But not now: “Wake up! Don’t spoil it all!”
“I’m awake, I’m awake.” He struggled upward, mind reeling, and looked around the small cabin in the amber light for his clothes.
She stood over him, washing her hands. “I’m sorry, Kwan,” she said. “I don’t blame you, we both fell asleep, but you have to hurry.”
“Yes. Yes.” He’d had yet another drink with her in this room, and then perhaps an hour’s sleep; brain and hands were equally numb, thick, uncertain. But he got into his clothes, and she peeked out the slightly open door at the corridor, and said, “It’s all right.”
They pressed together for just a moment in the doorway, she still naked, his left hand sliding down the wonderful slope of her spine. This body...
She saw it in his eyes, and responded, her own eyes gleaming, mouth softening. But then she shook her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” she murmured.
“Till then,” he whispered, knowing he would never see her again, and had to bite the inside of his cheeks to force back the tears. He had never felt so cheated, so depressed, so sorry for himself in his life. This was what he was supposed to have. An easy life, lovely women, the rewards of his class and education and looks and brains. She gently pushed him out, and shut the door.
What have I sacrificed, to become a creature of politics? But at the same time he knew, he knew even now, that all the rest of it could never be more than joy for the moment, that he was a creature of politics, that his devotion to the democratic cause was as intense as his craving for Helga’s body but more lasting, that a sacrifice wasn’t something you did to prove your worthiness but something that was done to you as an inevitable result of your commitment. There would be Helgas and Helgas, there would always be Helgas. Would there ever again be a chance for him to help break the stranglehold of the ancient murderers?
Stumbling along the endless corridors — but wider up here and better illuminated — Kwan realized he was drunk and lost and probably in a great deal of trouble. If he didn’t find his way back, if he wasn’t in his position at that deep sink by eight in the morning, he would have done the worst thing he could do: he would have attracted their attention. The ship’s officers would have cause to study his papers, to study him, to learn about him, to decide whether to turn him over to the regime of the ancient murderers or merely boot him off the ship in some other hellhole, nearly as bad.
“Outside,” he told himself. If he could find the deck, the clear air should clear his head, and then he would find the right deck, the promenade, and the ladder. That it was the ladder down to hell wasn’t important; what was important was that he find it and use it.
He did soon stumble across a bulkhead door leading to the deck, but he was wrong about the outside air making him less drunk; in fact, it seemed to make him drunker than before. He reeled to the railing and clung there a few moments while the world looped and swung around him, wondering if he would throw up.
No; not quite. At last he could lift himself and look around and decide which way was aft. He went that way, staggering, alone on the deck, the moon now high above him to the left and ahead, throwing his shadow back at a long narrow angle diagonally across the deck behind him.
He was already on the promenade deck, which he discovered when he came finally to the rounded stern, and there below him, gleaming palely in the moonlight, was his own empty oval deck. And between here and there, shimmering and seeming to move in the moon’s bright but uncertain light, were the ladder rungs.
He had to go over the rail. Somehow, he had to attach himself, first his feet and then his hands, to those wet metal rungs, and then descend them, as they swayed back and forth with the ship’s progress, in the deceptive moonlight, with his head full of cotton batting and his arms and legs as uncertain as stuffed toys. But he had to do it; no choice.
He began. Eyesight in and out of focus, fingers made of wood, he bent to duck beneath the railing, and a voice in perfect Mandarin said, with some shock, “Wait a minute! What do you think you’re doing there?”
So startled he nearly fell overboard, Kwan managed to fall the other way instead, landed painfully on his hipbone on the deck, and stared up at a short, skinny, bald Chinese man dressed as a room steward, who pointed over the side and severely said, “Are you trying to get down there? You’ll never do it.”
Amazed to hear Mandarin at this time in this place, but drunk enough to answer literally, Kwan said, “I have to.”
“Where are you from, the kitchen? Snuck up here, did you?” The steward smirked, letting Kwan know he was a naughty boy but the steward didn’t really mind. “Well, you’ll never get down there,” he said. “Believe me, you’ll miss a rung, you’ll go overboard, you’ll drown out in the sea, nobody will even see you go.”
“You’ll see me,” Kwan objected, with drunken clarity.
“Never mind me,” the steward said, being severe again. “You’re too important to lose like this.”
Kwan stared, almost shocked into sobriety. “You recognize me?”
“Yes, of course.” The steward reached down to grasp Kwan’s arm and yank him upright, surprisingly strong for such a little man. “You have a role to play,” he said. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“A safer way,” the little man said, and led Kwan inside, and down one flight of carpeted stairs and along another corridor to another door. “You can’t use this ever again,” he cautioned Kwan. “Normally it’s locked.”
“Thank you,” Kwan said. “Thank you.” Because he understood through his fog that the little man had saved his life.
“Yes, yes,” the little man said, gesturing Kwan through the doorway. “Just be more careful from now on,” he said, as testy as though Kwan were his personal responsibility.
Teetering but safe, Kwan made his way down the steep stairs to the kitchens, and along the yellow corridor to his room and his bunk.
And next day, at the sink, did he pay for it.
12
The excitement boiling within her was so great when she actually set foot on the airplane that she wobbled on her new shoes and smiled like a stupid up-country child at the stewardess, who offered a more professional smile as she reached for Pami’s boarding pass; studied it; returned it: “Just down this aisle, in the fourth cabin.”
“Thank you.” The words came out a whisper. Her clogged throat, full of emotion, wouldn’t even make words. But it didn’t matter; the stewardess’s attention was already on the next passenger.
Each person has a special seat. Pami understood that, but wasn’t sure just how each person found his special seat. She wandered down the aisle, carrying her new large plastic purse, past people stowing luggage and removing coats and moving back and forth, and when she came to another uniformed stewardess she mutely extended the boarding pass. “Next cabin,” the woman said, pointing. “On your right.”
Nothing to do but keep going forward. Past the next partition — so probably into the next “cabin” — she went, her heart fluttering, her eyes panic-stricken with the problem of finding the right seat but her mouth still uncontrollably beaming, showing her poor teeth. Arrived in the right cabin, she just stood there in the narrow aisle, bag in one hand and boarding pass in the other, and waited. People pushed past her, unswervingly drawn to their own seats, and she began to hope that eventually there would only be one unoccupied place left along the right here, and it would be hers.
I’m going away, she thought, and smiled so hard her cheeks hurt. I’m going away. I’m flying.