A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones

Author:Nicole Mones
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780440333982
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

10

“Would you like to see my ducks?” Gao Yideng asked when she answered her cell phone.

Her comprehension was fairly good, but she wondered if she’d heard him right. “Mr. Gao? Your ducks?”

“My ducks,” he repeated. “I keep ducks and chickens and pigs on a place out in the country, not far from the city’s edge at all. It is my dacha,” he joked, using the sinicized version of the Russian word. “Right now I will take a short ride there. If you like, I can pick you up.”

He made it sound entirely incidental, a casual excursion, when in fact he was an enormously busy man and she had left word that she wished to talk to him. He was so seamless. “Of course,” she said. “When?”

“Trouble you to come out to the gate, facing the lake. In fifteen minutes I will be there.”

So they drove out through Beijing’s southwestern suburbs until wooded valleys unfurled between jagged green hills. She marveled again at the personal, very private treatment she was getting from this mogul. Obviously the collection mattered to him. She looked at the light from the sunroof gleaming on his bare head, his imported sunglasses. Prada. She smiled. Real, not fake.

They drove up beside a little stone house with a low-walled animal yard; ducks and chickens, pigs. A garden on the south flank of the house teemed with vegetables.

“This place is always kept for me.” He unlocked the door, opened several of the windows to the June air. “That’s better. Let us drink some tea.” He went into the small kitchen to prepare it. She asked if she could help, but no, he would do it. She watched him at the simple stone counter. That was all there was. A sink, a half refrigerator, and a single wok-ring. It was crazy, she thought; it was theater. It was a fake dacha, but the rustic kitchen and the plants pushing up were real, the ducks genuinely clamorous. He poured boiling water into the teapot. Back at the table he let it rest a few minutes and then filled two plain cups with it, frothy, astringent green. He raised his cup to her and they both drank. “Now tell me how you progress with the collection,” he said.

“It’s magnificent. Overall. I have found more copies, though.”

“Really. What?”

“A so-called pair of Daoguang wine cups. Tiny, delicate, quite lovely. But fake. This tea is excellent.”

“It’s just what happened to be here.”

“As forgeries the cups are of no consequence. The pieces that they impersonate are not terribly valuable.” She shrugged as if it were perfectly normal for them to come all the way out here to discuss such a trifle. “Rather it is a matter of . . . accumulation.” She had found the chicken cup, the Daoguang wine cups, and earlier today two more fakes. It was then she decided to leave him a message. She smiled at him. “Now I’ve seen several more. I thought you’d want to know.”

He looked at her with a faint, constructed touch of a smile.

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