A Mind of Winter (12 page)

I reached the cul-de-sac at the end of the corridor, outside the headmistress’s rooms; not squirrels, but muffled footsteps, stockinged feet upon rug-covered floors. And a light chiffon voice as one might hear rising from a dance floor. Seized by giddiness, I leaned against the door; the old wood felt solid, I breathed in its mulled scent. Slowly, I turned the handle. The sitting room, where the headmistress received her callers, was lit by a single lamp on the reading table by the window. The dim bulb cast a yellowy light onto the glass, turning the pane slickly dark, blotting the outside world to incomprehensible shadows. The headmistress had left the blackout curtains undrawn! On tiptoe, in a confused flurry, I crossed the room and pulled the tarred cloth shut. A heavy silence emanated from the inner chamber, the sound of someone holding their breath. I walked as if in a trance, the air turned to water, slowing my movements and heightening the feel of my skin. The internal skip of anticipation—of something exciting and proscribed. There, within reach, the second doorknob, this one of cut glass. The door swung inward. Uncertain light, the stuttering hesitations of a single candle, and suddenly, directly before me, the headmistress sitting up in bed, clasping the cover inadequately to her breast, squinting at me with angry eyes.

“How dare you.” Beside the headmistress, Penelope’s enigmatic face with its curious expression of contempt. I turned my eyes slowly back to the headmistress. Though she still clasped the sheet, it had slipped and, as she repeated the accusatory mantra, her pendulous breasts, in an oddly suitable gesture of negation, swung gently back and forth across her torso.

I tried to shriek, but the words stuck in my throat.
Oh, Penelope! Don’t you see? Don’t you see that I love you?
I ran from the room, across the office, into the hallway, and clattered down the back stairway. Out into the cool air, blindly across the gravel driveway, into the dark. The lawn opened up beneath me; I kicked off my shoes and ran barefoot. My mind clouded over, my legs and arms turned to wax. I clamped my eyes shut and slowed to a halt.

The green hooded smell of beech trees, the crinkly cool feel of grass underfoot.

But then, suddenly, another world, somewhere else, both close by and distant, the here and now of four narrow walls, a ceiling, and a small square cut in one side that passed for a window. No bars, though it might as well have had them, and no moonlight.

What was that? A rapping at the door?

Like everything else, I thought:
My dreams are playing tricks on me
. The door opened and a slim figure slipped into the room.

“Some food, miss,” a voice said. Something set down on the table: a bowl of rice. It was one of the girls. Beside the bowl, she set down the glass box.

“Thank you,” I managed, attempting to lift my head from the pillow. I glimpsed yellow; the girl was wearing a yellow dress. “Wait,” I croaked, but it was too late. The girl had disappeared. The rice cooled on the table, the turquoise box glinted slyly.

I’d been wearing the yellow chiffon, that night with Robert: our last evening together. It is still there, I imagine—that dress, shut up inside my cedar trunk, which Mrs. Lassiter, my landlady, had agree to store in her attic. Still there, smelling of mothballs and disuse.

Robert had touched my arm, drawn his forefinger along my shoulder and down to my wrist.

All doubt, all the suspiciousness that had been dogging me about him—his past, his goings-on—all my concerns and fears: vanished in the beam of his gaze, which was fiery and soft, both. He moved to speak.

“Christine.” His voice was steady, though I heard in it something urgent.

I imagined I saw, in his face, the words he was about to speak. I reached out my finger and touched it to his lips. Not to silence him, no. But in order that I might declare myself first.

“Go and dress,” I said, aware of a sudden flicker of anxiety in Robert’s face. “We’ll have time later to talk.”

London, cheerless and cold. But I was more alive that night than I’d ever been; the air pulsed with readiness. I remember thinking that the whole odd arc of my life had led to this moment. Absurd imaginings, to think that Robert, dear, brilliant Robert, with his longings and stoic reserve and his secret history of suffering, could possibly be involved in dubious dealings of any kind. No, I reasoned, all of that was nothing more than my own faulty self, intent on painting others black, like me.

It sounds childish, but at that moment, I pictured Robert’s soul as a dewdrop, delicate and true.

Yes, I thought. I would write it down. I would find my own way to turn words that had once filled me with dread—words of love that had in the past been for me a kind of betrayal—to sweetness and truth.

A quick tender kiss: Robert’s soft, full lips, pressed against mine.

“Later, then,” he whispered, spots of pink growing in his cheeks.

Why do I still hold onto that instant? Why do I still close my eyes and recall the imprint of his lips, the sigh of his breath as he drew away? All of my own longing and loss, coiled into that brief moment?

But then it springs back at me every time, forked tongue out, venomous tooth at the ready. Along with the hatred that has grown familiar as a vicious pet—hatred toward Robert, for taking it all away.

My Manor House cell, sparse and ungiving. I rolled from my cot, thudded to the floor. I crawled to the table, reached up with one hand, fumbling at its edge. I touched it with the tip of my forefinger, tapped at the side of it; the smooth box nudged forward, then toppled and crashed to the floor.

Damn it, damn it to hell,
I half sobbed. Up on all fours, I batted at the floor beneath the table. The box was there, not shattered, though the lid had rolled off somewhere. Under the table, still on elbows and knees, I licked at the floor. The tarry crumblings clung bitterly to my parched tongue; the dust made it difficult to swallow. Enough of the resinous shavings remained in the box, though; I could see that, even in the faint light seeping through the window. With a sudden revival of bodily strength, I rose to my feet, pressed the shavings into a tiny, firm pellet, and set about preparing the pipe.

I breathed on my fingers to steady them, dragged a wooden match across the table, and held it to the paktong lamp.
Breathe,
I instructed myself. The hovering flame flirted with the wick until it made contact. My fingers trembled as I handled the needles, maneuvering the tiny lump over the flame until it succumbed, trembled, still, as I placed the swelling pellet over the hole in the stem. Finally, I felt the thin angel stream that made my veins ache with pleasure.

Then, something in that narrow exposed beam of the world filled me with fright. My own fingers: shaky, pale, like fated scraps of sea life left to shrivel on the shore.
I have also disappeared,
I thought bitterly. I watched as the wick in the oil lamp burned down. Watched as the sputtering flame extinguished in the oil.
A tiny drowning,
I thought. Numbly, I dipped my finger in the oil, aware of the searing heat, though from a distance. It didn’t feel bad so I left my finger there. After a time, I removed it, staring absently at the red burn in the flesh. I rubbed the shiny, raw spot with my thumb.

A racket at the end of the hall. At first, it sounded like barking, as if a street mongrel, too mangy to be seized for food, had made its way in through a window and was yelping in some closed-off room. As I made my way down the hallway, the yelping turned into Han Shu’s voice. He rarely lost his temper but when he did, he lost his English accent along with it; now, he sounded like a market hawker defending his pride. The shouting voice came in bursts, punctuated by the sound of another voice—an indecipherable rumble. I paused by the door.

“The future,” Han Shu was saying. “I have to think of the future! I have many girls to feed.”

The other voice, a man’s, said something I could not make out, though I could hear he was calm, in control.

“Is this how you think?” Han Shu again. I heard pacing, a thud—the sound of a fist coming down hard on a table. “This is not a
cabbage
you are talking about, my dear friend. We are talking about—” Another thud, and then the sound of breaking glass. “We are talking about my prize treasure!”

Again, the low mumble.

“If that is your final offer, you may as well leave. And I’ll ask you not to frequent my house anymore.”

There was a creak and the thud of a cane. And then the low voice—audible now, and so very familiar. “I can assure you, Han Shu, if this is your decision, Ma Ling will no longer work for you.”

“She does what she is told!” Han Shu shrieked. “She is
my
girl, do you hear?”

From inside the room, footsteps approached the door, accented by a wooden tap:
thud thud tap, thud thud tap
. The door flew open, I jumped out of the way.

“Why Christine, my dear. What a surprise,” Archibald said. Behind him was Han Shu, his face contorted.

“Bartering over her as if she were a goat,” I replied, my voice a squeak.

“The Orient, my dear,” Archibald winked. “We are in the Orient.”

“I won’t have you bartering over Ma Ling.” I felt my own voice squeezing tight; I feared I would lose the capacity to speak altogether.

“I would ask you to stay out of this discussion,” Han Shu said, his throat gurgling strangely in what I imagined was a vain attempt to retrieve his British inflection.

“She is not a goat,” I repeated.

“That, I know,” Han Shu said. “But may I remind you of the fee you were paid to bring her in?”

Ignoring this, I turned back to Archibald. “You want to buy her for good, don’t you? That’s what this is all about. You want to take her away …”

Archibald hung his head, seemed to weigh something in his mind. He turned to Han Shu. “I think we should continue our business another time. Feelings are running hot. Think about my offer, Han Shu. All I’m asking is that you think about it.” Archibald waved his arm before him, and I stepped away from the door.

For a long moment, Archibald examined me with his small pink eyes. “I wondered where you had disappeared to, Christine,” he said. “I hope you’re taking care of yourself.” He patted my arm, then labored toward the stairs.

“What I do with my girls is really not your business, Christine, dear,” Han Shu said. “I trust you are aware of that.”

I sat on my cot staring out at the wet summer sky. I let Han Shu’s words slip over me.

“I don’t understand what’s happened to you,” he said with growing agitation. “You may very well have scotched the deal.” He was pacing; the warped floorboards whined. “Archibald’s a wealthy man. He’s used to paying for what he wants. The bargaining is just a game with him; he doesn’t take it seriously.”

I could feel Han Shu’s eyes on my back.

“It’s all in the timing. I suppose I can’t expect you to understand that. Your presence, at the worst possible moment, just as …”

Outside, a sticky blood substance leaked from the setting sun onto the corroding, ramshackle roofs.

“Christine, what’s happened to you?” There was real distress now in Han Shu’s voice. “The girls tell me you are making little sense in your lessons. And have you given up entirely on finding a new girl?”

He approached my cot and took gentle hold of my shoulder.

“I meant it, Christine,” he said carefully. “When I talked of a partnership. It’s not too late. We can salvage things still. But I need your help.” Han Shu took my hand.

Familiar territory, I thought. A laugh curdled bitterly in my throat. Back where I belong.

“But do not despair. I have a secret little hope, my dear. Call me a fool, but I picture us—together. You and me. At the country club. You in your prettiest frock, and me, well, dressed for polo.” He paused. “Who knows, perhaps we’ll even …”

I could hardly make sense of what Han Shu was saying. What had the country club to do with—
this
? This life? This Manor House?

“Even what, Han Shu?”

“Go back. To England. Settle there, where we belong.”

I stared into his face, took note of his odd dreamy expression, my mind drifting away, the tiny buzzing pockets in my lungs suddenly silent, and my flesh, where Han Shu now stroked my shoulder, strangely unfeeling, as if I were made of nothing but rags.

Barnaby dismissed the rickshaw when the rain started, and ran the last half-mile at a sprint, less to escape the rain than to set the blood flowing. He paused under the canopy, slipped off his jacket, and shook the water from it. A frail, thin man in an elaborate red and gold costume bowed as he opened the door.

A reception of some sort was underway in the main ballroom; the sound of a brass band spilled into the foyer. Three women in evening gowns passed by on their way to the ladies’ lounge. Dressed in tight-fitting skirts, they moved with mincing steps. Barnaby recognized the wife of a fellow consul worker; he nodded, she waved back a hand tipped with shiny red nails.

Barnaby made his way down a long corridor until he came to a black door. He rapped gently, twice. The door was opened by a very old man with a cleanly shaven pate, and a stoop so pronounced he was almost doubled over. He peered up at Barnaby, his friendly features compressed into a smile.