As Max Saw It by Louis Begley Read Free Book Online Page A

intentions and the undeniable fact that no one in her generation had received a conventional education. The Cultural Revolution had taken care of that. Then if she did well—her intelligence and grasp of the English language were so fine that I felt confident she would—one could hope she would be admitted to the regular program of studies and, in due course, would emerge as an American lawyer. She needed to get permission to leave China, and a certain amount of specific backing from her ministry as well, since the Law School’s center for Far Eastern studies made no bones about wanting to be on good terms with the Chinese authorities. One would have to be able to show that she was a horse that would run on the track of Chinese bureaucracy when the time came for her to go back home. The question of funds we could face later. I told her I thought that problem could be solved: there were regular Law School scholarships and possibilities of foundationsupport as well. A strong recommendation from me would do no harm, and she could count on it. Because I thought the departure for America had to be her project, I took care not to let her guess that, in a pinch, I might cover the tuition myself.
    The powerful, melodious beauty of the place we were in, forms and colors recombined in seemingly unending variations, and its mad and tragic history always awakened in me a sort of heightened sympathy: it was as though I were on the verge of crying tears of gratitude. Exactly what for, I don’t know. Perhaps it was quite simply the good luck of being in that place; possibly, in a circular fashion, I was moved by my own ability to feel so deeply. In any event, I responded strongly to the blush of happiness that appeared on Miss Wang’s face: she also liked this Imperial Palace and its memories—in fact, of all the Chinese with whom I had walked there, she knew the most about its customs and history and was freest of the errors abounding in simplified guidebooks and stupidly repeated by official guides. At this moment, though, she had been transported to the land for which her years at the foreign language institute had been an unintended preparation. There she would at last use every phrase of those dialogues among lively, optimistic students she had memorized so well out of her schoolbooks. She had glimpsed the magnificence of it for such a brief moment only, with her group of comically dressed trade officials, deadly serious behind gold-toothed grins, when she made that single trip to Ottawa and Toronto. She embraced me, and I was about to kiss her on both cheeks, where they werereddest, when from behind I heard a voice I could not fail to recognize. It was Charlie Swan’s.
    The colors are imperial, my love, he was saying, only the son of heaven had the right to these yellows, greens, and blues, and the potent red. That is why the rest of Beijing is gray: it wears a smock of humility, like the puritan maidens who were my great-aunts and cousins. At the ends of the cornices, dragons and sea monsters, to frighten away evil spirits. You have seen these same protectors displayed in bas-relief on the sloping marble slabs that lead from the courtyards to each palace the emperor might enter, like this one here. His sedan chair would pass over the zone thus purified, the bearers on each side mounting the steps that are parallel to it.
    I considered prolonging the embrace of Miss Wang, and keeping my face buried in the shoulder of her parka, until he had moved past us, but curiosity got the better of me. I looked in his direction. Even heavier and larger than in Italy, where I had last seen him, and in deference to the season wearing a tweed suit of such exquisite heather tones that I wondered whether it had been woven for him alone by old crones on the Isle of Wight, he was otherwise unchanged. He held the arm of a beautiful and blond young man. It was Toby, the playful Eros of the Rumorosa.
    Max, you wicked snoop, boomed the voice thus