Free A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones Page A

all the things that had brought him here, the white wall and the IV drip of his own hospital room; his wife’s suitcases, ready. She’d been a saint to him through his illness. Nothing but love. Didn’t leave until he got better.
    So he’d taken this fellowship. He wanted to cycle for hours in the smoggy hutongs. He wanted to pound the extreme border. He wanted to leave life behind. China forced him awake with its strangeness, despite the dark-gray, head-in-the-yoke heaviness of its quotidian life. He had thought it would be a good place to let go. So far it had been.
    Finally his mind felt empty and good as he hurtled west through the leaf-spotted light, legs going, fingers loose on the handles. He breathed deep, as deep as he could, almost feeling the particulates, welcoming them, inviting them in to sear and settle on his lungs. World, he thought, come in.

5
    After she’d found the chicken cup she’d called Gao’s
shouji,
or handphone, using the number he had written on his card that first night. She left a message that she would like to talk to him. He left her one in return asking her to meet him for dinner, apologizing with precise courtesy for not having invited her to dinner already, he was at fault, he’d been away from Beijing. So she took a taxi that evening to the address he gave her.
    The car passed rows of stores selling Mongolian cashmere, Italian shoes, designer watches, and the newest flat-screen televisions. She saw an old man on a wooden stool selling candied crab apples on skewers, the sticks radiating in a sticky red starburst from his pole. Next to him stood another man, leaning on a Mercedes, talking on a cell phone. Just past this they turned into an alley, bouncing on potholes and uneven pavement, past the office blocks and the white-tile apartment buildings. These high-rise palaces were where most Beijingers seemed to be living now. They were full of the things that promised to make life right: rushing elevators, reliable plumbing, and high-floor windows revealing a stationary army of near-identical buildings receding across the city’s smoggy plain. But down here the alley twisted between smaller, older buildings, and the car finally stopped in front of one of them with a simple wood-framed entrance in Japanese style.
    Inside, Gao Yideng was waiting for her on the floor of a tatami-matted room, shoes off. He rose to greet her. He probably had multiple wireless devices in his pockets connecting him with associates all over China, but here in this little restaurant room he appeared solitary and relaxed. “How do you find the pots?” he asked.
    â€œThey are magnificent. As you must know.” They settled in across from each other.
    He poured green tea. “I hope you understand why at first we failed to mention the full . . . extent of things.”
    â€œI think I do,” she said. And in fact, despite the shock of arriving here and seeing hundreds of pieces, that aspect of the situation now seemed favorable. Only she and Dr. Zheng knew, and their position was undeniably better for it.
    Food he had selected began arriving at the table. They talked about Beijing, the modernization, the rate at which everything was being wiped away. Sake was served. They both leaned back slightly from their cushions to allow the kimonoed Chinese waitress to pour. Neither touched the alcohol. “There is one piece that fascinates me,” she said finally.
    â€œWhich?”
    â€œThe chicken cup. Do you know it?”
    â€œFrom the reign of Chenghua, that one?”
    â€œThat one.”
    â€œYes,” he said. “I know it.”
    She took her time eating a small piece of eel off the tips of her chopsticks. Interesting, she thought; he knew the piece and he said so, straight out. Moreover, he knew it was Chenghua. She wondered what else he knew. Obviously he had an affinity for pots. Which type was he, the tycoon or the connoisseur?
    In her experience,