I was dozing myself when I was suddenly jolted awake by a boy falling into me. He was carrying an armful of umbrellas and he fell across my lap and rolled into the seat next to me, forcing Geaxi to squeeze up against the window. He never once dropped the umbrellas, holding them with both arms in front of him like a bundle of trees. I couldn’t see his face, but he was apologizing profusely in Chinese. Sailor was sitting across from us, facing the boy. Then the boy began placing the umbrellas between his knees, lowering them one at a time. After two or three, Sailor could see his face.
“It is not so,” Sailor said. “Please, say it is not so.”
The boy lowered the rest of his umbrellas and I could see his face. He had curly black hair, green eyes, and he was definitely Meq.
Geaxi laughed out loud.
“Egibizirik bilatu,” the boy said with a smile. “Do the Meq not say that still?”
Geaxi, still laughing, said, “And five lights shine at the birth of every Buddha.”
The boy laughed along with Geaxi and said, “I am afraid I am out of salt,” then he looked directly at Sailor and said, “Hello, old one.”
Sailor stared back at him and without taking his eyes off the boy said, “Zianno Zezen, meet Zeru-Meq.”
The boy turned and focused his concentration on me. He looked me over thoroughly. “I did not know your father,” he said, “but I knew your grandfather. A tragedy.” Then he nodded toward Sailor. “Did this old wanderer tell you I was ‘unpredictable’?”
I looked at Sailor, who was shaking his head. “Actually, he said you were ‘completely unpredictable.’ ”
Zeru-Meq started laughing again and trying to find a place to put his umbrellas, as if we had all been planning to meet and he was just a little late.
Sailor said, “Why now? Why here? What’s the point?”
“The point is, old one,” Zeru-Meq said, finally putting up the last of his umbrellas, “that to find something while one is still looking is to lose it, but to find something after one has stopped looking, that is discovery. Anyway, it is I who need your help at the present. We can discuss your needs later. Do you still carry those wonderful Stones?”
Sailor, Geaxi, and I all glanced at one another, unsure of how much information we wanted to share. Sailor solved it, saying simply, “Yes.”
Zeru-Meq said “very well,” and went on to tell us that during the decay of the Ch’ing dynasty, open vandalism and looting were taking place at many sacred temples and shrines such as Yün Kang, which we had just passed. That was why the train had stopped, he said, to pick up stolen heads from several statues of Buddha to sell to foreign museums and art collectors. Zeru-Meq said this was an abomination to him. He told Sailor that just outside Peking, where the shrine robbers had planned their drop-off, he had planned his own pickup. Once they had unloaded their sacred contraband, if we could make the scoundrels “forget,” then his men would be there to return the heads to their rightful owners in Yün Kang. He also said that doing this would make Sailor “feel better.”
Geaxi stifled a giggle and we all agreed to help. Sailor was silent for most of the remaining journey, but I spoke to Zeru-Meq about many things and in the course of our conversation brought up the Fleur-du-Mal. I asked him what he was capable of and, straight out, if he had heard from or seen him recently.
He looked at me openly and smiled. He had the same brilliant white teeth as the Fleur-du-Mal, and his eyes were the same deep green, but there the similarities ended. I sensed no evil in Zeru-Meq.
“The Fleur-du-Mal,” he said, “is a righteous man. He does only one thing based on one way of thinking — that which is forbidden. He is not a grand thief or even a good murderer. He is a common man, as clear as a mountain stream, only he does not think he appears this way because of his obsession with the forbidden. If starving were forbidden, he would never eat another egg. The Fleur-du-Mal, Xanti Otso, is a pilgrim. A sad, dangerous pilgrim.”
“But have you seen him in the last eight years?” Geaxi asked.
“No,” he said, “I have not spoken with him since the 1860s.”
I thought about this and what Sailor had said about the Fleur-du-Mal and his habits. I glanced at Sailor to see his reaction, but he was staring out of the window.
We arrived at the station Zeru-Meq had said was the rendezvous point around dusk. A strong wind, laden with grit and sand, was blowing out of the west. Our plan was simple: surround the scene of the exchange at three equidistant positions and use each of our Stones together, simultaneously mouthing the words the way Geaxi and I had done at Kansu. In a matter of minutes it was done and Zeru-Meq had all the Buddha heads carefully loaded into two-wheeled peasant carts and “his men” discreetly hauled them away and back to the caves of Yün Kang. The other men, the thieves, wandered off aimlessly.
Later, Zeru-Meq mentioned that he hadn’t seen any gems imbedded in either my or Geaxi’s Stones, only in Sailor’s, yet they all seemed to work as they always had. He asked Sailor about it and Sailor was silent. He smiled and said, “This puts things slightly askew, doesn’t it, old one?”
Sailor finally said, “You know what we seek, Zeru-Meq. And you know we would never ask for your help if there were any other means. Will you help us find Opari?”
“If I had not seen what I just saw with the Stones, I would say no. And I have always thought you and the others were wasting your time with your fixation on the Remembering. We are who we are. The Remembering will not change that.”
“You have your opinion,” Sailor said.
“Yes, I have,” Zeru-Meq said and paused a moment. “Anyway, I can only arrange an audience with Li Lien-ying, the chief eunuch, and even then, an audience of only one. Three would never be allowed. Once inside the Forbidden City, whoever it is will be on their own. I would be very careful. Li Lien-ying and Tz’u-hsi herself are the only ones that know of Opari and another one with her called the ‘Pearl.’ They are very jealous of their magic children and protect them accordingly.”
We entered Peking and I saw everything from dogs and children sharing the same scraps of food in the street to wide avenues lined with peach trees in full bloom.
Zeru-Meq helped us locate rooms near the Forbidden City and we finally took off our Tibetan Buddhist robes for good. There seemed to be hundreds of thousands of children on their own in Peking and four more like us would alert no one.
That night, it was decided that I would be the one to visit Li Lien-ying. I was still convinced that it was Opari’s heartfear that made her vulnerable and her heartfear was me. “Why” was a question I couldn’t answer. All those years in China and I hadn’t heard one voice or dreamed one dream that made anything any clearer. But I was excited. I knew I was close. There were only a few miles separating us that night and I knew that soon even that gap would be closed.
The next day, Sailor went to cable Unai and Usoa. No matter what happened in Peking, he wanted news of the Fleur-du-Mal. Zeru-Meq went to arrange the audience with Li Lien-ying. He said it could take five minutes or five hours. There was no way to know until it was done. Geaxi and I began to walk around the Forbidden City, but the wind was still full of grit and sand and we returned to our rooms. It was odd. Whole years had swept by me, barely noticed or counted, and now a few hours seemed a lifetime. I was nervous. Geaxi laughed at me and said, “The one thing you should be able to do, and do well, is wait.”