The man with the red face, his eyes bloodshot, soon looks away, after having—probably just in case—offered a vague smile to no one in particular. He heads for the buffet, still accompanied by his auditor in the tuxedo who continues listening politely, without speaking a word, while he resumes his narrative, making abrupt gestures with his short arms.
The buffet has been stripped almost clean. It is easy enough to reach, but there is almost nothing left on the sandwich and cookie platters, irregularly strewn on the crumpled tablecloth. The man who has lived in Hong Kong helps himself to a glass of champagne, which a white-jacketed, white-gloved waiter serves him on a rectangular silver tray. The tray remains suspended for a moment over the table, about eight or twelve inches from the hand of the man about to pick up the glass, but who is now thinking of something else, having resumed his loud and rather hoarse tone in order to describe his travels to this same mute companion, toward whom he turns sideways, raising his head, for the other man is much taller than he. The other man, on the contrary, looks at the silver tray and the glass of yellow champagne in which tiny bubbles are rising, at the white-gloved hand, then at the waiter himself, whose attention has also just been drawn elsewhere: downward and a little to the rear, in an area hidden by the long table whose white cloth reaches to the floor; he seems to be looking at something on the floor, perhaps an object he has inadvertently dropped, or someone else has dropped, or else has deliberately thrown to the floor, an object which he will pick up as soon as the late-comer who had asked for a drink has taken his glass from the tray, which tilts at this moment in a manner dangerous to the sparkling liquid and to its crystal vessel.
But without paying any attention, the man continues talking. He is telling a classic story of white-slave traffic, the missing beginning of which soon becomes easy to reconstruct in its main outlines: a girl bought as a virgin through a Cantonese agent and then resold at three times the price, intact but after several months of use, to a newly arrived American who had settled in the New Territories, on the official pretext of studying the possibilities of growing . . . (two or three inaudible words). Actually he was growing Indian hemp and white poppies, but in moderate quantities, which reassured the British police. He was a Communist agent concealing his real activity under the more banal one of manufacturing and trafficking in various drugs, on a very small scale, just enough to satisfy his personal consumption and that of his friends. He spoke both Cantonese and Mandarin, and naturally frequented the Blue Villa, where Lady Ava organized special entertainments for some of her intimate acquaintances. Once the police appeared at her house in the middle of a party, but a perfectly ordinary one, probably arranged as a front, the vice squad called in on a false alarm. When the police in khaki shorts and white knee socks burst into the villa, they find only three or four couples still dancing, with dignity and restraint, in the big salon, a few officials or businessmen in sight, chatting here and there in armchairs, on couches, or standing in a window recess, merely turning their heads toward the door without changing position, leaning back against the window frame or resting a hand on the back of a chair, a young woman breaking into a mocking laugh at the surprised expression of the two young men she is talking to, three gentlemen lingering at the buffet where one of them is being served a glass of champagne. The waiter in a short white jacket, who was staring at the floor at his feet, glances back to his silver tray, which he straightens in order to offer it horizontally, saying: “Here you are, sir.” The fat man with the red face turns his head toward him, noticing his own hand still in mid-air, his half-curled fat fingers and his Chinese ring; he takes the glass, which he immediately raises to his lips, while the waiter sets the tray on the cloth and bends down to pick up something behind the table, which conceals him almost completely for several seconds. Nothing can be seen now except his curved back, where the short jacket has slipped up over the belt of the black trousers, exposing a strip of wrinkled shirt.
When he straightens up, he sets down beside the tray a small object he is holding in his right hand: a colorless glass ampoule of the common sort used by pharmacists, only one end of which has been broken, the liquid therefore removable only by means of a hypodermic syringe. The man in the dark tuxedo also looks at the ampoule, but it bears no label or trademark which might suggest what it has contained.
Meanwhile, the last dancers have separated, the music having come to an end. Lady Ava offers an elegant, polite hand to one of the businessmen who is taking his leave with ceremonious gestures. He is the only guest wearing a dark tuxedo (very dark navy blue, unless it is black); all the others, this evening, were in white dinner jackets or business suits of different colors, mostly dark of course. I approach the mistress of the house in my turn and bow, while she holds out her long fingers whose nails are a little too red. She repeats the gesture she has just made for my predecessor, and I bow ceremoniously in the same way, take her hand, raise it and brush it with my lips, the whole scene being repeated down to its slightest details.
Outside, the heat is stifling. Perfectly motionless in the sultry night, as though petrified within a solid substance, the delicately silhouetted foliage of the bamboos extends over the path, illuminated by the uncertain light from the villa’s front doorstep and outlined against a completely dark sky, in the continuous and strident sound of the cicadas. At the gate of the grounds there is no taxi, but several rickshaws parked in a row along the wall. The runner first in line is a puny little man in overalls: he offers his services in an incomprehensible language which must be some kind of pidgin English. Under the canvas hood erected against the sudden showers, which are frequent at this time of year, the seat is fitted with a hard, sticky cushion whose cracked oilcloth releases its stuffing at one of the corners: a rough substance wadded into stiff damp clots.
The center of the city gives off, as usual at this hour, a sweetish smell of rotting eggs and overripe fruit. The Kowloon ferry affords no relief, and, on the other side of the water, the row of waiting rickshaws is identical, all painted the same bright red, with the same oilcloth cushions; still, the streets are broader and cleaner. The few pedestrians still circulating here and there at the foot of the buildings are almost all wearing European clothes. But a little farther on, in a deserted avenue, a tall, supple girl in a white silk sheath split up the side passes into the bluish circle of a street lamp. She is holding a leash, her arm extended, a very large black dog with shiny fur walking stiffly ahead of her. It disappears at once, and its mistress afterward, into the shadow of a giant fig tree. The feet of the little man running between the shafts continue, with a quick, regular rhythm, pounding the smooth asphalt.
So I am now going to try to describe that evening at Lady Ava’s, to explain in any case what were, to my knowledge, the main events which characterized it. I reached the Blue Villa around ten after nine, by taxi. Thickly overgrown grounds surround the huge stucco house, whose ornate architecture, juxtaposition of apparently disparate elements and unusual color are always surprising, even to someone who has already observed it often, when it appears at the turn of a path in its frame of royal palms. As I have the impression of being a little ahead of time, that is, of finding myself among the first guests to cross the threshold, if not the first since I saw no one else on either the drive or the doorstep, I have decided not to go in right away and have turned to the left to take a stroll in this part of the garden, which is the pleasantest. Only the immediate environs of the house are illuminated, even when there is a party; very quickly, thick clumps cut off the light from the lanterns and even the blue glow reflected by the stucco walls; soon nothing is visible but the paths of pale sand, then, once one’s eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, the general shape of the groves and the nearest trees.
The noise is deafening, produced by thousands of invisible insects which must be cicadas or a related nocturnal species. The noise is strident, uniform, perfectly even and continuous, coming from all sides at once, its presence so violent that it seems to be l
ocated at the very level of a man’s ears. The stroller, nonetheless, may frequently be unaware of it, on account of the total absence of interruption, as of the slightest variation in intensity or pitch. And suddenly words are spoken against this background of sound: “Never! . . . Never! . . . Never!” The tone is touching, even a little theatrical. Although deep, the voice is certainly that of a woman who must be quite near by, probably just behind the tall clump of traveler’s palms lining the path on the right. The soft earth here makes no sound, fortunately, when anyone walks on it. But among the slender trunks topped with their fan-shaped bouquet of fronds, nothing is discernible except other identical trunks, increasingly close-set, forming an impassable forest which probably extends for some distance.
Turning around, I have taken in the scene at a glance: two people frozen in dramatic attitudes, as though under the shock of an intense emotion. They were hidden just now by a rather low shrub, and it is by advancing to the clump of traveler’s palms, then climbing the slope of cleared ground, that I have reached this position from which it is easy to see them, in a halo of blue light from the house, all at once closer than the ground cover suggested, and in a suddenly open prospect at this very point. The woman is wearing a long dress, white with a bouffant skirt, her shoulders and back bare; she is standing, her body rather stiff, but her head turned away and her arms making a vague gesture of farewell, or disdain, or expectation: the left hand just in front of her body at hip level, and the right raised to her eyes, elbow half bent and fingers splayed apart, as if she were leaning against a wall of glass. About ten feet away, in the direction which this hand appears to be condemning—or fearing—stands a man in a white jacket who seems about to collapse, as if he had just been shot with a pistol, the woman having immediately dropped the weapon and remaining, her right hand open, dumbfounded by her own action, no longer even daring to look at the man who has merely sagged a little, his back bent, one hand clutching his chest and the other stretched out to one side, behind him, apparently groping for something to catch hold of.
Then, very slowly, without straightening his body or his knees, he brings this hand forward and raises it to his eyes (thus producing a perfect image of the expression “to veil one’s face”) and then remains as motionless as his companion. He stays frozen in the same attitude when she, with a sleepwalker’s slow and regular gait, turns toward the house with its bluish halo and walks away, arms still in their raised position, left hand pushing away the invisible glass wall in front of her.
A little farther along the same path, there is a man sitting alone on a marble bench. Dressed in dark colors and resting under a fleshy plant with hand-shaped leaves that extend over him, his arms are spread on either side of his body, palms resting flat on the stone, fingers curved over its rounded edge; the upper part of his body is bent forward, head tilted in a fixed—or blank—contemplation of the pale sand in front of his patent leather dress shoes. Still farther on, a very young girl—wearing only a kind of tattered shift which reveals her naked skin at several points, parting over her thighs, her belly, her slight breasts, her shoulders—is attached to the trunk of a tree, her hands pulled behind her, her mouth parted in terror and her eyes dilated by what she sees appearing before her: a huge tiger only a few yards away, staring at her for a moment before devouring her. This is a group of life-size statuary carved out of wood and painted, dating from the beginning of the century and representing an Indian hunting scene. The artist’s name—an English name—is cut into the wood, at the base of the imitation tree trunk, along with the statue’s title: “The Bait.” But the third element of the group, the hunter, instead of being astride an elephant or on top of a log platform, is merely standing a little distance away in the tall grass, his right hand clutching the handlebars of a bicycle. He is wearing a white linen suit and a pith helmet. He is not preparing to fire; the barrel of his rifle, still in its sling, sticks out over his left shoulder. Moreover it is not the tiger he is looking at, but the bait.
Of course it is too dark, in this part of the garden, to be able to make out most of these details, which are visible only in daylight: the bicycle for instance, as well as the name of the statue and that of the sculptor (something like Johnson, or Jonstone). The tiger, on the contrary, and especially the girl tied to the tree, both of which are quite close to the path, stand out quite clearly against the darker background of the vegetation. Nearby, one can also admire, by day, various other statues, all more or less horrible or fantastic, of the type which embellish the temples of Thailand or the Tiger Balm Garden in Hong Kong.
“If you haven’t seen that, you haven’t seen anything,” the fat man says about this as he sets his empty champagne glass down on the white, wrinkled cloth near a withered hibiscus flower, one petal of which is then caught under the crystal disk forming the foot of the glass. It is at this moment that the salon’s main door suddenly opens, the heavy panel violently pushed from outside, letting in the three British policemen in their uniforms: khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirts, white knee socks and low shoes. The last one in closes the door behind him and remains on guard there, his legs slightly apart, his right hand resting on the leather holster of his revolver, against one hip. A second policeman crosses the room with determined steps toward the rear door, while the third—who does not seem to be armed, but whose epaulettes have a second lieutenant’s insignia on them—heads toward the mistress of the house as if he knew just where she was, although she is at this moment hidden from his gaze, sitting on a yellow couch in one of the columned recesses which correspond to the bay windows of the west façade. She is just saying: “Never. . . . Never. . . . Never. . . .” in an amused tone, more evasive than emphatic (but perhaps insinuating), to a blond young woman standing near her. As she speaks these words, Lady Ava has turned toward the window whose thick curtains are drawn. The young woman is wearing a white organdy gown with a long, bouffant skirt and a very décolleté top, revealing her shoulders and cleavage. She keeps her eyes fixed on the yellow velvet of the couch; she seems to be thinking; she says, finally: “All right. . . . I’ll try.” Lady Ava then glances at the pale face, once again with the same rather ironic smile. “Tomorrow, for instance,” she says. “Or the day after. . . ,” the young woman says, without raising her eyes. “Tomorrow’s better,” Lady Ava says.
Doubtless this scene has taken place another evening; or else, if it is today, it occurs, in any case, a little earlier, before Johnson’s departure. It is in fact his tall dark silhouette Lady Ava indicates with her eyes, when she adds: “Now you’ll go dance with him one more time.” The young woman with the pink doll’s complexion also turns then, but as though reluctantly, or apprehensively, toward the man in a black tuxedo who, standing a little apart, in profile, is still looking in the direction of the drawn curtains, as if he were waiting—but without attaching much importance to it—for someone to appear, suddenly, through the invisible window.
Suddenly the setting changes. When the heavy closed curtains, sliding slowly on their rods, part for the next scene, the stage of the little theater represents a kind of clearing in the forest, in which the habitués of the Blue Villa immediately recognize the general arrangement of the entertainment entitled: “The Bait.” The position and the attitude of the characters has just been described, among the collection of bibelots decorating the mirrored salon, either in connection with the garden or with something else. Still, there is no tiger here, but one of the huge black dogs of the house, made still more gigantic by skillful lighting and also, no doubt, because of the diminutiveness of the young half-caste girl who is playing the part of the victim. (Most likely this is the girl, bought some time before from a Cantonese agent, who has already been mentioned.) The man playing the hunter has no bicycle, this time, but holds a thick braided leather leash; he is wearing dark glasses. There is no use adding further details to this scene which everyone knows. It is already quite late at night, once again. I hear the old mad king prowling up and down the long corri
dor on the floor above. He is looking for something in his memories, something solid, and he no longer knows what. So the bicycle has disappeared, there is no longer a carved wooden tiger, no dog either, no dark glasses, no heavy curtains. And there is no longer any garden, no blinds, no heavy curtains which slide slowly along their rods. Now there is nothing left but some scattered debris: bits of faded papers heaped by the wind in the corner of a wall, rotting scraps of vegetables it would be difficult to identify for certain, crushed fruits, a fish head reduced to its skeleton, splinters of wood (from some slat or broken crate) floating in the muddy water of the gutter where the front page of a Chinese tabloid drifts by, swirling slowly.
The streets of Hong Kong are filthy, as everyone knows. At dawn the little shops with their vertical signs, bearing four or five red or green ideograms, spread all around their displays of suspect produce the stale-smelling rubbish that eventually covers the whole sidewalk, overflows into the street, dragged in all directions by the clogs of the pedestrians in their black pajamas, soon turned sodden by the sudden torrential afternoon rains, then reduced to broad sheets by the wheels of the split-cushioned rickshaws, or else heaped into vague piles by the sweepers whose uncertain, slow, almost useless gestures are interrupted a moment while the slanting eyes glance up obliquely as the haughty Eurasian girls pass at nightfall, imperturbably strolling through the sultry heat and the gutter stench, walking Lady Ava’s huge silent dogs.
La Maison de Rendez-Vous and Djinn Page 10