‘You see I am making careful note of it,’ Löwenthal said. ‘I will not make the mistake of omitting any part of your name—not this time! Say—I don’t suppose that you and Crosbie were related?’
Carver’s mouth twisted again. ‘No.’
‘It’s true that Francis is a very common name,’ Löwenthal said, nodding. He was still making note of the name of Carver’s hotel, and did not look up for several seconds; when he did, however, he found that Carver’s expression had soured still further.
‘What’s your name?’ Carver demanded, accenting the fact that he had not bothered to use it before. When Löwenthal replied, Carver nodded slowly, as if committing the name to heart. Then he said, ‘You’ll shut your f—ing mouth.’
Löwenthal was shocked. He received the payment for the advertisement and wrote up Carver’s receipt in silence—penning the words very slowly and carefully, but with a steady hand. This was the first time he had ever been insulted in his own office, and his shock was such that he could not immediately respond. He felt an exhilaration building within him; a pressure; an exultant, roaring sound. Löwenthal was the kind of man who became almost gladiatorial when he was shamed. He felt a martial stirring in his breast that was triumphal, even glad, as if a long-awaited call to arms had sounded somewhere close at hand, and he alone had felt its private resonation, drumming in his ribcage, drumming in his blood.
Carver had taken up the receipt. He turned, and made to leave the shop without either thanking Löwenthal or bidding him goodbye—a discourtesy that released a surge of outrage in Löwenthal’s breast: he could contain himself no longer. He burst out, ‘You’ve got a lot to answer for, showing your face around here!’
Carver stopped, his hand upon the doorknob.
‘After what you did to Anna,’ Löwenthal said. ‘I was the one to find her, you know. All bloody. It’s not a way to treat a woman. I don’t care who she is. It’s not a way to treat a woman—still less when she’s expecting, and so close to being due!’
Carver did not answer.
‘It was a hair short of a double murder. Do you know that?’ Löwenthal felt his anger mounting into fury. ‘Do you know what she looked like? Did you see her when the bruises were going down? Did you know that she had to use a cane for two weeks? Just to be able to walk! Did you know that?’
At last Carver said, ‘Her hands weren’t clean.’
Löwenthal almost laughed. ‘What—she left you in a bloody pool, then? She boxed you senseless? What is the phrase—an eye for an eye?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘She killed your child? She killed your child—so you killed hers?’ Löwenthal was almost shouting. ‘Say the words, man! Say them!’
But Carver was unmoved. ‘I meant she’s no blushing flower.’
‘Blushing flower! Now I expect you’re going to tell me she brought it all upon herself—that she deserved it!’
‘Yes,’ said Francis Carver. ‘She got what she was owed.’
‘You are short on friends in Hokitika, Mr. Carver,’ said Löwenthal, levelling his ink-blackened finger at the other man. ‘Anna Wetherell may be a common whore but she is treasured by more men in this town than you can hold off, armed or no, and you ought not to forget that. If any harm should come to her—let me warn you—if any harm—’
‘Not by my hand,’ Carver said. ‘I’ve got nothing more to do with her. I’ve settled my dues.’
‘Your dues!’ Löwenthal spat on the floor. ‘You mean the baby? Your own child—dead, before its own first breath! That’s what you call dues!’
But suddenly Carver was looking at him with a very amused expression.
‘My own child?’ he repeated.
‘I’ll tell you, though you haven’t asked,’ Löwenthal shouted. ‘Your baby’s dead. Do you hear me? Your own child—dead, before its first breath! And by your hand!’
And Carver laughed—harshly, as though clearing something foul from his throat. ‘That whore carried no baby of mine,’ he said. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Anna herself,’ Löwenthal said, feeling a flash of trepidation for the first time. ‘Do you deny it?’
Carver laughed again. ‘I wouldn’t touch that girl with a boathook,’ he said, and before Löwenthal could reply, he was gone.
SUN IN AQUARIUS
In which Sook Yongsheng pays another unexpected call; Lydia Wells has a most prophetic notion; and Anna finds herself alone.
Anna Wetherell had not visited the opium den in Kaniere since the afternoon of the 14th of January. The half-ounce of fresh resin that Sook Yongsheng had gifted her that afternoon ought to have lasted no more than two weeks, by Anna’s habitual rate of consumption. But now over a month had passed, and Anna had not once returned to Kaniere to share a pipe with her old companion, or to replenish her supply—an absence for which Ah Sook could not produce any kind of reasonable explanation.
The hatter missed the whore’s visits very much. Every afternoon he waited, in vain, for her to appear at the edge of the clearing beyond the bounds of Kaniere Chinatown, her bonnet hanging down her back, and every afternoon he was disappointed. He guessed that she must have ceased to take opium altogether: either that, or she had decided to source the drug from the chemist directly. This latter alternative ought to have been the more hurtful to Ah Sook, for he still suspected that Joseph Pritchard had played a part in engineering Anna’s overdose, on the night of the 14th: he still believed, despite many assurances to the contrary, that Pritchard had tried for some reason to end Anna’s life. But in fact it was the former alternative that was the more difficult for Ah Sook to bear. He simply could not believe—did not want to believe—that Anna had managed to rid herself, once and for all, of her addiction.
Ah Sook was very fond of Anna, and he believed that she was fond of him also. He knew, however, that the intimacy that they enjoyed together was less a togetherness than it was a shared isolation—for there is no relationship as private as that between the addict and his drug, and they both felt that isolation very keenly. Ah Sook loathed his own enslavement to opium, and the more he loathed it, the more his craving for the drug strengthened, taking a disgusted shape in his heart and mind. Anna, too, had loathed the habit in herself. She had loathed it all the more when she began to swell with child, and her trade in Hokitika dwindled, and she was left with days and weeks of twilit smoke, an acreage of time, that softened at the edges, and blurred, until the baby died, and Anna’s dependence acquired a desperation that even Ah Sook did not attempt to understand. He did not know how the baby came to perish, and had not asked.
They never spoke in the Kaniere den—not as they lit the lamp, not as they lay back, not as they waited for the resin to soften and bubble in the bowl. Sometimes Anna filled Ah Sook’s pipe first, and held it for him as he took the smoke into his body, and breathed, and slipped away—only to wake, later, and find her stretched out beside him, supple and clammy, her hair plastered wet against her cheek. It was important to the lighting of the pipe that no words were ever spoken, and Ah Sook was pleased that they had adopted this practice without any kind of negotiation or request. As the conjugal act cannot be spoken of aloud for reasons both sacred and profane, the ritual of the pipe was, for the pair of them, a holy ritual that was unspeakable and mortified, just as it was ecstatic and divine: its sacredness lay in its very profanity, and its profanity, in its sacred form. For what a solemn joy it was, to wait in silence for the resin to melt; to ache for it, shamefully, wondrously, as the sweet scent of it reached one’s nose; to pull the needle through the tar; to cut the flame, and lie back, and take the smoke into one’s body, and feel it, miraculous, rushing to one’s very extremities, one’s fingers, one’s toes, the top of one’s head! And how tenderly he looked upon her, when they woke.