He didn’t believe in God. He regarded the idea of the afterlife, and of resurrection, as a fiction as ancient as it was extravagant. And yet, every year since Sophie had died, he had conducted his ritual on the same day in September, and at the same time. He would go to Chinatown, and at the spot where his wife had fallen to the sidewalk he would stop for a few minutes, summoning up the brief moment in which he had seen the last spark of life in her eyes. It was the only form of prayer he was able to muster. When he told his psychoanalyst about it, Dr Esterhagen had defined this act as a spontaneous search for the vagina of eternity. He never went to see the doctor again. Whereas he did read every book and pamphlet he could find on the Book of Changes, which at the time he and Sophie had been on their way to buy at Tung Chung-shu’s famous store. Sixty-four hexagrams, in endless combinations, from which one could interpret the fate of both individuals and entire countries, continents and galaxies, seemed to him a mental delusion. Poetic enough to be called mad. That was no consolation, especially when he remembered the enthusiastic way Sophie used to tell him about it all, and how pleased she was when he suggested they buy the Book not at one of the elegant bookstores in their neighbourhood, but right at the heart of Chinatown. If at the time they had reached Tung Chung-shu’s store, which was barely a block away, would the final expression in her eyes have been any different? The cold look that had stuck in his memory expressed a feeling of utter loneliness, as devoid of complaint as it was of hope. But on the other hand, what value could there be in supposing that if her heart attack had happened after entering the store, she might have died happier? He could sense the absurdity of such speculation, but he couldn’t entirely free himself of it, because always, somewhere at the back of his mind, a sense of guilt stirred in him. As if it was he himself who had chosen the time and the place. He realised he would never free himself of it if he didn’t make some sort of change to his annual ritual, or abandon it. So why shouldn’t he consult the Book? He didn’t actually believe in its merits, and fortune-telling – if one could define the arrangement of a hexagram of scattered sticks in this way – had no greater value than the toss of a coin, in which we leave everything to chance. And so he went ahead and did it. Having no experience, however, he fell into a whirlpool of contradictions, which he failed to interpret. For what on earth did the element of fire mean in conjunction with being forbidden to climb? It wasn’t as if he was planning to go hiking in the mountains during the summer season of forest fires. And on top of all this – a man disappearing into a chasm! What sort of interpretation could this possibly offer for his affairs? It was no different at the second attempt: the element of water was supposed to lessen the severity of hurricanes, yet the death of a bird augured a never-ending, ever greater threat. He did not make a third attempt, which could only have confirmed his worst suppositions: interpreting the hexagrams made no sense at all if you were not a Chinese man from the time of the Ming dynasty. As he put the sticks back in the red lacquer box, he decided he would go there one last time. He would stop at the spot where Sophie had died, and then go into Tung Chung-shu’s store, because he had never actually visited its interior. By the beginning of September one more detail had come into play: he would put his apartment up for sale and, without taking any souvenirs with him, would leave for northern California, or anywhere at all.
What he remembered most was that sense of compression: as if from at least a hundred and twenty television channels a single one had been made. And as if on this single channel a malevolent goblin were running the same tape over and over again: the second plane crashing into the second tower. At once he understood why they kept showing that second one non-stop, less often returning to the first. When the second one crashed, the cameras were already in place: the plane flew in, decelerating, turned a semi-circle, speeded up and finally smashed its beak into the slab of glass, only to come flying out the other side as a jet of fire. The first plane was like a stone hurled accidentally. The second contained the elegance of an agent who, not satisfied with just killing, makes a show of it into the bargain. Between the replays there was live coverage. In bars, in stores, before window displays and at gas stations people were watching what was happening in the very same city, just a short distance away. Tiny figures were jumping downwards. A pillar of smoke was gushing upwards. Finally, this entire inferno slumped like volcanic lava, filling the labyrinth of streets and avenues with heat and dust. Just at that moment he crossed the street to enter Tung Chung-shu’s store, but it turned out that this repository of all kinds of wisdom and ancient knowledge, familiar from guidebooks and esoteric links, in whose display window he had seen the same golden Buddha each year, had closed down. In its place, a tacky painting of a dragon, with the royal letter wang hovering above it for some unknown reason, invited guests to enter an antique store.
He spent a long time wandering a narrow, badly lit labyrinth between dozens of wardrobes, dressers, screens, tables and cabinets, made chaotic by accumulated knick-knacks, until finally he spotted the storekeeper at the far end of all this junk. The old man was wearing a long silk gabardine and his white hair was covered by a little round hat, from under which a tacked-on pigtail spilled onto his shoulders. Reluctantly he turned his gaze from the television screen, where no doubt for the hundredth time that day, the plane full of passengers was on the point of crashing into the second tower.
‘You looking for something?’ he asked, glancing at the screen again. ‘Cheng have everything genuine, genuine porcelain, genuine fan, Canton, Shanghai, nothing fake!’
‘I’m looking for Tung Chung-shu’s store,’ he said. ‘Has it moved? Or closed down?’
Now on the screen he could see a fire truck disappearing into a dark cloud of dust.
‘You not see Tung Chung-shu?’ The old man shook his head. ‘No one see him.’
‘I saw him last year,’ he said, also glancing at the screen, from which a reporter leaning over a blood-stained stretcher was speaking. ‘I was standing just over there, on the other side of the street.’
‘Tung Chung-shu,’ said the old man, sniggering, ‘die long time ago. Very long time ago. Han dynasty.’
He knew nothing about the Han dynasty. The storekeeper, like many old people, was living in his own, insulated eternity, where this particular morning some aeroplanes made into missiles had joined in. He headed for the door, casting half-hearted glances at the imitations of lacquer, silk, or woven paper, made in Taiwan or Indonesia. And just then, on the surface of a small rectangular table, with columns of imprinted gilded Chinese characters in a wavy style running across it, he caught sight of a model of a cottage. He stopped beside it, gazing in disbelief at the intricately reproduced windows, the hip-roof and the small veranda with an architrave and a pergola. There was even the head of a china doll set in the middle window of the upstairs bedroom. All that was missing were the snow and the sledge, on which he could have seen himself. One after another, images released from the storeroom of his memory came passing before him as he picked up the model, gently ran his fingers over the red roof tiles, closed the white shutters and touched the chimney.
Opposite the former German barracks, in a row of officers’ villas built at the turn of the century, this one single house had always aroused his curiosity. It was mysterious. It caught the eye, like a visitor from a faraway land. The adults simply called it the Chinese cottage, though no one knew why some Prussian had come up with such a bizarre idea. In summer the house was fenced off from the street by a hedge. In autumn one could see a garden pond, with golden chestnut leaves floating in it. Yet it was at its loveliest in winter. Now he was remembering that evening, when under the Christmas tree he had found a copy of Mr Inkblot’s Academy and the sledge he had been longing to receive. Outside thick snow was falling. How wonderful! His father had agreed to let him try it out at once. They walked, or rather glided across the city like a pair in harness. His father was the reindeer and he was Father Christmas, come all the way here across the frozen Baltic from Finland. Beyond the last, narrow little street were the woods and the first hill. They slid down it a few times. On the way home he asked his father if they could make a short stop outside the Chinese cottage. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the illuminated windows, the snowy roof that looked like a pagoda and the little girl’s face that appeared for a moment in an upstairs window.