“What if I was simply brave enough?” he exclaims.
“What?”
“I swear I really saw that boy. Maybe … I was brave enough to see him.”
“Mistral was shouting that your eyes were yellow.”
“Like during the blackout in Rome!” Sheng continues, electrified. “That’s when my eyes turned yellow for the first time. Nobody could see a thing, but I could, like it was broad daylight.”
“That doesn’t—”
“And then at the museum in Paris! I was talking to a guard that Mistral couldn’t see. Maybe it’s my eyes that … How do they look now?”
“They’re blue.”
“They need to turn yellow. Maybe they turn yellow in dangerous situations. Or maybe I’m the one that needs to … command them.”
“We could ask Elettra’s aunt.”
Sheng shakes his head. “There’s no time for that. We need to find out what happened to the others.”
“Be my guest.” He smirks, pointing at the skyscraper. “Go over there and ask him.”
Sheng starts to throw on his clothes. “We need to do something for them, and fast! We can’t wait another second!”
“You want to go to the skyscraper?”
“No, I want to follow the clues and find the Shanghai object,” the boy says. “Elettra, Harvey and Mistral did their part. Now it’s up to me. I’m the fourth and final element: water.”
Ermete holds up the dripping clothes. “If you want water, just go outside.”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” Sheng finishes putting on his wet clothes, holding back a shiver. “You coming with me?”
“Where?”
“To the place the heart top suggested.”
A humid dawn, trickling and heavy with mist, rises over the city.
The air is still, the rain slicing through it. Colorful umbrellas blossom on the streets, and Sheng and Ermete need to push their way through the crowd. They’ve just come out from the metro station in Sheng’s neighborhood, a few blocks away from the Small Peach Garden Mosque.
“Everything’s fine, Mom,” the boy says into his cell phone.
He snaps it shut at the first cry of desperation.
“Next time, send her a fax,” the engineer suggests.
The Yuyuan Garden is closed. At the main entrance, a sign in two languages says it opens at eight-thirty.
“One hour to go,” Ermete says.
“We can’t wait an hour,” Sheng decides, walking along the perimeter of the garden. His determination stems from the only idea he’s come up with to help Harvey, Elettra and Mistral: find the Shanghai object as fast as he can and hand it over to Heremit Devil in exchange for his friends.
When Sheng reaches the corner of Anren Lu and Fuyou Lu, he climbs up the wall without thinking twice. It takes only a minute. He jumps down on the other side, rolls over on the ground, gets back up covered with mud and damp leaves and calls out to Ermete, “Wait for me out there! I’m Chinese. I can pretend I work as an errand boy for them, but you …”
“Go on, go ahead,” the engineer encourages him. “I’ll find someplace dry and have a cup of coffee.”
Mist rises from the ground of the Yuyuan Garden. Beneath the rain, it pools together like a blanket of fog. The raindrops form winding rivulets in the earth and, as they fall, hide the unattractive profiles of the cement buildings all around it. As he makes his way deeper into the garden, even the city’s noises seem to disappear. Sheng walks down the paths and over small wooden bridges, skirting ponds where giant carp swim. Bamboo stalks sag in dripping clusters. Lotus blossoms quiver. The only things peeking through the gray fog that shrouds everything are the pavilions’ white walls and the shapes of wooden dragons, which look like they’re leaping out from a dream. The corrugated rooftops on the red-lacquered wooden pagodas sparkle with legend.
When Sheng reaches the Ten Thousand Flower Pavilion, he’s left gaping in awe. He stops in front of a tree, its trunk massive, its branches trickling with rain. It’s like a four-century-old wise man with pearls falling from his open arms.
“The city’s great tree …,” Sheng whispers, touching its trunk. It’s a ginkgo biloba, one of the world’s most ancient trees, the same species whose seeds they found inside the Star of Stone.
The tree seems to confirm his hunch.
Sheng starts running again, his heart racing faster and faster.
Be brave enough to see what others can’t see.
The emperor’s teahouse pavilion is in the middle of a lake and is reached by crossing nine bridges built to keep out evil spirits. The pagoda is still dark, but a side door is ajar. Sheng walks in.
Without the throngs of tourists and their cameras, the old pagoda appears in all its magical charm, with its curved wood and dragon profiles. The picture windows that overlook the green lake fill the silent interior with shafts of gray light.
Sheng takes a deep breath and concentrates. He needs to find something that it’s important to find. He walks across the creaking floor and closes his eyes for a moment. It’s like going back through the centuries, back to when Shanghai was just a little fishermen’s village on the big, winding river.
But the illusion lasts only a few seconds.
“Hey! We’re still closed!” an old waiter says, his voice shrill. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Sheng admits, looking at him. The waiter has come out from behind a giant candelabrum. The rain is pounding against the windows, but to Sheng it’s like a drumroll. He smiles, flashing his gums. “That sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
The waiter seems surprised by his remark. He walks over to Sheng as if his feet weren’t even touching the ground and returns his smile. “You haven’t answered my question, young man.”
“Well, all I know is that I need to find something, and I’m convinced it’s somewhere in this pagoda. But I don’t know what it is, exactly.”
“Very interesting …,” the waiter replies, his long silk robe rustling. “And why are you so sure it’s here?”
“Because a toy top told me,” Sheng replies calmly. “And because I dreamed about it.”
“A toy and a dream. You are guided by great certainty.…”
“I don’t know of any better guide.”
“I don’t believe there is one.” The man looks around. “If this thing really is here, what do you plan on doing once you’ve recognized it?”
“I’ll try to figure out why it let itself be recognized.”
The man checks the big clock behind the counter that separates the tea room from the kitchen. “And do you think you’ll manage to do all that in an hour’s time?”
One hour later, the gates of the Yuyuan Garden are opened. Sheng runs out, dripping wet. He looks for Ermete where they split up and finds him at a small outdoor café not far away, leafing through the English edition of Shanghai Daily.
“Hey! Seen this?” the engineer asks, folding the paper and sticking the day’s latest news under Sheng’s nose.
GUNSHOTS AND EXPLOSIONS ON CENTURY AVENUE. ARE THE TRIADS BACK?
“We’ve gotta move!” Sheng exclaims, even more excited. “I found it, Ermete!”
“What?”
“The clue! In the teahouse there was a big Chinese painting hanging right in the middle of the pavilion. It’s always been there! Right in front of everybody’s eyes in the most touristy place in the whole city, but it’s like nobody ever saw it before!”
“Painting? What painting?”
“Picture this: four kids with different-color clothes on the back of a big dragon. A water dragon. A blue one.”
“You mean one of those big, wingless snakes with horse snouts that you Chinese call dragons?”
“I mean the most powerful dragon of all dragons, with us four on it!”
“What do you mean, us four?”
“Listen! The boy sitting on the dragon’s tail is holding some sort of stone egg. The girl in front of him has a mirror. The
third one, a long, white mantle decorated with golden scales …”
“Stone, mirror, veil … and the fourth?”
“The fourth is holding the dragon’s reins and making it fly toward a star that’s shining over the sea.”
“Wow!” Ermete says.
Sheng goes on. “Wait, there’s more. A Jesuit priest painted it in the seventeen hundreds.”
“A Jesuit priest? In the seventeen hundreds?”
“You got it! His name was Giuseppe Castiglione.”
Ermete gapes. “How do you know that?”
“The waiter told me.”
“A Jesuit from the seventeen hundreds who was a painter in China? Whoa!”
“The waiter says that if I want to find out more, I should ask the Shanghai Jesuits,” Sheng goes on. “He says they’ve got a massive library and that they might help us.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“We need to take the metro to Xujiahui, but that’s no problem. The problem is getting in: from what the waiter told me, the library isn’t open to the public, and it’s got strange opening hours.”
“Jesuits, huh?” Ermete murmurs. “I went to a Jesuit school. Let’s see.… What time is it in Italy right now?” He makes a quick calculation. “It’s early, but …”
The engineer dials a number.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling my mom. Meanwhile, lead the way to the metro.”
“Are you insane? At this hour, she’ll still be sleeping!”
“So? You want to get into a Jesuit library? I’ll get you into a Jesuit library.” Ermete waits for the phone to start ringing. “Haven’t I mentioned I was an altar boy in all the churches in Rome? I’ve got connections. Important connections. And it looks like the time has come to use them!”
THE CHURCH IS CALLED ST. IGNATIUS CATHEDRAL, NAMED AFTER the founder of the order of Jesuits: St. Ignatius of Loyola.
It’s a stately red church with two tapered bell towers. A large white Christ stands over the entrance with statues of the four evangelists to his sides. The library is next to the church in an old building that seems protected by a giant, age-old tree.
“A ginkgo biloba,” Sheng cheers when he sees it. It can’t be a coincidence: he’s following a trail with deep roots.
Standing in the doorway to the library is a small priest. He has an oval, geometrical face, gold-rimmed glasses and a short salt-and-pepper beard.
Ermete and Sheng cross the courtyard, dashing toward him and what is now useless shelter from the rain.
“It’s very kind of you to let us in!” Ermete says, almost shouting as he climbs the stairs that lead to the door.
“It’s a pleasure, Dr. De Panfilis. The cardinal told me you’d be coming.”
A simple, warm handshake.
When the priest turns to him, Sheng realizes he’s seen the man before: he’s one of the people who spoke to him in his dream last night. Along with the gypsy woman from Rome, the mailman from New York and the museum guard from Paris.
“Father Corrado,” the man introduces himself.
“Sheng,” the boy replies, shaking his hand just as cordially. Here’s the Shanghai guardian, he thinks, grateful.
“Welcome to the Zi-Ka-Wei Library.” The priest smiles. “Also known as the Reservata Bibliotheca, Biblioteca de Mission, Bibliotheca Major, Xujiahui Tianzhutang Cangshulou or, more simply, the Great Library.”
Once the introductions have been made, Father Corrado leads them into the building. “The cardinal told me you were coming to do research. What is it you need, exactly?”
Ermete points at Sheng. “He’s the expert.”
As the boy briefly describes the painting, Father Corrado nods more and more gravely. “That’s rather unusual, I must say. And where is it you saw the painting?”
“It’s hanging in the teahouse in the Yuyuan Garden.”
“Is it?”
“Do you know of this Giuseppe Castiglione?” Ermete asks.
The Jesuit smiles. “Naturally. Who doesn’t know of Giuseppe Castiglione?”
“Of course … Who doesn’t?” Ermete mumbles, joking.
“Giuseppe came to Shanghai when the great Qianlong was emperor, the one who had the garden and teahouse built. In those times, relations between the Jesuits and China were excellent and offered a mutually beneficial cultural exchange. Giuseppe was such a wonderful painter that he soon became the court painter for the emperor, who preferred him over many Chinese artists. In China, he went by the name of Lang Shining.”
As he speaks, Father Corrado delves farther into the old library.
“I didn’t know there were Jesuits in China,” Ermete says.
“Few people do. And yet, I believe we were the first Westerners to establish solid relations with the empire. We had a court delegation starting in the sixteenth century. We were the ones who reformed their calendar. We were also the first to translate the Chinese language into letters that could be understood in Europe.”
“So it’s your fault there are four different street signs for every road?” Ermete jokes.
Father Corrado smiles. “If you want to put it that way, yes. In any case, our presence wasn’t always appreciated. But despite many difficulties, we’ve managed to preserve these books, which are now one of the most important collections in the country. Especially for those who want to track down information about children riding a dragon, which otherwise would be impossible to find.”
The Chinese books section they’ve just walked into has red lacquer bookcases and occupies a long hallway leading into five side rooms with white wooden lofts around the upper shelves.
“There were six rooms once,” Father Corrado says with regret, “and the number wasn’t by chance: the library was a perfect copy of the Ming dynasty’s Tian Yi Ge private library and the perfect balance between sky and earth, between horizontal and vertical. But due to the metro line construction, the last room became part of the sidewalk outside.”
“Naturally,” Ermete says under his breath, pretending to understand what the man just said.
Father Corrado stops by the door to the fifth room. “This section is called Cang Jing Lou, meaning—”
“A building for a book collection,” Sheng translates.
“And it looks like there are lots of books,” Ermete says with admiration. “There must be at least … what, a hundred thousand?”
“Oh! We’ve never cataloged all of them, particularly the Chinese ones. Still, we think that, newspapers included, there might be over five hundred thousand. Subdivided into thirty-six main categories and two hundred eighty-six subcategories. Or perhaps I should say thirty-seven main categories and two hundred eighty-five subcategories.”
Father Corrado looks at the two with a hint of a complicity. “That is, if you count the ‘books-that-shouldn’t-exist’ category, which we keep on our … ‘non-bookshelf.’ ”
He removes two massive leather-bound books from a lacquered shelf and presses on the back wall, making the painted panel slide open. Inside, in a small niche, are some old books. Father Corrado picks up a booklet bound with leather strings and holds it out to Sheng. Then he quickly slides the panel in place and puts back the two books, smiling. “Not even the men from the Communist Liberation Army found this when they decided to come here and burn all the books.”
Sheng turns the leather volume over in his hands.
“What I’ve just given you is one of Giuseppe Castiglione’s journals, which he wrote the year he came to Shanghai and kindly left to our mission.”
“A journal?” Ermete exclaims, peeking over Sheng’s shoulder.
The priest leads them into a small, secluded room. “No one will disturb you here. The photocopier is down there, if you need it.”
TWO MEN GO UP TO THE TOP FLOOR OF CENTURY PARK’S TALL, black building. They’ve walked down a long hallway full of childish drawings, across a small bedroom, up a staircase and through an airtight door.
The first of the t
wo men walks rigidly, his hands clasped behind his back. The second has short, gray hair and is clutching an old violin.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Heremit Devil repeats obsessively.
Behind him, Jacob Mahler prods him with the violin bow. “It’s over, Heremit. Don’t you realize that?”
Helicopters are roaring outside the picture windows, trying to find out what’s happening inside. News of the swarm of insects has traveled fast, as has news of the explosions on the lower floors. The skyscraper has been divided in two: in the office on the second-to-top floor, it’s no longer possible to learn what’s going on below. The security system’s television screens have gone out, shutting down one by one.
The room on the top floor is almost completely bare. It’s a large office without furniture. The painting of a world map covers the entire floor. The two men are soon walking over its continents. Before the building’s electrical system went dead, the map would produce a series of ticking noises, its tiny lights blinking on and off.
“Your old office,” Jacob Mahler hisses. “How much longer did you think you could rule the world, hmm?”
“Why did you make me come up here?”
“Because I know how much you hate this room. This is where you were when they gave you the news, isn’t it? When was it? Five years ago? Four?”
Heremit Devil’s face turns ashen.
“It was devastating, wasn’t it? Even for a heartless man like you.”
Outside, sirens and bright beacons that look like Christmas lights. Heremit can’t stand the uncertainty of not knowing what’s going on below. And not knowing what Mahler intends to do.
“If you even try to lay a finger on me, Jacob, Nik will kill your little American friend.”
“And how’s he going to find out? Were you thinking of calling him?”
“He’s on his way up.”
“He’ll go to your new office. He’ll wonder where you are. And by the time he decides to come up here … I’ll already be done.”
“Done doing what, Jacob?”
The killer rests his bow on the violin strings. Rain lashes against the windowpanes, along with swarms of mosquitoes trying to get in.
Century #4: Dragon of Seas Page 14