Ma Lubitsch taught me there was only ever one truth. That was how you knew it; it was unique. There were no multiple versions of events, there was no “from a certain point of view.” Ma Lubitsch is above all a mother, and motherhood is not a binary state. But here, by the roadside, in front of the smouldering char which was the House of the Voiceless Dragon, there are two truths. Both of them acknowledge certain facts. This house is number five in the street. It was inhabited by an old man of Chinese origin, and contained a collection of antique weapons, a lot of geriatric furniture and an antique gramo-phone. Sometime between six and midnight, when they returned, a fire started on the garden side of the house, which swiftly consumed the place.
So much is, as it were, the skeleton. The fire, however, has consumed the flesh, and so the skull of truth has two faces. The first is simple and bleakly comfortable. Yumei and Ophelia were staying with Master Wu while their home was being redecorated, but were out that evening at a puppet show. Alone, and perhaps lonely, Wu Shenyang went to bed late, having consumed a certain amount of brandy. He neglected to place the guard in front of the fire, and thus a stray spark emitted from green logs crackled across the room and ignited the mismatched curtains. The house was filled with paper and wood, and the blaze was rapid and very hot. This would be a hard truth. That kind of grief is of a commonplace sort, and it is cool enough to hold.
The second face is fanciful. There is no evidence for it. It is a hero’s death. It goes like this:
The big clock is tock ticking and the fire is low. Master Wu is eating spiced apple cake—Elisabeth has sent him one in a Tupperware pot. Master Wu is fascinated by Tupperware. The variety of it, the fabulous utility of reusable, sealable plastic containers pleases him. This box is the new kind with the little wings which clip down over the side to make the boxes airtight. He is holding the box loosely in one hand and flipping the side up, clack, and down again, plick plack; there are two fastenings on each side—they open as one, but you have to close them individually. Clack . . . plick plack. The plastic is cool, but still ductile or elastic (this part of my mind doesn’t have full access to my education, isn’t sure which word is appropriate). It is bendy, anyway, bendy enough that old fingers can open it without catching fingernails or abrading skin. Clack . . . plick plack. The apple cake is very good. It is fresh and sweet, with moist bits of apple and the applegoo which happens when you make a cake like this and get it just right. There are none of those awful retch-inducing bits of core which some cooks insist are an important part of the apple, presumably out of a false sense of parsimony, because those bits ruin perfectly good mouthfuls and therefore consume scarce apple cake resources. Elisabeth is an apple cake perfectionist. Clack . . . plick plack. Master Wu’s fingers trace the smooth curve of the Tupperware box. It is a largish one. This particular model, he knows, comes with two segmented trays, so that you can store different but related foodstuffs in it. You could keep, for example, two portions of chicken, two of rice, and two of vegetables in oyster sauce. He does not actually like oyster sauce. It always tastes of oysters. Clack . . . plick plack. The box lid is a smooth quadrilateral with stubby wings. It is reinforced across the top with flanges or stanchions, injection-moulded as part of the lid form. It is not heavy, but it is strong. The base is more flexible, possibly so that it can absorb little shocks and knocks, possibly to allow for food and liquids which contract on cooling. The plastic is also resilient to being cut, almost sucks together around the small nicks and scars where someone has cut a cake inside it—something Master Wu would never do. Clack . . . plick plack . . . tink.
Master Wu does not change his position. He does not tense. He is exactly as he was a moment ago. And yet everything is different. The noise tink is a specific thing. It has implications and layers of significance, like a sort of deranged domino game spread out across several floors of a mansion house. It is the sound made by the leftmost bell on the middle line. It means that a small amount of pressure has been applied to the middle window. The fact that only one bell sounded means that it was a very, very slight pressure, and it has now been withdrawn. It is as if a butterfly took off from the window. At this time of night, of course, it would be a moth. Clack . . . plick plack. So. The moth has departed. However . . . tink. It has a somewhat heavier-handed friend, perhaps a boy-moth chasing a girl-moth. If so, he is doing so just by the window on the right. And . . . tinktink . . . the girl-moth is a game lass, and she is running him all around the houses and all the way over to . . . tink . . . the window on the left.
Master Wu is sitting in the rocker. He is an old man. He has eaten a lot of cake and drunk some tea, and he’s been playing with a Tupperware box for half an hour. If the cause of the bell ringing were not a pair of randy moths—if, for example, someone were thinking of entering his house with a view to assassinating him—they could not fail to see that he is over the hill. A harmless old geezer who is now falling asleep, lulled by the rhythm of his own fidgeting and the gentle movement of the chair. Perhaps he has chosen this fraught moment to enter a second childhood. His eyelids droop, but do not quite close. He is so old that the difference is hard to detect.
The man who comes through the leftmost window is big, which makes his silence all the more scary. He is in amazing shape; in order to step through as fast and quietly as he does, he has essentially to do the splits while standing on one leg, hold it, extend himself into the room and never lose his balance or his control as he moves onto the other foot. All this he does in a fraction of an eyeblink. The bells on the window make one more tink noise before he stills them.
Master Wu does not wake. He mumbles something, paws at his Tupperware. The intruder freezes. Two more men enter the room through the same window. More wait in the garden. There is an army out there. The ninjas—the foot soldiers of the Clockwork Hand Society—have finally come for Wu Shenyang. And as they look down at the old fart dozing in his chair, and as they realise that they have come all this way in such numbers and with such caution to deal with one octagenarian has-been, the leader gives a soft, unpleasant chuckle.
The lid of the Tupperware box hits him squarely over the eye. It’s not a dangerous cut, but it makes his forehead bleed and he can’t see clearly. He loses depth perception almost immediately, and so he cannot defend himself as the rocking chair flings Master Wu forward and almost into his arms. He thrusts and twists with his longknife, and it finds a target, but that target is the base of the Tupperware box. Master Wu twists it sharply. The plastic clutches around the knife blade, and the other man cannot easily withdraw it or hold onto it and consequently is in danger of being disarmed. His decision to cling to his weapon is instinctive, given that he has already been partially blinded and is not yet caught up with events as they are unfolding. Master Wu does not attempt to take the knife away. He accepts the direction his enemy has chosen, and flows with it, continues it and suddenly owns it. The other man finds his hips out of synch with his feet, his hands too far away from the centre line of his body for his arms to bring their strength to bear. The cycle ends with Master Wu in possession of the longknife, and the big man on tiptoe with the razor’s edge under his chin. That’s what you get for ignoring the beauty of Tupperware.
Master Wu chooses not to kill the man at this time. That is, in a sense, the definition of being a good guy. He knocks him out and hopes, very briefly, that his enemy will reconsider the path his life has taken. Then he steps smoothly between two more opponents and redirects their attacks towards each other. Regrettably, they are trying very hard to kill him and one of them therefore sustains a nasty wound high in the chest. This distracts his partner, and Master Wu takes advantage of this, propelling him backwards into two of his friends who are preparing an attack of their own.
The fight scene goes on, and it is fluid and magnificent, but at some point Master Wu realises something. He is getting tired, and they are not. He is unscathed, but by the same token he cannot sustain injuries, or he will lose. He has to be perfect; they only have to be persis
tent. He realises that even if he can beat all these men—even if he were to kill them, one by one—more will come, at a time and place not of his choosing. If he continues this battle much longer, the likelihood is that Yumei and Ophelia will come home, and even if they are not killed, they will be exposed. At the moment Master Wu could well be a bachelor. The ninjas have no knowledge of his family arrangements, because they haven’t had the opportunity to look around inside the house, and that’s where all the family photos are. They’ve seen only this room, and they’ve been kinda busy. Similarly, they do not have any idea who his students are. All that information is in the desk. Thus, he is the weak link in his enemies’ chain. Without him, they simply cannot find the Voiceless Dragon. It will be not only silent, but invisible. That’s the kind of situation which makes a ninja’s shoulder blades itch. It will be interesting to see how they like having the shoe on the other foot. And it is at this point that he makes a decision.
There are three men coming for him now. They approach slightly out of time with one another, which makes dealing with them exponentially more difficult, and by-the-by implies that they’re very good. It’s hard to avoid accepting the rhythm of those around you. Master Wu steps to meet one of his attackers, then slides through the space another is preparing to occupy, and slams the second man into the first. Both of them tumble into the fireplace and ignite. The third man hesitates, then breaks off to haul them out. Master Wu takes the opportunity to open the liquor cabinet and select two bottles. He smashes them over his head, creating two extremely unpleasant weapons and also drenching himself in alcohol. He steps to one side, allowing a fresh enemy to destroy the cabinet, breaking more bottles, and then he moves around the room, leaving a trail. He ducks and bobs, slices and scores, his arms whirling and twisting around his body. As he passes the fireplace, he shuffles, splashes booze into the flames. An instant later, fire laps at his feet, following him as he continues around the room. The curtains catch, and the painted walls start to smoke. The ninjas pursue him; blades slash past his back and over his head, heavy hands clutch at him and stamping feet thunder against the ground where he is no longer standing. They cannot touch him. Wu Shenyang is made of water.
And then, amid the chaos, there is a single perfect moment of stillness, as all the actions and reactions are held in balance. Master Wu smiles, reaches out to the flames and catches fire. He is still smiling as he turns to the remaining ninjas, a glass razor in each hand, burning arms spread wide. Every single one of them will remember this feeling for the rest of their lives, in quiet moments and in the cold, truthful hours of the night, and every time they see Tupperware. They will remember the terrible old man with placid eyes who stepped nimbly towards them while his skin blistered and his hair fizzled away; who advanced as they fell back. They will remember that he forced them out of his home into the night, and that he followed them, and kept them at bay until the house and all its contents were beyond salvation, and then kneeled down neatly to expire, at peace, while they cowered in the dark. They will remember it as the moment they discovered fear.
MASTER WU’s funeral is surprisingly large. It seems he knew nearly everyone in Cricklewood Cove. Every tradesman, every family, every teacher from the Soames School, everyone from every beach house and second home, all of them arrive to see him off. People bring cakes and tea, and we all stand and raise them in salute—I had no idea he knew so many people. I mention it to Elisabeth.
“I asked them to come,” she says. “It’s traditional to have a lot of guests. And I couldn’t—” Her mouth gets very tight, and her hands clench in her pockets. I know what she is not able to say; I too am disappointed. The people we could not find—despite great efforts—are Master Wu’s other students. In every city, on every continent, the Voiceless Dragon has vanished—boiled away like steam. Or, perhaps, ashamed to have left him alone, they’re just dodging our calls.
In the midst of the crowd, Yumei and Ophelia are almost invisible, two more guests at a big, bewildered show funeral for an old man. The urn is very small, so it’s not clear who carries it as we walk solemnly out of town to the sea. We scatter Master Wu into the wind from a high place, and he drifts like a cloud until the breeze whisks him off on new adventures. Elisabeth embraces me, then turns away, and we grieve separately.
Gonzo and Aline, always uneasy in each other’s company, take turns with me when I return to Jarndice. They get me drunk and make me forget or at least live through it all, until two weeks later I wake and discover that although the sky is grey and the world is dark, it is a dark which rouses my heart rather than subdues it. It is evening, and I am not hungover. I can function again, and indeed I am supercharged. The presence of death has woken me in some profound way, and I take great bites out of life. Aline and I screw like mink, and I leap from the bed as if sleep is for other people, and devour books and concerts and beverages and vast amounts of food. I put on several pounds of bulk. I wear my shirt open halfway down my chest without irony, and no one sees fit to mock. I am Tarzan, I am Long John Silver, I am all goddam that. Behold! Gonzo finds me alarming.
I reel from lecture to Cork to party to demonstration and the faces blur until the police are more familiar than the demonstrators, because although our comrades in linked arms and flowers are drawn from the same pool, we are always at the front, and spend more time looking through riot shields than back at our fellows. At one rally I am gashed by a falling stone, flung most probably from the back, but I am hailed as a hero and make the cover of the local news, and a genial letter arrives from the police superintendent saying he hopes I have sustained no lasting injury. To Aline’s momentary disgust I reply chirpily that I am well and hope that he is too. She forgives me only when I point out that he has admitted tacit responsibility for something he almost certainly did not do, and when the scores are tallied this will count against him. I place telephone calls to Sweden and ask them to send a speaker to Cork, and when they agree (a tedious little man shows up from the embassy and tells us about mineral rights in the North Sea until we get him drunk and send him home with an ostrich feather in the back of his trousers) I call Moscow, Sydney, Rome (and the Vatican), Poland and even Addeh Katir in the hope of further coups.
Calling Addeh Katir is exciting and difficult because the dialling code is not listed and eventually I have to ask the caretaker at Cork, who once dated a woman from the Red Cross and knows a guy at the UN who has a number for the office the Katiri Provisional Authority maintains in New York, but when I ring, the receptionist tells me she hasn’t been paid since November and she’s damned if she’s taking my message. I tell her she’s doing a great deal for international relations, but she has already gone. I hang up and try something more daring.
I call a man who knows a man who once dated this girl whose address book contains reference to a person (gender unknown) who apparently has contact with a certain scholar. The scholar is close to the great Colossus, the destroyer of sound economic practice and layer-waste of treaty obligations; the ravisher of coyly willing maidens (and matrons); the master swordsman and gargantuan, fearless, indestructible freak of nature; the titanic warrior Fred Astaire of Addeh Katir himself, Zaher Bey.
This chain of loose acquaintance yields a cell-phone number with a Swiss area code, which is answered by a querulous individual of indeterminate sex.
“Konditorei Lauener, hello?”
“Hello? I’m looking for Zaher Bey.”
“We have none. Only the hotel is now permitted to make it.”
This response confuses me. I was not prepared for an exchange of sign and countersign. I grope for something suitably espiocratic, but the other person interrupts before I can assemble the requisite parts.
“There was a legal case, you see. The people at the hotel required an adjudication. It is their mark, you see. Anyone can make a chocolate cake in the Sacher style, ne? But only they can make Sachertorte. It’s the law. But in any case,” the personage adds, with some satisfaction, “we have none.”
It appears that my interlocutor has misconstrued “Zaher Bey” as “Sacher Cake.” I explain that I am in fact looking for the leader of a political movement arising in response to foreign economic imperialism and a puppet regime predicated on the lust of Erwin Kumar. There is something of a pause.
“You know that it’s a cake shop?” the personage says at last, probably uncertain about whether to continue the discussion.
“This is the number I was given,” I explain. My voice has slipped from professional and commanding to apologetic.
“You should give it back!” This with some amusement. “You have a bad number. This number, it’s a cake shop. In Basel. That’s in the north, huh? We have lots of cake. But no revolutionaries. Revolution, the shouting and breaking things. It’s un-Swiss.”
This information delivered, the personage politely disengages, and I sit by the phone trying to figure out what to do next.
Two days later, a dapper gentleman in his forties sits down at my table in Cork. How he has secured entrance I do not know, but he is carrying a glass of single malt from the bar and gives every evidence of being comfortable with his surroundings. Mr. ibn Solomon (such being the name he gives me) has an almost unnoticeable pot belly and a fine blue suit. His skin is clear and fairly dark. He looks as you might imagine a Phoenician merchant or a Moorish market trader. He is clean-shaven and twinkly, and has well-kept hands. His voice is soft, and it is something of a surprise when he reveals that his full accorded title is Freeman ibn Solomon, Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Bey’s forces in Free Addeh Katir. Will he speak to the assembled thinkers and drinkers of the club? You betcha. It is his pleasure and his vocation. But Freeman ibn Solomon is a strict believer in single-level discussion and negotiation. No dais and no lectern; he will sit in this fine lounge and he will share in our conversation like one of us. And to demonstrate his willingness to be like us, he knocks back his Bruichladdich and obligingly fetches himself another.