There, in the room, she noticed a change on the TV. News, a cut-in; something had happened. She turned it up. Commentators were talking in hushed whispers while the camera showed an empty podium. Finally, the subtitle in English and Chinese: a joint statement by the Chinese Minister of Civil Affairs and the head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Two men came out. The Minister started to speak. She leaned closer.
“After careful study,” the Minister said, “the Civil Aviation Administration of China has determined that the crash of China International Airlines Flight Sixty-eight was an accident. It was a single-aircraft event with no complications or interferences from any ship, plane, or other conveyance; or any person or outside parties. The exact cause of the accident is still under investigation.” He gave a curt nod and then turned away; they both walked off camera. It was over. The screen cut back to the anchors, talking excitedly.
And she stood staring. So that was the official statement. That was the answer: an accident. Was this answer real or fake? And would all the ill feeling on the street now evaporate away? Until next time? She felt her usual stab of guilt at how little she really understood certain things here. There was only one facet of China she could fully and responsibly tackle; that was pots. Pots were celestial and endlessly varied and to do them justice took the full force of her mind.
The second morning she took a taxi up to Houhai Lake-just to be there, just to be near the pots-and sat outside, on a bench facing the lake. She watched pleasure boats on the far shore drift under the shade of overhanging branches. Snatches of conversation rose and fell behind her as people passed on the walkway. It was not until she had let go of waiting for it that her phone finally rang. “Wei.”
“Lia.” It was Dr. Zheng.
“Hey.”
“We have a close.”
“How much?”
“One hundred and twenty-six million.”
“What a deal for him!” she cried. “He’s so lucky!”
“Yes. Gao could have got more with multiple buyers. But he wanted it done and over. I don’t suppose we can complain.”
She returned the twinkle in his voice with her own. “No. I don’t suppose we can.”
“Lia,” he said. “Congratulations.” He let the word hang, warm with fondness.
She felt the filial satisfaction of pleasing him, the sense that all the world’s geometry was right, and she secure within it. “Thanks,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Thank you. Did you see the statement?”
“Yes! Yesterday.”
“Too late to send Phillip.”
“I guess so.”
And they both laughed at the same time, her glassy peal and his age-cracked chortle. “Ah, it’s well done. But you’re not finished. Your flight leaves for Hong Kong tomorrow night. You meet the pots there.” He gave her the locator numbers. “Your room’s at the Mandarin.”
“No problems with the flights, I suppose?”
“No,” he said. “All back to normal.”
“Okay, then.” What else could she say? That was it, she was leaving.
“And Lia?” Zheng said.
“Yes?”
“Good job.”
“It was just what I was supposed to do,” she said.
They clicked off and she put her phone back in her pocket. It was over. Why didn’t she feel any different than before? The water kept moving in front of her under the line of willows, the majestic, wind-ruffled pace of its surface unchanged. She had done it. She had wielded her principal sword-intelligence, memory, knowledge-and the deal had worked. It had come to pass. But pleasure boats still passed, the seasons advanced with every minute, and she was sitting alone on a bench.
After a time she walked back up to the road to get in a taxi. She could go somewhere and celebrate by herself.
Bai sat on an overturned metal pail beside his rig, smoking. He was parked in an empty drying barn in the countryside outside Wuhan. The arduous drive had brought him much of the way to Changsha, and here he rested. The arrangement had been made through Huang, one of his crew in Jingdezhen. Five hundred yuan for the use of the barn, no questions asked. He sat there with his cell phone on, waiting, smoking. When the deal was done they’d call him. Then he’d go further south.
In the meantime he reviewed every facet of his fiction: the false wall, the frozen chickens, all the documents.
He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another one. He thought about the manifest. There was a chicken cup there, one from the reign of Chenghua. Was destiny not smiling on him, to put one of the world’s eighteen cups in this shipment? Had he not just, by purest chance, managed to buy a copy of the Chenghua chicken cup so perfect, so bright in the firmament that only a few people on earth could separate it from one that was real? No one could say he had planned it. This was certainly luck. It was the will of heaven.
He had taken careful note of the cup’s location in the shipment. It was number four hundred thirteen, crate twenty-seven. He looked up at the truck speculatively. Should he switch the cups now?
Just then his cell phone rang. “Wei,” he said.
It was Gao Yideng. “The deal has closed,” he said. “You can leave. Zou-ba,” Go.
“Hao,” he agreed, and as he closed his phone and put it in his pocket he was already climbing into the back of the truck. Indeed he would go. First he had to take care of one small matter.
Late that afternoon Michael and An walked down the hospital corridor. The day had not been good. The head of their hospital was preparing a summary of the city’s public-health issues for the fall meeting of the National People’s Congress. The two of them naturally hoped lead poisoning would be included. But a few minutes in his office had suggested this hope was unrealistic. Not only were reports from every researcher and department head piled up on the desk, but the harried director had made a pointed reference to the need to avoid those issues that the leaders had already recognized, on which they had already taken action, however insufficiently, and about which they had made it clear they did not wish to hear more.
“At least he was straight up front about it,” Michael said later.
“That was for you,” An said morosely. “You’re a foreigner. Not expected to get it.”
“Wonderful. Insult to injury.”
“So let’s get something to eat,” An said.
“You always say that.”
“Exactly right,” said An. “What else? What better?”
“Not tonight for me, though, thanks. I’ve got something on.”
“You’re going to go see that woman.”
Michael smiled. An was right. He so liked it that she had come to his room the day before. He liked the way she just stepped in. He had awakened thinking about her and there she was. “I might call her,” he admitted.
“Ah.” An was staring at him, fascinated. “Well, good luck.”
“Bici,” Michael gave him back, Same to you, and they each grinned in good-bye. Their eyes met and exchanged an understanding of what had just happened in the director’s office; it was disappointing, but they’d go on working. An continued down the corridor and Michael turned to the elevators.
He pressed the DOWN button. He’d never worked in a hospital before. Always he’d been in institutes and research labs. It had been eight months now and he’d gotten used to the faint chemical smell, the constant disembodied voices, the hard fluorescent light. It felt different from when he was a patient himself. Now, in a dogged and unpleasant way, working here felt good to him. It neutralized his balance sheet a little bit. He’d seen things here; he’d seen children die. Nothing had ever affected him like that. He’d seen that the young ones died quickly. He’d heard the staff talk about it. When they were ready they let go. Not like adults. Adults took a long time. It was as if adults had built such a thick, petrified husk around them that this alone gave them the strength, the form to hold on. And by the transient revival that so often came to the dying, adults seemed to find a last little puff of life before the end. They had a term for it here at the hospital-hui guang fan zhao, the reflected rays of the setting sun. Children were lacking in this. They went quickly. He watched as the DOWN light came on and the elevator door slid open.