Ghost Hero (22 page)

“I see,” I said.

Anna flushed. “But no one ever said anything about him,” she went on. “Chau, I mean. Until I was old enough to go through Daddy’s books and start asking questions. That’s Daddy’s way anyhow, waiting for people to ask things. Then he told me Chau’s story, the outlines of it. And that he knew him, back in China. But that’s all. I never knew … Mom, why didn’t you tell me?”

Mrs. Yang stayed silent. Asked and answered already; Anna wouldn’t get a second response. I recognized that Chinese-mother policy.

Anna gave up, started again. “But always, as long as I can remember, I loved those paintings, and Chau’s other work in the books I found. It just … it spoke to me, in some special way. In art school I started copying it, over and over. Chau’s paintings are so beautiful. Do you know them? Graceful, controlled linework, and such precarious composition … and they’re so entirely political. Completely committed, but never at the expense of the art. I wanted to learn from that. I wanted my work to be like that.” She paused. “When I got back from China…” A catch in her voice; she went on, “When I had to leave without Mike, I was so angry, and so helpless. Daddy tried, and other people, and there’s the whole movement here, but it’s all about begging and waiting, isn’t it? It’s horrible.” Another pause, this time longer. “I didn’t know anything to do except make art out of it all. So I tried, but nothing worked out. It was all garbage and I threw it away.

“Then I started to think about Chau. What would he do, what would he make? I started a painting, not a copy but something new, using everything I knew about him. I used the same paper he did, the same inks. You can still get them, they haven’t changed in centuries. It was the discipline, you know? The painting was pine branches, and a wren. Nothing political, just a technique exercise, but it absorbed me. I can’t tell you how grateful I was for that, just to be able to be out of my thoughts for a while, putting ink on paper.” She stopped, fingering the curtain.

“As I was finishing up, wishing it weren’t over, I heard Mike’s voice. Oh, not really.” She shook her head impatiently, though none of us had said anything. “I wasn’t crazy. But he used to read his poems to me, and I heard him reciting one about a tree in autumn, tall against a gray sky, alone as the cold wind blew the leaves away and the birds flew south. So in Mike’s calligraphy, as closely as I could, I put the poem on the painting. Partly just because it kept the painting time going, you understand? That was what I wanted most. Then when it was almost done, I came in to work on it one day and it caught me by surprise. It really looked like a Chau. Not that I’m that good. Obviously I’m not, no matter how hard I work at his techniques or his style. An expert could tell, of course he could.” Her voice caught again; then she went on. “But I realized. The poem was what made it a Chau. The balance of politics and art. The funny thing is, it’s not one of Mike’s political poems, not when he wrote it. You can read it that way now, but then it was only about a tree. Before his trial, if someone had put it on a painting, that’s all it would have meant. But now, a painting in Chau’s style with a poem of Mike’s—in China I’d have been arrested.”

Maybe it was the comfort in telling the story, in saying Mike’s name; maybe it was the relief in getting through it without dissolving in tears; or maybe it was just exhaustion; but Anna now turned back, stood for a moment, and then walked over to once again sit beside Jack. I stole a glance at her mother, found her still face unreadable.

Jack angled toward Anna, elbows on his knees. “I can’t wait to see these paintings. You are that good and I bet they’re spectacular. But I still don’t get the problem.”

Anna reached toward the coffee table, straightening photographs that didn’t need it. “I pinned the painting up and started a second one. That one, I had a poem of Mike’s in mind, about how lions and tigers can rampage through the forest but they can’t stop the cicadas from singing. Tiny bugs, dozens of them, and a wild tiger face, a paw.… I was working on it when Pete came in. Pete Tsang, you know him?”

“Yes. We saw him last night, at East Village.”

She stopped. “You went to the studio?”

“Because of the photo. I knew the papercuttings were yours.” He added, “Can’t miss ’em.”

I was glad he’d said that because it brought a small smile from Anna. Not from her mother, though, and Anna’s smile faded as she went on. “Pete’s been working with an artists’ freedom network for years. The kind of international human rights group the Chinese government hates. They took up Mike’s case as soon as he got arrested. They won’t give up. I don’t know if they can do any good but at least they keep trying.” She ran out of photos to straighten, so she drew her hands back to her lap. “Pete saw the paintings, the pine one and the one I was working on. No one else in the studio had any idea but Pete knew right away what they were and he understood why I was making them. He was the one who suggested, a couple of weeks later, that if people thought they were really Chaus, that might work for Mike.”

“Pete said to claim they were authentic?” Jack asked skeptically. “That doesn’t sound like him. And what did he mean? Help how?”

“We weren’t going to claim they were authentic. But we weren’t going to announce to the world they weren’t, either. We were just going to show them. Next week.”

“Asian Art Week,” I said. I looked at the guys. “That’s the splash.”

Anna said, “Splash?”

“My client thought someone might be planning to unveil them next week, to make a big splash. I think he was thinking more art world than political, though. Or,” I paused, reflecting on who my client was turning out to be, “maybe not.”

Anna nodded. “It would explode. It’s more than just Asian Art Week, it’s Beijing/NYC. You know about that?”

“There was a poster outside your father’s office.”

“The Chinese government’s bringing over a group of officially approved artists. They’re showing off, how vibrant the art scene is in China, all that. It’s a big deal, big opening party, all the critics, everyone.

“Chau may not be taught much, people here might not know him, but everyone in that world, the collectors, the academics, everyone the government’s trying to impress, they all know who he was and what he stood for. How he died. New Chaus with Mike’s poems on them, even if we admitted they weren’t real—‘homages,’ Pete said we’d call them, not ‘fakes,’ ‘homages’—new ones with the poems of a jailed dissident, shown just when the government’s turning the spotlight on their own artists, it would be a huge embarrassment. It would be a big loss of face in the international community.”

“Weren’t you worried?” I couldn’t help asking. “That they’d take it out on Mike somehow?”

“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “To bring attention to Mike, that was the whole point. Since there’s a spotlight, to turn it on
him.
Keep his name in the news, remind people he’s still in prison, that nothing’s changed. China wouldn’t dare do anything to him while the world was watching. During his trial, the world was. But people forget. Nothing happens and they move on to something else. The government counts on that with dissidents, that people will forget about them. We were going to remind people in a way the government would hate.”

“But they found out,” I said. “And that’s the problem, why you called Jack? Samuel Wing came to you?”

Mrs. Yang looked up. Anna blinked. “Samuel Wing? Who’s that?”

“Maybe he was calling himself something else, because Samuel Wing’s a phony name anyhow. The guy from the Chinese Consulate. The skinny guy. He came to me, too.”

Anna looked completely blank. “What? From the Chinese Consulate? No. What guy?”

It seemed I was having a hard time selling Samuel Wing this morning. “A guy calling himself Samuel Wing said he’d heard I was looking for the Chaus and the people he represented wanted me to stop. He offered me money if I did and trouble if I didn’t. That’s not what this is about? The Chinese government threatening you?”

Anna shook her head. “The government? No. They don’t know yet.”

“I’m afraid they do. Mrs. Yang? Does Samuel Wing mean anything to you?”

“I do not know this man,” Mrs. Yang replied, though I’d asked because she seemed a micron paler than before. “He said he was from the Consulate?”

“No. But he was. Though as of yesterday,” I said to Anna, “he didn’t know where the paintings were. He didn’t know you had them.”

“I don’t have them,” she said wearily. “That’s what’s wrong. That’s not who came to me.”

“Who did?” Jack asked.

“Doug Haig.”

Jack and I looked at each other. “That revolting sleazebag creep?” I said. “What did he want?”

Bill gave up the standing at a distance thing and came over and sat down in the other armchair.

“When he first came he just wanted to see the paintings. I guess someone told him they were there.”

“He’s seen the photo.” Bill spoke for the first time and Anna turned to him. “The woman who took it was showing him the sculpture.”

“Tony Ling’s? The foil?”

“She thought he’d like it. She still thinks that’s what he was excited about.”

“Poor Tony. Haig almost knocked that piece over, bulldozing past it.” She pushed some loose strands of hair back from her forehead. “Haig had probably never been to Queens before in his life. He came in a limo. Someone saw it pull up and word raced through the building before he got to the front door. Everyone ignored him, to not be uncool, but everyone was praying he’d come to their studio. They stuck their heads out after he passed, to see where he was going. We could tell from the way he was galloping along like a hippo in a hurry that he wasn’t there out of curiosity, to check out the show. He was on a mission. It never crossed anyone’s mind, especially mine, that he was coming to see me. I just kept cutting. I looked up when he got to my door, just to watch him pass. I almost sliced my finger when he actually came in.”

“You were papercutting?” I asked. “Not painting Chaus?”

“I’d done four Chaus by then. I had them up in the studio. They were … comforting. But at an open studio show, when people are wandering in and out all day, they like to see you making your work. The work they’ll write up if they’re critics, or the collectors will buy. People like to see it being born. And anyway, the Chaus were just for me.”

“Not for Pete Tsang’s bombshell show?”

“He hadn’t suggested it yet. That came later. Partly because of Haig.”

“I’m not following. Haig knows what Pete’s planning?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. When Haig got to my studio he barely glanced at my papercuttings but he spent a long time with the Chaus. It made me uncomfortable. They were for me, they were about Mike. He was wearing a loupe around his neck on a gold chain, how ridiculous is that? He leaned close and examined them, every inch. Then he turned to me, all oil and smiles, and said those were nice paintings, where did I get them? I almost laughed. It seemed like he actually wasn’t sure if they were real. I got the sense he was hoping they were and I didn’t know what they were worth, so he could steal them cheap.”

“Did you tell him you’d made them?”

“No. He was so taken with them that it felt like bragging to say they were mine. They were none of his business, anyway. I wished I’d thought to take them down. I told him a friend had done them.”

“Did he ask who?”

“And he got really mad when I wouldn’t tell. Bottled-up mad, like he’d have screamed at me except losing it was beneath him. He told me I wasn’t doing my friend a favor, and who did I think I was to stand between an artist and interest from Baxter/Haig? I promised I’d tell my friend. He left steaming, but what could he do? After he’d crashed out through the halls, Pete came to my studio to find out what was going on. ‘You could hear us?’ I asked him. ‘We could feel it,’ he said. ‘Like an electrical storm. Your studio was shooting off sparks.’ So I told him. He thought it was pretty hilarious that the paintings had convinced Haig. Then he got thoughtful, and he came back the next day with the idea of the show. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but I did take the paintings down.”

“Why?”

“Well, first, the open studio was still on and I didn’t want anyone else to drool over them the way Haig had. And if I did decide to go ahead with Pete’s idea, we’d want to spring them on people. We needed them to be a surprise.”

“But Haig had already seen them.”

“Pete said that wasn’t a problem. In case they were real, Haig would keep them to himself for now, until he’d browbeaten me into giving them up. And when we unveiled them, we could count on Haig to add to the hype because he’d go around telling everyone he’d seen them first and known right away what they were.”

“Self-aggrandizement R us,” Jack agreed. “Except didn’t Haig think they were fakes? Didn’t he believe in your ‘friend’? ”

“I think for a while he thought my friend might be Chau himself.”

“Those paintings must be damn good. Haig’s a parasite but he has an eye.”

“No,” said Anna. “Or if they’re good, they’re good imitations. But eye or not, we all see what we want to see.”

“Meaning?” asked Bill.

Anna said, “Haig’s in trouble. He needs money. That’s the rumor, anyway.”

“We’ve heard it,” I said.

“I think the idea that the Chaus might be real, it was like a lifeline. If they were and he could get them cheap and sell them all his troubles would be over.”

“Well, too bad for him, then.”

Anna shook her head again. “That’s the problem. It’s dawned on him that it doesn’t matter if they’re real, as long as people think they are.”

“But people wouldn’t,” I said. “As soon as you said you’d made them.”

She didn’t answer that right away. “I don’t have them,” she said after a pause. “I came in yesterday to work, and opened the drawer I’d had them in, and they were gone.”

Bill and I exchanged glances. Jack said, “Someone stole them?”

“Doug Haig called an hour later. He has them.”

“Someone sold them to him already? That was quick work.”

“No,” said Jack slowly. “Not sold them to him. Stole them for him. Am I right, Anna?”