Crooked Hearts (22 page)

So here she was in the damp, drafty, not very clean cellar, moving down a narrow stone corridor, trying not to touch the sooty wall on her right or the swinging arm of her peculiar host on her left. At a turn in the corridor, a door stood half open. She caught a glimpse of two men laboring inside, pushing wooden casks around and stacking them against the walls. Wing’s firm hand on her elbow got her moving again, at the same instant she remembered when and where she’d seen wooden chests just like those: three nights ago, on the sidewalk outside the opium parlor, being loaded through a trapdoor into the cellar. Did that mean Wing stored the drug for his own dens right here? Right in his own basement?

They came to a closed door, illuminated by a shuttered lantern hanging from the ceiling. Wing withdrew a key from the pocket of his conservative black frock coat, unlocked the door, and threw it open.

“Oh, my,” Grace breathed, a reaction that seemed to please him immensely.

He spread out his arms. “Thiss—thiss is my gallery,” he said, his creepy whisper echoing strangely in the enormous room. “Welcome, Miss Ssmith.” His voice went even lower; he clasped his hands and screwed up his face, like a hungry beggar. “Or … Augustine? May I call thee Augustine?”

“Sure,” she said, distracted.

He crossed his wrists over his heart and bowed low. “My thanks,” he whispered fervently.

“Don’t mention it.” She turned away from his unnerving ardor to gaze around the room. It really was a gallery, as high, wide, and opulently furnished as any of the exhibition rooms she’d seen in the San Francisco Museum of Art. The walls were of dark oak paneling, not damp stone; the carpet on the floor was a thick, breathtaking Oriental; discreet gas lights on the walls and ceiling created the illusion of natural light. Even the air was sweeter here than in the musty basement corridor they’d just left. Watercolor paintings, scrolls, and silk screens covered three of the paneled walls, and long glass cases full of sculpture and ceramics lined the fourth. A sound like plucked harp strings was coming from behind a tall painted screen. Grace sent Wing a questioning glance. “For thy enjoyment,” he simpered, with another theatrical hand wave. Stepping sideways, she saw that behind the screen sat a young girl in a red satin gown, playing a pear-shaped instrument vaguely resembling a lute. If this was a seduction, it was having the opposite effect on Grace, who had an almost overwhelming urge to giggle. Wouldn’t Reuben love this when she told him?

“Ah, you are drawn to the paintings, I see.” He sidled closer, and she realized she was staring at a watercolor drawing of a robed man with a long goatee and a topknot. “As works of art, paintings satisfy the Western aesthetic more readily than sculpture or ceramics, do you agree? That is a portrait of Li Po, our greatest poet. It’s not very old, only five hundred years or so. Liang K’ai is believed to be the artist.”

“One of my favorites.”

“Indeed?” He looked charmed. “Thiss, Augustine.” He moved to a bust on a pedestal in the middle of the room. “She is also a bodisattva—an angel, if you will, of mercy and kindness. The phissical resemblance is not as marked as with the small statue I offered thee yessterday,” he said with gentle reproach, “but the spirit of selflessness and generossity is the same. Dost thou not see it?”

“You bet.” What was this “Dost thou not” business?

He pulled something from his pocket. “Take this.”

She reached out automatically. “What is it?”

“A simple piece of jade. Touch it, Augustine. The purity of the form, its cool smoothness, the extreme simplissity—they lift the soul in a kind of ecstasy, beyond the world of appearances. Do you feel it? Do you know that you and I are the same?”

“Beg pardon?”

“The universal essence, the oneness, the unity of all things. Within the One, differences are only illusions of the senses. Thou, Augustine, and I: we are one and the same.”

She dropped the lump of jade back into his palm. “That’s an interesting philosophy, Mr. Wing. I’ll give it some thought, but right now I think I’d better be running along.”

He hung his head. Heavy white hair slithered over his shoulders, curtaining the sides of his face. The plunking music stopped; Grace heard rustling behind the screen, and a moment later the girl in the red dress came toward them, bearing an ebony tray. Two lotus-shaped bowls full of some dark red liquid rested on the tray. Wing took one of the bowls and handed it to Grace—”Oh, no, one’s my limit,” she tried to say, but he pressed it into her hands firmly—and took the other for himself. The servant bowed and retreated behind the screen.

“Thiss is my final oblation,” Wing hissed sorrowfully. “I fear thou and I shall never meet again.” He raised his cup to her, a sad, beseeching look in his eyes.

I’ll drink to that, thought Grace, and downed hers in three swallows. The cool, sweet liquid was delicious, and tasted more like fruit than alcohol—which she guessed meant Wing had given up on seducing her. He had his peculiarities, no doubt about that, but he also had some undeniable good points. Generosity, for example. And let’s not forget urbanity. He wasn’t all that bad to look at, either. She smiled to herself, thinking he was starting to sound like one of Reuben’s wines—”Suave and attractive, with a big heart.”

“Hm?” Wing intoned, moving in closer.

Good Lord, had she said that
out loud?
This,” she clarified hastily, waving her lotus leaf at him. “What is it?”

“Rice wine.”

“Really?”

“In China we have an expression—to drink rice wine together. It means to become friends. Companions.”

“Sweet.” She looked around for a place to set the empty bowl, but couldn’t see one. “Well, guess I better be going now. My brother’ll be wondering what’s keeping me.”

Wing’s thin lips compressed. “He is very devoted to thee.”

“Who, Algernon? Oh, yeah, very.” Still carrying her bowl, she let him take her arm and escort her out of the gallery and into the damp, drafty corridor.

They turned right where she could’ve sworn they were supposed to turn left, and a few feet later they stopped in front of a door she knew she hadn’t seen before. Wing pointed to painted Chinese writing above the door, then translated it for her with his lips close to her ear: “The Realm of Eternal Life.”

“Sounds nice. Gotta go.”

His flat hand between her shoulder blades prevented her from backing up. “A moment only. So important.”

“No, really.”

“Plees.”

“I’m already—”

He reached past her and pushed open the door. The fact that there were lights and people inside lessened her trepidation. When Wing motioned her over the threshold, she shrugged and stepped inside.

Two men in rough work clothes were kneeling at the base of a gigantic stone rectangle, hollow inside, applying gold paint to tiles inlaid around the arched entrance. More men were busy inside the rectangle, a sort of squat, windowless building, with trowels and plaster. “What are they making?” she asked.

Wing’s black eyes, usually somber and flat, shone like polished coal. “They are making my tomb.”

“Oh, your tomb.” She stopped nodding abruptly. “Your
tomb?”

“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.