“My granddaughter,” he said. “Yu Ling. Yu Ling, Miss Fan and Mr. Bai.”
“Pleased,” she said, and bobbed her head to them.
“Are you the painter?” Lia asked.
“Yes.” Yu Ling was too shy to look up, and only did so in quick darts. “I paint the pots.”
And my God, you’re just starting, Lia thought. “Words can barely express my compliments,” she told the younger girl in a voice full of warmth. “Your work is very, very fine.”
The girl gave one small, satisfied grin and then averted her eyes again. “Thank you,” she said.
“You can go,” Yu told her.
The girl left and the elder potter turned back to Bai. Lia listened as the two men slipped into Jiangxi dialect. Bai paid for the cup-only five thousand ren min bi, she saw. A bargain. A paltry sum. He was a lucky man.
The ah chan was ready to go, and polite good-byes went around. “I congratulate you again, Mr. Bai,” she said. “It is a great day for you.”
“Yes!” He was grinning. “With greater days on the way. Potter Yu? I thank you. Good business. Good luck. Miss Fan? Good luck.”
“Bici,” she answered.
Then he was gone, the door clicking and jingling behind him. After a silence she said, “I think I’ve met him before.”
“It’s possible. Bai is everywhere.”
“Why do they do it?” she said, thinking about men like Bai. “They take so much risk, buying up zu chuan,” heirloom holdings, “transporting them out.”
Yu gave his low laugh again, and this time tempered it with a sad shake of his head. “For them the money is everything. They think all the time about money. Though they are fools with it! They get it and then they spend it as fast as they can and then they are poor again. Then again they get it. So what should they fear? Death?” He laughed, his eyes almost disappearing behind the lined mask of his face. “Why?” He wiped at his eye. “There’s nothing for them to fear! Open the door, do you see it or not? Here is the fact. If they have enough money they can make even the spirits on the other side do whatever they want.”
13
She walked down the main street in Jingdezhen, her mind shimmering with excitement. She had part of the story now, at least. Her pots were the Wu Collection, forgotten, discovered, sold, and the center of local rumors since. This felt real to her; it clicked with the little she’d heard from Gao. Not only that, now she knew the Master of the Ruffled Feather… a teenage girl. She still couldn’t get over that one.
Her walk was giddy through the drifting clots of people on the sidewalks, past the open storefronts with their goods stacked up, mostly pots, pots of every size, quality, and description. Nothing great, most of it crude and cheap, much of it fang gu. This alone was enough to awaken the thrill in her. She scanned the stalls, a predator. When she saw a row of Chenghua chicken cups, she stopped and bent to look.
Unfortunately they were poor copies. She’d seen much better ones for sale in other places.
“You have good eyes,” the proprietor said approvingly from his chair. He touched his thick glasses for emphasis, a cigarette smoldering in his hand.
She looked up at him through the crowded forest of pots on the counter. “Yes, Chenghua chicken cups,” she said. “After the Ming prototype.”
“Well.” He made a small laugh. “They’re not Ming, exactly.”
“No,” she said, and thought, that’s an understatement. She picked one up and turned it over. It did have a reasonable facsimile of the Chenghua reign mark.
“Still, they’re old,” he assured her, “just not quite that old.”
“Old?” she said, playing along. “Let’s see. They’re not Kangxi using Chenghua marks-“”
“No. They are a little later than Kangxi. You have good eyes!”
“Not Yongzheng-“”
“No. But, xiaojie, they are nineteenth century. They are copies made in the nineteenth century. Trust me on this, they are.”
“Well. I could concede that they might be a few months old. Or maybe just a few weeks.”
“Good eyes,” he said again. This time they both laughed. She waved and stepped out of his stall and back into the flow of the sidewalk. Her cell phone went off and she flipped it open. “Wei.”
“It’s me.”
“Hi,” she said. Michael. The sound of his voice wrapped around her.
“I was wondering whether you were finished with work.”
She grinned, weaving through the crowd. “I am finished, actually. For today. But I’m not in Beijing. I had to leave for a few days. I’m down south. In Jiangxi Province.”
“Where?”
“A town called Jingdezhen. Near Nanchang. South of the Yangtze.”
“Are you on the porcelain trail?”
“I am.”
“Why there?”
“Oh, but this is the place.” She looked around at the honking, hill-climbing downtown, the cluttered jumble of little concrete buildings, the profusion of pots, all colors, all sizes, piled up, multiplying everywhere. “This is our holy city.”
He couldn’t hold in a joyful little toot of laughter. “Oh, really? Have you met the Maker?”
“Yes! As a matter of fact I have. And it turns out the real master is his granddaughter, who’s fifteen at most. God. She can really paint. One day she’ll be my undoing.”
“And why is that?” In a flicker his voice had dropped its bantering humor and now put out the warmth of wanting to know.
“Because what she makes looks so real,” Lia said.
“And what’s real and what isn’t could undo you?”
“Oh yes,” she said, meaning it. And then she thought, you too could undo me. If I crossed the line with you, and learned it was not real.
“Are you coming back?” he said.
“Yes, late tomorrow. I have more work in Beijing. I’m not done.”
“Good news for me,” he said.
“And for me. I’d love to see you. But not the minute I get back, if that’s okay. I have to go see the collection first. The next day, though-should I call you?”
“Just come find me,” he said.
“Okay, then.” She could feel that sneaky grin of interest in another person tugging at her face. She felt a rising sense of lightness in her midsection. “I think I know where you are.”
The Jingdezhen Airport opened only when there was a flight, and when Lia stepped out of her taxi there the next afternoon it was still locked up. In time, though, workers arrived and unlocked the flimsy glass door. Forty minutes later it could have been any little wood-benched airport, anywhere. Families sprawled, young women bounced babies, businessmen carried boxed porcelains and briefcases.
She sat down and watched a woman opposite her share one set of mini-headphones with a teenager, each with a plug in one ear. They were whispering along with a Cantonese pop tune. There was something sweet about them. They sat with their legs splayed out and their toes tapping. Sisters? Lia thought. Aunt and niece? They were so unconscious of themselves in the middle of the crowd, eyes far off, bonded to each other. She couldn’t stop looking at them.
“Miss Fan?” said a voice from her right.
It was the ah chan. “Mr. Bai,” she said. “How surprising.”
“Not really,” he said half ruefully. “There’s only one flight a week.”
“True,” she said. She could guess from his stacked lash-up of brocade boxes what business took him north, to Beijing. He had eight or nine of them in a twine-knotted net, with a handle he’d improvised on top. She wondered if he had the chicken cup.
“You return to Beijing?” he asked.
“Yes. This was just a quick visit for me. And you?”
“Business,” he echoed, and smiled.