Despite that, hed managed to profit from the confusion. Upper-class people sold Ming furniture by weight, hed told me. Porcelains and paintings and bronzes went by the crate everyone wanted to get rid of the things that betrayed their class status. Hed packed up his treasures and sent them home to Massachusetts, where theyd kept his business going for the rest of his life and had sustained me as well. Still, he swore his treasures were nothing compared to what had lain within the gated walls of the Forbidden City. Hed spent days in those dusty palaces, and had described them to me so many times that Id dreamed of them. Hed once said something that made me sure the Temple of Heaven lay within the Forbidden City, so when I broke away from Walter and hired a cab to bring me to Dr Yu, I didnt even check my guidebook.
At Tiananmen, I dismissed my cab like a fool. The great gate guarding the grounds was still intact, as were the watchtowers guarding the corners, and after I paid my ten fen I stood inside the gate, right where Uncle Owen had been a score of times. I had a picture of him standing here, dressed in scholars robes and holding a sprig of flowering plum, and I had forty-five minutes in which to see some of what hed loved.
Only when I entered the first building did I remember the rest of Uncle Owens tale: the palaces had been looted twice, once by the Japanese and then again by the Kuomintang. Nothing was the way Id pictured it. In the Three Great Halls, the surviving Ming and Qing relics were jumbled with treasures brought from all over China to fill the gaps. Song and Yuan paintings, water clocks, jade seals, cooking vessels, archeological finds; none of the rooms were intact, and they had the feel of a junk shop or of a museum exhibit hastily arranged by an amateur. The things were only things, dusty and out of place, and I couldnt recapture Uncle Owens rapt appreciation.
At Tiananmen, I dismissed my cab like a fool. The great gate guarding the grounds was still intact, as were the watchtowers guarding the corners, and after I paid my ten fen I stood inside the gate, right where Uncle Owen had been a score of times. I had a picture of him standing here, dressed in scholars robes and holding a sprig of flowering plum, and I had forty-five minutes in which to see some of what hed loved.
Only when I entered the first building did I remember the rest of Uncle Owens tale: the palaces had been looted twice, once by the Japanese and then again by the Kuomintang. Nothing was the way Id pictured it. In the Three Great Halls, the surviving Ming and Qing relics were jumbled with treasures brought from all over China to fill the gaps. Song and Yuan paintings, water clocks, jade seals, cooking vessels, archeological finds; none of the rooms were intact, and they had the feel of a junk shop or of a museum exhibit hastily arranged by an amateur. The things were only things, dusty and out of place, and I couldnt recapture Uncle Owens rapt appreciation.
As I wandered past the Dragon Throne and the great bronze turtle whose mouth had once billowed smoke, I tried to feel the ghosts of the emperors and empresses, the eunuchs and the concubines, but the rooms were dead for me. I put my lack of interest down to tiredness and overexposure: I had seen too much in the past week, too much, too fast, too false. I turned away from the turtle and then I heard Zillahs voice again: Of course you dont like it, she said. The whole place is a lie.
Seven days since Id last heard her; her reappearance frightened me. I knew my bronchitis was getting worse and that the waves of heat and cold flooding me werent a good sign, but I wanted so much to see Dr Yu that I willed my hands to stop trembling and refused to acknowledge what Id just heard. So Id heard a voice; it was only a voice. Maybe I was starved for English words.
Wheres the Triple Sounds Stone? I asked out loud, as if someone might answer me. Its almost five.
A group of women stared at me warily.
Ni jiang Yingyu ma? I asked. Do you speak English?
The women shook their heads and moved away.
Triple Sounds Stone? I said to everyone who passed. No one knew what I meant. I walked from hall to hall, up steps, down ramps, past carved pillars and painted dragons and another large bronze turtle, and still I couldnt find the stone or Dr Yu. Five oclock came and went, and then quarter past. I was trembling and weak and beginning to get concerned.
A man with a black and red eye and a strangely twisted mouth approached me near the Dragon Throne, after Id circled past for the third time. You are lost? he said in English. I may be of help?
I was so glad to hear his voice that I reached out and shook his hand. Im supposed to meet a friend, I said. At the Triple Sounds Stone.
You have no guide? he said. You come here alone?
I nodded. I couldnt help looking at his mouth, and he caught me. My mouth twist from sleeping near open window, he said. A draft. Please excuse this way I look. My eye I have acupuncture for curing this mouth, and instead comes this coloring. You are American?
Yes, I said.
Your friend you meet is Chinese?
I nodded. And Im late. Already. And actually, I havent been feeling so well.
He looked at me gravely. This is visible, he said. You appear to have a deficiency of yin your nose and throat feel dry?
All the time, I said.
He shook his head. Many fluids, he said. Increase secretions. Also certain herbs are very helpful. Come this stone is perhaps near south of compound.
We rushed through the halls at great speed, and only after a hot and sweaty thirty minutes did I think to mention to him that the Triple Sounds Stone was part of the Temple of Heaven. I know its here, I said. I just dont know where. The stone is somewhere in the temple.
He groaned and pressed his small hands together. Temple of Heaven? he said, his voice rising in real anguish. Not Triple Sounds Stone you are looking for Triple Echo Stones, in temple is not here, is across city, twenty minutes at least by car, and how you will get a cab With that he rushed me back to the main gate. There were taxis parked there, but all of them were spoken for, and after a long argument with two lounging drivers he dashed into the streaming traffic of Changan Avenue and tried his hardest to flag down one of the passing cabs. Finally he went to the white-coated policeman who stood on an island above the traffic, and by the time hed finished shouting and throwing his arms about hed convinced the policeman to step into the traffic himself and commandeer a cab. The driver resisted, pointing to me and then shaking his head, but he gave in when the policeman bundled me into the back seat.
Temple of Heaven? my rescuer said. You are sure? I nodded and he gave directions to the driver. How can I thank you? I asked.
You will get there, he called, as the car eased into the traffic. No thanks are needed. But you must be more careful.
Careful wasnt high on my list just then. If Id been careful I would have spent the day in bed, tending to my bronchitis; I wouldnt have left the hotel, unarmed with guides or books, in search of Dr Yu. All week Id been listening to the humming voice of caution: Dont drink the tap water; dont even brush your teeth with it. Dont eat any fruit or any street food. Dont lose sight of the tour bus. Dont go out without your passport. Dont buy jade without an experts advice. That voice didnt belong to Lou, our guide it was the voice of breakfast, all the scientists and their spouses gathered at the long tables in the hotel dining room, exchanging warnings before they split up for the day. Dont, dont, dont the list was endless and expanded each hour, and it brought out the worst in me. It made me want to stick my head under the faucet and gulp the water down, to sink my face into one of the smoked ducks that hung by their twisted necks in the smeared shop windows. Our hotel room large, clean, privileged had come to seem like a cage, and even when I ventured outside I carried it on my back like a turtles shell.
I wanted to leap from the cab and find my own way across the city, but instead I sat and watched the back of the sullen drivers head. I was late, I reminded myself; I was an hour late already. I let the driver drop me off near the Triple Echo Stones, and I tried not to notice how he hovered until he saw Dr Yu reach out for me. She moved through a rushing stream of people, and she laughed when I apologized for being late and told her what had happened.
You must have been meant to go there, she said. The places are separate, but also connected. In the old days, the Emperor marched out of the Forbidden City each October with his elephant carts and lancers and musicians and high nobles, and all of them headed here. The Emperor meditated in the Imperial Vault of Heaven, stayed all night in the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, and made a ceremony next day at the Round Altar, which decided the future. People hid behind their shutters and prayed again and again for everything to go well. It is an ill omen if anything goes wrong here.
Have we done anything wrong yet? I asked.
No, she said. Why?
I closed my eyes and clicked my heels together three times, a gesture left over from a time when I thought ruby slippers and a good witch could fix my life. My future, the one Id been waiting for, seemed to lie just around the corner, and what I wished for was that it would hurry up.
Dr Yu smiled at my antics. Is your husband still angry? she asked.
I leaned against a pillar and coughed. Still, I said. Walters behavior at the banquet last night had broken down some of the barriers between Dr Yu and me, and I felt I could tell her the truth. Shed already seen him at his worst. Madder, now, since I told him I was coming to meet you. He went with all the others to the Exhibition Hall, to see some singers and acrobats and stuff.
Dr Yu made a face. Thats so boring, she said. It is only for tourists. Why does he stay mad so long? Is this typical of those from North Dakota?
I laughed. Maybe, I said. How did you know where hes from?