Zhang Guo Xing.
When she arrived at the bar in the Park Hyatt, she was able to approach him without him knowing. She saw him first, just as she had in the club on the night they met. His head was lowered. He seemed lost in thought. He wasn’t scanning the bar for her, as men she was meeting normally did. He wasn’t apprehensive, or predatory. He might almost have forgotten that she was coming. She liked this about him. He mirrored her desire for an intimacy that would be more profound because it sprang from confidence, not need or lack. She stood by the table for a few seconds, watching him. Then, finally, she spoke. Have you been waiting long? He glanced up and saw her. Once again, he surprised her, since he didn’t have the look of a man who wanted something from her. It was more as if the sight of her gladdened his heart. She felt, oddly, like the view from a high window—miles and miles of wooded hills and valleys unfolding into a distance that was hazy, blue.
Have a seat. What can I get you?
The taxi dropped her at Longyang Road station, and she took an escalator up to the concourse, where she bought a one-way ticket to Pudong airport. The woman told her the Maglev would be leaving in thirteen minutes. She stepped onto a second escalator that led up to the platform. Once she had boarded the train, she sat down and stared out of the window. Not long afterwards, a middle-aged man in a New York baseball cap sat nearby. He looked Taiwanese, or possibly Malaysian. A camera with a long lens hung around his neck.
When she lay down with Zhang in the Chairman Suite on that first night, everything that he did felt right. He touched her body as if he was already familiar with it. He knew when words were needed, and when they were not. How often did that happen? She wondered briefly if he had also lived more than one life—if she had been with him before…But no, he was too young in himself. Too new. It was instinct on his part. It was her good fortune. Even then, though, she had registered a flicker of anxiety, scarcely detectible, yet catastrophic, like the discarded cigarette that starts a forest fire. If he knew how to touch her, what else did he know? What would he sense in her? How would she conceal what she needed to conceal? She had wanted to sleep with him the moment she saw him. She was someone who responded quickly. But she seemed drawn to the very people who endangered her. The intuitive, the curious—and sometimes, also, the malevolent. How long could she give him? A week? A month? Or should she remove herself immediately? As she gazed at the top of the Jinmao Tower, the china animals motionless behind her on their artificial grass, she was torn between self-indulgence and self-denial. They were both powerful, both painful. That was what her life was like. Raids on the sublime tended to be followed by rapid withdrawals. I don’t love you. Forget me. I was never here.
In hindsight, one thing was certain. She should have ended it before she met Mad Dog. She should have ended it as soon as Torben appeared. That was a sign, if ever there was one—the past floating up into the present and capsizing it. What did the fishermen in Finnmark used to say? The wave that sinks you is the wave you never see. It should have been a one-night stand—an assignation that couldn’t be repeated. The exotic stranger, the deluxe hotel. Nothing wrong with that. But she had been undisciplined, and greedy. She’d allowed herself to become involved…
As the train slid out of the station, there were announcements in a number of different languages. The airport was thirty kilometers southeast of Shanghai, and the journey would take just over seven minutes. They would be traveling at speeds of up to 430 kilometers an hour. Something about the shortness of time it would take to reach the airport undid her. She began to tremble, tears spilling from her eyes.
“Are you all right?” The man in the baseball cap was leaning towards her, across the aisle.
She held up a hand to ward him off. “I’m fine—”
“Can I help?”
“No,” she said. “Thank you—”
The train gathered speed, tilting on its rails. A digital screen at the far end of the carriage showed how fast they were going: 180 kmh. 190 kmh. 210 kmh. The man in the baseball cap was on his feet in the aisle, taking photographs of the screen.
The flat land outside the window was a blur.
She remembered dancing with Zhang in his apartment late at night. They had ended up pressed against each other, barely moving, the music Spanish, sentimental. Pero tengo que ser / Tengo que ser como soy…In that moment, she would willingly have traded all her many lifetimes for a single life with him, but as the song suggested she couldn’t get away from who she was.
430 kmh. 431 kmh. 430 kmh.
The train had reached its optimum speed. Had she loved him? She thought she had.
The tears kept coming.
* * *
—
The Maglev slowed and stopped. As she left the train, the man in the baseball cap asked once again if he could help in any way. She thanked him, then said she was feeling better. Though she was several hours early for her flight, she headed straight to Security. She handed the uniformed official her passport and boarding card. He studied her name, the name that was about to become obsolete. It was a pity. She had grown to like it. But this was her last day as Naemi Vieno Kuusela. The official lifted his eyes and was looking at her steadily. Perhaps he could tell she had been crying. But there was nothing unusual or suspicious about that. People were always crying in airports. At last, he stamped her passport and handed it back to her. This, too, would become obsolete as soon as she cleared Customs and Immigration in Frankfurt.
Since her flight wasn’t due to leave until the evening, she decided to check into the hourly rate hotel. A manager with a badge that said ANGELA escorted her to reception on the seventh floor of an annex, where she was given a simple, uncluttered room. Switching on the TV, she took off her coat and shoes and lay down on the bed. Her tears had left her feeling shaky, weak. This moment, when it came, never felt good. There was usually somebody she cared for, or somebody she had to leave—somebody whose silence she had to secure if she was going to survive. Sometimes her hands were dirty, sometimes not, but her heart was seldom clean. Through the sealed window, she saw dark clouds massing to the northwest. It looked as if a thunderstorm had descended on Shanghai.
She remembered the day her English boyfriend Peter died. After calling the police—she had used a public phone box, and had chosen to remain anonymous—she ran to the halls of residence where Torben lived and knocked on the door of his room. She was crying and shaking. Torben didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t liked Peter. He had never thought Peter was good enough for her. Then again, he wouldn’t have thought anyone was good enough for her, and he was sufficiently self-aware to realize that, and to be able to laugh at himself. He put his arms around her and held her until she calmed down, then he made her a cup of Nescafé and rolled her a cigarette.
“I told him the drugs would kill him,” she said, “but he didn’t listen to me.”
“He didn’t listen to anyone.” Torben paused. “Sometimes, when we were talking, I’d think of that line in The Tale of the Heike: ‘The arrogant do not long endure.’ ” He looked at her. “I feel bad about that now.”