The Chinese Alchemist Read online

  “Would you consider doing just that? I would pay your expenses of course, plus something for your time, and I would pay you a commission if we get it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll see if Alex will come into the shop to help Clive out for a few days. I’d like to go early and get a good look at this at the preview to make sure it’s authentic before we buy it.”

  “You should go right away,” Dory said. “But is it authentic? Almost certainly. You see, this silver box in front of us is one of three that my stepfather smuggled to Hong Kong, and thence to North America where they were auctioned off one at a time in the mid—nineteen seventies. I expect my stepfather believed that he could get a better price if he sold them separately, although I’m not so sure he was right. George, my husband, bought it at auction about ten years ago. Have I ever showed you his collection? Please, have a look in the next room.”

  The room was lined with built-in shelving divided into twelve-inch squares and fronted by glass doors. In each of the squares was a single object, lit from above. On one wall, which was dark, the objects were in sealed display cases, and the humidity and temperature in each was being monitored. “May I turn on the light on the end wall?” I called out to Dory, and did so when she agreed. These objects were really, really old, some old silver bowls, a couple of gold boxes, and a number of puzzling objects I couldn’t identify. It took me several minutes to figure out what this collection was all about. “Medical equipment of some kind,” I said finally.

  “Correct,” Dory said from the next room. “My husband, as you know, is head of an international pharmaceutical company, and he collects objects related to that business. There are molds for pills, very old syringes, beakers, and boxes that would have been used for medicinal herbs. It is quite an extensive and unusual collection. Some of the objects there are over two thousand years old.”

  “Maybe these should be in a museum,” I said.

  “George has finally agreed that when he dies they will, indeed, go to a museum.”

  “I hope you have a good security system.”

  “Oh, yes. I turned it off just for you to see the collection. The door here is usually closed and locked.”

  “So does this box have something to do with medicine, or did it just come in a lot with something your husband wanted?”

  “Inside the box is a process for making something,” Dory said. “It tells you to heat the ingredients, unspecified, in a sealed container for thirty-six hours, and then to partake of the resulting substance for seven days. George interpreted it as a process for making drugs, and that is why he acquired it. It’s Chinese, so he didn’t discuss it with me for reasons I have already explained, I recognized it as soon as I set eyes on it, however. I saw the three boxes when my stepfather got them. I fell in love with them, but he sold them, over my protests. George found this one, a second has turned up in New York that I plan through you to purchase, and I hope to find the third before I die. George and I may be the only people, along with you now, who know that this is part of a nesting set. When I find all three of them, I plan to give them to the Shaanxi History Museum in Xi’an, China. I want them to go home.”

  “That is very generous of you. This will not come cheap. You have to think about how much you’ll pay for it. We’ll get you registered as an absentee bidder and establish your credit worthiness through Molesworth and Cox here, and I’ll also arrange to be on the telephone with you for the bidding. I’ll book my flight as soon as I get back to the shop.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, but I don’t want to register as a bidder, absentee or otherwise. I am going to transfer a great deal of money to your account, and you are going to be the bidder. I don’t want anyone to know I am attempting to purchase this.”

  “I could head for Brazil with your money,” I said.

  “You could, but I know that you won’t. It is possible, by the way, that Burton Haldimand, representing the Cottingham Museum, may be after this as well. I hope to outbid them. I would most particularly not want Dr. Haldimand to know of my involvement in this.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but then decided against it. What I wanted to ask was if this last stipulation was what her request was really about. You see, when Major Cottingham died and control of the board of directors went to his trophy wife, Courtney, a decision was made that new blood was required at the museum. In the case of Dory’s job as curator of the Asian galleries, that new blood came in the form of Burton Haldimand. It was all done rather lavishly, of course, in true Cottingham style, with an elaborate farewell dinner for Dory, and the gift of a watercolor by one of China’s leading nineteenth-century artists. There were hosts of speeches, including a very gracious one by Dory welcoming Burton to the position she was leaving. Only those of us who knew her well were aware that Dory was devastated. To her credit, none of us had ever heard her criticize the museum, or for that matter, Burton Haldimand for getting her job.

  It took her awhile to get her equilibrium back, if she really ever did. At first, she would come and just sit in a chair at McClintoch & Swain, chatting away to my neighbor and sometimes employee Alex Stewart, who is getting along in years himself. Clive and I were glad to have their company, and it certainly didn’t bother the customers. In fact, the only member of the McClintoch & Swain team who seemed less than enthusiastic about Dory was Diesel, the orange cat who guards the store for us. That was undoubtedly because Dory insisted upon making a fuss over Diesel and kept trying to pet him, something this particular cat abhors. The minute Dory came through the door, Diesel would turn his full attention and his considerable talent for spotting shoplifters to the back room.

  I don’t know whether the shock of being replaced had anything to do with it, but Dory’s arthritis, well under control while she worked, had been steadily getting worse through her forced retirement, and soon she had to abandon even those outings. It was a shame, really, not the least because I didn’t think Burton could hold a candle to Dory. It would be my pleasure to help outbid him.

  It was unseasonably warm in New York when I got there. The Molesworth & Cox Oriental auction was the first of the season and had attracted a lot of attention. There were some wonderful objects in the show, and the people at the auction house were justifiably proud, managing to get some play in the New York Times. Unhappily, the silver box was one of the objects featured, almost certainly ensuring I would have more competition for it.

  Consequently, there were a lot of people interested in the sale, some of them with major museums, and the usual suspects in terms of collectors. At the preview, the first person I saw was a curator from the Smithsonian. The second person I saw was Dr. Burton Haldimand.

  Mention the name Burton Haldimand in certain circles, and you’re almost certain to be subjected to a wide range of opinion. To wit: Haldimand is exceptionally talented, perhaps even a genius, and he should be forgiven a few eccentricities. Or: Haldimand may be talented, but he is also the most ruthlessly ambitious person in the whole field of museology, and woe betide anyone who gets in his way. And finally: Haldimand is not so much eccentric as seriously disturbed.

  All of these things were true. Haldimand came to the Cottingham with a reputation as an expert in Chinese antiquities, and I’d never heard anyone say he wasn’t as represented. I’d had few dealings with him, but I was certainly prepared to acknowledge that he was good at his job. There was no question he was ambitious. No sooner had he taken over responsibility for the Chinese galleries than he set his sights on the furniture galleries as well. So far the targeted curator had managed to fend him off, but I wasn’t sure for how long. Burton seemed to have a way of insinuating himself into good standing with the powers that be anywhere he worked, and generally got what he wanted.

  More than anything else, though, few could deny that Haldimand was very odd. Haldimand, you see, had a thing about germs. Even in the warmest weather—and that day in New York was no exception—he wore a scarf, almost always an azure color, and gloves. T
rue, museologists often wear gloves to protect the objects they are handling. This is not what I am talking about here. Haldimand wore gloves all the time, those plastic surgical gloves which he removed the way surgeons do, wiggling their way out of them so that they never actually touch the outside of them with their bare fingers. He wore them under winter mittens. He also, if Cottingham Museum staff were to be believed, sprayed his desk and all objects on it, including the phone, with disinfectant every evening when he left, and then again in the morning when he arrived. I have no idea why, other than he thought the cleaning staff must be running a business out of his office at night.

  If you went to a meeting in his office—which wasn’t often given that you could hardly hear yourself think over the drone of the huge air filter he had there—he probably sprayed your chair after you left. He was always dosing himself with some remedy or prophylactic. His assistant, one Maria Chappell, said he had a cupboard full of medicines of all sorts, homeopathic and otherwise. She also maintained that he never used the toilets, either staff or public, at the Cottingham. Fortunately he lived close enough, and apparently had a strong enough bladder to wait until he went home at lunchtime, and then again after work. It probably explained why he was never seen with a cup of coffee in his hand.

  In flu season, he augmented his scarf with a surgical mask. When Toronto was hit with the horrible SARS outbreak, he called in sick, holed himself up in his Victorian townhouse in the Annex neighborhood, and didn’t come out until the all clear had been sounded. Mind you, the all clear was sounded a little prematurely, which probably brought Burton to the brink of mental collapse, given that he’d ventured abroad too soon. Somehow he survived. We all speculated that he must have had quite the supply of food stashed away to outlast the germs. He most certainly wouldn’t have been calling for pizza delivery.

  Despite this, or possibly because of it, Burton seemed to be sick more often than average. He always seemed to have a cough or the sniffles, a headache or some tummy upset.

  Sick or well, though, Burton knew his stuff. He was intent upon building up the T’ang dynasty collection at the Cottingham, and while Dory had had to tell me the silver box was T’ang, Burton headed straight for it. There was none of the pretend-I’m-not-interested approach of many buyers at auction previews. Under the watchful eye of a Molesworth & Cox staff person, Burton picked it up—he was allowed to do that given he was wearing gloves—and scarcely concealed his glee. It was not until he had examined it in minute detail through a magnifying glass, as I had done a few minutes earlier, that he noticed me.

  “Lara!” he said. “What a pleasure.” For once, Burton looked to be in better shape than I was, the picture of health, in fact: just the right amount of tan for the fall that said he got enough sun, but not too much, and a general spring in his step. I, on the other hand, was nursing a cold, and had been for a couple of weeks. It was more nuisance than anything else at this stage, and something I attributed to stale hotel air, but I couldn’t shake it, and continued to blow my nose at regular intervals. Feeling this way also made me grumpy, and seeing someone I was not fond of in such glowing health was something of an annoyance.

  Needless to say, Burton did not extend his hand for a polite handshake, my having managed to sneeze twice since I entered the room. He may have had gloves on, but I didn’t. He spoke a bit loudly, as he had the habit of standing well away from those to whom he spoke. Someone must have told him that germs could travel no more than six feet because that was about how far away from me he’d placed himself. He would have had a rather trying time at those cocktail receptions the Cottingham threw for high-end donors.

  “Something special you’re looking at?” he went on.

  “The same thing you are, I expect,” I said.

  “The cloisonne vase, you mean?” he said, coyly.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Oh, ho,” he said in a jovial tone. “McClintoch and Swain are aiming for a wealthier clientele, are they? I hate to tell you, but this one starts well into six figures.”

  “The cloisonne vase?” I said. “That would be a little high, wouldn’t it?” I had him there. He was tripping over his own lies.

  “I know you’re after the silver coffret a bijoux” he said. If there is a fancy term for anything, in this case French for “jewelry case,” Burton was almost certain to use it. “You can’t fool me. And you can’t afford it either.”

  “Quite right, Burton. Under normal circumstances I couldn’t, but I’m buying for a client, I’m happy to say. It’s somebody else’s money, so it’s no problem.” In fact I had half a million dollars of Dory’s money in a trust account, although I promised her I’d spend as little of it as I could.

  “I see,” he said. “Still, I rather suspect that you won’t have the resources of the Cottingham estate. I hope you won’t be too disappointed if I get it. It’s better that way in any event. It’s a public institution and far more people will have the opportunity to enjoy it. It will be the anchor piece of our Asian galleries. You know that is what the Cottingham tries to do, to have at least one piece of international importance in each of its galleries. Now we’ll have Lingfei.”

  I knew about anchor pieces all right. I’d nearly been killed over one of the museum’s so-called anchor pieces, a twenty-something-thousand-year-old mammoth ivory carving called The Magyar Venus, although what this Lingfei business was about I had no idea. “My client plans to donate it to a worthy museum,” I said. It is possible I put just the slightest emphasis on the word “worthy.” Haldimand was starting to get up my sore nose.

  “I don’t suppose you’d tell me the name of your client,” he said, seemingly oblivious to my slight.

  “No, I don’t suppose I would,” I said.

  “The rules applying to auction houses with regard to revealing that information would not really apply to you, you know,” he said.

  “How exactly is that relevant here, Burton?” I replied. “My client wishes to remain anonymous, and I’m not going to tell you.”

  “Well then, may the best man win,” he said. He sounded supremely confident. In retaliation, I took two germ-ridden steps toward him and stuck out my hand. He blanched, sort of waved in my general direction, flung his azure scarf over his shoulder and hurried away. “See you Thursday evening,” he called out from a safe distance. “I hope you’re feeling better. You should do something about that cold, you know. I’d suggest ginseng tea. You need to bolster your immune system.”

  “I’ve been taking echinacea,” I said. Actually, my favorite cold remedy is a warm whiskey with honey and lemon at bedtime, but I didn’t think Burton would be impressed.

  He was not impressed by echinacea either, waving his hand in a disparaging gesture. “Too late for that, I’m afraid.

  If you were familiar with the medical classic of the Yellow Emperor, you would know that your illness results from a disharmony of qi. You don’t treat a formed illness. Rather you treat the unformed illness. In other words, you work to prevent illness, not treat it after you’re sick. You have to say yes to good health.“

  “I’m sure you’re right, Burton,” I said. Personally I thought that what I needed was to be the successful bidder for the silver box. I might still have a cold, but I wouldn’t care, and I would certainly feel better than he did, no matter how harmonious his qi. That and being able to move back home safely would add years to my life.

  “Then farewell, my concubine,” he said, blowing a kiss in my general direction.

  “In your dreams, Burton,” I replied, and heard his chuckle. It was difficult to think of Burton with a close companion. All those germs!

  “Do you have any idea who that Yellow Emperor is?” I said to the representative of Molesworth & Cox, a young man by the name of Justin who was accompanying me while I assessed the merchandise.

  “Absolutely no clue,” Justin replied. “But if you’re interested in immortality, perhaps I can help you.”

  I gave him a baleful glance.
“A little joke, there,” he said. “There’s actually a formula for the elixir of immortality written in this box. You need a magnifying glass to read it, assuming you even know how to read Chinese. Let me go and get you the translation, just for fun.”

  He did just that, giving me a copy for my records. It did indeed contain a recipe. Apparently the elixir of immortality contains potable gold, realgar, cinnabar, salt, and powdered oyster shells.

  “I’m sorry to say there are no details on the proportions of the ingredients, or instructions as to how to take it,” Justin chuckled. I could have told him: you heat it in a sealed container for thirty-six hours and then take it for seven days. That information, according to Dory, was to be found in the box in her husband George’s collection. This was indeed a very interesting collection of boxes. “Don’t know about the potable gold. It seems too bad to drink it when you could wear it instead,” he added, pulling up his shirt cuff to reveal a very impressive gold watch.