Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (79 page)

* *
*

CATHERINE STOOD
in the doorway, looking across at him. Ben was sitting on the edge of
the bed, his head pushed forward, his shoulders hunched, staring at
the frame without seeing it.

He had awakened
full of life, had smiled and kissed her tenderly and told her to wait
while he brought her breakfast, but he had been gone too long; she
had found him in the kitchen, staring vacantly at his hands, the
breakfast things untouched.

"What is
it?" she had asked. "What's happened?" But he had
walked past her as if she wasn't there. Had gone into the other room
and sat down on the bed. So still, so self-engrossed that it had
frightened her.

"Ben?"
she said now, setting the tray down beside him. "I've cooked
breakfast. Won't you have some with me?"

He glanced up at
her. "What?"

"Breakfast."
She smiled, then knelt beside him, putting her hand on his knee.

"Ah . . ."
His smile was wan; was merely the token of a smile.

"What is
it, Ben? Please. I've not seen you like this before. It must be
something."

For a moment he
did nothing. Then he reached into the pocket of his gown and took
something out, offering it to her.

It was a letter.
She took it from him, handling it with care—with a feeling for
its strangeness.

She sat on the
floor beside his feet, handling the letter delicately, as if it were
old and fragile like the book he had given her, taking the folded
sheets and smoothing them out upon her lap.

For a moment she
hesitated, a sudden sense of foreboding washing over her. What if it
were another woman? Some past lover of his, writing to reclaim him—to
take him back from her? Or was it something else? Something he had
difficulty telling her?

She glanced at
him, then looked back, beginning to read. After only a few moments
she looked up. "Your sister?" He nodded. "She wants to
come and visit me. To see what I'm up to."

"Ah . . ."
But strangely, she felt no relief. There was something about the tone
of the letter that troubled her. "And you don't want that?"
Again he nodded, his lips pressed tightly together. For a moment she
looked past him at the books on the shelf beside his bed. Books she
had never heard of before, with titles that were as strange as the
leather binding of their covers; books like Polidori's
Emestus
Berchtold,
Helme's
The Farmer of Inglewood Forest,
Poe's
Eleanora,
Brown's
The Power of Sympathy
and Byron's
Manfred.
She stared at them a moment, as if to make sense of
them, then looked back at him.

Folding the
sheets, she slipped them back inside the envelope, then held it out
to him.

"I've come
here to get away from all that," he said, taking the letter. He
looked at it fiercely for a moment, as if it were a living thing,
then put it back in his pocket. "This—" he gestured
at the frame, the books and prints on the walls, the personal things
that were scattered all about the room, then shrugged. "Well,
it's different, that's all."

She thought of
Lotte and Wolf, beginning to understand. "It's too close at
home. Is that what you mean? And you feel stifled by that?"

He looked down
at his hand—at the left hand where the wrist was ridged—then
looked back at her.

"Maybe."

She saw how he
smiled faintly, looking inward, as if to piece it all together in his
head.

"Your
breakfast," she said, reminding him. "You should eat it.
It's getting cold."

He looked back,
suddenly focusing on her again. Then, as if he had made his mind up
about something, he reached out and took her hand, drawing her up
toward him.

"Forget
breakfast. Come. Let's go to bed again."

* *
*

"Well? Have
you the file?"

Heng Chian-ye
turned, snapping his fingers. At once his servant drew nearer and,
bowing, handed him a silk-bound folder.

"I think
you'll find everything you need in there," Heng said, handing it
across. "But tell me, Novacek, why did you want to know about
that one? Has he crossed you in some way?"

Sergey Novacek
glanced at Heng, then looked back at the file. "It's none of
your business, but no, he hasn't crossed me. It's just that our
friend Shepherd is a bit of a mystery, and I hate mysteries."

Heng Chian-ye
stared at Novacek a moment, controlling the cold anger he felt merely
at being in his presence. The Hung Moo had no idea what trouble he
had got him into.

"You've
made your own investigations, I take it?" he said, asking
another of the questions his uncle had insisted he ask.

Novacek looked
up, closing the file. "Is this all?"

Heng smiled.
"You know how it is, the richer the man, the less there is on
file. If they can, they buy their anonymity."

"And you
think that's what happened here?"

"The boy's
father is very rich. Rich enough to buy his way into Oxford without
any qualifications whatsoever."

Novacek nodded,
a hint of bitterness overspilling into his words. "I know. I've
seen the College records."

"Ah . . ."
Heng gave the briefest nod, noting what he had said.

"And the
bronze?"

Heng Chian-ye
turned slightly. Again the servant approached him, this time carrying
a simple ice-cloth sack. Heng took the sack and turned, facing
Novacek. His expression was suddenly much harder, his eyes coldly
hostile.

"This cost
me dear. If there had been any way I could have borrowed a million
yuan
I would have done so, rather than meet my uncle's terms.
But before I hand it over, I want to know why you wanted it. Why you
thought it worth a million
yuan.
"

Novacek stared
at him a moment, meeting the Han's hostility with his own. Then he
looked down, smiling sourly. "You call us big-noses behind our
backs, but you've quite a nose yourself, haven't you, Heng?"

Heng's eyes
flared with anger, but he held back, remembering what Heng Yu had
said. On no account was he to provoke Novacek. "And if I say you
can't have it?"

Novacek laughed.
"That's fine. You can pay me the million. In installments, if
you like. However, I'll charge you interest on it. A
hundred-and-fifty thousand a year." He looked up again, meeting
Heng's eyes. "But that's rather more than what you get, so I
hear. You might find it...
difficult
to make ends meet. It
takes a fair bit to live as richly as you do."

Heng swallowed;
then, almost brutally, he thrust the sack into the other man's hands.

Sergey watched
Heng a moment, noting how angry he was and wondering about it, then
looked down at the plain white sack he held, feeling the shape of the
bronze through the flesh-thin cloth, a clear, clean sense of
satisfaction—of fulfillment—washing through him.

"Good,"
he said. "Then we're clear, Heng Chian-ye. I'd say your debt to
me.was settled, wouldn't you?"

Heng Chian-ye
turned, taking three angry steps away from him before turning back,
his face almost black with anger, his finger pointing accusingly at
his tormentor.

"Take care,
Novacek. Next time you might not be so lucky. Next time you could
meet with someone who counts honor a lesser thing than I. And then
you'll find out what the world really thinks of scum like you."

Sergey stared
back at him, smiling insolently. "Go fuck yourself, Heng
Chian-ye.

You've no more
honor than a Triad boss's cock. The only reason you paid up was your
fear of losing face in front of your friends. But that's your
problem. I've got what I want."

Heng opened his
mouth, as if to answer him in kind, then changed his mind. He laughed
then shook his head, his voice suddenly colder, more controlled.

"Have you
my friend? Have you now?"

* *
*

THEY WENT to the
Cafe Burgundy and took a table close to the Green, paying to keep the
three chairs empty. Catherine sat to Ben's right, the tiered cage of
the central pagoda behind her, forming a frame to her pale, flamelike
beauty. "My bird," he called her now, and so it seemed
fitting. He smiled, studying her profile, then turned and raised a
hand to order wine.

He had been
quiet all evening, pensive. A second letter had come. It lay inside
his jacket pocket unopened. He could feel its gentle pressure against
his chest; sense the hidden shape of it.

She, too, had
been quiet, but for different reasons. Hers was a broody, jealous
silence, the kind he had come to know only too well these last few
days.

The waiter came
and poured their wine, leaving the unfinished bottle in an ice bucket
on the table between them. Ben leaned across and chinked his glass
against hers.

She turned her
head and looked at him. "What does she want?"

He almost smiled
at that, knowing what she really thought. His unexplained absences.
The letters. Even his moods. He knew she took these things as signs
of his infidelity. But she wasn't certain. Not yet, anyway. And so
the brooding silence.

He sipped at his
wine then set the glass down. "Here." He took the letter
from his pocket and handed it to her.

She narrowed her
eyes, suspicious of him, then took the letter from his fingers. For a
time she simply stared at it, not certain what he meant by giving it
to her. Then she lifted it to her nose and sniffed.

"Open it,"
he said, amused by her hesitation. "Or give it back and I'll
open it. It's from my sister, Meg."

She nodded, only
half-convinced, but gave the letter back, watching as he slit it open
with his thumbnail and drew out the four slender sheets of paper.
Without even glancing at them, he handed them to her.

"Here."

She lowered her
eyes, beginning to read, reluctantly at first, but then with a
growing interest. Finally, she looked up again, her face changed,
more open to him.

"But why
didn't you say? That was cruel of you, Ben, leaving me in the dark
like that. I thought. . ."

She blushed and
looked away. He reached across and took the letter from her.

"Aren't you
pleased, Ben? I think it's sweet of her to worry about you. She could
stay with me, if you'd like. I've a spare pulldown in my room. She
could use that."

He glanced at
her, then returned to the letter. Finished, he folded it neatly and
slipped it back into his pocket.

"Well?"
she said, exasperated by him. "It would be lovely to meet your
sister. Really it would."

He poured
himself more wine, then drank deeply from his glass, emptying it. She
watched him, puzzled.

"What's the
matter? What aren't you telling me?"

He shook his
head.

"Don't you
like her? Is that it?"

He laughed.
"What, Meg? No, she's . . ." He smiled strangely, looking
down into his empty glass. "She's just perfect." He looked
up at her, then reached across, and gently lifting her chin, leaned
forward to brush his lips against hers.

She smiled.
"That's nice. But what about her?"

"She'll
stay with me," he said, dismissing the subject. "Now, what
shall we eat?"

She stared at
him a moment, then let it go. "I don't care. Surprise me."

He laughed,
suddenly, inexplicably, his old self. "Oysters. Let's have
oysters."

"Just
oysters?"

"No. Not
just oysters, but a whole platter of oysters. The very best oysters.
More than we could possibly eat." He puffed out his cheeks and
sat back in his chair, his hands tracing an exaggerated curve about
his stomach, miming a grossly swollen gut. He laughed, then sat
upright again and turned in his chair, snapping his fingers for a
waiter.

The abruptness
of the transformation both delighted and disturbed her. It hinted at
a side of him she had not seen before, unless it was in that moment
when he had mimicked her. She poked her tongue between her teeth,
watching him. Laughter at a nearby table distracted her momentarily,
making her turn her head. When she looked back he was watching her
again, a faint smile on his lips.

"Sometimes
you're just plain strange," she said, laughing. "Like this
business about your family. What's wrong with talking about them? You
never tell me anything."

He shrugged. "It
isn't important. That's home. This is here. I like to keep them
separate."

She looked down,
wondering if he realized what he was saying. She felt hurt by his
exclusion, somehow lessened by it.

"It's too
close there"," he went on. "Too—" he
laughed, a short, almost painful laugh, "too intense. You'll
find that difficult to understand, I know. I don't hate it, it's just
that I need distance from all that. Need something other than what I
get there."

He had set down
his glass and was pushing at the skin of his left hand with the
fingers of his right, looking down at it as he smoothed and stroked
the ridged flesh.

"And where,
then, do I fit in? Am I real to you, Ben, or am I just something to
be got?"

"Maybe,"
he said, meeting her eyes candidly. "Maybe that's all there is.
Different kinds of getting."

She was about to
speak—about to say something she would have regretted
later—when the laughter rang out again, louder this time. She
felt herself go cold, realizing whose voice it was that led the cold,
mocking laughter.

Sergey . . .

She turned,
seeing him at once. He was no more than twenty feet away from where
they were sitting.

He turned in his
chair, smiling at her. "Catherine! How
lovely
to see
you!"

She could see
that he was drunk. He pushed himself up unsteadily from his chair and
came across, pulling out the empty chair beside her. Ignoring Ben, he
sat, leaning toward her unpleasantly, almost threateningly, as he
spoke.