Skeleton Women (34 page)
32
The Grandfather Clock
J
inying turned out to be a good cook. He’d brought some groceries and fixed steamed fish, a simple dish but one requiring exact timing. He also stir-fried some rice with mushrooms and other dried vegetables. A plain meal but quite satisfying.
inying turned out to be a good cook. He’d brought some groceries and fixed steamed fish, a simple dish but one requiring exact timing. He also stir-fried some rice with mushrooms and other dried vegetables. A plain meal but quite satisfying.
After dinner, he led me to the white grand piano I had noticed earlier. He wanted to hear me sing, but I insisted that he play first. As he stroked the keyboard, music spread through the room like honey. Judging from Jinying’s entranced expression, it was in music that he found his soul. His eyes closed, and his lips trembled; he looked as if he were about to experience a sexual climax, not through a woman’s mysterious gate but through the mystical interplay of musical notes.
Suddenly I saw the man’s hardships, so different from mine, with greater clarity. He loved music but could not become a concert pianist because his father despised this talent and forced him to study law. He loved a woman but could not make his love public, nor even reveal it to his own father, a father who provided him with expensive luxuries but not the luxury he craved most—freedom to follow the life he wanted.
But Jinying had never been without all the luxuries he thought he despised. If one day he were stripped of them, including the Steinway concert grand on which he was now expressing himself so movingly, could he subsist by just making love with his music and me?
Jinying looked happy, seemingly pushing our difficulties into a remote chamber of his brain. After he finished his first piece, a Chopin nocturne, his elegant fingers went on to shape the same composer’s ostentatious Polonaise in A-flat Major. Then he surprised me by moving on to something simple: Mozart’s Sonata in C Major.
Madame Lewinsky had told me that Mozart, though living a miserable and abused life, had never expressed even a hint of his sufferings in his works. His music always seems to declare that human life is truly worth living. In his music was always happiness, never sighs nor tears.
Was there any hope that someday my life would be like Mozart’s music, rather than his life?
As Mozart’s sonata was reincarnated under Jinying’s fingers, tears stung my eyes. The cheerful mood of the first movement evolved into the darker but mellow movement of the second, then lightened again into the third, like a bad dream dissolving in the early dawn.
Jinying stopped playing to touch my cheek. “Why are you sad, Camilla? Please stop shutting yourself off to me and to our love.”
I shook my head, trying to seem tranquil. “I’m not sad. Just moved by your beautiful playing.”
“Camilla, I really want to know you more. Is it about my father?”
Of course there was no way I could confess to him anything about myself..
So I said, “Jinying, I’m fine now, happy to be with you.” To further distract him, I asked, “Now why don’t I sing while you accompany me?”
I sang a few familiar Chinese pop songs, then told Jinying I’d try the famous aria from
La Traviata
. I felt a special connection with this opera, named for its fallen heroine. Would I, the skeleton woman, end up any better off than the protagonist, Violetta? Would I be saved by my spy training in the four “nothingnesses”: no family, no feelings, no attachments, no morality? I was beginning to think not, because these had brought me nothing but loneliness and hardship.
La Traviata
. I felt a special connection with this opera, named for its fallen heroine. Would I, the skeleton woman, end up any better off than the protagonist, Violetta? Would I be saved by my spy training in the four “nothingnesses”: no family, no feelings, no attachments, no morality? I was beginning to think not, because these had brought me nothing but loneliness and hardship.
So as the first few notes of this melancholy aria sounded, I found myself trying to charm a man I knew I shouldn’t care about.
We wait for someone we can hold,
We pray we will never be alone.
When you leave, a part of me leaves with you.
But like the sun without the moon,
It’s half my life without you here... .
We pray we will never be alone.
When you leave, a part of me leaves with you.
But like the sun without the moon,
It’s half my life without you here... .
After I finished, Jinying immediately sang the lines by Alfredo, the young man who would not succumb to his father’s demand that he leave Violetta.
Love is the beating pulse of the universe,
The torment and delight of my heart... .
The torment and delight of my heart... .
When the last note vanished like a dream, Jinying stood up from the piano, pulled me to him, and kissed me fervently. To my surprise, I kissed him back with the same intensity.
After a long and searching meeting of tongues, the young master pulled his head back and looked into my eyes as his hand stroked my cheek.
I asked, “Is my makeup smeared?”
He looked a bit surprised. “No ... Camilla, you’re crying... .”
Before I could respond, my lips were again covered by Jinying’s warm ones. I felt myself let go to enjoy this man’s love. The sky might be about to fall, but I would still savor these stolen moments.
Jinying held me gently, stirring something inside me that I’d not known existed. Until now my world had held nothing but indifference and deceit. Stimulated by Jinying’s human feelings, I felt insatiable, like a ghost in hell thirsting for water. As if drowning, I grasped him desperately and pressed my orphaned body against his cologne-fragranced one. Tenderly he lifted me up and carried me toward the stairs leading up to the bedroom.
Jinying savored my body in a way none of my other lovers had. He was like a kitten playing with its spool, or a child on Chinese New Year. I squirmed as his tongue, like a greedy lizard, crawled all over my body. His hands, freed from the restraints of the keyboard, now seemed, like those of a beggar, to be importuning my body for more and more.
As his swollen sex plunged its way inside my mysterious gate, he exclaimed, “Camilla, let me die right now a happy man... .”
Unwittingly he had just given voice to what I most feared. So I put a finger across his shivering lips. “Shh ... Jinying. Please don’t say inauspicious things like this.”
After love, we cuddled against each other, but Jinying looked sad.
“What’s the matter, Jinying?”
“I love you very much, Camilla, but ... why do you stay with my father?”
“I told you, no woman can afford to say no to your father. I still love this life, even though it’s been nothing but misery and struggling to survive.” I realized that I’d just spoken from my heart, something I often thought I did not have.
“But, Camilla, don’t you feel any joy being with me?”
I was afraid to say it out loud, so I said, “How can we have a future together?”
“Camilla, do you love me?”
I was even more afraid to say this, so somewhat guiltily I tried to put off this line of questioning. So I asked, “Jinying, can we not engage in a discussion about something so abstract but just enjoy our moments together?”
“Camilla, this is not a discussion of philosophy, but of feelings,
our
feelings. My love for you is
real,
not abstract. My heart is aching right now.”
our
feelings. My love for you is
real,
not abstract. My heart is aching right now.”
“Jinying, if you want me to be honest, then I’ll tell you—I don’t really know how I feel anymore.” Again, I regretted what I’d just said. Why couldn’t I
really
have been honest and poured out my heart to him?
really
have been honest and poured out my heart to him?
“Do you like my father?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
His mention of his father only served to remind me that I needed to figure a way out of my predicament as quickly as possible. My only hope to placate Big Brother Wang was to uncover Lung’s secrets.
But meanwhile, there were still Jinying’s feelings to deal with.
“Sorry, Camilla, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay. I need time... .”
“I understand... .”
While he went into the bathroom, I went down to the kitchen to get him a glass of milk. When he came back, he drank the milk and soon fell asleep, having not suspected that I had added a sedative. I felt terrible deceiving him in yet another way, but I had no choice.
While he slept soundly, I took the opportunity to more fully explore the villa. I began upstairs but, finding nothing, stepped softly down the stairs to continue my search for the secret hiding place I was certain must exist. I even looked inside the radio to see if it was a safe in disguise. But still no luck.
Frustrated, I sat down on the living room sofa to think. If Lung’s safe was not in this secret mansion, then I would probably never be able to find it. I got back up and paced around the room, racking my spy’s brain as I scrutinized everything.
Now I was worried about the time. Maybe I should go back upstairs, in case Jinying woke up and found that I was not in bed. I looked at my wrist but saw only my pearl bracelet. My watch had been left somewhere in the tangle of clothes on the bedroom floor. I glanced up at the grandfather clock, only to be reminded that it was not working. The two hands had not budged from 10:38.
Feeling tired and frustrated, I sat back down on the sofa. Then my eyes again landed on the antique timepiece, looking forlorn in its lonely corner. It was almost six feet tall, with a reddish dark wood case and a white face that seemed to be reflecting on past glories. The pendulum was still; otherwise the gentle swinging would have generated some
qi,
as well as dreamy music when it sounded the hours.
qi,
as well as dreamy music when it sounded the hours.
It was a gorgeous piece of craftsmanship. But, however pleasing to the eye, a clock should still tell the time. Lung had no tolerance for failure. Why, then, would he keep something that failed to do its job? He certainly would not pay for a beautiful woman if her gorgeous legs were stuck together and refused to spread, so why pay for a clock that didn’t move? So Lung must have a use for this clock; I just did not know what it was. In the luminous metal I studied my own reflection, a portrait of bewilderment and anxiety.
My eyes strayed to the nearby writing table. Again I studied the scholar’s items on top—rice paper, ink stone, ink sticks, mountain-like brush stand—and again I had the sense that these were props rather than functional objects.
I went to take a closer look, and reached to lift up the brush holder. To my surprise, it refused to budge! Looking more closely, I saw that a small hole had been drilled in the wood behind the brush holder, with what looked like an electrical wire running through it. I tried pushing down hard on the middle hill. There was a whirring sound, and the front panel of the grandfather clock swung open. Inside was what I had been looking for—a safe!
But my elation subsided as quickly as it came. Yes, I’d found the safe, but not the combination to open it.
So, what to do? I had to think fast, before Jinying woke up!
But there was no way I could guess the combination. Lung had many favorite numbers that he thought were lucky for him. As I racked my brain to remember them, my eyes continued to study the clock. Then it was as if a bomb exploded in my head. The hands, pointed to ten thirty-eight—a ten, a three and an eight. The most lucky of lucky numbers.
Yes!
Again I dashed to the clock. Just then I heard Jinying’s sleepy voice from upstairs. “Camilla, what are you doing? Please come back to bed. I miss you.”
Obviously he had no idea what I was up to. I hoped he was too groggy from the sedative to think clearly. I exhaled deeply, then dashed upstairs to the master bedroom, where he was sitting up, rubbing his eyes.
“Jinying, go back to sleep. I’ll be back in a moment. I just have to go to the bathroom.” I gently eased him back down onto his pillow.
“Give me a kiss.”
As soon as I did, he fell asleep again, like an obedient child.
I tiptoed back down to the living room and dashed over to the clock. Hands shaking, I twirled the handle in order to 1-0-3-8 and felt a wave of relief as I heard the sound of gears turning and saw the door swing open. I peered inside. At long last I was face-to-face with Lung’s secret stash. Finally my long years of sweating and agonizing were about to be rewarded. Inside were piled bundles of documents, gold and silver coins, thick wads of American dollars, what looked like stocks and bonds, and most important, Lung’s bank books and a big jade seal.
My plan had always been to photograph everything with my lipstick camera so that when Lung came back, he wouldn’t suspect a thing. But now I changed my mind. Why photograph them when I could just as easily make off with them? So I made a quick detour into the kitchen, where I had seen a burlap rice bag. I dumped the rice out and sped back into the living room. Holding the bag open, I started to fill it with bundles of cash and as many gold coins as I thought I could carry. Then I took the bank books and, most important, the big jade seal. The seal was literally the key to Lung’s bank accounts, but now it would be the key to my own freedom. With the seal I could go to the bank and draw out all his money. Although he must have secret accounts elsewhere, there was more in these than I would ever need. More than enough for me to seek a life outside Shanghai, even in America.
I thought I was pretty clever to have figured out that the combination to the safe was 10-3-8, the time at which the clock was stopped. The pronunciation of 10 is
shi,
which rhymes with
must,
3 is
san,
which rhymes with
living,
and 8 is
ba,
which rhymes with
fortune.
So these numbers meant, “must bring life and wealth.” I smiled to myself, because now these numbers meant my good fortune, instead of Lung’s.
shi,
which rhymes with
must,
3 is
san,
which rhymes with
living,
and 8 is
ba,
which rhymes with
fortune.
So these numbers meant, “must bring life and wealth.” I smiled to myself, because now these numbers meant my good fortune, instead of Lung’s.
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