by Shira Nayman
“We’re old friends, Archibald and I. There’s not much about him I don’t already know.”
Li was silent a moment. He seemed to be thinking something over. “Sometimes, he visits the junks,” he said finally.
Barnaby nodded. “Thanks.” He reached across and patted Li’s narrow shoulder before taking his leave.
The man in the red and gold flagged down a rickshaw and Barnaby climbed aboard. They skirted along Bubbling Well Road for a good mile, made the jog onto Nanking Road, and then took a sharp turn into a small unnamed street that wound toward the harbor. There was a pause in the rain and, for ten or fifteen minutes, the rickshaw man picked up speed. Then the rain came down again in sheets, spiking up from the pavement in hot, angry bursts. Through half-open doorways, Barnaby glimpsed distant figures: an old woman sprawled on a cot in the light of a candle; a group of men huddled around a table; a toddler at its mother’s breast.
The alleys became narrower and more difficult to negotiate. The rickshaw bounced roughly over stones and threatened to stall in places where the roadway had become soft patches of mud. Barnaby called out for the man to stop. He paid, dismounted, and continued on foot. The harbor, black and unsettled by the rains, sprang into view. He made his way to the curve where the junks were lined up by a section of wharf in a dismal state of disrepair.
Surveying the oddly shaped vessels, which bobbed before him in syncopated rhythms, Barnaby felt a vague feeling of dread. It had been some time since Archibald told him about his harbor visits, but with no other clue to go on, Barnaby counted to the fifth boat from the end of the pier. It was the largest of the junks and the most curious, seeming both hulking and fragile at the same time. A tent-shaped construction of corrugated metal, like the misshapen beak of a giant bird, had been affixed to the stern, and at the other end was an open deck, scattered with wooden barrels and crates. The junk’s middle consisted of several small chambers made up of old planks. As he got closer, Barnaby could see places where metal sheets had been soldered to join the little rooms together. He stepped onto the deck and through an uneven doorway hung with an old bedsheet.
Inside, he had to bow his head to keep from banging against the ceiling. The space was filled with the sound of voices, but it was a moment before he could make out the two women sitting on crates in the corner. A kerosene lamp, spewing black fumes, blinked ineffectually on the floor. Barnaby was about to speak when one of the women, without interrupting her conversation, motioned toward another crude doorway, also hung with a faded sheet, and Barnaby stooped still lower to pass through this. He found himself in another chamber, with two more women, and again fumes from a kerosene lamp. Passing through the third doorway, he was relieved to discover a larger room, which accommodated his full height—and no sputtering lamp. What light there was here was moonlight, which entered through slits punched out at the top of one metal-sheeted wall.
Feeling a tug on the hem of his jacket, Barnaby looked down to see a little girl with a toothy smile.
“Hey, mister,” she said easily in English, pointing across the room to where a group of children crouched against the wall, engaged in some kind of game. She was wearing a garment that was clearly too large for her, holding the skirt with one hand to keep it from dragging on the floor. The deep scoop of the neckline revealed her thin and undeveloped chest.
“Choose, mister, any one yours.”
He heard the sound of tiny claws scratching against wood, and from where the children were playing, the clack clack of tiles being flipped.
“We clean girls,” she said, lifting the hem of her dress to show a pair of spindly legs and a smooth white groin. Barnaby gently lowered the fabric and hunkered down on his haunches.
“Archibald,” he said quietly to the girl. “I’m looking for Archibald.”
The girl nodded, eyes bright with a child’s desire to please, and pointed a grubby finger in the direction of yet another doorway, this one hung with a piece of rough cloth. Barnaby patted her hand.
Beyond the rough curtain, the room was in almost complete darkness, but for a single taper burned down to a stump, which sat waist-high in a hollow in the wall. In the middle of the floor was a mammoth dark shape, moving and thumping against the boards and emitting a horrible low bark. It was a man. From the floor, the white sphere of a face turned toward Barnaby.
“Why Barnaby, is that you?” he heard Archibald’s voice say. “Well, fancy … I’m sorry to be, ah, indisposed right at the moment.”
Another pause. Beneath Archibald’s bulk, the owner of the face: a small girl, pressed flat against the floorboards. Barnaby’s eyes had adjusted to the dark and now he could see that she, too, was wearing one of the oversized dresses, carefully unbuttoned and splayed around her like a butterfly’s torn cocoon.
Barnaby felt paralyzed, but before he could decide what to do next, he heard Archibald say something to the girl in a soothing voice. There was a commotion of clattering as Archibald rose, with the help of his cane, to his feet. Barnaby looked away.
“I’ve come back to my little dears,” Archibald said, fastening his pants as he approached Barnaby. “Ah, but then, you don’t know how I’ve neglected them of late.”
“I’m looking for Christine,” Barnaby responded tersely. “Li seems to think you know where she is.”
“Christine,” Archibald said sadly. “Now there’s another story. And, strangely enough, not altogether unrelated to the terrible misfortune that has befallen me.” Archibald came closer. He took Barnaby’s arm and peered at him morbidly. “It’s all gone. Everything I’ve worked for, for so long. Collapsed. Destroyed. Burned to the ground.”
“Christine, where is she?” Barnaby asked harshly.
“Now, now, we’ve been over this before.”
“Where, Archibald.”
“No need to get short. Are not manners the touchstone of civilization?” He took a white silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his fingers carefully, one at a time. “Now where were we? Oh yes, you were asking about Christine.” He frowned. “As it happens, I’ve only just seen her. And not, I’m afraid, under very favorable circumstances. It’s all linked up, her misfortune and my own. Dear boy, never have I suffered so great a disappointment. My scheme was well underway, with only the final details to be put into place. But Han Shu has pulled the rug out from under my feet. He may speak the King’s English but I’ll be damned if he knows a thing about being a gentleman!”
Archibald reddened and a few fat tears made their way down his cheeks.
“Christine,” Barnaby said coldly. “What about Christine?”
“I was getting to that, Barnaby. Honestly, if we weren’t such dear friends, I’d suspect you had no heart at all. Christine.” Archibald let out a deep, deflating sigh. “Who knew she’d turn out to be nothing more than your poor little swallow who should long since have flown to Egypt? You do know the story of the Little Prince—the statue, who relied on the swallow to be his eyes, to fly forth and harvest real experience for him. He kept her so long from her instinctual migration that the bitter winter killed her. It was the Nile the little bird longed for; nothing festers there, not by those waters. Brings to mind Palestine, the holy hush of ancient sacrifice, the porch of spirits lingering, the grave of Jesus where he lay …”
Archibald perched for a moment on tiptoe, the wide globe of his belly tipping down, and peered through one of the slits that looked out onto the black waters of the harbor.
“I suppose she did head northward after all. Though not to any limpid destination. Perhaps I must take some portion of the blame. But then, is one man ever really responsible for another’s destiny?”
Barnaby tapped his foot impatiently.
“Yes, yes, dear fellow,” Archibald sighed. “I’ve not forgotten you. You want to know about Christine. Well, she has been in Han Shu’s employ. Schoolmistress, I believe. At his other establishment. You do know about Manor House, don’t you? The very same place I met my princess. Who was to have been Lady of my Oxfo
rdshire estate …”
Archibald wiped at his eyes with a fresh white handkerchief. “The passage to England booked—first class. The inaugural visit: Ma Ling’s exposure to the height of English society. He wants to take it all away, Barnaby, right when I have it in the palm of my hand.”
He reached outstretched fingers toward Barnaby, his face a pitiful mask. “I have seized my North Star,” he whispered, tears sliding down and settling in his whiskers. “I can feel its tender little points up against my skin,” and he closed his fist on the air as if it were something, rather than nothing.
“I will get her back,” he went on. “Han Shu has not seen the last of me, I can assure you of that.”
When Barnaby spoke again, the coldness was gone from his voice: “Tell me how to get there. I’m really worried about her.”
“And right you are to be worried …” The pinkness faded from Archibald’s cheeks, and a vaguely sinister gleam appeared in his eyes. “Dear boy, you don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“About Christine.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“She’s not like us, Barnaby. She doesn’t traffic in love. At least, not love for other people.” Archibald came close, whispered hotly into Barnaby’s face: “Christine’s not a woman of human passions. She wants to go to the Sirens. But I’ve told you all that already.”
Archibald squinted in the way he had that made his eyes disappear. “She’s willing to sacrifice her life for it. Isn’t that simply marvelous? I mean, from a philosophical point of view. It’s a splendid gift to the more fearful among us. The amateurs—that includes you and me, I’m afraid, Barnaby—those of us without the courage, let’s face it, without the force of character, the true spirit of adventure to really follow Truth to its ultimate source or endpoint. You realize, of course, that they’re one and the same? Origin, destination: endings, beginnings. A great coiling serpent eating its own tail, swallowing itself up as it spits itself out.
“True, she was partly to blame for my misfortune.” Archibald’s eyes popped back to full size; they glistened, uncannily, far away and close up at the same time. “But I have to say, I admire the hell out of her.”
Barnaby had to restrain himself from grabbing the fat man and wringing his neck. “Archibald, please.”
Archibald seemed suddenly to realize something. His face became tender. “But you didn’t know how it would turn out. I’m sorry, Barnaby, truly I am. I thought—foolishly, I now see—that you were up for it. I didn’t factor in that you might actually get snagged.”
He crept back a few steps, then peered at Barnaby through the murky, airless space. “I’ll let you in on the truth. Perhaps it will make it easier for you.”
Barnaby felt a rise of panic.
“She’s Eve,” Archibald hissed. “Pure and simple. She set out to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and eat she did. A big robust bite of Human Truth.”
After a moment’s silence, he mumbled, as if to himself: “I’d just as soon overlook the position that puts me in.”
Barnaby could hear Archibald’s shallow, wheezing breath.
“It wasn’t Eve’s fault. The English language got all tangled in itself, fashioning the word Evil from Eve’s name. It is, in the end, the innocent who must be flung from the garden. It takes rigorous calculation to avoid that fate, to figure out a way to remain ensconced. And that—calculation—is precisely the measure of what the innocent lack.”
In the thick, dank space of the junk, Barnaby was finding it hard to breathe.
“The address, Archibald. Tell me how to get there.”
Archibald backed away further, tiny careful steps on his small, well-shod feet.
“I’m sorry, Barnaby. I see now that this is out of the question. Far be it for me to interfere, to upset the planets in their orbs. It is as it is, each journey is fated.”
Archibald’s voice faded, the footsteps suddenly a rapid retreat. The misshapen space offered up one final rancid whisper: “Written in the stars. Your journey too, my friend. It might as well have all happened already.”
“She’s gone. Ma Ling. Her books, her clothes. Gone.”
Han Shu had not bothered to knock. I tried to shake the muddy half-sleep away. My watch told me it was five o’clock in the morning.
“Christine—have you forgotten our plans? My hope for Manor House? For our future?”
Han Shu was wearing a newly laundered tuxedo with a starched white shirt and he smelled, as always, of floral-musk cologne.
“We have to find her.” His voice was strangely sweet, the way one talks to a child to whom one is promising a treat. He leaned down to the bed and took my chin in his hand.
“You were right, when you said that Ma Ling is not a goat. But let’s be frank. Like a goat, she is worth something. To me and to others. To you too, if you consider where your livelihood comes from. I’ll find someone else to take her over, I can promise you that. There will be others willing to pay even more than that scoundrel has been paying.”
Han Shu patted my cheek. “Let us salvage my dreams—dare I say, our dreams? Let us do it together. You found Ma Ling—you can find her again. She trusts you. I have complete faith that you can bring her back.”
I pulled myself up from my cot. I looked at Han Shu. Through the mud in my brain I could see it, something I’d not seen before in his face. Wistfulness.
I nodded. “Yes, Han Shu. I’m sorry, I—”
He took me into his arms. I allowed myself to be held, aware of the useless, fleshless feel of my limbs.
At this hour, the bay was a conspiracy of silence. Old boats rocked on the water, oozing decay into the depths. Ma Ling had never spoken to me of any family, but for a handful of ever-less-valuable paper currency, one of the girls had told me where I might find a relative of Ma Ling’s, a distant cousin. I walked around the bay, surveying the lean-tos across from the water—haphazard structures of old board and corrugated tin. Even from that distance, I could see where heat and rain had caused the paint to hang in ragged strips.
I ducked into an alley, rehearsing in my mind the landmarks the girl had described to help me find my way: a blue shack, wire chicken coops, a rickshaw chained to a fence. The drizzle turned to rain. My throat burned for want of smoke.
The further I went inland, away from the lights of the bay, the darker it became. Wire chicken coops, I said to myself. Six of them tied together with twine, beside a blue shack. My eyes scanned from side to side. The sound of chirps, I thought: that would be a signal. But no, at this hour, the chickens were probably asleep.
A man appeared in my path. “Chicken coops,” I said in Chinese. “I’m looking for six chicken coops.”
The man laughed, drew twice on the stub of a foul-smelling cigarette and tossed the butt onto the street. “I’ll find you some chicken coops,” he said, taking me by the arm.
He walked briskly; I stumbled on the hem of my dress. A gentle rain fell.
One alleyway led into another. I started to think we were going in circles; everything had begun to look the same.
“A blue house,” I mumbled.
Again, the man laughed. I was feeling dizzy, and paused to regain my balance. The man waited at my side.
“Smoke. Do you have any smoke?” I asked.
“Sure,” the man said in English. “Chicken coops and smoke. I have them both.”
I put out my hand, hoping he would set a pipe in it, but the man just tapped my palm lightly in the rhythm of a waltz, one two three, one two three.
“We’re almost there,” he said, pulling me back into motion by the arm.
We must have been moving even further inland, for it got darker and darker until I could no longer see more than six feet in front of me. As I walked, my sodden dress flapped against my thighs.
“We’re here,” the man finally said. I had already forgotten about the chicken coops, so it didn’t much matter that there wasn’t a coil of wire in sight. I stood s
hivering at the man’s side, my hair dripping onto my shoulders.
After the blackness of the wet night, the candlelight inside hurt my eyes. I stumbled alongside the man through a hallway, listening to the simultaneous creaking of the floorboards underfoot and the wet slapping of our shoes. Through a doorway, an old woman shrieked something to the man, who shouted something back in a hoarse, disgruntled voice. We climbed a narrow staircase with no railing. One thought only pierced the dense static of my mind. Light, I thought. Yellow afternoon light splashing through green leaves onto a polished floor, static to the eye but slowly moving, like the fugitive and determined motion of a planet. The thick, heavy warmth of the sun through a pane of glass. And music floating in from another room.
“A pipe,” I said almost desperately. This man was as good as any, I thought. He would give me a pipe. “Do you have a pipe?”
I looked at his eyes, at the water streaming from his hair, at the pixielike triangle of his jaw. He was not a cruel man, I could see that. He shook his head.
“No pipe,” he said apologetically, leading me to a cot in a corner of the room. “I’m sorry, I have no pipe.”
I lowered myself onto the cot. It was made of wood and had no mattress or padding of any kind, covered only by a worn sheet. The man fumbled in a box by the bed, then withdrew a roughly rolled cigarette like the one he had been smoking earlier. He placed it between my lips.
The sound of male voices and clacking tiles suddenly filled the room, followed by a wedge of wavering candlelight that angled onto the ceiling. One voice rose above the rest: a flat voice. But I could not quite hear what it was saying.
I knew it was no good. I would never find Ma Ling. Perhaps I could find another child to bring back to Han Shu who would take the girl’s place.
The flat voice grew louder. I watched the shadow of a man move in the candlelight along the wall. When it came to a stop immediately beside me, I turned my head and found myself looking into a face with pasty white skin and deep pockmarks. The owner of the flat voice. He repeated whatever it was he had said before. I heard a door slam. The room lurched, I lurched, the hard palette beneath me lurched. And in all the motion, a memory of Ma Ling, seated before her art deco dressing table (it had arrived not long after the first crate of books), pulling a comb through her dark hair. I sit on the bed, watching the fluid movement of the girl’s arms. Ma Ling wears a pure linen dress that reaches to mid-calf and is bordered at hem and throat with Irish lace.
