The Jade Mummy
after Jade Burial
Suit (China) c. 206 BC-220 AD
Short Story
by Lorette C. Luzajic
The sun was still
sleeping but Henry was awake. Larry was snoring softly when the percolator
finished brewing. As was their custom for nearing twenty years, Henry poured
his coffee into a stainless-steel thermos and kept the rest on warm for Larry
for later. It was a frosty morning, but he left the vehicle for Larry, who was
moving slowly in the aftermath of radiation treatment. Henry loved walking in
the sublime silence of the city before it stirred. The brisk air was
invigorating, but it was also a chance to collect himself and settle the
avalanche of anxieties in his mind.
The lemon and pine antiseptic
scent in the empty museum is as familiar to him as the tirade of nervous
thoughts in his busy brain. “Morning, Henry,” says the sleepy security guard as
he ambles through the metal detector and scans his access card.
Henry loses himself in
his work almost immediately, the weight of the world outside dimming into the
distance. For some time, he has been immersed in ancient China, transported
into an enchanted kingdom at the dawn of the Silk Road, an empire of jade and
red-black lacquerware, of metallurgy and hydraulic engineering and horses and
the invention of mulberry bark paper.
His task this week has
been the careful cleaning and cataloguing of crates of Han dynasty treasures,
mingqi horse figurines and other spirit objects from a forgotten world. The
Chinese used these “heavenly horses” and assorted oddments to accompany their
spirits to the afterlife.
Last week while tenderly
tagging an earthenware Ferghana horse, he had been briefly tempted to slip the
thing under his overalls and stow it away until the time came to slide it into
Larry’s casket. Larry had been raised in Oklahoma and he loved horses, spoke so
often of missing them in their shared city life. Henry thought of the gaunt
edges of Larry’s bones against paper skin, imagined him riding free in the
liminal beyond.
This week, Henry is
occupied by something even more spectacular. A jade burial suit. He is still
astonished after forty years as an archeological conservator to touch time
through the precious artifacts of the past. Few humans have the privilege of
handling such marvels. He still feels the jolt of history and the connection to
faraway people, the same electricity as the first times he touched such relics.
The eternity suit is especially rare: once believed to be a fantasy of
classical Chinese literature, the afterlife armour is real after all. The
armour of death is not just something from tomb raider fables but was a
tangible reality in the sacred rituals of distant emperors and noblemen.
The jade coffin is one
of the most epic acquisitions of the museum so far. The suits were created from
jade extracted from mountain streams, worn by the dead in the belief that the
stone’s magical properties would preserve the body indefinitely.
Larry and Henry seldom
went to church, but since Larry got sick, they’d felt a nostalgic spiritual
pull and periodically ventured to nearby masses. Just this weekend past, Henry
had felt a comforting continuity in the ritual, a connection to other cultures.
What was more catholic, after all, than the dream of defeating death? Far more
popular at the museum than the China wing was ancient Egypt, well-known for
fascinating beliefs about the afterlife, one glass case after another of cat
mummies and canopic jars, grave paintings of grains and grapes to nourish a
body and soul into forever.
In the Sunday pews, as
Harry imbibed the sour grape juice, he’d thought about the Ray Bradbury stories
he’d loved as a child, inspired the day the young author had encountered a
charismatic magician at a Coney Island fair. Live forever, Mr. Electro
had said, electrifying the boy into storytelling. Those tales had immortalized the writer on
the page.
The museum called the
jade coffin an immortality suit. It was exquisite, made from more than three
thousand lovingly carved pieces of the prized mutton fat jade, creamy white
nephrite of the Five Sacred Mountains. Each piece was masterfully drilled and
sewn together with gold thread to form the shape of a human figure that
shrouded the deceased inside.
As Henry tenderly
brushes the debris of the years from the mysterious body suit, he imagines
himself crawling inside and feeling completely covered in the mists of time.
Jade more ancient than the suit itself, staggering to consider, metamorphic
stone of destiny, formed more than 141 million years ago. Could the dead
actually feel the splendour in some way, perhaps sense the hope and love of the
craftsman, of the ones they left behind? Henry leans his body close to the
casket for just a second, filled with inexplicable longing he can’t describe.
The phone beeps him out
of his reverie. Larry, letting him know he is up and about and feeling okay.
Two red heart emojis, Larry’s signature on every message. What will life be
like without Larry? Henry always imagined he would be the first to go on, older
by a single year that feels meaningless on the clock of destiny.
He works for a while on
the small box of jade plugs, unsettled by the idea that they were inserted into
the orifices of a cadaver, the nostrils, ears, eye sockets, and nether openings.
The wide, flat jade cicada is the most beautiful, pale and luminous as the
morning moon, representing resurrection. It was worn over the tongue of the
dead.
Impulsively, Henry
raises the cicada to his lips, slides it over his tongue, into place on the
roof of his mouth. Just to taste eternity for a second.
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