeping or nibbling on fodder. Under a row of stunted trees on the far side of the parking lot a group of four beggars squatted on the ground. One of them was a boy with a stringed instrument. It was Dunhuang’s equivalent of the Bowery.

  She nudged Marsha.

  Beggars were few and far between in China. The government viewed them as examples of the failure of Communism, and they were rounded up and stowed away out of sight. But occasionally you did see them. Charlotte had even seen a beggar on a staircase landing in the Beijing Friendship Store.

  “I see,” said Marsha, as she paid the herbalist, who calculated her bill on an abacus. “What do you think we should do?”

  “Ask the herbalist if he knows of a beggar by the name of Feng, and if he associates with that group over there.”

  Turning back to the herbalist, Marsha asked him the question. After he had responded, she translated for Charlotte. “He says he knows him, and that he usually can be found sitting under those trees with the others. But he’s not there now because he’s in jail.”

  “Ask him if he’s seen any foreigners associating with him.”

  Again, Marsha put the question to the herbalist. Even without understanding the language, Charlotte could see that he wasn’t going to answer. The wall had come down, and his genial face had frozen into a stiff mask.

  “He says he doesn’t know.”

  It was one thing to oblige a customer who has just made a purchase, but it was another to be overly cooperative in a matter that was nobody’s business but public security’s.

  Marsha raised a hand as if to say “That’s okay” and thanked him for the lotion. After bowing to her, the herbalist gestured in the direction of the beggars. “Why don’t you ask them?” he was clearly saying.

  They took his advice. The beggars had nothing to lose by answering a few questions from some nosy foreigners.

  As they approached, the boy stood up, revealing a leg that was withered to a spindly stick. He started playing a Chinese melody on his instrument, which looked like a lute. When he had finished, he took off his cap and held it out. Charlotte and Marsha each donated a few fen, and the boy sat down again.

  Marsha picked the most alert-looking of the adults to address. In front of him was a dish of dry crumbs, which symbolized his poverty. Despite the heat, he was smothered in layer upon layer of rags. Except for his Chinese features, he might have been a typical New York street person.

  In answer to Marsha’s question, he shook his head. Then he turned to the others and repeated it for them.

  It was the boy who answered.

  “He says he saw a foreigner talking with Feng on Friday morning,” said Marsha. “But he doesn’t know what they were talking about.”

  Maybe they were on to something here, Charlotte thought. Larry had been killed Thursday night or early Friday morning. Which meant that whoever killed him had to have planted the shortwave radio on Feng sometime later in the day on Friday. “Ask him what the foreigner looked like,” she urged.

  The boy responded to Marsha’s question with a jabber of Chinese. He was a skinny, filthy little thing with an oversized cap and a smile to go with it. He reminded Charlotte of Dickens’ Artful Dodger. She was sure he would have picked your pocket in a trice.

  When he had finished, Marsha turned to Charlotte with a discouraged expression. “He says he doesn’t remember.”

  “Maybe there was something else. Ask him if there was anything at all about the foreigner that impressed him—his clothing, the way he walked, his tone of voice …”

  Marsha repeated the question, but the answer was no.

  “That was a bust,” said Marsha, as they headed back to the place where they were scheduled to meet the minibus.

  “Oh, well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Not that we gained anything.”

  They were halfway to the bus stop when Charlotte felt a tug on her leg. She turned around; it was the Artful Dodger. He was chewing a big wad of pink bubble gum, and carrying the lute under one arm. “Hello, lady,” he said with an engaging smile. He then proceeded to blow a gigantic bubble.

  After the bubble had popped, covering his grimy face with a layer of sticky pink froth, Marsha squatted down to speak with him. After a moment, she stood up and turned to Charlotte: “He says there is something else he remembers about the foreigner.”

  “What?”

  “He was carrying a pipa. It’s a kind of Chinese lute—a short, pear-shaped lute with four strings. It was popular during the Tang Dynasty.”

  The boy held up his instrument as if to say “similar to this.”

  Charlotte gave him a few coins, and he was off.
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  After lunch and a siesta, Charlotte headed out to the cliff for Marsha’s lecture, which was on the influence of the art of Dunhuang on Chinese landscape painting of the Song Dynasty. The idea was that the themes and techniques that brought Chinese landscape painting to its zenith in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were already apparent centuries earlier in the paintings in the caves at Dunhuang. Though Charlotte should have been doing other things, like finding out where Bert had been on the morning of the murder, or where he claimed to have been, she felt an obligation to put in an appearance. After all the trouble Marsha had taken to arrange the trip for her, the least she could do was attend her lecture.

  It was a small group that met at the souvenir kiosk at the foot of the cliff. Maybe it was because the Dunhuang murals didn’t have the drawing power of the secret library or the colossal Buddha. Or maybe it was that the hotels in Dunhuang town weren’t fully booked. But if others had left, the irrepressible Vivian Gormley was still around, this time with her friend in tow. “I’m so glad we ran into you again,” she said. “We’re leaving later on this afternoon for the next oasis.” She yanked her friend forward. “This is my friend, Beverly Watts. She’d like your autograph too.” She turned to her companion: “Give her your notepad, Beverly.”

  A timid hand reached forward with the pad.

  “Sign it ‘To my adoring fan, Beverly Watts,’” commanded Vivian.

  Charlotte signed the notepad in her round, bold scrawl, and handed it back to Beverly, whose thin skin looked like crepe paper.

  “Thank you so much,” said Beverly, clasping the notepad to her breast.

  If there were any other autograph seekers in the group, Marsha effectively put them off by announcing that they would now set out for Cave 323, which was located at the northern end of the cave complex. As they walked along the paved avenue at the foot of the cliff, Marsha informed her audience that Cave 323 wasn’t among the caves that were usually open to the public. She had convinced Chu to allow the group to visit this particular cave because it contained especially fine paintings of the Pure Land of the Western Paradise that illustrated her landscape theme. It would be the first time that she herself would be seeing these paintings outside of the pages of a book, she said, and her excitement at the prospect conveyed itself to her charges.

  Midway along the cliff face, they were joined by Emily, who came running up, her ring of iron keys jangling. It was clear that she was upset about something. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, and tears stained her cheeks. As they walked on, she talked earnestly with Marsha in Chinese. When they reached the northern group of caves, Marsha stopped to tell them more about Cave 323, which dated from the Tang Dynasty. “The Tang caves represent the peak of artistic achievement in Dunhuang,” she said. “During this period, the Tang rulers consolidated their rule over China and extended their domain into Central Asia. This period was also the great age of Buddhism. The strength of the empire is reflected in the worldliness and sophistication of the paintings, and the influence of Buddhism is reflected in the proud bearing of the statues of the Bodhisattvas, priests, and saints.”

  Now that Emily had regained her composure, Marsha interrupted her talk to introduce her, and then went on: “The Tang Dynasty produced several sects of Buddhism, including the Pure Land School, which was centered around the worship of the Amitabha Buddha, or the Buddha of the Future, and his Western Paradise. Unlike the austere doctrines of early Buddhism, which taught that Nirvana could be reached only through unceasing effort over the course of many incarnations, the Pure Land School taught a doctrine of salvation by faith. Through faith, one could enter directly into the heaven of the Western Paradise. The painting of the Western Paradise that we will see today was meant to inspire the beholders’ faith in the paradise that was theirs if they were devout in their practice.” Turning, Marsha pointed to the door of an isolated cave high above them on the cliff face. “We’re headed to the cave on the uppermost level. It’s a climb of about sixty feet.” She smiled at the group. “Are we ready?”

  The group assented, and they started climbing, with Emily taking the lead. Charlotte brought up the rear with Marsha. The route was like a maze set on end: up irregular rock-cut staircases, across narrow plank verandas, through low-beamed doorways, and up steep access ramps. Fortunately, they were shaded from the sun by the cliff face.

  “What’s wrong with Emily?” asked Charlotte as they climbed.

  “Chu just called her in for a little heart to heart about her relationship with Ned. He reminded her that as a representative of her motherland, she shouldn’t be demeaning herself by consorting with foreigners and the like.”

  “He makes it sound like it’s against the law,” said Charlotte.

  “Until just recently, it was. Chu maintained that it still was, but Ned wrote away to the ministry in Beijing for a copy of the document allowing marriages between Chinese and foreigners.”

  “Oh, I see. We’re talking marriage.”

  “Yes. When Ned produced the document, Chu was forced to admit that Chinese-foreign marriages were legal, but Emily still needs his permission, as her Party representative, and he says he won’t grant it. He told her that capitalists get married and divorced just for the fun of it.”

  “What are they going to do?”

  “The same thing one would do in dealing with any other bureaucracy: go above his head to the next rank of Party cadres.”

  Charlotte had paused to catch her breath. She had always enjoyed excellent health, a lucky circumstance that was in large measure responsible for all that she had achieved. A big ingredient in the recipe for success, she had learned, was sheer stamina. But she was also showing the wear and tear of her sixty-odd years. “Why don’t you go on ahead,” she said.

  She was joined shortly after Marsha had gone on by Vivian Gormley, who had lagged behind with an another Australian. Under her sun visor Vivian’s round face was bright red with the exertion of the climb. For a moment, Charlotte wondered if Ho might have another dead foreigner on his hands.

  “I’m glad we’re not doing this at high noon,” said Vivian as she removed the sun visor to wipe her dripping brow.

  After a few minutes, they continued on. The last leg of the climb was a rickety bamboo ladder which led to the porch fronting the cave. Arriving at the top, Charlotte felt a little as if she had already ascended to one of the celestial paradises that Marsha had described.

  As they awaited the stragglers, the group took in the view, which hammered home how tiny and vulnerable this oasis was. Beyond the fringe of waving poplars and the stream bed dotted with the stupas honoring forgotten monks, there was only gravel wastes, sand dunes, and badlands.

  And Larry’s camp.

  All Charlotte could see of it was the white Toyota hidden in the shadows of the foothills of the Mountain of the Three Dangers, and the dome of Bouchard’s blue tent, but the sight nevertheless brought the problem of Larry’s murder to the forefront of her mind.

  The Artful Dodger had said that he had seen Feng talking to a foreigner carrying a lute. Recalling a trip to Russia she had taken years ago as part of an international cultural exchange in which everyone had gone home with a balalaika, she guessed that the lute must have been a souvenir. In any case, it shouldn’t be hard to track down Dunhuang’s equivalent of a music store, and ask the proprietor if a foreigner had recently purchased a stringed instrument. Maybe he could give a better description than the Artful Dodger had.

  When the last person had reached the top, Marsha again addressed the group: “I’m very pleased that Mr. George Chu, the director of the Dunhuang Research Academy, has allowed us to see this cave today. It contains a very fine and detailed example of a paradise scene, which is a typical subject of this period. Unfortunately, the pigments are flaking off, which is why this cave is usually closed to the public, so I’ll have to ask you to be especially careful not to brush up against the walls.”

  Then Emily unlocked the door of the cave,
and they all entered.

  By contrast with the hot glare outside, the inside of the cave was chilly, gloomy, and deathly still. Unlike the caves housing the secret library and the colossal Buddha, which were visited daily, this cave conveyed a sense of having been shut up for ten centuries.

  As Charlotte’s eyes became accustomed to the dim light, the paintings on the walls of the antechamber gradually emerged from the darkness. There were paintings on either side depicting processions of elegant Bodhisattvas carrying trays of fruits and flowers. They were long, narrow figures wearing jeweled necklaces and armlets, and flowing robes girdled with jeweled belts. They appeared to be walking toward the inner chamber, and their stance suggested that they had halted for a moment to bid the viewer to accompany them.

  “I have a stupid question,” said one of the tourists. “Are the Bodhisattvas male or female?”

  “That’s not a stupid question at all,” Marsha replied. “In fact, they’re both. They took the form of court ladies, but they have tiny mustaches to make them conform to the convention that they could be of either sex.”

  Their tadpole mustaches reminded Charlotte of Ho’s.

  After admiring the Budhisattvas, the group passed through a narrow doorway into the inner chapel. Marsha had picked the cave for its frescoes, but it was the statues that interested Charlotte. As in Cave 16, the center was occupied by a Buddha whose rich maroon robes glowed in the light of Marsha’s torch. Mounted on a horseshoe-shaped dais, he was surrounded by the figures of half-a-dozen divine attendants, several of which lay scattered around on the floor in pieces, like giant dolls in a doll hospital. The one nearest Charlotte had a hole in its back.