Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (72 page)

"What do
you want?"

He laughed, then
came across to her. "Is that how you greet me?"

He tried to
embrace her, but she pushed him away.

"You
forget," she said, moving past him and throwing the sheet back
over the oil board.

"It was a
joke—" he began, but she rounded on him angrily.

"You're a
child! Do you know that?"

He shrugged. "I
thought that's what you liked about me. Besides, it wasn't you who
had wine thrown in your face. That hurt."

"Good."

She turned away,
but he caught her arm and pulled her back.

"Let go of
me," she said coldly, looking down at where he held her.

"Not until
you apologize."

She laughed,
astonished by him. "Me apologize? After what you said? You can
go rot in hell before I apologize to you!"

He tightened his
grip until she cried out, tearing her arm away from his grasp.

"You
bastard. You've no right—"

"No right?"
He came closer, his face leaning into hers threateningly. "After
what we've been to each other these last two years, you have the
nerve to say I've no right?" His voice was hard, harder than she
had ever heard it before, and she found herself suddenly frightened
by this aspect of him. Had it always been there, just below the
surface of his charm? Yes. She'd always known it about him. Perhaps
that was even what had first attracted her to him. But now she was
tired of it. Tired of his thoughtless domination of her. Let him
drink himself to death, or take his whores, or gamble away all his
money—she would have no more of it.

"Just go,
Sergey. Now, before you make even more of a fool of yourself."

She saw his eyes
widen with anger and knew she had said the wrong thing. He reached
out and grabbed her neck roughly, pulling her closer to him. "A
fool?"

Through her fear
she recognized the strange parallel of the words with those Fan
Liang-wei had used to Shepherd. Then she was fighting to get away
from him, hitting his arms and back as he pulled her chin around
forcibly and pressed his mouth against her own. Only then did he
release her, pushing her back away from him, as if he had finished
with her.

"And
now
I'll go see Heng."

She shivered,
one hand wiping at her mouth unconsciously. "You bastard,"
she said, her voice small. "You obnoxious bastard . . ."
She was close to tears now, her anger displaced suddenly by the hurt
she felt. How
dare
he do that to her? How
dare
he treat
her like his thing?

But he only
shook his head. "Grow up, Catherine. For the gods' sake grow
up."

"Me?"
But her indignation was wasted on him. He had turned away. Slamming
his fist against the lock, he pushed out through the door, barely
waiting for it to open. Then he was gone.

She stood there
a while, staring at the open doorway, fear and hurt and anger
coursing through her. Then, as the automatic lock came on and the
door hissed closed, she turned and went into the kitchen. She reached
up, pulled down a bottle of peach brandy, and poured herself a large
glass, her hands trembling. Then, using both hands to steady the
glass, she took a long, deep swig of it, closing her eyes, the rich,
dark liquid burning her throat.

She shuddered.
The bastard! How
dare
he?

Back in the
other room, she set the glass down on the floor, then threw the sheet
back from the oil board, looking at the painting. It was meant to be
a joint portrait. Of her and Sergey. Something she had meant to give
him for their second anniversary, two weeks away. But now . . .

She looked at
it, seeing it with new eyes. It was shit. Lifeless shit. As bad as
the Tung Ch'i-ch'ang landscape. She pressed ERASE and stood back,
watching as the faces faded and the colored, contoured screen became
a simple, silk smooth rectangle of uncreated whiteness.

For a moment she
felt nothing, then, kneeling, she picked up her glass, cradling it
against her cheek momentarily before she put it to her lips and
drank.

She looked up
again, suddenly determined. Fuck him! If that was what he thought of
her, if that was how he was prepared to treat her, she would have no
more of it. Let it be an end between them.

She swallowed,
the warmth in her throat deceptive, the tears threatening to come
despite her determination not to cry. She sniffed, then raised her
glass, offering a toast to the silent doorway.

"Go fuck
yourself, Sergey Novacek! May you rot in hell!"

* *
*

sergey STOOD at
the top of the steps looking down into the huge, dimly lit gaming
room of the Jade Peony. Lights above the tables picked out where
games were in progress, while at the far end a bar ran from left to
right, backlit and curved like a crescent moon. The floor below was
busy. Crowds gathered about several of the tables, the excited murmur
of their voices carrying to where he stood.

There was a
sweet, almost peppery scent in the air, like cinnamon mixed with plum
and jasmine, strangely feminine, yet much too strong to be pleasant.
It was the smell of them—of the sons of the Minor Families and
their friends. The distinguishing mark of this Han elite, like a
pheromonal dye. Sergey smiled. In theory The Jade Peony was a mixed
club, membership determined not by race but by recommendation and
election, but in practice the only
Hung Mao
here were guests,
like himself.

Yang kuei
tzu,
they called his kind. "Ocean devils."
Barbarians.

Even the Han at
the door had looked down on him. He had seen the contempt that lay
behind that superficial mask of politeness. Had heard him turn, after
he had gone, and mutter a word or two of his own tongue to the other
doorman. Had heard them laugh and knew it was about him.

Well, he'd wipe
a few smiles from their faces tonight. And Heng? His smile broadened
momentarily. He would make sure Heng would not be smiling for a long
time.

He went down the
plushly carpeted stairway, past the great dragon-head sculpture that
stood to one side, making his way to the bar.

As he passed
they stared at him openly, their hostility unmasked.

Heng Chian-ye
was where he said he would be, at a table on the far left, close to
the bar, a big, hexagonal table covered in a bright-red silk.
Representations of the
wu fu,
the five gods of good luck,
formed a patterned border around its edge, the tiny silhouettes
picked out in green.

He smiled and
bowed. "Heng Chian-ye . . . You received my message, I hope."

Heng Chian-ye
was seated on the far side of the table, a glass and a wine bottle in
front of him. To either side of him sat his friends, four in all,
young, fresh-faced Han in their early twenties, their long
fingernails and elaborately embroidered silks the calling card of
their kind. They stared back at Sergey coldly, as if at a stranger,
while Heng leaned forward, a faint smile playing on his lips.

"Welcome,
Shih
Novacek. I got your message. Even so, I did wonder
whether you would make an appearance tonight." His smile
broadened momentarily, as if to emphasize the jest. "Anyway,
you're here now, neh? So please take a seat. I'll ask the waiter to
bring you a drink."

"Just
wine," he said, answering the unspoken query, then sat, smiling
a greeting at the others at the table, inwardly contemptuous of them.

Then, taking the
silken pouch from inside his jacket pocket, he threw it across the
table so that it landed just in front of Heng Chian-ye. It was
deliberately done; not so much an insult as an act of gaucheness. In
the circles in which Heng mixed it was not necessary to provide proof
of means before you began to play. It was assumed that if you sat at
a gaming table you could meet your debts. Thus it was among the
ch'un
tzu.
Only
hsiao jen
—little men—acted as Sergey
was acting now.

Sergey saw the
looks that passed among Heng and his friends and smiled inwardly.
Their arrogance, their ready assumption of superiority—these
were weaknesses. And the more he could feed that arrogance, the
weaker they would become. The weaker they, the stronger he.

"What's
this?" Heng said, fingering the string of the pouch as if it
were unclean.

"My stake,"
Sergey said, sitting forward slightly, as if discomfited. "Look
and see. I think you'll find it's enough."

Heng laughed and
shook his head. "Really,
Shih
Novacek. That's not how we
do things here."

Sergey raised
his eyebrows, as if puzzled. "You do not wish to play, then? But
I thought. . ."

Heng was smiling
tightly. His English was clipped, polite. "It isn't what I
meant." He lifted the pouch with two fingers and threw it back
across the table. "You would not be here if I ... doubted your
ability to pay."

Sergey smiled.
"Forgive me," he said, looking about him as he picked up
the pouch and returned it to his pocket, "I did not mean to
offend."

"Of
course," Heng answered, smiling; yet the way he glanced at his
friends revealed what he was really thinking. "I understand,
Shih
Novacek. Our ways differ. But the game . . ."

Sergey lowered
his head slightly, as if acknowledging the wisdom of what Heng
Chian-ye had said. "The game is itself. The same for Han and
Hung Mao
alike."

Heng gave the
barest nod. "So it is. Well, shall we play?"

"Just you
and I, Heng Chian-ye? Or will the ch'un
tzu
join us?"

Heng looked to
either side of him. "Chan Wen-fu? Tsang Yi? Will you play?"

Two of the Han
nodded, the other two—as if on cue—stood, letting the
others spread out around the table.

"You will
be west,
Shih
Novacek, I east. My friends here will be north
and south."

Sergey sat back,
taking the wine from the waiter who had appeared at his side. "That's
fine with me. You have new cards?"

Heng lifted his
chin, as if in signal to the waiter. A moment later the man returned
with a sealed pack, offering them to Sergey. He took them and hefted
them a moment, then set them down on the table.

"Bring
another."

Heng smiled
tightly. "Is there something wrong with them,
Shih
Novacek?"

"Not at
all, Heng Chian-ye. Please, bear with me. It is a foible of mine. A
superstition." He spoke the last word quietly, as if ashamed of
such a weakness, and saw the movement in Heng's eyes, the way he
looked to north and south, as if to reinforce the point to his two
friends.

"You have
many superstitions,
Shih
Novacek?"

"Not many.
But this . . ." He shrugged, then turned, taking the new pack
from the waiter and putting it down beside the other. Then, to Heng's
surprise, he picked up the first and broke the seal.

"But I
thought . . ."

Sergey looked
down, ignoring Heng's query, fanning the huge cards out on the table
in front of him. There were one hundred and sixty cards in a pack of
Chou, or "State," arranged into nine levels, or groupings.
At the head of all was the Emperor, enthroned in golden robes.
Beneath him were his seven Ministers, these graybeards plainly
dressed, as if in contrast. At the third level were the Family
Heads—the twenty-nine cards richly decorated, each one quite
different from the others. At the next level down the four Generals
seemed at first glance quite uniform; yet the staunch
Hung Mao
faces of the old men differed considerably. Beneath them came the
four Wives of the Emperor, ranked in their household order, and
beneath them—at the sixth level—came the two Concubines,
their scantily dressed figures making them the most attractive of the
cards. Next were the eight Sons, their resemblance to their
respective mothers suggested by their facial features and cleverly
underlined by use of color and decoration. Then, at the eighth level
of this complex hierarchy came the eighty-one Officials, ranked in
nine levels of nine, their great
chi ling
patches displayed on
the chests of their powder-blue gowns. And finally, at the ninth
level—last in the great pecking order of State—were the
twenty-four Company Heads, their corporate symbols—some long
forgotten, some just as familiar now as when the game was first
played one hundred and twenty years before—emblazoned on the
copy of the Edict scroll that each held.

Sergey turned
one of the cards a moment, studying the reverse carefully for special
markings, then compared it with a second. The backs of the cards were
a bright, silken red, broken in the center by a pattern of three
concentric circles, three rings of dragons—twenty-nine black
dragons in the outer circle, seven larger dragons in the second, and
at the very center, a single golden dragon, larger than all the
others, its great jaws closing on its tail.

Sergey smiled
and looked up. "These are beautiful cards, Heng Chian-ye. The
faces . . . they look almost as if they were drawn from life."

Heng laughed.
"So they were, my friend. These are copies of the very first
Chou pack, hand-drawn by Tung Men-tiao."

Sergey looked
down at the cards with a new respect. Then these were tiny portraits
of the actual people who had filled those roles. Men and women whom
the great artist and satirist Tung Men-tiao had known in life. He
smiled. Somehow it gave the game an added bite.

"Shall we
start?" Heng asked. "If you'll stack the cards, we'll cut
to see who deals."

For the first
few hours he had tried to keep things fairly even, attributing his
victories to good fortune, his defeats to his own stupidity. And all
the while he had studied their play, had seen how the other two
played to Heng, even while making it seem that they had only their
own interests at heart. It was clever but transparent, and he could
see how it would have fooled someone else, but he was not just any
player. At Chou he excelled. He had mastered it as a child, playing
his father and uncles for his pocket money.