Don Winslow: The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

We never learn, he thought. We assumed she was a hooker because of who we are.

He had only seen the poster because he had quickly become bored with meditating and wandered over to the bookstore to entertain himself. The bookstore turned out to be also a cafe and cabaret and who knows what else, and it had a bulletin board announcing local events, one of which was Li Lan’s show.

The Illyria Gallery was right across the street, three doors down from the coffee shop. He had been looking right at it as he sat on the bench.

He didn’t dick around browsing for books or consuming java or eating. Instead, he bought a copy of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, found a phone booth with a directory, and called the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. He got put on hold several times before he got a staffer who was willing to have a phone conversation with a student doing a research paper.

The bleached wooden door to Illyria was set back between two plate-glass display windows that featured large acrylic landscapes by Li Lan. The interior was a large, whitewashed, open room in which canvas partitions had been hung at strategic angles to display paintings and prints. A few bleached wood stands held small sculptures, and brightly colored printed textiles hung from the high ceiling like sails in a low breeze. A larger version of the poster he had seen was set on an easel just inside the door.

A woman sat behind a desk writing in a ledger book.

“‘And what should I do in Illyria?’” Neal asked her.

“Buy something, I hope,” she answered. She was small and maybe in her early forties, with thick, shiny black hair pulled back severely from her face. Her blue eyes were also shiny; she had a small, aquiline nose and thin lips. She wore a black jersey dress and black ballet shoes.

Neal couldn’t tell whether she was impressed with his erudition, but she sure did notice the “I Left My ¦ in San Francisco” bag.

“Can I show you something?” she asked.

Like the door, maybe?

“Are you the owner?”

“I am. Olivia Kendall.”

“Olivia… hence the gallery’s name.”

“Not many people who walk in here make the connection.”

“Twelfth Night might be my favorite Shakespeare. Let me see… ‘When my eyes did see Olivia first-Methought she purged the air of pestilence…’ How’s that?”

She stepped out from behind the desk.

“That’s pretty good. What can I do for you?”

“I came to see the Li Lans.”

“Are you a dealer?”

“No, I just have a strong interest in Chinese painting.”

Since about an hour ago.

“Good for you. We’ve sold several. Tomorrow is the last day of the show.”

“I’m not sure I’m buying.”

“You’ll wish you had. Two of the purchases were museum buys.”

“May I look at them?”

“Please.”

Neal didn’t know a lot about art. He had been to the Met twice, one on a school trip and once on a date with Diane. He didn’t hate art, he just didn’t care about it.

Until he saw Li Lan’s paintings.

They were all mirror images. Steep, dramatic cliffs reflected in water. Swirling pools in rushing rivers that showed distorted images of the mountains above. Their colors were bright and dramatic-almost fierce, Neal thought, as if the paints were passions fighting to escape… something.

“Shan Shui,” he said. “‘Mountains and Water,’ a reference to the Sung Dynasty form of landscape painting?”

Like the nice lady at the museum told me?

Olivia Kendall’s face lit up with surprise. “Who are you?” she asked.

I don’t know, Mrs. Kendall.

“And she certainly shows a southern Sung-Mi Fei-influence,” Neal continued. He felt like he was back in a seminar, discussing a book he hadn’t read. “Very impressionistic, but still within the broader frame of the northern Sung polychromatic tradition.”

“Yes, yes!” Olivia nodded enthusiastically. “But the wonderful thing about Li Lan’s work is that she has pushed the ancient technique almost to its breaking point by using modern paints and Western colors. The duality of the mirror images reflects-literally-both the conflict and harmony between the ancient and the modern. That’s her metaphor, really.”

“China’s metaphor, as well, I think,” Neal said, grateful that Joe Graham wasn’t there to hear him.

Neal and Olivia slowly examined the paintings, Olivia translating the titles from Chinese: Black and White Streams Meet; Pool With Ice Melting; On Silkworm’s Eyebrow-this last showing a narrow trail up a steep slope beneath the reflection of a rainbow.

Then they came to the painting. A gigantic precipice was shown reflected in what seemed to be the fog and mist of the bottomless chasm below. On the edge of the cliff sat a painter, a young woman with a blue ribbon in her hair, looking down into the chasm, and her mirror image-the saddest face Neal had ever seen-stared back up from the mists. It was Li Lan’s metaphor: a woman sitting serenely with her art and at the same time also lost in an abyss.

The face in the mists was the focal point, and it drew Neal’s eye down and in, down and in, falling off the precipice until he felt as if he were trapped in the abyss, looking back up at the face of the painter, up the impossibly steep cliff. In the cool of the northern California dusk his hands began to sweat.

“What’s this one called?” he asked.

“The Buddha’s Mirror.”

“It’s incredible.”

“Li Lan is incredible.”

“How well do you know her?”

Yeah, lady, how well? Well enough to tell me where she is? Who she’s with?

“She stays with us when she’s in the States.”

Careful, Neal, he told himself. Let’s be nice and careful.

“She’s not a local, then?”

“To Hong Kong, she is. I’d say she comes over here every couple of years or so.”

“Is she here now?” he heard himself ask, wondering as he said it if he was moving too quickly.

He felt more than saw Olivia Kendall’s curious stare and kept his eyes focused on the painting.

“Yes, she is,” Olivia said carefully.

What the hell, he decided, let’s roll the big dice.

“I have a great idea,” Neal said. “Let me take all of us out to dinner. Mr. Kendall, as well. Is there a Mr. Kendall?”

Olivia looked at him real hard for a second and then started to laugh.

“Yes, there is definitely a Mr. Kendall. There is also a Mr. Li, so to speak.”

“I’m afraid I don’t catch your drift.”

Okay, okay. Just tell me that she’s otherwise engaged, all right?

“Are you interested in her paintings or in her? Not that I blame you-she’s drop-dead gorgeous.” She reached out and patted his arm. “Sorry. You’re a little young, and she’s very involved.”

Bingo.

Okay, Neal, he told himself-think. How about The Book of Joe Graham, Chapter Three, Verse Fifteen: “Tell people what they want to hear, and they’ll believe it. Most people aren’t naturally suspicious like you and me. They only see one layer deep. You make that top layer look real, you’re home free.”

He looked Olivia Kendall right in the eyes, always a useful thing to do when you’re lying.

“Ms. Kendall,” he said, “these are the most beautiful paintings I’ve ever seen. Meeting their creator would make me very happy.”

She was an art lover, and he was counting on that. She wanted to believe that a young man could find art so moving that he had to meet the artist. He knew it had far less to do with her perception of him than with her perception of herself.

“You’re very sweet,” she said, “but I’m afraid we have plans. In fact, Lan is making dinner tonight. Some Chinese home cooking.”

“I’ll bring my own chopsticks…”