Maybe the young man had been standing at the window to signal a long-lost relative. Luis actually had said that. And I had dismissed it as Macanese sarcasm. What did I know about Macanese sarcasm?
Greta looked at the
“I liked it better when we were having pastry. Go on.” I pushed the dish to her side of the table. “You were telling me about the family ties.”
“I was with him a lot when he was growing up. Later, I went away to school in Europe and decided not to come home.”
“That’s where you met Kang.”
“He said I was about the same age his daughter was when they took her away. You were there that night, Inspector. You saw what happened.”
“I only saw the aftermath, the furniture wrecked, the flowers she put on the tables scattered across the floor.” I didn’t mention the book in French, facedown as if she’d placed it carefully on the counter when they crashed through the door. “One thing I still can’t figure out. Why did he invite Tanya to his room?”
“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe Tanya just knocked on his door. I think the whole story about him inviting a prostitute to his room, having dinner, the whole thing is a lie, part of the effort to destroy his image.”
“There are receipts in his handwriting for the room service charge.”
“There are a hundred ways to forge a receipt. Zhao probably owned a string of print shops that turned out phony receipts. No one pays attention when signing those things anyway. The signatures all look like four-year-olds did them. They’re easy to forge.”
“You don’t think we know what happened that night. Neither do I.”
She helped herself to one of my
“I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
12
“Everything is coming apart at the same time, Kang, all at once. It’s exactly like the hotel. Boom! And anything left standing is only there by inertia.”
“That’s how it might look to some people.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Things appear; then they disappear. That’s how the universe does its business, Inspector. Evolutionary change is a nice idea, but it isn’t the way the world works itself into a new order. I wouldn’t let it upset me. That’s why people age; they worry about things they have no control over.”
“I take it you think you have a place in the new order.”
“No, I don’t know. Unless what we’re talking about is chaos. For that, we both have a reserved seat.”
“You expect Kim to stay and fight?”
“He and his friends will fry all of us if we let them. So, we don’t let them.”
“You really think you’re going to defeat the whole South Korean army? They’ll pour across the border. We’ll be up to our necks in troops and bureaucrats and religious zealots and helping hands.”
“We have ways.”
“When you left, did you think you’d be back?”
“I left behind what existed then. But this is now, and we’re going to shape what comes next.”
“That’s what people always think. That’s what they thought the last time. That’s what they’ll think the next time.”
“It’s a wheel; it goes around.”
“You’re going to ask me to join?”
“No. It was considered but rejected.”
Chapter Five
Because it was so late in the year and I had nowhere to go, Kang arranged for me to stay in an apartment near his until the spring. By late April, I had returned to the mountain, in a truck with a load of lumber and a small box of tools. The new house took more than three months to build. It was smaller than the old one, darker on cloudy days, though the window faced south this time, not east, which meant there would be more sunlight in the winter. The army brought up another phone line; the new phone arrived a couple of weeks later. Kang called me a several times a week at first-to get my views, he said-but then there was less and less to say.
Soon after it was decided that I would move back to the mountain, I learned that my brother had died the year before, while I had been in Prague. Kang had known but had held off telling me. I made the trip to the cemetery in October, on the first anniversary of my brother’s death, and was surprised to meet a man, middle- aged, who was standing silently, his head bowed, in front of the marker.
The weather was perfect, the sky boundlessly high and blue. “A pleasant day,” I said when the man looked up and acknowledged my presence. “Did you know this person?”
“He was my father. And you?” The man studied my face closely. “You are his brother; I can see it from the eyes. We have a picture of my great-grandfather at home. You both had his eyes.”
We shook hands, though I was too stunned to say much more than, “It is a pleasure to meet you.” When he asked if I lived nearby, I said merely that my home was outside of Pyongyang, several hours’ drive away. We left it at that.
As we walked together out of the cemetery, he put his hand on my arm. “I’m afraid I was not completely truthful with you. I am not his son, that is, not his real son.”
“How do you mean?”
“He never married my mother.” ’
“I see.” I pointed to a bench. “Why don’t we sit and enjoy the air for a few minutes. I’m sure no one here will mind.” Once we were seated, I spread my arms on the wooden rail and lifted my face to the sun. “If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”
“I am forty-nine. My father-your brother-was assigned to the border region in 1969, soon after the clashes. He did something that helped defuse the situation and he arranged for food to be brought to Koreans living on the Chinese side.”
“Your father told you this, I suppose.”
“No, he never mentioned these things. I heard them from other people. While he was there, he fell in love with a woman. Afterward, he came twice a year to see me and to give my mother support. We saw him every year until I was twenty. Then I went away to school, and it became more difficult.”
“Why would it be difficult? You were in Pyongyang, I imagine.”
“In Pyongyang? No, I was in Beijing.”
A breeze came down the hill and scattered the leaves that the groundskeepers had raked into a tidy pile. “Your mother, she is well?”
“She is.”
“And she lives where?”
“In Yanji.”
“Aha, I see. She is Korean?”
