It was very sad, but I also felt like a fool. I had suspected Dr. Xie of poisoning Burton. He had been nothing but generous with his time with me, and that’s how I’d rewarded him. I had thought my life was in danger because Burton had been murdered. Instead, Burton had very foolishly managed to kill himself. I was very glad I hadn’t left an hysterical message for Rob. He would be too polite to say anything, of course, but he would have been puzzled by my reaction, I was sure.
As for Song Liang, the victim in the alley, did I know for certain that he was the same man who had been at the auction in New York, or had stolen the silver box in Beijing? I was beginning to think maybe I didn’t. I had to admit that I’d been more interested in his suit than his face, and for sure he wasn’t wearing fake Hugo Boss or Armani in that alley in Xi’an. He was better dressed than most of the people in that neighborhood, but that could be because he was from Beijing. I’d found that most of the people I saw in Beijing were well dressed, particularly the people in the part of town I spent time in, around the hotel and the auction house. The only information about him that was a link to Chinese art was his position at the Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau, and given that he died in Xi’an, just how relevant could that be?
I had to go to the police station to retrieve my passport. I had also received a call from a brother of Burton’s I’d never heard him mention, who asked me if I would have a look at the contents of Burton’s suitcase, and make a decision as to whether or not anything there was worth sending home. This brother had tracked me down through the Cottingham, Burton having apparently told his employers that I too was after the box for a client, and then to the Beijing hotel where I’d now left a forwarding number, and thence to Xi’an. I took the suitcase back to my hotel and after sitting around staring at it for about an hour willing myself to open it, got around to the unpleasant task.
It was an instructive little exercise, and very, very sad. Where the rest of us put clothes, Burton had a box of surgical gloves, his portable air purifier, disinfectant spray, a large economy-size bottle of hand sanitizer, and another box, this one of surgical masks. There were also two boxes of tissues. Hotels do provide tissues, but I guess Burton wasn’t about to risk the ones in the dispenser in a hotel bathroom. The police had told me they had kept the pills and other potions, a very large plastic bagful. Presumably they had kept the tea apparatus and the teabags, too, because there was no sign of them in the bag.
I figure I’m a good packer, and I travel light, but believe me Burton would have had to do laundry every night. If anything he had fewer changes of underwear than I did in my carry-on bag, which was all I’d brought to Xi’an. He also had five azure scarves, considering them more important than clean underwear, I guess. It was cold, yes, but somehow I’d managed to get along with only one scarf. If it hadn’t all been so awful, it would have been funny. I sent an e-mail to the brother saying there was nothing worth keeping, and I’d see to it that Burton’s clothes, what there were of them, went to a worthy cause. I told him I’d try to find out if Burton had checked any luggage at the hotel in Beijing when he’d flown to Xi’an. The surgical gloves, masks, air purifier, disinfectant spray, and the like I tossed in the waste basket.
Life went back to normal almost immediately. My capacity for self-delusion is as bad as the next person’s, and it must have been in high gear that day. All it took was a tentative finding of accidental death in Burton’s case, and I was prepared to believe all was well and that I should just get on with my life. I would forget the search for the silver box, I would do something appropriate to mourn poor Burton, and I would go to Taiwan as soon as they’d let me.
First order of the day was to deal with the demons. It was Wednesday, another antique market day at the Baxian Gong. I decided to go. I walked slowly through the park outside the city walls, and into the neighborhood beyond the ugly high-rises, telling myself over and over that I could do this.
I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to revisit the alley, but that wasn’t a problem because I was pretty sure I would never be able to find it. However, the person I did want to see was the antique dealer with the scar on her face. It was pretty clear that she wished me no ill. Indeed, she was my guardian angel. She’d dragged me out of that alley and got me to my hotel when my legs had turned to lead. I’d have been standing there for a long time if she hadn’t, maybe long enough that the police would have wanted to spend more time with me than they already had. Still, I really wanted to know how she knew where I was staying. There was always a possibility that she didn’t, that she’d just sent me to one of the closest tourist hotels to get me out of there. At the very least, I owed her a thank you.
Looking back on these thought processes of mine now, from a safe distance, I am amazed at how proficient I was becoming at rationalizing just about everything. I felt almost euphoric, as if this huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders with the news that Burton’s death was an accident. My life had never been in danger at all.
In any event, the woman with the scar on her face wasn’t there. I looked everywhere, including the shops that lined the little plaza. And then, given that I was having no luck with the task I’d set myself, I started doing what I said maybe an hour earlier that I absolutely would not. I began to look for the silver box again. I mean, I was there anyway, wasn’t I? Somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have been planning this, because I had put the copy I’d made of the photograph in the Molesworth Cox catalog in my bag before I went out. It was ridiculously rash, of course, but having been told Burton had essentially killed himself by accident, the threat had receded from my mind. I got out the photograph and started negotiating the narrow aisles between the stalls, by which I mean sheets on the ground on which the items were displayed, asking each of the dealers in turn if they had seen such a thing. Some of them understood the question, others did not. All shook their heads.
In the middle aisle I came upon a dealer who had some very interesting objects on display, including a lovely jade disk that I thought, despite a crack, would make a truly unique piece of jewelry with minimal effort. I picked it up and then looked into the face of the dealer who had it on offer, planning to try to purchase it, and also to show off my photograph of the silver box.
The man was dressed in a rather scruffy-looking padded jacket against the cold, worn boots, and pants. He had a cap pulled down low, and his face was a little smudged with dirt. It was, however, Liu David, lawyer and business consultant from Beijing, the same man who couldn’t call me back because he was in Shanghai, or if not David, then his identical twin. I opened my mouth to say something, and he gave me just the very slightest of shakes of his head. I closed my mouth, set down the jade disk, and moved on.
This was perplexing indeed. I supposed there were several possible explanations for Liu David’s presence there, but there was only one I liked. Regardless, I’d obviously seen something I wasn’t supposed to, and the best course of action was to get out of there. Trying not to look too hasty, I made my way along the aisle stopping occasionally to look at something, on to the street, and then, at as stately a pace as I could muster when my inclination was to run, back to the city walls. I liked the idea of big, high city walls between me and the antique market at the Baxian Gong.
I didn’t get far, however. I was about a block or two away from the antique market when a man, one I recognized from the market, and to whom I had shown the photograph of the silver box, approached me. His English was such that we could make ourselves understood, if not exactly converse about the problems besetting the planet. He suggested he had some objects I would be interested in seeing. I asked him about the silver box.