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parcel.
    ‘When you open it, sir, you will see.’
    Whatever was inside had been wrapped up in a couple of layers of brown paper and looked pretty large. This however turned out to be a mistaken impression, for when all the paper wrappings had been removed, they revealed a statuette of the Bodhisattva Guanyin that you could hold in the palm of your hand. It had been carved from muttonfat jade and had a single dark sapphire set between its eyes as the urna , the Buddhist ‘Third Eye’. Holding it delicately in his hand the old man scrutinized it carefully; immediately he sense a kind of icy pure aura spreading from his palm to the rest of his body – a testament to the high quality of the jade. The workmanship was also excellent; the combination of these two factors suggested that this statuette had a long and complex history. He was sure that such a remarkable treasure must be worth a very great deal of money. The old man thought the matter over, looking at the child. Then he said with a sigh, ‘I hardly knew Mr Auslander. Why should he leave me any bequest at all?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You know, this statuette is worth a lot of money. You should keep it.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Mr Auslander took you in when you were only a baby and he loved you as if you were his own son; you ought to take it.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You need it more than I do.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Or is it that Mr Auslander was worried that you would be cheated if you tried to sell it yourself and wanted me to do it for you?’
    ‘No.’
    While he was speaking, the old man’s eyes happened to fall on the outer wrapping paper and he noticed that it was covered in figures, line after line of calculations, as if someone were working out a very difficult sum. When he spread out all the papers and looked at them, he realized that they were all the same, covered in line after line of mathematical calculations. Changing the subject completely, the old man now asked: ‘Did Mr Auslander teach you mathematics?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Who wrote this then?’
    ‘I did.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I was trying to work out how many days Daddy lived for . . . ’

3.
    The disease that finally killed Mr Auslander first manifested itself in his throat. Maybe this was some kind of karmic revenge for all those years he had spent interpreting other people’s dreams – everything that he had gained in life had come to him thanks to his elegant turn of speech; likewise all the harm he had suffered was brought about by others taking umbrage at his choice of words. Even before he started composing his last letter to Young Lillie, he had already pretty much lost the ability to speak. It was this that made him feel that death was coming and that he needed to start making some plans for Duckling’s future. Every morning during those silent days, Duckling would put a cup of pear blossom steeped in water by the old man’s bed and he would be woken by the faint breath of its perfume; as he watched the pale dried flowers would uncurl in the warm liquid. It made him feel calm and relaxed. These pear blossoms seemed to alleviate the pain he felt from his badly-set bones; he came to think of them as the one thing that had enabled him to live to this great age. When he had first begun collecting these flowers, it was simply because he was bored. After a time, he began to appreciate the startling clarity of their colour, not to mention their delicate texture. He would collect the flowers and sun them under the eaves. When they were completely dry, he would put them in his pillow or on top of his desk. Every time he smelled their fragrance, it seemed as if he were prolonging their flowering season by keeping them by him.
    Since he only had one eye and his legs had never recovered properly after they were broken, he found it difficult to get around. As a result, he spent much of his life sitting in his chair. As time went on, he gradually became sick with constipation; at its worst he felt that there was