The Meq (21 page)

“Just don’t slip up. These Boxers are fanatics. I don’t trust a one of them. Tz’u-hsi, the Empress Dowager, thinks they might bring the old China back with their lunatic magic. She might be as crazy as they are. Anyway, it’s time to leave China, not stay. Have you thought about it?”

“No, it’s not possible. We still have unfinished business. But tell me, how is Pello and . . . how did Eder take the news?”

Just then, Sailor seemed to appear out of nowhere and walked up beside us. He acknowledged Owen Bramley with a nod and said, “Please, go on.”

Owen Bramley hesitated for a moment. Then he answered. “Pello is fine. He walks with a limp, but he is well and back at Kepa’s.” He turned to face Sailor directly. “Eder is . . . brokenhearted. Kepa said she is well, but very sad. However, Ray is with her and Nova keeps them both very much alive.”

Sailor looked down at the cracks between the ancient paving stones, then up to Owen Bramley. “Good,” he said.

The train blew its whistle long and loud, signaling that the repairs were finished and it was time to board. We all looked in the direction of the children and they were frantically trying to pull in their kites. Geaxi was standing next to the boy Owen Bramley had handed his kite to earlier. They were both looking our way, the boy almost frozen, like one of the stone lions.

We started back toward the train. Owen Bramley said, “Listen, Z, I have a contact, don’t ask me who or how, but it’s the best, inside the Forbidden City, inside the imperial palace itself. If I ever have to reach you outside normal channels, I will use this contact and I guarantee you will get my message. How soon is another matter.”

We reached the train and it was five minutes of Chinese chaos gathering kites, counting the children, and making sure all were back on the train. The boy Geaxi was standing by barely moved the whole time and seemed to be transfixed by me. In five more minutes, they were all accounted for and the train steamed forward toward the hills and eventually Tsingtao. Owen Bramley waved once. The same boy leaned out of his window and stared at me until the train was completely out of sight. I turned to Geaxi and said, “Who was that kid? And why was he staring at
me
?”

A mischievous grin was spreading across Geaxi’s face. “His name is Willie Croft,” she said, “and I told him you were Buddha.”

Sailor chuckled and we all stood there, staring up the empty tracks and listening to the last echoes of the disappearing train. Six hours later, I was on a cot in the monastery and I tore open Carolina’s letter. By candlelight, I read it slowly, five times.

My only Z,

I am writing to you, hoping and praying this will reach you. Solomon said not to worry, that Owen Bramley would somehow accomplish the task. He is a nice man and told me as he took the letter that it would not leave his person until he handed it to you. If you are reading this, then our luck still holds and he has found you.

I ache for you, for your presence, but not in a sad or painful way. I am so happy, Z, I feel so wonderful I am about to burst with joy.

I have met a man, a good man, a man I can love. I know you would approve. He is a sportswriter for the
Post
and loves baseball. And me, of course!

I met him out of the blue while attending a game at Sportsman’s Park (the Cardinals need pitching, by the way). Solomon and I have got box seats and season tickets, but that day I was alone. In the third inning, he simply sat down, unasked and unannounced, and passed me a box of Cracker Jacks, never taking his eyes off the field. I never said a word, nor did he, and I was in love by the fifth inning. That was last year. I would have written to you sooner, but I wanted to wait, wait and see if what I felt was real. It is real, Z, and now I have even more wonderful news. I found out the day before yesterday I am going to have a baby. A baby, Z! Can you believe it? And I always thought you were the crazy one.

God, I wish you were here. I have so much more to tell you, so much I wish I could share with you. I pray every day that you are well and will remain so. I do miss you terribly. I even think Georgia misses you, wherever she is. I don’t hear her playing as often as I used to.

From my heart of hearts,

Carolina

PS. His name is Nicholas and the “business” is doing well, thank you very much.

That letter cleansed my soul and cleared a dark window I’d been afraid to look through. I’d thought of her so often, worried and wondered, and now I knew. I was overjoyed for her. I carried that letter and read it every day for six months. It became a talisman, a lucky charm, and it served me well.

Owen Bramley was right about war. Through June, July, and August, there was a war, of sorts. They called it the Boxer Rebellion, but it was really an ineffectual attempt by China to stave off the inevitable. China was an old woman falling down and the Western powers were going to help her, not to get up, but to stay down. The Boxers and their belief in old magic and the notion that bullets would turn away from their holy bodies as they killed Christians were only crazy examples of China’s refusal to accept change, both good and bad, especially the imperial family and the “Old Buddha.” The Boxers could be dangerous, however, and we tried to avoid them. And cities. And trains. Sailor said the Meq had no place in Giza politics and their penchant for barbarism and war. I said what about the Fleur-du-Mal and Sailor said that was what made him “aberrant.”

We did learn something, however, as a result of an encounter with the Boxers. We were in the remote province of Kansu following another “clue” about Zeru-Meq’s whereabouts. It was long after the “Rebellion,” late 1901, and these Boxers were on their own, no longer connected to anything political or even righteous. They were roaming and raiding, murdering and torturing at random in the poorest towns and villages of Kansu. In all our years in China, it was the first time we were forced to reveal ourselves as Meq.

We had stopped to rest at a small inn and get some relief from a bitter wind that seemed never to stop blowing. The Boxers arrived suddenly, maybe thirty in all, and a few came inside and ordered the innkeeper to give them whatever they wanted or be dealt with as a nonbeliever. They wore the symbolic red sashes and turbans they were known for, but theirs were old, tattered, and stained. Outside, the rest of them were noisily torturing some poor innocent. They were calling their victim a “liberal old crow” and we could hear the high-pitched screams as the Boxers delivered their blows.

In a very few minutes, whether it was the immediate situation or an accumulation of our years in China and the futility of our search, I don’t know, but Geaxi had had enough. She was out of the back door and up on the roof in a matter of seconds. Sailor and I followed, but neither of us was as quick as Geaxi. When we got to her, she was on the edge of the roof looking down on the Boxers and the beating that was taking place. She had the small, pitted black rock, the Stone, in her hand. I took mine out as Sailor and I came up beside her. With just a glance toward me and a nod, she looked back down on the Boxers. We both raised our hands and spoke low in unison, “Hear ye, hear ye now, Giza!
Lo geltitu, lo geltitu, Ahaztu!
”

The Boxers were carrying everything from ax handles and homemade swords to government-issue carbines. They laid them all down immediately and walked away. In less than a minute, they were gone in five different directions. Sailor stared at us in mute fascination. This was the first time in twenty-six centuries he had seen the Stones used without the gems.

We climbed down the front of the building into the little courtyard surrounding the inn. The person the Boxers had been beating sat huddled against the wall and trembling. It was a man, but as Sailor approached him he let out a piercing, high-pitched screech like a crow. And as I approached, I could smell something foul about him, not from lack of hygiene, but something else. He was a eunuch and, judging from the robes he was wearing, an imperial eunuch. He, and thousands like him, had run the daily palace affairs and served at court for centuries. They were known, at least some of them, to be masters of deceit and intrigue. Eunuchs like him, who sounded like crows, were usually castrated after puberty. Others had a softer tone and had probably been castrated as children. The Boxers hated them and blamed them for a long list of imperial wrongdoings, especially the liberal ones who believed in Western influence.

Sailor stopped and told him not to be afraid. He looked at Sailor, still trembling, and in Mandarin replied that he was not afraid, he was thankful, and he had screamed only because an ancient legend and rumor in the imperial palace had now come true. Sailor asked him what that was and he told of a tale that had been passed among the eunuchs down the years. That Li Lien-ying, the chief eunuch, and the Empress Dowager herself, Tz’u-hsi, harbored a girl, a girl with Western features who was known for her powerful presence, sexual and otherwise, even though she was physically immature herself. And she supposedly had a hypnotic effect on others whenever she wanted them to stop what they were doing. The legend held that she was called the “Hare” and sometimes the “Jade Hare.” He said that when he heard us and saw the Boxers leave it was the same thing.

Sailor looked to Geaxi and then to me, barely suppressing a grin. We knew the “Hare” had to be Opari.

We helped the man up and he gathered his sensibilities, then departed in a flurry to who knows where. On the spot, we discussed if our search for Zeru-Meq should continue or whether we should go to Peking and explore other avenues. Sailor said we should keep looking for Zeru-Meq. “Without him,” he said, “we will get nowhere in Peking. If Opari is behind an imperial gate, Zeru-Meq will know the gatekeeper.” Geaxi and I reluctantly agreed.

After that, we stepped up our search, traveling faster and resting less. We covered Honan province and Hupei to the south. We doubled back through Shensi and north as far as Ningsia. At every stop, whether riverfront opium den or mountaintop shrine, Sailor thought we had learned something, inched a bit closer, or didn’t have long to go. He had started asking certain questions in a certain way, so that he could read between the lines of the answer and anticipate Zeru-Meq’s movements. The longer we kept at it, the more obsessed he became.

For two more years we searched in vain. Then, in a remote Taoist monastery near Yushu, at the far west end of Szechwan, not far from Tibet, which was supposed to be our country of origin, we gave up.

It happened suddenly. After our arrival and a few inquiries, we were taken back to the kitchen and shown an ancient slab-oak table, twelve feet long and four feet wide. We were told it was used for everything from the preparation and serving of food to communal meetings and prayer. On the far end and carved into the edge was a poem. We were informed, after asking, that it had been written “the day before yesterday.” It read:

The oyster folds over the Pearl
The Hare stays put in the nest
      Your steps are loud
      Your thoughts are thunder
Why do you still hunt?

Sailor turned bright red and pounded his fist on the table. The monk who had shown us the carving jumped back and then excused himself, not knowing how to respond to such a violent reaction. Then, just as suddenly, Sailor broke into laughter, loud and long, more than I’d ever heard him laugh before. When he stopped, he said, “This game is over. I will not play any longer. Do either of you have anything else in mind? Anything will do. We must try something else.”

I suggested we go to Peking and cable Unai and Usoa. They might know something of Zeru-Meq through the movements of the Fleur-du-Mal. While we were waiting for their reply, we could try and find a hint of Opari. What could we lose except time?

Geaxi agreed and Sailor was open to anything. The next day we started on the long trip to Peking. It was spring of 1904 and we had been after Zeru-Meq for almost eight years.

We traveled by train as often as we could. Now that our priorities had changed, we were anxious to get to Peking. We were silent for hours on end. I think all three of us were disillusioned, but when we did speak, I noticed Sailor was much more pleasant. We watched the vastness of China pass around us, and in our Buddhist robes we probably looked more like the young monks we were supposed to be than we ever had.

When we were still a good distance from Peking, maybe two hundred miles, the train made an unscheduled stop close to Ta T’ung and near the ancient Yün Kang caves that contained thousands of Buddha statues, images, and carvings. We were there for at least twenty minutes and outside I heard men shouting and yelling while they loaded something heavy into a car farther down the train. People inside were grumbling about the delay, but once we got going, everyone settled back into the stupor of a long train ride.

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.”