Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

“The cows come home. Hell freezes over.” I began to pace around the room, hands in my jeans pockets. “I wasn’t planning to leave any shores, anyway.” But it had already dawned on me; they were going to take me to China. What the hell; it beat prison. And Isabel might be there. “Is ‘home’ China?” I said.

She nodded.

“Okay,” I said, “okay. I’ll need some clothes.” The prison jeans and dungaree shirt I was wearing were all I had. “Does this have to do with endolin?”

“Our interest in you, Mr. Kwoo, is not pharmacological. It is your other cargo that occupies our attention. It has caused us to go to some lengths to take you from prison.”

Shit. They wanted the Juno uranium fields. For a moment I chilled with the image of a Chinese dungeon somewhere. What if they had revived the water torture? Meltdowns were a scandal to the People’s Republic and the old ladies who ran it; there were radioactive villages and ruined rice paddies sprinkled all over that ancient geography. My well-being, in that context, would mean very little.

“Is Mourning Dove Soong behind this?” I said.

“Madame Soong is Deputy Chairman for the Honshu District. I do not know her position with respect to your case.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go to China. How do we get there?”

She took another cigarette and lit it from the butt of the first. “We’ll go by ship, Mr. Kwoo.”

“All right,” I said. I stubbed my cigarette out in a little jade dish. “But tell me. What does ‘Kwoo’ mean?”

The shorter woman spoke up, in a quiet voice. “It’s an old Mandarin word. It denotes an ancient coin. You could translate it as ‘cash.’”

I looked down at her and fingered my beard. “Well,” I said, “you people do know how to name the newborn. I accept Kwoo.” Ben Kwoo .

It was a Chinese jet that took us to the Embarcadero in San Francisco. This time my stratosphere suit was crimson. There was a valve in the mask, so I could sip oolong through a straw during the two-hour flight. My cigarette-smoking friend was seated behind me, but had little to say on our intercom. I tried to get her to talk about her family, but she wasn’t interested. I sipped my tea and brooded a bit. Then I did some knee bends just as we were zooming over the Rockies and started figuring out ways of getting back into the search for Isabel from wherever we were going in China.

A gray Mercedes was waiting for us; we drove in silence from the airfield to a dock. The car pulled up at the gangway to a coal-burner with rusty sides. On the forepeak lettered in red was PRS KEIR HARDIE. It was a Scottish ship! “What the hell?” I said to my chain-smoking companion. She was climbing the gangway alongside me with her short black hair blowing in the offshore wind. “Why aren’t we sailing Chinese?”

“This was available,” she said, stepping briskly aboard.

My stateroom was ready and she ushered me right to it. My heart lifted when I walked in. The parlor had a screen painted with blue morning glories; there were walnut tables and blue silk poufs. Along one bulkhead was a galley with a refrigerator, a molecular cooker and a freezer. “How long will the trip take?” I looked at her. “And what’s your name?”

“My name is White Heron. Many call me Jane. It will take us two weeks to cross the Pacific.”

There was a bar with relief carvings of birds on its front and two crystal decanters and glasses. I crossed over to it and sniffed one of the decanters. Scotch, sure enough. I started to pour. “Would you like a drink, White Heron?”

“Jane,” she said. “I’m on duty.”

“Suit yourself,” I said and made mine larger. I went to the refrigerator, filled my glass with ice and clinked it around. I was still wearing my red stratosphere suit. I took a drink and a ship’s whistle blew, loud, clear and thrilling. Nothing in this world sounds better than a ship’s whistle. “Are we leaving?”

Jane nodded and the deck beneath our feet began to vibrate. I drank another musty slug of scotch, spreading out my big feet into a seaman’s stance. “Jane,” I said, “who assigned me to these quarters? It wasn’t you, was it?”

She looked at me coldly. She’d have had me in the bilges if she’d been in charge. Then she shrugged. “It was Mourning Dove Soong,” she said. “Your partner at Lao-tzu Pharmaceuticals.”

“Yes,” I said, and drank off my scotch. “Bless her heart.” I thought of Arabella Kim and her woodlot in Washington. Old Chinese mothers, the two of them, as good as gold. Maybe there was something in matriarchy after all.

I played a lot of solo chess during the next few days and then began to suntan myself on deck when we got far enough into the South Pacific. I read a few twenty-first-century Chinese novels, but their vigor wore me out. Everybody was productive and brave in those books, and nobody made love except after a Confucianist wedding, and then they did it solemnly and in the dark. Puritanism is like the wheel; if it ever got lost it would be reinvented fast.

I was allowed no access to the ship’s communications equipment, which was probably just as well. I wasn’t ready to do business just yet. I managed to borrow some recent Scottish magazines from one of the mates and entertained myself with stories of love among the fens, or brawls on collective farms in the lowlands. Still dull stuff, but better than the Chinese. More balls.

The ship plowed across the blue Pacific as if in a dream, leaving a wake like a glory in that awe-inspiring surface. At night the stars were magnificent—nearly as bright as from my toilet seat on the Isabel . When we got to our southernmost point I could see Fomalhaut, near the horizon.

Nobody talked to me much and I didn’t try to make friends. They were probably under orders anyway. There were some other passengers, all well-to-do Chinese families. It seemed the Keir Hardie was used by the higher ranks of the Party. As much as they officially excoriated one another, the Chinese and the Scots could work things out when it came to luxury. There’s nothing new in that.

I took my meals alone and ate with chopsticks. The officers’ mess supplied what I ordered, and once offered a haggis if I wanted to try one. I declined politely. I had no television and no newspapers and didn’t care. It was shipboard lull and fine with me. But I worked out in the ship’s gym daily and did pushups in between, coiling up for whatever lay ahead.

I would see families sometimes standing in a row along the gunwale, wrapped in their heavy overcoats, staring out to sea. The children were touching—so solemn and oriental, with their bangs and quiet black eyes. Sometimes a beautiful child would peek toward me as I stood nearby, in one of my crazy capitalist outfits, but there was never any conversation. I’d like to have adopted about six of those kids. I’d have loved to cook pot roast for a bunch of them and taught them how to play chess.

Well. Children are hostages to fortune, as Bacon said. But what else is there to do with your time?

I can see myself dying by coronary in a parlor suite, clutching my throbbing shoulder and mumbling, “Hey! I need time to think about this!” I would be ninety and still in good shape but without a home or family, without a profession. Tycoon is no profession. All I do is make money and chase women. And travel. “ I haven’t done anything with my life! ” I would say in that hotel suite, thrashing about in the kitchen in terminal anguish, falling dead over the truite fumée .

One evening at the beginning of my second week there was a knock on my door. I was at the table, playing king’s gambit against Myra’s board. I got up and opened the door. It was Jane, wearing a pink silk dress. She was lighting a cigarette.