“I am all right,” said Adam. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.” He paused and said ruefully, “This time last year I would have run to Sam Hamilton to talk.”

“Maybe both of us have got a piece of him,” said Lee. “Maybe that’s what immortality is.”

“I seemed to come out of a sleep,” said Adam. “In some strange way my eyes have cleared. A weight is off me.”

“You even use words that sound like Mr. Hamilton,” said Lee. “I’ll build a theory for my immortal relatives.”

Adam drank his cup of black liquor and licked his lips. “I’m free,” he said. “I have to tell it to someone. I can live with my boys. I might even see a woman. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I know. And I can see it in your eyes and in the way your body stands. A man can’t lie about a thing like that. You’ll like the boys, I think.”

“Well, at least I’m going to give myself a chance. Will you give me another drink and some more tea?”

Lee poured the tea and picked up his cup.

“I don’t know why you don’t scald your mouth, drinking it that hot.”

Lee was smiling inwardly. Adam, looking at him, realized that Lee was not a young man any more. The skin on his cheeks was stretched tight, and its surface shone as though it were glazed. And there was a red irritated rim around his eyes.

Lee studied the shell-thin cup in his hand and his was a memory smile. “Maybe if you’re free, you can free me.”

“What do you mean, Lee?”

“Could you let me go?”

“Why, of course you can go. Aren’t you happy here?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever known what you people call happiness. We think of contentment as the desirable thing, and maybe that’s negative.”

Adam said, “Call it that then. Aren’t you contented here?”

Lee said, “I don’t think any man is contented when there are things undone he wishes to do.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Well, one thing it’s too late for. I wanted to have a wife and sons of my own. Maybe I wanted to hand down the nonsense that passes for wisdom in a parent, to force it on my own helpless children.”

“You’re not too old.”

“Oh, I guess I’m physically able to father a child. That’s not what I’m thinking. I’m too closely married to a quiet reading lamp. You know, Mr. Trask, once I had a wife. I made her up just as you did, only mine had no life outside my mind. She was good company in my little room. I would talk and she would listen, and then she would talk, would tell me all the happenings of a woman’s afternoon. She was very pretty and she made coquettish little jokes. But now I don’t know whether I would listen to her. And I wouldn’t want to make her sad or lonely. So there’s my first plan gone.”

“What was the other?”

“I talked to Mr. Hamilton about that. I want to open a bookstore in Chinatown in San Francisco. I would live in the back, and my days would be full of discussions and arguments. I would like to have in stock some of those dragon-carved blocks of ink from the dynasty of Sung. The boxes are worm-bored, and that ink is made from fir smoke and a glue that comes only from wild asses’ skin. When you paint with that ink it may physically be black but it suggests to your eye and persuades your seeing that it is all the colors in the world. Maybe a painter would come by and we could argue about method and haggle about price.”

Adam said, “Are you making this up?”

“No. If you are well and if you are free, I would like to have my little bookshop at last. I would like to die there.”

Adam sat silently for a while, stirring sugar into his lukewarm tea. Then he said, “Funny. I found myself wishing you were a slave so I could refuse you. Of course you can go if you want to. I’ll even lend you money for your bookstore.”

“Oh, I have the money. I’ve had it a long time.”

“I never thought of your going,” Adam said. “I took you for granted.” He straightened his shoulders. “Could you wait a little while?”

“What for?”

“I want you to help me get acquainted with my boys. I want to put this place in shape, or maybe sell it or rent it. I’ll want to know how much money I have left and what I can do with it.”

“You wouldn’t lay a trap for me?” Lee asked. “My wish isn’t as strong as it once was. I’m afraid I could be talked out of it or, what would be worse, I could be held back just by being needed. Please try not to need me. That’s the worst bait of all to a lonely man.”

Adam said, “A lonely man. I must have been far down in myself not to have thought of that.”

“Mr. Hamilton knew,” said Lee. He raised his head and his fat lids let only two sparks from his eyes show through. “We’re controlled, we Chinese,” he said. “We show no emotion. I loved Mr. Hamilton. I would like to go to Salinas tomorrow if you will permit it.”

“Do anything you want,” said Adam. “God knows you’ve done enough for me.”

“I want to scatter devil papers,” Lee said. “I want to put a little roast pig on the grave of my father.”

Adam got up quickly and knocked over his cup and went outside and left Lee sitting there.

Chapter 27

1

That year the rains had come so gently that the Salinas River did not overflow. A slender stream twisted back and forth in its broad bed of gray sand, and the water was not milky with silt but clear and pleasant. The willows that grow in the river bed were well leafed, and the wild blackberry vines were thrusting their spiky new shoots along the ground.

It was very warm for March, and the kite wind blew steadily from the south and turned up the silver undersides of the leaves.

Against the perfect cover of vine and bramble and tangled drift sticks, a little gray brush rabbit sat quietly in the sun, drying his breast fur, wet by the grass dew of his early feeding. The rabbit’s nose crinkled, and his ears slewed around now and then, investigating small sounds that might possibly be charged with danger to a brush rabbit. There had been a rhythmic vibration in the ground audible through the paws, so that ears swung and nose wrinkled, but that had stopped. Then there had been a movement of willow branches twenty-five years away and downwind, so that no odor of fear came to the rabbit.

For the last two minutes there had been sounds of interest but not of danger—a snap and then a whistle like that of the wings of a wild dove. The rabbit stretched out one hind leg lazily in the warm sun. There was a snap and a whistle and a grunting thud on fur. The rabbit sat perfectly still and his eyes grew large. A bamboo arrow was through his chest, and its iron tip deep in the ground on the other side. The rabbit slumped over on his side and his feet ran and scampered in the air for a moment before he was still.




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