A Cup of Light

by Nicole Mones

  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.” Phi
llip 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.

  14

  Michael Doyle bent over the table in his room, laying out his Polaroids. These were the kids in his study. He’d taken a shot of each during the first interview, all against the same wall in his office. They were all between five and eight. Their little faces called out to him from childhood.

  He liked to put the pictures in the order of their lead levels. At first he’d started with their newborn readings, from cord blood. This was maternal exposure, at birth, no more. When he got a tooth, though, he could see what they’d actually accumulated. This marker was much more solid. With each tooth he made another change, put the pictures in a new order. Today he moved Xiaoli. Twenty parts per million. Bottom row center, for now.

  He passed his hands over his thin layer of hair, half gray now since his illness, and his skull, strong, almost rectangular, widest at his ears and cheekbones. He could follow these children but he couldn’t keep them safe. Again he reminded himself.

  So he put the pictures in order. It also helped him keep his mind off Lia Frank. Why wasn’t she back? And wasn’t it amazing that he seemed unwilling to leave this room until he saw her get in? She had stepped across his path and somehow gained his attention, the involuntary drift of his awareness. First he had started to let pleasant thoughts breach his barrier, thoughts about what might happen. Now, admit it, he was worried about her. He was in here with the TV playing low because he was worried. He knew perfectly well she had not been on an international flight. She was coming from Jingdezhen. Still, there had been an air disaster. It was getting late. And no lights had come on in her courtyard.

  He picked up the picture of Xiaoli, with her little bowl haircut and her quick, amused eyes. He taped it to the door frame. He liked the idea of those eyes following him as he passed by. He wanted to remember her.

  Now something was happening on TV. He touched the volume button. It was a statement by—he squinted at the name and title that flashed on the screen—the Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador. The man stepped in front of the camera, cleared his throat, straightened his notes. “The United States joins China in grieving the crash of China International Flight Sixty-eight. We express the greatest regret and sorrow that this accident occurred. Our nation’s prayers go to the families of those Chinese passengers and crew who lost their lives and”—a polished little beat—“also to the families of the six Americans aboard the plane, including four young Luce Scholars bound for fellowships in China. Our thoughts are with you.”

  Michael stood in the middle of the floor, sensed the invisible shift in dynamics. This would alter opinion. It had to. People couldn’t think the U.S. would shoot down a plane with its own citizens on board. Or could they?

  And where was Lia? He took a few soundless steps to the window and looked out over the half-curtain. He could see down the length of the courtyard and through the decorative rock gate. He could see the fountain spraying in the entry court, the pools of lamplight. But her court beyond was still dark.

  At that moment Lia was sitting in a forest of boxes, hundreds of pots and their stories intersecting before her. She had been through all of them once. Now she’d seen dozens a second time. Tonight she had found yet one more fake, something minor, hardly enough to justify the effort. But this brought the count to ten. So it wasn’t as if she could stop. She had to keep going, even though it was too much and it seemed insurmountable.

  Her cell phone bleated. She flipped it open. “Wei.”

  “Lia,” said Dr. Zheng.

  “Hi. I’m glad you called. Phillip’s not here. Gao said he was in Vancouver.” She wedged the phone into her shoulder and lowered a pot back into its boxed froth of white silk.

  “He’s held up. It’s the plane crash. All the flights are delayed.”

  “I know, I was delayed too, and that was domestic. How long?” She latched the lid down.

  “Indefinite.”

  She paused, hand on the box. “Don’t tell me this is turning into a . . . a situation.”

  “Well, the crash itself would seem to have been an accident. These days, who can say? As to what they’re reporting, about people seeing lights streaking up, I don’t know. But there was a naval vessel, the U.S.S. Roosevelt, in the area at that time.”

  “Oh. That’s sticky.”

  “I should think.”

  “Not good.”

  “No.”

  “Has the Chinese government made a statement?”

  “Not yet. But air travel’s frozen—at this moment, anyway.”

  “And Phillip . . . ?” She was getting the drift and she didn’t like it at all.

  “Phillip is not coming to Beijing. He made it as far as Vancouver. Then everything was canceled. If his flight had taken off an hour earlier he’d have made it.”

  “Well, so—when?”

  “I can’t say.” There was a silence. “Luo Na,” Zheng finally said. “You’ll have to try to finish this yourself.”

  How can I? she wanted to scream. Nobody ever rules on anything alone, and these are eight hundred pieces, and already I’ve found fakes . . . it’s beyond what anyone should be expected to stand by, alone. It had always been her fantasy to find a cache like this. Only in her fantasy, she was not alone, she was not uncertain, she was not already chipped away by falsehoods. “What choice do I have?” she said. “If I have to do it, I’ll do it.”

  “The sale will be quick. I’m sure of it. He wants it.”

  “And the shipping?” she asked. Normally their Hong Kong office would take care of this.

  “I’ve thought of that,” Zheng said. “We still want to keep the purchase quiet. The buyer plans to remain anonymous. He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s acquiring it. I don’t see any reason to bring the Hong Kong office in on things now. You can do it, Lia. It’s only a few more days.”

  “I know,” she said, feeling her adrenaline spike right up through the middle of her fear. “You’re right. The profile should stay low.”

  “Very. Yes. But don’t worry, I’ll hire Tower Group. There’ll be nothing for you to do except keep an eye on it.”

  “Good.” Tower was the Rolls-Royce, the world-class Hong Kong company that specialized in packing and shipping fragile, incredibly valuable fine artworks. This job would be wei ru lei luan, as dangerous as a pile of eggs. But those people were masters. She knew that. “Okay,” she agreed. “Let me get to work. I’ll go as fast as I can.”

  Gao Yideng drove the ah chan to the northeastern suburbs of the city, where just a decade ago pigs ran along the narrow raised paths between plots of vegetables and rows of poplars. Now it was a low-lying, semi-industrial outskirt with warehouses and factories, mopeds and carts and stores. The farm plots had receded. The wide streets of packed dirt buzzed with people shopping, carrying packages, going to work.

  Gao drove up at the back of a blank white warehouse. He got out of the car and opened a combination lock, rolling up the automatic door just long enough for them to drive inside. Then it closed again.

  The sedan whispered to a stop on the white concrete floor. In front of them stood a truck. It shone like a light from heaven. All white, it stood bright as ice, Lanqian Industries tastefully painted along one side. In the back the cargo compartment, made to order, was precisely measured. It would hold the crates of porcelain tightly and perfectly packed. Then the false wall, and the freezer compartment, as Bai had specified. This was narrow, not too deep, well insulated from the main cargo bay. Bai and Gao opened the rear doors of the truck into this freezer, swinging back the big plates of steel and shafting light into the mist-frozen compartment. The two men laughed in delight. It was early summer outside, blazingly hot already, and the frigid air blasting from the empty freezer was paradise.

  Bai saw they’d done a beautiful job. He could do anything with t
his truck. He could drive this cargo all the way to Australia.

  “Well?”

  “It’s perfect,” Bai said. “You know what I say?” He turned to Gao. “Tan guan xiang qing.” We might as well go ahead right now and congratulate each other and dust off our official hats.

  She was scrolling down her list, her mind racing, dizzy with pressure, scanning for the next one she should get out and recheck. There were no more second opinions now. Everything rode on her instincts. The problem was that she’d never had instincts. Data, yes; data forever. More data than anyone. But not instincts.

  Her handphone rang. “Lia?” It was Michael.

  “Hi,” she said. She sat up on her haunches.

  “You’re back.”

  “I am. I got back a few hours ago.”

  “I must have missed you.”

  “I was in and out.”

  “That plane crash.”

  “Terrible, isn’t it? I landed in it—all the chaos, anyway.”

  “Any problem?”

  “No. Just delays. I should be worried about what it means, but now all I can think about is work. God.” She looked at her rows all around her. “I have so much to do.”

  “I think I should make you take a break,” he said.

  She realized her eyes were dry, almost burning. She closed them and touched the lids with her fingertips. “I can’t stop,” she said. “I have to finish.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Although—” She hadn’t eaten all day.

  “Give me your address. I’ll come and get you. Just take a little walk. Have a small something. Then you’ll go directly back to work.”

  She shouldn’t. There were all these pots. But she wanted to, and that feeling was warmer and more sweetly suffusing than anything else. “Okay.”

  “You’re on Houhai Lake, right?”

  “Yes. East side. The road runs right along the lake. Number 1750. Michael, actually I’d love it if you came over here. I want you to. Please come. It’s just that I have to finish.”