He laughed with her laughter. “Is it a compliment or not?”
“Take it for what you please,” she said. “The fact is we are both somewhat foreign, on opposite sides of the world. But you have the advantage, I think. You have lived in your ancestral country. I have never been in China. I speak Chinese, but badly I fear, though my father has tried to teach me. But my mother, who was an American, talked with me when I was a child more than my father did, and so I know English also. Would you prefer we speak English?”
“Would you?”
She hesitated. “I am more easy in French. Besides, even my American mother spent a lot of time here in Paris and she also spoke fluent French, even to me sometimes. Alas, she never learned Chinese. There was a prejudice. I never understood it. But my father has taught me Chinese also after—well! I have little chance to speak English. But I speak English also. Let us speak in English, for my practice! I don’t have any English-speaking friends.”
“What does your father do here?” he asked in English.
She replied in his language, a trifle slowly but precisely. “He is a collector and dealer of Oriental art objects, but of course especially of the Chinese. Unfortunately it is not so easy now to get art objects out of China. But he knows the necessary people in Hong Kong.”
“Have you been in Hong Kong?”
“Oh, yes—I travel with my father. Of course, being Chinese, he hoped I’d be a son. When I wasn’t, still being very Chinese, he made the best of it. But then I’ve tried, too.”
“You have tried—”
“To take the place of a son.”
“Very difficult, I should say—when a girl is as beautiful as you are!”
She smiled but did not reply to this obvious small talk.
He discerned in her something of his own aloofness and remained silent. Now it was her turn to ask questions if she had any curiosity about him—that is to say, if she were interested in him. He wondered how old she was and resolved to conceal his own age. He was in years so distressingly young. How often he would have liked to lie about his age, to say, for example, that he was twenty-two or -three! He was never able to lie. Honesty was an absolute—but then he could be silent. He watched her as she sipped her drink meditatively, meanwhile gazing about her at the people.
She was looking at him now. “It is your first visit here?”
“Yes.”
“And you came from—”
“I was in England all winter.”
“You have a slight English accent but not quite English!”
He laughed. “That’s clever of you! No, as I said, I’m American—from the very heart of my country.”
“Where is that heart?”
“The Midwest—if we’re speaking geographically.”
“You are here to study something?”
“I suppose one could say so.”
She lifted her delicate eyebrows. “You are very mysterious!”
He was smiling at her serious eyes, dark eyes, set in long straight black lashes. “Am I? But you are rather mysterious yourself, half-American, half-Chinese, but speaking perfect French, too, with only the slightest accent—an accent I can’t recognize.”
She shrugged. “It’s my own. We Chinese speak languages easily—not like Japanese, who have thick tongues. I speak also German and Italian and Spanish. It is possible for me to understand other languages—we live so close here in Europe.”
“Do you consider yourself Chinese?”
“As my father’s daughter, of course I am Chinese. But—”
Again the slight shrug, and he leaned his elbows on the table the more closely to examine her exquisite face.
“But what do you feel you are, inside yourself?”
Unconsciously he was back in his old habit of asking questions. Yet how did it indeed feel to be the child of nations and peoples, speaking many tongues as one’s own?
“How you do ask questions!” she exclaimed, half laughing. Then suddenly she was serious. The lovely mouth closed; her eyes were thoughtful and she looked away from him. “How do I feel inside—,” she murmured as though asking herself. “I suppose I feel I belong nowhere and everywhere.”
“That means you are unique—you are a new kind of person,” he declared.
She shook her head. “How can an American say such a thing? Are not Americans something of everything? I have heard my father say that Americans are the most difficult people to understand. When I asked why, he said it is because they are all so mixed, having roots in every country. That is what he says. Is it true?”
He reflected, gazing straight into her eyes as he did so. “Historically, yes, individually, no. Each of us belongs, beyond family, to his own region, his own state, and to the conglomerate, the nation. We are a new people, but we have our own country.”
“How intelligent you are,” she exclaimed. “It is so pleasant to speak with an intelligent man!”
He was laughing at her again. “You don’t find men intelligent?”
She gave the characteristic little shrug, very pretty, very French, “Not usually! It is customary for men to remark on one’s face, et cetera. Always the looks!”
“And then?”
“Then? Oh, something like where is one going, where does one live, will one have a drink and so on. Always the same! But you, although we are strangers, not meeting until fifteen minutes or so before now, you have given me a sensible thought. I know more about Americans. Thank you, monsieur—”
She was entirely serious, as he could see. And he might have thought of her sexually, with that lovely face and the long narrow hands she used with unconscious grace, except that somehow Lady Mary had helped him to put sex in its place. She had given him nothing but sex and in so doing she had made it extraneous, having nothing to do with anything else in life, an act merely physical. She had surfeited him until he knew that sex was not enough for him. Healthy male that he was, he knew the limitations of sex. There were many other aspects of life for the human animal, and these he must explore. His curiosities were far beyond sex, and in this Lady Mary had served him well. He did not hate her but he doubted that he would ever return to her or indeed ever see her again. Meanwhile here, facing him, was a new and beautiful female creature, one for whom he had not sought but had found as one accidentally finds a jewel.
“And you,” she was saying. “Tell me who you are and truly why you are here. It seems to me that I can like you as a friend, and I don’t find many.”
How could he explain himself to her? And yet he wished very much to be able to do so. It was the first time in his life that he really wished to explain himself to someone else. For that matter, he had never tried to explain himself even to himself. Driven by question and wonder and the insatiable hunger to know everything, he had omitted explanations even to himself!
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said slowly. “I have not had time to think much about myself. Wherever I have been—at least until now, I have been mostly alone. The others were always much bigger—much older.” He paused to consider himself in the past. “Older in years, that is,” he amended. “I’ve always been too old for myself.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Then you have an old soul. We know about such things in my father’s country. Would you like to meet him? I think he would like you. Usually he doesn’t like young men—especially Americans.”
“Then why me?”
“You are different from the others. You’ve said so yourself—in effect. Even your English isn’t American.”
He thought again of the many months he had spent with Lady Mary. Had she indeed left even the mark of her language upon his tongue? Yet why should he speak of her to this girl? He did not want even to think of Lady Mary.