City of Ink

by Elsa Hart

  Li Du pointed. “I have another suggestion. If we are going to be here all night, quite possibly without sleep, we may as well make use of the time. Do you remember, in our conversation with Ji Daolong, he mentioned this establishment? He said that Pan dined often at The Green Door. Perhaps this is an opportunity to glean some information.”

  Hamza acquiesced, on the condition that they could order food in addition to asking questions. They had to wait for a group of armed and mounted Bannermen to pass before it was safe to cross. The horses, sleek and gleaming in the lantern light, emitted the same repressed strength as their riders. They had been trained for war, and the narrow alley seemed too narrow to accommodate them. Pedestrians backed up against the walls, pressing close together to stay clear.

  Li Du and Hamza crossed in the wake of the Bannermen, just before it filled with people again, and entered the restaurant. The place was not busy, most of its patrons having dined there on their way home from the Inner City, and departed before the gates closed. Its specialty was a dish of duck and vegetables. Steam from cooking rice filled the air and condensed in drops of water that studded the leaves of courtyard plants.

  While Hamza took a seat at a table, Li Du made his way to the fire, where a bald man with expansive cheeks, shining with heat and grease, was turning three ducks on a spit. Speaking just loud enough for the man to hear him over the crackle of flame and shouted orders of food and drink, Li Du explained that he was an official of the North Borough Office, and that he had come with questions about a man who, until his death, had been a regular customer.

  “I heard about it,” said the man, who proved to be the owner. He had an affable demeanor. “Sad news. Jealous husband, wasn’t it?”

  “I was told he came here often.”

  “Very often. I’d say he was here more days than he wasn’t.”

  “Did he ever speak with you about his life, or his work at the ministry?”

  “For most of my customers, life is work at the ministry. But he didn’t talk to me about that. Of course he didn’t. I would never presume to address my customers on familiar terms, even the ones who are here all the time. I would not be so impertinent. This is what I know how to do.” He indicated the golden skin of the roasting ducks.

  “When was the last time you saw Pan?”

  The owner began to slice pieces of meat onto a plate. He considered the question for some time. “Which day was the big thunderstorm?”

  “Eight days ago.”

  “It was after that,” said the owner. “Must have been, yes, I think it has been seven days. I didn’t hear he was dead until yesterday.”

  Seven days, thought Li Du. That means Pan was here on the evening he died. Out loud he asked whether Pan had dined alone.

  The owner mopped his brow with a stained sleeve to which several feathers adhered. “He was alone, yes.”

  Something in his tone caught Li Du’s interest. “Was there something unusual about that night?”

  “Well, now that you ask, I think he met a friend of his.”

  “But you just said he ate alone.”

  “He did, he did.” The owner’s hands were occupied, but he gestured with his chin toward the open door of the courtyard. “But when he left, I saw him speaking with someone at the door.”

  “Did you see who it was, or hear what was said?”

  “It was a young man, but I can’t tell you his rank. It was crowded in here, and I couldn’t see clearly through the smoke and the heads of all the customers. Couldn’t hear a thing, either. But he did speak to someone, there, in the doorway. I do remember that.”

  The owner could offer no further insights. Li Du placed an order for a modest meal and joined Hamza at the courtyard table. The food arrived quickly—simple, hearty fare that revived them both. When they had finished, Li Du, who had been watching the alley through the open door, told Hamza he had an idea.

  “Before we crossed the alley,” he said, “I noticed a woman standing in a doorway just behind us. The crowds are thinner now, and I think I can still see her. She hasn’t moved from that doorway the whole time we have been here.”

  “Ah,” said Hamza, understanding. “You are hoping she may be able to tell us more about this mysterious young man.”

  Li Du nodded and stood up. “If we are lucky.” They left The Green Door and crossed the alley. The woman standing in the door was holding a lantern, which she lifted as they approached. She wore a robe of pink silk with an embroidered collar. Her face was powdered. Three silver butterflies were nestled in her hair, which was piled in intricate loops on top of her head.

  She raised a hand coquettishly, as if to bar the entrance. “I am the guard of this gate,” she said. “But I am not so stern as most soldiers. You could convince me to let you go inside.” From over her shoulder, through the slightly open door, drifted the sound of feminine laughter. The air was redolent with rose incense.

  “My hope,” said Li Du, a little shyly, “was to speak with you. Do you often stand here in the evenings?”

  She lowered her hand, and looked from Li Du to Hamza with a hint of uncertainty. “Most evenings,” she answered.

  Li Du indicated the restaurant. “This alley is so narrow that you must be able to see clearly the customers that go into The Green Door. I am hoping you recall a man who went there often, an official of the third rank.” Li Du tried to picture Pan’s face as it would have looked in life. “He was perhaps thirty-five years old, tall, and he had strong eyebrows—”

  “Like willow leaves,” she said quickly. “I know the man you mean. From Anhui?”

  “Yes.”

  She gave a little sigh. “We all like to watch him, though he never comes here.”

  Li Du didn’t ask her how she knew Pan came from Anhui. It was one of the most remarked-upon characteristics of the capital that a man could never hide his place of origin. The accents of the provinces were easily identified. But his hopes rose.

  “You say he never came here,” Li Du said. “Still, you know his voice. Seven days ago, he stood outside that door and spoke to a young man. Is it possible that you witnessed that conversation?”

  Her brow creased. “I might have been here, but how can I separate one day from another? I don’t think I can help you.”

  “Are you certain you cannot remember? The conversation took place the last time he was here.”

  She was silent for a long moment. Li Du saw her turn her focus inward as she moved through her memories. The lantern, now lowered, left her face in shadow. It cast a pool of light on the ground, which was sprinkled with feathers that had blown across the alley. “I do remember,” she said finally. Her forehead relaxed, leaving faint lines in the powder.

  “There was a young man, not much older than a boy. He was pacing outside the restaurant, back and forth and back and forth, the whole time the man from Anhui was inside. I remember thinking he was like an anxious little pigeon, going back and forth like that. When the man from Anhui came outside, I don’t think he recognized the youth. He would have walked past him, but the youth grabbed his sleeve, like this.” She clutched the silk of her own sleeve, so voluminous that it touched the stone threshold of the door, and pulled at it.

  “Then you don’t think they knew each other.”

  “They did know each other,” she said. “The man from Anhui recognized him. I am certain of it.”

  “Did he say his name?”

  She shook her head. “Not his name, but he said something else. I remember it because he smiled. Whenever he smiles, my whole heart turns to butterflies. He smiled, and he said to the young man, What would the kiln master say if he knew his son was here?”

  Li Du blinked. The kiln master’s son. “Did you hear anything else they said?”

  She gave a little shrug. “Nothing more. They walked away together. A troupe of acrobats began to perform, breathing fire and making their false swords into glittering mountains. Everyone stopped to watch and it was so crowded, I had to step backw
ard out of the street so that I would not be crushed.” She glanced behind her to the doorway.

  Hamza followed her look. “My friend and I are in need of a place to stay tonight,” he said in a tone of courtly respect. “If you have room within your fragrant establishment to house two tired guests who have stayed too late from their homes, we would be most grateful.”

  After a short consultation with the manager of the establishment, a woman who went by the name of Big Sister Wu, it was determined that space could be made for a reasonable price. Li Du and Hamza were ushered into a spacious dining room, where two pallets were assembled for them on the floor. Hamza accepted a cup of warm wine and an invitation to tour the courtyard gardens, which were more extensive than they could have guessed from outside the high wall.

  Li Du stretched out on his pallet with relief, but it was some time before he slept. His thoughts hovered around the anxious youth he had met in the offices of the South Church. To his knowledge, there was only one kiln master within the city walls who had forbidden his son from speaking to Pan. If he was right, the young man who had met Pan that evening, and who almost certainly had been among the last to see him alive, was the young secretary to the Jesuits, Hu Erchen.

  Chapter 31

  Li Du woke early to the sound of clinking dishes and water splashing on stone. He rose quickly from the pallet that had been laid out for him in the corner of the dining room and went outside to find the cook washing dishes in a bucket. A sturdy woman with reddened hands and an authoritative voice, she insisted on stopping her work to serve him tea and steamed rolls. While he ate, she informed him that his friend had been up all night telling stories to the women who had found no employment that evening, and had only gone to sleep himself when the sky began to lighten.

  Leaving Hamza to his slumber, Li Du left the courtyard to find the neighborhood transformed, the shops open and the strings of unlit lanterns pale and unobtrusive against the wan morning sky. Yawning soldiers at an open alley gate made no comment as he passed through to the adjoining neighborhood. He was pleased to find Wu’s bookstore also open. The bookseller was sitting on his front step, finishing a bowl of noodles, a book open across his knees.

  “You’re too early to have come from Water Moon Temple,” said Wu. With raised eyebrows, he looked over Li Du’s shoulder as if the night’s activities were visible behind him. “I never took you for a theatergoer.” A subtle emphasis on the word theater suggested that Wu knew well that the most popular activity within the opera district was not attending operas.

  Li Du explained that he had been returning home from the Inner City, and had misjudged the hour. “I was fortunate to find a room,” he said, “given the demand for them.”

  Wu cocked his head to indicate the shop interior. “You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “You’ll find my shelves bare as a larder after a hard winter. The candidates this year are a particularly voracious group.”

  Li Du smiled. “I see they have left you at least one book to accompany your breakfast.”

  Wu set his bowl down beside him on the step. “It is the latest from the Master of Fox Tales. You must delay your errand long enough to hear one passage. Am I wrong to rejoice that the poor man has not been able to pass the examinations? If he ever does, we will be denied his bitter parodies.”

  The man to whom Wu referred was a well-known scholar who had failed the examinations a humiliating seven times. Most recently, he had been automatically disqualified for skipping a page in his answer book. It was, the examiners argued, a suspicious discrepancy. What if the blank page had been a predetermined signal to a corrupt clerk or examiner who had been paid to give a passing grade?

  “Sit!” Wu patted the stone beside him. As Li Du took a seat on the cool stair, Wu flipped through pages, humming with indecision over which passage to read. “This one,” he said finally. “The seven forms of the examination candidate.”

  Li Du had to restrain himself from directing an anxious glance into the store. He enjoyed his visits with Wu, but the bookseller’s words, especially when he was inspired to read passages aloud, could have an ensnaring effect.

  “‘First, the examination candidate is a beggar,’” Wu began, seemingly oblivious to Li Du’s impatience as he concentrated on the text before him. “‘He enters the examination hall with only a single forlorn basket to hold all his possessions. Second, he is a prisoner who cannot leave his cell. Third, he is a cold bee, sitting at his desk with stiff legs and arms stuck out in front of him. Fourth, he is a sick bird, released from the examination yard, fluttering and dragging his plumage. Fifth, he is a captive monkey, one moment mad with dreams of success, the next plunged into despair, sullen as a corpse. Sixth, he is a fly who has been poisoned. The list of successful candidates is posted, and his name is not there. He throws his notes into the fire, and says he will never study again. Then, after a month has passed, he adopts his seventh form. He is a turtledove, just hatched. He begins to study for next year.’”

  “By lining his nest with books from your shop,” said Li Du. “But the volume I have come to find would not interest students of philosophy. Do you have the Compendium of Named Temples somewhere on your shelves?”

  Wu scrunched his features thoughtfully. “Are you looking for the edition published in the twentieth reigning year, or the forty-second?”

  “Either, or both. I have come merely to consult the text, if you will permit it.”

  Twisting to look over his shoulder into the shop, Wu clicked his tongue against his teeth. “At another time of year, I would be tempted to remind you of the difference between booksellers and librarians. But with my shelves almost empty, and my purse filled with coins, I am disposed to be generous. You will find the earlier edition in the back. It’s to the left, in the cabinet labeled Books of Miscellaneous Records.”

  Li Du thanked him, rose, and made his way into the depths of the shop, where a trace of night lingered, evident in the cooler air and a sense of slumber to the books. He located the compendium easily. There were a few smudged fingerprints on its white silk cover, left by customers who had started to pull the book from the shelf, realized it held no key to examination success, and slid it back into place.

  It was a simple list of the temples of Beijing. Most entries consisted merely of a name and a location. A few offered additional information, such as descriptions of curiosities displayed at the temples, including such objects as a meteor fragment, an iron ship’s anchor, and a carved stone taken from a famous ruin. Li Du found the name he was looking for, repeated its location to himself until he had memorized it, and closed the book.

  “I did not know you were visiting temples,” said Wu, when Li Du emerged from the shop. “Are you compiling a guidebook? Surely your visit can have nothing to do with the terrible crime at the factory. I heard that matter was resolved, however unhappy its conclusion.”

  Li Du hesitated. “Come,” said Wu. “This is my price for your consultation of my shelves.”

  The bookseller’s shrewd gaze warned against unnecessary dishonesty. Li Du stayed as close to the truth as possible. “It is the factory case that brings me here,” he admitted. “But you are correct when you say the matter is closed. I am only writing a report, which demands the clarification of certain details connected to the events.”

  “Of course,” said Wu. He stood up, shook the dust from his robes, and picked up his bowl. “It is best to be thorough.”

  Before Wu could renew his questioning, Li Du thanked him and gave the excuse that he had a pressing appointment. Then he hurried to retrace his steps and retrieve Hamza, whom he found miraculously fresh and bright in appearance, and ready to depart. The cook gave them an additional helping of steamed rolls to take with them, and they left the neighborhood, walking east, Hamza holding a roll in each hand.

  “Did you know,” he said, “that there are examination candidates who pay the women who hosted us last night to assume the roles of examiners? I will be clear. I do not have the im
pression that they stay up all night practicing answers to essay questions.”

  Li Du cleared his throat. “I am aware,” he said. “Though that was not my own strategy for relieving stress before the exams began.” He thought back to those exhausting evenings, when the pieces of knowledge he had arranged so carefully in his mind had turned to leaves caught in a tempest. What was the point, he remembered having thought at the time, of memorizing so much when, now that the exams had arrived, it had all turned to a jumble? But he had been one of the privileged few who lived in the capital, and could seek calm within the familiar setting of his own home. He had not been forced to participate in the poisonous solidarity of the overcrowded inns.

  “Speaking of examination candidates,” said Hamza, “I assume we are going to speak to the youth who failed to mention his conversation with a murdered man hours before the murder.”

  “We are.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “When he is not providing his secretarial services to the Jesuits, he lives in his father’s house. It is near the Black Tile Factory. So near, in fact, that a person could, with no trouble, move from one place to the other, even in the dead of night.”

  Chapter 32

  Hu Gongshan owned a modest home with a single large courtyard. The space was crossed by laundry lines, from which unadorned clothing swung in cloudy shades of gray and white. The servant who answered the door told them that Erchen was in his study, but the room to which he led them had nothing in common with the scholar Bai’s airy haven for contemplation and composition. On one side of the room, two small children were playing with a kitten. At its center, an older boy and girl sat beside each other at a table, practicing calligraphy. The remaining side of the room was divided from the rest of the space by hanging blankets. Pinned to these partitions were numerous charms and bouquets of herbs. Dried leaves and fallen petals littered the floor.