Read Online A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones - Free Book Online Page B

of that.”
    â€œAs far as you recall.”
    â€œWell, actually, I do recall. I make it a point to retain all such things.”
    He raised his brows in a look that said, elaborate.
    â€œIt’s just my hobby, memory.”
    â€œMemory,” he said after her.
    â€œMnemonics. Cultivation of memory. I’ve been working at it since I was small. And, you can see, I happen to be interested in porcelain.”
    He looked at her, surprise and calculation twining in his face. He pointed to the third piece. “What about this one?”
    Of course, she knew and he knew that memory was only half of what made a great pots expert. Half was the database. The other half was feeling and instinct. Only then could one distill.
That
was what made a great eye.
    She studied the third pot. It was a blue-and-white moon flask with the same kind of overt, studied heap-and-piling she had seen on the bottleneck vase. The Ming style had been much admired in the Qing, but when artisans of that later era had attempted to replicate it, they’d been inclined to go too far. Not that that made the piece a fake, exactly. Fine works from the best Qing reigns had enormous value, whether after a Ming prototype or not. The painting, of a young scholar being carried over the waves on the back of a dragon after a triumph in the imperial examinations, was finely wrought, if a touch mechanical, in the way Qing wares often were. She needed more details.
    She turned the flask over and looked at its base.
Da qing qian long nian zi.
Made in the reign of Qianlong, great Qing Dynasty. Plausible. But then she looked more closely at the character
qing
. Two parts of the left-hand radical were connected by a diagonal stroke, which was technically incorrect.
    That character’s wrong, she thought.
    And then in the next instant, blooming over the first thought before her heart even beat again, she knew she had seen it before. This fluke—or signature, whatever it was—was stored in her memory.
    So she went inside in her mind, to the examination yards. She visualized a quiet night, a stone walk lined with cubicle doors. On each door was a character, a concept she had chosen out of love: similitude and grace and impersonation. Finally she stood in front of the door marked
peng,
to flatter, to shower with compliments. Here she kept memories of minor imitative works, the lesser
fang gu
pieces, the merely decorative. Not here. To the next pair of doors, marked
zi
and
da,
which together mean vanity; here were memories of the forgers who could not resist leaving telltale signs on their
fang gu
. . . and here—she looked again—here was the man who had written
qing
this way. He worked in Jingdezhen in the 1840s, in the reign of Daoguang. He’d operated outside the imperial workshop system, a freelancer. He didn’t last. Foolish of him to have always left his signs on the mark and period. What was his name? Ask again. Wait. Wei Yufen. Yes. Wei Yufen.
    â€œWei Yufen,” she said to Dr. Zheng.
    His eyes looked like they were going to drop off his face. He opened his mouth and closed it again as if he thought he must have heard her wrong. “Say it again,” he said.
    â€œWei Yufen. This was made by Wei Yufen.”
    â€œI am amazed!”
    Oh good, she thought, with her usual crashing dissonance of triumph and terror. That meant she was right.
    â€œSo it is a fake?” he prompted.
    She turned back to the piece. It was actually quite wondrously made. “Real or fake, it was made by Wei Yufen in the reign of Daoguang, but after the Ming prototype.”
    â€œMiss Frank.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œWould you like a job?”
    â€œYes!”
    How awkward she must have seemed then, Lia thought; how young. She was better now. She had experience. No one had to fix her; she was right already. And she could do this. Yes. She finished eating and got up to leave.
    In another restaurant, in the Beijing Club across