The Middle Kingdom by Andrea Barrett Page A

the palaces had been looted twice, once by the Japanese and then again by the Kuomintang. Nothing was the way I’d pictured it. In the Three Great Halls, the surviving Ming and Qing relics were jumbled with treasures brought from all over China to fill the gaps. Song and Yuan paintings, water clocks, jade seals, cooking vessels, archeological finds; none of the rooms were intact, and they had the feel of a junk shop or of a museum exhibit hastily arranged by an amateur. The things were only things, dusty and out of place, and I couldn’t recapture Uncle Owen’s rapt appreciation.
    As I wandered past the Dragon Throne and the great bronze turtle whose mouth had once billowed smoke, I tried to feel the ghosts of the emperors and empresses, the eunuchs and the concubines, but the rooms were dead for me. I put my lack of interest down to tiredness and overexposure: I had seen too much in the past week, too much, too fast, too false. I turned away from the turtle and then I heard Zillah’s voice again:
Of course you don’t like it
, she said.
The whole place is a lie.
    Seven days since I’d last heard her; her reappearance frightened me. I knew my bronchitis was getting worse and that the waves of heat and cold flooding me weren’t a good sign, but I wanted so much to see Dr Yu that I willed my hands to stop trembling and refused to acknowledge what I’d just heard. So I’d heard a voice; it was only a voice. Maybe I was starved for English words.
    â€˜Where’s the Triple Sounds Stone?’ I asked out loud, as if someone might answer me. ‘It’s almost five.’
    A group of women stared at me warily.
    â€˜ Ni
jiang Yingyu ma?
’ I asked. ‘Do you speak English?’
    The women shook their heads and moved away.
    â€˜Triple Sounds Stone?’ I said to everyone who passed. No one knew what I meant. I walked from hall to hall, up steps, down ramps, past carved pillars and painted dragons and another large bronze turtle, and still I couldn’t find the stone or Dr Yu. Five o’clock came and went, and then quarter past. I was trembling and weak and beginning to get concerned.
    A man with a black and red eye and a strangely twisted mouth approached me near the Dragon Throne, after I’d circled past for the third time. ‘You are lost?’ he said in English. ‘I may be of help?’
    I was so glad to hear his voice that I reached out and shook his hand. ‘I’m supposed to meet a friend,’ I said. ‘At the Triple Sounds Stone.’
    â€˜You have no guide?’ he said. ‘You come here alone?’
    I nodded. I couldn’t help looking at his mouth, and he caught me. ‘My mouth twist from sleeping near open window,’ he said. ‘A draft. Please excuse this way I look. My eye – I have acupuncture for curing this mouth, and instead comes this coloring. You are American?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said.
    â€˜Your friend you meet is Chinese?’
    I nodded. ‘And I’m late. Already. And actually, I haven’t been feeling so well.’
    He looked at me gravely. ‘This is visible,’ he said. ‘You appear to have a deficiency of
yin
– your nose and throat feel dry?’
    â€˜All the time,’ I said.
    He shook his head. ‘Many fluids,’ he said. ‘Increase secretions. Also certain herbs are very helpful. Come – this stone is perhaps near south of compound.’
    We rushed through the halls at great speed, and only after a hot and sweaty thirty minutes did I think to mention to him that the Triple Sounds Stone was part of the Temple of Heaven. ‘I know it’s here,’ I said. ‘I just don’t know where. The stone is somewhere in the temple.’
    He groaned and pressed his small hands together. ‘Temple of
Heaven?
’ he said, his voice rising in real anguish. ‘Not Triple
Sounds
Stone – you are looking for Triple
Echo
Stones, in