Hwang Sok-yong: Princess Bari

I wrapped a hot towel around the client’s feet and went out into the waiting room. I didn’t recognize the woman there at first. She wore a short skirt, boots that came all the way up to her knees and a loose jumper that left her shoulders bare. Her hair was long, straight and parted down the middle like a stereotype of an East Asian girl. She sat with her legs crossed, but stood up halfway when she saw me, raising her butt off the chair awkwardly.

“How’ve you been?” she asked.

I could not for the life of me place her smile.

“I’m sorry … Do I know you?”

I tilted my head to one side as I looked at her, and she answered in a small voice: “I’m Xiang.”

For a moment I thought: Who’s Xiang? Then I clapped my hand over my mouth. She looked so much older that she was almost unrecognizable. Her once-pale face had turned dark, and the once-taut skin around her eyes was sagging, but what made it even harder to tell that it was Xiang was her caked-on makeup. I clasped her hand in surprise. At that instant, a rush of regret, like a kind of guilt, came over me.

“I meant to look for you,” I said. “But other things kept getting in the way. I’m so sorry …”

“I only need a minute of your time. Are you busy?”

“No, I have time.”

I took her across the street to a café. When she rested her hands on the table, I saw that her nail polish was chipped, and that the seams in her jumper were coming undone. She kept glancing at the counter and then at the entrance, as if she was nervous about something.

“Lou told me where to find you,” she said.

“Have you been in that same place this whole time?”

“I moved around a bit … Situation’s the same.”

What she meant by “the same”, of course, was that she was still working in brothels. As she and I had been through so much together, there was no need to beat around the bush.

“Have you considered finding a different line of work?” I asked.

“What’s it matter now?” Xiang said. “Anyway, I’m doing fine.” But then she pressed both hands against the table suddenly, leaned forward and blurted out the words she’d been trying to keep inside: “Loan me some money! I’m really in a jam, and you’re the only one I could think of.”

I didn’t want to tell her that I’d already paid off my smuggling debt, or ask how much she still owed. The only reason I’d managed to free myself was because Uncle Lou had been willing to vouch for me, but for all I knew she might still have been in the snakeheads’ clutches.

“How much do you need?” I asked.

“Two hundred pounds. Or even just a hundred.”

“I don’t have any cash on me, but I’ll get it for you.”

Xiang waited in the café while I went back to the salon and asked Uncle Tan for a hundred-pound advance on my wages. She gulped down two glasses of water in quick succession. When I handed her the five twenty-pound notes, she grabbed the cash and got up immediately.

“Look at the time,” she said. “I swear I’ll pay you back next week.”

She went outside, waved goodbye and then ran in the direction of the Underground. I stood on the sidewalk and stared after her. She never once looked back.

Something wasn’t sitting right with me, so when my shift at the salon ended I called Uncle Lou. He didn’t have long to talk, because they were getting ready for the dinner rush. When I told him that Xiang had come to see me and asked how she’d been living, he apologized right away.

“She begged and pleaded, saying she wanted to see you, so I had no choice but to give her the address. That girl isn’t going to make it. I’m pretty sure she’s on drugs. She can’t go back to China either. It’s really sad. Anyway, I’ll pay back what she borrowed from you.”

I told him it didn’t matter and asked whether or not there was anything he could do for her.

He sighed. “You have to have the will to live first. That’s the only way you can earn other people’s trust and get help.”

Naturally, Xiang did not come back the following week. I had no intention of collecting on the debt, but decided to use my next day off to try to track her down. I thought that if we opened up to each other, we could find some way to help her. That was my plan, but somehow I never found the time to follow through.

One night, I happened to miss the last Underground train while coming home from a friend’s birthday party with Luna. We boarded a night bus near Piccadilly Circus instead. Sitting in the back of the bus was a large group of drunken girls dressed in short skirts and wearing bright makeup and garish accessories. They chattered loudly; one was slumped in her seat, asleep. As I looked at them, I noticed an East Asian woman behind them gazing vacantly at the passing streetlights. She must have felt me staring at her, because she turned and looked at me. Our eyes locked. The expression on her face was so dark that I couldn’t look away. When she got off the bus on some quiet street, I kept looking intently out the window at her. She stood and stared back at me. I felt as if I was looking at Xiang. Ah, I thought, the ties that bind us were already formed long ago, in the heavens. Like a finely woven spider web that ensnares us all.

Ali had still not come home, and there was still no news; meanwhile, Hurriyah Suni had grown rapidly and was crawling everywhere, grabbing onto things to try to stand up, falling down and crying. I would leave her upstairs with Grandfather Abdul while I went to work, but it wasn’t easy for him to keep up with her. Some days I came home to find him and his great-granddaughter conked out together on the bed. He finally asked his friends at the mosque for help finding a babysitter, and ended up hiring the daughter of a Pakistani family that ran a small corner shop selling cigarettes, bus tickets, accessories and other such items. The son went to school, while the daughter, Ayesha, helped out at the shop. Ayesha agreed to look after Hurriyah in the afternoons, when her mother took over for her at the store. Grandfather Abdul offered to pay for the babysitting, but I firmly refused. It was my child after all, and even if he was a blood relative, he was already doing so much just by taking care of her in the mornings.

I hadn’t been to Lady Emily’s house in nearly a month, as she was travelling frequently around that time. When I finally returned, Auntie Sarah greeted me at the door with a smile. I’d long been in the habit of guessing the mood of the rest of the house by the look on her face when I arrived, so the moment I saw her, I said: “I take it something good has happened.”

“An angel’s come down from Heaven,” she said, practically humming the words.

I gestured to show I didn’t understand, and she turned to lead the way.

“Let’s hurry upstairs. The madam has some bragging to do.”

We headed for the stairs, but I could already hear the breathless giggling of a child coming from the living room. Lady Emily was clapping her hands and shouting. We stood and watched for a moment as the two of them scampered around the room in a game of tag.

“Ah, Bari!” Lady Emily said when she noticed me. “Come in and meet Anthony.”

The boy was running toward me, so I scooped him up on reflex. His face crumpled into a startled frown. He reared out of my arms, reaching for Auntie Sarah, who stood next to me, so I passed him over to her. He was a handsome little boy with black hair, dark eyes and fine features.

“Take him into the kitchen and give him something to eat,” Lady Emily said.

Auntie Sarah took the child downstairs while Lady Emily and I had tea. She told me the baby belonged to her late husband and his Thai mistress. Her husband’s sister had been looking after him while the mother was in jail, awaiting trial for the murder. The sister-in-law had called her a while back and, after some hesitation, Lady Emily had gone to see the child herself. The moment she saw him, she knew she had to bring him home.