“Then I started to think about Chau. What would he do, what would he make? I started a painting, not a copy but something new, using everything I knew about him. I used the same paper he did, the same inks. You can still get them, they haven’t changed in centuries. It was the discipline, you know? The painting was pine branches, and a wren. Nothing political, just a technique exercise, but it absorbed me. I can’t tell you how grateful I was for that, just to be able to be out of my thoughts for a while, putting ink on paper.” She stopped, fingering the curtain.
“As I was finishing up, wishing it weren’t over, I heard Mike’s voice. Oh, not really.” She shook her head impatiently, though none of us had said anything. “I wasn’t crazy. But he used to read his poems to me, and I heard him reciting one about a tree in autumn, tall against a gray sky, alone as the cold wind blew the leaves away and the birds flew south. So in Mike’s calligraphy, as closely as I could, I put the poem on the painting. Partly just because it kept the painting time going, you understand? That was what I wanted most. Then when it was almost done, I came in to work on it one day and it caught me by surprise. It really looked like a Chau. Not that I’m that good. Obviously I’m not, no matter how hard I work at his techniques or his style. An expert could tell, of course he could.” Her voice caught again; then she went on. “But I realized. The poem was what made it a Chau. The balance of politics and art. The funny thing is, it’s not one of Mike’s political poems, not when he wrote it. You can read it that way now, but then it was only about a tree. Before his trial, if someone had put it on a painting, that’s all it would have meant. But now, a painting in Chau’s style with a poem of Mike’s—in China I’d have been arrested.”
Maybe it was the comfort in telling the story, in saying Mike’s name; maybe it was the relief in getting through it without dissolving in tears; or maybe it was just exhaustion; but Anna now turned back, stood for a moment, and then walked over to once again sit beside Jack. I stole a glance at her mother, found her still face unreadable.
Jack angled toward Anna, elbows on his knees. “I can’t wait to see these paintings. You are that good and I bet they’re spectacular. But I still don’t get the problem.”
Anna reached toward the coffee table, straightening photographs that didn’t need it. “I pinned the painting up and started a second one. That one, I had a poem of Mike’s in mind, about how lions and tigers can rampage through the forest but they can’t stop the cicadas from singing. Tiny bugs, dozens of them, and a wild tiger face, a paw.… I was working on it when Pete came in. Pete Tsang, you know him?”
“Yes. We saw him last night, at East Village.”
She stopped. “You went to the studio?”
“Because of the photo. I knew the papercuttings were yours.” He added, “Can’t miss ’em.”
I was glad he’d said that because it brought a small smile from Anna. Not from her mother, though, and Anna’s smile faded as she went on. “Pete’s been working with an artists’ freedom network for years. The kind of international human rights group the Chinese government hates. They took up Mike’s case as soon as he got arrested. They won’t give up. I don’t know if they can do any good but at least they keep trying.” She ran out of photos to straighten, so she drew her hands back to her lap. “Pete saw the paintings, the pine one and the one I was working on. No one else in the studio had any idea but Pete knew right away what they were and he understood why I was making them. He was the one who suggested, a couple of weeks later, that if people thought they were really Chaus, that might work for Mike.”
“Pete said to claim they were authentic?” Jack asked skeptically. “That doesn’t sound like him. And what did he mean? Help how?”
“We weren’t going to claim they were authentic. But we weren’t going to announce to the world they weren’t, either. We were just going to show them. Next week.”
“Asian Art Week,” I said. I looked at the guys. “That’s the splash.”
Anna said, “Splash?”
“My client thought someone might be planning to unveil them next week, to make a big splash. I think he was thinking more art world than political, though. Or,” I paused, reflecting on who my client was turning out to be, “maybe not.”
Anna nodded. “It would explode. It’s more than just Asian Art Week, it’s Beijing/NYC. You know about that?”
“There was a poster outside your father’s office.”
“The Chinese government’s bringing over a group of officially approved artists. They’re showing off, how vibrant the art scene is in China, all that. It’s a big deal, big opening party, all the critics, everyone.
“Chau may not be taught much, people here might not know him, but everyone in that world, the collectors, the academics, everyone the government’s trying to impress, they all know who he was and what he stood for. How he died. New Chaus with Mike’s poems on them, even if we admitted they weren’t real—‘homages,’ Pete said we’d call them, not ‘fakes,’ ‘homages’—new ones with the poems of a jailed dissident, shown just when the government’s turning the spotlight on their own artists, it would be a huge embarrassment. It would be a big loss of face in the international community.”
“Weren’t you worried?” I couldn’t help asking. “That they’d take it out on Mike somehow?”
“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “To bring attention to Mike, that was the whole point. Since there’s a spotlight, to turn it on him. Keep his name in the news, remind people he’s still in prison, that nothing’s changed. China wouldn’t dare do anything to him while the world was watching. During his trial, the world was. But people forget. Nothing happens and they move on to something else. The government counts on that with dissidents, that people will forget about them. We were going to remind people in a way the government would hate.”
“But they found out,” I said. “And that’s the problem, why you called Jack? Samuel Wing came to you?”
Mrs. Yang looked up. Anna blinked. “Samuel Wing? Who’s that?”
“Maybe he was calling himself something else, because Samuel Wing’s a phony name anyhow. The guy from the Chinese Consulate. The skinny guy. He came to me, too.”
Anna looked completely blank. “What? From the Chinese Consulate? No. What guy?”
It seemed I was having a hard time selling Samuel Wing this morning. “A guy calling himself Samuel Wing said he’d heard I was looking for the Chaus and the people he represented wanted me to stop. He offered me money if I did and trouble if I didn’t. That’s not what this is about? The Chinese government threatening you?”
Anna shook her head. “The government? No. They don’t know yet.”
“I’m afraid they do. Mrs. Yang? Does Samuel Wing mean anything to you?”
“I do not know this man,” Mrs. Yang replied, though I’d asked because she seemed a micron paler than before. “He said he was from the Consulate?”
“No. But he was. Though as of yesterday,” I said to Anna, “he didn’t know where the paintings were. He didn’t know you had them.”
“I don’t have them,” she said wearily. “That’s what’s wrong. That’s not who came to me.”
“Who did?” Jack asked.
“Doug Haig.”
Jack and I looked at each other. “That revolting sleazebag creep?” I said. “What did he want?”
Bill gave up the standing at a distance thing and came over and sat down in the other armchair.