by Steve Cash
The tall man said something in Chinese I couldn’t quite catch. His voice was high-pitched, but not the screech of a crow The small man spoke immediately after, interpreting. “Your name is Zezen, is that correct?”
“Yes,” I said, speaking to the tall man.
He spoke again, still with his back to me, and the small man interpreted. “Is it Zianno Zezen?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Do you know a man, a Chinese man, named Po?”
I thought for a moment, trying to place all the names with all the faces I’d seen in China. Then, I thought again. “I know a man named Li who used to be called Po. He lives in America with a friend of mine.”
“Then our meeting is most fortuitous,” he said, turning around as the small man was translating.
“I am—” he started, then caught his breath in his throat and his eyes widened slightly. He was startled at seeing me and I thought if he had known of the Meq, then he hadn’t known many. He composed himself and continued. “I am Li Lien-ying, chief eunuch for the imperial court of Ch’ing, and please tell me, how is my cousin?”
I almost laughed out loud, but managed to keep a straight face. “Li, I mean Po, is your cousin?”
“Yes, my first cousin on my mother’s side. We would have starved as children if it had not been for his family. He has always been opposed to my chosen profession, but I have always owed him a debt of gratitude. I have promised to deliver what was given to me.”
I was confused. I wasn’t sure what he meant. “You mean, you will take me to Opari?” I asked.
At the mention of Opari, he was genuinely surprised and looked down on me with a cruel, paranoid stare. “No, no,” he said rapidly. “That would be impossible.”
“Then what did you promise to deliver?”
“This!” he said and pulled open a drawer in the desk, drawing out a letter and handing it to me.
I looked at it. It was very familiar. There was nothing written on the side facing up and I turned it over. In the middle, scratched in black ink, was a single letter. “Z.”
I ripped it open and read it by the light of the single candle.
Z, my only Z, please get this! I am afraid. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who else to tell. I have seen the evil one, the one that killed Georgia and Mrs. Bennings. I saw him in the French Pavilion at the World’s Fair. And he saw me!! I had my baby with me, Z, and he gave me a look that was like a knife in the chest. I am so frightened. I know he will do something, I can feel it, but what? And when? I can’t bear this with my baby around, Z. I am more afraid for her than me. Please, Z, I don’t know what you can do, but you are the only one who understands. The only one. I pray this gets to you.
C.
I looked up and glared at the chief eunuch. “When did you get this?”
He looked over at the small man, as if to confirm it, and said, “The day before yesterday.”
At that moment, the door to the large room opened and in the darkness we could hear the rustle of robes followed by a sharp command in Chinese. Li Lien-ying and the small man stood frozen in their slippers.
Shuffling toward us with tiny steps and gradually becoming visible was an old woman dressed in a priceless robe of yellow, orange, and purple. Embroidered with seed pearls and coral, it was covered with ideograms and images of bats and dragons. A girl about my size, with a translucent scarf over her head for a veil, accompanied the old woman and held her arm gently. It was Tz’u-hsi herself, the Empress Dowager of China.
She stopped not three feet in front of me. Behind me, Li Lien-ying said, “Good evening, madam.”
She stared at me, up and down, as if I were an exotic animal. “It was,” she said, “until We were informed of certain proceedings. We would think that We would be informed when such a special guest is in Our midst.”
She tried to smile at me, but the right side of her face sagged and her eye and cheek began to twitch violently. She turned away from me and barked, “Why does this ‘magic child’ come to Us?”
Li Lien-ying answered, “He seeks one of his own kind, madam.”
Still hiding her face from me, Tz’u-hsi said, “And who would that be?”
“Opari,” I said.
“Silence!” Li Lien-ying yelled.
Tz’u-hsi raised her hand and said, “There is no need for that.” Then she reached over and lifted the scarf from the girl’s head and revealed her face. She was Meq. She had green eyes. She was somehow familiar. “This is Opari,” Tz’u-hsi said. “Tell her what you seek.”
I looked down at the letter I was still holding in my hand. Suddenly all I could think was “I may be too late. I’ve got to get there.” Then, I thought I heard a bird crashing against the lattice windows, somewhere in the darkness. It was loud and I looked all around me, but no one else seemed to hear. I looked at the girl who was staring back at me, expressionless. There was something about her, something in the eyes. Then it made sense.
“You’re the ‘Pearl,’ aren’t you?” I asked her. She took a slight step back. “But your real name is Zuriaa, isn’t it? You’re Ray’s sister!”
The girl’s eyes opened wide and her pupils rolled up and disappeared in the back of her head. She fainted and fell at Tz’u-hsi’s feet.
Li Lien-ying let out a piercing cat scream and Tz’u-hsi shouted into the darkness, “Seize him!” Hidden doors that looked like windows opened on all sides and government soldiers with rifles and long-robed eunuchs with swords started toward me. I reached into my pocket as slowly and casually as I could. I felt the Stone in my palm, cold and solid. I turned first to Li Lien-ying, whom I knew would have a weapon. He was pulling a long stiletto out of his brocaded sleeve and I raised my fist with the Stone in it. In a droning cadence that was loud enough to fill the room, I said, “Hear ye! Hear ye now, Giza! All stop now!”
I looked in Li Lien-ying’s eyes, and where they had been burning into me a moment ago, there was now a softness, a dullness, staring back. He dropped the stiletto and I started backing away, looking around me and trying to find the door and still chanting, “Lo geltitu, lo geltitu. You will forget. You will go like lambs now. Ahaztu, Giza!”
The soldiers dropped their rifles and stopped in their tracks. The eunuchs let their swords fall. Tz’u-hsi was kneeling over the girl and seemed somehow unaffected. She watched me turn and walk through the dreaming soldiers, more in wonder than fear.
I hurried out of the door and into the courtyard, stopping for a moment to locate the large hall of the eunuchs. Every building looked the same. I was lost. I started to pick any path, any direction, then I dropped Carolina’s letter and bent to pick it up. Before I could, I heard the Whisper.
It was soft but strong, like incense or perfume. It had texture. It had fingers and stroked my hair and touched my eyes. I breathed it. It filled my heart and mind with mist and musk. It spoke no word. It said no name, but it was speaking to me, as it always had, as it always would.
I looked up and from behind a life-size statue of some forgotten emperor she stepped out in a plain blue silk robe. She was my height and looked about twelve years old. Her hair was black and cut straight at the shoulders. Her eyes were dark and set wide over high, round cheekbones. Her nose was short and round at the tip. Her eyebrows were as black as her hair and thick. She wore no earrings, but her robe had an open neck and I could see a necklace with the Stones attached, sparkling in the lamplight. I could see the vein in her neck throbbing and I could feel her heart beating from where I stood. I could see her lips, her beautiful lips, tremble.
I knew two things instantly. I knew she was Opari and I knew she was my Ameq.
I heard men shouting somewhere and saw more lights coming on. I heard a deep ringing bell from another courtyard, an alarm of some kind. I knew there was no time. Not here. Not now. I picked up the letter and glanced at her just once more. She moved her lips and mouthed one word. “Beloved.”
I turned and ran, climbing over rock gardens and under bridge
s like Geaxi, racing through halls as fast as Ray. I was lost, but kept running until I found a gate that was still open with several foreign diplomats and their wives straggling through. I lost myself among them and, once outside, lost myself on the streets of Peking.
One day later, I was in Tientsin, and two days later, I was on board a ship bound for San Francisco. I had spoken to no one. I could only keep thinking, “I may be too late. I’ve got to get there.” And then another thought occurred to me. I was already hundreds of miles from Opari, from my Ameq, and I had only met her the day before yesterday.
10. GURPIL (WHEEL)
Wheel and deal. Do you want a hit? Wheel and deal. It is a game. It is a ride we sometimes take with fate as our companion, strolling through a carnival of circumstance and fortune. It is return. It is a circle spiked with fear and spoked with dream and spun with love and will. It is a cycle. It is completion. It is the motion of our birth and death, our sweet crop of secret corn, sown in light and harvested in darkness. It is a song, it is a refrain. You know how it goes and comes again. It is a wheel. Take a spin. Spin the real. It is your turn.
The tramp steamer Cartagena took five weeks to cross the world’s largest ocean. I had no luggage except what I had on me, which was my passport, the Stone, and a few British banknotes and Chinese coins. I had lied to get on and I would lie to get off. An innocent-looking child with half a lifetime of experience and a good story can slip through many locked gates and still be left alone. I talked only to the captain and spent all my time obsessed with the moment a beautiful girl had walked out from behind an ancient statue and looked into my eyes.
In a split second, I had felt her inside me, felt it in my chest physically, and everything I had ever thought about this world changed forever, because now I knew she was in it. It was the most urgent and powerful feeling I had ever felt.
On the long crossing, I watched the spray of ocean as our ship cut through the Pacific, I stared at a rose in the old-fashioned wallpaper of my cabin, I looked up at the bright star Vega, shining at the top of the night sky, and only thought of Opari, only saw her eyes and her trembling lips. I could still hear the whisper, as you would a gentle, familiar voice waking you from a long and unsettling dream. Thoughts of Opari ran parallel or intersected with every thought I had. I understood why the Itxaron and the power behind it was so difficult to describe. It would be like trying to tell someone who only lived in the desert about the effects of a flood. And still I went east, away from her, toward St. Louis, toward Carolina. There are two things you are never prepared for: suddenly finding love and suddenly losing love.
I knew Sailor and Geaxi would have no way of knowing what had happened, and Zeru-Meq would have to call in many favors and ask endless questions, perhaps ultimately to find no answers. Whatever had happened inside the Forbidden City would have to be explained later.
Coming into San Francisco, I had the same anxiety and fear I’d had years earlier approaching New Orleans with Captain Woodget, only this time my fear had a specific name and face. The Fleur-du-Mal was a killer. I knew that now and I was determined that he had to be stopped. I knew who he was and I knew what he was and my fear increased with every passing second, because now I knew where he was.
I made it through customs with only a slight delay due to the fact that I was unattended and had no luggage. I told a long and pathetic story about my missionary parents and their wish to get me out of China as fast as possible to the United States and a Chinese Christian family in San Francisco that was to take care of me. I even spoke a little Chinese at one point and gave him Owen Bramley’s name as an American reference. I was in the country and at the train station within an hour. I thought about trying to reach Owen Bramley and decided against it. I thought about wiring Solomon and Carolina to tell them I was coming and decided against that too. It was best, this time especially, that I come unannounced. If something had already happened, then I would find out soon enough. If something was about to happen, if Carolina was being stalked, then the best way to stop it would be to stalk the stalker. I didn’t know how the Fleur-du-Mal “worked” or what he had in mind, but I could find out from a distance. Then, I could stop him forever, if I had to.
I boarded the first train with connections all the way to St. Louis using a similar story on the conductor that I’d used in customs. It worked again and I was able to gain free passage all the way through. He put me in a cabin “for looking after” with an unusual family of three also traveling to St. Louis. There were two men, one very old and one middle-aged, and a woman of about thirty. They were Ainu, an ancient people from northern Japan who are unique in their own right. They have Caucasian features, some are said even to have blue eyes, and the men have heavy, thick beards. No one knows why they are the way they are or where they originally came from. I felt an immediate kinship based solely on isolation and survival. The conductor told me they were part of an entire contingent of Ainu living in the grounds of the World’s Fair. “Some promoter’s idea,” he said, “they got people from all over kingdom come living there.” He told me the woman spoke very limited English and the two men hadn’t said a word in any language. They all wore brightly colored tunics and wide trousers covered in simple but beautiful patterns. The woman watched me take my seat and made a slight bow with her head. I nodded back. The two men stared impassively out of the window. I followed their gaze and we stayed that way for hours. Together, we watched the twentieth century in the Western world pass by us for the first time. I thought about what Sailor had said, deep in China on the eve of the twentieth century. “We must look out for this century,” he said. “Our kind must adapt quickly. The Giza are shrinking the world with their inventions in communications and travel and they have only just begun. Our old ways must change or we will be swept away, obliterated and forgotten. It will be very difficult for many of us, but we must do it or none of us will live long enough to see the Remembering. The twentieth century, if we are not alert, could be the extinction of children such as us.” Going east, I watched the cities, farms, faces, fashions, noises, and spaces and I knew he was right. Especially, thinking of Baju and the Fleur-du-Mal, if we were going to kill our own kind.
The two men never spoke the entire journey, neither to me nor to the woman. She offered me a rice cake once in silence and I accepted in silence. Twice I exchanged glances with the older man, once while passing through Colorado and once while crossing the Meramec River, just before we arrived in St. Louis. As we were preparing to leave, the old man whispered something to the woman. It sounded like a series of low belches. She looked over at me and in very broken English said, “Grandfather say you have very old eyes for so young one.”
I looked at the old man. He was looking out of the window at the traffic in Union Station. I said, “Tell Grandfather he has very young eyes for so old one.”
We bowed to each other a final time and I thought I saw a trace of a smile on her face.
I stepped from the train and was hit by a wall of heat and humidity. I had almost forgotten the infamous St. Louis summer. There were people everywhere speaking in a dozen different English accents and in another dozen foreign. St. Louis had always been a hub for railroad and river traffic, but now it was the center of a wheel of international culture and commerce. The World’s Fair was in St. Louis and St. Louis had attracted the world.
I tried to focus and concentrate. It had only been eight years, but for some reason I was disoriented and walked aimlessly through the crowd. The men all seemed to wear the same flat-topped straw hats and the women all had parasols, which reminded me of the last time I’d seen Carolina in her yellow dress with her yellow parasol in hand. I kept thinking the same thought I’d had for weeks—“I may be too late.” I felt dizzy and couldn’t catch my breath. I made my way the best I could through the noise and bustle and finally came to a halt, slumped against a cool marble wall. I let my head fall back and closed my eyes. What was wrong with me? Was it the heat? I tried to relax and breathe
deeply. Somewhere in the back of all the noise in Union Station, I heard music and the unique sounds of a calliope. I opened my eyes and walked toward it. I passed under the Whispering Arch and looked up at the cavernous ceiling. There were no birds flying. Beyond the arch and in the open was a small carousel crowded with children and their families all around. As the calliope played, the children rode in a circle on painted lions, tigers, giraffes, and elephants. Vendors on either side sold pins, ribbons, and flags announcing St. Louis and the World’s Fair. The strange, hypnotic sound of the calliope drew me closer. I looked at the faces of the children on the carousel. One had Opari’s nose and lips. Another had her eyes and eyebrows. Still another had her hair and lips again. She was everywhere. I saw Opari in a part of every child in front of me. My temples throbbed and my breath caught again. I turned and looked back through the arch and saw something else, something I never expected, something that brought my mind into focus instantly. I walked back toward what I saw. I wondered how close I could get without being seen or felt. I didn’t get far. Still thirty feet from them, they stopped what they were doing, turned in unison, and stared at me. They stood next to a woman speaking in rapid French to several porters at once. They wore loose black trousers tucked into leather boots laced to the knees. Both had white cotton shirts with broad collars. I smiled at them. Unai and Usoa smiled back.
They nodded toward a shoeshine stand next to the wall and I walked over to meet them. I could see the outline of the Stones with the gems still intact under Unai’s shirt. Usoa still wore the blue diamond in her ear. We stood three feet apart and looked at each other in silence. The shoeshine boy, who was about our size and busy with a customer, glanced over at us. He looked at our faces for a moment, astounded by our similarities, but then looked down in obvious admiration of Unai’s boots, which were of the highest grade leather and craftsmanship and polished to a high sheen. He looked up again and shouted over to Unai, “Man, where did you get those?” Without a moment’s hesitation, Unai turned and said, “In Barcelona, after the Romans left.” The boy turned back to his customer laughing and repeating the words, “Right, right.”