Peter May - The Firemaker

Old Yifu looked beyond him at Margaret. ‘And you must be Dr Campbell,’ he said, his English almost without accent. He lowered his sword and held out his hand. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’

Margaret shook his hand, bemused to find that Li’s legendary Uncle Yifu was this smiling, shrunken old man swinging a sword under the trees.

‘My Uncle Yifu,’ Li said.

‘I’ve heard a great deal about you… Mr…’ Margaret didn’t know how to address him.

‘Just call me Old Yifu. When you get to my age people call you “old” as a mark of respect.’

Margaret laughed. ‘That won’t come easy to me. In the States, to call someone “old” would be dismissive, or derogatory.’

He took her arm and steered her towards the low stone table where his chessmen were laid out on their board. ‘Ah, but in China to be old is to be venerated. Age equates with wisdom.’ He grinned. ‘We have a saying: “Old ginger tastes the best”. Sit down, please.’ He indicated a folding canvas chair. ‘Naturally, at my advanced age, I should be very wise. And, of course, everyone thinks I am.’ He laid his sword on the ground and sat opposite her, then leaned confidentially across the table. ‘I would be very wise if I could remember everything I knew.’ He sighed sadly. ‘The trouble is, nowadays I’ve forgotten more than I can remember.’ And his eyes twinkled as he added, ‘That is why I am still learning my English vocabulary. It helps to fill up all the empty places left in my head by everything I have forgotten.’

‘Well, you certainly haven’t forgotten how to charm a lady.’ She smiled back at him, an immediate rapport established.

‘Pah,’ he said dismissively. ‘Not much use to me now.’ He raised an eyebrow and nodded towards Li. ‘If only my nephew had inherited a little of it. But he takes after his father. Slow in affairs of the heart.’ He looked at Li. ‘What age are you now, Li Yan?’

Li was acutely embarrassed. ‘You know what age I am, Uncle.’

Old Yifu turned back to Margaret, mischief all over his face. ‘Thirty-three years old and still single. Doesn’t even have a girlfriend. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, I think.’

Margaret stifled her smile, enjoying Li’s discomfort.

‘I’m glad he at least took my advice,’ Old Yifu said.

‘Advice on what?’

‘Uncle, I think you should be going back to the apartment and getting packed,’ Li said.

Old Yifu ignored him. ‘On obtaining your help for the investigation.’

Li wished the ground would simply swallow him up. Margaret cocked an eyebrow at him then turned back to Old Yifu. ‘Oh, so that was your idea, was it?’

‘Well… let’s just say I encouraged him in that direction.’ Old Yifu bared his teeth in a broad smile. ‘Now I can see why he didn’t take too much persuasion. He didn’t tell me how attractive you were.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t think I am.’

‘Oh, I do not think he would be blushing like that if he did not think so.’

Li could barely contain his embarrassment. He sighed and gazed off through the trees, teeth clenched. Margaret was enjoying herself.

Old Yifu asked, ‘Do you play chess?’

‘You don’t have time, Uncle. Your train is at eight. It is nearly five thirty.’

‘Of course I have time.’

Margaret said, looking at the board, ‘I think the chess you play may be a little different from the version I know.’

‘No, no, no. It is very similar. Instead of your representational carvings, we play with these wooden disks. The character on each disk tells us what it is.’

‘She’s not familiar with Chinese characters, Uncle. Once the pieces are out of position she’ll never remember what they are.’

‘I don’t think that will be a problem,’ Margaret said, a tiny edge to her voice. ‘I have a pretty well photographic memory.’

‘Good, good.’ Old Yifu clapped his hands with pleasure and began explaining the board and the rules. Instead of moving pieces into each square, you moved them on to the intersection. There was a King, but no Queen, just two King’s Guides. The four-square area at the centre-back at each side was the only area in which the King could move — one space at a time at right angles. The same rule applied to the King’s Guides, except that they could only move on the diagonal. The pawns were called Soldiers, the knight was a Horse, and while it moved in the same way as the knight, it could not jump another piece to do so. There were other minor variations in the names of pieces and their movements, but essentially it was the game Margaret knew and played in the States. The board, however, was dissected by a single broad belt representing a river. And you didn’t ‘take’ a piece, you ‘ate’ it.

Margaret was to play with the red pieces, Old Yifu with the black. Li, resigned to the game going ahead, sighed and leaned back against the trunk of the tree that shaded the board and folded his arms across his chest. ‘How is your office?’ Old Yifu asked him as Margaret made her first move.

‘It’s fine,’ Li said.

‘Fine? Just fine ? The feng shui man showed me his plan. It looked excellent to me. You will work well in this office.’

‘Yes, of course. Thank you, Uncle.’

Old Yifu grinned wickedly at Margaret. ‘I detect a little scepticism. He thinks his uncle is a superstitious old fool.’

‘Then he is the fool,’ Margaret said. ‘ Feng shui or not, I can see sound reasons for all the changes.’

‘Naturally. Superstition grows from the practice of truths. Not the other way around.’ He brought his Horse straight into play. ‘Your move.’ And as she contemplated her next move, he said, ‘I have always been a great admirer of the Americans. Like the Chinese, you are a very practical people. But you are also dreamers who try to make your dreams come true. And that is not at all practical.’ He shrugged. ‘But, then, you have succeeded in turning so many of your dreams into reality. I think it is a good thing to have a dream in life. It is something to aim for, to give you focus.’

‘Is that not a bit too much of an “individual” concept for a communist system?’ Margaret slid her Castle across the back line.

‘You must not give way to that bad American habit, Dr Campbell, of intolerance for other ideas. One must always be pragmatic. I was a committed Marxist myself as a young man. Now I am, I guess, a liberal. We all evolve.’

‘Didn’t someone once say if you are not a Marxist at twenty you have no heart, and if you are not a conservative at sixty you have no brain?’

He smiled with delight. ‘I had not heard that one. It is very clever.’

‘Very paraphrased, I think. I don’t know where it comes from.’

‘The words are unimportant if the meaning is plain. And a truth is a truth no matter who says it.’ One of his Soldiers ate one of her Soldiers.

Li sighed theatrically to signal his impatience, but they both ignored him. Margaret slid her Bishop across the diagonal, eating one of Old Yifu’s Soldiers and threatening his forward Horse. He was forced into a defensive move, conceding the initiative to her. ‘Li Yan told me you were imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution,’ she said.

‘Did he?’

To her disappointment, Old Yifu seemed disinclined to talk about it. ‘For three years, Li Yan said.’

‘He says a lot, it seems.’

There was no eye contact during this. Both were focused on the board, contemplating the next move, sliding a piece here, jumping the river there.

‘You must have been very bitter.’

He ate her Bishop. ‘Why?’

‘You lost three years of your life.’ She swooped on the offending Horse and left his Castle wide open to attack. Again he was forced on to the defensive.