he was no longer smoking his pipe, and no one dared to greet this former department chief.
After a full night of warfare, it had started to get light. He went to the lavatory and washed his face. The cold water revived him and he looked through the window into the distance at the stretch of gray-black roof tiles. People were probably still asleep and dreaming. Only the round top of the White Pagoda had been tinted by dawn and was becoming more and more distinct. For the first time it occurred to him that he probably was a concealed enemy, and if he wanted to go on living he would have to wear a mask.
“Please be careful of the carriage door, the next station is Admiralty.” This had been spoken first in Cantonese and then in English. You had dozed off and gone past your station. The underground in Hong Kong is cleaner than it is in Paris, and Hong Kong and Hong Kong people are orderly, compared to Mainlanders. You will have to get off at the next stop to go back the other way so that you can return to the hotel for a nap. Tonight you don’t know where you will wake up, but it will be in a bed with a foreign woman. You are irredeemable. Now you are not just the enemy, you are careering toward hell. However, memories for him were hell.
“Why don’t you tell me about that Chinese girl of yours? How is she?” Margarethe puts down her glass of wine and raises her long black eyelashes, thick with mascara, to look at you across the small round table.
“I don’t know, I suppose she’s still in China,” you mumble, trying to avoid the question.
“Why don’t you get her out? Don’t you ever think about her?” Her eyes are fixed on you.
“That was ten years ago, what’s the point of bringing it up? If it’s not brought up, then it’s forgotten.” You try to say this nonchalantly. What you want right now is to be romantic with her.
“Then how is it that you remembered me? That night, the first night we met in your home?”
“It’s hard to say, sometimes the smallest incident remains clear, yet some other times I can’t remember the names of people I know well, and sometimes I can’t remember what I had been doing for many years—”
“Have you also forgotten her name?”
“Margarethe!” You squeeze her hand and say, “Memories are depressing, let’s talk about something else.”
“Not necessarily, there are also happy memories, especially of people one has loved.”
“Of course, but it’s best to forget what is in the past.” You, in fact, can’t think of the girl’s name and can, instead, only recall pain. Her voice and face have also become blurred.
“Will you forget me, too?”
“When you’re so vibrant, so full of life, how could I forget you?” You look at her eyes under her thick eyelashes, trying to change the subject.
“But her, you’re not saying that she wasn’t?” She doesn’t avoid your eyes and looks directly at you as she says, “She was so young, delicate, lovely, and so sexy. She was sitting right in front of me, clutching her skirt around her legs, the front of her dress hung low and she clearly had nothing on underneath. It was in China, at that time, so it left a very deep impression.”
“When you were knocking on the door, we were probably making love.” Your lips part in a smile, it is best not to be too serious.
“You’ll forget me just the same, and before many years.” She pulls her hand back.
“But this is different, it’s different!” you retort, unable to think of what to say, and not saying anything intelligent.
“For men, it doesn’t matter which woman’s body it is. It’s all the same thing.”
“No!”
But what can you say? Every woman wants to prove she’s different and in that hopeless battle in bed, tries to find love in lust, always thinking that after the physical lust passes something will remain.
In this very fashionable Bar 97 on this little street in Lan Kwai Fong you sit facing her. You arc close but there is a small round table between you, and you are trying to catch her eye. Loud rock music is playing, and the howling is in English. White clothing glows in the dark-blue fluorescent lights. The men with ties, mixing drinks behind the counter, and the hostesses are all tall Westerners. Margarethe, dressed all in black, is barely visible except for her bright red lipstick that shines and looks purple in the fluorescent lights. She seems unreal and is utterly stunning.
“Is it simply because I’m a Western woman?” She is staring at you with a slight frown and her voice seems to be coming from far away.
“No, it’s not simply because you’re a Western woman. How can I put it, you’re in every sense a woman whereas she was still a girl.” You seem to be lighthearted and joking.
“How else are we different?” She seems determined to find out everything.
In her unflinching gaze you detect something devious, and say, “She didn’t know how to draw in, she could only give but didn’t know how to enjoy. …”
“Of course, the woman would come to know, sooner or later. …” She stops looking at you, and her eyelashes, heavy with mascara, lower.
You think of her pulsating body, stiff but yielding, her moistness, her warmth, and her breathlessness, that all arouse your lust, and you fiercely say you’re thinking of her again.
“No!” She cuts you short. “It’s not me you are thinking about but her. You are only seeking compensation from my body.”
“How can you say this, you are truly beautiful!”
“I don’t believe you.” She looks down and turns the glass with the tips of her fingers. This little movement is very seductive. She looks up and smiles, revealing the gully between her breasts that had been blocked by the shadow of her head, and says, “I’m too fat.”
You start to say no but she stops you, “I’m quite aware of it.”
“Aware of what?”
“I hate this body of mine.” She suddenly turns frosty again, has a sip of wine, and says, “All right, you don’t understand me, you don’t know anything of my past and my life.”
“Then tell me about it!” you coax her. “Of course I want to understand, I want to know everything, everything about you.”
“No, all you want is to have sex with me.”
All right, you can only try to wheedle your way out. “There’s nothing bad about that, people have to go on living, the important thing is to be living in this instant. What has happened is in the past, there has to be a clean break.”
“But there can’t be a clean break. No, there can’t be!” she insists.
“What if I have?” You wince. She is a serious woman, she was probably good at mathematics in middle school.
“No, you can’t cut off memories, they remain submerged in your heart and from time to time they gush out. Of course, it’s painful, but it can also give you strength.”
You say that memories may give her strength but for you they are the same as nightmares.
“Dreams aren’t real but memories are events that have actually happened and can’t be erased.” This is how she argues.
“Of course, and moreover, they haven’t necessarily gone into the past.” You give a sigh, and go along with her argument.
“They can resurface any time if you don’t guard against them. Fascism is like that. If no one talks about it, doesn’t expose it, doesn’t condemn it, it can come back to life again!” She becomes