When he landed in Hong Kong, Christopher went straight to his meeting. The situation in Hong Kong was promising—a start-up Chinese company that only sold white shirts on the internet. In China, white shirts were the uniforms for work all over the country, and demand for cheap, easily obtainable white shirts offered this company huge growth potential. But it was complicated as to what percentage of ownership a foreigner could hold and how limited the exit strategy could be. Meetings with legal and financial advisors were extended into the coming days because Christopher knew that if he didn’t get an agreement hammered out while he was there, it would never happen. Without someone managing every step, smoothing out every wrinkle and roadblock, the transaction would stall and the deal would fall apart. He would have to tell Helen he would not be able to join her in Marrakech.
* * *
Several days before she was scheduled to leave, Helen felt odd. She wondered if she were having a reaction to the vaccine. The feeling of a buzz in her body did not go away, and she went to see her doctor. He suspected she might be pregnant. He did an ultrasound and showed her the small sac with a beating heart. She was nine weeks pregnant. She asked if the vaccine he had given her could be a problem. He told her there was very little information, but the hep A vaccine wasn’t a live virus and so highly, highly unlikely to be a worry. She couldn’t wait to tell Christopher. She knew it was early days, but she felt light-headed with happiness.
When he reached her the following day, he sounded exhausted and said he was extending his stay in Hong Kong. He wouldn’t be able to meet her in Morocco. She didn’t see why he couldn’t change his original plan and go to Milan after Marrakech instead of before. He explained that he had confirmed a number of meetings that could not be rearranged on such short notice. She was disappointed, but she wasn’t angry. The news of her pregnancy had given her power over disappointment. She would cancel their reservation at Riad Madani and delay her trip by a few days. There was no point in going early now. She hoped they could rebook once his work settled down.
* * *
The car the El Minzah Hotel had arranged to collect Helen at the Ibn Battouta Airport did not show up, so she hailed a taxi. It had seats upholstered in a worn synthetic leopard cloth that smelled of sweat and stale weed. She rolled the window down to let the air roll over her. There was a message for her at the hotel from William Pauling’s secretary. He was indisposed and could not see her in the afternoon as planned but could see her the following morning at eleven.
Accompanied by her notes for the interview and her worn copy of The Sheltering Sky, Helen had a late lunch by the pool. She spotted a well-known French philosopher with his wife, who wore a tiny red bikini and moved around the pool as if she were an actress doing multiple takes of the same scene. There was also a gathering of Brits—two young women and two young men slouched on chaises as if they were waiting for something or someone—drinking and talking in loud, sloppy, upper-class accents. All their energy was being spent on making cutting remarks and stretching to be clever. They made her recall the passage she had just read about the difference between a tourist and a traveler—a tourist “accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.” Helen judged the people around the pool as tourists, and she did not want to be among them. She returned to her room to lock her passport and wallet in the safe before stopping by the concierge and asking for a map of the city. She wanted to walk around the medina and the English cemetery.
Across from the hotel on Zankat El Houria was the Galerie Delacroix. Next to it was a shop selling beautiful bowls. Their mews house was small and already filled with books and china and furniture she had bought on solitary Saturday afternoons. Buying something for a house they did not own felt like bad luck. When she returned to London, she would make more of an effort to look for a larger place. She would not wait for Christopher.
She spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the medina. It was as if the buildings and houses had been pushed tightly together on narrow streets that rippled down to the sea. The map from the hotel was of no use. The streets hooked and zagged in all directions, disregarding rules of geometry, and the twists and turns and tunnels of the narrow passageways could disorient even the best traveler’s sense of direction. Being lost felt joyless without Christopher, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She had traveled often by herself. Maybe it was because he had thought that not coming wasn’t a big deal. It was as if he had not considered the consequences. She paused to watch a woman getting her hand tattooed with henna. The design was lacelike and extended across her fingers. An assistant shoved a book of designs toward her. Helen shook her head and moved on. As she meandered through the medina she began to feel hot even though the October afternoon was cooling as it leaned toward dusk. The strong scents of cooking—onions and spices and baked bread—pressed down on her and made her feel nauseated. She rested against a building to steady herself. The low sun covered the narrow passageways in shade. She stopped to ask a man who squatted behind embroidered slippers laid in rows on a blanket for the direction to the Grand Socco, but he did not understand and instead picked up the slippers to show her. She kept going.
Around a corner she saw a tight staircase. Maybe it would lead her out of the medina, but it only took her to the top of a building. She could see where she wanted to go. She should be able to find her way out. She climbed down, and when she passed a small shop selling prayer rugs, she stopped and asked again. The man walked with her outside the shop and pointed the way, which was almost at a 120-degree angle to where she thought she should be heading. She walked another several hundred yards along a path that was never straight for very long. She thought she was getting close until she saw the shop where the woman had been getting her hand hennaed. The woman was now paying, the entire top of her hand was covered in an intricate design. Helen asked her if she knew the way out. The woman nodded and indicated she would show her. After a series of twists and turns, the woman stopped and pointed to an opening down a passageway.
On her way back to the hotel, Helen had planned to stop by the English cemetery, but she was followed by several little boys who held their hands out begging for money. They were malnourished, with dark circles under their eyes, their clothes nothing more than dirty rags. She had left her wallet in the safe in her room and had nothing to give them. The small boys tapped the side of her leg in a last desperate plea. She thought of Henry, who was about their age and who was always so well looked after. She would have a child soon. She would go back to the hotel and get some money to give them. After some dead ends and wrong turns, she found her way back to the hotel, but the manager told her that after five in the evening, a woman should not be on the streets unescorted. It was not safe.
There was a message from Christopher. He had called from the Hong Kong airport before he took off for Milan. He would call when he landed.
Chapter Twenty-One
Djemaa El Mokra
William Pauling’s house was in the hillside suburb of Djemaa el Mokra just west of Tangier. The hotel organized a driver to stay with Helen for the morning. She was at the gate at the appointed time and rang the bell. A voice answered through an intercom and gave instructions to follow once the gate buzzed open. She entered a wild, lush small courtyard with a fishpond in the middle. She did as she was told and arrived at a second gate. Again a bell and intercom, more instructions, this time through an overgrown area of lilac-blue plumbago and citrus trees. The third set of instructions brought her to a front door where a large man stood in the open doorway. “You follow directions well,” he said and turned and moved back into the house—expecting her to follow. His action had the same mixture of deliberate weariness and ponderous arrogance as his one-word message scrawled across her letter. It was as if he had recalibrated his life by moving the weight of a metronome to the tip of the pendulum, making all measurement and movement heavy and slow. She
followed him down a dark hallway to a study painted a deep green.
William Pauling had grown up surrounded by beautiful works of art. As a young man, he had wished to acquire pieces of his own, but not being first born, he had received no inheritance, so he became a fine arts dealer with a shop at the seedy end of Pimlico Road. Unable to surround himself with the types of magnificent objects he had grown up with, he had to make choices. Castiglione had always fascinated him, and so he chose to collect only Castiglione at a time when no one cared about his drawings.
“This is the prize of my Castiglione collection,” he said, patting the enlarged head of a sheep mounted on a gilt base. The bronze object was a deep, burnished brown, the surface lightly roughed with short marks to replicate the flat hair on a sheep’s face. The eyes, by contrast, were smooth, and the reflection caused them to appear lighter than the rest of the head. “It was executed from a design by Castiglione. This is what all the controversy is about. He is about to leave me forever. I am pleased you have seen him.”
“I hadn’t realized it would be so large,” Helen said.
“Oh, yes, all the heads were mounted on human bodies carved out of stone. But we are not to speak about it. It’s no matter, for you see, what pleases me most is my collection of drawings of the European Pavilions,” he said, pointing to the far wall. “They are what make my heart sing.” As he spoke, he moved the palm of his hand upward as if batting a descending balloon. “I collected them first. There were two hundred sets made, and now there are only six known complete ones. Mine is the only one in private hands—the others are held by public museums in New York, Berlin, Dublin, Paris, and Los Angeles. The V&A’s set is missing one print. It has been a lifetime of work. I have found them across the world from country house sales in the north of England to dealers in Hong Kong. I even found one in a market stall in Tangier.”
Pauling went on to explain how this complex of European Pavilions came to be built in China. In 1747 the Qianlong Emperor saw a painting of a European fountain and asked Castiglione to explain it. Another Jesuit missionary, Father Michel Benoist, had some knowledge of hydraulics and built a model of a fountain. This so delighted the Emperor that he became determined to build both a fountain as well as a European-style pavilion as its setting. “Obviously,” Pauling said, waving his hand, “he got carried away. As you know the Qing dynasty emperors built the Yuan Ming Yuan—you may know it by the name the Garden of Perfect Brightness—or the Old Summer Palace as it is called now—as a place to reside and conduct government affairs. The Forbidden City was used only for formal ceremonies. The Qianlong Emperor chose a patch of land in Yuan Ming Yuan to build what I like to call his ‘European theme park.’ Castiglione was largely responsible for the architecture. Voltaire spoke of it. Victor Hugo equated it to the Parthenon. In fact, he said, and I quote, ‘All the treasures of our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient.’” Pauling laughed, pausing with delight. “Imagine.” He went around each of the drawings, announcing the names. “Pavilion Harmonizing Surprise and Delight, Observatory of Lands Beyond, Hall of Calm Seas, Observatory of Distant Seas. And here, the most spectacular of the twenty, The Palace of Tranquil Seas. Come closer.”
Helen did as she was told. She did not risk telling him she knew everything he was telling her. She had done her research, but she did not want to break the spell.
“The most spectacular of the waterworks was this magnificent clepsydra in front of this pavilion. In the center you see the huge marble shell, and the twelve seated calendrical animals, six on one side, six on the other. The Chinese day was divided into twelve two-hour periods, each represented by one of the twelve animals. The clepsydra was designed so that each head spouted water for its appropriate two-hour period and all twelve heads spouted water at noon.” Pauling looked down at her. “It’s all quite wonderful, isn’t it? You see, here they are.” He pointed to the fountain and named the figures in the order they appeared from left to right: dog, rooster, sheep, snake, rabbit, ox, rat, tiger, dragon, horse, monkey, boar.
“I found my sheep thirty-seven years ago. I had just found this print with all the fountains. When I saw the head at a small country house auction not far from where I had been brought up in Wiltshire, I knew I had seen it before. I couldn’t place it, but I knew I had to have it. The auctioneers did not know what they had, nor did any of the London dealers who viewed the sale. The auction house thought it was some ill-attempted Victorian copy of something. I bought it for a song. And some time later, as I was admiring my drawing, I made the connection.
“So you see, these pieces call out to one sometimes. When I was younger and much more ambitious, I dreamed of finding all twelve heads and then bequeathing them to the British Museum and having a small room—in my honor, of course”—he laughed in pleasure at the thought—“dedicated to them, with enlarged copies of these drawings as backgrounds. It would have been marvelous, just marvelous,” he said, twisting the signet ring on his pinky finger. “But it was not meant to be.”
Helen thought Pauling’s life seemed to be arranged around the slowed-down curve of beauty. He stopped short of finishing the story, but she knew the rest. The Chinese government had objected to the sale of what they considered looted national property, and the auction house backed down immediately. Eventually Pauling agreed to sell the head to a benefactor of the Chinese government for a fraction of what he would have received had he sold it at auction. She was amazed he still had it. She was surprised he held no bitterness.
“Come,” he said, “let us have some sustenance.” She followed him to a terrace shaded by large trees where a tray of mint tea had been left. “It reminds me of home,” he said when she looked up at the large mulberry tree. “We had the most marvelous mulberry tree in our garden, and in the summers Nanny would send us out to pick bowls and bowls and we would come roaring into the nursery with our bounty, and she would pour cream to the rim and a heaping tablespoon of sugar on top.” He pointed to a mosaic on the wall. “First century A.D.”
As he was serving tea, Helen asked him if he knew Castiglione’s sources for the pavilions.
“Oh, well, he relied on European books available at court and from the missionaries’ library. He found inspiration in illustrations of Italian baroque villas, the royal palace and grounds at Versailles, and classical architecture.” He answered her question with a boredom it did not deserve. “But I think his design had more to do with homesickness and imagination than about reproducing actual European buildings.
“About homesickness I understand. What I find so remarkable about these prints is that they are one of the first examples of a hybrid Sino-European style. Yi Lantai, who was a member of the China Imperial Academy and who studied under Castiglione, made these drawings. They combine elements of convergent and parallel perspective. Why just look at this one with the enchanting maze. It’s the front garden. The major elements of the composition use convergent perspective, the rectangular walled garden enclosing the maze is drawn as a trapezoid, with the back wall shorter than the front. But look—all the paths and partitions of the maze are the same size, they don’t get smaller the farther away they are from the front of the maze. All the secondary elements remain the same size, no matter where they are in the drawing.
“You see, the trick in life is learning how to see differently,” he said. “Castiglione taught the Chinese about perspective—parallel lines versus converging lines. That’s really the trick to life—being able to see both ways and knowing when to switch. In linear, or convergent, perspective, lines that are parallel converge to a single point. In parallel perspective, parallel lines remain the same distance apart whatever their distance from the picture plane. Parallel perspective does not presume a fixed viewpoint as linear perspective does, and objects do not diminish in size because of their distance from the observer. You can be anywhere and the view is the same, but not so with convergent perspective. It assumes a fixed point of observati
on and that perception will change whenever position changes.”
As Pauling was expanding on perspective and explaining how all the drawings had elements of the Western perspective of converging lines, especially in the drawings of the buildings, as well as elements of Chinese perspective, most notably in the way many of the attached gardens included flat planes with no vanishing point or sense of depth, Helen began to feel light-headed and had a metallic taste in her mouth. She tried to stay with him on his ramble. She wondered about the mint tea. She wanted to ask him for a glass of water. She had a hard time concentrating. He had not given her permission to record the interview, so she would not be able to go back over it and pull it apart. After an hour, she wasn’t certain she had grasped Pauling’s theories, but she had more than enough to write a short article.
From Pauling’s house, Helen stopped by the hotel to collect her suitcase and then went directly to the airport. She was happy to be leaving. On the drive to the airport, she thought about the distinctions Pauling had made. Parallel or converging lines. Maybe that was the complexity. If you lived your life along parallel lines, it didn’t matter where you stood, things would always look the same. If, on the other hand, you lived your life along converging lines, it did matter where you stood because place determined perspective—standing in one place, things looked one way, in another, a different way. So the trick was to figure out where to stand.
But was that really the right distinction to make? Was she naive to think that marriages and relationships weren’t always moving—either closer together or further apart? Were she and Christopher living along parallel lines? If they were, then it didn’t matter where they stood, because no matter where they were, things wouldn’t change. That wasn’t the way it had been in the beginning. Maybe they had been so in love that they did not even know where they were. Or at least that was the way she had felt about him. But day by day, his work had consumed him—he traveled all week and on most weekends was at the office catching up on the past week, preparing for the next. When they returned from Saint-Tropez, Christopher’s business obligations had increasingly begun to edge over into drinks parties and evening events. He understood her work was important, too, and he never pressured her to come with him. But wouldn’t it all need to change with a child?
A Theory of Love Page 10