black Chinese ink—all that in Paris, before ever he went to Asia himself. The door opened immediately and he went in on a gust of snow-laden wind. Rann recognized the manservant, a Chinese, and was recognized by him with a wide and welcoming grin.
“Miss Kung?” he inquired.
“Waiting, sir. I take your hat, coat, sir.”
She did not wait. She came downstairs, smiling, graceful in her long Chinese robe of jade-green brocaded satin. The only change was in her hair. She had wound it about her head, a shining black coif. He stood waiting for her. Amazing that he had not realized her beauty! Her cream pale face, the oval of Asian song and poem, the dark Asian eyes—he had seen these in Korea and even in his brief stops in Japan, but the tincture of American blood defined the Asian lines. In Asia she would be called American, though here, in New York, she was Asian.
“Why do you look at me so?”
She paused on a step and waited.
“Have I changed?” she demanded.
“Perhaps it is I who am changed,” he said.
“Yes, you have been in Asia,” she said.
She moved toward him, put out her hands, and he clasped them in his.
“What luck for me that you are here!” he said.
He looked down into her face, a face radiant and yet with its usual calm. Her control never broke. The surface was smooth, yet she communicated warmth. He hesitated, and decided not to kiss her. Instead, he put her left hand to his cheek and then dropped it gently. She drew him by her right hand toward a closed door.
“My father is waiting for us,” she said.
He hesitated, her hand still in his. He searched that lovely face.
“Yes, you have changed!” he accused.
“Of course,” she said calmly. “I am no longer a child.”
They looked into each other’s eyes, deeply. Neither drew back.
“I shall have to know you all over again,” he said.
“You—” She hesitated. “You are not a boy anymore either. You are altogether a man. Come! We must go to my father.”
MR. KUNG SAT IN A huge carved chair to the right of a square table of polished dark wood, which stood against the inner wall. He wore a long, plum-colored Chinese robe and a black satin vest. The large room was an exact replica of his library in Paris. On the table stood a Chinese jar. He was examining the jar through his tortoiseshell Chinese spectacles. When Rann entered, he smiled but did not rise. As though they had met an hour ago, he said in his usual mild voice, a trifle high for a man’s voice and gentle, “This is a vase which belongs to a famous American collection. It may be for private sale. Some of the best Chinese collections are here in your country. Extraordinary—I cannot yet understand. My shop already is busy with American collectors—very rich men! Look at this vase! It is from some ancient Chinese tomb—Han dynasty, more than a thousand years. Probably it had wine in it for the dead. Usually such has an octagonal, faceted base. The material is red clay, but the glaze is this bright green—very beautiful! The sheen—you notice? A silvery iridescence!”
He took the vase in both hands and tenderly smoothed it. Then he set it carefully on the table again.
“Sit down,” he commanded. “Let me see you now how you are.”
He set his spectacles firmly on his low-bridged nose and, a hand on each outspread knee, he examined Rann carefully across the table. Then he took off his spectacles, folded them, and put them into a velvet case. He turned to Stephanie, who stood waiting.
“Leave us,” he commanded. “I have business to talk now.”
She smiled at Rann and left the room, her footsteps silent on the heavy Peking carpet.
Mr. Kung cleared his throat loudly and sat back in his chair, his gaze nevertheless fixed upon Rann’s face.
“You,” he said with emphasis, “you are now a man. You have been in a war.”
“Luckily not to kill,” Rann said.
Mr. Kung waved this aside with his right hand. “You saw sights, you have learned about life, and so forth. As for me, I have become an old man. I have developed heart disease. Why have I come to a new country at this time? It is because you are here. I have no son. I have only a daughter. She is clever, she understands my business, but she is a woman. Any woman may suddenly marry a fool or a rascal. This is my great fear. I must see her safely married to a man I trust. I prefer Chinese. Alas, what Chinese? We are refugees or—what is a Communist? I do not know. Besides, she is half-American. Perhaps a good Chinese, thinking of his own family line, will wish to keep his blood pure.”
“Sir”—Rann could not refrain—“you married an American.”
“Who left me for an American,” Mr. Kung retorted. “Perhaps similarly, in turn, and so forth, a Chinese might leave my daughter for a Chinese. New Chinese women are very bold. My son-in-law will be rich man.”
Mr. Kung looked gloomy. He sighed deeply, coughed, and put his left hand against his left side.
“Pain,” he said.
“Shall I call someone, sir?” Rann asked.
“No. I have not finished.”
Mr. Kung was silent for one, two, three minutes, his eyes closed, his hand on his heart. Then he opened his eyes, his hand dropped.
“I cannot die,” he said slowly. There was indeed a look of suffering on his thin face. “I must not die until my daughter’s marriage is arranged—has taken place—until I am assured that her future is safe.”
“Have you discussed it with Stephanie?” Rann knew that probably the old man had not. “Perhaps she has some ideas of her own.”
“It is not for her to decide.” He was as firm as one of the jade figures behind him. “How can a girl so young decide a thing as important as the man to whom she shall entrust her future, the one whose children she will bear? Her own mother decided and see what has happened? No, it is I who must decide and I have decided. I have only now to convince you and we begin today. You will stay and have dinner with us. You are now a famous man, and I have asked my daughter to prepare it with her own hands. What her mother did not do I have had done by faithful servants. She is well trained for your wife. And now in the meantime she must show you around my shop so you can see her brain. She knows my business as well as any man. I have taught her. Then we will have a drink together while she finishes our meal. But you must not take so long to decide. I am already a very old man and I cannot join my honored ancestors until I know this is done.”
The old town houses were side by side, one for their residence and one for the shop. The one that the shop occupied had been tastefully decorated with carpets, walls and draperies in neutral tones of beige, and the objects of art stood out in sharp contrast. Soft piano music played through hidden speakers and Rann allowed himself to be led from room to room, where he was shown object after object—each at least as beautiful as the one before it, if not even more beautiful.
“And this is the Quan Yin,” Stephanie said when they stood finally in the last room overlooking Fifth Avenue from the fifth floor, the snow still whirling into the streets below. The figure Stephanie indicated was about three feet high, carved in wood and very old, Rann judged, and she stood by herself in an alcove between the two arched windows, the place of most importance in the room. Rann knew the Quan Yin but he allowed Stephanie to continue with her explanation.
“She is my favorite of all. She is the goddess of mercy and she is about five hundred years old. My father found her in a small secondhand shop just outside Paris. There was nothing else of any value in the place and as we were leaving he saw her lying on her side under a table in the back of the room.
“The shopkeeper was very surprised when my father took her up and bought her. And now she is here until someone falls in love with her and she goes to their home for a while, but only for a while, and then she will go on to yet another lover and so on, for goddesses are eternal and can never be possessed by a mere mortal for very long. It is sad in a way to think of her never having an eternal home of her own—but that is the price one must pay for being a goddess of mercy.”
Stephanie laughed and slipped her arm through Rann’s and tilted her head prettily to look up at him as they stood side-by-side before the goddess.
