“Wow! That tiger is priceless,” Jones explains. “It’s the big come-on, the piece which tells you this guy is the king of jade.” Her voice has risen an octave when she says: “See how the sculptor has bunched the muscles, giving that impression of power, and look at the harmony. Limbs, haunches, back, shoulder, stomach-synchronized, masterful, harmonious.”
“It’s not green,” I object.
“That’s the point. After about a thousand years jade loses its color. That tiger goes back to the Early Western Zhou dynasty. He would never sell it, I bet. To anyone who knows anything, it’s as intimidating as hell.” She shakes her head. “I’m surprised he’s got the guts to show some of this stuff. Look at that crouching dragon in mutton-fat nephrite and those thrush-breast freckles-think of the genius it took to see that dragon in the crude stone. That chatelaine is impressive, too, and look at that openwork plaque with peonies. I don’t know, this is more than just a collector, this is a curator of his own museum.” She takes the two steps back to the center of the window. “That tiger, though, it’s still the best piece on display. It’s more than just a great piece, it’s world class, the stone equivalent of the Mona Lisa-if you like the Mona Lisa, which I don’t, personally. Oh, look, he’s acknowledging his Chinese connections. See that brilliant piece of calligraphy hanging on the wall consisting of a single pictograph? That’s the Chinese character yú.”
“So what?”
“Yú is Mandarin for jade. Since the Chinese were the first to discover it, you could say it’s the original name. Those three lines mean ‘virtue, beauty and rarity,’ in other words the three qualities of jade according to Confucius.”
“See the piece on the shelf,” I say, pointing behind the window display, into the interior of the shop.
“Well, I’ll be…”
“It might not be the same one.”
“Oh, it’s the same one.”
Horse and rider.
In a small café in the main complex, downstairs, while we’re waiting for the shop to open, Jones says: “I did try love once. I really did. It still gets so much hype, you feel you’ve got to give it a chance, right? I think in the States we’re way past that stage, though. It’s like, in the first phase of industrialization there’s still marriage as in an undeveloped agricultural economy, meaning it lasts for life. The next phase, people get married knowing they’ll get divorced. One phase further on, and you find people marrying in order to get divorced. By the time you reach twenty-first century America, love is a blip on the career path, something that was capable of making you late for work for a week, before you got over it. The sad truth is it’s incompatible with freedom, money and equality. Who the hell really wants to be stuck with their equal for life? Human beings are predators, we like to hunt and eat the weak so we can feel strong for a moment. How about you?”
The question has taken me by surprise, not least because Jones has her hand on my thigh again. This time there can be no doubt as to her meaning and I think the talk about predation must be a kind of foreplay. My inferiority in my badly tailored khaki shirt, awful pants and truly hideous black anvil-shaped shoes is evident. I should take her hand off my thigh to make it clear I don’t want to be eaten, but instead cast around in my mind for an answer to her question. I think of Kat as I say: “Some people give their hearts only once. When love fails, they take up some occupation which reflects their bitterness.”
Jones raises her eyebrows. “Is that what I did? Became a man-hunter because my true love betrayed me?” I expect some cynical coda. Instead she mutters, “Damned right,” and takes her hand away. Jones is not a Buddhist, therefore I do not explain the endless cycle of life after life, each one a reaction against some imbalance from the one before, that reaction setting up yet another imbalance and so on and on and on… We are the pinballs of eternity.
At 11:20 a.m. we ride up the escalator again and I am surprised at the preindustrial feeling of anticipation in my stomach, a delicious foreboding of dangerous karma to come.
She is slightly inside the fine-art side of the shop, dusting a full-length standing Buddha from Ayutthaya with a feather duster. A gong sounds as we cross the threshold and she turns toward us, a polite smile on her face. She is wearing a simple white linen blouse from Versace with open neck projecting a delicious vulnerability, black skirt probably also by Versace to below her knees. Her string of pearls is much larger than the FBI’s, but what causes my most intense suffering is her fragrance, the name of which escapes me but not the brand: it is indisputably from Van Cleef & Arpels, no doubt flown in from their store on the Place Vendôme, the very shop where Truffaut seduced my mother’s nose even if the rest of her body remained beyond his failing powers. I pretend to sneeze slightly to have an excuse to inhale deeply. (Smell is the most animal of the senses, Truffaut advised, and like an animal a person will fall prey to a delicious intensity when he or she truly enters the universe of fragrance.)
The first words I ever hear her utter are Good morning, and I note with mounting joy how her voice-womanly, soft with Negroid timbre-so exactly matches and expresses her physical beauty.
Fatima’s father was black American, mine was white American, there the difference ends. I know she is experiencing the moment in the same way while Jones, with great professionalism, conceals her surprise at seeing her in Warren’s shop. I do not hear Jones’ spiel about seeking out special pieces for her bijou gallery in Manhattan, and neither does the spectacular woman who was Bradley’s lover. Jones’ voice could be a mile away, all I hear is Fatima’s polite reply: “Oh, how wonderful of you to think of us!”
I am pierced by her fragility, the sense of a recent loss of life-threatening proportions so similar to mine; pierced also by a perception which initially is mind-boggling, then blindingly obvious. Why did I not think of it before?
Clearly such mutual depth of emotion can only be the product of an intense relationship in a previous lifetime, and Jones’ comment about people dying, then carrying on conversations after rebirth, echoes in my head. Jones stops in mid-sentence while I float effortlessly toward Fatima across the polished floor. I have the impression of waltzing between Buddhas while I jabber in Thai about Khmer art, of which I know nothing, and-it is obvious-neither does Fatima. She explains, with a laugh, that she does not actually work here, she is filling in for someone as a favor to the boss. Here should be my opening to insert the name of Sylvester Warren, instead I let it pass. I do not want to talk shop.
Jones tries to follow us around the salon and I am pleased to see she has no idea what is going on. We are continuing not one conversation, Fatima and I, but many, perhaps hundreds, from hundreds upon hundreds of lifetimes. She is my twin. The words we use have no correspondence to the present moment, they are merely vehicles of our excitement at meeting again at last. How long has it been? A hundred years? A thousand? Now Fatima is leading me into a remote corner, near a door. It is as if she wishes to tell me something. She has taken care to choose a moment when Jones has been left behind. I see him for a split second, a face at a doorway partially opened, before he withdraws and closes the door. It was one of the Khmer who befriended Elijah, the one with the knife. I make startled eyes at Fatima, but she shakes her head to reassure me. I nod as if I understand, even though I am now thoroughly confused.