He collected his Mercedes from the short-stay car park and drove back into the city. A truck had crashed on the Yan’an elevated highway, and dozens of glossy pale green cabbages were scattered across the road, some of them crushed flat, others so unmarked that people were getting out of their cars to pick them up. It took Zhang an hour and a half to reach the complex of galleries and studios on Moganshan Road. He parked outside and sat with his hands on the steering wheel. It was still early, not even ten o’clock, and the street was empty except for a security guard on duty by the main entrance. The air was tense and gray. Why had he come? What did he hope to achieve? He had told Naemi that she was responsible for Mad Dog’s death, something he could neither justify nor prove, and he wished he had never opened his mouth. At the same time, he had been unable to forget what had happened during the moments that followed his accusation. Had he perceived some truth about her, or had his mind been bent out of shape by Mad Dog’s unrelenting talk of ghosts and demons? Had he, too, begun to see things that weren’t there? That would amount to a kind of derangement. But if sanity meant he had to believe what he had seen, perhaps he would rather not be sane. As a child, he had always run towards his fear. It was something his father had taught him. If you’re afraid of heights, his father said, look for a high building or a precipice. If the darkness scares you, turn off all the lights. Nothing had ever frightened Zhang more than the face he had glimpsed in the split second before the service lift dropped out of sight. But it was that face that he had come to see.
He entered the complex and climbed the red stairs to the gallery where the opening had taken place the previous Wednesday. At the far end of the space was a two-story glass cube where several gallery employees sat at desks, their faces lit by computer screens. A woman emerged as he approached. She was in her forties or fifties, and her face had the pallor and consistency of wax. She wore glasses with oblong lenses and severe black frames. Her jacket and trousers were also black.
“I’m looking for Naemi Kuusela,” he said.
“She left.”
“When will she be back?”
The woman shook her head. “You don’t understand. She no longer works here. Friday was her last day.”
He stared at her. “Has she got a new job?”
“I suppose so.”
“Where?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
He was still staring. “Are you in charge here?”
“I’m the director.”
“And she didn’t tell you where she was going?”
“Why should she? It’s none of my business.” The woman examined him through her designer glasses. Her default expression was that of somebody conducting an experiment. Measured, impassive. Scientific. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“Wait.”
The other people in the gallery looked up from their computers. He had raised his voice.
“She told me she was leaving China,” the woman said. “She had been here for long enough. There comes a time, she said, when you just know. But she didn’t say where she was going, or what she might be doing in the future.”
Leaving China? Zhang looked down at the polished concrete floor. He was thinking of Nina again. Gulsvig’s Nina. He remembered Gulsvig talking of her abrupt and unforeseen departure for New York. He imagined she would have left New York too, eventually, and with similar abruptness. And whenever she disappeared, she would leave a death in her wake. In London, it had been her boyfriend, Peter. In New York, he thought, there would also have been an unexpected death. She cast off people as a snake casts off its skin. Places too. Things that had been important to her, crucial even, suddenly became superfluous, disposable. Gulsvig’s actual words came back to him, Gulsvig recalling something Nina had said about her English boyfriend. He can’t seem to get close enough. Naemi had said very nearly the same thing to him, early on Thursday morning, when she returned the jade ring he had given her. Was that a coincidence? If so, what kind of coincidence? Once again, the two young women, born forty years apart, appeared to merge, to overlap, but the link between them remained as obscure and mysterious as ever.
“I was sorry to lose her,” the director said. “Her knowledge was remarkable—especially for someone so young.”
Zhang nodded to himself. “And you really have no idea where she might have gone?”
“She was always very discreet. Very private.” The director looked past him, towards the entrance to the gallery. “I had the impression that it wasn’t just China that she was leaving. She was leaving the art world too. There were other avenues she wanted to explore. She is one of those people who can turn their hand to almost anything. Perhaps I was lucky she stayed as long as she did.” She shook her head in admiration, and also, Zhang thought, in disbelief.
He thanked the woman, and was just moving away when she asked him for his name. He looked at her over his shoulder.
“So I can tell her that you asked for her,” the woman said, “when she gets in touch.”
“She won’t,” he said. “You’ll never hear from her again.”
The woman blinked.
On his way back down the stairs, Zhang checked his phone. Just work e-mails. He would deal with them later. When he reached the road, he stopped and looked around. The sky was darker, greener. There was going to be a storm. The rain would fall with such force that it would bounce off the pavement. The temperature would drop.
“You want to buy a gift?”
He turned. The street vendor had arrived with his wooden cart and his trinkets.
“What about a nice piece of jade,” the vendor said, “for luck?”
Zhang took out his car keys and pressed Unlock. “You look like you could use it more than me.”
“There isn’t a person in the world who doesn’t need a bit of luck from time to time.” Shaking his head, the vendor adjusted the position of an old cracked teakettle. “This weather. Everybody’s out of sorts.”
Zhang selected a couple of notes from his wallet and laid them on the handcart.
The vendor looked at the money. “What’s that for?”
Zhang shrugged.
Once in the car, he put in a call to Johnny Yu.
“Naemi’s disappeared,” he said.
“After the parting I know not if she is far or near / What meets the eye is bleak and doleful.” There was a quick rasping sound as Johnny lit a cigarette. “That’s Ou-Yang Hsiu. A Confucian master.”
“I think she left the country,” Zhang said.
“You want me to find out what’s going on?”