“Yes,” he said. “T’ang. You come with me. I take you to box.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this when I asked?” I said, just a tad suspiciously.
“Too many ears,” he said. “Also police always watching us. They are corrupt,” he added. “They want money not to arrest me.”
I didn’t know whether that was true or not, although it was depressing to think it might be. Part of me assumed this was a variation on what I refer to as the tax-collector pitch, which goes something like this: dealer notices you admiring something, whispers in your ear that he will give you a very special price because the tax collector is over there, whereupon he gestures somewhere indeterminate, and he has to pay him or her off or he will be in trouble, and he is a man with a family, etc., etc. I’ve heard this one all over the world.
I wasn’t sure how far I was going with this man, my newly discovered confidence in my safety not stretching so far as to enter a blind alley with him, but I did follow along. He kept to well-crowded streets, which helped, and as he chatted away to me, I began to feel more confident.
He stopped at a tiny house on a very small street, opened the door and gestured to me to go in. I didn’t think that was a good idea, but I looked in, and saw a woman playing with a very young child. She, too, gestured me in. An older woman, the grandmother, I expect, immediately went to a pot over a fire and started to make tea. It seemed pretty harmless. In fact, it was playing out the way it so often did when I was on a buying trip, with the approach in the street, the ritual cup of tea at the home of the dealer, and then the unveiling of the merchandise, for a special price, of course, just for me.
The Chinese version of this time-honored and nearly universal ritual included excellent little pancakes with green onions in them that the grandmother made, something I thought added to the occasion considerably and might happily be picked up by salesmen elsewhere. The rather stilted conversation from the dealer, the only family member who spoke English, was sadly familiar, however. After the social niceties had been observed, I was led out a back door into a little courtyard, and then to a padlocked door in the building to one side of the courtyard. There was no way I was going any further with this man, and I said so.
He grabbed my arm. “Please,” he said. “Tang.”
I peered into the room, being careful to stand just in the doorway so I could run if I had to. There was T’ang all right, several pieces, in fact, including sancai, or three-colored glazed earthenware pottery, in this case four ceramic figures of musicians, all women, each about eight inches tall. The earthenware is called sancai but in fact it often employs more than three colors, as was the case here. The colors, red, green, blue, yellow, and a soft purple were faded, as were the facial expressions, but if anything this enhanced their beauty. They were undoubtedly authentic. There was a dusting of dirt on them, which is a pretty easy way to give the impression, to the uninitiated at least, that the objects were old. In this case, however, I was pretty sure they really were. They were almost as certainly looted merchandise. “T’ang,” the dealer repeated, as he whipped out a calculator. It was his favorite word. He keyed in a few numbers and showed the result to me.
Despite my conviction these were stolen artifacts, something of which it would be almost impossible to convince oneself otherwise in such a setting, I wanted them. I admit it. In fact, I would have given my firstborn for them. I could have bargained him down to something I was prepared to pay—of that I was sure, given his starting position—just a few hundred dollars for the lot. They were exquisite. The women were slim and graceful, the faces charmingly expressive, the little instruments perfect in almost every detail. Figures like this, I had learned from Dory, came in the slim variety and the well-rounded. Dory had told me the latter came into vogue because one emperor rather fancied a little excess flesh on his concubines. These women, though, followed the more traditional svelte lines.
Who would know I had these? I found myself asking. There ate lots of T’ang tomb figures to be had on the open market in North America. Once out of China, they would look perfectly legitimate. Furthermore, if Burton had been right, I would have little trouble getting these out of the country. I was reasonably sure that any moment now my newfound friend would offer an export stamp as part of the deal. Reluctantly, I told myself to get a grip. What was I thinking? In the first place, I really enjoy not being in jail, most especially a jail in a foreign country. Furthermore, one can only imagine what my Rob would think if he found out. Not only that, but I rather fancied myself as an ethical antique dealer. Clearly my commitment to ethical behavior is not as robust as I like to think it is.
“Where did you get these?” I asked.
“Tomb,” the man said. “What you pay?” I told him I wasn’t going to buy them, as beautiful as they were. It was not easy to do so, and predictably he took this as my opening gambit rather than a firm decision on my part. “How much?” he demanded again. “T’ang. Very beautiful.”
“No,” I said, taking the photograph out of my bag. “Silver box.”
“T’ang,” he said again. He picked up one of the musicians. “T’ang. Stamp for export, yes. I will give you.”
“T’ang, yes, but not a silver box. I want this silver box.” I wondered what an export stamp would cost me in addition to the price of the musicians.
He continued to wave the musician under my nose. “Special price for you,” he said over and over. “You tell me what you pay.” In retaliation, I kept waving the photo of the silver box under his nose. There was a lot of arm-waving going on.
It was a fruitless gesture, however, on both sides. As lovely as these pieces were, it was pretty clear I’d been brought to this house under false pretenses. He didn’t have the box.
He’d have brought it out by now if he had. It was time to go. The man looked disgusted as I walked back through the courtyard and through his house, pausing only to say thank you to the two women and to smile at the child. I handed the wife a few coins, which I hoped she wouldn’t give to her husband.
It was only as I left the house that I realized that I was very near the spot where Song Liang had died, at the other end of the L-shaped alley in fact. When I turned right, I could see that the alley was blocked off with tape at the end. I took a quick look and, sure enough, it was almost certainly the same place where I’d witnessed the murder. There was a dark stain on the ground where he’d fallen. I’d just come at it from the same direction as the motorcycles, rather than the way I’d entered it before, which was probably just as well, because I would never have followed the man into the alley from that direction. Had that happened, I would not have learned what I had from the visit, which is to say that T’ang tombs were being looted somewhere nearby.
This proximity did lead to some interesting questions, however. Assuming Song Liang was indeed Mr. Knockoff and furthermore had stolen the box, and if he had had it in his possession the day he died, as I had surmised he might, was he bringing it to the man I had just met to sell for him? Did the man have the silver box even if he hadn’t shown it to me? Or had the men on the motorcycles stolen it from Song before he could get there? Did the dealer I’d just visited have an inkling of any of this, or was Song just trying to unload the box as fast as he could? There were many questions I would have liked to ask the dealer, but I didn’t think there was any way he’d answer them, and furthermore I wasn’t sure it was in my best interests, given that I wanted to get out of this country in one piece, to pursue it with him.