“She had to leave in any case. She had a meeting.”
Gulsvig shook his head. “Extraordinary, the resemblance.” He brought his cup to his lips again. This time he drank. Letting out a sigh, he put down the cup. “You don’t forget someone like Nina. Can I tell you a story?”
“Of course.”
Once, Gulsvig said, he had met Nina in a pub near the British Museum. This was in London, in the ’70s. A man came over to where they were sitting. He was drunk. He told Nina she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He wanted to buy her a drink. He wanted her to go out with him that evening. He wouldn’t leave her alone. In the end, he—Gulsvig—interrupted. He told the man that Nina was his wife. The man lurched backwards, shocked. He wanted to know how long they had been married. We got married yesterday, Gulsvig said. We’re very happy.
“Nina thought that was hilarious.” Gulsvig paused, thinking back. “I was always braver when I was with her.”
“You were just friends, though,” Zhang said. “That wasn’t my point—but yes, just friends.” Gulsvig nodded to himself, head lowered, his smile embarrassed, wistful. “She was out of my league.”
Zhang finished his coffee, then glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry,” Gulsvig said. “I’ve taken up too much of your time.”
Something suddenly occurred to Zhang. What if Naemi was related to Nina? What if she was Nina’s daughter, for instance? If that was the case, though, surely she would have recognized the name? And why would she have reacted with such unease?
“I still can’t get over the resemblance,” Gulsvig was saying.
Zhang rose from the table. “Our memories play all kinds of tricks on us.”
“You’re right.” Gulsvig let out another sigh and shook his head. “It’s probably the jet lag. I only arrived last night.”
“Well, it was nice to meet you.”
Gulsvig shook hands with him again and thanked him for the coffee. “You have my card?”
“Yes, I do,” Zhang said. “And here’s mine.” He put his business card on Gulsvig’s side plate. “Enjoy Shanghai.”
ONCE IN THE TAXI, Naemi leaned forwards, her elbows on her knees, her hands covering her face. She was sweating, and her brain whined and crackled like a radio stuck between stations.
“You’re not going to throw up, are you?” The driver was eyeing her in the rearview mirror.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just drive.”
He muttered a few derogatory words, then shifted into gear and pulled away from the hotel.
She hadn’t wanted breakfast in the first place, but Zhang had talked her into it. And it had gone well, she thought. Then, just as she was about to leave, she heard a name she hadn’t heard in almost half a century.
Nina.
If Torben hadn’t told her who he was, would she have guessed? She doubted it. Unless, perhaps, she had closed her eyes and listened to his voice, which was tentative and candid, exactly as she remembered it. To look at him, though? No. He was just a middle-aged man in a crumpled beige suit. She had a sudden, sickening realization. The world was full of such people. Since they looked older, they could stand right in front of her, and she’d be none the wiser. It was as if they were in disguise. To them, though, she was instantly recognizable. She corresponded to the memories they had of her—because she hadn’t changed at all. Time had rendered her conspicuous, like a rock exposed by an ebbing tide, there for everyone to see.
She ought to have had a strategy in place, but she had been caught off guard. In a panic, she had done the only thing she could think of doing. She held on to the genuine bewilderment she had felt when he said, “Nina.” She pretended she had no idea who he was. Then she fled. Through the restaurant, down in the lift, and out into the sunlight, trembling…
The bars on Changyi Road slid by, their exteriors sleepy, shut-eyed, unsuited to the daylight. In her mind she traveled back to London. June 1974. She was in the Students’ Union with friends when a young man came over, an empty beer glass in his hand. He stood in front of her in his maroon velvet loon pants, his hair unfashionably short.
“They tell me you’re Finnish,” he said.
“Do they?” Her voice was lightly mocking, but she already knew that he posed no threat to her, and that she could be kind.
He nodded. “Yes.”
She lit a cigarette. “I’m from North Karelia, originally.”
“I was born in Helsinki.”
“Ah,” she said. “The sophisticated type.”
He grinned.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.
“I don’t drink.”
“What kind of Finn are you?”
He was joking, or half joking, but this was a question she had often asked herself, a question she had no answer to, and she looked at him steadily, no longer smiling. He didn’t understand the look—how could he have done?—and yet it didn’t seem to bother him. He was a little drunk, of course. He told her later that he had been wanting to talk to her for months, but had never dared.
“Am I so frightening?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “You are.”
Was it that same night that she and Torben set off through the streets of Bloomsbury? When they came to Coram’s Fields he spread his raincoat on the ground and they sat down. They smoked roll-ups and talked, with London all around them, murmuring and mumbling under a warm charcoal sky…He seemed oddly familiar to her. It was as though she already knew him, or had known him before. As though he belonged to the part of her life that she thought of as the happy time, the life that had come to such a sudden end on that day of sun and wind, when the world went dark while she wasn’t looking. Perhaps he reminded her of somebody she had been close to as a child—or perhaps it was simply that he was gentle.
They began to seek each other out. They drank endless cups of coffee in cheap cafés. They went to art galleries, and to the cinema. They walked for hours—through the West End, in Richmond Park, on Hampstead Heath. Since they shared a secret language—Finnish—they could talk about people without them knowing. They laughed a lot. Once she had Torben as a friend, it became clear to her how lonely she had been before. And there was something about his company that rekindled the innocence in her. The youth. He helped her to be the age she appeared to be. The age she was supposed to be. Up until then, she had felt like an actor in a spotlight, delivering a monologue. Now, suddenly, she had someone on stage with her who she could play off, someone who could give her cues. Also, she was able to unburden herself without arousing suspicion or being judged. Once or twice, she came close to telling him the truth. Since she couldn’t make sense of it herself, though, she doubted she could explain it to him, despite the fact that he was intensely loyal, and would want to believe her. At times, the temptation was almost irresistible, but she never quite gave in.