He turned back, meeting Lever's eyes. "But that's the challenge, neh? To surprise oneself."
Lever watched him a moment, then nodded. "It's yours, Ernst. The painting, I mean. Keep it."
"Keep it?" Heydemeier gave a laugh of surprise. "I don't understand . . ."
Lever looked past him, enjoying the moment. "On one condition. That you paint something for me."
Heydemeier looked down, then gave the tiniest shake of his head. His voice was apologetic. "I thought you understood, Shih Lever. I thought we'd discussed this already. I don't undertake commissions. This . . ." He looked up, meeting Lever's eyes unflinchingly. "This was different. Was my rent, if you like. Repayment of your hospitality. But what you're talking of... that's different again. I have to be free to paint what I want. It just doesn't work, otherwise."
"I understand. But look at that. Look at it again, Ernst Heydemeier. That's a moment in your life—in your career—that you won't repeat. Oh, you may paint things which are better technically, but will you ever recapture that one moment of vision? Besides, I could resell this tomorrow and make, what, five, maybe ten million ;yuan. As to what it'll be worth ten years from now . . ." He paused, letting that sink in. "And what am I asking for in exchange? Three, maybe four days of your time."
Heydemeier turned away, his discomfort and uncertainty evident in every muscle of his long, gaunt body.
"I don't know, Shih Lever. I..."
"Okay. I won't force the issue. Keep it anyway. Let it be my gift to you. But let me tell you what it was I wanted. Just hear me out, okay?"
Heydemeier turned, facing the old man again. Whatever he had expected from this meeting, it had not been this. He stood there, bemused, his earlier composure shattered. "All right," he said resignedly. "I'll listen, but that's all. . ."
"Of course." Lever smiled, relaxing now he had brought him this far. "It's a simple little thing really . . ."
Twenty minutes later, as Lever was climbing into his sedan, a messenger came. He tore the envelope open impatiently, knowing even before he glanced at it who it was from. This was the second time in the last twenty-four hours that his son, Michael, had written to him about the freezing of his accounts.
"Damn the boy!" he said, angry at being chased up in this manner. "Who the hell does he think he is! He can damn well wait. . ."
He held the letter out stiffly, waiting for his secretary to take it, then, changing his mind, he drew it back.
"No. Give me brush and ink. I'll give him his answer now."
"There," he said, a moment later. "Maybe that will teach him manners!"
He stepped up into the sedan again, letting the servant draw the curtains about him, but the satisfaction he had felt only moments before had gone, replaced by a blinding fury at his son. Well, Michael would learn just how decisive he could be when pushed to it. It was about time he understood how things really were.
He shuddered and sat back, reminding himself of the days successes—of the unexpected thrill of the auction that morning, the pleasant and productive lunch with Representative Hartmann, and his "negotiations" with Heydemeier. But this last—this final matter with his son—had taken the bloom off his day.
"Damn the boy!" he said again, turning the heavy ring on his left-hand index finger, unconscious that he was doing so. "Damn him to hell!"
JELKA CRUMPLED UP the note and threw it down, angry with herself. Angry that she couldn't find the words to express what she had been feeling that night.
Or maybe it wasn't that at all. Maybe it was simply that she had wanted to hurt the young lieutenant; that, in a funny way, she'd needed to. But if that was true, what kind of creature did that make her?
She sat back, taking a long breath, trying to calm herself, but there was so much darkness in her; so much unexpressed violence. Why, she couldn't even write a simple letter of apology without wanting to hit out at something!
She stood, looking about her at the chaos of her room. Sketches of uniforms and weaponry, of machines and fighting soldiers, cluttered the facing wall, while to her left a number of old campaign maps covered the face of her wardrobe. A combat robe hung over the back of the chair beside her unmade bed, while nearby, in a box in the corner, a selection of flails and staffs and practice swords reminded her of how long she had spent perfecting her skills with each. Above the box, high up on the wall, was a brightly colored poster of Mu-Lan, dressed in full military armor. Mu-Lan, the warrior princess, famed throughout history for her bravery and skill.
Mu-Lan . . . the name her girlfriends called her.
She swallowed, her anger turned to bitterness. He had made her this. Year by year he had trimmed and shaped her. Year by year he had molded her, until she was this thing of steel and sinew.
Or was that fair? Was her father really to blame? Wasn't it true what he had said that night? Wasn't it simply that she was of his blood, Tolonen, with the nature of their kind? Hadn't she glimpsed something of that on the island that time? Hadn't she seen her own reflection in the rocks and icy waters of that northern place? So maybe it was true. Maybe he wasn't to blame. Even so, if she had had a mother...
She caught her breath. Slowly she sat again.
If she had had a mother. . . What then? Would it all have been different? Would she have turned out normal?
She laughed; a strange, bleak sound. What, after all, was normal? Was "normal" what the others were? For if that was so, then she didn't wish to be normal. But to be as she was, that was dreadful, horrible.
Unbearable.
She went through to the kitchen and took a refuse sack from the strip beside the freezer, then returned to her room. She stood there, looking about her numbly, wondering where to start.
Mu-Lan, perhaps . . .
She went across and ripped the poster from the wall, stuffing it down into the sack. Then, in a frenzy, she worked her way around the walls, tearing down the pictures and sketches, the posters and the maps, thrusting them all down into the sack, grunting with the effort. Finally she emptied the weapons box into the sack and tied the neck.
She stood back, looking about her at the bare walls. It was as if she had been dreaming all these years; sleepwalking her way through the days. Oh, there had been moments when she had woken—like the time she had defied him over the marriage to Hans Ebert—but for the most part she had colluded in her fate. But now all that must change. From here on she must be mistress of her own destiny.
Lifting the sack she went back through, into the kitchen. Waving the serving girl away, she stood there, over the portable incinerator, half in trance, thinking of her mother.
In some other world, perhaps, it was different. There, beneath an open sky, she was herself, complete. For an instant she pictured it; imagined the log house on the hill beside the forest, the stream below;
turned and saw, as if in memory, her father standing in the doorway, her mother—the image of herself—beside him, his arm about her shoulder. Felt herself turn, her skirts swirling out about her naked legs, her bare feet running on the sunlit grass . . .
She closed her eyes, the pain of longing almost overwhelming her. In some other world ...
The click of the incinerator brought her back. She looked about her, as if coming to from the depths of sleep, then shuddered, the tension in her unabated. What wouldn't she give to be able to live like that. To be like that, open and whole.
Maybe so. But that was only dreams. This here was the world she inhabited. This massive, brutal world of levels. This Yang world, heavy with the breath of men. And what were her dreams against the weight of that reality?