The Stone Monkey

sixteenth-century artist Wan Li, who would do a simple rendering to record a scene he would later paint on ceramic—the sketch was half-formed but beautiful in its own right. Chang took the piece of wood representing the family name and rested it on the impromptu cardboard altar sitting on the fireplace mantel in the living room.
    China is a theological shopping mall, a country in which the Buddha is the most recognized traditional deity but where the philosophers Confucius and Lao-tzu stand as demigods, where Christianity and Islam have large pockets of devotees and where the vast majority of people hedgetheir bets by regularly praying and sacrificing to folk gods so numerous no one knows exactly how many there are.
    But highest in the pantheon of gods for most Chinese are their ancestors.
    And it was to the Chang progenitors that this red altar was devoted, decorated with the only ancestral likenesses that had survived the sinking of the ship: seawater-stained snapshots from Chang’s wallet of his parents and grandparents.
    “There,” he announced. “Our home.”
    Chang Jiechi shook his son’s hand and then gestured for tea, which Mei-Mei poured for him. The old man cupped the hot brew and looked around the dark rooms. “Better than some.”
    Despite the man’s words, though, Sam Chang felt another wave of shame, like a hot fever, that he was subjecting his father to such a mean place as this. The strongest duty after that owed to the ruler of the government, according to Confucius, is that which a son owes to his father. Ever since Chang had planned their escape from China he’d worried about how the trip would affect the elderly man. Ever quiet and unemotional, Chang Jiechi had taken the news of their impending flight silently, leaving Chang to wonder if he was doing the right thing in the old man’s eyes.
    And now, after the sinking of the Dragon , their life wasn’t going to get better any time soon. This apartment would have to be their prison until the Ghost was captured or went back to China, which might be months from now.
    He thought again about that place they’d stopped at to steal the paint and brushes—The Home Store. The rows of glistening bathtubs and mirrors and lights and marble slabs. He wished he could have moved his father and familyinto a home outfitted with the wonderful things he’d seen there. This was squalor. This was—
    A firm knock on the door.
    For a moment no one in the family moved. Then Chang looked out through the curtain and relaxed. He opened the door and broke into a smile at the sight of the middle-aged man wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Joseph Tan walked inside and the men shook hands. Chang glanced outside into the quiet residential street and saw no one who looked like enforcers for the snakehead. In the humid, overcast air was a foul smell; the apartment, it turned out, was not far from a sewage treatment plant. He stepped inside, locked the door.
    Tan, the brother of a good friend of Chang’s in Fujian, had come over here some years ago. He was a U.S. citizen and, since he had no history of dissident activity, traveled freely between China and New York. Chang had spent several evenings with him and his brother in Fuzhou last spring and had finally grown comfortable enough to share with Tan the news that he intended to bring his family to the Beautiful Country. Tan had volunteered to help. He had arranged for this apartment and for Chang and his oldest son to work in one of Tan’s businesses—a quick printing shop not far from the apartment.
    The easygoing man now paid respects to elderly Chang Jiechi and then to Mei-Mei and they sat down to tea. Tan offered cigarettes. Sam Chang declined but his father took one and the two men smoked.
    “We heard about the ship on the news,” Tan said. “I thanked Guan Yin you were safe.”
    “Many died. It was terrible. We nearly drowned, all of us.”
    “The TV said the snakehead was the Ghost.”
    Chang replied that it was and that he’d tried to kill them even after they came ashore.
    “Then we will have to be very careful. I will not mention your name to anyone. But I have people around the shop who will be curious about you. I had thought you should start work right away but now, with the Ghost . . . It would be better to wait. Maybe next week. Or the week after. I’ll train you then. Do you know about American printing equipment?”
    Chang shook his head no. In China he’d been a professor of art and