“What does ‘take care of these people’ mean?”
“Whatever it takes,” he said. “In the meantime, we’re having an all-expenses-paid holiday. Now let’s see what’s on the room service menu.”
As pleasant as an all-expenses-paid stay in a pretty nice hotel sounds, with someone cooking and cleaning and even making the bed every day, I can tell you it is amusing for about forty-eight hours. After that it gets a little claustrophobic, the room service fare starts to taste like prison food, assuming prison food tastes the way I think it does, and generally your roommate begins to get tiresome. I believe the feeling was mutual. If we ever move in together, the place will have to be very large, something on the scale of, say, Versailles.
So it was that what I consider to be my acutely sensitive nose for dissimilitude was not working as it should, so eager was I to get out of the place. What I saw as a godsend, but was really a trap—which if not set for me, certainly caught me in its snare—came in the form of a call to the shop on a fine autumn day from one Dorothy Matthews, known to her friends as Dory.
“I have a favor to ask,” she began.
“Ask away,” I said.
“It’s more of a proposal than a favor, although I would be exceedingly grateful if you would undertake it for me. I suppose I’m actually asking two favors. Would you consider having lunch with me at my home? I need to show you something, and my arthritis is acting up today. Taking it to you at McClintoch and Swain, no matter how much I might enjoy it once I got there, would be difficult. Would one o’clock work for you?”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
The maid was setting out a plate of sandwiches and some fruit when I arrived shortly after one. Dory was in an armchair, a cane at her side, and she greeted me warmly. I first met Dory when I was researching Chinese bronzes for a client of McClintoch Swain. At that time, Dory was the curator of the Cottingham Museum’s Asian galleries, having been lured there from her position at one of Canada’s most prestigious galleries by Major Cottingham when he first opened the museum to house his private collection. Within five years, the Cottingham’s Asian galleries had not only expanded, but had earned an international reputation, all thanks to Dory. Everything I know about Chinese art and antiquities, I learned from Dory Matthews.
People who knew Dory by reputation only, as a preeminent scholar of Chinese history and art, were surprised to meet her in person, not expecting the Asian woman in front of them. She got Dory from her English mother, and Matthews from her husband, the industrialist George Norfolk Matthews. Born Dorothy Zhang, or more accurately Zhang Dorothy in 1944 in Beijing, she was taken to England by her mother in 1949 as the Communists took power, eventually settling in Canada. It was a harrowing experience, she told me, getting out of China. In the chaos of that time, with so many people trying to leave the country before the Communist forces of Mao Zedong took over, she and her mother became separated from her father. She never saw him again. She was led to believe that her father had survived, but had never joined them, choosing instead to become a part of the People’s Republic of China. She believed that at one time, at least, he held a senior position in the government of Mao’s Communist China, having been a loyal supporter of Mao, most notably having accompanied Mao on the Long March in 1934. This was one of the most famous strategic retreats in history, a five-thousand-mile march that took just over a year, but which enabled Mao to break through the Koumintang lines and eventually push the Koumintang, and their leader, Chiang Kai-Shek, off the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, then called Formosa. Dory thought she might even have had other siblings in China, a half-brother or sister, although she never tried to find them. Dory’s mother remarried, whether or not exactly legally, neither I nor perhaps Dory was ever entirely sure. I think she probably just said her Chinese union wasn’t legal, and carried on.
Once we were alone, and I was tucking into my lunch— I noticed she wasn’t eating—she began to talk. “You are aware, I’m sure, that it is not really ethical for a curator to personally collect in the area in which he or she works. My husband has collected for some years, and I gave him advice as often as I could, but never when the object he wanted could be considered Asian art. But now that I am under no such restriction, I feel that I can get into the market, if I wish to do so. Would you agree?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“Good,” she said. “I was worried what you would think about that.”
“Why would you? I’m assuming you’re not trying to smuggle antiquities out of some country, or buy on the black market.”
She was silent for a moment. “Do you know how my stepfather made his fortune?” she said at last.
I decided I’d better stop stuffing my face with her lovely homemade sandwiches—such a nice change from hotel fare—and pay attention, as this conversation did not seem to be following a nicely logical path, and there were some undercurrents, possibly disturbing ones. “Didn’t you tell me he imported china and porcelain, some of it from Occupied Japan after the war? Or was it Hong Kong?”
“Both,” she said. “That’s how he made his living. He made his fortune by importing very high-end Chinese antiquities, by which I mean very old imperial treasures, sometimes even older than that, a lot of them smuggled out of China and into Hong Kong, where they joined his regular shipments. He used a contact of my mother’s to do so, a high party official in Mao’s regime, someone I have come to believe was my father. If so, my father had no compunction feathering his nest by selling whatever he could get his hands on, and in his position that was quite a bit, and my stepfather had no compunction expediting its passage out of the country, and making a good deal of money for himself as well.”
“I can understand why this would bother you for any number of reasons,” I said carefully. “I’m not sure, though, what you mean by ‘smuggled.” It really depends when the objects came out of China, as you know only too well. There was a period when a lot of antiques and antiquities were considered decadent imperialist trappings by the Communist Party, and nobody cared if they were taken out of the country or even destroyed.“
“It may have been legally acceptable, but it was never morally acceptable,” Dory said. “So is what I am about to ask you to do legal? Of course it is. Ethical? I suppose that depends on what I propose to do with what you get for me—if, that is, you agree to do it. I promised to show you something. Would you mind going over to the walnut cabinet? On the lower left side there is something wrapped in cloth. I want you to bring it here so that we can look at it together.”
“It” was an exquisite rectangular silver box with a hinged and rounded lid, of a shape sometimes referred to as a casket. Incised on the top was a bird, and a scene showing a number of women together in a garden wrapped around the four sides. “May I open it?” I asked. I believe I was whispering.
Dory nodded. Inside, along the sides and bottom, were Chinese characters. I couldn’t read them, but I thought perhaps Dory could. I closed it carefully.
“Beautiful,” I said. “Very old.” I waited for her to say something.
“T’ang dynasty,” she said. “You know when that was, of course.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “I’ll remember. T’ang dynasty is, just a minute, 618 to 907. Capital was Chang’an, essentially where the city of Xi’an is now. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty, and followed by the Five Dynasties Era and then the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties in that order. How am I doing?”