by Temple Drake
Black hair, blue eyes. If what Naemi was telling him was true, it put paid to his theory that she was the daughter of Nina, the girl Gulsvig had known.
He tried another angle. “Did she ever go to university?”
“My mother?” Naemi laughed. “I told you. My parents were country people. I grew up in the middle of nowhere.”
“It seems so unlikely,” he said, “you being the child of country people.”
“That’s me. Unlikely.”
Some minutes later, Chun Tao pulled up on the north side of People’s Square. The Shanghai Museum stood in the middle, rounded and glowing, like an interplanetary craft that had just landed.
“I want to show you something,” Zhang said.
Naemi contemplated the floodlit museum for a few moments, then turned to look at him. “Are you sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
They entered the museum by the side entrance and climbed the steps to the second floor. As always, the building housed a grainy silence. When they reached the ceramics gallery, he led her to an ivory-colored vase with a round body and a long neck. The small white card below it said: T’ang: 618–907. The vase was almost defiant in its plainness and its simplicity, and yet it carried with it a sense of all the years that it had lived through. All the centuries. He glanced at Naemi, and saw a new stillness in her face. He didn’t ask her what she was thinking. She would speak if she wanted to. There was no need, in fact, to speak at all. Like meditation, it was an experience that transcended words.
“About the photograph,” he said. “Did you mind me buying it?”
“No, of course not. It’s just—” She cut herself off, unwilling to go further. “Just what?”
But she wouldn’t say anything else.
They moved on round the gallery. Most of the pieces had the same qualities of elegance and blankness. She was drawn to a celadon jar or bowl that stood in a glass case of its own in the middle of a room. Made in the early eighteenth century, during the reign of Yongzheng, it had a pale green glaze, and was decorated with an embossed design of mingling clouds and dragons.
“This doesn’t feel quite as calm as the others,” she said.
“If the others are ascetics or holy men,” he said, “this one’s a kind of warrior.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“The people who made these pieces were channeling something much bigger than they were. They were real masters of their craft, but they were servants too. They weren’t entirely in control.”
“They were vessels,” she said. “Vessels making vessels.”
“That’s clever—and true.” Slipping an arm round her waist, he drew her close and kissed her.
Later, when they were outside again, he told her that he always felt different afterwards. “Cleaner than before, somehow, and capable of anything. Or nothing.”
Her eyes on the ground, she nodded and smiled.
As they walked back to the car, he suggested they sit for a few moments. She sank down onto a bench and looked up into the trees. The night was warm and damp. Leaning sideways, he took a little dark green box out of his jacket pocket.
“Here,” he said.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“A gift.”
She shook her head, a movement so small that it was almost imperceptible. He couldn’t tell if she was disapproving or overwhelmed.
“Why don’t you open it?” he said.
She undid the catch and lifted the hinged lid. Inside was an antique ring he had bought for her earlier that day, a single oblong piece of jade in a setting of carved gold. Her lips parted, and her black eyes seemed to be emitting light.
“Try it on,” he said.
She did as he asked. The milky green stone was precisely the same width as her ring finger. She didn’t speak. A breeze pushed through the branches overhead.
“The moment I saw it,” he said, “I thought of you. The way the beauty of the gold combined and yet contrasted with the mystery of the jade.” He took hold of her hand and looked down at the ring. “We have a saying here in China. Perhaps you know it: Gold has a value, but jade is priceless.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard that before,” she murmured.
“People think jade wards off evil spirits, and that it brings good fortune. They also think it stands for longevity. I don’t know whether you believe in any of that. I’m not sure I do.” He smiled faintly. “In any case, it can’t do any harm.”
“Longevity?” She gave him a furtive look, almost as if she were guilty of something.
“Isn’t that what everybody wants?”
She didn’t say anything else.
On the way back to his apartment, she rested her head against his shoulder. Her hair smelled of frankincense. The Sacred Tears of Thebes. He should forget about what she might or might not have done. Who she might or might not be. He should forget about what people said. He had only been seeing her for a few weeks, and it seemed doubtful that it would last. The affair would burn itself out, like all the others. Why not make the most of things in the little time that they had left? He felt his heart expand, as it had expanded in the nightclub dream, but there were no girls in tight black tops and no golden lounges, and the small man in the pale blue suit wasn’t a metaphor for anything, or an oracle. He was just one of life’s many enigmas. Not every question had an answer.
* * *
—
Once Chun Tao had dropped them outside Zhang’s building, they hurried through the revolving doors and across the lobby. The concierge said good evening, but they didn’t stop. In the lift, they stood against opposing walls, their eyes on the illuminated numbers above the door. Their desire for each other was so powerful that they didn’t know what to do with it. They couldn’t look at each other, or even speak.
Then they were in his apartment and stumbling towards the bed, undressing each other as they went, no time to turn on any of the lights, just the city’s brownish-yellow glow filling the room like a liquid, slowing them down. She clutched at him as if afraid of being cut loose—or perhaps he was the one who was adrift, and she was trying to rescue him. Sometimes he felt she was stronger than he was, but then she would startle him with a moment of defenselessness or vulnerability, the one seemingly rooted in the other in a way he could never grasp. He remembered Gulsvig telling him about Nina. That night at the party, on the outskirts of Helsinki. I have this secret. I can’t tell you what it is. That sounded just like the woman he was with. Waves took him, luminous and supple. He gave himself to them. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. No world but this world, no moment but this moment. She came first, which made him come, then she appeared to come again, her cries and shudders impossible to separate from his…
At last, they fell back, breathing hard, his left hand behind his head, her right arm across his belly, a cold place where the ring was.
“I had something engraved on the inside,” he said.
“The inside of what?” Her voice was drowsy.
“The ring.”
She propped herself on one elbow. “What does it say?”
“You can look.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“All right. It says: My heart is like the pine and cypress / But what is your heart like?”
She didn’t speak. There was just the silver glitter of her eyes.
“They’re not my words,” he said. “They were written by Li Po, a great T’ang poet. The same era as the vases we saw earlier.”
Li Po had traveled widely, and had a reputation for heavy drinking and general irresponsibility. What would Li Po have done? This was something Johnny Yu would often say, when he found himself in a dilemma, and the Li Po option was always the most reckless and attractive of those on offer.
“It’s from one of the Wu songs,” Zhang went on. “He would
take song structures and write poems to fit them. The poems were intended to be lighthearted and playful. They were very popular at the time.”
“If your heart is like the pine and cypress,” Naemi said, “I imagine your feelings must be steadfast and true.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m not known for that.”
She smiled. “Have you changed? Did I change you?”
He didn’t answer.
“You feel something for me which is constant,” she went on. “That’s what the ring is saying?”
“Yes.”
“But you want to know what I’m feeling…”
“It’s Li Po talking, remember? It’s not serious. Constancy is the one thing he can’t manage.” He paused. “Do you love me? People ask that a lot. But it’s the wrong question.”
She was nodding. “I agree.”
There was a silence, and he must have fallen asleep because when he reached for her she wasn’t there. Sometimes, when he woke, he thought he had only dreamed that he was with her, but there she would be, reading on the chair in the corner, under the lamp, or standing beside the bed, reaching back to fasten the clip on her bra, or leaning against the window, looking at the view…Lying still, he thought he heard the shower running. He dozed again. Next time he looked, she was in the bedroom, already dressed, strands of fair hair tumbling across her face as she bent down to zip up a boot. Watching her through narrowed eyes, he was struck by her litheness and her grace. An animal, pretending to be human…
“Are you awake?” she said.
He opened his eyes and stretched. “Just about.”
She placed the ring on the bedside table. “I loved wearing it, even for twelve hours, but I’m afraid I can’t accept it.”
“Why not?”
“It has come at the wrong time.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “You came too close. You asked too many questions.” She paused. “I think I fell for you.”
He watched her, but said nothing.
“It was supposed to be casual,” she went on, “something we could walk into. Walk away from. Intense, but momentary, like a shaft of sunlight reaching down into a forest.” She laughed softly, mocking herself for being so poetic. “I thought you’d be capable of that. I thought it would come naturally to you.”
He took her hand. “The ring is a gift. I’m not holding you to anything.”
“I know. But it’s too much.”
From far below came the ghostly wail of a siren.
“You told me once that you had to protect yourself,” he said. “What are you protecting yourself from?”
She looked away from him, towards the window. Outside, day was breaking. No sign of the sun, just a gradually encroaching grayness.
“It’s something I can’t imagine, isn’t it,” he said.
“This is what I mean,” she said, “by asking too many questions.”
He was silent, thinking. Remembering.
“I forgot to tell you,” he said. “Mad Dog died.”
She stiffened, then removed her hand from his. “What happened?”
He told her about the drinks in the bar, the late-night walk. He told her Mad Dog had fallen down a flight of steps and hit his head. He said he was the last person to have seen him.
She moved from the bed to the window and stood facing away from him. “I’m sorry. He was your friend.” She seemed affected by the news, more than he would have expected.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you,” he said. “You only met him once. You hardly knew him.”
“I heard him play…”
“He was good, wasn’t he.”
“Yes, he was.”
He was about to say something else when his phone rang. It was the concierge. Wang Jun Wei was in the lobby. Zhang glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes after six. Probably Jun Wei had been out all night.
“Should I send him up?” the concierge asked.
“Tell him to wait,” Zhang said. “I’ll come down.” He ended the call and saw that Naemi was by the window, watching him. “It’s Wang Jun Wei. He’s in the lobby.”
“I’d rather he didn’t see me.”
Zhang nodded. “I’ll show you out the back way.”
He pulled on a T-shirt and trousers, then took her hand and led her through the living room and the kitchen and on into the utility room. There was a door he rarely used, which opened onto the service lift and the emergency stairs. He pressed the call button and heard the lift grind into motion somewhere deep down in the building.
“When will I see you?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
The lift arrived. He kept his finger on the button to prevent the door from closing on her as she stepped inside. She turned to face him. The fluorescent strip light in the ceiling lit her gold-blonde hair and her smooth forehead. Her eyes were in shadow. As she stood on the gouged and battered metal floor in her dark clothes, the harsh white light splashing down on her, he remembered what the girl in Quik had said. She was amazing-looking, like a comic-book character or a superhero. In that moment, with his finger still pressing the button and the door of the lift still open, the realization hit him. There wasn’t anyone who looked like her—not in Shanghai, not anywhere. There wasn’t anyone who even came close. It had to have been her.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“You never went to London,” he said, “did you.”
She stared at him, her blonde hair gleaming, her eyes shadow-black, unreadable.
“It was you.” His voice was calm. A sense of dream or wonderment. “You killed him.”
He had taken his finger off the button, and the door was sliding shut, but he could still see her through the small, smeared window. The light above her head began to flicker on and off. Rapid, flashed glimpses of her. Her face a maze of cracks and wrinkles. Her hair all white. Flecks of blood flew at the glass, like paint flicked from a brush. He stepped back, his heart beating so hard he felt his whole body was being shaken.
Then she dropped out of sight.
For a few long moments he didn’t move. He couldn’t. He wasn’t sure what he had seen.
When the lift jolted to a halt at ground level, and the cables had fallen still, he backed into the utility room and locked the door and leaned against it, looking towards the kitchen but not seeing it, a hissing in his head, like tinnitus, his throat parched and dry. He closed his eyes and felt the cool painted wood beneath his hands. He remembered Jun Wei, who would be waiting in the lobby. At least ten minutes had gone by since the concierge had called. Opening his eyes again, he pushed away from the door and fetched his phone from the bedside table. When the concierge answered, he asked to speak to Wang Jun Wei.
“He just left,” the concierge said.
Zhang called Jun Wei’s number, but there was no reply. He sent a text instead. Sorry to miss you. Flying to Beijing this morning. Back on Monday. After showering and getting dressed, he packed a small bag, picked up a set of car keys from the kitchen counter, and left the apartment. Once in the lift, he pressed B for basement. His mind seemed to have closed down. There were no thoughts. Only practicalities.
In the car park under the building, Chun Tao was already waiting.
“Change of plan,” Zhang said. “I’m going to drive myself to the airport. I won’t need you again till after the weekend.”
In the far corner of the car park was a black Mercedes, which he kept for private use. He watched Chun Tao depart, then he walked over to the Mercedes and got in. Putting on his dark glasses, he drove up the ramp and out into the daylight. When he stopped at the security barrier, he glanced in the rearview mirror. The road behind him was empty. He wasn’t sure what he had expected to see.
At the first red light, he called his wife. They had arranged to meet the following day, he reminded her,
but he would also like to have time with his son. She told him that Sunday would be best. He drove towards the Yan’an Road Tunnel, which would take him west, to the airport in Hongqiao. Though it was the second week of October, a kind of summer had returned. It wasn’t the Autumn Tiger, when the weather was unseasonably hot and dry. This was something else. Something humid. Clammy. Something that didn’t have a name.
The curved silver edge of a CD was protruding from the CD player. He pushed it all the way in. It was a Howlin’ Wolf album called Killing Floor, and the title song had never seemed more apt. I shoulda quit you / A long time ago…For years, he had assumed that “killing floor” referred to the Chicago slaughterhouses, where so many black men ended up working when they fled the Deep South, and he wasn’t necessarily wrong, but then he had read an interview with the Wolf’s guitarist, Hubert Sumlin, which had cast a new light on the lyric. Sumlin explained that the Wolf’s wife had suspected him of being unfaithful to her while he was away on tour. The day he returned, she opened fire on him from the front window of their house. The Wolf was picking buckshot out of himself for weeks after. On the killing floor, Sumlin said. It’s when a relationship brings you down so low you wish you were dead.
Zhang drove towards Hongqiao, with Howlin’ Wolf’s abrasive voice scouring the inside of the car. Every now and then, he checked his rearview mirror. He still didn’t know what he was looking for. Probably he felt dogged or poisoned by what he had witnessed, and was struggling to shake it off.
* * *
—
Five days later, on Monday morning, his plane touched down in Shanghai. The trip to Beijing had not been a success. When he met Xuan Xuan, she had done nothing but complain about money—she needed a new car, among other things—and he had agreed to increase the limit on her credit cards. The next day, he visited his mother in the nursing home. As usual, she didn’t speak or move. It seemed unlikely that she knew who he was, or even that he was there. Her eyes were misty. Blind-looking. He sat with her for an hour, then kissed her on the forehead and left. That evening, he took Hai Long out to dinner, but the fifteen-year-old spent most of the time on his phone. He responded to Zhang’s questions with a kind of distant courtesy, as if they had no relevance to him whatsoever and he was simply providing answers that he imagined might be appropriate. Zhang sensed boredom and contempt beneath the politeness, and perhaps that was only to be expected. All things considered, he had not been much of a father.