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It took an entire summer to discover in which province the late Ti-Chin-Fú had lived. What a picturesque, thoroughly 'Chinese' administrative episode!
The obliging Camilloff spent his days going from one state yamen to another and first had to prove that the wish to know an old mandarin's address did not conceal a conspiracy against the security of the empire. Afterwards, he still had to swear that this curiosity did not constitute an attack upon the sacred rites. Only then did Prince Tong, according to Camilloff, authorise the imperial inquiry. Hundreds of scribes grew pale, night and day, drawing reports with brushes upon rice paper. Mysterious conferences whispered through every department of the Imperial City, from the Astronomical Tribunal to the Palace of Preferred Goodness. A multitude of bearers carried litters creaking beneath bundles of ancient documents between the Russian legation, the pavilions of the Forbidden City and the Archive Courtyard.
When Camilloff asked for the result, he was solemnly told that the sacred books of Lá-o-Tsé were being consulted. Or they announced that ancient texts from the time of Nor-ha-chú were about to be examined. According to Camilloff, Prince Tong accompanied the messages with some substantial gift: filled sweets or bamboo shoots in sugar syrup.
While the general worked fervently to find Ti-Chin-Fú's family, I spent the summer on very different pursuits.
I wove 'hours of silk and gold', as a Japanese poet put it, at the small feet of Camilloff's wife.
Beneath the garden sycamores stood a pavilion called, in the household's Chinese manner, Discreet Repose. Beside it, a cool stream sang beneath a small rustic bridge painted pink. The walls, a lattice of fine bamboo lined with bluish silk, filtered the sun into an unearthly light of faded opal. At the centre billowed a white-silk divan, light as a morning cloud and inviting as a nuptial bed; scarlet lilies, Nanking mats and a fan of crystal blades completed that setting which our fantasy had made its own.
The late-August mornings were gentle in Peking, already touched by an autumnal tenderness. At that hour, Meriskoff and the legation officers remained in the chancery preparing the diplomatic bag for St Petersburg.
Fan in hand, treading lightly along the garden's sandy paths in my satin slippers, I would half-open the door of Discreet Repose: - Mimi? - All right... - the general's wife would answer, her voice soft as a kiss.
I described Vladimira dressed as a Chinese lady, with peach blossom in her raised hair and her eyebrows darkened with Nanking ink. I lingered over the gold-embroidered gauze blouse clinging to her small, upright breasts, the wide silk trousers that lent her the grace of a seraglio, the slender ankle and the slipper into which scarcely three of my fingers would fit.
Her name was Vladimira, and she had been born near Nidji-Novogorod. She had been brought up by an elderly aunt who admired Rousseau, read Faublas, powdered her hair and resembled a coarse Cossack lithograph of a coquettish lady of Versailles. Vladimira dreamt of living in Paris and, while making tea, asked me for mischievous stories about cocottes and declared her devotion to Dumas fils.
I rolled back the wide sleeve of her silk coat and made my lips travel devoutly over the cool skin of her arms. Then, entwined upon the divan, breast to breast, we remained in a silent ecstasy. We heard the crystal blades ring like an Aeolian harp, blue magpies flutter through the plane trees and the fleeting rhythm of the running water.
Above the divan, a panel of black satin displayed Chinese characters forming maxims from the Sacred Book of Li-Nun 'on the duties of wives'. Neither of us understood Chinese. In the silence, the kisses began again, spaced and gentle, comparable, in what I called the florid language of those countries, to pearls falling one by one into a silver basin. 'Oh, gentle siestas in the gardens of Peking, where are you? Where are you, dead leaves of Japan's scarlet lilies?' I would ask later.
One morning, Camilloff entered the chancery, where I was smoking the pipe of friendship with Meriskoff, and flung his enormous sabre onto a sofa. Radiant, he told us the news passed to him by the perceptive Prince Tong: it had at last been discovered that a wealthy mandarin called Ti-Chin-Fú had lived on the borders of Mongolia, in the town of Tien-Hó. According to the same report, the man had died suddenly and his numerous descendants lived there in poverty, inside a wretched hovel. The discovery was due, after all, not to the acumen of the imperial bureaucracy but to an astrologer from the temple of Faqua. For twenty nights, Camilloff said, the astrologer had leafed through the luminous archive of the stars in the sky.
- Teodoro, he must be your man! - Camilloff exclaimed. - He must be your man, Teodoro - Meriskoff repeated, shaking the ash from his pipe. - My man... - I murmured darkly.
Perhaps he was my man; yet the authority for the information amounted to no more than an astrological report passed on by others. I was not enticed by the prospect of seeking him, or seeking his family, amid the monotony of a caravan through China's desolate borderlands. Since arriving in Peking, I had not again seen the hateful form of Ti-Chin-Fú or the paper kite that accompanied it. Conscience slept within me like a dove. I persuaded myself that Eternal Justice had judged the effort of abandoning the pleasures of the boulevard and the Loreto and crossing the seas to the Middle Kingdom to be sufficient expiation and a pilgrimage of reparation. Surely Ti-Chin-Fú, appeased, had withdrawn with the paper kite into eternal stillness.
Why, then, should I go to Tien-Hó? Why should I not remain in pleasant Peking, among water lilies in sugar syrup, the amorous languors of Discreet Repose and walks with Meriskoff along the terraces of Purification or beneath the cedars of the Temple of Heaven? The zealous Camilloff, however, already had pencil in hand and was beginning to trace my route to Tien-Hó on the map.
The general showed me an unpleasant tangle of mountain shadows, winding lines of rivers and blurred patches of lakes. - Here it is: my guest goes up to Ni-ku-hé, on the bank of the Pei-Hó - Camilloff began. From there, he continued, I would travel in flat boats to My-yun, a good town where, according to the general, there was a living Buddha. Then I would ride to the fortress of Ché-hia and cross the Great Wall, which Camilloff assured me was a famous sight. I would rest at the fort of Ku-pi-hó, where I might hunt the magnificent gazelles that so delighted him. From the fort to Tien-Hó there would be only two days' march. - Splendid, is it not? When do you wish to leave? Tomorrow? - the general asked.
- Tomorrow - I growled sadly. That night, Meriskoff played his ritual game of whist with three embassy officers, while Camilloff slept open-mouthed, solemn as though seated in an armchair at the Congress of Vienna.
Vladimira sat at the piano, and beside her I lugubriously twisted my moustache in the pose of a Lara devastated by fate. Between moans from the keyboard, she sang with piercing longing, fixing me with moist eyes: 'The bird flies away, over there, over there; the bird flies away and does not return...' - The bird will return to its nest - I murmured, moved. I moved away to hide a tear. I growled furiously: - Scoundrel Ti-Chin-Fú! This is your fault!
- You old rogue! You old scoundrel!
The following day, I did indeed set out for Tien-Hó with the respectful interpreter Sá-Tó. Behind us came a long line of carts, two Cossacks and a multitude of bearers. As we left the wall of the Tartar city, we travelled for a long time beside the sacred gardens surrounding the Temple of Confucius. It was the end of autumn; the leaves had yellowed and a touching gentleness hung in the air.
A murmur of chants came from the sacred pavilions in a monotonous, sorrowful strain. Across the terraces crawled enormous serpents, venerable as gods and already numbed by the cold.
Here and there I saw elderly Buddhists, dry as parchment and knotted as roots, sitting cross-legged beneath the sycamores. They remained motionless as idols, contemplating their navels as they awaited the perfection of Nirvana. The caravan moved on beneath the pale Asian October sky, and my sadness was equally pale.
I thought of the two round tears I had seen shining in Vladimira's green eyes at our farewell.