A Mind of Winter

by Shira Nayman

  In all the time I had been at Manor House, Han Shu had never joined us for breakfast. So when, as I was bringing the steaming rice to the table, I heard the clatter of a rickshaw from the street, followed by the click of heels in the hall, I realized he must be even more pleased about the new resident than he had let on.

  As the girls filed in, each curtsied to Han Shu before taking her seat. Having observed the others, Ma Ling plucked up the sides of her skirt and executed a competent dip. Han Shu let out a delighted laugh. He motioned for Ma Ling to come toward him. I saw shyness in her face as she moved into his outstretched arm.

  “I see you’ve already met the daughters of the house. They will teach you about the life here. We have happy times and many comforts, as you can see.” Han Shu swept his arm toward the table to indicate the rice and puffy white buns.

  “Here, we will equip you for life. Discipline, whole-hearted application to all of your tasks. The art of being a young lady.” He passed his gaze down the length of the table. “Girls, I’d like you to welcome Ma Ling to Manor House.”

  The girls chimed their welcome in unison. Ma Ling took her seat to the right of Han Shu and the meal began.

  After breakfast, Han Shu lingered to enjoy a cigarette.

  As I stood to take my leave, he said through the smoke: “Christine, come to my room this evening for a nightcap. I’d like to thank you for your marvelous work. Ma Ling is a find; I have a feeling she’s going to bring honor and good fortune to this house.”

  All that day, I was aware of the spark of pride in my chest and of a growing anticipation as the evening approached. At dinner, I had no appetite, just picked with my chopsticks at the food in my bowl. The meal over, I retired to the bathing room where I took a long time over my toilette. Refreshed, every pore tingling, I returned to my room where I dabbed perfumed oil behind my ears and on my wrists. The three dresses I’d retrieved from my lodgings—which, along with a few smaller items were the only things my landlord had not sold—were beginning to look shabby. I chose the pink. Standing before the small mirror by my cot, I held up a lavender handkerchief I had bargained down to almost nothing at the market the previous week, then twisted it into a flower and pinned it to the neck of my dress. I examined myself for a moment in the glass, aware of my thinness, but pleased with the effect of the knotted handkerchief.

  I hesitated outside Han Shu’s door, then reached up and knocked twice.

  “Come in,” he said.

  The room seemed changed, patterned by wavering shadows flung out onto the ceiling and walls by a row of candles along the windowsill. I sat across from Han Shu in the wicker armchair. A decanter of whiskey stood on the table between us, and two crystal goblets from which flashed a splinter of light. Han Shu, in his ivory smoking jacket, filled first my glass and then his own.

  “You have had a real impact on Manor House,” he said, lifting his glass and motioning for me to do the same. “I’d like especially to toast your effort of last evening. Two or three more finds like that would usher in a whole new era here.”

  Han Shu tapped his glass against mine, took a long sip, then slid something across the table.

  “For your efforts,” he said.

  I saw it was a blue velvet pouch of considerable size and could easily guess what it contained. I dropped the pouch into my purse.

  “I don’t want to jump the gun,” Han Shu continued, “but I did want to mention one other thing. Some time ago when we were, how might I put it, on somewhat different terms, I made plain to you the financial realities of Manor House—that the establishment is not exactly a money-making venture. However, the fact is, with the two of us working hand-in-hand, we could turn it around. I believe we could make this organization quite profitable. If you are able to maintain the level of your contribution, we might begin to think about some sort of limited partnership. I leave the opportunity in your hands.”

  I tried to attend to Han Shu’s words but my mind was on the pouch I had just slipped into my purse—on the square weight of it, the soft human give of the fabric as it briefly made contact with my hand.

  Han Shu took a cigar from the wooden box on his desk, struck a match, and frowned thoughtfully as he waited for the flame to set it alight.

  “Let’s see how things progress,” he said. “I can be harsh, I know that, but I believe in acknowledging work well done.”

  A flake of ash drifted to the waist of his smoking jacket; carefully, he flicked it away.

  “I know!” his face brightened. “You appreciate photography, I am sure, a cultured woman like yourself. How would you like to sample my slide collection? We’ll kill two birds with one stone!” He jumped from his chair. “Entertainment—and at the same time the history of Manor House!”

  Han Shu disappeared behind a red curtain at the back of the room and returned carrying a black leather case. He placed it on his desk and unsnapped the clasp. Inside was a cumbersome goggle-like viewing device and hundreds of slides arranged in velveteen slots.

  “Let’s see, where shall we begin.” He held a slide above one of the candles and examined it briefly. “This was taken before the war, just after I established Manor House.”

  Han Shu placed the slide along with another he took from an adjoining slot into the viewer and handed me the device. I held it to my eyes and found myself suddenly surrounded by the greenery of a large estate; in the foreground stood an assemblage of British officers in uniform, several men in helmets and riding clothes, and a younger, slimmer Han Shu in a white morning suit, all holding still for an instant to allow the photograph to be taken. It looked as though the men would at any moment resume ambling across the lawn. The effect was so vivid, so real, it was if I had stepped into another place, another time.

  “Three-dimensional slides,” Han Shu said. “You must have seen them before—in England?”

  I handed back the device.

  “And here is Manor House, in the early days,” Han Shu said, changing the slides.

  This time, when I raised the viewer, I beheld Han Shu standing behind a group of girls, one more solemn than the next. Their faces and hair looked clean, but instead of the miniature gowns the girls at Manor House now wore, they were wearing street rags.

  “After a time, they become like one’s own children,” Han Shu sighed. “As you’ll see, we had not yet found a solution to the problem of their garments, but then, war was in the air.”

  They were standing in front of the house, which was in greater disrepair than its current state. The window casements were cracked, and several panes were missing. The tin sheeting of the roof was rusted and showed several black patches where it had eroded through. But what struck me most about the picture was Han Shu’s expression: an almost kindly, sincere regard, directed unblinklingly into the lens. I wondered who the person on the other side of the camera had been.

  Several more slides of Han Shu in front of the house followed, taken across a span of years. The girls changed from picture to picture: new faces appeared while others vanished, and their attire became less tatty. The house, too, showed improvement: the missing panes replaced, the window casements repaired; and in the last pair of slides Han Shu offered for my consideration, I noted the new roof. As the sequence progressed, Han Shu’s mien also altered by shades, though in his case the changes were more subtle and of reverse order: not the signs of gradual repair, but a fugitive undoing. The uncharacteristic kindly visage of the first Manor House photograph turned gradually to a sheen of dissimulation. And by the eighth or ninth slide, Han Shu’s face had evolved into the one I knew.

  “But here I am chatting away,” Han Shu said, with his usual mixed tone of calculation and conviviality. “You’re probably ready for some refreshment.”

  I put down the viewer.

  “Allow me.” He reached for the device and exchanged it for a delicate porcelain pipe. I waited while he prepared the pellet, watched as he passed it back and forth over the flame until it became sticky and soft and then
placed it over the hole in the pipe. I closed my eyes and drew in the smoke. Han Shu walked to where an open glass cabinet stood against the wall and surveyed the rows of crystal on the shelves. Selecting a small cocktail glass, he filled it with cherry brandy, then returned to his seat.

  “Your health,” he said, raising the glass to me.

  I smiled at him through the smoke.

  He drained his glass in one toss, then rose to refill it. The second shot he drank while standing, directing an intent gaze toward me. This time, he did not sit down but simply stood there, holding his empty glass and continuing to stare at me as if trying to decide something. Then his face took on a queasy pallor, but for his cheeks, which turned a mottled pink.

  “I know this was not part of our initial arrangement,” he stammered. “Might I suggest—”

  This was something new, I thought: Han Shu, uncertain. He crossed the room tentatively, and when he placed his hand on my bosom, his touch was tender. I closed my eyes, allowed the tender feeling to seep through me. I found myself drifting back, back to my London lodgings. Even in the seismic drift, I knew the association to be absurd: two people more different from each other surely did not exist on the entire planet. Robert, Han Shu. And yet, there was something about the way Han Shu was touching me that recalled how I’d felt with Robert—something about the way he entered me while still leaving me free to travel to my own private place. Spiraling into the confusion—losing myself as children do in dreams, as perhaps the dying do in their approach to the blinding, allhealing light—I held one flickering, changeling thought: It’s a terrible thing to be known, it’s a glorious thing to be known.

  A beautiful odd sound reached my ears through the cottony fog: a filigreed tinkle as angels might make.

  * * *

  We were lying together on the floor when I opened my eyes to the astonishing fact of Han Shu quietly sleeping in my arms, the girth of him suddenly not Power or Force as it had been, but an amorous plumpness, soft to the touch.

  His eyes snapped open. He sprang up, looked at me with bafflement, then averted his eyes, the look on his face turning opaque.

  “Christine, forgive me. I don’t know what came over me.”

  I rose, smoothed my dress, attempted to rearrange the lavender handkerchief into the decorative knot.

  “It’s just that I, well, ah—” Han Shu muttered, batting a hand at his mouth as if to coax out the right words. He clutched my hand. “A beautiful woman like you. And me, a man—”

  I smiled. Looking at Han Shu, I felt oddly happy, as though I had reclaimed some piece of myself that had gone missing.

  “Really, Han Shu. It’s all right.”

  He stood stiffly opposite me, a terse smile on his lips. I retrieved my purse from the floor, where I noticed the shards of porcelain scattered under the chair. The pipe, I thought. That had been the tinkling sound.

  “Well, good evening, my dear,” Han Shu said formally, as he escorted me across the room. “Until—the next time. And thank you again for your fine …” but he closed the door before he had finished, allowing the sentence to dangle.

  I stood there, staring at the door, aware of the rise of something in my chest, a surge of—what? Aliveness? Was that it? I glimpsed a new world—some undiscovered continent I’d known existed all along. The place I sensed was dark, unencumbered by civilization or law, a place that had long called out to me, perhaps all my life, in the fluid thin voices of Sirens—and I having strapped myself, one way or another, to the mast on the deck of the slow-moving unstoppable ship.

  Finally, this evening, I had wrenched myself free.

  “There are souls which need altering, if they are to come into their own,” Archibald announced as Barnaby sat down. “So often, I find, people don’t know what it is they want.”

  Archibald’s tiny eyes twinkled. “Actually, I introduced them. Meet your spiritual guide, I said. They both looked a bit perplexed, Han Shu and Christine, as if neither knew which of them I meant.”

  The waiter set down a plate of half shells.

  “Did I ever tell you about my theory of the North Star?” Archibald continued. “Well, I do believe the one will turn out to be the North Star of the other. I do love symmetry, don’t you?”

  Archibald’s new passion was oysters; it was miraculous that Harry, the restaurant owner, managed to keep up with Archibald’s culinary whims.

  “You see, Han Shu and I are masters of the hovering life within, to borrow a phrase. Christine is also a visionary of a sort; she and Han Shu are destined to play a key role in each other’s lives. Every imagination is only a fragment in need of its complement. Artists understand this. Until the artist has found his North Star—the transcendent counterpart that is to be his guide—he despairs, flounders in search of that something which has gone lost.

  “I know all too well what it is like. Oh—the heavenly hurrahs when you stumble upon it! It only seems like chance, my boy. Believe me, it is anything but. After all, that’s the only thing we have: imagination. Besides oysters!”

  Archibald picked up a shell and gently sucked the flesh from it. “I must ask you, while we are on the subject of finding one’s spiritual complement: how go things with Christine?”

  Barnaby hesitated. He was not in the habit of confiding in Archibald. And yet, he found himself feeling a level of desperation he’d not felt in years—perhaps ever.

  “I think I’ve lost her. I thought it was only temporary—that she would come to her senses, realize, after a month or so, what we really have together. I thought I’d just back off, let her taste her old life without me in it, and she’d know it wasn’t a satisfying life. Some breathing room, she said. So I let her be. I waited. One week. Then another.” Barnaby pulled out a white handkerchief and drew it across his brow.

  “Dear boy, I am sorry.” Archibald looked genuinely pained.

  “She’s disappeared. Clear disappeared.” Barnaby could hear the crack in his own voice. The look in Archibald’s face came as a shock: the depth of his sympathy and concern. “I went to her lodgings. She’s gone. That vile landlord of hers told me he sold her belongings weeks ago.”

  Archibald nodded somberly. “Destiny involves Darkness, there’s no getting around it. She is going where she needs to go, and there’s not a damn thing you or I can do about it. We’re neither of us a Virgil, I’m afraid. Which isn’t to say she won’t find one, further down the line.”

  He leaned across to Barnaby and whispered into his face: “There is always another side to consider. Let us not forget Coleridge. Where would English poetry be without ‘Kubla Khan’? And without the exquisite poppy—well, there simply wouldn’t have been any ‘Kubla Khan’ at all.”

  Archibald slid another oyster into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “There’s a brilliance to Christine,” he added. “You must have sensed it. She feels the pulse of the universe.”

  “I only know I have to find her,” Barnaby said.

  Archibald squinted meaningfully through the smoke of his cigar. “Destiny has to be thought through, Barnaby. It doesn’t descend like some ghostly visitation. I met a young man at the club, on my short trip home to London. Charming chap, frightfully good looking, half his luck. Made a killing on the stock market. Toward the end of the war, he devised an ingenious scheme. Something to do with mapping troop movements in the major theaters of war, deducing military tactics. He’d pour over newspapers while the ticker tape spewed from his machine. He was a refugee. Imagine. Arrived in England with nothing but the shirt on his back. A stowaway—that was the rumor. Sociable fellow, but get him on the subject of his background and he was tight as a clam. You’d never have suspected from the look of him, from the way he spoke, that he was anything but an Englishman. Thoroughbred.

  “That fellow—can’t think of his name now. There’ll be no thickets for him, come middle life. More like this—at the helm of a yacht on the Riviera. He’ll fill his chest with fresh, salty air, thinking, The past was the past; this is no
w. He decided upon his scheme and then saw it to its inevitable conclusion. Quite a project, really. To take that grimy war machine—how many thousands mown down at Normandy? Derelict buildings, bombed and deserted and crawling with rats—and make it grind out cold hard cash.”

  Archibald paused. “Come to think of it, Barnaby, where did you spend the war? I’ve heard so many of your stories but I can’t say I’ve ever heard you talk about your army days. You did have army days, how could you not? A strapping chap like yourself.”

  Barnaby sipped his drink but said nothing. It was just like Archibald to find the raw spot and put his finger on it. Did he sense Barnaby’s shame? At not having seen action, stuck, as he’d been throughout the war, on home soil, an officer in charge of supplies and requisitions shipped to the real fighting men at the front.

  “Let’s come back to that later; you must remind me.” Archibald chuckled. “Hats off to him. A refugee translating the war into the trappings of a good English life. A town house in London, a country estate, a full staff to manage it all. In the end, that’s the task: take what we’re given and turn it into a reflection of our own True Self.”

  Archibald stared distractedly forward. “I was still a young man, about your age, when I fashioned my own compass, for better or worse.” He cupped his elongated fingers as though now holding that very compass in his hand. “I pointed it straight ahead of me, and lo and behold! It guided me here, straight to the seething heart of the matter!”

  Barnaby set down his drink. He was beginning to find Archibald exasperating. “Archibald, I must ask you. As a friend. Do you have any idea where Christine is? Or how I could go about tracking her down?”

  Archibald shook his head sadly. “Christine has seized her destiny, my boy, whatever you or I might think of her journey.”