Frank Schätzing - Limit

She had disappointed everyone.

For a while she hung around silently in Joanna’s studio, watching as Tian’s beautiful wife conjured up a feverish sparkle in the eyes of the exhausted teenagers, that last glimmer of energy moments before all systems shut down. On the monstrous two and a half by four metre canvas, she portrayed carefree natures through pigments: two ornamental fish in the shallow waters of their sensitivities, whose only worry in life was how not to die from boredom before the next party kicked off. Realising that the worst massacres in the lives of the two beauties were probably the ones they had caused in the hearts of pubescent boys, Yoyo cried a little more.

She was probably doing these girls an injustice too. Was she really any better? She had certainly been no stranger to excess in the last few years. She was more than familiar with the moment when one faded out like a dwindling, bright red dot in the blackness of a charred wick. She had sung incessantly against Hongbing’s sadness, danced against it, smoked and fucked against it, without once flagging with a soothing emptiness in her gaze like the princesses of the night on Joanna’s canvas. Each time, her last thought had been that the excesses weren’t worth dying for, that she would have much rather been sitting at home listening to what her father had to tell her about the time before she was born. But Hongbing hadn’t told her one single thing.

Joanna created eyelashes with a flourish, pressed in smatterings of mascara and distributed make-up in the corner of the eyes and onto cheekbones. Yoyo watched, overcome with melancholy. She liked Joanna’s flirtation with society, the way she wore its colourful plumage. There was no canvas big enough to depict the way China entertained itself, Joanna always said. After all, China was a big country, and so she explained to her feathered friends, whenever they came to sharpen their beaks and sip at champagne, that lack of content couldn’t be portrayed on a small scale. It was a witty and catchy comment, but really incomprehensible in an artistic sense. She pompously celebrated the beauty of emptiness and the emptiness of beauty, sold her fans something they could look at, and neglected to tell them it was actually a mirror.

‘Don’t forget,’ she always said with her most charming Joanna smile, ‘I’m in the picture too. In every single one. Including yours.’

Yoyo envied Joanna. She envied the egoism with which she sailed through life, and without picking up any bruises along the way. She envied her ability to be uninterested, and her lack of concern in showing it. Yoyo, on the other hand, was interested in everything, and compulsively so. Could that ever end well? Sure, the Guardians had accomplished quite a lot of things. Under their pressure, imprisoned journalists had been released, corrupt civil servants stripped of office and environmental scandals solved. While Joanna’s hands were being manicured, Yoyo had been busy dirtying hers by delving them into painful subjects, never tiring in demanding China’s right to its own culture of fun. This had given her the reputation of being a nationalist from time to time. Just as well. She was a hedonistic preacher, a liberal nationalist who got fired up by the injustice in the world. Wonderful! And yet there were so many other things she could do. She was sure she could find something, as long as it meant not having to be Chen Yuyun.

Joanna painted, and was simply Joanna. Self-involved, care-free and rich. Everything that repulsed Yoyo from the bottom of her heart, and yet she yearned for it too. Someone who offered security. Someone who wouldn’t step aside, because it was something they never did.

She was crying again.

After a while, Yoyo’s supply of tears was exhausted. Joanna cleaned her brushes in turpentine. Over the glass surfaces of the pagoda roof, the sky was working its way through every shade of grey in preparation for the evening.

‘So how did it go? Well?’

Yoyo sniffed and shook her head.

‘It must have gone well,’ Joanna decided. ‘You screamed at each other, and you cried. That’s good.’

‘You think?’

Joanna turned to her and smiled. ‘Well, it’s certainly better than him swallowing his own tongue and talking to the walls at night.’

‘I shouldn’t have lied to him like that,’ said Yoyo and coughed, her airways blocked from all the crying. ‘I hurt him. You should have seen him.’

‘Nonsense, sweetheart. You didn’t hurt him. You told him the truth.’

‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’

‘No, you’re getting confused. You’re acting as though speaking frankly were some huge moral issue. If you tell the truth, you’re one of the good guys. How it’s received is a different matter, but that’s what psychiatrists are for. There’s nothing more you can do to help your father bite the bullet.’

‘To be honest, I’ve got no idea what I’m supposed to do now.’

‘I do.’ Joanna stretched out her slim fingers, one after another. ‘Run yourself a bath, go a few rounds with the punch bag, go shopping. Spend money. Lots of money.’

Yoyo rubbed her elbows. ‘I’m not you, Joanna.’

‘No one suggested you take off and buy a Rolls-Royce. I want you to understand the principles of cause and effect. The truth is a good thing, even if it can be unpleasant at times. And if it is unpleasant, it strengthens the body’s defences.’

‘And did it strengthen Owen’s defences?’

Joanna held a thick paintbrush up to the light and fanned the bristles out with her fingernail.

‘Tian told me that you were together,’ Yoyo added quickly. ‘Before you got married.’

‘Yes, we were together.’

‘Okay. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’

‘It’s fine.’ She put the paintbrush down and gave her a beaming smile. ‘We had a great time.’

‘So why did you break up? I mean, he’s a really nice guy.’

Yoyo was surprised by her own words. Did she think Owen Jericho was nice? So far he had only come up in connection with firearms, death and severe bodily harm. On the other hand, he had saved her life. Do you automatically think someone is nice because they save your life?

‘Relationships are contracts that can be terminated at any time, my dear,’ said Joanna, picking up the second brush. ‘Without notice. You don’t quit sexual relations six weeks before the end of the quarter. If it’s not working any more, you have to go.’

‘And what wasn’t working?’

‘Everything. The Owen who came with me to Shanghai bore no resemblance to the one I had met in London.’

‘You were in London?’

‘Is this an interview?’ Joanna raised her eyebrows. ‘If it is I’d like to see the article for authorisation later.’

‘No, I’m genuinely interested. I mean, we haven’t known each other for that long, right? You and Tian, you’ve been together now for – how many years?’

‘Four.’

‘Exactly. And we haven’t had much of a chance to talk.’

‘Woman to woman, you mean?’

‘No, not all that rubbish, it’s just, I’ve known Tian for ever, my whole life, but you—’

‘You don’t know anything about me.’ Joanna smirked mockingly. ‘And now you’re worried about good old Tian, because you can’t imagine what a beautiful and spoilt woman would want from a bald-headed, sloppy, overweight old sack who, despite having money coming out of his ears, still fixes his glasses with sticky-tape and wears the seat of his trousers around the backs of his knees.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ replied Yoyo angrily.

‘But you thought it. And so did Owen. Fine, I’ll tell you a story. It’s a lesson about the economics of love. It begins in London, where I moved in 2017 to study English Literature, Western Art and Painting; something for which you need to be either crazy, an idealist or from a rich background. My father was Pan Zemin—’