“You have to help me, Master Chen. I will be grateful to you all my life.”
“What I can tell you, madam, is from the character alone. Fortune or misfortune is self-sought. Human proposes, heaven disposes.” He paused significantly before going on. “But I may be able to read a little more out of it if you can tell me what you really want to know. For instance, the time and the direction of the movement you are concerned with.”
“Yes, my little son has not come out yet,” she said hesitantly. Xing might have warned her about talking to strangers. “I don’t know when he can make it. Or whether he can make it.”
“Now excuse me for saying so, but the horizontal stroke looks like a sword weighing over his head,” Chen said, pushing it as much as he could. “I am afraid he may be in some sort of danger.”
“Oh you almighty Buddha, protect him. I know he’s in danger, Master Chen,” she said in a tearful voice. “Xing, come over here. I have met with a great master today. You have to write a character too.”
“You have done an interesting job!” Xing said to Chen, moving up, producing a hundred-dollar bill, and tossing it on the table. “For candles and incenses.”
“Illusion rises from your heart, sir. What is interesting to one may not be so to another. There is no door for fortune or misfortune. The world depends on your thought to be good or bad,” Chen said, switching on the mini recorder in his pants pocket as he dipped the brush pen lightly in the ink. Thanks to his voracious reading in his college years, those old phrases came to him naturally. “But if we can see something from a character you choose in correspondence to Way of the Heaven, it may help.”
“Can you read such a lot from one single character, Master Chen?”
“I do not claim that a character can tell you everything, but it can reveal a possible direction in which things might be going. Go ahead and write the character with the question in your mind. If you think my interpretation is neither here nor there, you can take back the candle and incense money.”
“You may have something,” Xing said, looking him in the eyes. “You do not sound like a local Chinese?”
“Who is a local Chinese in Los Angeles? But for the request by Master Illusionless, I would not have come over today.” Chen then added, improvising on a Tang poem, “The Buddha Glory Temple / stands amidst the deep green, / the temple bell carrying / the evening far in a breeze. // A straw hat fastening / the setting sun, / I retreat alone into the blue, / distant mountains.”
Xing might not necessarily be a man of high intelligence, but he was definitely not a gullible one. Chen had to risk being seen as a quack-or worse, as a disguised cop. It would then no longer be a matter of facing the possibly armed bodyguard standing in the background. The exposure of Chen’s secret police activity here-under the cover of the government delegation-could lead to diplomatic troubles. But so far he had succeeded in tricking the old woman, and he might be able to do so with Xing. He could always try to give Xing’s reading in metaphysically ambiguous sentences. A fortune-teller didn’t have to be responsible for his superstitious claptrap. What really mattered was fishing something crucial out of Xing. For this to work, he had to include the old woman in the talk too.
“As madam has demonstrated, a character arising from the heart of her hearts will tell. The choice of the character is simply made by you, but more by the divine power of the universe, so it contains the qi from you, as well as from everything else, including this great temple, including your great mother.”
“That’s right. The temple makes a difference too,” the old woman said, nodding vigorously. “Write your character. It’s too good an opportunity for you to miss.”
“Well, the same character then.” Xing wrote it on the paper. “Xing.”
“Now, is it about yourself?” Chen said, studying the character anew.
“Yes, it’s about myself.”
“The same character, but with all the different qi from your heart,” Chen said. “Let me say one thing first. Your handwriting is bold and powerful. The shape of the character bears a certain resemblance to dragon. Very impressive, like in a proverb often used to describe Chinese calligraphy, ‘like a dragon moving and like a tiger walking.’ It’s in line with the meaning of the character xing too. So I would say there is something of a dragon in you.”
Chen knew Xing had been born in the dragon year. A dragon was generally considered a lucky, masculine symbol in traditional Chinese culture, with the connotation of great power. It was a compliment Xing would snatch up, Chen supposed, and Xing nodded approvingly.
“You are no ordinary man,” Chen pushed on. “In your case, the double person radical may not be just about two. Your movement concerns a lot more. It’s difficult to see the direction for the moment. Also, the character xing for you means, among other things, a sort of a business center, possibly with a great deal of money at your disposal, as inyinghang.”
Chen watched Xing’s reaction. He had to convince Xing of his authenticity by throwing out information unavailable to an ordinary quack, but at the same time he should not go so far as to arouse Xing’s suspicions. His interpretation had to remain open, ambiguous, yet specific enough for Xing to think in the way Chen had planned. Only through that could Xing let out some information, unwittingly, in his anxiousness to obtain “divine” advice.
“More and more interesting!” Xing said composedly. “What else can you read in the same character?”
“What time period do you want to know about?”
“The near future, I think.”
“If it’s about traveling, the people with water element in them may not be good for you.”
“What do you mean by water element?”
“Wuxing-five elements, as you know. For instance, those with their names containing water radical in them, like Jiang.”
“Names containing water radical, like Jiang,” Xing repeated without making an immediate response.
“Yes. Don’t you remember the man in charge of land development in Shanghai, Xing?” the old woman said, growing pale. “His name is Jiang- river, water radical, no mistake. Both you and Ming have met him a number of times. He’s in trouble now, you have told me.”
“Mom, you don’t have to believe too much in those things,” Xing said, frowning. “What else, Master Chen?”
Chen restudied the character for another two or three minutes, resting his forehead on his hand, with his eyes half closed, before he resumed, “There’s something strange. It is a very complicated situation.”
“A man asks about misfortune, not about fortune,” Xing said. “Don’t worry. Go on with your interpretation.”
“I’ll be frank. There’s another character: xing plus the plant radical. Also pronounced xing, but it means floating without a root. Now it’s unusual for somebody of your weight. In a flight of association, with the plant radical plus the character zhong, or weight, it brings in somebody surnamed Dong into the picture. He may not be helpful to your movement.”
“Dong, anybody surnamed Dong, Xing?” the old woman asked anxiously. “Dong?”
“That’s weird,” Xing said, visibly shaken. “Dong Deping. He’s in charge of the State Industry Reform Committee in Shanghai. He also helped with that land deal for our little brother.”
“Is he also in trouble?” The old woman was growing hysterical, grasping at Xing’s sleeve.
“I don’t know, but he took a big red envelope from us,” Xing said to her. “So did Jiang. The amount was large enough to lock them up for life. Their days may not be easy with the investigation going on.”