by Steve Cash
Carolina
PS. His name is Nicholas and the “business” is doing well, thank you very much.
That letter cleansed my soul and cleared a dark window I’d been afraid to look through. I’d thought of her so often, worried and wondered, and now I knew. I was overjoyed for her. I carried that letter and read it every day for six months. It became a talisman, a lucky charm, and it served me well.
Owen Bramley was right about war. Through June, July, and August, there was a war, of sorts. They called it the Boxer Rebellion, but it was really an ineffectual attempt by China to stave off the inevitable. China was an old woman falling down and the Western powers were going to help her, not to get up, but to stay down. The Boxers and their belief in old magic and the notion that bullets would turn away from their holy bodies as they killed Christians were only crazy examples of China’s refusal to accept change, both good and bad, especially the imperial family and the “Old Buddha.” The Boxers could be dangerous, however, and we tried to avoid them. And cities. And trains. Sailor said the Meq had no place in Giza politics and their penchant for barbarism and war. I said what about the Fleur-du-Mal and Sailor said that was what made him “aberrant.”
We did learn something, however, as a result of an encounter with the Boxers. We were in the remote province of Kansu following another “clue” about Zeru-Meq’s whereabouts. It was long after the “Rebellion,” late 1901, and these Boxers were on their own, no longer connected to anything political or even righteous. They were roaming and raiding, murdering and torturing at random in the poorest towns and villages of Kansu. In all our years in China, it was the first time we were forced to reveal ourselves as Meq.
We had stopped to rest at a small inn and get some relief from a bitter wind that seemed never to stop blowing. The Boxers arrived suddenly, maybe thirty in all, and a few came inside and ordered the innkeeper to give them whatever they wanted or be dealt with as a nonbeliever. They wore the symbolic red sashes and turbans they were known for, but theirs were old, tattered, and stained. Outside, the rest of them were noisily torturing some poor innocent. They were calling their victim a “liberal old crow” and we could hear the high-pitched screams as the Boxers delivered their blows.
In a very few minutes, whether it was the immediate situation or an accumulation of our years in China and the futility of our search, I don’t know, but Geaxi had had enough. She was out of the back door and up on the roof in a matter of seconds. Sailor and I followed, but neither of us was as quick as Geaxi. When we got to her, she was on the edge of the roof looking down on the Boxers and the beating that was taking place. She had the small, pitted black rock, the Stone, in her hand. I took mine out as Sailor and I came up beside her. With just a glance toward me and a nod, she looked back down on the Boxers. We both raised our hands and spoke low in unison, “Hear ye, hear ye now, Giza! Lo geltitu, lo geltitu, Ahaztu!”
The Boxers were carrying everything from ax handles and homemade swords to government-issue carbines. They laid them all down immediately and walked away. In less than a minute, they were gone in five different directions. Sailor stared at us in mute fascination. This was the first time in twenty-six centuries he had seen the Stones used without the gems.
We climbed down the front of the building into the little courtyard surrounding the inn. The person the Boxers had been beating sat huddled against the wall and trembling. It was a man, but as Sailor approached him he let out a piercing, high-pitched screech like a crow. And as I approached, I could smell something foul about him, not from lack of hygiene, but something else. He was a eunuch and, judging from the robes he was wearing, an imperial eunuch. He, and thousands like him, had run the daily palace affairs and served at court for centuries. They were known, at least some of them, to be masters of deceit and intrigue. Eunuchs like him, who sounded like crows, were usually castrated after puberty. Others had a softer tone and had probably been castrated as children. The Boxers hated them and blamed them for a long list of imperial wrongdoings, especially the liberal ones who believed in Western influence.
Sailor stopped and told him not to be afraid. He looked at Sailor, still trembling, and in Mandarin replied that he was not afraid, he was thankful, and he had screamed only because an ancient legend and rumor in the imperial palace had now come true. Sailor asked him what that was and he told of a tale that had been passed among the eunuchs down the years. That Li Lien-ying, the chief eunuch, and the Empress Dowager herself, Tz’u-hsi, harbored a girl, a girl with Western features who was known for her powerful presence, sexual and otherwise, even though she was physically immature herself. And she supposedly had a hypnotic effect on others whenever she wanted them to stop what they were doing. The legend held that she was called the “Hare” and sometimes the “Jade Hare.” He said that when he heard us and saw the Boxers leave it was the same thing.
Sailor looked to Geaxi and then to me, barely suppressing a grin. We knew the “Hare” had to be Opari.
We helped the man up and he gathered his sensibilities, then departed in a flurry to who knows where. On the spot, we discussed if our search for Zeru-Meq should continue or whether we should go to Peking and explore other avenues. Sailor said we should keep looking for Zeru-Meq. “Without him,” he said, “we will get nowhere in Peking. If Opari is behind an imperial gate, Zeru-Meq will know the gatekeeper.” Geaxi and I reluctantly agreed.
After that, we stepped up our search, traveling faster and resting less. We covered Honan province and Hupei to the south. We doubled back through Shensi and north as far as Ningsia. At every stop, whether riverfront opium den or mountaintop shrine, Sailor thought we had learned something, inched a bit closer, or didn’t have long to go. He had started asking certain questions in a certain way, so that he could read between the lines of the answer and anticipate Zeru-Meq’s movements. The longer we kept at it, the more obsessed he became.
For two more years we searched in vain. Then, in a remote Taoist monastery near Yushu, at the far west end of Szechwan, not far from Tibet, which was supposed to be our country of origin, we gave up.
It happened suddenly. After our arrival and a few inquiries, we were taken back to the kitchen and shown an ancient slab-oak table, twelve feet long and four feet wide. We were told it was used for everything from the preparation and serving of food to communal meetings and prayer. On the far end and carved into the edge was a poem. We were informed, after asking, that it had been written “the day before yesterday.” It read:
The oyster folds over the Pearl
The Hare stays put in the nest
Your steps are loud
Your thoughts are thunder
Why do you still hunt?
Sailor turned bright red and pounded his fist on the table. The monk who had shown us the carving jumped back and then excused himself, not knowing how to respond to such a violent reaction. Then, just as suddenly, Sailor broke into laughter, loud and long, more than I’d ever heard him laugh before. When he stopped, he said, “This game is over. I will not play any longer. Do either of you have anything else in mind? Anything will do. We must try something else.”
I suggested we go to Peking and cable Unai and Usoa. They might know something of Zeru-Meq through the movements of the Fleur-du-Mal. While we were waiting for their reply, we could try and find a hint of Opari. What could we lose except time?
Geaxi agreed and Sailor was open to anything. The next day we started on the long trip to Peking. It was spring of 1904 and we had been after Zeru-Meq for almost eight years.
We traveled by train as often as we could. Now that our priorities had changed, we were anxious to get to Peking. We were silent for hours on end. I think all three of us were disillusioned, but when we did speak, I noticed Sailor was much more pleasant. We watched the vastness of China pass around us, and in our Buddhist robes we probably looked more like the young monks we were supposed to be than we ever had.
When we were still a good distance from Peking, maybe two hundred m
iles, the train made an unscheduled stop close to Ta T’ung and near the ancient Yün Kang caves that contained thousands of Buddha statues, images, and carvings. We were there for at least twenty minutes and outside I heard men shouting and yelling while they loaded something heavy into a car farther down the train. People inside were grumbling about the delay, but once we got going, everyone settled back into the stupor of a long train ride.
I was dozing myself when I was suddenly jolted awake by a boy falling into me. He was carrying an armful of umbrellas and he fell across my lap and rolled into the seat next to me, forcing Geaxi to squeeze up against the window. He never once dropped the umbrellas, holding them with both arms in front of him like a bundle of trees. I couldn’t see his face, but he was apologizing profusely in Chinese. Sailor was sitting across from us, facing the boy. Then the boy began placing the umbrellas between his knees, lowering them one at a time. After two or three, Sailor could see his face.
“It is not so,” Sailor said. “Please, say it is not so.”
The boy lowered the rest of his umbrellas and I could see his face. He had curly black hair, green eyes, and he was definitely Meq.
Geaxi laughed out loud.
“Egibizirik bilatu,” the boy said with a smile. “Do the Meq not say that still?”
Geaxi, still laughing, said, “And five lights shine at the birth of every Buddha.”
The boy laughed along with Geaxi and said, “I am afraid I am out of salt,” then he looked directly at Sailor and said, “Hello, old one.”
Sailor stared back at him and without taking his eyes off the boy said, “Zianno Zezen, meet Zeru-Meq.”
The boy turned and focused his concentration on me. He looked me over thoroughly. “I did not know your father,” he said, “but I knew your grandfather. A tragedy.” Then he nodded toward Sailor. “Did this old wanderer tell you I was ‘unpredictable’?”
I looked at Sailor, who was shaking his head. “Actually, he said you were ‘completely unpredictable.’ ”
Zeru-Meq started laughing again and trying to find a place to put his umbrellas, as if we had all been planning to meet and he was just a little late.
Sailor said, “Why now? Why here? What’s the point?”
“The point is, old one,” Zeru-Meq said, finally putting up the last of his umbrellas, “that to find something while one is still looking is to lose it, but to find something after one has stopped looking, that is discovery. Anyway, it is I who need your help at the present. We can discuss your needs later. Do you still carry those wonderful Stones?”
Sailor, Geaxi, and I all glanced at one another, unsure of how much information we wanted to share. Sailor solved it, saying simply, “Yes.”
Zeru-Meq said “very well,” and went on to tell us that during the decay of the Ch’ing dynasty, open vandalism and looting were taking place at many sacred temples and shrines such as Yün Kang, which we had just passed. That was why the train had stopped, he said, to pick up stolen heads from several statues of Buddha to sell to foreign museums and art collectors. Zeru-Meq said this was an abomination to him. He told Sailor that just outside Peking, where the shrine robbers had planned their drop-off, he had planned his own pickup. Once they had unloaded their sacred contraband, if we could make the scoundrels “forget,” then his men would be there to return the heads to their rightful owners in Yün Kang. He also said that doing this would make Sailor “feel better.”
Geaxi stifled a giggle and we all agreed to help. Sailor was silent for most of the remaining journey, but I spoke to Zeru-Meq about many things and in the course of our conversation brought up the Fleur-du-Mal. I asked him what he was capable of and, straight out, if he had heard from or seen him recently.
He looked at me openly and smiled. He had the same brilliant white teeth as the Fleur-du-Mal, and his eyes were the same deep green, but there the similarities ended. I sensed no evil in Zeru-Meq.
“The Fleur-du-Mal,” he said, “is a righteous man. He does only one thing based on one way of thinking — that which is forbidden. He is not a grand thief or even a good murderer. He is a common man, as clear as a mountain stream, only he does not think he appears this way because of his obsession with the forbidden. If starving were forbidden, he would never eat another egg. The Fleur-du-Mal, Xanti Otso, is a pilgrim. A sad, dangerous pilgrim.”
“But have you seen him in the last eight years?” Geaxi asked.
“No,” he said, “I have not spoken with him since the 1860s.”
I thought about this and what Sailor had said about the Fleur-du-Mal and his habits. I glanced at Sailor to see his reaction, but he was staring out of the window.
We arrived at the station Zeru-Meq had said was the rendezvous point around dusk. A strong wind, laden with grit and sand, was blowing out of the west. Our plan was simple: surround the scene of the exchange at three equidistant positions and use each of our Stones together, simultaneously mouthing the words the way Geaxi and I had done at Kansu. In a matter of minutes it was done and Zeru-Meq had all the Buddha heads carefully loaded into two-wheeled peasant carts and “his men” discreetly hauled them away and back to the caves of Yün Kang. The other men, the thieves, wandered off aimlessly.
Later, Zeru-Meq mentioned that he hadn’t seen any gems imbedded in either my or Geaxi’s Stones, only in Sailor’s, yet they all seemed to work as they always had. He asked Sailor about it and Sailor was silent. He smiled and said, “This puts things slightly askew, doesn’t it, old one?”
Sailor finally said, “You know what we seek, Zeru-Meq. And you know we would never ask for your help if there were any other means. Will you help us find Opari?”
“If I had not seen what I just saw with the Stones, I would say no. And I have always thought you and the others were wasting your time with your fixation on the Remembering. We are who we are. The Remembering will not change that.”
“You have your opinion,” Sailor said.
“Yes, I have,” Zeru-Meq said and paused a moment. “Anyway, I can only arrange an audience with Li Lien-ying, the chief eunuch, and even then, an audience of only one. Three would never be allowed. Once inside the Forbidden City, whoever it is will be on their own. I would be very careful. Li Lien-ying and Tz’u-hsi herself are the only ones that know of Opari and another one with her called the ‘Pearl.’ They are very jealous of their magic children and protect them accordingly.”
We entered Peking and I saw everything from dogs and children sharing the same scraps of food in the street to wide avenues lined with peach trees in full bloom.
Zeru-Meq helped us locate rooms near the Forbidden City and we finally took off our Tibetan Buddhist robes for good. There seemed to be hundreds of thousands of children on their own in Peking and four more like us would alert no one.
That night, it was decided that I would be the one to visit Li Lien-ying. I was still convinced that it was Opari’s heartfear that made her vulnerable and her heartfear was me. “Why” was a question I couldn’t answer. All those years in China and I hadn’t heard one voice or dreamed one dream that made anything any clearer. But I was excited. I knew I was close. There were only a few miles separating us that night and I knew that soon even that gap would be closed.
The next day, Sailor went to cable Unai and Usoa. No matter what happened in Peking, he wanted news of the Fleur-du-Mal. Zeru-Meq went to arrange the audience with Li Lien-ying. He said it could take five minutes or five hours. There was no way to know until it was done. Geaxi and I began to walk around the Forbidden City, but the wind was still full of grit and sand and we returned to our rooms. It was odd. Whole years had swept by me, barely noticed or counted, and now a few hours seemed a lifetime. I was nervous. Geaxi laughed at me and said, “The one thing you should be able to do, and do well, is wait.”
Sailor returned at about four in the afternoon, saying only, “Peking has lost its charm.” Zeru-Meq arrived at six and said I was to be outside the east gate at eight o’clock sharp. An audience had been accepted.
He said he had had to give my name, it was required, and the truth seemed most appropriate. He said “the truth” from now on would be my ally; it was so rarely heard inside the walls of the Forbidden City.
We had tea together at a small café as the sun was going down and the wind with it. Outside, however, the Peking traffic remained constant. Sailor went over everything I should say to Opari if the chance arose and reminded me that I would be the first to do this. “Do not be the last,” he said.
I was met at the gate by four eunuchs, two in front to escort me and two behind for no reason other than ceremony and ritual, the way it had always been done.
We walked through the massive gate and along the wall to another smaller gate, through that and across a courtyard into a large hall with two huge doors, painted a brilliant vermilion. All around the building were hundreds of intricately carved lattice windows. Inside, there was electric light, which somehow seemed incongruous.
I was handed over to four other eunuchs in slightly more elaborate dress and led down a corridor alongside the hall. It must have been the living quarters for hundreds, maybe thousands, of eunuchs. The same sour odor of decay I had detected in Kansu was overwhelming.
At the end of the hall, we crossed another courtyard and I was left alone on the steps of a smaller, but just as magnificent, structure. It was a two-story pavilion with stone dragon heads peering over the upturned corners of the roof.
The building was dark inside and around me the sounds of Peking were only a distant murmur. The door opened gently and a small man asked me politely in English to come in.
It was deathly quiet. I followed him to the center of the large room where a man was standing with his back to me: a tall man, taller than any of the other eunuchs I had seen. He was standing beside an ancient cherry and teak wood desk with a single candle on top. It was the only furniture in the room. The small man moved slightly to the side, into the shadows. I was not introduced, so I stood where I was, waiting.