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It took one long summer to discover the province where the late Ti-Chin-Fú was said to have lived.
The investigation became a picturesque administrative episode, which I described as typically Chinese. Camilloff spent days in the state Yamens proving that a search for an old Mandarin's home did not conceal a conspiracy against the empire. He also had to swear that the enquiry was not an attack on the sacred rites. Only then, according to Camilloff, did Prince Tong authorise the imperial enquiry.
Hundreds of scribes grew pale while drafting reports with brushes on rice paper. Secret consultations moved through the departments, and groups of porters carried piles of documents between the legation, the Forbidden City and the Archive Courtyard. When Camilloff asked for results, he was told that the Holy Books of Lá-o-Tsé or ancient texts from the time of Nor-ha-chú were being consulted. It was also said that Prince Tong sent him filled sweets and bamboo shoots in syrup to calm his military impatience.
While Camilloff searched for the family, I was conducting an adulterous affair with Vladimira, his wife, and claimed to weave hours of silk and gold at her feet.
We met in a garden pavilion beneath the sycamores called Discreet Repose. Beside it, a stream ran beneath a small pink bridge, and bamboo walls covered with silk admitted an opal light. At the centre stood a white silk divan, soft as a morning cloud and inviting as a bridal bed. Red lilies from Japan, Nanking mats and a fan made of crystal blades completed the setting, while the breeze made the fan vibrate with tender music.
The late-August mornings were gentle, with the first melancholy of autumn in the air. At that hour, Meriskoff and the officers were usually in the chancery preparing the diplomatic bag for St Petersburg. I crossed the garden on tiptoe, with a fan in my hand and satin slippers on my feet.
- Mimi? - I would call, opening the door a little. - All right... - Vladimira would answer, in a voice I compared to a kiss.
In my eyes, she was beautiful in the dress of a Chinese lady. She wore peach blossoms in her hair, her eyebrows emphasised with Nanking ink and a gauze blouse embroidered in gold. Her wide silk trousers fell over slender ankles, and I judged how small her shoe was by the width of three of my fingers.
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 and resembled a coarse Cossack lithograph of a coquettish lady of Versailles. Vladimira dreamt of living in Paris, asked me for risqué stories about cocottes and declared her devotion to Dumas fils. I lifted her sleeve and slowly kissed the skin of her arms.
Then we lay embracing on the divan, breast to breast, listening to the crystal fan, the magpies in the plane trees and the water in the stream. We remained like that in a silent rapture while blue magpies flew among the plane trees and the stream flowed on.
Above the divan hung a black satin panel bearing Chinese maxims from the Sacred Book of Li-Nun on the duties of wives. Neither of us understood the Chinese writing.
In the silence, our kisses began again, slow as pearls falling into a silver bowl. Remembering those Peking afternoons, I asked where the gentle hours and the red lilies of Japan had gone.
One morning, Camilloff entered the chancery, flung his enormous sabre onto a sofa and cheerfully announced the news he attributed to Prince Tong. According to that account, a rich Mandarin named Ti-Chin-Fú had lived on the edge of Mongolia in the town of Tien-Hó, had died suddenly and had left many descendants there in poverty. The information had not come from the imperial bureaucracy but from an astrologer at the Faqua temple who claimed to have read the stars for twenty nights.
- 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, but I was not tempted to cross those desolate regions in a caravan to seek my man or his family. Since reaching Peking, I had not again seen the figure of Ti-Chin-Fú or his paper kite. My conscience seemed to me like a sleeping dove. I told myself that leaving Lisbon and crossing the seas to China already amounted to sufficient atonement and pilgrimage. I imagined Ti-Chin-Fú appeased and wondered why I should abandon the sweets, Discreet Repose and my walks with Meriskoff. Camilloff, however, was already marking the route to Tien-Hó on the map.
- My guest will go up to Ni-ku-hé, on the bank of the Pei-Hó - Camilloff explained. - From there he will travel in flat-bottomed boats to My-yun, where they say there is a living Buddha. - Then he will ride to Ché-hia, cross the Great Wall and rest at Ku-pi-hó, where there are gazelles to hunt. - After another two days' march he will reach Tien-Hó; splendid, don't you think? - When do you want to leave? Tomorrow?
- Tomorrow - I replied sadly. That evening, Meriskoff played whist with three officers while Camilloff slept open-mouthed on the sofa.
Vladimira sat at the piano, and I stood beside her in the pose of Lara, a romantic hero ruined by fate. - The bird flies away, far away, far away; the bird flies away and does not return... - Vladimira sang, looking at me with moist eyes. - The bird will return to the nest - I murmured, moved. Then I moved away to hide a tear and blamed Ti-Chin-Fú, calling him a scoundrel, a rogue and a wretch.
The next morning, I set out for Tien-Hó with Sá-Tó, a long line of carts, two Cossacks and numerous porters.
On leaving the wall of the Tartar City, we travelled along the sacred gardens surrounding the Temple of Confucius. It was late autumn: the leaves had turned yellow, chants could be heard in the pavilions, snakes numbed by the cold crawled over the terraces, and very old Buddhists, dry as parchment and gnarled as roots, meditated beneath the sycamores while awaiting the perfection of Nirvana. As I travelled on, I thought of the two small tears I had seen shining in Vladimira's green eyes at our farewell.