Speaker of Mandarin Read online

  ‘You want to speak to me?’ he said, enunciating clearly.

  She made no answer. He repeated what he had said. She seemed to shrink, from shyness or fear. From the other side of the square Mr T’chung began calling, ‘Bus has come. Please come quick down hill to bus. Come along, bus has come.’

  When Wexford turned from the voice and looked where the old woman had been she was gone. Into the house? It was impossible she should keep vanishing into the abodes of strangers. He went up to the dark doorway and looked inside. It was a dirty hovel in which a child sat eating rice on the floor and a small pig rooted in the far corner. No old woman and no other exit for her to have departed through. If for one moment he were prepared to entertain the idea of the supernatural …

  Talking excitedly about their purchases, the drowned Wong for the time being forgotten, the train party and the Australians made their way down the hill to where the bus waited. It was parked by the beach and beside it was what was very evidently a police car. Police were on the boat, talking to Captain Ma. An officer came up to Mr T’chung and fired a string of questions at him.

  ‘People’s police will come to hotel this evening,’ said Mr T’chung.

  All this would normally have interested Wexford very much. The reason it didn’t was that he had been aware, all the way down the hill, of the old woman with the bound feet following him at a distance. He turned round once or twice, like Shelley’s traveller, he told himself, and saw not exactly a frightful fiend but this old creature, hobbling on her stick, who was becoming fiendish enough to him. Now about to enter the bus, the heat thick and gleaming, radiated off the still blue water in a dazzling glare, he made himself turn round and face behind him boldly. She was gone. There was nowhere for her to disappear to but she was gone.

  For the rest of the passengers the bus ride back was as rewarding as the boat trip had been on account of the scenery through which the route passed. They drove along lush valleys, green with young rice. Wexford thought about the old woman whom he had now seen three, or possibly four, times. Was she real? Was she a real woman who, incredible as it might be, was for some reason following him across China? Or was she a hallucination such as he supposed schizophrenics might have?

  He was sitting next to Tony Purbank, who was as silent as he. Purbank was also a fair-skinned person who reacted badly to the sun and his face hadn’t been protected as Wexford’s had. Moreover, he had a big bald patch on top of his head. His forehead and his bald pate began to glow a fiery red as soon as he was in the air-conditioned shelter of the bus. He spoke not a word, he looked as if he were suffering from a mild degree of heatstroke. Mr Sung too made the return journey in total silence. From the back seats, where Lois Knox sat with Bruce and the Knightons, Wexford could hear a continuous hum of speculation as to how Mr Wong had come to fall overboard.

  Wexford expected to see the old woman get off the bus after him but she didn’t. It was an absurd relief. He went straight off upstairs and made himself a cup of Silver Leaf. He lay on the bed, thinking about schizophrenia, wondering what he was going to do if she moved in with him, if she came into his room in the night and lay down in the other bed. Presumably, the truth was that she had never existed at all. He thought back. At Chang-sha he had heard the tap of her stick, her voice as she spoke to her companion. Besides, if his mind was going to produce figments to haunt him, why produce her? Out of what recesses of experience, unconscious processes, even trauma, was his mind conjuring an old Chinese woman?

  The tea, as always, made him feel better. Could he convince himself it was a mirage he had seen in that river village, a trick of the heat and light?

  ‘People’s police say no need talk with you,’ said Mr Sung, coming up to his table as dinner was being served. ‘No need ask questions any tourists, ship’s crew only.’ He paused, said, carefully choosing his words, ‘They have find dead body Wong T’ien Shui.’

  ‘Poor chap,’ said Wexford. ‘He can’t have been more than twenty or so.’

  ‘Age I don’t know,’ said Mr Sung. ‘Very young, yes. Body cut and—what you say?—brushed very bad by rocks.’

  ‘Bruised?’

  ‘Bruised, yes. Thank you. Many bad rocks there under river so body all cut and bad bruise.’

  There was as usual a screen between Wexford and the table at which the train party sat. From beyond it he could only hear a general buzz of conversation. The girl came round with the tea kettle and he had two cups, strangely disturbed now by the death of Wong T’ien Shui. It was still only seven and the sun was just setting. He walked out of the hotel, crossed the road and took the little causeway to the island in the middle of the lake. Somehow—sentimentally, no doubt—he couldn’t help imagining Wong as he must have been when a little boy, not so long ago, attending the kindergarten, being met by his mother with her hair in two braids, having a doughnut bought for him in a dark, scented grocer’s shop, flying a kite shaped like a butterfly or a dragon, going home to loving grandparents. It was a very young life to have been cut short like that.

  It should have been pleasant out on the island but because of the weighty thickening humidity, it wasn’t. The undulations of mountains looked blue now, veiled in mist, and the air hung full of sluggishly moving mosquitos. After being bitten for the second time, he went back to the hotel. Malaria and dengue fever might now be avoidable, but you could still have a leg or an arm swell up like a balloon.

  Up on the roof it was too high for the mosquitos. He knew he shouldn’t drink, because of his blood pressure and an ever threatening weight problem, but he had to get some sleep somehow. He bought a smallish bottle of cassia wine. The Baumanns, the Knightons and Gordon Vinald called him over to the table they were sharing, only a second before he was similarly summoned to the other—necessarily a few yards away because of the Purbank-Vinald feud—shared by Lois Knox, Hilda Avory and Purbank. There was no sign of the Australians, Fanning or Mrs Knighton’s friend. Lois looked sour and Hilda ill, and it was a relief to Wexford to follow the rule of first come, first served.

  The people at the table he joined were indulging in the favourite tourist pastime of showing off to each other the souvenirs they had bought that day. As Gordon Vinald began talking, Mrs Baumann whispered to Wexford that he was an antique dealer.

  ‘Jade is always cold to the touch,’ he was saying. ‘That’s one of the best ways for the amateur to tell if it’s jade or not. If it stays cold in a hot room or against the skin the chances are it’s jade.’

  He told them of various jade frauds. How the unscrupulous dealers of Hong Kong would arrange a display with five items of plastic to one of jade, five items of plastic to one of ivory. China was safe, though. The Chinese were either too high-principled to deceive or too innocent to understand the mechanics of deception. But if, of course, the jade they were selling had been imported into China they might themselves have been deceived … Wexford thought of the little pieces he had bought for Dora. Were they cold to the touch? He couldn’t remember. He put a tentative question about it to Vinald.

  ‘You’re in the room next to mine, aren’t you?’ Vinald replied. ‘No doubt we’ll be keeping our usual nursery hours, so why don’t you bring them in at the witching hour of nine-thirty and show me?’

  Margery Baumann laughed. She took a tissue-wrapped parcel out of her handbag and out of it tumbled half a dozen little cups, medallions, a ring and a pendant in the shape of a turtle. She put the ring on to her finger. Vinald examined all the pieces and pronounced them to be jade, one indeed very close in colour to the imperial jade beloved by the emperors. Then suddenly, as if no one else was there, he lifted her hand in his and brought it up against his cheek. Ostensibly, he was testing the temperature of her ring on his own skin, yet the gesture had a very lover-like air to it. Wexford saw Mrs Baumann smile with pleasure and Margery blush.

  Vinald released her hand. ‘That’s your true nephrite. You’ve done well, Margery. If you hadn’t a worthier profession already I’d say you’ve a f
lair for my business.’

  She said nothing, only laughed again. And yet the remark, delivered in such a tone and after such a gesture, could almost have been leading up to a proposal of marriage. Wexford thought he wouldn’t be surprised if an announcement were made to the party on the following day.

  He offered his wine round the table. The beer drinkers refused but Mrs Baumann and Mrs Knighton each took a glass. His bottle wasn’t going to last long at that rate. He went off to the bar to get another as ‘Silent Night’ came crooning out of the record player.

  Standing at the bar, in the company of an older woman, was the best-looking girl he had seen since he came to China.

  The best-looking Caucasian, that is. Of Chinese beauties there had been plenty but it had seemed to him that women with the looks of his daughter Sheila or his niece Denise weren’t interested in visiting the People’s Republic.

  This girl, though, would have compelled glances in the most sophisticated milieu. She and the older woman were standing by the counter, talking to the three Australian businessmen about the topic which commanded the attention of the whole hotel, and probably the whole city of Kweilin, the drowning of Wong T’ien Shui. Wexford heard her say, ‘There’s always something with that boat. If I believed in things like that I’d say that boat had bad joss. Maybe the place they built it was on a dragon’s eye or something.’

  She laughed. The Australians laughed uproariously. Her accent, he thought, was that of New Zealand. The older woman—her mother?—spoke to her.

  ‘Are you having that red wine again, Pandora, or the Japanese whisky stuff?’

  Pandora pondered. She was tall and extravagantly slender, somewhere in her early twenties. Her hair was as black as Lois Knox’s raven dye, but Pandora’s was natural and it fell as straight to her shoulders as if it were wet. There was no make-up on the dazzling white skin but for a stroke of emerald green on her eyelids. Her eyes were hazel green and the lashes as thick and sooty as a black kitten’s. She had on a bright green dress with a pink and black cummerbund and pink sandals. Deciding on the whisky, she turned away and walked out on to the roof. Bruce took a tray and piled bottles and glasses on to it.

  Wexford bought his wine and went back. For a moment he thought he saw the old woman with the bound feet standing up against the parapet, but when he looked again he saw only a Chinese boy with a firecracker in his hand. Back at the table they were once more on the topic of Wong’s death. Dr Baumann couldn’t understand how anyone could have drowned where there were so many reefs to provide footholds. Margery wondered if he had struck his head on one of those reefs as he fell. Mrs Knighton, with an unpleasant little laugh, said be that as it might it had ruined what had promised to be an interesting day out. And then Wexford’s attention was caught by the action of Lois Knox who, seeing her Australian come out on to the roof with a woman and two other men, seeing him home in on the table where Pandora had sat down, got up, muttered ‘excuse me’ to her companions and walked swiftly away towards the stairs. Purbank said something inaudible but Hilda Avory’s reply carried on the night air.

  ‘Of course it makes her unhappy. What does she expect if she goes on like that at her age?’

  Knighton was staring ahead of him. He had contributed little to the conversation but now he had extracted himself from it entirely. Gazing across the roof like that, he looked as if he had had some transcending vision or had just seen a ghost. Abruptly he jerked his head aside and Wexford was astonished to see his enraptured expression. What had produced that?

  His wife was showing family snapshots to Mrs Baumann. ‘We’ve four children, three sons and a daughter, and four simply adorable grandchildren with another on the way.’

  Mrs Baumann was beginning an appropriate comment when Knighton spoke. He seemed to be addressing no one in particular. He looked at the view, at the stars, and said:

  ‘ “I had gone aboard and was minded to depart,

  When I heard from the shore your song with tap of foot.

  The pool of peach blossom is a thousand feet deep

  But not so deep as the love in your farewell to me.” ’

  The Baumanns looked extremely embarrassed. A sheepish smile lingered on Vinald’s face. Mrs Knighton looked at her friend and her friend looked at her. Then Mrs Knighton very slightly cast up her eyes.

  ‘The work of Li Po,’ said Knighton in his more usual cold and dry tone. ‘The famous eighth-century Chinese poet.’

  ‘I don’t know about you, Irene,’ said Mrs Knighton, ‘but I feel like going up to my room.’

  ‘Down,’ said her friend.

  ‘I mean down. Don’t be late,’ she said to her husband. ‘You’ve had a long day.’ She achieved, like someone doing facial exercises, a broad smile and said briskly, ‘Good night, everyone.’

  Knighton got to his feet with the air of someone following a weary old rule of politeness. But when the women had gone and the elder Baumanns had gathered up their things and started to follow them, instead of sitting down again, he walked away from the table to a distant part of the roof, leaned over the parapet and gazed at the moonlit landscape.

  Wexford was left to play gooseberry to the lovers. He said good night to Margery, went down to his room and made himself a cup of tea. The old woman with the bound feet had departed to wherever such materializations go when off-duty. Settled down with Poe’s ‘The Tell-tale Heart’, he waited for Vinald’s footfall in the corridor—unless, of course, he should forget his appointment and his footfall sound tonight in the corridor below, where Margery’s room was.

  But no more than half an hour had passed before he heard Vinald’s light switch go on. Wexford collected his pieces of jade and knocked at the antique dealer’s door.

  Treasures set about the austere chinese hotel bedroom had transformed it into something resembling a corner of a museum in the Forbidden City. There were dishes of famille jaune, pieces of blue and white ware, a magnificent tall pearl-coloured vase with a design on it of birds and ripe peaches on a peach tree, lacquer trays, boxes of chops in jade and carnelian and soapstone, three or four plain pale bowls of exquisite shape, a pair of carved jade vases with lids, and everywhere a scattering of tiny pieces of carved jade, of snuff bottles, seals and metal scent bottles.

  ‘I confess to liking the gorgeous stuff best,’ said Wexford. ‘Does that prove me ignorant and undiscriminating?’

  Vinald laughed. ‘Not really. That vase is a lovely piece. I’m lucky to have found it. There are a pair just like it that were made for the Dowager Empress.’

  ‘It’s not so very old then?’ Wexford knew that much.

  ‘Under a hundred years.’ Vinald handed his purchases back to him. ‘Your jade’s OK. Frankly, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t. Can I offer you a cup of tea?’ When it was poured he began tidying the room. ‘We’re off again tomorrow, a ghastly roundabout journey since there’s no direct route from Kweilin to Canton. It seems that the mountains get in the way.’ He was thrusting items from the desk into a hand case, a ball-point pen, a stick of red sealing wax, a note book, the hotel writing paper out of the blotter. Wexford was amused. How people loved acquiring something for nothing, even the wealthiest! Here was this evidently rich man pinching three sheets of writing paper when there was little doubt he could have bought up all the notepaper stocks in Kweilin and given it back again without much noticing the loss.

  Vinald took a drink of tea. ‘I didn’t exactly come to China to buy antiquities,’ he said. ‘I was in need of a holiday. I was literally dying on my feet for a holiday. But I had every intention of buying antiquities when I got here. I knew what a hoard China has, you see.’

  Wexford raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

  ‘Oh, yes. You can imagine the stuff that got pinched at the time of what they call Liberation, can’t you? Not to mention the Cultural Revolution. They claim it has all passed through Government hands but the fact is they simply stole it from its rightful owners, and murdered them too if the truth were known.’


  ‘The truth never really is known about China,’ said Wexford. ‘And that’s not new, it’s always been so.’

  Vinald passed over the interruption with a slight impatient wave of his hand. ‘I can tell you that if China chose to let loose what she’s got on the world the bottom would fall slap bang out of the antiques market.’

  ‘Which would hardly suit you, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re right there. I’ve helped myself to a few unconsidered trifles.’ Vinald pulled tissue paper out of a drawer and started wrapping things up, packing them into boxes, some of which were padded with straw. ‘Tell me,’ he said, speaking rather abruptly, ‘do you think it’s wrong to buy something for fifty yuan—say fifteen pounds—when you know perfectly well its real worth would be five hundred pounds?’

  ‘If by wrong you mean illegal, I shouldn’t think that’s illegal anywhere in the world. No doubt it’s unethical; some would say it’s taking advantage of innocence. Why? Have you done much of that sort of thing?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Vinald. ‘They’re so ignorant they don’t know what they’re offering you half the time. It might be unethical in some places. I don’t think it is here. You can’t think of yourself as taking an unfair advantage of the Chinese government, can you? It’s not as if it were some individual trying to make a living.’

  ‘How about a nation trying to make a living?’ Vinald looked uncomprehending so Wexford turned aslant of the subject. ‘I don’t envy you carrying that lot home.’

  ‘Most of it’ll go in my suitcase.’ Vinald packed the blue and white dishes, an ikon, a gleaming white bowl. ‘I brought the minimum of clothes because I knew I’d want to fill up this end.’

  ‘You don’t anticipate trouble with the Customs?’