“Excusing me, sir, it is too bad snowing. You going somewhere?”
“A friend from Paris.”
He was knotting his tie—a blue suit, a striped tie of wine and blue, then suddenly he remembered.
“By the way, she’s half-Chinese!”
“She? Which half, sir?” Sung smiled a small prim smile, suitable to his small size. “Father Chinese is good, sir. Never mind Mother.”
Rann laughed. “Always a Chinese!”
“Mother dead?” Sung asked hopefully.
“Damned if I know,” Rann said, staring at himself in the glass.
Sung was taking an overcoat out of a closet. “Please, you wear this, sir. Inside is very warm fur.”
“I don’t think I shall be very cold but I’ll take it along anyway.”
“If no taxi,” Sung said, concerned.
“I’ll walk!” he retorted.
Rann found a taxi nevertheless, covered with snow but cruising along slowly and he leaped into it.
“Fifth Avenue—between Fifty-Sixth and Fifty-Seventh. I’ll tell you where to stop.”
The ride would be endless but the snow was magnificent, floating down in the clouds of white through which small black figures, bent to the wind, labored their way. He was in haste yet as ever he was diverted by all he saw, his restless mind storing every sight, every sound, against an unknown future. This was his mind, a storehouse, a computer programmed to life, minute by minute, hour by hour, day and night. He forgot nothing, useless and useful. Useful! But for what? Never mind the question, never mind the answer. It was enough to be as he was, himself, every instant alive to everyone and everything. Time never crawled, not even now, as the cab lumbered through drifts and lurched over frozen ruts.
Nevertheless, when he reached the house on Fifth Avenue, the great shop, its windows curtained with snow, he made haste to ring the bell on the door of the adjoining house, a red door on which he saw in brass Chinese characters her father’s name. He had learned to write that name with a rabbit’s-hair brush and dense 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 h
appened? 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.
“She is truly the most beautiful I have ever seen,” Rann said, and he made a decision. “I must have her for my own. Her face reminds me of you, somehow, in the expression.”
Stephanie smiled. “It is my Chinese half, Rann.”
He kissed her then, his kiss long and gentle and full on her soft lips, and she returned his kiss.
“And you must have her,” she said when he released her. “You must take her to your home this very night. My father and I present her to you and charge her to look after you.”
“But I must pay for her,” Rann protested. “I have money, Stephanie, and I can afford her.”
Stephanie was firm. “And we too have money and can afford her. There is no need for us to buy and sell goddesses between us. You are to have her as a gift from us. If you must think of money then think of all the money we will make when you have to redecorate your apartment to provide a suitable home for such a goddess.”
They laughed then and went arm in arm to the elevator and joined her father in the drawing room of the house next door. The houses had been ingeniously joined by a door in the back of Mr. Kung’s office in the shop, which opened onto his study in their home.
“I will bring only my most important and wealthy clients here,” Mr. Kung explained to him. “Here we will keep our most treasured and valuable articles and all must be for sale. This is one sad decision which must be made early in this business if one is to be a success. One must either be a collector or a dealer, for one cannot be both. Therefore, if one is to be a dealer, everything must have a sale price. It pleases me to know that I can keep my most treasured things here, however, and if I do not like one who inquires, I do not bring him here and so he does not see my best pieces and so he does not want them. It is a small deception, yes, but it soothes me somehow for buying and selling beautiful things and so it is a harmless deception.
“I am glad you are to have my goddess and Stephanie was right to give her to you. I was making a place for her here, but I like to think of her in your home. She will be happy there and you will be happy with her there and so I shall be happy, also. Ah—it should be so simple for me to place my daughter there as well. It is easier, though, to deal with goddesses than with human beings. Goddesses can be to us only what we need and want them to be while, alas, with humans it is not always so.”
Rann laughed and they talked lightly of his business and Rann’s writing until the servant appeared to say Stephanie was waiting for them to join her in the dining room. Rann was filled with delicious food and warm wine when he said good night later that evening.
The snow had stopped and he found a taxi easily. He sat in the backseat with the goddess in his arms as indeed Stephanie had been only a few hours earlier. With pleasure he remembered the softness of her supple figure as his arms had enfolded her and the sweet gentleness with which she had pressed her lips to his, returning his kiss. So different from the demanding kisses he had shared with Lady Mary. They had been wild and uncontrolled, each of them demanding satisfaction for himself each from the other, each with no thought of the other beyond that satisfaction. Remembering Stephanie, there was a sweetness that pervaded his entire being with thoughts of her presence, and yet not without passion. Rann felt a familiar warmth rising in his loins as he recalled the shared intimacy with Stephanie.
He ordered the taxi to stop and he walked on the freshly fallen snow for the remaining short blocks to his apartment building.
“That is a very beautiful figure, sir,” said the night doorman as he offered to take the goddess from Rann’s arms.
“That’s all right,” Rann told him. “I can make it myself. I’d prefer it. She was a gift from a very dear friend.” He could not bear the thought of her in anyone’s arms as she had been in his.
He entered his apartment and placed the goddess on the small table in the entrance hall and admired her for a moment, then he went into the study and dialed Stephanie’s number.
“She is home,” he said when she came on the wire.
“I am glad,” Stephanie said.
“She is so beautiful where she stands now that I know I have been saving this space for her. You must come and see her here.”
Stephanie agreed. “Yes, I must.”
“Will you come here for dinner? Sung can prepare for us and he is very good and perhaps you could bring your father, too.”
“I do not think my father will come,” Stephanie told him. “He has not been well for some time and rarely goes out anymore. However”—she laughed softly, teasing Rann—“I am a big girl now. I don’t need a chaperone. I can come alone if you wish.”
“Tomorrow then.”
“So soon? Very well, I shall come tomorrow if it pleases you.”
“It does. Until tomorrow, then?”
“Until tomorrow, then,” she repeated. “Good night, Rann.”
He heard the soft click as she broke the connection.
THEY WERE TOGETHER ALMOST EVERY EVENING in the months that followed and Rann’s friends eagerly accepted Stephanie into their homes and hearts, especially Rita Benson. They had dinner with her one evening and as Rann fitted the key into the door of his apartment upon returning he heard the telephone begin to ring. He rushed to answer before its ring could wake Sung.
It was Rita. “You had better marry that girl quickly, Rann,” she told him. “She is too beautiful to last long and some hot shot will take her away from you if you aren’t careful.”
Rann laughed. “Rita, we haven’t even discussed it.”
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“So—what’s there to talk about?” Rita made her tone indignant. “Men! Always talking. The girl is in love with you. Are you too blind to see the way she looks at you? Besides, I like her and it’s a rare thing for me to like a woman, especially one so young and beautiful, but she is just right for you and you are going to lose out if you don’t get busy. How did your mother like her?”
Rann had taken Stephanie to Ohio with him to visit with his mother over one weekend.
“She liked her very much,” Rann told her. “She even said the same things you have said after our visit.”
“That settles it then—get busy or your mother and I will gang up with Stephanie’s father and railroad you both into it.”
Rita laughed and ended the call, leaving Rann in deep thought. He decided at last that he would discuss his own feelings with Stephanie when next they met.
“Can you not understand, Rann, that is exactly why I cannot marry you?”
They were comfortably settled in the study with coffee and a cordial served to them by Sung after they had completed a delicious seafood dinner he had prepared. It had been Sung’s own concoction, consisting of various types of shellfish with bamboo shoots and bean sprouts in a sauce tart but at the same time with the unmistakable pinch of ginger Rann had come to expect of Sung’s cooking. It had been a thoroughly successful experiment, and both Rann and Stephanie had complimented him profusely. To show his pleasure, Sung had served them a rare Chinese liqueur from a bottle he had treasured for years and was difficult to locate in New York.
Rann and Stephanie had spent that afternoon walking in the park while Rann explained his feelings to her. She listened to all he had to say and had then said, “Please, do not let us talk more now. Allow me to think while we refresh ourselves at dinner. Then when we have finished we can speak of this again.”