The Crime of My Life, page 2
Volgorughi leaned across the table, looking at Kiada. “What would you say if I told you that I had just added a Wang Wei to my collection?”
Kiada showed even, white teeth. “Nothing but respect for your excellency’s judgment could prevent my insisting that it was a copy by some lesser artist of the Yuan Dynasty—possibly Chao Meng Fu. An original Wang Wei could not be bought for money.”
“Indeed?” Volgorughi unlocked a cabinet with a key he carried on his watch chain. He took something out and tossed it on the table like a man throwing down a challenge. It was a cylinder in an embroidered satin cover. Kiada peeled the cover and we saw a scroll on a roller of old milk jade.
It was a broad ribbon of silk, once white, now ripened with great age to a mellow brown. A foot wide, sixteen feet long, painted lengthwise to show the course of a river. As it unrolled, a stream of pure lapis, jade, and turquoise hues flowed before my enchanted eyes, almost like a moving picture. Born in a bubbling spring, fed by waterfalls, the river wound its way among groves of tender, green bamboo, parks with dappled deer peeping through slender pine trees, cottages with curly roofs nestling among round hills, verdant meadows, fantastic cliffs, strange wind-distorted trees, rushes, wild geese, and at last, a foam-flecked sea.
Kiada’s face was a study. He whispered brokenly, “I can hear the wind sing in the rushes. I can hear the wail of the wild geese. Of Wang Wei truly is it written—his pictures were unspoken poems.”
“And the color!” cried Volgorughi, ecstasy in his eyes.
Lucien’s sly voice murmured in my ear. “A younger man, married to Olga Kyrilovna, would have no time for painting, Chinese or otherwise.”
Volgorughi had Kiada by the arm. “This is no copy by Chao Meng Fu! Look at that inscription on the margin. Can you read it?”
Kiada glanced—then stared. There was more than suspicion in the look he turned on Volgorughi. There was fear. “I must beg your excellency to excuse me. I do not read Chinese.”
We were interrupted by a commotion in the compound. A giant Cossack, in full-skirted coat and sheepskin cap, was coming through the gate carrying astride his shoulders a young man, elegantly slim, in an officer’s uniform. The Cossack knelt on the ground. The rider slipped lightly from his unconventional mount. He sauntered past the window and a moment later he was entering the study with a nonchalance just this side of insolence. To my amazement I saw that he carried a whip which he handed with his gloves to the Chinese boy who opened the door.
“Princess, your servant. Excellency, my apologies. I believe I’m late.”
Volgorughi returned the greeting with the condescension of a Western Russian for an Eastern Russian—a former officer of Chevaliers Gardes for an obscure colonel of Oussurian Cossacks. Sometimes I wondered why such a bold adventurer as Alexei Andreitch Liakoff had been appointed Russian military attaché in Pekin. He was born in Tobolsk, where there is Tartar blood. His oblique eyes, high cheekbones, and sallow, hairless skin lent color to his impudent claim of descent from Genghis Khan.
“Are Russian officers in the habit of using their men as saddle horses?” I muttered to Carstairs.
Alexei’s quick ear caught the words. “It may become a habit with me.” He seemed to relish my discomfiture. “I don’t like Mongol ponies. A Cossack is just as sure-footed. And much more docile.”
Olga Kyrilovna roused herself to play hostess. “Sherry, Colonel Liakoff? Or vodka?”
“Vodka, if her excellency pleases.” Alexei’s voice softened as he spoke to Olga. His eyes dwelt on her face gravely as he took the glass from her hand.
The ghost of mockery touched Volgorughi’s lips. He despised vodka as a peasant’s drink.
Alexei approached the table to set down his empty glass. For the first time, his glance fell on the painting by Wang Wei. His glass crashed on the marble floor.
“You read Chinese, don’t you?” Volgorughi spoke austerely. “Perhaps you can translate this inscription?”
Alexei put both hands wide apart on the table and leaned on them, studying the ideographs. “‘Wang Wei.’ And a date. The same as our A.D. 740.”
“And the rest?” insisted Volgorughi.
Alexei went on. “‘At an odd moment in summer I came across this painting of a river course by Wang Wei. Under its influence I sketched a spray of peach blossom on the margin as an expression of my sympathy for the artist and his profound and mysterious work. The words of the Emperor. Written in the Lai Ching summerhouse, 1746.’”
Kiada had been frightened when he looked at that inscription. Alexei was angry. Why I did not know.
Carstairs broke the silence. “I don’t see anything mysterious about a picture of a river!”
“Everything about this picture is—mysterious.” Kiada glanced at Volgorughi. “May one inquire how your excellency obtained this incomparable masterpiece?”
“From a peddler in the Chinese City.” Volgorughi’s tone forbade further questions. Just then his Number One Boy announced dinner.
There was the usual confusion when we started for the ball at the Japanese Legation. Mongol ponies had to be blindfolded before they would let men in European dress mount and even then they were skittish. For this reason it was the custom for men to walk and for women to drive in hooded Pekin carts. But Sybil Carstairs always defied this convention, exclaiming, “Why should I be bumped black and blue in a springless cart just because I am a woman?” She and her husband were setting out on foot when Olga’s little cart clattered into the compound driven by a Chinese groom. Kiada had gone on ahead to welcome his early guests. Volgorughi lifted Olga into the cart. She was quite helpless in a Siberian cloak of blue fox paws and clumsy Mongol socks of white felt over her dancing slippers. Her head drooped against Volgorughi’s shoulder drowsily as he put her down in the cart. He drew the fur cloak around her in a gesture that seemed tenderly protective. She lifted languid eyes.
“Isn’t Lady Carstairs driving with me?”
“My dear, you know she never drives in a Pekin cart. You are not afraid?” Volgorughi smiled. “You will be quite safe, Olga Kyrilovna. I promise you that.”
Her answering smile wavered. Then the hood hid her face from view as the cart rattled through the gateway.
Volgorughi and Lucien walked close behind Olga’s cart. Alexei and I followed more slowly. Our Chinese lantern boys ran ahead of us in the darkness to light our way like the linkmen of medieval London. Street lamps in Pekin were lighted only once a month—when the General of the Nine Gates made his rounds of inspection.
The lantern light danced down a long, empty lane winding between high, blank walls. A stinging Siberian wind threw splinters of sleet in my face. We hadn’t the macadamized roads of the Treaty Ports. The frozen mud was hard and slippery as glass. I tried to keep to a ridge that ran down the middle of the road. My foot slipped and I stumbled down the slope into a foul gutter of sewage, frozen solid. The lanterns turned a corner. I was alone with the black night and the icy wind.
I groped my way along the gutter, one hand against the wall. No stars, no moon, no lighted windows, no other pedestrians. My boot met something soft that yielded and squirmed. My voice croaked a question in Mandarin: “Is this the way to the Japanese Legation?” The answer came in singsong Cantonese. I understood only one word: “Alms. . .”
Like heaven itself, I saw a distant flicker of light coming nearer. Like saints standing in the glow of their own halos I recognized Alexei and our lantern boys. “What happened?” Alexei’s voice was taut. “I came back as soon as I missed you.”
“Nothing. I fell. I was just asking this. . .”
Words died on my lips. Lantern light revealed the blunted lion-face, the eyeless sockets, the obscene, white stumps for hands—“mere corruption, swaddled man-wise.” A leper. And I had been about to touch him.
Alexei’s gaze followed mine to the beggar, hunched against the wall. “She is one of the worst I’ve ever seen.”
“She?”
“I think it’s a woman. Or, shall I say, it was a woman?” Alexei laughed harshly. “Shall we go on?”
We rounded the next corner before I recovered my voice. “These beggars aren’t all as wretched as they seem, are they?”
“What put that into your head, Charley?”
“Something that happened last summer. We were in a market lane of the Chinese City—Sybil Carstairs and Olga Kyrilovna, Lucien and I. A beggar, squatting in the gutter, stared at us as if he had never seen Western men before. He looked like any other beggar—filthy, naked to the waist, with tattered blue trousers below. But his hands were toying with a little image carved in turquoise matrix. It looked old and valuable.”
“He may have stolen it.”
“It wasn’t as simple as that,” I retorted. “A man in silk rode up on a mule leading a white pony with a silver embroidered saddle. He called the beggar ‘elder brother’ and invited him to mount the pony. Then the two rode off together.”
Alexei’s black eyes glittered like jet beads in the lantern light. “Was the beggar the older of the two?”
“No. That’s the queer part. The beggar was young. The man who called him ‘elder brother’ was old and dignified. . .Some beggars at home have savings accounts. I suppose the same sort of thing could happen here.”
Again Alexei laughed harshly. “Hold on to that idea, Charley, if it makes you feel more comfortable.”
We came to a gate where lanterns clustered like a cloud of fireflies. A piano tinkled. In the compound, lantern boys were gathering outside the windows of a ballroom, tittering as they watched barbarian demons “jump” to Western music.
Characteristically, the Japanese Legation was the only European house in Pekin. Candle flames and crystal prisms. Wall mirrors and a polished parquet floor. The waltz from Traviata. The glitter of diamonds and gold braid. Punch à la Romaine.
“Where is Princess Volgorughi?” I asked Sybil Carstairs.
“Didn’t she come with you and Colonel Liakoff?”
“No. Her cart followed you. We came afterward.”
“Perhaps she’s in the supper room.” Sybil whirled off with little Kiada.
Volgorughi was standing in the doorway of the supper room with Lucien and Carstairs. “She’ll be here in a moment,” Carstairs was saying.
Alexei spoke over my shoulder. “Charley and I have just arrived. We did not pass her excellency’s cart on the way.”
“Perhaps she turned back,” said Lucien.
“In that case, she would have passed us,” returned Alexei. “Who was with her?”
Volgorughi’s voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “Her groom and lantern boy. Both Chinese. But Kiada and the Carstairses were just ahead of her; Monsieur de l’Orges and I, just behind her.”
“Not all the way,” amended Lucien. “We took a wrong turning and got separated from each other in the dark. That was when we lost sight of her.”
“My fault.” Volgorughi’s mouth twisted bitterly. “I was leading the way. And it was I who told her she would be—safe.”
Again we breasted the wind to follow lanterns skimming before us like will o’ the wisps. Vainly we strained our eyes through the glancing lights and broken shadows. We met no one. We saw nothing. Not even a footprint or wheel rut on that frozen ground. Once something moaned in the void beyond the lights. It was only the leper.
At the gate of the Russian Legation, the Cossack guard sprang to attention. Volgorughi rapped out a few words in Russian. I knew enough to understand the man’s reply. “The baryna has not returned, excellency. There has been no sign of her or her cart.”
Volgorughi was shouting. Voices, footfalls, lights filled the compound. Alexei struck his forehead with his clenched hand. “Fool that I am! The leper!” He walked so fast I could hardly keep up with him. The lantern boys were running. A Cossack came striding after us. Alexei halted at the top of the ridge. The leper had not moved. He spoke sharply in Mandarin. “Have you seen a cart?” No answer. “When she asked me for alms, she spoke Cantonese,” I told him. He repeated his question in Cantonese. Both Volgorughi and Alexei spoke the southern dialects. All the rest of us were content to stammer Mandarin.
Still no answer. The Cossack stepped down into the gutter. His great boot prodded the shapeless thing that lay there. It toppled side wise.
Alexei moved down the slope. “Lights!” The lanterns shuddered and came nearer. The handle of a knife protruded from the leper’s left breast.
Alexei forced himself to drop on one knee beside the obscene corpse. He studied it intently, without touching it.
“Murdered. . .There are many knives like that in the Chinese City. Anyone might have used it—Chinese or European.” He rose, brushing his knee with his gloved hand.
“Why?” I ventured.
“She couldn’t see.” His voice was judicious. “She must have heard—something.”
“But what?”
Alexei’s Asiatic face was inscrutable in the light from the paper lanterns.
Police? Extraterritorial law courts? That was Treaty Port stuff. Like pidgin English. We had only a few legation guards. No gunboats. No telegraph. No railway. The flying machine was a crank’s daydream. Even cranks hadn’t dreamed of a wireless telegraphy. . .
Dawn came. We were still searching. Olga Kyrilovna, her cart and pony, her groom and lantern boy, had all vanished without a trace as if they had never existed.
As character witnesses, the Chinese were baffling. “The princess’s groom was a Manchu of good character,” Volgorughi’s Number One Boy told us. “But her lantern boy was a Cantonese with a great crime on his conscience. He caused his mother’s death when he was born, which the Ancients always considered unfilial.”
At noon some of us met in the smoking room of the Pekin Club. “It’s curious there’s been no demand for ransom,” I said.
“Bandits? Within the city walls?” Carstairs was skeptical. “Russia has never hesitated to use agents provocateurs. They say she’s going to build a railway across Siberia. I don’t believe it’s practical. But you never can tell what those mad Russians will do. She’ll need Manchuria. And she’ll need a pretext for taking it. Why not the abduction of the Russian minister’s wife?”
Kiada shook his head. “Princess Volgorughi will not be found until The River is restored to its companion pictures. The Lake, The Sea, and The Cloud.”
“What do you mean?”
Kiada answered me patiently as an adult explaining the obvious to a backward child. “It is known that Wang Wei painted this series of pictures entitled Four Forms of Water. Volgorughi has only one of them. The River. The separation of one painting from others in a series divinely inspired is displeasing to the artist.”
“But Wang Wei has been dead more than a thousand years!”
“It is always dangerous to displease those who have Passed Above. An artist as steeped in ancient mysteries as the pious Wang Wei has power over men long after he has become a Guest on High. Wang Wei will shape the course of our lives into any pattern he pleases in order to bring those four paintings together again. I knew this last night when I first saw The River and—I was afraid.”
“I wonder how Volgorughi did get that painting?” mused Carstairs. “I hope he didn’t forget the little formality of payment.”
“He’s not a thief!” I protested.
“No. But he’s a collector. All collectors are mad. Especially Russian collectors. It’s like gambling or opium.”
Lucien smiled unpleasantly. “Art! Ghosts! Politics! Why go so far afield? Olga Kyrilovna was a young bride. And Volgorughi is—old. Such marriages are arranged by families, we all know. Women, as Balzac said, are the dupes of the social system. When they consent to marriage, they have not enough experience to know what they are consenting to. Olga Kyrilovna found herself in a trap. She has escaped, as young wives have escaped from time immemorial, by taking a lover. Now they’ve run off together. Sabine a tout donné, sa beauté colombe, et son amour. . .”
“Monsieur de l’Orges.”
We all started. Alexei was standing in the doorway. His eyes commanded the room. “What you say is impossible. Do I make myself clear?”
“Of course, Alexei. I—I was only joking.” Lucien sounded piteous.
But Alexei had no pity. “A difference of taste in jokes has broken many friendships. . .Charley, will you come back to the Russian Legation with me?”
The Tartar general’s audience hall had never seemed more shabby. Volgorughi sat staring at the garish wall of red and gilt. He was wearing an overcoat, carrying hat and gloves.
“News, excellency?” queried Alexei.
Volgorughi shook his head without looking up. “I’ve been to the Tsungli Yamen.” He spoke like a somnambulist. “The usual thing. Green tea. Melon seeds. A cold stone pavilion. Mandarins who giggle behind satin sleeves. I asked for an audience with the Emperor himself. It was offered—on the usual terms. I had to refuse—as usual. By the time a gunboat gets to the mouth of the Pei-ho, they may agree to open another seaport to Russian trade by way of reparation, but—I shall never see Olga Kyrilovna again. Sometimes I think our governments keep us here in the hope that something will happen to give them a pretext for sending troops into China. . .”
We all felt that. The Tsungli Yamen, or Foreign Office, calmly assumed that our legations were vassal missions to the Emperor, like those from Tibet. The Emperor would not receive us unless we acknowledged his sovereignty by kowtowing, the forehead to strike the floor audibly nine times. Even if we had wished to go through this interesting performance for the sake of peace and trade, our governments would not let us compromise their sovereignty. But they kept us there, where we had no official standing, where our very existence was doubted. “It may be there are as many countries in the West as England, France, Germany, and Russia,” one mandarin had informed me. “But the others you mention—Austria, Sweden, Spain, and America—they are all lies invented to intimidate the Chinese.”
