The Glint of the Luopan

Chapter 9

It was dusk when Suresh came by for our session. Meanwhile, I checked my alien camera, but nothing came in front of the lens. Maybe New York was too crowded, not a safe place for them to show themselves.

A few minutes after I had taken my weekly medicine and leaned back on the couch, I knew that I was on a roll. It seemed as if I was sitting in a bobsled, and all I had to do was to streamline myself so that I would offer no resistance to what was about to happen.

My consciousness rushed into a big hall and suddenly stopped, dangling in the air as if someone had seized me by the collar. My stomach fluttered. I was hanging from a big, round ceiling covered with intricate honeycombed shapes.

Beneath me, the audience was silently staring at someone on the stage, someone in an embroidered, black silk vest. My dad. Smoke wafted through the air in front of him, but there was no fire. The smoke was coming out of his fingers.

I focused on the first few rows of the audience. A little girl was sitting on the far end of the first row, her hair tied into two shiny plaits, her eyes anxiously fixed on the stage. A few rows behind her, I recognized the man my dad had talked to in his office in my previous session. He sat with his arms crossed, eyes narrowed. My dad made some complicated hand gestures, whereupon the smoke formed into Chinese characters.

The audience was gasping while the little girl was happily dangling her feet and pulling one of her braids. Tie guy was nodding almost imperceptibly, as if to himself. Then, I felt as if something was pulling me by my collar and the scene started to blur.

Gently, I came out of my trance. When I opened my eyes, they met Suresh's.

"Finished already?"

"Yes. Luckily. It's not the best feeling to hang from a ceiling." I snuggled up against the soft couch.

Suresh did not respond to my comment. "Did you see anything?"

"Yes. It was more detailed than ever. I was even able to zoom in on faces." I gestured with my hands like my dad had done during his show. "I saw my dad again. I had totally forgotten about this. He used to do magic shows here in New York. The Chinese kind of magic, fire magic. The guy from my previous trip was there and I think I saw myself in the audience as a little girl. When I didn't sit behind the stage, my dad always let me sit in the first row of the audience, very close to him. Maybe he hoped that some of his magic would eventually rub off on me." Seeing myself sitting there, I remembered how much I had wanted to please my dad. I had tried to figure out his magic tricks, but there had always been a link between reality and illusion that I couldn't figure out.

And I did see the Chinese guy with the suit in the audience. My dad created some schemes out of smoke, whereafter the suit guy suddenly stood up and left the hall. I figure he must have given him some kind of sign?"

"Did you see what that sign was?"

"I think it was 知道了. That means, 'Got it.' 道, dao, is also a Chinese philosophy that my dad appreciated...appreciates a lot." Even my Chinese teacher considered this word untranslatable. Language could not convey ideas about a philosophy that was all about constant change, she had said.

"Of course. So, that could mean that he really did start to work for the suit guy, I guess. For the U.S. government. So, if anything, we now have an even greater number of people who could be involved in his disappearance."

"God, yes." I looked to the window. The night fell over the city, not covering and dampening all the noises, but somehow amplifying them and making them more distinct. How could I find my dad in this mess of light and sound, behind all these interwoven parts?