“Stop in the shade,” Christopher said, when they had passed Yu Lung’s house for the second time. He wrote six dates, each followed by a time of day, on a page of his notebook. Then he tore five hundred-dollar bills in half, put five halves in an envelope with the notebook page, and placed the other torn halves in his wallet.
“Pong, walk back so they don’t see the car,” he said, “and give this to whoever answers the door. Make an appointment for me to see Yu Lung after dark tonight-but not after nine o’clock. Tell him I want horoscopes for the men born under the first four dates and times-he’ll have to transpose the dates to the lunar calendar. I want to trace the connection between the birth dates and the last two dates, which are days and times when certain events took place. Have you got all that?”
Pong scowled and repeated Christopher’s instructions. “Who do I tell him is coming?” he asked. “He may not want to see an American.”
“Tell him I’m a friend of Lê Thu,” Christopher said. Pong tapped the submachine gun to call Christopher’s attention to it and stepped into the street. Pong rocked from side to side as he walked, as if the taut muscles of his squat body were disputing the signals from his brain.
When he came back, he nodded at Christopher. “Yu Lung will have the stuff for you at eight o’clock,” he said.
“Let’s have some lunch, then,” Christopher said.
“Barney told me not to leave the car.”
“Have you anything with you?”
“Sandwiches,” Pong said, holding up a packet. “I made them at Barney’s while you were telephoning the young lady.”
“You’re a good operator, Pong. Did you report that to Wolkowicz?”
“Yes, on the radio while I waited for you at the dead man’s house. That’s when he told me not to leave the car.”
6
Nicole was waiting at the table on the roof of the Majestic, a Coca-Cola before her and the city spread out beyond her soft profile. She wore a different French frock; her hair was bound with a broad white ribbon that passed over the top of her head. Christopher sat down with his back to the view, so that he could watch the door and the room.
“I’m a little surprised you came,” he said.
“You came last night when I invited you.”
“Yes. I hope you have a quieter journey home than I had.”
“You seem well. There’s a cut on your cheek.”
Christopher spoke to the waiter, who poured cassis in the bottom of a glass and filled it with white wine.
“You shouldn’t drink wine at midday in this climate,” Nicole said. “It’s very bad for the liver.” Her eyes looked beyond him as she watched ships move in the river.
“Well,” Christopher said, “have you any compliments or messages for me from the Truong toe?”
Nicole smiled, a sudden sly glint of teeth and eyes. “He doesn’t confide-I listen at doors. I listened last night, in Cho-lon. You took their breath away, you know.”
“Did I? Then they have very good self-control.”
“They don’t know how to deal with you. At first they thought you were insane.”
“And now?”
Nicole traced a pattern on the tablecloth with her fingernail, then looked up quickly into Christopher’s eyes. “They think you’re in a terrific hurry. That upsets them more than what you say you know, or suspect. They think you want to lay this theory out before the world as truth. They know you’re a journalist.”
“I’ve never concealed it.”
“They know what else you are. You conceal that.”
“Then I’m concealing it still. I’m only a journalist, Nicole. There’s no one behind what I’m doing.”
Nicole shuddered with impatience. “You suppose they don’t know where you slept last night, or whose car you have today? Come, Paul-really.”
“My embassy thought, for some reason, that I needed protection. I was glad to have it.”
Nicole looked at him again and laughed shrilly, almost in the tones of Phuoc’s laughter. The waiter brought them fish, poured more wine, and went away. Nicole ate deftly, saying nothing until she had cleared her plate. Her eyes moved busily over the landscape behind Christopher’s shoulder; the sun filtering through the green awning changed the hue of her skin as she turned into the light or away from it.
“What you were saying to my uncles last night-were you serious?” she asked.
“About revealing what they had done? Absolutely.”
“If they have done such a thing-let us have that plainly understood.”
“All right. It isn’t proved that they did.”
“You think the proof would have the effect you described? Would the Americans leave?”
“Yes.”
“It’s logical,” Nicole said. “The Americans would do what you say in the open, before the world. But what would they do secretly?”
Christopher shrugged. “I don’t know. Not much. After all, it was a fair enough exchange.”
Nicole drew in her breath. “You are cold-blooded. Would you speak in this way to an American?”
“I’ve done so. They don’t like it any more than you do, Nicole.”
Nicole touched the back of his hand with her fingertips. “Leave Vietnam,” she said. “You don’t understand us.”
“Don’t I? Tell me about yourself, Nicole. Where were you born? What were your schools? What is your future?”
She drew back her hand. “All that means nothing.” She touched her temples. “You believe one lives in this part of the body, but I live in my three souls and my nine spirits, and there are a thousand vital points in my body. Each one of which touches a time or a date or a number in the lunar calendar, which you cannot even understand. I never speak my own name, nor does anyone who loves me. You haven’t time, if you lived here for another fifty years, to begin to understand.”
Christopher put a forefinger on her brow; she made no movement to avoid it. “If your brain stops,” he said, “then all this wonderful system of mysteries stops, too, doesn’t it?”
“In this body, yes. There are other forms, other forces that go on.”
“You seem determined to convince me that Vietnamese culture is a secret code.”
“And you seem determined not to believe me.”
Christopher called for the bill. While he counted out the money, Nicole sat watching him, her upper lip caught between her thumb and forefinger. Christopher remembered how he had closed Luong’s dead mouth, and again saw the grain of rice between his lips, magic against the Celestial Dog. It took him a moment to realize that Nicole’s long fingernail was pressing into the back of his hand. When he looked up, she removed it, leaving a white half-moon on his sunburnt skin.
In Vietnamese she said, “My name is Dao. I was born in Hanoi. I am twenty-three. All that is worth loving will die around me before I have a child.”
Christopher, giving no sign that he understood her language, folded his napkin into a neat triangle. “We seem to be back where we began,” he said. “I thought we might to beyond gibberish today.”
“You really don’t believe in the importance of anything I’ve told you, do you?”
“Oh, yes, I believe in its importance, and you’ve taught me quite a lot,” Christopher said. “But if there is one certain thing about codes, it’s this-they can be broken. Tell the Truong toe I thank him again for the photograph he gave me last night. Tell him, too, that I have some pictures of my own.”