“The next thing I knew, she was gone,” Gulsvig said. “She didn’t tell me she was going. She didn’t even say goodbye. She just left.”
“She was in shock, perhaps,” Zhang said.
“Perhaps. In any case, I never heard from her again.”
“Did you ever look for her?”
“No. It was too painful.” Gulsvig paused, as if, for a split second, he had felt that exquisite pain again. “Someone told me she had flown to New York. I don’t know if that’s true.” He paused once more. “The years passed, and in the end I managed to forget about her, I suppose—until, you know, the other day…”
Zhang nodded to himself, then asked Gulsvig if he would be prepared to try to find out what had happened to Nina.
“You really are interested in my story, aren’t you, Mr. Zhang?”
“It seems that way,” Zhang said.
“I’ll do my best. Right now, though, I’m afraid I have to go. I have a class.”
“Of course. Goodbye, Professor.”
“Goodbye.”
Zhang leaned on the balcony, his phone in his hand. Thirty-nine floors below, taillights slid along the curving length of Puming Road, their red glow softened by the fog. Going back over the conversations he’d had with Gulsvig, Zhang was struck by something odd. Whenever he listened to Gulsvig talking about Nina, he had imagined Naemi. In every scene—the meeting in the Students’ Union, the drink in a pub near the British museum, the flight to New York—it was always Naemi who he had seen…
Just then, Zhang’s doorbell rang. He went back inside.
On opening the door, he found Johnny Yu standing there. Blood ran down the side of his face and neck, some of it already dry and black.
“Johnny!” Zhang said. “What happened?”
Johnny grinned. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
Zhang led him to the bathroom.
The cut was above the hairline, about three inches long. He asked Johnny if he had lost consciousness at any point. Johnny didn’t think he had. Zhang cleaned the wound with iodine, which made Johnny suck his breath in through his teeth. When the bleeding had stopped, he gave Johnny a clean T-shirt, half a tumbler of whiskey, and a couple of painkillers, and showed him to the spare room. Johnny lay down on the bed. He was flooded with adrenaline, though, and wouldn’t stop talking. His girlfriend had attacked him with a meat cleaver, he said. He had bought the cleaver the week before, in the market on Fangbang Road. It had been her birthday present. She wanted to become a chef one day.
“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.” Zhang was leaning against the wall, arms folded.
Johnny nodded. “We’ve been together for about two years.”
“It doesn’t seem to stop you chasing other women.”
“That’s why she was so angry. We’d had sex, and she said there was less sperm than usual. She thinks I’ve been seeing someone else.”
“Wait a moment. She checks your sperm?”
“Only afterwards, when it comes out of her.” Johnny stared up at the ceiling. “I always thought it was kind of romantic.”
Zhang shook his head in disbelief.
“She could have killed me.” Johnny was still gazing at the ceiling, as if his soul had already departed from his body and was floating in the air above him.
“You should go to the hospital,” Zhang said. “You could do with some stitches.”
Johnny drank a mouthful of whiskey. “I can’t believe what she did to the apartment,” he said. “She really trashed the place. It’s going to cost me a fortune.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to take you to the hospital?”
“I’ll just lie here for a while, if that’s all right.” Johnny closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Unendurable is the night’s length and a man’s wakefulness, / As a few sounds in the moonlight pierce the screened casements.” He rolled his head sideways on the pillow and looked at Zhang. “Li Yu. My namesake.”
Zhang said good night and left the room, and when he looked in on Johnny half an hour later Johnny was asleep and breathing through his mouth.
Not so unendurable after all.
AS SOON AS NAEMI SAW Zhang’s Jaguar pull up outside MoCA in People’s Park, she knew she had made a mistake. She should never have agreed to go out with him that evening. She should have gone straight home. There were times when she felt her true age was catching up with her, the process sickeningly graphic and speeded-up, like the fast-motion footage of a flower dying. It was a remorseless feeling, something like flu, and it seemed to present all over her body, in every bone and muscle, every cell. Her skin would feel damper, and less elastic, and her hair would seem to lose its luster. It wasn’t painful exactly. It was more as if foreboding or dread had taken on a physical form. And whatever appeared to be welling up inside her was all the more powerful for having been suppressed for so very long.
They headed east, towards the Peace Hotel. There was a gala dinner to celebrate the annual Business Awards, and she was Zhang’s guest. As they stopped at the lights on Fuzhou Road, he turned to her and asked if she was ill.
“No,” she said. “Just tired.”
“Would you rather forget about the dinner?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to spoil your evening.”
Zhang’s phone rang, and he took the call. As things tilted and she began to fall away, she heard his end of the conversation. Ten minutes…Yes, of course…I also have something to discuss…
When she came round, the car was parked at the side of the road, and Zhang and his driver were staring at her.
“I should take you home,” Zhang said.
“No, no,” she said. “I’m fine. Really.” She hauled herself upright and tucked a loose, limp strand of hair behind her ear. “This happens all the time.”
Zhang was still looking at her.
“It’s all right. I’m not going to die.” She let out a little laugh, which sounded strange, even to her. “Do you ever think that death—one’s own, I mean—might actually come as a relief?”
She should not be saying such things—she was dropping hints, giving herself away—and yet the truth was so unlikely that she doubted he would ever guess.
Zhang told Chun Tao to drive on, then he turned to her again.
“I worry about you,” he said. “Please don’t.”
“There’s something wrong—”