by Pat Bertram
Kerry gave him a questioning glance. “How did you know?”
“Kwai lo is the Chinese name for barbarian, an insult of the highest order. To keep the back turned is a sign of disrespect. In this case, the insult seemed to be directed not so much at me but at Hsiang-li as my mentor. They spoke awhile longer in Chinese, then they started to leave. One man looked back and said, in English, ‘As we have explained, we’re consolidating the antiques business. We want you to join us or get out. We have excellent sources for new antiquities, and we don’t want or need the competition. If you do as we say, your American dog will be safe.’”
Kerry shot bolt upright. “What? They threatened you? Yet when I asked what happened in Thailand, you said, ‘Nothing.’ How can that be nothing?”
“Because Hsiang-li did what they wanted.”
“He closed his antiques business to protect you?”
“I told Hsiang-li he didn’t need to give in on my account. If I left he would be safe, but he said he had other reasons for closing.”
“Who were the men? Triads?”
“Maybe. Hsiang-li called them thugs in business suits. When I reminded him that he’d dealt with people like that before, he said, ‘No, these men are different. Their power is far reaching.’ When I continued to protest, he told me all things must end. If it weren’t those men, there would be others. Penalties for dealing in stolen antiquities had become severe in an attempt to stem the flow of Thailand’s heritage out of the country, and jealous business rivals would be glad of an opportunity to turn him in.”
“But he only pretended to sell stolen anti-quities,” Kerry said.
“It didn’t matter. He became too successful, and he made enemies.”
Kerry shivered. “Maybe his enemies are your enemies.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Bob said slowly, “but the men I saw in my room were Caucasian, and definitely American. You’ve got me thinking. I wonder if someone got wind of Hsiang-li’s gold Buddha and figured I know where to find it.”
Kerry’s eyes grew enormous. “Gold Buddha? It sounds to me as if your life wasn’t so quiet and uneventful after all.”
“This isn’t my story,” Bob reminded her. “It’s Hsiang-li’s.”
“Well, do you know where to find the Buddha?”
“No, and neither does Hsiang-li, but he sold his restaurant and went in search of it.”
“All by himself? If you were so close, I would have thought you’d go with him.”
“He wanted to go alone. A personal quest. Also, I have the feeling that one way or another he doesn’t plan on returning to civilization.”
“Jeez. Where did he go to look for the gold Buddha?”
“In the jungles of Northern Thailand and Burma.” Bob closed his eyes. “I dream of the jungle sometimes. Hsiang-li is lost, and I have to find him. As I push my way through the foliage, vines strangle me, snakes entwine themselves around me, clouds of insects envelop me. Then I’m hurt, I don’t remember how, and I have to pull myself along on my belly, but the jungle goes on forever.”
He rose and paced the room. A minute, two minutes ticked by.
Finally, Kerry patted the couch next to her. “Why don’t you come back here. Maybe if you finish telling the story, you can get it out of your system and out of your dreams. I know he’s your friend and you’re worried about him, but he made his choice.”
Bob’s steps slowed. A minute later he settled beside her. She took one of his hands in both of hers, and he felt her warmth seep into him.
“Two months ago we were in the secret room. We had sold off Hsiang-li’s inventory and all that remained were the tan and sepia figurines I mentioned. ‘I found these figurines a long time ago during a period of great sorrow,’ he said, and explained that he had not been prepared for such sadness. He’d lived in Ch’engtu, the largest city in Szechuan Province, which is the most densely populated province in China, but his own world was tiny, centered around his family’s restaurant. He went on to tell me about his robust baby boy, about his beautiful wife who had a laugh like the tinkling of bells, and about how happy and complete they made his life.
“Then a high-placed friend warned him about his name on Mao’s purge list, and his wife decided they should escape. They hired a guide to take them through the mountains and across the border into Burma, then on into Thailand. Although Thailand curtailed Chinese immigration, Hsiang-li figured they could blend into the Chinese community there with no one being the wiser. Before they left, his wife set her pet finch free. She could no longer stand the idea of any creature living in captivity.”
Feeling Kerry moving restlessly next to him, Bob said, “Maybe I should tell you the story some other time, let you get some sleep.”
She shook her head; strands of her hair brushed against his cheek. “This is daytime to me. Normally, I’d be in the middle of the bar rush, being run off my feet. Besides, no one’s told me a story since I was a little girl sitting on my grandfather’s lap.” Kerry moved closer to Bob and curled up against him. “You don’t smell the same, though. He smelled of pipe tobacco and horses and old leather. You smell like Rimrock’s meatloaf. You don’t feel the same, either. He felt safe and secure. Settled. You feel . . .”
“Feel what?” Bob asked when she didn’t finish.
“Dangerous.” She spoke in a voice so low it barely qualified as a whisper.
He wanted to put his arms around her, assure her everything would be all right, but he couldn’t lie to her. No matter how much care a person took, things still happened.
“All went well for Hsiang-li at first,” he said. “They actually made it into Burma, maybe even Thailand. One evening Hsiang-li went off to collect firewood while the others remained behind to prepare camp. He returned to find his wife, his son, the guides all dead, knifed by bandits for the pittance they had managed to bring with them.”
Kerry sucked in a breath. “Oh, that poor man.”
Bob nodded, remembering the pain in Hsiang-li’s eyes while he spoke of his grief, and the way his voice rasped, as if the words scraped the sides of his throat.
“The next morning he started to dig their graves. He had no tools, only rocks, sticks, and his hands. He dug for many days, wanting to be certain the bodies would be safe from the ravages of animals.”
“His poor hands must have been raw and bleeding,” Kerry said. Then, in an even softer tone, “I wonder what it would be like to love someone that much.”
“I don’t know,” Bob said, but he was getting an inkling. “Hsiang-li had dug a very deep hole when suddenly the earth gave way, and he fell into a cave, or so he thought. As his head cleared and his eyes adapted to the dim light, he realized he had fallen into a man-made chamber.”
“A treasure house?” Kerry asked breathlessly.
“No. An ancient kiln. Fragments of broken pot-tery littered the floor of the room. He also found many intact jars on long stone benches and a cache of—”
“Figurines,” Kerry cut in. “The little ceramic creatures. No wonder he got so sad every time he looked at them.”
Bob nodded his agreement. “Hsiang-li lowered the bodies into the kiln and laid them on the stone benches. He stuffed a backpack with the figurines, crisscrossed branches over the opening to the kiln, and refilled the hole he’d dug. Then, staggering under the weight of the pack, he left. He didn’t get far when he came face to face with an immense sitting Buddha, perhaps twenty feet tall.”
“The gold Buddha,” Kerry exclaimed.
Bob smiled at her eagerness. “It makes me wonder who actually told the stories when you were a child. You or your grandfather.”
She laughed. “I never like waiting for the ending. I want everything in a single gulp. Beginning, middle, and end all at once.”
“Maybe I should stop here. Make you beg to hear the end.”
“You can’t stop! Not until you get to the part about the gold Buddha.” Snuggling closer, she took his arm and draped it around her shoulders. She
smiled at him, her eyes dancing, as if daring him to move it away.
He fell silent for a moment, savoring the feel of her tee shirt- and jeans-clad body next to his. She smelled clean and fresh, like cucumber, or melon, or pear.
“Roots of a strangler fig enveloped the Buddha.” Hearing a slight huskiness in his voice, he cleared his throat and continued. “The tree’s foliage concealed it further. The dark green algae or fungus coating the Buddha added to its appearance of ageless wisdom and serenity. Hsiang-li thought it would watch over his family until he could return.
“Beyond the Buddha, barely visible through the dense foliage, he saw a building almost swallowed by the jungle. Hsiang-li found an open, vine-covered doorway and pushed his way inside. The beauty of the room he had entered awed him. Luminous golden brown tiles overlaid the floor. The walls and ceiling were also tiled, but in a pale green that shimmered in the shadowy light of the jungle. Except for patches of discoloration from a fungus, the room was remarkably well preserved.
“At the far end of the room sat a crude stucco Buddha about five feet tall that seemed at odds with the elegance of the place. Out of curiosity, he scraped off a piece of the lichen-encrusted stucco and discovered the glimmer of gold. With a pounding heart, he went outside for some mud to hide the scratch.”
“Why was it covered in stucco?” Kerry asked.
“I don’t know. He thought he had stumbled on a lost city, one, perhaps, that had been destroyed by Mongol hordes. In the days of Kublai Khan, gold Buddhas had often been stuccoed to hide then from the invaders.”
Kerry sat upright and stared at him. “Are you telling me Hsiang-li discovered a lost city?”
“No. There were four buildings, one of which lay in ruins. He decided the place must be a monastery compound that had been long abandoned.”
“But why would they leave the Buddha behind?”
“He didn’t know and didn’t care. He just knew it now belonged to him. He made his plans. He would find his way back to civilization, sell the figurines for the funds to mount an exhibition, then return.”
Kerry settled back into Bob’s embrace.
“Unfortunately,” he said, continuing with the story, “things did not work out according to plan. First, he had no idea where he was or where he was going. Because of the vaulted canopy of the jungle, he could not even tell where the sun rose or set to give him a vague idea of direction.
“Second, there were no distinctive landmarks to tell him where he had been. All around him, everywhere he looked, he saw the same soaring tree trunks, giant ferns, tangled roots, dangling vines, and huge orchids.”
An image of the jungle formed in Bob’s mind. It seemed so real, he felt as if he were in that shadowy gloom with its suffocating aroma of moist, decaying vegetable matter, and the deafening din of insects, birds, tree frogs, and monkeys. He shuddered at the thought of a lone man lost in such an inhospitable place.
“Bob?”
Hearing his name, Bob gave a start and saw Kerry peering anxiously at him.
She touched his cheek. “You got so still, I thought you were in the jungle of your nightmares.”
Bob laid a had on top of hers. “I was.”
“Then let’s get you out of there. Finish the story.”
“Hsiang-li didn’t know how long he wandered, alone, starving, half-mad with grief, before he stumbled on a hunting party of Lahu. They fed him and showed him a trail to Mai Hong Son, a half-day’s journey away. He sold a figurine, getting enough money to get to Bangkok where he sold a few more. By then he realized it could take years—and a small fortune—to find the abandoned monastery again, so he put the money into a restaurant instead.”
“Then he met you,” Kerry murmured, “and found contentment once again.”
Bob swallowed. “Yes. After he finished telling me the story of the figurines, he said a consortium of Japanese executives had approached him. They wanted The Lotus Room for a conference center, and he decided to sell it to them. He said his dreams of looking for the gold Buddha had faded, but he wanted to find the remains of his wife and child, and give them a proper burial. ‘I am getting old,’ he said. ‘If I don’t do it now, I never will.’”
Bob grew silent, thinking about the last time he’d seen Hsiang-li. They were at Bangkok Hua-lompong Station; Hsiang-li had decided to travel north by train instead of airplane because he wanted one last look at rice paddies and open skies before disappearing into the jungle to begin his search. He bowed under the weight of the backpack containing the figurines, which he planned to restore to their rightful place.
Hsiang-li pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Bob. “This is for you, my son,” he said quietly. Without waiting for a response, he swung into the train and was lost in the crowd.
Bob watched the train pull out of the station, then left to prepare for his own journey into the past.
Hearing a sigh, Bob turned his head to look at the woman in his arms. She slept, a peaceful expression on her face. He watched her for a minute, then closed his eyes. Soon he too fell asleep.
He did not dream.
Chapter 8
Bob’s left arm, entwined around Kerry’s shoulders, was asleep, but the rest of him was awake and rested, with only the tiniest twinge in the back of his skull to remind him of his problems.
Kerry stirred. Her eyelids fluttered and popped open. She lifted her head, looked around the living room, then up at Bob.
She smiled. “And you were saying?”
He disentangled himself from her. “I’m not telling any more stories. All I do is put us to sleep.”
“You slept?” she asked. “No nightmares?”
“No nightmares.”
She stretched. “I had such a delicious dream, hacking my way through jungles, finding lost cities and golden Buddhas.” Two vertical lines appeared between her brows. “Was the story true? You weren’t stringing me along?”
Shaking life back into his arm, he said, “I didn’t make it up, if that’s what you’re asking. I told you the same story Hsiang-li told me.”
“In that case, it has to be true. I doubt he’d have closed his restaurant and left his adopted son for anything less. Wow! A gold Buddha, five feet tall. No wonder someone is looking for you. I bet they think Hsiang-li gave you a treasure map and directions how to find the abandoned monastery, and those are the papers they’re looking for.”
“You’re forgetting one thing—Hsiang-li and I were alone in his secret room when he told me the story.”
She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “If those thugs in business suits are as powerful as you say, they could easily have bugged the place to make sure Hsiang-li got out of the antiques business.”
Bob stood and arched his back while he considered the possibility. If true, could they have also followed Hsiang-li to the train station and seen him handing over the envelope? But why wait a month before trying to nab it? Could it have taken them that long to understand the implications of what they’d seen and heard? It didn’t make any sense, but neither did anything else that had been happening.
“How much do you think the gold Buddha is worth?” Kerry asked.
Bob shook his head, a faint smile playing on his lips. “I should never have told you about it. The next thing I know, you’re going to be tramping through the jungles of Thailand and Burma looking for the Buddha yourself.”
“I wish I could, but buying a ticket to Thailand, stocking up on supplies, hiring guides, and who knows what else would take more money than I could earn in a lifetime. Rats. I would have loved to be able to see it.”
“If all you want to do is see a gold Buddha, that’s a lot easier to arrange. There’s one in a wat on the edge of Bangkok’s Chinatown, near the railway station. Interestingly, stucco covered that one, too, but movers dropped it during a relocation, and some of the stucco came off showing the gold underneath. Five and a half tons of pure gold.”
Excitement flared in her eyes, then died. “I d
on’t even have the money for a ticket to Thailand. Now that I’m shucked of the cheat, maybe I can start saving.”
***
Kerry was still in her bathroom when Bob finished showering and shaving. He pulled on the clean clothes he’d purchased the day before, and went out to the kitchen.
As he chopped onions, zucchini, and carrots for a stir-fry, Kerry entered the room. She stopped and stared wide-eyed at him.
He paused, knife in the air. “Do I frighten you?”
“No,” she said quickly.
Noting the way she wadded her hands together, he laid down the large knife. “After you reminded me about the MSG in American-Chinese food, I went to the Asian market on Alameda and bought supplies, including a wok and a sharp knife. Whenever I cooked, my landlady hid behind the kitchen door, peering at me as if terrified, but I don’t know why.”
Kerry let her hands fall to her sides. “It’s the way you use the knife, so fast and proficient. I’ve never seen a blade move so rapidly.”
Bob picked up the knife and slowly finished chopping the vegetables. “I didn’t realize. Wu Shih-kai always found my efforts to be hilariously clumsy.”
Kerry watched him a moment. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Set the table. The food is ready.” He gave a theatrical shudder. “Minute rice. Shih-kai would be horrified, but that’s all I could find in the cupboard.”
“This is fabulous,” Kerry said after they filled their plates and took their first bites. “What’s it called?”
“No name. It’s just a stir-fry.”
She took another bite and sighed in contentment. “You can cook for me whenever you want.”
“Maybe next time I’ll make whole pigeon or whole fish soup.” He gave her a sly smile. “Those are delicacies you will never forget.”
“Were they on the menu at The Lotus Room?”
“In the beginning, until I told Hsiang-li that westerners were squeamish and didn’t like to see eyeballs and feet in their food.”