He took the vase in both hands and tenderly smoothed it. Then he set it carefully on the table again.
“Sit down,” he commanded. “Let me see you now how you are.”
He set his spectacles firmly on his low-bridged nose and, a hand on each outspread knee, he examined Rann carefully across the table. Then he took off his spectacles, folded them, and put them into a velvet case. He turned to Stephanie, who stood waiting.
“Leave us,” he commanded. “I have business to talk now.”
She smiled at Rann and left the room, her footsteps silent on the heavy Peking carpet.
Mr. Kung cleared his throat loudly and sat back in his chair, his gaze nevertheless fixed upon Rann’s face.
“You,” he said with emphasis, “you are now a man. You have been in a war.”
“Luckily not to kill,” Rann said.
Mr. Kung waved this aside with his right hand. “You saw sights, you have learned about life, and so forth. As for me, I have become an old man. I have developed heart disease. Why have I come to a new country at this time? It is because you are here. I have no son. I have only a daughter. She is clever, she understands my business, but she is a woman. Any woman may suddenly marry a fool or a rascal. This is my great fear. I must see her safely married to a man I trust. I prefer Chinese. Alas, what Chinese? We are refugees or—what is a Communist? I do not know. Besides, she is half-American. Perhaps a good Chinese, thinking of his own family line, will wish to keep his blood pure.”
“Sir”—Rann could not refrain—“you married an American.”
“Who left me for an American,” Mr. Kung retorted. “Perhaps similarly, in turn, and so forth, a Chinese might leave my daughter for a Chinese. New Chinese women are very bold. My son-in-law will be rich man.”
Mr. Kung looked gloomy. He sighed deeply, coughed, and put his left hand against his left side.
“Pain,” he said.
“Shall I call someone, sir?” Rann asked.
“No. I have not finished.”
Mr. Kung was silent for one, two, three minutes, his eyes closed, his hand on his heart. Then he opened his eyes, his hand dropped.
“I cannot die,” he said slowly. There was indeed a look of suffering on his thin face. “I must not die until my daughter’s marriage is arranged—has taken place—until I am assured that her future is safe.”
“Have you discussed it with Stephanie?” Rann knew that probably the old man had not. “Perhaps she has some ideas of her own.”
“It is not for her to decide.” He was as firm as one of the jade figures behind him. “How can a girl so young decide a thing as important as the man to whom she shall entrust her future, the one whose children she will bear? Her own mother decided and see what has happened? No, it is I who must decide and I have decided. I have only now to convince you and we begin today. You will stay and have dinner with us. You are now a famous man, and I have asked my daughter to prepare it with her own hands. What her mother did not do I have had done by faithful servants. She is well trained for your wife. And now in the meantime she must show you around my shop so you can see her brain. She knows my business as well as any man. I have taught her. Then we will have a drink together while she finishes our meal. But you must not take so long to decide. I am already a very old man and I cannot join my honored ancestors until I know this is done.”
The old town houses were side by side, one for their residence and one for the shop. The one that the shop occupied had been tastefully decorated with carpets, walls and draperies in neutral tones of beige, and the objects of art stood out in sharp contrast. Soft piano music played through hidden speakers and Rann allowed himself to be led from room to room, where he was shown object after object—each at least as beautiful as the one before it, if not even more beautiful.
“And this is the Quan Yin,” Stephanie said when they stood finally in the last room overlooking Fifth Avenue from the fifth floor, the snow still whirling into the streets below. The figure Stephanie indicated was about three feet high, carved in wood and very old, Rann judged, and she stood by herself in an alcove between the two arched windows, the place of most importance in the room. Rann knew the Quan Yin but he allowed Stephanie to continue with her explanation.
“She is my favorite of all. She is the goddess of mercy and she is about five hundred years old. My father found her in a small secondhand shop just outside Paris. There was nothing else of any value in the place and as we were leaving he saw her lying on her side under a table in the back of the room.
“The shopkeeper was very surprised when my father took her up and bought her. And now she is here until someone falls in love with her and she goes to their home for a while, but only for a while, and then she will go on to yet another lover and so on, for goddesses are eternal and can never be possessed by a mere mortal for very long. It is sad in a way to think of her never having an eternal home of her own—but that is the price one must pay for being a goddess of mercy.”
Stephanie laughed and slipped her arm through Rann’s and tilted her head prettily to look up at him as they stood side-by-side before the goddess.
“She is truly the most beautiful I have ever seen,” Rann said, and he made a decision. “I must have her for my own. Her face reminds me of you, somehow, in the expression.”
Stephanie smiled. “It is my Chinese half, Rann.”
He kissed her then, his kiss long and gentle and full on her soft lips, and she returned his kiss.
“And you must have her,” she said when he released her. “You must take her to your home this very night. My father and I present her to you and charge her to look after you.”
“But I must pay for her,” Rann protested. “I have money, Stephanie, and I can afford her.”
Stephanie was firm. “And we too have money and can afford her. There is no need for us to buy and sell goddesses between us. You are to have her as a gift from us. If you must think of money then think of all the money we will make when you have to redecorate your apartment to provide a suitable home for such a goddess.”
They laughed then and went arm in arm to the elevator and joined her father in the drawing room of the house next door. The houses had been ingeniously joined by a door in the back of Mr. Kung’s office in the shop, which opened onto his study in their home.
“I will bring only my most important and wealthy clients here,” Mr. Kung explained to him. “Here we will keep our most treasured and valuable articles and all must be for sale. This is one sad decision which must be made early in this business if one is to be a success. One must either be a collector or a dealer, for one cannot be both. Therefore, if one is to be a dealer, everything must have a sale price. It pleases me to know that I can keep my most treasured things here, however, and if I do not like one who inquires, I do not bring him here and so he does not see my best pieces and so he does not want them. It is a small deception, yes, but it soothes me somehow for buying and selling beautiful things and so it is a harmless deception.
“I am glad you are to have my goddess and Stephanie was right to give her to you. I was making a place for her here, but I like to think of her in your home. She will be happy there and you will be happy with her there and so I shall be happy, also. Ah—it should be so simple for me to place my daughter there as well. It is easier, though, to deal with goddesses than with human beings. Goddesses can be to us only what we need and want them to be while, alas, with humans it is not always so.”
Rann laughed and they talked lightly of his business and Rann’s writing until the servant appeared to say Stephanie was waiting for them to join her in the dining room. Rann was filled with delicious food and warm wine when he said good night later that evening.