Nina led Daniel along a line of stalls that seemed to have every imaginable item for sale: pots, statues, palanquins, lanterns, vintage embroidered clothes, implements of torture, fortunetelling bones with century-old predictions, and even images of Zigu, the goddess of the privy, to whom people would pray for good luck in their family matters.
Gu Ya-min’s antique shop took up two-floors of a creaky old house, rickety ladders leaned against the shelves on its walls, and light shone in through its colored-glass windows. The owner, who appeared at least a hundred years old, had become so shrunken and dark with age that he looked more like one of his own ancient teak carvings than a living human being. Even in the height of summer he felt the cold and would wander around his shop in a quilted coat and felt slippers.
Gu Ya-min gave Daniel a long searching look and asked Nina who he was and what he wanted. After introductions were made, he agreed to show Daniel his collection.
“A lewd and licentious man lost these items to me at cards,” the old man said, heading for the back room. “He told me they were worth at least three thousand taels of silver, but I can’t even get a yuan for them. It’s against the law for me to sell them.”
The dark, hot, and stuffy back room was cluttered with boxes that reached right up to the ceiling. Nina pushed aside a carved screen and opened the window. She had been hoping that Gu Ya-min would leave her on her own with Daniel, but instead the old man sat down on a stool, resting his hands on the intricately carved head of his stick. “Be my guests,” he said.
Nina had hatched her plan to lure Daniel to this room a long time ago, but now her hangover and nerves had thrown these well laid schemes into complete disarray. To make things worse, Gu Ya-min followed her movements with a disapproving look, as if fathoming what was on her mind.
Daniel opened a cardboard box and pulled out a smaller one covered with silk. Inside was a jade disc depicting a beautiful smiling girl lying on nine chrysanthemum petals, her naked body gleaming and her eyes closed in ecstatic abandon.
Daniel glanced at Nina but said nothing. He took a porcelain bracelet out of a different box. It was decorated with a painted garden along with a pagoda and humpbacked bridge. On the other side of the bracelet was a playful looking woman with a high coiffure. Her gown had slipped open revealing her breasts, and its red belt slid over her stomach disappearing between her thighs.
In the next box there was a fragment of a mammoth tusk covered with carvings of nude figures enjoying every possible sensory delight.
“Do you know how much this thing is worth?” Daniel asked Nina.
“No idea,” she mumbled, rubbing her aching temples.
“This collection could be sold for a very large sum of money. Not here but in Europe.”
Gu Ya-min suddenly dropped his head on his chest and began to snore, his gray mustache quivering in time with his breathing like a pennant in a light wind.
“If Gu Ya-min tries to send these things abroad,” Nina whispered in Daniel’s ear, “he could be accused of selling pornography and end up in jail. That’s why I turned to you: the old man needs advice on what to do with this stuff.”
“What if you were to send the collection under the protection of one of your diplomatic bags?” Daniel said. “You could avoid customs by sending it through your Czechoslovak Consulate. You know there’s a lot more money in illicit antiques than in illicit champagne.”
Nina went cold. Daniel had twigged her little scheme after all.
“You’re a dangerous man,” she said hesitantly.
Daniel laughed. “If I was so dangerous, would you have invited me here on your own?”
“I can explain—”
“Don’t bother. You’d be better off helping me to make an inventory of these treasures.”
They sorted through the remaining boxes together. There were albums with brass corners and prints that smelled of spices, sets of painted fans depicting the most unimaginably debauched scenes, porcelain figurines, and laced puppet figures for the shadow theater. Daniel looked at them in the light while recounting the plots of the famous Chinese medieval stories in an excited whisper. But all Nina could manage to do was to nod and smile stiffly.
Daniel showed her a scroll yellowed with age, depicting a samurai writing thin columns of characters on the thigh of a naked Japanese lady.
“Do you want me to translate it for you?” Daniel asked.
Gu Ya-min woke up suddenly and looked reproachfully at Nina and Daniel.
“Forget about these footprints,” he grunted and pointed at a big box with his stick. “You’d be better off having a look in there.”
Daniel opened the box and pulled out a saddle with a sharp peg sticking out of the middle of it.
“What is it?” he asked in surprise.
“A very useful thing,” Gu Yamin said with a smile. “It’s a donkey saddle for adulterous wives. The philandering hussy is placed on top of the peg by her cuckolded husband, and then the donkey is goaded into a gallop.”
Nina pulled Daniel’s sleeve. “Let’s get out of here. I need some fresh air.”
He accompanied her out into the street. “I didn’t know you were so impressionable. Did you not realize the old man was just teasing you?”
Nina nodded, fanning herself briskly. Hot and cold flushes coursed up and down her body, and the thick pall of sweet-smelling incense that hung over the street was making her feel nauseous.
“If you agree to bring the collection to Europe,” Daniel said, “I can make enquiries to see if any of my clients would be interested in buying it.”
“Thank you,” said Nina. “But I’m afraid I really have to go now.”
“Have I done something wrong?”
“No. Bye.”
Nina disappeared around the corner. If she had stayed with Daniel a minute longer she might have been sick right in front of him.
Even on her return home, it was a while before Nina managed to get over her nausea.
What on earth was it? she pondered. From the very first moment of their meeting, it was as if her body had felt a physical revulsion for him.
However, when Daniel called her again, Nina agreed to meet up. The only omens she ever chose to believe were those with a prediction that she approved of.
9. JUST GOOD FRIENDS
Nina had been hoping to rekindle the bond and intellectual kinship that she and Daniel had enjoyed back on the train, but instead they fell into a strange and exciting game of feigning indifference towards each other.
Daniel was nothing Nina had imagined. After visiting Gu Ya-min’s treasure chamber, he decided that there was no need to be a perfect gentleman in her presence. He spent much of his time with her now making scabrous and unflattering comments about other people and made no pretense of the fact that he found Nina “really rather attractive.”
“Thank God I’m a cynic and a misanthrope,” he told her, “and I have the good sense not to have an affair with you.”
“It’s me, not you, who has the good sense here,” Nina said. “I prefer to steer well clear of cynical married misanthropes.”
Pretty soon she figured out that Daniel didn’t love Edna.