She was crying again.
After a while, Yoyo’s supply of tears was exhausted. Joanna cleaned her brushes in turpentine. Over the glass surfaces of the pagoda roof, the sky was working its way through every shade of grey in preparation for the evening.
‘So how did it go? Well?’
Yoyo sniffed and shook her head.
‘It must have gone well,’ Joanna decided. ‘You screamed at each other, and you cried. That’s good.’
‘You think?’
Joanna turned to her and smiled. ‘Well, it’s certainly better than him swallowing his own tongue and talking to the walls at night.’
‘I shouldn’t have lied to him like that,’ said Yoyo and coughed, her airways blocked from all the crying. ‘I hurt him. You should have seen him.’
‘Nonsense, sweetheart. You didn’t hurt him. You told him the truth.’
‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’
‘No, you’re getting confused. You’re acting as though speaking frankly were some huge moral issue. If you tell the truth, you’re one of the good guys. How it’s received is a different matter, but that’s what psychiatrists are for. There’s nothing more you can do to help your father bite the bullet.’
‘To be honest, I’ve got no idea what I’m supposed to do now.’
‘I do.’ Joanna stretched out her slim fingers, one after another. ‘Run yourself a bath, go a few rounds with the punch bag, go shopping. Spend money. Lots of money.’
Yoyo rubbed her elbows. ‘I’m not you, Joanna.’
‘No one suggested you take off and buy a Rolls-Royce. I want you to understand the principles of cause and effect. The truth is a good thing, even if it can be unpleasant at times. And if it is unpleasant, it strengthens the body’s defences.’
‘And did it strengthen Owen’s defences?’
Joanna held a thick paintbrush up to the light and fanned the bristles out with her fingernail.
‘Tian told me that you were together,’ Yoyo added quickly. ‘Before you got married.’
‘Yes, we were together.’
‘Okay. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’
‘It’s fine.’ She put the paintbrush down and gave her a beaming smile. ‘We had a great time.’
‘So why did you break up? I mean, he’s a really nice guy.’
Yoyo was surprised by her own words. Did she think Owen Jericho was nice? So far he had only come up in connection with firearms, death and severe bodily harm. On the other hand, he had saved her life. Do you automatically think someone is nice because they save your life?
‘Relationships are contracts that can be terminated at any time, my dear,’ said Joanna, picking up the second brush. ‘Without notice. You don’t quit sexual relations six weeks before the end of the quarter. If it’s not working any more, you have to go.’
‘And what wasn’t working?’
‘Everything. The Owen who came with me to Shanghai bore no resemblance to the one I had met in London.’
‘You were in London?’
‘Is this an interview?’ Joanna raised her eyebrows. ‘If it is I’d like to see the article for authorisation later.’
‘No, I’m genuinely interested. I mean, we haven’t known each other for that long, right? You and Tian, you’ve been together now for – how many years?’
‘Four.’
‘Exactly. And we haven’t had much of a chance to talk.’
‘Woman to woman, you mean?’
‘No, not all that rubbish, it’s just, I’ve known Tian for ever, my whole life, but you—’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’ Joanna smirked mockingly. ‘And now you’re worried about good old Tian, because you can’t imagine what a beautiful and spoilt woman would want from a bald-headed, sloppy, overweight old sack who, despite having money coming out of his ears, still fixes his glasses with sticky-tape and wears the seat of his trousers around the backs of his knees.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ replied Yoyo angrily.
‘But you thought it. And so did Owen. Fine, I’ll tell you a story. It’s a lesson about the economics of love. It begins in London, where I moved in 2017 to study English Literature, Western Art and Painting; something for which you need to be either crazy, an idealist or from a rich background. My father was Pan Zemin—’
‘The Environment Minister?’
‘Deputy Environment Minister.’
‘Hey!’ cried Yoyo. ‘We always admired your father.’
‘He’d have liked that.’
‘He publicly addressed a number of problems.’ Warming enthusiasm flooded through Yoyo. ‘He was really brave. And the way he pushed to put more money into solar research, to increase the energy yield—’
‘Yes, generally speaking he was pretty salubrious,’ said Joanna drily, ‘but it didn’t hurt that one of the companies which made the breakthrough belonged to him. As I said, crazy, idealistic or from a rich background. In London, the Chinese community had long since outgrown Gerrard Street by then. There were a lot of good clubs in Soho that were popular with Chinese and Europeans. I met Owen in one of them. That was 2019, and I liked him. Oh, I liked him a lot!’
‘Yes, well, he’s very good-looking.’
‘He’s easy on the eye, let’s say. But the great thing about him wasn’t the way he looked, but the fact that he wasn’t afraid of me. It was awful, how all the men were instantly afraid of me: such losers; I used to eat them for breakfast.’ She smiled maliciously and twirled another brush through the turpentine. ‘But Owen seemed determined not to let himself be influenced by my undeniably dazzling looks or my financial independence, and for two whole hours he managed not to look at my tits. That spoke volumes. He also respected my intelligence; I could tell by the way he contradicted me. He was a cyber-cop at Scotland Yard, where they don’t exactly shower you in gold, but then I wasn’t interested in money. Owen could have slept under London Bridge and I would have lain down next to him.’ She paused. ‘Well, let’s say I would have bought it and then lain down. We were very much in love.’
‘So how could that go wrong?’
‘Yes, how?’ Joanna gave a melodious little sigh. ‘In 2020, my father suffered a stroke and was considerate enough not to wake up again. He left behind a respectable fortune, a wife whose patience had been tested and who endured his passing as unquestioningly as she had endured him, and also three children, of whom I am the eldest. Mum was often lonely, and with the unhoped-for inheritance I’d just received, I felt there was no need for me to keep clogging up the lecture theatres in London. So I decided to go back. I asked Owen what he thought of us moving to Shanghai, and he said, without giving it much thought: Sure, let’s move to Shanghai. And you know, that was strange in itself.’
‘Why? That was exactly what you wanted.’
‘Of course, but he didn’t have even the slightest objection. And we’d only been together for half a year. But that’s the problem. If men do what you tell them to, they’re suspect, and if they oppose us we think they’re ridiculous. Back then I thought, well, it’s because he loves me so much, which was a good thing in itself, because as long as he loved me, he would only betray himself and not me. But back then I was already beginning to ask myself which one of us loved the other more.’
‘And he loved you too much.’
‘No, he loved himself too little. But I only realised that after we arrived in Shanghai. To start with, everything was great. He knew his way around, liked the city, and had been there numerous times during bilateral investigations. At New Scotland Yard he was a kind of in-house Sinologist, and I should mention that Owen doesn’t learn languages laboriously like other people do; he simply swallows them down and then brings them back up in well-worded formulations. I suggested he take a job with the Shanghai Department for Cybercrime, because they already knew and valued him there—’
‘Cypol,’ snorted Yoyo.
‘Yes, your good friends. We moved into an apartment in Pudong
and planned a lifetime of happiness. And that’s when it started. Little things. His gaze started to waver when he spoke to me. He started to suck up to me. Sure, we were living in my country, meeting my people, including politicians, intellectuals and all kinds of representatives of society, every one of whom sucked up to me. In my circle, greatness is the result of the degradation of others, but Owen’s knees became weaker and weaker. His wonderful self-confidence melted like butter in the sun, he seemed to degenerate, get pimples again, and after a while he asked me, full of timidity, if I loved him. I was totally gobsmacked! It was like he’d just asked me, right in front of a bright blue sky, if the sun was shining.’
‘Perhaps he sensed you didn’t love him as much as you had before.’
‘It’s the other way around, sweetheart. The doubts came with the doubter. Owen didn’t have the slightest reason to mistrust me, even though he probably thought he did. He had stopped trusting himself; that was the problem! You can only fall in love when you’re on an equal standing, but if your partner is bowed over in front of you, you have no choice but to look down on him.’
‘Did he get jealous?’
‘Jealousy’s such an ugly addiction. Nothing makes you smaller or less attractive.’ Joanna walked over to an open store cupboard, in which dozens of tubes lay next to one another. ‘Yes, he did. He was possessed by some old insecurity. Our relationship lost its equilibrium. I’m a positive person, sweetie, and I don’t know how to be any other way, which meant that next to me Owen looked increasingly like a pot plant someone had forgotten to water. My optimism left him to wither. The worse he felt, the more I enjoyed my life, or that’s what he thought anyway. That was complete nonsense of course! I had always enjoyed life, but before that we used to enjoy it together.’ She took out a tube of vermilion and squeezed a small splodge of it onto a palette. ‘I left him so that he could finally find himself.’
‘How considerate of you,’ scoffed Yoyo.
‘I know how you see it.’ Joanna paused for a second. ‘But you’re wrong. I could have grown old with him. But Owen had lost his faith. The world is an illusion; everything is an illusion, love intrinsically so. If you stop believing in it, it disappears. If you stop feeling, the sun becomes just a blob and flowers become brambles. That’s the whole story.’
Yoyo padded over to a footstool and sank down onto it.
‘You know what?’ she said. ‘I feel sorry for him.’
‘Who?’
‘Owen, of course!’
‘Tsk, tsk.’ Joanna shook her head disapprovingly. ‘How rude, I thought you would grant him a little more respect. Owen is talented, intelligent, charming, attractive. He could be anything he wants to be; everyone knows that. Everyone except him.’
‘He probably believed it for a while. Back in London.’
‘Yes, because of the sheer surprise that things were working out with us he temporarily forgot to be a pathetic little jerk.’
Yoyo stared at her. ‘Tell me, are you really this heartless, or are you just pretending to be?’
‘I’m honest and I try not to be corny. What do you want? Sentimentality? Then go to the movies.’
‘Fine. So what happened next?’
‘He moved out right away of course. I offered to support him, but he turned it down. After a few months he chucked his job in, purely because I had got it for him.’
‘Why didn’t he go back to England?’
‘You’d have to ask him that yourself.’
‘You never spoke about it?’
‘We kept in touch, sure. There were just a few weeks when we didn’t talk, a time during which I fell in love with Tian, whom I had already met at a number of parties. When Owen found out we were seeing each other his entire world-view collapsed.’ Joanna looked at Yoyo. ‘And yet I don’t care how old, fat or bald a man is. None of that matters. Tian is genuine, honest and straightforward, and I sure as hell value that! A fighter, a rock. Quick-witted, educated, liberal—’
‘—rich,’ completed Yoyo.
‘I was rich already. Of course I liked the fact that Tian was looking for a challenge, that he was achieving success after success. But when it comes down to it there’s nothing he can do that Owen wouldn’t be able to do too. Except that Tian’s existence is shaped by an almost unshakable belief in himself. He thinks he’s beautiful and that makes him beautiful. That’s why I love him.’
Joanna’s story had begun to have a pleasantly numbing effect on Yoyo. She suddenly realised that she could breathe more easily when other people’s problems were the topic of conversation. At the very least it was good to know that other people had problems. Even if they could have done with being just a little bit bigger to fully distract her from the morning’s events.
‘And what happened with Owen after that?’ she asked.
Joanna turned her attentions to the oily strand on her palette and stirred it into a crème with a pointed paintbrush.
‘Ask him,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I’ve told my story. I’m not responsible for his.’
Yoyo slid indecisively back and forth in her seat. She didn’t like Joanna’s unexpected uncommunicativeness. She decided to press her, but just at that moment Tu came into the studio.
‘There you are!’ he said to Yoyo, as if she were obliged to let him know where she was at all times.
‘Has something happened?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Owen’s been working hard. Come with me to the office – it looks like he’s found out a whole load of stuff.’
Yoyo got up and looked over to Joanna. ‘Are you coming?’
Joanna smiled. Vermilion dripped down from the tip of her paintbrush like old, noble blood. ‘No, sweetheart, you go ahead. I’d only ask stupid questions.’
* * *
At 19.20 hours, Tu, Jericho and Yoyo immersed themselves in the beauty of the Swiss Alps. A 3D film was playing in large format on Tu’s multimedia wall. It showed a cable car rising up from a picturesque little town and heading towards a neat alpine pasture, over ravines and forests of fir trees. A low, classic-looking building came into view. The Spanish commentator lauded it as one of the first designer hotels in the Alps, praising the rooms for their comfort and the kitchen for its dumplings, before heading off to accompany a group of hikers across a meadow. Cows plodded over curiously. A pretty city girl watched them approach with scepticism, started walking quickly then broke into a run towards the valley, where two donkeys came shuffling out of their shed, grey and tired, and herded her back towards the cows. Some of the hikers laughed. The next scene showed a farmer kicking one of the cows up the backside.
‘Up here, traditions are still quite coarse and primordial,’ explained the Spanish commentator in the tone of some behavioural scientist who has just discovered that chimpanzees aren’t that intelligent after all.
‘Well, this is great,’ said Yoyo.
Neither she nor Tu spoke Spanish, but that didn’t matter. Jericho stubbornly let the film play on, champing at the bit for his big moment.
‘I don’t need to explain to either of you how a film like this is developed,’ he said. ‘And you both know about watermarks too. So—’
‘Excuse me,’ said someone from the door.
They turned round. Chen Hongbing had come in. He paused, hesitantly took a step towards them and straightened himself up.
‘I don’t want to interrupt. I just wanted to—’
‘Hongbing,’ Tu hurried over to his friend and put his arm around his shoulder. ‘How lovely that you’re here.’
‘Well.’ Hongbing cleared his throat. ‘I thought, we should make them smart, shouldn’t we? Not for my sake, but—’ He went over to Yoyo, looked at her and then away again, looked around at the others, massaged the tip of his chin and waved his hands around indecisively. Yoyo stared up at him, confused. ‘So, the thing is, I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know what, may I ask?’ Jericho asked cautiously. Chen gestured vaguely towards the film playing on
the screen.
‘How something like that is developed. A, erm – watermark.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘But I don’t want to hold you up, don’t worry. I just wanted to be here too.’
‘You’re not holding us up, Father,’ said Yoyo softly.
Chen snuffled, let out a whole cascade of throat-clearing noises, and mumbled something incomprehensible. Then he took Yoyo’s hand, gave it a brief, firm squeeze and let it go again.
Yoyo’s eyes started to shine.
‘No problem, honourable Chen,’ said Jericho. ‘Have the others brought you up to date with what we know?’
‘Chen, just call me Chen. Yes, I know about the – the garbled report.’
‘Good. We didn’t have much more than that until just now. Just a hunch that there must be something else in the films.’ He wondered how he could make all of this comprehensible to Chen. When it came to technology, the man was endearingly clueless. ‘You see, it’s like this: every data stream is made up of data packages. Try imagining a swarm of bees, several million bees of different colours, who keep rearranging themselves in new ways so that your eyes see moving pictures. And now imagine that some of these bees are encoded. In a way that isn’t visible to the viewer. But if you have a special algorithm—’
‘Algorithm?’
‘A mask, a decoding process. It lets you block out all of the non-encoded bees. Only the encoded ones stay. And suddenly you realise that they represent something too. You see a film within a film. That’s called an electronic watermark. It’s not a new process: at the beginning of the millennium it was used to encode films and songs when the entertainment industry was fighting against pirate copiers. It was enough to make just a small adjustment in the frequency spectrum of a song. The human ear can’t tell the difference, but it enabled the computer to investigate the origin of the CD.’ He paused. ‘Today, the difference is this: the old internet mapped the data streams two-dimensionally, whereas nowadays the internet is construed for three-dimensional content. These kinds, of data streams have to be pictured cubically, which offers much better opportunities for hosting complex watermarks. Although, admittedly, decoding has become equally complex.’
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