‘Come to the point.’
‘The point is we talk to each other — to the other side. We reach agreements, we negotiate, we do deals. It helps to keep the body-count down. So I’m co-operating with the CIA? Looked at the other way, the CIA is co-operating with me! So who’s the traitor, eh?’
‘You tell me, Harry.’
Korn gave an acid laugh. ‘You don’t catch me so easily, Pete. Ask Heltai when you see him next. He says I’m to work with Craig, so I’m working with Craig.’
‘What for? What’s the purpose?’
‘Search me. All I know is that, as long as I’m co-operating, Craig isn’t trying to kill me. And from my point of view that’s a bloody good idea.’ Korn struggled to his feet, leaving a damp patch on the paving the shape of a heart. He studied his hands, his shoes, his rumpled seersucker pants. ‘What do you say?’ he added almost affectionately. ‘Let’s go, huh?’
On their way from the temple Harry Korn bought a couple of fortune chips. He cast them on the ground and checked his fate against a paper slip. He murmured, ‘Shit!’ and stuffed the paper in his pocket, then took Kirov’s arm and pushed him through the crowd.
A narrow lane ran at right angles to the other side of the road. It was lit by lanterns from the open fronts of the shops, and heaving with a chattering crowd. The corner spot was occupied by a pox-doctor’s clinic in a wooden shack decorated with poster-sized photographs of diseased genitalia. Next to it was a food stall, a couple of boards, a couple of stools, a griddle with some prawns on it, a rack of chicken-feet. The lane smelled of food, hot fish and stir-fried greens, pungent sauces and sometimes a whiff of spice from a herbalist. The traders pushed their lines of imported cigarettes, fake Rolexes, perfumes, audio cassettes, just-like-gold jewellery, ginseng, elixir of life, love potions, charms, toys, idols as colourful as dolls, brassware, leatherware, bits of stick and feather with scrolls of Chinese calligraphy. People haggled, sat and ate, scratched their backsides, cuffed their children, made great raucous spits. By the shops sat grave merchants and wrinkled old men, aloof from the crowd, waiting for the mug or the connoisseur. Young crooks in T-shirts and tight jeans assembled customers and harangued them. In the alley that ran off the main lane, children with come-on eyes peered through the flimsy bamboo screens of the brothels. ‘Four thousand years of civilisation,’ said Harry Korn. Then: ‘Where the hell am I? Hang on a minute while I take my bearings.’
They had stopped by one of the shops. The counter gave straight onto the street and was stacked with cases holding live terrapins. A young orang-utan with bright dreamy eyes was sitting on the counter chained by one foot. In his spare foot he clutched one of the terrapins and, in an acrobatic movement, brought it to the level of his pouting lips and studied it with ancient wisdom. The shopholder sat behind the counter watching a video of a dog fight. The struggle was over and the winning cur had its head buried to the ears in the entrails of the loser.
‘Got it — that one. C’mon, Pete.’ The fat man grabbed Kirov by the arm again and, brushing the Chinese aside, forced his way through the crowd. They reached another shop where a press of people had gathered and a young Chinese was making a vigorous pitch for their attention. He stood at a trestle table; behind him was an open room with a few more tables and chairs laid out like a cheap cafeteria. Over his head was a steel bar and hanging from it a row of dead snakes like a rack of ties. There were more snakes in cages stacked on the ground. On the counter was a live cobra.
Korn checked his watch. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his face again. The armpits of his jacket, his crotch and the pockets of his seersucker pants were damp with sweat. He had a bright new Band-aid plaster on his cheek which he fingered as he spoke. ‘Watch the show, Pete,’ he said. ‘This is something you’ve got to see.’ For his part he was on tiptoe and looking up and down the lane over the seething mass of people. He turned to Kirov. ‘Watch — watch,’ he urged with a thin-lipped grin. Behind his counter the Chinese was making passes at the mesmerised cobra.
The youth had an insistent, jabbering voice. His eyes were fixed on the crowd and he seemed indifferent to the snake except to wave his hand generally to indicate its finer points. Then, without interrupting the flow of banter, he grabbed the beast and stuffed it into one of the cases. From a back room somewhere a skinny kid scuttled out, lifted another case and placed it on the table. The older Chinese pushed a stick into the box followed by his hand. It emerged gripping a snake firmly behind the head. He brandished it with a flourish to the crowd. The reptile was a metre or more long and thrashing furiously.
‘A blue krait,’ said Harry Korn.
Kirov’s eyes were fixed on the reptile, its flickering tongue and impotent flailing. He felt its cold fear.
‘Is it poisonous?’
The Chinese continued speaking, a high-pitched yammer-yammer.
‘Fucking deadly,’ Korn answered evenly. ‘But this young bloke knows what he’s doing. You and me on the other hand, we should stay away from snakes.’ He returned to the show. The Chinese, in one sharp movement, impaled the snake on a pair of scissors, slit along its length and tore out its heart.
The snake continued to thrash. Its eyes continued to glitter coldly. Its heart, the size of a man’s thumb, lay on the table and continued its regular beat. The skinny kid dashed out from the wings bringing a dirty beer glass. Without taking his eyes from the crowd, the Chinese grabbed the snake and wrung out its blood into the glass. The blood squirted and filled the glass a dark venous red with a crimson foam. The Chinese held it up and his voice grew louder and more emphatic. The snake’s heart went thump-thump on the table and showed no signs of slackening.
The skinny kid, like a conjuror’s apprentice, produced a smaller glass tumbler with two fingers of murky liquor at the bottom. The Chinese gestured at it and at the snake, which now hung limply though its detached heart was still beating. He took the scissors again and slit further along the animal. His fingers plucked out the gall bladder. He held it between finger and thumb and squeezed until a dark jet of fluid shot out and turned the liquor in the glass a sickly green. He held up the glass and explained its virtues in the same hypnotic tone. Then the skinny kid came out again and placed a small spirit glass on the table. This glass was full.
‘Snake venom,’ said Harry Korn. He checked his watch again. ‘Show’s over and Craig is late.’ Kirov was still watching the Chinese. The boy was ordering the three glasses on a tray. He finished then disappeared into the wings again and returned with a bowl and spoon. The contents of the bowl steamed. He placed it on the tray.
Harry Korn said idly, ‘Chicken soup.’
‘Why soup?’ Kirov asked.
The fat man paused. His eyes were looking at something over Kirov’s shoulder. Then he remembered as if prompted and said, ‘Didn’t I explain? That little piece of butchery is a meal.’
‘And I’ll take it,’ said Craig.
Craig was wearing Levi’s, Cuban-heeled boots with medallions stitched into the pointed toes, and a tough-guy leather jacket. The zipper of the jacket was partly down and showed a yellow silk scarf wrapped around the American’s throat; above this was some chicken skin where his age showed, and then the firm jaw line and taut tanned skin drawn over the bones of that monumental head. The hair was all in place and the face freshly shaved even though it was evening when the stubble normally shows through tired skin. Kirov had never before given thought to the American’s vanity, but here it was; you could literally touch it, and somehow it was part of the engine that drove the other man’s violence.