Sometime later, she found herself on the white dirt road that led southwest, and after several days of traveling she reached a small town on the river Tana. She would like to have said goodbye to Halgard. She would like to have explained, if such a thing were possible. In her absence, she assumed he would take sides against her. He would have no choice. It saddened her to think he might lose that easy grin. That he might turn bitter, like his mother. Given the way things had gone, she viewed her infertility as a necessity, or even as a blessing. How could she have children when she might be forced to disappear at a moment’s notice, never to return? Leaving a husband was one thing. Leaving a child would be something else entirely.
After Vardø, a time of wandering…
She climbed the mountain at Koli, its rounded slopes once used for human sacrifice, and still haunted, so people told her, by the spirits of the dead. She spent a spring and summer on the island of Läpisyöksy, where the north wind blew through the holes in the rocks, making them moan and wail like organ pipes. Years passed. Decades. Decades she shouldn’t have had. Somehow she didn’t question it. She would sink her teeth into the soft skin of her arm—or sometimes she would use a knife. She was comforting herself, and also punishing herself, perhaps. She was paying homage to her family. It was a sacrament. A kind of mass.
What she did became a reflex, a habit. A ritual. She would break the circle in her body, the loop of her own blood, and then she would repair it. The feeling was like a sigh, but also like a rush. A slowing down, a speeding up. The pleasure chasing the pain. But people began to notice what was happening to her. Elsebe was the first. Later, there were others. She was like a clock in a catastrophe. Her hands had stuck. Her face no longer told the time. While everyone around her grew older, she held on to her youth. People who knew her became intrigued, and then suspicious. They began to ask questions. Always the same questions. How is it that you never change? What’s your secret?
Tell me your story.
She realized she couldn’t stay in one place for too long. Ten years. Fifteen at the most. After that, she would have to leave, and when she left the break would have to be decisive, absolute. The person she turned into could have no contact with the person she had been before. Nothing could be allowed to compromise the new life she was embarking on. At first, she kept her name, and chose not to venture beyond the borders of her own land. In time, that became unsustainable. She moved farther afield, setting her course for the ends of the earth. She acquired new languages, new customs. She altered her appearance. Short hair, long hair, black hair, red hair—no hair at all. Once or twice, she masqueraded as a boy, but it was more of an experiment than anything else, and it carried its own inherent dangers. There were times when she couldn’t have said if she was alive or dead. All she knew was that she didn’t age. Was it because she drank her own blood? Was she an auto-vampire, if such a thing might be said to exist? Or was it fueled by rage at what her family had suffered? Was it a weird, unexpected by-product of violent emotion? She had no idea. And there was no one she could ask either—though there had been years when she searched the world for somebody who might be qualified to speculate. But in the end it was probably better not to know. Thinking about it only made her squeamish. It was like being too acutely aware of the heart beating in your chest. Why not just accept it and be grateful? After all, most people dreamed of living forever, and she often had to pinch herself when she considered all the possibilities that lay before her. There was nowhere she couldn’t go, nothing she couldn’t do…Elation doesn’t last, though. You can have too much of a good thing. The feeling that crept up on her in the wake of all that euphoria was like a hollowness. A kind of dread. She began to feel trapped in something endless. Immortality is claustrophobic.
At some point in her travels, it occurred to her that she could circle back and live where she had lived before, since all those who might have recognized her would now be dead. It was such a relief to be able to return—not to a person she had loved, admittedly, but to a place. She would revisit North Karelia, sometimes spending months there, sometimes years. Or she would pass through, on her way to somewhere else. She needed the green trees and the blue water. She needed the earth. What an uncanny feeling it was to walk among the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of people she had known! By then, she had become accustomed to departure. Adept at it. That was the lesson she had learned. She had also resolved that there would be one aspect of herself that she would not renounce, one element that all her many lives would have in common. Her initials. NVK. There had to be something to hold on to, some faint trace of continuity, or she would fall apart.
And now, in Shanghai, it was happening again…
She sat on the floor of her apartment, facing the window, the light from the street arranged in orange blocks in front of her, and she began to speak. Her voice was as it always was, monotonous yet also musical, like plainsong, but the language she was using was new language. You think you know what I am. You have no idea. I’m not in any of your books. You try to catch me. Your hands grasp empty air. I’m not a story you can tell. My blood leaves my body. My blood returns. Like breath. I am between two deaths. The day goes dark. I walk over your grave.
WHILE ZHANG WAS ON HIS WAY BACK to the office after lunch at Mad Dog’s house, he received a call from Johnny Yu.
“I’ve got what you need,” Johnny said.
Something in Zhang’s mind tightened a notch. “Can you meet me at six?” He gave Johnny the address of the Bamboo Lounge, the cocktail bar he had visited a few nights earlier.
When he walked into the bar that evening, the same girl was working, only this time she was wearing a green dress, and her hair was pinned up in a chignon. The place wasn’t empty, but business was slow. She smiled at Zhang as he approached. He ordered a whiskey, then asked if she would like a Malibu.
“Not tonight,” she said. “The owner’s here.” She tilted her head in the direction of two men sitting in the corner. “But thank you.”
He carried his whiskey to a table by the window. Parting the wooden blinds, he peered out. Since the bar was on the second floor, he had a good view of the street. The yellow light seeping from a neon sign on the restaurant below slid over the cars that passed. He sipped his drink. The whiskey burned a line of glowing gold down the middle of his body.
Taking out his phone, he called his wife, Xuan Xuan. She picked up, but told him that she couldn’t talk as she was about to leave the house. Her best friend was taking her to a spa. He asked if he could have a word with his son. There was a muted discussion on the other end, most of which he couldn’t hear. Hai Long was in the middle of doing his homework, she said at last. He didn’t want to be interrupted. Zhang told her that he would ring back another time, when it was more convenient, then he ended the call.
Johnny arrived ten minutes later, with his chin lowered and his hat brim pulled down at the front, as if he was a celebrity, and was afraid he might be recognized. He was wearing a bronze-colored suit and a black shirt. He shook hands with Zhang and sat down opposite. When the waitress came over, he ordered a beer. His eyes traveled up and down her body as she took his order, and he kept looking at her as she moved away.