K, p.15
K, page 15
‘Anything else, sir?’ Vole asked.
‘Just don’t bother me!’ Julian suddenly lost his temper and shouted, which he had never done before. The British always made it a point to be polite, if patronizing, to the household staff.
This was madness! Perhaps he’d better buy that bottle of cyanide. Or die in her arms, with no need for the cyanide. Just let her use her Daoist arts on him. She had spent plenty of time rehearsing them in private. Let him die exhausted, all passion spent, just like the sex-crazed hero in The Golden Lotus.
At the thought, he began to laugh, startling the two servants, who were outside the door. It was ridiculous to contemplate sacrificing his life for a Chinese woman, even if she was beautiful and talented, and a witch in bed!
The following day he made a point of leaving his house early, at a quarter to eight, before Lin could possibly get there. His class did not start till ten o’clock, so he went to his office in the department of English. In the corridor he bumped into two women. They introduced themselves as the new language teachers in his department. One was English and the other American. Both had husbands working in companies in Hankou – men who travelled frequently. They had nothing to do at home, so they had come to be temporary English teachers, to pass the time, as they put it.
Julian’s spirits rose. His affair with Lin had left him friendless, with neither the time nor the inclination to meet new people. After all, he did not want to draw attention to himself. But he was sociable by nature, and when he travelled in Europe, even with a girlfriend, he was always to be found in a crowd.
Now he was in the company of two young women. Whether or not they were truly beautiful did not matter, since they both had the undeniable attraction of youth. The old excitement of getting to know a new woman came back to him. He set out to be witty and amusing. The two women were able to flirt openly, since they were as good as single and free. Within a few minutes they had invited him to take them out for meals, and separately at that. They meant it as a joke but it was exactly what he wanted.
After his class that day Julian invited the English woman for lunch and the American for dinner. They talked the same language and the conversation flowed. The flirting was easy, the innuendo delicate and there were no awkward misunderstandings.
That American was more interested in politics, or said she was. From their seats in the Wuchang restaurant they had an unimpeded view of the lights of Hankou on the north bank of the Yangtze River.
She asked whether there were any underground Communists on campus.
Julian did not answer directly. In fact, he had thought it better not to try to find out. There might be quite a number of students who held more or less Marxist views. When he had tried to discuss a Marxist analysis of Dostoevsky the faces in front of him looked tense and anxious, which he found interesting. From this he gauged that the leftwing students were scared he might say something offensive to Marxism, which would leave them with no choice but to stand up and argue back – not a very comfortable thing for a Chinese student to do.
The food and wine were good, and they were enjoying them. Julian had become quite a gourmet in China, and was glad to show off his knowledge to this American. They chatted about Bloomsbury and the crisis in Europe. Julian refused to believe that it would engulf China.
He also spoke a little about politics. Several columns of the Red Army, he said, were under pressure to retreat to a desolate area of western China, and the police in Peking had raided some major universities and arrested radical students and professors. For both these reasons a strike was quite likely on this campus.
Julian raised his glass and said to the woman, ‘Drink it down, as the Chinese say.’ He drank the whole glass down in one go. ‘To the strike, if nothing else.’
The American woman was attractively flushed after draining her wine. She pulled her chair a little closer to Julian and asked, ‘If there’s a strike, how would you spend your time?’
‘Making love,’ Julian replied without even thinking about it.
She stared at him, shocked. Julian stared back. He enjoyed making provocative comments and then staring challengingly at the woman to see her reaction. Her face flushed a fiery red and she looked away. He smiled. He felt as if he were back in Europe. He used to be good at this kind of conquest, and good, too, at dumping those he no longer wanted.
So he went on. ‘If there’s no strike I shall start to lecture on the Cambridge liberal thinkers, from G.E. Moore to Bertie Russell, not in detail, but enough to encourage the students to think about the principles of liberalism.’ He was a far more confident teacher now, after his months of practice.
The American sighed. She knew little about these things, and was bored. ‘Very interesting,’ she said. No, he didn’t want to go to bed with her, he thought, not tonight. And tomorrow was another day. He was perfectly in command of the situation.
He felt much more cheerful. He had meals with one or other of the two women, even inviting each of them to his house for dinner. Both pretended not to care, though they shared an intense rivalry for his attentions. It pleased him to stroll around the campus with one or other of them. The Chinese did not care much about what the European men and women got up to, and he could flirt openly, which he loved to do.
Then it began to pall. He called a halt before sleeping with either of them.
One day, when he was on his way to a class, he found Lin waiting for him on the road. She looked like a student again, in her white cotton dress and cloth shoes with no make-up, in total contrast to her glamorous outfits in Peking. Her hair was caught up into two pigtails. But her face was bony and she looked very thin.
He had expected the meeting, yet he was put out at being ambushed in this way. ‘Still in the land of the living, I see…’ As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized he had been cracking too many jokes recently. It was only too easy to be cruel.
Lin did not seem to hear. She started with the words she had prepared.
‘I hear you have now had L and M. Congratulations!’
‘Nonsense!’ he said, almost instinctively, though he had mentally decided that he would not deny it if she asked him about it.
She smiled and moved closer. ‘You don’t have to lie. You are handsome, attractive, charming. You come from a famous family. You are a young professor and thinker, a gifted poet. How could any woman not fall in love with you?’
She didn’t seem to be accusing him. Nor was there any note of irony in her voice. She must have been feeling wronged: the man she loved was humiliating her. Seeing the tears in her eyes, he felt torn. She was apparently trying hard to control herself, and told him that she blamed herself for falling in love with the wrong man, and for not being able to forget him. She gradually moved closer to him, and her eyes had a wild, reckless look.
‘Don’t, please.’ Julian could hardly bear the way she looked at him, and turned his face away.
‘You would rather see me die, wouldn’t you?’ Her sigh broke his heart. ‘I will, when the time comes. But please, Julian, I beg you. Don’t throw me aside like this.’
‘I’m not.’ He didn’t know what he was denying – abandoning her or wanting to see her die.
Her eyes had lost their shine now, and her breathing was shallow. He suddenly realized that love was the stuff of life itself to her, that she might really have been thinking of suicide – God alone knew whether she had a ‘self-termination method’ like she had a method for everything else in their relationship. She had said repeatedly, ‘dying in front of you’. He knew he had degraded her, and himself, too, by going out with two women for whom he felt nothing.
Suddenly he felt indescribably guilty, and pulled her against him, holding her tight.
‘I love you.’ This was the first time he had said this to her; it shocked him as much as her. And he added, ‘Believe me, please.’
Lin was stupefied, and her breath came a little faster. Then she helplessly shook her head. ‘I know I’m cheap. I used the threat of suicide to force you into this. I know you really feel for my predicament. That should be enough for me.’
She raised her head. A little colour returned to her face, as if her spirits had revived. ‘My mother always said that to be prepared to cheapen oneself can be the noblest option.’ She shook herself free and asked Julian to walk away first.
After a dozen paces he turned his head, but Lin was nowhere to be seen. He went on, lost in thought, until all that he could hear were the raucous cries of invisible birds and the screams of the monkeys.
He discovered that he had actually been walking in the wrong direction, away from the campus, and was now lost in the dense forest amongst a mass of azaleas and morning glory flowers, with their large and brilliant trumpets. Thin rays of bright sunlight pierced the gloomy undergrowth.
He put his hands over his ears to block out the din of the forest and made an effort to calm down. Once he had managed to reorientate himself he headed back to the campus. He was forty minutes late for class. The students were worried and had sent people to search for him in his office and home, and when they could not find him they had gone to the dean’s office.
His apology to the class was matter of fact. ‘Sorry, I lost my way.’ He said it so earnestly that he began to laugh at himself, and the students laughed too.
The whole day seemed unreal. He had a dinner date with the English woman; it was her invitation. He did not want to go but it was too late to call it off. So he returned home to put on a suit and tie, and carefully combed his hair before he went. He had never dressed so elaborately to see Lin.
The English woman was overdressed too. She wore a cheongsam, for God’s sake, and a pearl necklace, and the result made her look like a Chinese cigarette advertisement. To cap it all she wore two very red roses in her hair: the effect was slightly comic, like an actress back home playing one of Somerset Maugham’s Chinese characters.
‘You look a little distracted,’ she noticed immediately.
Julian apologized, saying that he had been in the hills and caught a chill.
She was flattered – it was nice, she said, that he had come even when he was not feeling well. The happier she was, the sadder he became; it made him feel that European women were insensitive. If it were Lin, she would have forced him to go home to bed. Also, cheongsams, with their high side slits, just did not look right on the European figure: they had been designed to complement the shape of Chinese women.
He could hardly bring himself to look at her, and turned his gaze towards the door. Just then he saw the American woman coming in with a European man. So she was not wasting any time moping over him. The same would be true, he thought cynically, of this rose-bedecked woman sitting opposite him, should he not be available.
I am being too hard on them, he thought. I’m just in a foul mood. After all, I’m playing the same game as them, and we don’t owe each other anything.
He did his best to keep his partner amused, but he found it hard to get his dinner down. What a chatterbox she was. As soon as they had finished the dessert he called a taxi to take her home.
Once in the taxi she insisted that since Julian was not well he should be dropped off home first. He did not demur. At the door he planted a good night kiss on her cheek and, without further ado, went inside and shut the door.
He went to his bedroom feeling tormented. Perhaps some Chinese music would lull him to sleep.
The evocative sounds filled the room: a cascade of water, the chimes of a wooden percussion instrument, a bronze temple bell, the sighing of the wind in the trees.
He began to dream vividly. The skylarks are singing, and a pebble drops into a pond. He is not surprised when a Chinese woman, with hair piled high on her head, in an ancient court dress and glittering jewellery, walks out of the bamboo grove into his bedroom. He has seen her before somewhere. She is flawlessly beautiful, even through the tear stains on her face.
He tries in vain to extricate himself from the bedclothes. In the middle of the room she starts to undress, each layer of clothing falling from her like the ages of history. As she does this her appearance alters imperceptibly.
He is bewitched by her performance, but then she begins to chant her words of accusation.
‘You fear love and hurt the one who loves you. Do not wait too long. The time will come when you realize, too late, that you cannot live without love. Reject me and you reject yourself, since I am already part of your life.
‘I am a virgin. I renew my virginity again and again. And each love is like my first love. Now you see I have one last layer of clothing. I am a modern woman now. Once I remove this, I shall be pure womanhood.
‘Are you capable of showing me your love?’
Now she is naked and lying on him, wriggling like a snake, entwining herself around his cock. He cannot control himself and ejaculates prematurely. She is furious and slaps him violently in the face. But the pain is nothing in comparison with the contempt he sees on her face.
She leaves him and goes to lie on his desk. Her voice now comes as a gentle song. ‘When that which goes has gone, how can that which remains stay?’
And the desk floats like a boat out of the window. He rushes to look out, but it has flown.
The sound of his own voice awoke him. It was three o’clock in the morning. Every cell in his body felt wide awake. He remembered every detail of his dream, although he was unable to make sense of it.
The gramophone that had not been played for so long, the swirling fabrics hanging on the wall, the two china vases and the delicately carved furniture, every thing of beauty in his world was connected with her. Without her, the world was not complete: it lacked its essential truth.
He had always known this. He was now more aware of it than ever. I always destroy what I love most. Her suffering causes me such pain. Why am I doing this to myself? What am I frightened of? I am making us both miserable.
Julian tried to find his yellow handkerchief, the gift she had given him with the initial K on it. It was nowhere to be found. He searched frantically until finally, exhausted, he sat down at the top of the stairs.
He had to give up looking. Everything comes and goes as it will. Why force something to happen? Daoism again. The handkerchief would surely turn up when he least expected it.
Julian sent his servants out shopping early the next morning. He waited for eight o’clock, wondering if she would come. Well, it was a quarter past eight now, and the door remained closed. There were no footsteps. So he would go down to meet her.
He walked to her house. Taking the downhill path in leaps and bounds, it took only eight minutes. Lin was sitting on her doorstep as if waiting for him. The sun was rising behind the trees on the hill and enveloped both of them in its brightness. They saw each other and said, simultaneously, ‘I had a dream.’ Surprised, both of them stopped.
Had they shared the same dream? What if she repeated it now and gave him a slap in the face? That might be a good thing for both of them, he thought. He wanted desperately to apologize for everything, inside or outside the dream, and to take her back to his house now, so that they could try to make amends.
He was about to say it when the door behind Lin creaked. Out walked a young Chinese man, tall, strong and well proportioned, in a spotless creamy white suit, smart tie and leather shoes. Julian considered himself better-looking than most Chinese men, but now he saw someone who was undeniably more attractive than him.
The young man nodded perfunctorily to Julian, took Lin’s arm and walked away with her. Julian felt his anger flare up. The man had not even taken the trouble to greet him. A new lover! Someone from the New Moon Society? The way they walked arm in arm suggested a long and intimate relationship. A virgin again and again, she had said in his dream – what a lie!
His head was spinning; he did not know what to make of it. He even pictured Lin naked in the man’s arms, and he, the man, slipping in between her legs.
He rushed back to the university library, half hoping to find them, then on to the department. It was too early for his class. By chance he bumped into Cheng on the stairs. As usual they exchanged a few words. Without even thinking, Julian told him that he had seen Lin with a handsome stranger, who seemed on unusually intimate terms with her.
‘That’s Lin’s brother, just returned from America. He is passing through Wuhan. Should I introduce him to you?’
Her brother! Her father had had so many concubines she must have a whole squadron of siblings. Julian tried to pass off his indiscretion with a laugh. ‘It would be nice to meet him. A good-looking young man always catches my attention, I’m afraid. We’re like that in my family.’
But the incident continued to weigh on him. He knew that his reaction had been despicable. He should be ashamed of himself. Had it not been Lin’s brother, what might have been the consequences of his words to Cheng? What was he doing spying and informing on her like this? What a bastard he was!
He genuinely regretted his behaviour.
‘Everything here is like a bad novel.’ Those were the words written by his father Clive to Aunt Virginia many years ago, just before Julian was born. Looking back with the advantage of hindsight, he could see the continuing strains in the relationship between his father, mother and aunt. Their liberal reputation, and their position among the cultural elite of British society, had made their lives public property. And now they were forced to continue practising the principles of remarkable frankness and freedom they had espoused. But the seeds of resentment had been planted long ago, and whenever the opportunity arose they would take revenge on each other. For instance, when Aunt Virginia refused to publish his essays.
Chapter Eleven
The next morning Julian lay in bed, waiting. Would she come? He wasn’t sure. If she did come, they could have a healthy laugh to put all their misunderstandings behind them. After the servants had left he heard a light click at the door and someone coming in, followed by the sound of the door closing. He waited for her footsteps on the stairs. In the quiet of the early morning those light steps struck his ears as sweeter than birdsong. Yes, it must be her.
