Gai-Jin (116 page)

“You didn’t, Angel,” Malcolm said.

“I was just leaving,” Gornt said. No need to conceal all of his admiration. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Ma’am.” He bowed. “Good day, suh, I shall be in touch.”

They watched him walk off. “Who is this Mr. Gornt?”

He told her, but nothing in fact about the real Mr. Gornt. He was fogged by the thought of Tuesday.

“More pork in black bean sauce, Younger Sister?” Ah Tok asked, chomping on a piece of fish.

“Thank you.” Ah Soh reached over with her chopsticks to replenish her bowl, then snapped up the choice quick-fried prawn she had ogled. “Please continue, Elder Sister.”

The two women were in Ah Tok’s room, their lunch spread out in a multitude of dishes, a fresh pot of jasmine tea close at hand. “Ayeeyah, it’s very difficult. Illustrious Chen gave no clear instructions.”

“That’s not like him.” Ah Soh took more of the succulent pieces of beef in oyster sauce. “Not like him, not at all.”

“I agree, but then his new concubine, the whore from Soo Chow, is sure to be taking most of his concentration.”

“Ayeeyah! Is it true she’s fourteen with no pubics?”

Ah Tok took up another bony piece of fish head and sucked it appreciatively. “It’s only the Garlic People of Chosen who don’t have pubics.” She spat the bones onto the floor and selected another part.

“Interesting. I wonder if it’s all the garlic they eat? May I reread his letter, Elder Sister?”

It said:

“Ayeeyah, what does he mean, be like bats?” Ah Soh asked irritably. “Bats are silent but they squeak. Bats can fly in the dark but are blind during the light, are invisible at night, helpless by day. Their droppings are valuable but stink to Heaven. What does he mean, heya?”

“Eyes and ears and nostrils open, like a bat, and watch where you drop droppings!” Ah Tok cackled. “Ten thousand summers to Noble House Chen, without him we would not have known her Jade Gate’s hung on my son’s door!”

“How do we know it was him?” Ah Soh said with a robust belch. “How do we know it was the Master and not someone else?” She dropped her voice and looked around as though expecting alien ears and Ah Tok’s chopsticks hesitated in midair. “Someone like Long Pointed Nose, the same kind of foreign devil as she is, heya? Those two are as close as lice in a beggar’s crotch. And didn’t he sink the bottle, all the evidence in the sea, remember?”

The old Ah Tok was no longer laughing.
“Fang-pi!”
she said, using the rare expletive. “That’s what Illustrious Chen must have been cautioning us about! Bats weave as they fly and don’t alight on the first branch and even then they hang upside down. He’s telling us to find out which Yang possessed that Yin! Ayeeyah, yes, I agree, it’s possible … possible Long Pointed Nose made my son wear a green hat!”

“The Master cuckolded!” Ah Soh’s eyes went to Heaven. “It’s true Long Pointed Nose spent enough time in her room to …” She gasped. “Ayeeyah! Remember, weeks ago, when she sent me away and later screamed because she thought someone was climbing into her room from outside when it
was only the wind banging the shutters? I remember now, I was quicker than a bat to her side but Long Pointed Nose was already there and both of them … now I think of it, both were whiter than a five-day corpse! Was that the time his Yang …”

“When was it, Young Sister? The day? When?”

“It was the day … the day after the Master had that native whore from the brothel across the Canal.”

Both women began calculating, minds abacus-fast. Today was twelfth month, fourth day. “That would be … that would be tenth month, eighteenth or nineteenth day, Elder Sister.”

“Not enough, perhaps not quite enough time, unless this Dark of the Moon is swallowed earlier.” Absently Ah Tok sucked more of the fish head, then spat out the bones with conviction: “They must have lain together earlier. The whore had plenty of chances, heya? She was always at that barbarian house, even before you both stayed there.”

“You’re right, you’re right as usual, Elder Sister! We must inform Illustrious Chen at once.”

“But why should she give her Jade Gate to such an ugly foreign devil when my son’s panting over it?”

Ah Soh shrugged expansively. “Barbarians! Who knows what they think? You should tell the Master!”

Weak with excitement, Ah Tok looked at her bar. Madeira, whisky, brandy. “We need strength!” She selected the whisky and poured two large tots. “To work! We must plan, plot and think how to get the whore and her paramour to reveal the truth!”

“Good, very good! Together we’ll do it!”

“But no hint to my son, unwise for us to carry dirty tidings. Until we are sure.” They clinked glasses. “By all gods great and small, no one is going to cuckold my son, make him wear the green hat. He will live a long and happy life!”

“Good evening, Father Leo,” Angelique said politely, knelt and kissed his hand, finding it hard to contain her revulsion against his strong odor. They were alone in the little church, the nave dimly lit, only a few candles burning, the dying sun coming through the small, poorly executed stained-glass window. There were few Catholics in the Settlement, the revenue miserly, even so the altar and crucifix were rich. Outside, in the sunset, Vargas waited to escort her back again.

“You wanted to see me?” she asked innocently, knowing she had missed Mass again on Sunday. Her pink bonnet had been chosen carefully, also the long Kashmir shawl over her most maidenly afternoon dress of somber silk. “How well you look, Father.”

“I’m glad to see you, senhorita, my child,” he said with his heavy Portuguese accent. “You are not at Mass again.”

“It’s the vapors, Father. I’m still recovering from the disorder … Dr. Babcott advised rest,” she replied, her mind on what she would wear for tonight’s birthday banquet for the Russian Minister, and what she could do to entertain Malcolm during the evening. “I am sure by next week I will be better.”

I’m glad, my young and not so feeble teller of lies, Leo thought, disgusted with the perfidy of humanity. It’s ungodly to dance at night and kick up your heels and show your unclothed nether parts. “Never mind, I will confess you now.”

Angelique could have yawned, he was so predictable. Meekly she followed him into the confessional, knelt and went through the motions, glad for the screen between them, parroting her litany, comforted with the pact she had made with the Virgin Mary, repeating their code fervently, as always, “… and Father, I forgot to ask the Blessed Mother for forgiveness in my prayers.”

Her absolution was quick, a modest penance of a few Hail Marys and she felt the better for it. She began to get up—

“Now, a private matter, my child. Two days ago Mr. Struan sent for me, privately, and asked me to marry you both.”

She gasped, then smiled gloriously. “Oh, Father, how marvelous!”

“Yes, my child, yes, it is. ‘Please marry us as soon as possible,’ the young Senhor Struan said, but it is difficult indeed.” Night and day he had wrestled with the problem. An urgent letter had gone the same day to the Bishop of Macao, Catholic spiritual leader in Asia, begging for advice, equally urgently. “Very difficult for us.”

“Why, Father?”

“Because he is not a Catholic an—”

“But he has agreed our children are to be brought up in the True Church, he promised.”

“Yes, yes, my child, he has—he has. He told me the same but he is not of marrying age, not without permission, nor are you, but I wanted to tell you secretly that, even so, I have asked His Eminence for permission to conduct the ceremony for the greater Glory of God, even so—with or without your father’s … approval. I hear your father, he is missing, somewhere in French Indo-China or Siam, or somewhere.” Particulars of her father’s frauds and flight had raced around the Settlement, but in deference to her had been kept quiet, also from Struan. “If His Eminence agrees, I am sure Senhor Seratard, in loco parentis, he will agree, even so.”

The tightness in her throat did not go away. “How long will it take for His Eminence to reply, to approve?”

“By Christmas, around Christmas, before then, if he is in Macao and
not travelling, visiting the Faithful in China, and if it is the will of God.” As usual he sat facing away from the screen, ear close to it for whispered privacy, but now he glanced through the mesh and could see her vaguely. “The matter I would like to discuss, privately, is the conversion of the Senhor.”

Again she gasped. “He said he would convert?”

“No, no, he has not yet seen the Light, that’s what I want to talk about.” Father Leo leaned closer to the screen, savoring her nearness, choked with a desire he knew to be unholy and Satan-sent, the same that, on his knees, daily and nightly he fought against—as, in equal torment, he had fought against for as long as he had been within the Church.

God give me strength, God forgive me, he thought, almost in tears, wanting to reach out and fondle the breasts and the rest of her that was hidden by the screen and by her shawl and by her clothes and the wrath of God. “You must help … help him embrace the True Faith.”

Angelique was as far from the screen as she could be. Painstakingly, she eased the curtains open to reduce the claustrophobia the boxlike structure gave her. Confessionals never used to be like this, she thought, shuddering. It’s only since … since that which never happened. “I will help, Father. I will do as much as I can,” she said, her nervousness increasing, and again began to leave.

“Wait!”

The violence in the voice shocked her. “Father?”

“Please … wait, please wait, my child,” the voice said nicely now, but the niceness was forced and this frightened her for it was no longer the voice of a priest and sacrosanct in a sanctified place, but of a stranger. “We must talk about this marriage, and his conversion, my child, and beware of evil influences, yes, we must, conversion is a must … a must as preparation for … for Eternity.”

“‘Must,’ Father?” she muttered. “Were you about to say, ‘must as preparation
for marriage’
?”

“For … for Eternity,” the voice said.

She stared at the shadow behind the screen, sure that he was lying, appalled that she could even consider it, let alone believe it. “I will help all I can,” she said, and got up and groped through the curtains for air.

But he stood in her path. She noticed sweat on his forehead and that he towered over her, in height and bulk. “It’s for his own … his own salvation. His, my child. It would be better—better before.”

“Are you saying, Father, his conversion is a must before you will marry us?” she asked, in dread.

“It is not to me the conditions, what His Eminence decides governs us, we are faithful servants!”

“In my fiancé’s Church, he has not said I must become Protestant, of course I cannot force him either.”

“He must be made to see the Truth! This is a God-sent gift, this marriage. Protestant? That heresy? Apostasy? Unthinkable, you’d be lost forever, doomed, excommunicated, your eternal soul consigned to everlasting torment in the Fire, to burn, to burn forever!”

She kept her eyes down and was barely coherent. “For me, yes, for him … millions believe otherwise.”

“They’re all mad, lost, doomed, and forever they’ll burn!” The voice hardened even more. “They will! We must convert the heathen. The Malcolm Struan must con—”

“I’ll try. Good-bye, Father, thank … I’ll try,” she mumbled, and stepped around him and hurried away. At the door she turned back a moment and genuflected and went out into the light, him standing in the aisle, his back to the altar, all the time his voice ringing in the rafters, “Be an instrument of God, convert the heathen, if you love God save this man, save him from purgatory, if you love God save him, help me save him from Hellfire, save him for the Glory of God, you must … before you marry, save him … let us save him … save him …”

That evening a samurai patrol came out of the guard house at the North Gate. Ten warriors, fully armed with swords and light battle armor, an officer at their head. He led the way over the bridge and passed the barrier into the Settlement. One man carried a tall, narrow banner with characters on it. The leading samurai held flares aloft that cast weird shadows.

The High Street and the seafront walk were still busy in the pleasant evening. Traders, soldiers, sailors, shopkeepers taking a constitutional or standing in groups, chatting and laughing, here and there, with a few singsongs and drunks and one or two wary male prostitutes. Down on the beach some sailors had lit a fire and were dancing a tipsy hornpipe around it, a transvestite amongst them, and from the distance came the noisy undercurrent of Drunk Town.

The ominous presence was noticed. People stopped in their tracks. Conversation hesitated in midsentence. Then ceased. All eyes turned northwards. Those nearest the patrol backed out of the way. Not a few felt for a revolver and cursed that it was not in the pocket or holster. Others retreated and an off-duty soldier near an alley took to his heels to summon the Marine night watch.

“What’s the matter, suh?” Gornt asked.

“Nothing, yet,” Norbert said, his face grim. They were amongst a group on the promenade but still well away from the samurai who paid no attention whatsoever to the silent crowd watching them, slouching along out of step as was their custom.

Lunkchurch sidled up to them. “You armed, Norbert?”

“No. Are you?”

“No.”

“I am, suh.” Gornt took out his tiny pistol. “But it won’t make much of a dent in them if they’re hostile.”

“When in doubt, young feller,” Lunkchurch said hoarsely, “take a powder, I always say.” He stuck out his hand to Gornt before he hurried off. “Barnaby Lunkchurch, Mr. Gornt, pleased to meet you. Welcome to Yokopoko. I’ve seen you in the Club, hear you play bridge—anytime.”