‘We’re sharing a room?’ Nadia asked when the bellboy was gone. The two cases lay on the bed. The room had the vacant look that affects all hotel rooms. The television was showing an English-language film. Nadia was sitting on the bed studying the folds of her dress.
‘We spent too much money in Vienna,’ Kirov told her. ‘I don’t have much left.’ In the film people were shooting each other. He turned from watching it and found the woman watching him. ‘I’ll sleep in a chair,’ he said indifferently and returned to the tepid action on the screen.
The afternoon passed. A sharp fall of warm rain rattled off the window and then stopped. Kirov fended off the effects of travel with cigarettes. He had taken the opera ticket from his pocket and it lay on the table by the ashtray. Once he called the desk and asked if there were any more messages but there were none. Just the ticket with its unintelligible script.
‘I have to go to sleep,’ Nadia told him. She searched for a nightdress in her case. ‘Is it possible to have some clothes washed?’ He answered that he would see what could be arranged. Their cases were by now full of unwashed clothing, rumpled and sour. Finding no nightdress Nadia turned her back to him and stripped off her clothes so that he could see the fine curve of her naked back and buttocks, and the shallow play of light on her skin.
‘Viktor was homosexual, wasn’t he?’ Kirov said. She froze, still not looking at him. Her hands clutched a scrap of underwear. ‘That’s why you weren’t his mistress, isn’t it? That was the little secret between Viktor and all his women.’
‘He was kind to us,’ she responded distantly. She folded her clothes and stooped to place them on a chair. The fall of her breasts was in shadow, the nipples like darts emergent from the silhouette.
‘He could afford to be.’
‘Other men can’t?’ she asked. The bedclothes were folded down. She slipped between the sheets and pulled them so that only her shoulders were exposed and her face with its expression that was not an accusation but a plea holding no hope of its being answered.
‘I don’t know,’ Kirov admitted. He lit another cigarette instead of giving in to tiredness. He put a couple of questions to her — what did she think of Taiwan? — as if she were a tourist The smoke was making him sick. He extinguished the cigarette and poured a glass of mineral water from the bar and took this to the window where his reflection and hers and the view over Jen Ai Road to the distance and an unidentified Chinese monument confounded themselves. Her manner told him again that the relationship between men and women was a mystery, a conspiracy as fluid as the Ring, open-ended as the actors turned it to their needs, a question to which all answers were provisional.
When he turned from the window she was asleep. He placed his empty glass on the table and took a seat where he could keep watch over the woman. He checked his watch for the hours until the performance at the Chinese opera and his heavy-lidded eyes struggled to focus. What he needed was sleep. He began to remove his clothes.
Her sleep was restless. She made a fist of her right hand and clenched the pillow. Outside a brewing storm stained the sky purple and revealed a furtive moon in wracks of indigo cloud. Kirov stood naked by the window, with moonlight on his back and his dark impenetrable gaze lying upon her. His body was hard and still as a statue while her pliant form whimpered and writhed in her dreams. He stepped slowly across the room, leaned forward and drew back the sheets at one corner of the bed exposing the flesh of her spine and the soft swell of her contours. He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over to touch her shoulder.
She shuddered. The pace of her breathing changed. He heard the irregular rhythm, the catching in the throat. She turned over slowly. Her face was shadowed by his except for a bar of light across her forehead and a single bright dot in her eyes. He knew he must be invisible to her, no more than an outline of form, translatable into any man. He came no closer and withdrew his hand so that they did not touch and only their breathing, stirring the insubstantial air between them, formed a link. She said, ‘It’s easy to love men.’ The words hurt her. She turned her head towards the pillow so that her expression was wholly in darkness. Kirov’s hand was resting on the pillow and he could feel the tears that he could not see. Her muted voice went on: ‘But it’s difficult to like them.’
‘You liked Viktor?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’ He began to remove his hand but encountered her fingers splayed across the pillow. They touched his and halted there, hooked around his fingers like a question.
Kirov made love to her tenderly, although she was a stranger.
At six-thirty Kirov rose and dressed. He told Nadia that he had to leave her for a while, warning her to close and lock the door behind him and not to answer any callers. He collected the opera ticket and went down to the hotel lobby where he checked again for messages. In the street he picked up a blue-shield cab and had the driver take him to the China Bazaar in Chung Hua Road.
In the mild night the pavements were crowded with pedestrians. Chung Hua Road was a chaotic stream of cars and motorcycles manoeuvring between lanes. People were crowding around a new restaurant that displayed a series of red floral targets calling on good luck and the gods’ blessings for the business. Kirov crossed the road and made his way through the crush of local fans into the theatre. He displayed his ticket and was shown to a seat among the rows of black-haired Chinese. The side of the stage was occupied by the orchestra. There were few props. In due course the orchestra struck up, the hubbub of voices subsided and the performance began.
He first became aware of the Australian when the row started bobbing up and down to allow someone to get past and a friendly Australian voice said, ‘G’day, mate. Know all about this stuff or do you need a helping hand? The fella there with the purple on his face, that’s Lo Hung-hsun, he’s the good guy. Look out for the fella in the white paint job, he’s a cunning bastard.’
Kirov turned his head. The man next to him nodded good-naturedly and revealed a row of teeth with a gold incisor. ‘Watch the show, mate,’ he said pointedly. ‘Fella there, red face, that’s Yu. He’s Lo’s servant. Real bloody hero! Lo’s in the mountains — chair there equals mountains, get it? The other fellas are robbers or something.’ On his lap the Australian had a paper bag. He took a peanut from it and nibbled. ‘Here they go, singing their heads off. The female is Pi Lien. Nice face, eh? Shame about the tits. Nothing up here, your Chinese — flat, if you take my meaning,’ he added delicately. ‘She’s Lo’s girlfriend — or maybe his sister, I forget.’ He offered the bag of peanuts. ‘Go on, take one. In this place us Round-Eyes have got to stick together.’
‘You understand Chinese?’ Kirov asked.
‘Not this lot. This is Mandarin. The locals speak Fukienese. I’ve picked up a few words — how much? too much, please, thanks and fuck off. The big guy is Pi Lien’s dad. He gets his mates together and they take on the robbers and rescue the hero or something like that. Do you really want to watch this or shall we get a bite to eat?’ The Australian got to his feet, a big man with a big belly restrained in a pair of green and blue striped trousers by a heavy leather belt with a brass Chinese medallion as a clasp. Over this he wore a brightly patterned cotton shirt and a red handkerchief tied about his neck. His head was heavy, with plenty of chins and folds of skin, a narrow lipless mouth, broad wide-pored nose and hyperthyroid eyes. What was left of his hair was grey and he wore it pasted and swept across a mottled scalp.