Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

At my first words in their own language, many of them were clearly shocked. Several seated themselves, as if mulling it over. But the older man was relentless. “I cannot accept your professed gift to China. China has been promised gifts from white devils before. Opium was such a gift.”

“I am not British,” I said angrily. “I love China. I am dismayed to see its ancient culture discarded and its men become soft. But China’s greatness is everywhere manifest, as was that of America in the time of my grandfathers. I too mourn the accident at Wu and know the cost of China’s wealth is incalculable. In this case the dead speak.”

The old man was adamant. “Only the devil calculates with lives.”

Mourning Dove was watching his face. She spoke directly to him. “Someone must,” she said.

They stared at each other for a long moment. Finally he said, between his teeth, “Murderess,” and sat down. Another voice, from the back, picked up the cry of “Murderess” and then another. I heard a man shout, “Capitalist!”

And then a voice rang out from behind me and I turned to see Isabel standing by me with her hands on her hips, facing the audience. The part in the curtain was still moving from where she had just stepped through. She was in Lady Macbeth’s russet gown, but the stage makeup was gone from her face and it looked pale under the lights.

“ What kind of Communists are you? ” she said.

“ English ,” someone hissed.

Isabel’s voice could have waked the dead. “I am not English,” she said, spacing the words out. “And you are hypocrites. You make me ashamed for the great Mao and for his discipline.” She pointed at the old man. “Your jacket is from Saks. Solar power cannot make such jackets.”

Several of the more thoughtful ones had become quietly attentive. Finally a young woman who had been silent spoke up from about twenty rows back. “Yes, we live well. Must others die for that?”

Mourning Dove answered. “Yes.”

And immediately I said, “Not anymore.”

The anger was still in the air, but less powerfully. For a long minute everyone was silent, wondering if it would start up again. Then a couple in the back row got up and left the theater. More followed, and after a while the three of us were alone onstage with the footlights still blazing on us.

“Mother,” I said, “I’d like you to meet Isabel.”

In the gutters of Chang An Avenue lay occasional clumps of leftover red confetti, from some parade or other that afternoon. It was bitterly cold and halos of frozen mist surrounded the streetlamps. An occasional official car droned by under electric power, its red fender flags flapping. Party officials were on their way to meet sweethearts or were coming back from gambling clubs. A sleek electric bus hummed past us, with most of its seats empty.

“Did you mean that, Ben? That China was wise to use nuclear power?” Isabel said.

“I did at the time,” I said. “But I was defending Mourning Dove. God knows how many have died of leukemia alone.”

“I’ve thought of that.”

“Isabel,” I said, “I’m not impotent anymore.”

“That should ease your temper.”

“Yes.” There was a lighted skyscraper between us and Tien An Men Square and we were heading toward it. It looked a bit like the Empire State Building. “They’ve lost a quarter million people,” I said. “Maybe twice that. If they’d burned it right, coal would have been more humane. But they were in a hurry, and they had all that uranium at Sinkiang and Kiangsi…” I felt a sudden wave of sadness.

“Mourning Dove didn’t need your help,” Isabel said.

Two Mercedes limousines hummed past us, down the middle of the broad old avenue. From one of them came the muffled sound of Broadway music, a new musical called Oriental Blues . What strange transactions the modern world conducted!

“Anyway, it’s over. I’ll have my ship back in three weeks, and they’ll start changing cores.”

Isabel was wearing an enormous down-filled coat and a black watchcap pulled over her ears. I had my hands jammed in my pockets against the cold. Expert opinion said it was not an ice age, but here we were in another horror of a winter. “You were magnificent in the play,” I said, for the second time. “I’ve never seen a Lady Macbeth like you.”

“Ben,” she said, “it’s a fine play, but sometimes it felt like Fifty-first Street, with you.”

That annoyed me. “I’m no murderer.”

“That’s not what I mean. You can be awfully bombastic.”

“I’ve changed,” I said.

“I hope you have,” she said, a bit grimly. We walked in silence for a while. Abruptly she stopped and turned to me. “Ben,” she said, “I don’t want to be a supporting actress in your melodrama.”

That hit home, and I said nothing. We were coming up to the skyscraper. There were ideographs incised on an arch over its entrance. We stopped and looked at them.

“I can’t read Chinese,” Isabel said.

“It Says INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF HAPPINESS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN.”

She hesitated. “You weren’t the only cause of those fights,” she said. “When I let you move in, my life felt empty and I expected you to fill it.”

“And did I?”

“With a vengeance.”

“Look,” I said, “that’s all past. You’ve got a career that’s clearly taking off. Fieler wants you to do Ibsen in New York. I have to buy into Con Ed or start up my own company. I’ve got to mount another voyage for endolin and uranium. We won’t be focusing on each other all the time. Besides, I can get it up now. Sometimes I can’t get it down.”

She looked at me closely. Under the lights by the building I could see the redness of her cheeks and the red tip of her nose. “I gave up my apartment in New York,” she said, “and my sister has Amagansett and William.” She hesitated. “You won’t be going after the uranium yourself?”

I shook my head. “There’s a new captain.” She hesitated and I said, “I’ll be moving back into my mansion and I want you with me. I want the cats too. I’d like you to marry me.”

“Things have gone very well since you left,” she said. “The Times ran my picture during Hamlet and I did television here in Peking before Macbeth …” She stopped. “Ben, you require more attention than I want to give.”

“Honey,” I said, “don’t forget the good times. We used to take walks and eat in restaurants and go to concerts. We really enjoyed each other.”

“Sometimes.”

I shrugged.” I’ll take you home,” I said. “Where are you staying?”

“I have an apartment near Tien An Men. We can walk.”

I started walking and suddenly I felt Isabel’s arm interlink itself with mine. I remembered how we used to hold each other on those cold nights in her apartment, sleeping wrapped up with one another.

She must have been thinking of the same thing because she said, “You can spend the night with me, if you’d like.”

The apartment was quiet and warm. There were no cats. We made love easily, in silence, and then lay on Isabel’s blue Chinese bed holding each other as tightly as yang and yin. Gradually we separated enough that we could lie on our backs with our feet touching.

I lit a cigar. “How long does the play run?” I said, breathing easily and as relaxed in the body as on Belson grass.

“Eight more performances.” She rolled over and kissed my neck. “Oh my, Ben,” she said. “It was about time.”

“We could get married in Peking,” I said.

She rolled over, stretched her arms out and yawned. “New York, Ben. We ought to get married in New York.”