"I am an American," Remo said.
"Rooty toot toot," Chiun said. Remo started to laugh, then stopped when he saw the curtains move. Slowly, their delicate weight seeming to move, massively, like an ice age crossing a continent. The curtains moved slowly forward, a full inch, until they touched Chiun's extended fingertips, and then they swung forward even more until his fingertips were surrounded by the thin gauze which wrapped itself around the tips of his fingers as if they were iron filings and his fingers were magnets.
Chiun dropped his hands to his sides and the drapes retreated, swinging softly back into place.
The old man turned and saw Remo staring at him.
"Enough," he said, "for one day. Let that be a lesson to you. Even the Master must exercise."
The drapes were again motionless.
"Do that again," Remo said.
"Do what?"
"That thing with the curtains."
"I just did it," Chiun said.
"I want to see how you did it."
"You were watching. You did not see before. How will you see if I do it again?"
"I know how you did it. You inhaled and the drapes came to you."
"I inhaled with my fingers?" asked Chiun.
"How?" said Remo.
"I spoke French to it. Very softly so you would not hear. Even drapes understand French because it is not a hard language, even if they garble the pronunciation."
"Dammit, Chiun, I'm a Master of Sinanju too. You've told me that. You shouldn't withhold information from me. How am I going to support the village when I take over from you? How are all those sweet people I've come to know and love, how are they going to live if I can't ship them the gold? How can I do that if I can't even make a curtain lift?"
"You promise then?"
"Promise what?" asked Remo suspiciously. He had the vague sense that he was being pulled into Chiun like the drapes.
"To send the tribute to the village. To feed the poor, the elderly, the infants. For Sinanju is a poor village, you know. In bad times, we…"
"All right. All right. All right. I promise, promise, promise, promise. Now how'd you do that with the curtain?"
"I willed it."
"You willed it? And just like that, it happened? Remo asked.
"Yes. I have told you many times that all life is force. You must work to extend that force beyond the thin shell which is your skin. Extend that force beyond your body, and then objects that fall into the field of that force can be controlled by it."
"Okay, you've told me what, now tell me how."
"If you do not know the what, you cannot do the how."
"I know the what," Remo said.
"Then you can already do the how. No one need show you," said Chiun.
"A typical non answer," Remo said.
"You must practice," Chiun said. "Then you will be able to do it too. You had better start soon because you're not going to have me to kick around much longer."
"Oh? Where are you going?"
"I am retiring. I have a little sum put by which will enable me to live out my few remaining years in dignity. In my home village. Respected. Honored. Loved."
"Don't give me that. The last time you were home, the village sent a tank after you," Remo said.
"An error," Chiun said. "Never to be repeated. I have advice for you, regarding your future duties as Master of Sinanju."
"Yeah?"
"Yes. Do not take any checks. Make sure the tribute to the village is in gold. Remember. I will be there to inspect it when it comes And I do not trust Smith. He is an idiot, that man."
"Anything else?"
"Yes. Practice."
"Practice what?" Remo asked.
"Everything," Chiun said. "You do it all so badly."
"Little Father," Remo said, standing in the center of the room. "Ragaroo, digalee, freebee doan."
"What is that?"
"It's an old American art form called Mung Poetry. You know what it means?"
"No. What, if anything?"
"Go blow it out your ears," Remo said and walked out of the hotel room.
Entering the lobby, Remo took one step off the elevator and stopped cold, as if he had just remembered he had forgotten to put on his pants.
From across the Persian rugged lobby a woman smiled at him. She was long legged and dark haired. She wore a white silk pants suit, its jacket tied loosely above her hips with a belt, and even though she lounged on a chair, Remo knew that when she stood up the garment would be unwrinkled. She was a woman on whom a wrinkle, either of flesh or fabric, would have seemed like the defacing of a monument.
She stood and opened her arms wide as if welcoming Remo to step into them. Her long eyelashes flickered. Her eyes were gentian violet, made even more violet by the light blue of her upper lids, a light blue that seemed a gift of nature and not of a colorist's brush.
Remo moved forward dully across the lobby, toward the woman whose eyes were fixed on him with the unblinking gaze of a cheetah on the hunt. He felt ten years of Sinanju slip away from him. Ten years of control of mind and body so specific, so rigid, so detailed, that even his sex drive had turned into a physical exercise and an excuse to practice techniques. But as slowly as it had gone, that quickly it had returned, and Remo was consumed with the thought of the dark haired woman who still stood, smiling at him.
He stumbled across the lobby toward her outstretched arms, feeling foolish, wondering what he would do if those arms were not open for him, wondering what he would do if, at the last minute, she looked past him, stepped by him and swept some other man into her arms.
He knew what he would do. He would kill the other man. He would kill him on the spot, immediately, without remorse or feeling, and then he would grab the woman and drag her from the hotel and take her to a safe place from which she would never leave him.
When he neared her, the woman's arms dropped and like a chastened schoolboy, Remo stopped short.
He swallowed hard.
He tried to smile and even as it lit on his face, he knew it was a lopsided, sheepish smirk.
"My name is…"
"Your name is Remo," the woman said coldly. "You are an American. My name is Ludmilla. I am a Russian. I do not like Americans. You are decadent."
"Never more so than now," Remo said. "Why did you stand with your arms open?"
"Because I wanted to show you your foolish stupid decadence so that you would know the kind of idiot you are; the kind of imbecile I could make of you."
She walked away from Remo toward the door of the hotel. The bellboy scurried ahead of her to open the door, even though it was automatic and opened electronically when someone stepped on the rubber matted approach plate.
"Wait," Remo called, but the woman was gone out into the street, her very back exuding disdain for Remo. He ran to the door. It was the entrance door and the mechanical opener would not work from his side of the lobby. He used his right hand to teach it never again to stop anybody who was in a hurry to leave.
The woman was getting into a cab. The doorman went to close it after her. Gently. She was not the kind of woman after whom one slammed cab doors, even if she had not given him a tip. She had looked at him and almost smiled; it would last him the rest of the day.
Something stopped the cab door from closing. The doorman pushed harder.
"Just a minute," Remo said. He pulled the door open, extricated his left foot, then slid into the back seat of the cab and closed the door himself.
"Presumptuous bumpkin," the woman said.
"None other," said Remo. "Driver, take us anywhere at all, just as long as it takes a long time."
The driver turned. "Madame?" he said.
"Drive, I said," Remo ordered.
The driver nodded as if he was the creator and preserver of a unique moment in the history of old world charm, when actually he was wondering what kind of tip he would get out of this ride. Good looking women rarely tipped cabdrivers in Paris. And this American didn't look like a tipping tourist either.