Demon Box

Then, ironically, this same Mr. Mude furnished the first ray of hope that the old man still lived. Exasperated by my continued inquiries after the missing teacher, Mude had stood in the door of our little tour bus before allowing us to get off at the main gate of the University of Beijing, where we were going to check out their athletic department. Frowning darkly, he had advised that it would be better if such questioning were curtailed during the remainder of our sojourn through the People’s Republic. Better for all concerned. Then, smiling again, had added—

“Because Dr. Fung Yu-lan is not for anyone beneficent to meet with—ah?—even if such a personage is.”

–indicating that such a personage must still be in disfavor somewhere. But in what doghouse, in what province? Mude probably knew, for all the good that did; he had driven off to other inscrutable duties before I could pursue the point. Yet if he knew, others must. Who else? It was after we had left the shabby little gymnasium and were following Bling back across the campus that an obvious possibility suddenly occurred to me.

“Hey, Bling. What say you we swing by the philosophy department?”

“To ask after your fossilized egghead?” Bling laughed at me. “Man, I’ve spent weeks trying to track down profs I know live on this crazy campus, asking everybody. These Beijing bureaucrats don’t know, don’t want to know, and wouldn’t tell you if they did.”

Yet the first woman behind the first desk we came upon in the stark old building had lit up with delight at Bling’s translation of my question. After listening to her chatter a moment, Bling turned to the rest of us, his eyes unslanted by surprise.

“She says yes, by golly, that he’s very much alive, still on the faculty, lives about two blocks away, practically next door to the gym we just left! Furthermore, she wants to know if we’d like her to phone and see if he is amenable to a visit from some foreign pilgrims?”

So, at last, I was standing with my three companions before a small cottage hunched back under a grove of looming gum trees, waiting for a little girl in pigtails to go tell her great-grandfather that his visitors had arrived. We all stood in a foolish row, our Yankee banter hushed by the neatness of the small swept yard and the nearness of a man we had barely believed in and were yet to see. Beijing’s afternoon pollution was still. The only sound coming through this undersea murk was a scratchy tune being played on a phonograph somewhere, faint and vaguely familiar.

“Say, isn’t that a Goodman solo?” the photographer wondered in a whisper. “Benny Goodman and the Dorsey orchestra?”

Before anyone could wonder further, the screen swung wide and was held back by the girl. For a long moment there was nothing; then the old man was standing there in the gray Sun Yat-sen Maoutfit and gray felt bedroom slippers, as spectral and dim as last month’s mildew.

Except for the eyes and the smile. The eyes came slicing out of a pair of wire-rimmed lenses, sharp as two chips of jade. And there was a gleam in the smile both mysterious and madcap—something between Mona Lisa and Mork from Ork. The old man let this expression play across the four of us for an amused pause without speaking, then held a liver-spotted hand toward me, standing nearest. One might have expected to see a pebble in the palm and hear him say, “So, Grasshopper… you have come at last.”

Instead he said, in English as musty and precise as the pages of that old book back in my hotel room, “Gentlemen, please… won’t you come in?”

I took the hand. One might have hoped I’d have the wit to reply, “Dr. Fung, I presume?” Instead I stammered, “Yeah yes we’d be happy to, Mister You Lawn… proud.”

The child held wide the door and bowed slightly to each of us as we followed her great-grandfather into his home. We passed through a small foyer and into the room that was obviously his study and parlor. The windows were nearly covered by the drooping gray-green foliage of the gum trees, yet the room was by no means dim. The air in fact seemed brighter than it had outside. Light appeared to glow out of the ancient furnishings like foxfire from humus. It shimmered along the old troweled plasterwork and glistened between the tiny network of cracks on the leather upholstery. Even the dark wood of the kitchen door and the bookcases shined, rubbed to a rich luster by years of dusting.