“Come and ssee.”
“No, thanks. Here—” She started to hand him the lotus-leaf bowl, and froze in amazement when she realized it was full of the ruby-red liquid again. “What the hell,” she breathed, staring at the bowl, then at Wing.
“Don’t be afraid, my golden one. Here thou art safe. Look, the dragon guards the entrance; no evil may disturb us here.” He made one of his graceful gestures at a waist-high ceramic statue of a snarling lizard, on guard at one side of the tomb’s door. “And there, the man-beast.” He pointed to another ferocious image, at attention on the other side. “Now dost thou see that thou art ssafe?”
“Um—”
“Yess,” he hissed, moving in. “You see, Augustine, because you have been blessed with a special wisdom.”
“Right. Listen, I’d—”
“Do you know the worst sin a man can commit, Augustine?”
Letting his so-called friend go into a crackpot’s house all by herself? she guessed silently. Why was it so hot in here all of a sudden? She sighed, and took a small sip of her fruity wine. “What?”
“To have no sons. This is the most heinous of all acts of unfilial conduct. Why? Because without sons, a man cannot enter heaven. The prayers of his sons intercede for him with the Cosmic Powers, just as the soul of his dead father intercedes for him. In its ignorance, the West calls this ‘ancestor worship,’ but of course it is not our ancestors whom we worship.”
“Of course not.” When she looked around for a place to set her wine bowl, a warm wave of dizziness washed over her. “Uh-oh.” She reeled; Wing steadied her.
“Come and see what I am taking with me to heaven,” he said—or she thought he said; on second hearing, it didn’t sound very likely. “Thiss way, Augustine, beyond the curtain.”
“Uh-oh,” she said again, but that seemed to be about it as far as resistance to Wing’s will went. Feeling oddly flatfooted, she let him lead her past scattered tools and paint-spattered sawhorses to a curtained alcove at the back of the big room. Inside, it looked like another gallery, but smaller than the first one, and devoted to sculpture.
“In centuries past, the wealthiest noblemen gathered about them in life all the things they would need in the afterlife, Augustine. Pets, special foods, favorite works of art. Servants.”
She licked her dry lips. “Servants?”
“Representations of them.” He smiled. “Behold.” He gestured toward a group of sculptures on a table. “Beautiful, aren’t they? Here, a dancer and an acrobat, both from the Han dynasty. Exceptional pieces. These sculptures are women servants—Wei period, fourth century. And these, musicians and singers, from the Song dynasty. Are they not graceful? Would they not be worth taking to the afterlife?”
They would. The face of one of the musicians arrested her attention, round-cheeked and sly-eyed, a jolly little drummer. It was really very, very charming. She put out her hand to touch it, but Wing caught her fingers and brought them to his lips. His cool, thin, feminine lips. She shuddered inside, but she let him nuzzle her knuckles. His tongue came out to stroke across her fingers like a little pink brush, and she didn’t move a muscle.
“Farther back in time,” he whispered, tickling her wet hand with his breath, “instead of sculptures of servants, slaves were sacrificed and buried with the corpses of the dead noblemen. To serve them for eternity.”
Her mouth was bone-dry; she had to wet her lips again before she could speak. “What a warm tradition.”
The lotus cup was still in her hand. He lifted it to her lips, and she drank thirstily, draining it. “More?” he murmured. He pressed his thumb against the bronze stem, and at once the receptacle filled again with wine.
“A false bottom,” she marveled, blinking at it.
“Drink.”
She obeyed.
He reached inside his coat then, and Grace waited patiently, expecting anything. But instead of a dove or a rabbit or a colorful scarf, he withdrew the tiger sculpture she’d just swapped him for ten thousand dollars half an hour ago. For the first time she noticed how small it was, and how lovely, how incredibly kind the tiger’s face. “Ohhh,” she sighed, a sad, wistful lament. The thought of trading back crossed her mind, then drifted away. Wing drew her away from the table and toward a glass shelf attached to the wall. “The others,” he said simply, and she saw them—the dragon, the horse, the monkey, the snake. Ox, pig, goat, and dog. Rat, rabbit, tiger. “I shall take them all with me now. All.” With careful hands, he set the tiger in its place among the others, and stepped back. He took a deep breath and emptied his lungs in a long sigh—a sound of completion.
Grace envied him for it, because she was feeling strangely incomplete. Unsatisfied. Not hungry or thirsty, but … wanting. She thought of Reuben, and then the thought drifted away.
“We must go now.”
“Yes,” she agreed. He had to help her, though, because her legs weren’t working right; she was gliding rather than walking, and in her mind she had an image of the Godfather pulling her by a string like a child pulling a wagon. The image disintegrated when they got to the cellar steps; then it was more like a man pushing a rock up a hill. “What’s going on?” she asked curiously, arms limp at her sides, letting him press against her backbone while she lifted her leaden feet up each separate step. “What’s happening?”
He didn’t answer, just levered her gently up step after step till they reached the top. They started down the hall toward the front door; but when they arrived at it, Wing turned left, toward another staircase.
“Wait, wait,” mumbled Grace, twisting around so slowly, pointing toward the door. Wing circled her waist with his arm and started climbing, ignoring her low, repetitious, “Uh-oh’s.” On the landing, she planted her feet. “Reuben won’t like this,” she said distinctly.
“We won’t speak of him again,” Wing reproved her gravely.
“We won’t?”
“No.”
Her will was coming and going in waves, making her feel strong and purposeful one minute, weak as water the next. During one of the weak periods, Wing led her around the corner to another staircase, this one narrow and candlelit, with huge shadows dancing on the walls. Panic crept through her skin past blood and bones to her vitals. It was a peculiar, disengaged kind of panic, though, as if some woman she barely knew were being coerced up unknown steps by an insane Chinese man. The fear came and went in the same waves as her will, now a spiking arc of anxiety, now a trough of weird tranquility.
Wing was supporting her with both arms, and yet her body felt curiously agile, more flexible than usual, as if normally one-way joints like elbows and knees could twist and turn in any direction she liked. If not for the fear, and the vague, disturbing, unspecific longing for something she couldn’t name, she might have called this surpassingly peculiar state of mind and body pleasurable, or at least interesting.
But the fear kept rising and falling, surging and ebbing, spoiling the peaceful periods when her strongest emotion was curiosity. She was flowing down the shadow-strewn corridor like slow water through a tunnel, now stopping at a doorway, now moving into a room. She heard herself say “No” through numbed lips, then forgot what had frightened her. How beautiful—a bed as big as a river, high and wide, covered in gorgeous silk swirls like beaten eggs, yellow white orange red, pillows like plump suns and fat starbursts, gold silver bright brilliant soft, soft, and Wing whispering “Augustine,” with his slow hands on her skin. Back, back, falling. Cool silk watery soft, airy whispered words against her cheek. Behind his black shoulder a girl, servant. Familiar. He spoke—she disappeared.
“Scared,” Grace tried to say. “Skth” came out of her mouth. She gave up. White hair, a dove’s wing brushing her throat, soothing. “Augustine,” in her ear, a hot heated whisper. Call me Gus, Reuben does. “Reuben” fell out of her mouth like marbles, like coins. Oh, God, Reuben!
“Lie still, my opal. Wait for the blisss, for it will come. Ahhh.” Pale face looming, hair draping,
teeth gleaming. “Dost thou know how often I’ve dreamt of thee? The white-skinned woman. The golden-haired woman. I knew who you were the moment I saw you. The vision—my wife, beside me, enthroned, while at our feet our strong sons play like lion cubs.”
Grace lifted a long, stern forefinger in the air to point something out. What was it, though? Oh. “Barking up the wrong tree,” garbled around the limp thickness of her tongue.
Wing smiled: a wonderful joke. Kai Yee, Godfather; Ah Mah, Mother. Thin lips pursed, puckered, sucked her pointing finger inside the black wet cave of his mouth. Revulsion, snakes twisting in her belly—and then a shocking liquid change. Touch, she thought. Said? Touch me. Evil knowing eyes sparkled, flicked down, aware. The suave fumble of fingers at her breast … cloth tearing so slowly … warm air on warm, shamed skin. His hands. Touch—don’t touch. Oh, God, his hands …
The woman again, girl servant. With a pipe, a candle, metal wire. Flame crackle, burning poppy smoke—“No! Bastard, bastard—” No use. Fire in her throat, chest burning, eyes streaming—and some of the poison sneaked in, she could feel it slink, slither, curl like a worm in her skull.
The Godfather, filled with the poison, rose over her, white moon face glimmering. “Wait for me, golden one, my dahlia. I will go and prepare myself for thee. Wait for thy husband. Patience”—the hiss of a snake. She shuddered. But his lips opened hers, and she took the long slide of his tongue like a lover.
Stillness. Behind her closed eyelids, fires flickered. Her blood had become lighter than air. She dreamed that she was rising above the bed, floating through the ceiling, up through the blue air of the sky, higher and higher until everything in the universe spread out beneath her like a rug. With exquisite indifference, she understood it all, every detail. Everything was clear; everything was revealed. A huge philosophical work took shape in her mind, long, unfolding links of thought, a great synthesis of all knowledge that would explain everything in existence. She couldn’t wait to tell everybody.
But … something was happening … something in the room with the bed … Oh, yes—Wing was coming back. Because he was her husband, and he was preparing.
She opened her eyes and lifted her head. Nobody there. I’m safe. Safe on the river-bed of scarlet silk, crimson silk, arms tight in the sleeves of her dress, bare-shouldered, bare-breasted—
A wash of horror suddenly prickled her skin everywhere, drenching her. She threw her body up and out of the river, and landed hard on the bank, scrabbled to her feet, lurched to the door. Locked. Walls, curtains, scrolls, hangings, drapes. “Well, Goddamn it!” It rang in her throat like a bell, wonderfully clear and outraged. Where the hell is the goddamn window?
There, past waterfalls of dangerous silk, sly as a strangler’s hands. Her fingers clutched wood; her muscles hardened, and the sash flew up, up. She staggered and caught herself on the sill, smacking her ribs. Light from the room gleamed on a metal grid outside—fire escape! “Oh, help me!” Sobbing, diving, hands grappling wood, knees flexed—
“No, my lady. No, my lady.” Gentle arms pulled softly, insistent.
Grace screamed. But it wasn’t Kai Yee, it was the girl, the servant.
“Help me?”
“Yes.”
“Help me.”
“Yes, my lady. Come.” Docile, hopeless, she let the girl lead her away from the window toward the bed. Bridal bed. Damn. Slow tears trickled down when the girl, whose hands were gentle as birds, unfastened Grace’s torn dress and eased it down to the floor. Shift next, petticoats, then shoes, stockings. Reuben, where are you?
“Lie,” said the girl, and Grace lay.
“Help me.” One last pathetic try. Cold silk on her spine warmed insidiously.
“Here is help,” said the girl. “I tell you: don’t fight. Understand? Best help—give up.”
11
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
—Elbert Hubbard
“YOU OKAY, BOSS? OKAY now?”
“OW, quit it. Get your—ow!”
“So sorry, boss! Okay now? You want drink? Want girl? All on house! Boss feel better now, okay?”
Snarling, cradling his head with both hands, Reuben hoisted himself to a sitting position on a squishy velvet sofa that smelled like dirty clothes and rancid perfume. Two men hovered over him, chattering to each other in worried-sounding Chinese, while a middle-aged woman in a voluminous black gown tried to press a wet, vinegary-smelling cloth to his temple. He batted her hand away and glared at all three, unappeased by the anxiety in then round faces. “What happened? Who the … uhhh.” He gritted his teeth against the stunning pain. “Who the hell hit me?”
Nobody raised his hand, but the taller of the worried-looking Chinese men said, “So sorry, boss, big mistake,” and hung his head.
The woman rose from beside the couch and made him a low, abject bow. “Plees accept apologies for terrible error. You white gentleman, very fine sir. Sometime bad men sneak in house in back, take favors from girls, not pay. We keep watch. Dark tonight, make big mistake. You okay now—no police. Feel like glass plum wine, any girl you want? Got special very young virgin, father big prince in China. You like?”
The cotton stuffing inside his brain thinned to let a little light in, enough to get him on his feet and ask weakly, “What time is it?”
“Plenty time, early, have good—”
“What time is it?” He clutched at his head, fighting the return of the stuffing, swaying.
“Ten-thirty.”
“Ten …” He took, his hands away and stared in horror. They grabbed at him when he tried to bull his way through their solicitous semicircle to the door. “Move! Move, damn it!” They fell back, and he charged outside.
He had to halt in the grainy mist and reckon where he was. He’d come out the front door of the House of Celestial Peace and Fulfillment—so the murky yellow light forty feet to his right had to be the entrance to Wing’s house. Racing toward it, he tripped and slammed his knee on the wet sidewalk. He cursed foully, but the shock helped clear his head.
The dragon knocker set up a hell of a racket. He hammered it harder, louder, wishing it was a weapon. The heavy portal finally cracked open, and In Re stuck his head out.
“Yes?”
“Grace was here—Miss Smith, she was here visiting Wing. Did she leave yet?”
“Nobody here by that name.”
“You mean she left?”
“No Smith come, no lady.” He started to close the door.
“Hold it! She was here—the same woman who came with me yesterday. I saw you let her in, she—Hey!” In Re got the door an inch away from the latch before Reuben could get his foot in the threshold and stop it. “Listen, you son of a bitch! Open the door, open it or I’ll—”
“Yes?” With the speed and ease of a farmer scything grass, In Re brought up a nine-inch scimitar, and made a frame for Reuben’s throat in its gleaming crescent.
Reuben lifted both hands in the air, palms out: an outclassed dog rolling over, telling the big one he gave up. Very gently, In Re closed the door in his face.
He made it to the sidewalk before he had to stop and grab for his knees, head dangling between his legs. From experience, he knew that if he thought about the knife, saw in his mind the silvery edge, sharp as a hair, or imagined the curved blade slicing across flesh—a fingertip, a cheek—oh, God, a tongue—he would either faint, vomit, or start screaming.
He took his hands off his knees in slow degrees, straightened, and gulped in a great chestful of the cool night air. With the next gulp, he shouted, “Grace!” at the top of his lungs.
Silence.
Hands cupped around his mouth: “Grace!”
No answer.
She wouldn’t have gone home by herself, she’d have waited for him. So she was still in the house. Wing had her.
They were surprised to see him again so soon at the House of Celestial Peace and Fulfillment. “Esteemed sir,” exclaimed the black-gowned madam, grinning falsely and wringin
g her hands, glancing behind him to see if he’d brought any cops. “You feel okay now? Sorry, sorry, many—”
“I need a girl,” he panted, “any girl. That one—I want her.” A small, homely thing, trying to hide behind the red sofa he’d been stretched out unconscious on ten minutes ago.
“You like Toy Gun?” simpered the madam. “Sure, she’s for you. On the house. You want whiskey, we send up—”
“Yeah, later.” He advanced on Toy Gun, who was trying not to cringe, and looking as if a large, wild-eyed white devil was not her idea of a good time. She was too docile to fight him when he grabbed her hand, though, and she let him hustle her out of the parlor and up the gaslit staircase to the second floor without a chirp. Behind them, the madam and the two bouncers who’d carried him inside the house called up jovial encouragement and best wishes for his health and happiness.
Toy Gun tried to stop at a closed door midway down the hall that ran the length of the brothel, front to back. “My room,” she got out, pointing, but Reuben kept going, pulling her along behind him. As he’d hoped, there was another staircase at the back of the house, servants’ stairs, since they were darker and narrower than the ones in front. The girl started protesting in Chinese when he jostled her in front of him and trotted her up the steps. “Third floor,” he muttered behind her, “I want the third floor, gotta have it. Hurry, hurry.”
Another dim hallway, lined with closed doors, behind one of which he heard a man’s loud, drunken laughter. To the right of the landing, a short, dark corridor ended at a black door with a window in the top half, covered with a bead curtain. Toy Gun balked when he drew her away from the landing and into the alcove. “Nah! Nah!” she wailed, trying to tell him he was going the wrong way. Ignoring her, he turned the doorknob. Locked. Toy Gun went white and stopped wailing when he reached in his pocket and pulled out Grace’s little two-shooter. Using the barrel, he bashed a hole in the window, flinching at the noise the glass made when it shattered. Through the jagged hole, his hand found the key in the lock and twisted it. “Come on,” he told his shrinking captive, and towed her through the door.
Crooked Hearts Page 18
