“I didn’t know how poorly I cared for her—until all this happened,” Rieux said. “Things might be different if I’d understood her pain.”
“You always tried, Bernard. She knew that,” Castello said. “You’re too hardworking. When are you going to take a vacation?”
“In about two weeks,” he said with a smile. “I still have patients to see and paperwork to put together.”
The bill came to the table. She snatched it from the plate like a cat swatting at a bird. “Go on holiday earlier,” she told him. “People are going to live and die whatever you do.”
The Sanitation League met an unceremonious demise as calls to its hotlines and emailed requests plummeted more drastically than the rate of infection. Tso and Rieux personally thanked every volunteer for their service. They talked about throwing a party after the quarantine was over, but neither could manage to do anything. Besides, Tso needed to leave.
Through the US consulate Tso purchased a ticket home. The time in Vancouver had drained her savings—the consulate would reimburse her, but the lag in processing meant that she pushed up against her credit-card limit. She needed to make money soon, and her old job had opened up. A friend in Los Angeles emailed to say that she was moving in with her boyfriend. Tso had always loved her apartment. Did she want it? Tso could take over her lease in March.
She decided that a sudden return to her old life would be the best cure for any hangover that came from her experience in Vancouver. Leaving these new friends behind would be bittersweet, but there was no point in staying in one place when everyone else’s lives were being reordered. You either leave people, or you’re being left behind, she told herself.
At the US consulate, she was given an envelope. It had been couriered from their Japanese counterparts. The note was written on tissue-thin writing paper in a frail hand.
Dear Megan Tso,
I apologize for our late reply. I apologize also for our simple English.
Thank you so much for sending to us the passport of our daughter, Yuko. The consulate official said you tried to help her when she became sick.
We thought you might want to know more about Yuko.
Yuko was our only daughter. She was twenty-two years old. She studied English for a year in the United Kingdom. She wanted to work for an airline and travel. She loved dogs.
We are very sad since she died. But we know that she lived a life that made her happy.
Thank you for reading this letter about our daughter.
Tso’s hands trembled as she reread the note. She saw a girl running down the beach into the embrace of the person who made her.
After being released on bail, Elliott Horne-Bough announced his latest venture with philanthropist and family friend Frederick Graham. Evermark™ would create luxury monuments for the ultra-rich, built to last a thousand years.
“I think we should keep an eye on Farhad,” Grossman told Tso a few days after the reopening was announced. She had heard him screaming into the phone in his apartment.
The smuggling trade had not yet been affected. As inspection protocols remained in place, contraband was still required to meet the city’s more celebratory appetites for foie gras, champagne, and Atlantic lobster. But within a few weeks, his services would no longer be in demand.
It was Oishi’s move into Izzy Grossman’s apartment that prompted Khan’s next outburst. When he saw the judge outside the house with the moving van, he ran up to Grossman’s apartment, pounded his fists against her door, and demanded that she open it.
Tso, who had moved to Grossman’s couch until she left the city, was wearing her pyjamas when she cracked open the door. Khan slipped his foot in the crack and pried it open.
“What message are you trying to send to me, eh?” Khan asked. “Have I not been your friend? Why do you rent to that judge?” he asked. “Is there a reason why you’re torturing me?”
Grossman appeared a moment afterward. Khan shouted to her over Tso’s shoulder. He kept thumping his bare chest like an over-emotive singer.
Grossman didn’t know about Oishi’s connection to Khan. “He needed a place to stay,” she said.
He threw his hands in the air. “A man needs to feel like he’s at home. Not like he’s on trial.”
He stomped back into his apartment. When they heard glass breaking and other noises, Grossman called the police. Khan stormed out before they arrived. Grossman prepared an eviction notice for him, but he never bothered to pick it up. He never returned to the apartment.
A few days before the quarantine was lifted, one of Gastown Annex’s newest condo projects, set to cast the rest of the block in its shadow, was set ablaze. Police and firefighters found Khan sitting on the curb with two tanks of gasoline.
The damages to the stone and steel foundations were superficial, yet the developers wanted Khan punished severely. Later that year, when Khan stood in the courtroom for his sentencing, he swayed back and forth until his lawyer asked him to stop. He dutifully answered the questions that the judge asked him but otherwise looked swept up in his own private music. He seemed disappointed that his prison sentence wasn’t longer.
24.
When the reopening was announced, Rieux booked a ticket back to Hong Kong for his mother. Mrs Rieux had begun to sigh at the pictures of her growing grandchildren recently sent by his sister. She had been here too long. “I imagine Elyse will be home soon,” she told him. “I don’t want to get in her way.”
Rieux resolved to spend more time with his mother now that an end-date to her visit came into sight. She was at the age when any visit could be her last and he would only be able to see her in Hong Kong, where he found it difficult to breathe in the smog and heat.
He received two tickets from the Cantonese Opera troupe. The actress whom Rieux had attended to had recovered and regained her strength. To celebrate their imminent departure and to show their appreciation to the city, the company would stage a farewell performance before they travelled home to China. Rieux and his mother were invited backstage afterward.
“Once was enough,” Mrs Rieux said. “You don’t even like the opera!”
“It was my fault. I didn’t put in the time to understand it,” he explained. “I read about this one.”
She nodded. She wanted to go. “Thank you, Bernard,” she said.
The performance took place in the same theatre, but this time the house was full. Since the reopening had been announced, pedestrians filled the streets to the curb and passengers on buses stood shoulder-to-shoulder. People behaved as though they were already free. Rieux was reminded of visiting less temperate Canadian cities in the spring and seeing shirtless joggers running alongside towering snowbanks that had only begun to thaw. Vancouverites would have looked the same way to outsiders: like maniacs.
He flipped through the program. The original version of The Peony Pavilion, written at the end of the sixteenth century, consisted of fifty-five scenes and took days to perform. This popular adaptation, which featured eight scenes, lasted only for an evening.
The lights dimmed on a stage that was made to look like a garden. The actress he had treated stood in the green light. Her cheekbones seemed to jut out more noticeably, but it was hard to tell in her makeup. She played the lead character, a young woman named Du Liniang, and was followed onto the stage by another woman, who played her maid. To Rieux’s relief, this performance was subtitled.