Marilyn wasn’t at the studio. No sign, no message. For a while I hung around hoping she would appear. I went to the Luk Yu in Wing Kut Street for oolong tea and dim sum—it’s the best traditional teahouse—but no sign. I ended with a few daan tat custards to cheer myself up, didn’t succeed, and was at Steerforth’s within an hour.
We’d drawn a couple of Mexican ladies. The plan was for J.S. and me to arrive at a glitterati party about ten o’clock, where we would “accidentally” meet our clients. Their politician husbands were on a fact-find mission around the Third World, chuckle chuckle. They would spend their Third World funds being entertained all night by six choice girls in Deep Water Bay.
Mine was Eva, quite possibly the most sophisticated woman in the galaxy. Proof: she showed no perturbation when admitting two Chinese maids to our vast bathroom where we were, sort of, resting jointly. They fetched oysters and champagne and grub with seven types of perfume on trolleys. I tried leaping into the bath and sinking decorously below the suds but they brought more trolleys until they were all along one wall. Eva was amused when I played hell.
“That’s the first laugh I’ve had for ages!” She fell about. “You were so funny! Hands over your middle and everything!”
Angry, I stalked to the picture window and stood glaring out at the night sky above Kowloon. We were on the eighth floor.
“Why didn’t you put your dressing gown on, stupid man?”
“Haven’t got one.”
“Really?” She was delighted. “Aren’t all you expatriates in Hong Kong rich?” She waited, a cigarette between her lips. “Light. And vodka orange.”
“No,” I said. “No. And get your own.”
“What if,” she said, fury controlled, “I don’t pay you? I’m not used to refusals.”
“Time you learned.”
There was something going on in the streets below. Police lights, people blurring the illumination in Nathan Road. I opened a window. Distant noises rushed in on the night heat.
“Shut that window, assassin! The heat! My skin!”
“Shush.” I couldn’t hear what was going on.
“I tell you—” She tried to slam it so I clocked her one and stood listening.
We were stark-naked. Breaking glass? Sirens, a shot even. My spine chilled. Some sort of riot was going on.
“Put the telly on,” I said.
“Of all the—”
I advanced on her and she scrambled for the controls. Nothing but sitcoms. I divided my time between the window and telly. She became excited as my growing horror communicated itself. Our naked reflections in the wide window’s darkness were bizarre—a Mexican svelte beauty and a ghastly tousle-healed pillock.
“What is it, doorlink?” she kept saying.
The newsflash came on after twenty minutes. What with the screen’s shambles and the real-life pandemonium down in the streets it was life in disorientating duplicate.
Students had marched on a studio near Jordan Road and were blocked by police. Two companies of Gurkhas had drawn kukris. Cars blazed, blood spilled. Forty students had been arrested. A company of the Queen’s Own Buffs was moving armored personnel carriers down Nathan Road…
Aghast I watched the running street battles, moaning at the demonstration placards:
“Commerce Kills Art!” “Halt Exploitation of Artists!” And, most painful of alclass="underline" “Set Art Free!!”
The telecaster was babble-mouthed with hysteria. “Seven fires are already blazing in Kowloon. Tonight students erupted in violence. They demand the right to petition the Sovereign to protect the Crown Colony’s artistic integrity,” et horrendous cetera.
Eva pried my hands from my face and fed me glugs of wine. She was panting—with heat, thrills or what, I don’t know. Terror takes women this way. To me, it’s terrifying stuff and naught else.
“What is it, Lovejoy? Why should some silly students… ?”
She gazed at me and gasped, clapping her hands. “It’s you, isn’t it? They’re rioting about something you’ve done!”
Exalting, she dragged me to the bed, slickly sealing off the world with the manual control. “And I’m here! With the East’s chief arch-revolutionary! And my Enrico the right-wing…”
“Look, Eva.” She was all over me, demanding, whining crude exhortations. “Look.” I tried explaining, but it was no good. Truth is hopeless against passion. I’ve always found that.
31
« ^ »
EVA left during breakfast. No woman ever finishes breakfast. In fact, most never even start. She left me a blank check, insisting.
“That bowl you told me about, Lovejoy. For the bride and groom.”
“There isn’t one available,” I said with a mouthful. “Can’t you understand? They’re antiques, unbelievably rare.”
Before the horror of the rioting I’d been telling her of a favorite antique. Mazer bowls were drinking vessels. You offered the bridal pair cake soaked in wine in it, then gave it to the local church. Bowls of the 1490 period occasionally come up for auction. They don’t look much, being only ordinary beechwood with a silver-gilt rim, so are often missed or misunderstood, though worth a King’s ransom. You often see a carbachon stone of rock crystal set in the bottom—not mere decoration: it changed color if the wine was poisoned. In a fit of nostalgia I’d waxed lyrical about owning one.
She bussed me, glancing at her Cartier watch. “You find one, Lovejoy doorlink. And now, until tonight.”
Gone, in a waft of umpteen blended perfumes. I finished her breakfast, having cunningly made her order two. It was going to be a long day.
The street folk had also been hard at it. Dust carts were still busy scooping up heaps of glass. A couple of fires still smoldered, but the fire people were slick as ever. The last of the burned-out cars was being removed as I made my way past the police posts. The population was already streaming to work. For the first time I saw British police, four, passing in a Land Rover, by the ferry concourse. Discreet, or vestigially obscure? In Hong Kong you could ask the same question of China herself, or me, or anyone.
By the time I reached the Flower Drummer I was soaked, beat, and raging. I went to a nearby bathhouse to prepare for war. There, resting after the millionth scrub, I saw the news. Mercifully nobody had died, but eighty-five people had been arrested and thirty were hospitalized. The damage was assessed in millions.
One of the folks brought me a video tape of the morning news interview as soon as I was through the bamboo curtain. I was given tea and orders to run it. The Great Fake Accusation was first on, a sensation. Carmen Noriego, the great Andalusian art expert, had been hired to denounce us. I was pleased and settled back to watch. The Triad was using its collective cortex.
“Accusations claim that Hong Kong’s major art find is actually a fake,” the interviewer intoned. “As the world’s leading Impressionist valuer, what is your view?”
“I saw the very painting two years ago in Kwangtung,” the lady said from between frying-pan earrings with much head tossing. “It is undoubtedly a fake. The brushwork, style, the very quintessential nuance of Song Ping originals have a rapport which…” And all that verbal jazz.
I was out of the chair like a flash and yelling in the corridor for Sim, Fatty, Dr. Chao, Ling Ling, anybody, raising Cain. Two seconds later I had five goons scampering. I was promised an audience within minutes. I got Ling Ling and three women attendants who were banished as I entered the third-floor lounge. No screens, I noted, but a mirror wall. Same difference.
“There’s a traitor in the Triad,” I said, seething. I wouldn’t sit down. “The cretins let that woman art critic give Song Ping’s name away.”
“It was my instruction, Lovejoy.” She gestured. Her hand compelled me to sit. “All Hong Kong knows the expert lady has never been to Kwangtung. The entire Orient now realizes we possess a priceless work of art.”