A Cup of Light (25 page)

And here was the greatest of them all. She picked up her little consolation prize, the cup, her treasure, and packed it safe away in its box. There was kindness in the world after all.

It wasn't so many hours now until her flight. She clicked the room into darkness and crawled into bed, spreading her loose hair over the pillow behind her. She had given the thought of him all of herself that she could—though she left one hearing aid in, just in case the phone still rang. Now she had to try and sleep.

Stanley prepared the documents. He would send them to San Francisco the next morning, via personal courier. He had a man he could trust. Not an ah chan; an employee. He paged through the documents one last time before putting them in the package. For some reason he stopped to look at the special visa issued by China. He had seen a few of these before. Usually it meant the government was selling off something it owned. Often, as in this case, there was an intermediary.

Yet just as there were famed and noted
fang gu
artists in the world of pots, each of whom turned out his own distinctive style of reproduction, so there were known masters in the world of forged documents. One did not know their names, of course. They were known by the names of their quirks—the same way he had heard Miss Frank call the maker of that marvelous chicken cup the Master of the Ruffled Feather. Just as these document copiers became known by their peculiarities of lettering, shading, and border.

Stanley leaned closer. He knew this artist. He was one of the document masters people talked about. He worked with a flawed inlay machine, and his documents always had a pale patch in the lower left corner.

Stanley looked at the visa. There it was. The pale patch.

A fake.

So this sale wasn't for the government at all. It was inauthentic, a private sale with fake paperwork.

Yet this visa in front of him had only been needed to cross from China to Hong Kong. Stanley smiled to himself. This visa was never presented at that border. It would have been spotted. That meant the pots were not brought through openly. They were smuggled. By the ah chan Bai. And so very many of them. Stanley's esteem for the man, despite everything, increased.

And now the collection was in Hong Kong, legal, unimpeachable. Of course, Stanley thought, with the present tensions between the U.S. and China, if someone on the American side noticed this fake visa, in Customs, say, there might be a problem. More for diplomacy than for legality. Because if the Chinese government found out about this, they would most assuredly strike multiple postures demanding it back. It was just too big, too priceless; and matters between the countries too uneasy.

Well. Stanley Pao slid the visa back into the stack of pages.

He certainly would not be the one to mention it.

He slipped into the lobby of the hotel after two
A.M.
He felt his chest singing with excitement. He rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor and walked in quick silence down the brilliantly patterned carpet. It was late. Everything was hushed.

He came to her door and knocked. The sound seemed to echo all the way down the wallpapered corridor. He waited. Nothing.

He knocked again.

Inside, Lia sat up in bed. Her hair was down. She got up in the twisted confusion of dreaming. She found the door by its little pinpoint of light that gave out onto the hall. She looked.

Michael. Really? Was it really? His shoulders under his loose white shirt, the sleeves rolled up . . . now she knew she was dreaming. This was false. But his broad face leaned toward her through the peephole, his hand came up and knocked again.

She opened the door. She stood behind it, pale, half lit by the shafting light from the hallway. Three steps and he was in the room, turning, looking for her.
Who knows about me,
she thought. The door clicked shut and they found their way to each other in the dark.

CHINESE DYNASTIES AND REIGN TITLES

Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC)

Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220)

Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties (220–581)

Sui Dynasty (581–618)

Tang Dynasty (618–907)

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907–960)

Song Dynasty (960–1279)

Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368)

Ming Dynasty (1368–1644)

Hongwu (1368–1398)

Jianwen (1399–1402)

Yongle (1403–1424)

Hongxi (1425)

Xuande (1426–1435)

Zhengtong (1436–1449)

Jingtai (1450–1456)

Tianshun (1457–1464)

Chenghua (1465–1487)

Hongzhi (1488–1505)

Zhengde (1506–1521)

Jianjing (1522–1566)

Longqing (1567–1572)

Wanli (1573–1619)

Taichang (1620)

Tianqi (1621–1627)

Chongzhen (1628–1644)

Qing Dynasty (1644–1911)

Shunzhi (1644–1661)

Kangxi (1662–1722)

Yongzheng (1723–1735)

Qianlong (1736–1795)

Jiaqing (1796–1820)

Daoguang (1821–1850)

Xianfeng (1851–1861)

Tongzhi (1862–1874)

Guangxu (1875–1908)

Xuantong (1909–1911)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my editor, Jackie Cantor, a sage and caring guide who somehow, at every turn, made me choose the way myself. Thanks to my agent, Bonnie Nadell, for intelligence, grace and good humor at the helm.

Mee-Seen Loong took me by the hand and led me into her world of porcelain. Her knowledge and love of pots, her adeptness in the intersecting subcultures surrounding them, and her endlessly interesting ideas about them educated and inspired me. My research also owes much to published scholarship, especially the work of Julian Thompson, Regina Krahl, Liu Xinyuan, and Wen C. Fong.

To those in Hong Kong and Jingdezhen who talked to me about ah chans, thank you for your candor and for cracking the door to this underworld, just enough.

I am grateful to the Morgan Library for allowing me to examine the 1913 correspondence between J. P. Morgan's office in New York and F. H. McKnight in Peking, and to James Traub for first writing about this historical episode and then generously answering my questions.

Dr. Joan Rothlein and Dr. Herb Needleman were of great help in researching lead poisoning. In matters related to pediatric hearing loss I am indebted to Beth Cardwell, M.D., and the Audiology department at Oregon Health Sciences University.

For insight, ideas, and information, my gratitude to Fred Hill, Sabrina Ullman Mathews, Richard Herzfelder, Jason Tse, Nicolas Chow, Jon Conte, Marta Aragones, Lucy Metcalf, Jin Mei, Rone Tempest and Laura Richardson, Anthony Kuhn, Kemin Zhang, Chris Perkins, Nancy Beers, and Huang Zhifeng.

A debt of inspiration is due to
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
by Jonathan Spence, “Funes, the Memorious” by Jorge Luis Borges,
The Recognitions
by William Gaddis, and especially
The Art of Memory
by Frances Yates.

Ben and Luke, I could never have written this book without your generosity in releasing me to the task. For everything else, my first and last thanks are for Paul Mones.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NICOLE MONES was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for her first novel,
Lost in Translation,
which was also named a
New York Times
Notable Book. She lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

Also by Nicole Mones

Lost in Translation

PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF NICOLE MONES

A CUP OF LIGHT

“Page-turning intrigue . . .” —
The Oregonian

“Unconventional and intriguing . . . [Mones] generates real suspense—moving cinematically from character to character and place to place—all the while deftly sketching the intricacies of Chinese porcelain and the world of imitators and smugglers that surround it.”
—Publishers Weekly

“American Nicole Mones has worked and traveled in China for more than twenty years, and her knowledge of the country illuminates every page of
A Cup of Light,
her second novel . . . Mones weaves . . . many threads into a seamless whole, using pure and brilliant prose.”
—BookPage

“A pleasurable read . . . a page-turner.” —
Winston-Salem Journal

“Well-paced . . . intriguing . . . A CUP OF LIGHT has the rare distinction of bringing together an entertaining sequence of just-suspenseful-enough events with writing that is both spare and lyrical.”
—The Seattle Times

“A story full of mysteries yet revelatory in its treatment of human nature.”
—Eugene Weekly

LOST IN TRANSLATION

“A gripping story . . . An engrossing narrative of adventure and desire.”
—San Franciso Chronicle

“An adventurous and romantic tale . . . A remarkable first novel.”
—Dominick Dunne

“A satisfying romp through alien landscapes: China, the past, human love.” —
The Washington Post Book World

“The author . . . conveys with poignant élan the trance of unrequited love for the exotic.” —
The New Yorker

“A pleasurable, observant and exciting paean for China.”
—
The Seattle Times

“A gripping yarn with an exotic backdrop. It's also a luscious love story, a political thriller, and a close-up of a China that is changing almost day by day.” —Associated Press

A CUP OF LIGHT

A Delta Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Delacorte Press hardcover edition published April 2002

Delta trade paperback edition / May 2003

Published by

Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Photo of porcelain cup courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Mrs. Richard E. Linburn Gift, 1987. (1987.85) Photograph by Sheldan Collins. Photograph © 1988 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2002 by Nicole Mones

Visit our website at
www.bantamdell.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001053782

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-440-33398-2

v3.0