A Mind of Winter (3 page)

I smoothed the ripple of hair above my ear. Barnaby’s eyes followed the movement; their warmth felt like a caress.

“I have a quick errand to run,” I said quickly. “Why don’t you two get acquainted.”

I rose, lifting the hem of my dress, which I noticed was slightly frayed.

The corridor was almost completely dark; narrow glass shingles near the ceiling let in a greasy red glow. At the end of the hallway, by the front door, I recognized my contact, a thin Chinese man whose face was a plane of hard angles. Our business took barely a minute. Nodding curtly, the man left through the front door. He’d granted my request for an extension on the loan, but there was still the matter of finding fresh funds. I stood for a moment, alone, twisting my handkerchief in my hands, wondering how my savings, which had seemed so robust—surely enough to sustain me here for two years, possibly three—could have dwindled so rapidly. Archibald, I thought. He would help me figure out how to dig my way out of the mess I was in. I would visit him later at his hotel. Starting back down the corridor, I almost collided with Barnaby and hastily resumed my cheerful air.

“You will come with us, won’t you?” I said. “Stonehill’s a bit simple, but he’s awfully nice.”

“You’re in trouble, aren’t you,” Barnaby said.

“Don’t be a silly boy,” I replied brightly, linking my arm in his. “We’re going to have a wonderful evening. We’ll go to the American Bar and dance. I’ll take turns, though I can assure you that every moment I’m dancing with Red, I’ll be thinking of you.”

After a languid day spent with Barnaby, I readied myself for my nightly sortie to Han Shu’s café.

“Let’s give it a miss tonight,” Barnaby said. “I’m rather bored with the place.”

“You’re not going to give me reason to call you a stick-inthe-mud. You, of all people.”

Barnaby eyed me with uncharacteristic seriousness. “What do you see in a buffoon like Stonehill, anyway?”

I smiled. “Barnaby Harrington. I do believe you’re just the teensiest bit jealous.”

He smiled back. “Haven’t you heard? Life is painful, hard, and short.”

“Darling, that’s not how the saying goes,” I said.

“Well, I’ve got the short part right, and that’s my point. Life—time—it’s precious. Spend it with me. Don’t throw yourself away.”

He regretted his words immediately, I could see that; something in the air between us altered, like a sudden plunge in barometric pressure.

“There’s something else,” he said, unable to mask the darkness in his face.

“Yes?”

“You should stay away from Han Shu’s. It’s not good for you.”

I lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, turned to face him.

“Barnaby, dear. You stick to your pleasures, I’ll stick to mine.”

Archibald was at his usual table in the hotel bar, his giant belly like a lost, friendly sea creature perched in his lap. Barnaby slung his panama onto the hat rack and sat opposite his friend in a cushioned chair.

“Out late again last night, I presume?” Archibald’s small eyes glistened beneath bushy brows. “Official business? Or intrigues of another kind? Nothing that a thick bristle from the dog that bit you won’t fix.”

Barnaby tapped down a cigarette on the side table. “Decidedly
un
official. And a decidedly fiendish dog.”

Barnaby enjoyed his little tête-à-têtes with Archibald.

“The usual suspects?” Archibald inquired.

“And a new chum of Christine’s.”

Archibald nodded glumly. “Christine was here earlier. We both know she’s a woman of broad gifts. As it happens, though, I’m a mite worried about her. She seems to be having trouble—how can I put it?—staying afloat. I’m afraid there’s some disappointment on the horizon.”

Barnaby drew on his cigarette.

Archibald craned his neck in search of the waiter. “Damn it,” he said good-naturedly. “Never there when you need them.”

“What do you mean—about Christine?” Barnaby asked.

“I’ve noticed a change in her. Not sure I can put my finger on it. I do believe the Romantics were right when it came to the charms of women. Innocence and grace. Call me old-fashioned, but it’s all in the manner. Unadorned coyness, that’s the measure of a woman’s regard for her own worth.”

Archibald stroked his belly with tender concentration.

Barnaby knew the man’s penchant for drama, and sensed that this was all a springboard for the real story he wished to tell. At last a waiter arrived with their drinks. Barnaby took a few slow sips.

“Which brings me to something I’ve been meaning to chew over with you, Barnaby—of a personal nature. If I may be permitted to prevail on your generous attention.”

Barnaby raised his drink in a toast, and Archibald continued.

“Imagine, if you will, a country under siege. Wartime. Shanghai cowers under the yoke of occupation. And there you are, as worried as the next fellow about your weekly ration of noodles, hoping you might have a few shavings of pork.

“You spend the morning on your toilette, making the best of the wafer of shaving soap left at the bottom of the dish. You rub only three drops of oil into your whiskers. You notice the dirt gathering in the head of your walking cane, in the creases of the lion’s mane. You didn’t ask for this war and you’re none too happy about it.

“You head down to the water, breathing in the smell of the quay. It smells human: sweaty, unclean. It smells like a brothel. This makes you hungry. Dirty children crowd around; the pier is rotting, you can almost hear the termites gnashing their teeth. The children have sores on their faces and feet. Some of the girls have babies tied to their backs with rags. They slip their filthy little hands into your pockets. You pat their heads and wonder if you should worry about lice jumping onto your fingers.

“The junks are bobbing up and down. You step onto the deck of the fifth junk from the end of the pier, balancing yourself with your cane. There are boys and girls inside the junk too, you know that. They’re older, old enough to know about life. Their mothers sit on crates, arguing about something.

“Now, Barnaby, here’s the question. Are you responsible for what happens next? Are you a person making a choice, or simply a cork in the current of history, caught in the timeless web of human misery? Oh dear, I’m mixing my metaphors. Let me put it another way. Are you, in the end, no more than an instrument of the human urge to destroy?”

Barnaby was aware of a creeping discomfort. He squinted through the smoke at his friend, whose face was the picture of affability.

“I’ve always thought that destruction was a form of creation,” Archibald went on. “Take a fire. I don’t mean a bonfire or a small kitchen blaze. I’m talking a real forest fire, an out-of-control devouring beast of a fire. Splendid, I say. Nature’s sylph. Alive. Even if what it’s alive with is its own end.”

He laughed roundly then leaned forward, earnest, his voice falling to a whisper. “Have you ever seen a house burn, my boy? All the way to the ground?”

Archibald finished his drink in a swift gulp, then glanced impatiently around the room. Sighting the waiter at the bar, he held up his empty glass, his face almost vibrating with anticipation. “And a little something to nibble, if you wouldn’t mind!”

He turned back to Barnaby. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, the junk. I know you’re a fellow after adventure; heaven knows the stories I’ve heard you tell about Africa. Now here’s an admission. Never have had a bit of ebony. But I’m awfully fond of the smooth jade you can collect out here—quite a bargain too—and the tigereye. Up north, if you look hard enough, a nice long sliver of hematite. They’re taller in the northern villages, you probably know that. Thinner too. Still tender, though, if you catch them at the right age. But a nice smooth onyx for my collection—did I say onyx? I meant ebony. Never mind, it’s all the same.”

The idea of Archibald being sinister struck Barnaby as absurd. Then why the feeling of alarm? Barnaby let out a quick laugh to mask what he was feeling, then tried to relax into the soothing languor afforded by the drink: was this his second, or already his third?

The waiter set down a plate, and Archibald greedily eyed its contents: a dozen or more small pastry shells, each containing a shrimp smothered in creamy sauce. Delicately, he picked one up between forefinger and thumb and popped it into his small red mouth, which was set like a shiny bright egg in the nest of his whiskers.

Outside, the skies were clear; a brief respite from the rains. As I waited for Barnaby—how many months had it been, these trysts with Barnaby?—I felt the familiar stirrings of disaffection. When Barnaby rounded the corner, and I saw the eager set of his face, my spirits dampened further.

As I opened the door, I could feel his ardor spilling into the room, sucking up the oxygen. I tried to return his smile, gripped by a desire to flee. Not Barnaby—I’d thought things would be different with him. The wine did nothing to quell the panic, so I reached for the bourbon, trying to distract myself from the fact that we had no opium to smoke.

“Darling, what is it?” Barnaby asked with genuine concern. Then, playfully: “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I attempted to smooth the trouble from my face, puzzling over the tricks that feelings could play—little inner sprites that frolicked and squealed, then disappeared on a whim. I watched as Barnaby unpacked his satchel. He’d brought delicious morsels, as always, and whistled quietly as he set them out. Then, in a burst of cheer, he swept me into his arms and twirled me around. Around, around, the feel of his strength enfolding me, the room a sudden discombobulation.

“Barnaby,” I whispered, distress in my voice. “Put me down.”

He laughed. “Christine, you
are
wonderful.” His voice trembled with happiness.

He continued to spin me around; the room sped up. I threw back my head, fixed my eyes on the blur of the light, a sorry earthly comet, plummeting nowhere. No use, I thought, aware for a moment of a great, crashing sadness.

It was there, always: the fallen sun. I have loved once, only once, and unwisely, to say the least.

I thought of the thunderbolt, the way it had hit me, that first day, when Robert—before I knew anything about him, before I even knew his name—walked into my classroom along with the scraggly contingent of his fellow Internment Center residents.
He
was not scraggly—a misfit, rather, of dignified elegance, as if a case of mistaken identity had landed him someplace he did not belong. It was his carriage, and the intelligence and clarity that poured from his eyes. I knew in that moment that Robert and I would be lovers. I also knew something else, though I could not have known where it would lead, what this fact would come to mean (about him, about me): that Robert and I were two of a kind.

Barnaby was still twirling me. I wanted desperately for him to put me down.

“Christine,” Barnaby breathed.

It was already too late. No sadness now: only numbness, stillness, drought.

He came to a sudden halt; still holding me, he brought his lips close to mine.

“I love you, Christine. Did you know?”

“Barnaby. Put me down. Please.”

He gently set me down on the couch. I caught my breath, then reached for a cigarette.

“Let’s not fuss with the food,” I said, attempting nonchalance. “We can go out to the noodle house.”

Barnaby glanced at the items he’d lain out on the table: a handful of green beans, some sticks of dried beef, a bamboo box containing cold steamed rice, and two small, perfectly ripe mangoes.

“But it’s so much nicer here, just the two of us.”

I drew deeply on my cigarette. I was aware of the awful familiar restlessness in my feet, my legs, my arms: it took some effort to stop myself from fleeing the room.

“Barnaby, you know I’m not much of a homebody.”

He seemed finally to register that something was wrong; he approached the couch, knelt beside me.

“Darling,” he said, reaching down to stroke my hair. I carefully removed his hand, peered into his eyes, certain, suddenly, of what I must do.

“Maybe we just need a little air,” I said.

“But it’s muggy as hell out there.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what, Christine. What do you mean?”

“Breathing room. Perhaps we’ve been spending too much time together.”

“You can’t mean that.”

I said nothing. I gazed over at the mirror, stared at the tassels of the peacock-blue scarf; stirred by the overhead fan, they flared up like the hair of a running child.

“Why are you doing this?” Barnaby asked. “I don’t see the reason in it.”

His words seemed distant, as if his voice were echoing in my memory, rather than here, with me, in the room. When I turned to him, I was momentarily surprised to find that he was still there.

“It’s not about reason, Barnaby.”

“Then what?”

I looked at him—Barnaby flustered. Not the Barnaby I knew. And, bridling a little at my own callousness, not the Barnaby I wanted.

“Well,” I said, calm now, measuring my words, “if you must know, I’m not fond of being told that I’m wonderful.”

Barnaby looked like a child who’d been slapped. I ground out my cigarette in the alabaster ashtray on the side table, steeling myself.