A Nail Through the Heart

26

A small man, Heng has enough energy for three large ones. He bounces up and down on his toes as he listens, eager for the chance to reply. When he talks, he makes large, empty gestures that look to Rafferty like Nicolas Cage playing an Italian. Surrounded in his Khmer antiques shop by carved, immobile faces, his own face is never in repose. He goes through more expressions in ten minutes than Rafferty uses all day.

"I'm completely straight now," he informs Rafferty without being asked, his eyebrows bouncing up and down like a pair of bungee jumpers. "No more smuggling, papers all in order, keep a clean nose, observe all the international conventions. It's a new world we're living in, Poke, a global village. We're all citizens of the world. What goes around comes around."

When it is clear Heng has exhausted Bartlett's Familiar Quotations for the moment, Rafferty says, "Do you mind if I write that down?"

Heng pounces. "A Boswell," he says. "What every really interesting man needs. Have you ever stopped to think, Poke, how much good talk is wasted on just one or two people? Similes, metaphors, unexpected turns of speech, puns, insights, revelations, fresh perspectives? All of it gone, used once, disposable, tossed into the air like confetti, frittered away on a few people who probably won't even bother to remember. New ideas, perhaps even new religions, lost to the ether. Who was Samuel Johnson, anyhow? A blowhard with a Boswell. We need more of them."

"You're the only person I know who thinks the world is short of talk," Rafferty says.

"Good talk," Heng says, holding up an admonitory finger. Since the finger is in the air anyway, he waves it back and forth. "We're drowning in dull talk. No wonder our children are in trouble. Nothing to fire their imaginations. They hear dull talk all day long, this, that, blah, blah, blah, fact, fact, fact, cause, effect, pallid adjectives, the occasional timid speculation. That's why we live in the Age of the Concrete Slab. We might as well be mute as fish. There's no feeling for language, no appreciation for how it can be stretched, Poke, to weave that elusive net of words that can be thrown over, that can capture, the most ephemeral-"

"Heng," Rafferty says.

Heng stops. His eyebrows go up again, inquiringly this time, to demonstrate that he is listening with his entire being. For a moment Rafferty thinks he will cup his hand to his ear.

"This man, Heng," Rafferty says, holding out the photo of Claus Ulrich, which is becoming dog-eared with use. "Do you know this man?"

Heng takes the picture and scans it avidly, as though it is the first photograph he has ever seen and the technology dazzles him. He does everything except turn it over to see whether the image goes all the way through to the back. When he is finished, he reverently hands it back.

"I might," he says. He waits, bouncing a little.

It is the shortest sentence Rafferty has ever heard him speak.

"Well," Rafferty says, "why don't you tell me about it. Just a summary, Heng, sort of a caption."

"I said I might," Heng says. Cataclysmic doubt floods his face.

"When and where might you have seen him?"

"It's a small community, Poke," Heng begins, but Rafferty holds up a hand.

"What's a small community?"

"People of taste," Heng says with nicely modulated awe. "People who can find room in their lives for the timeless. The things I offer, Poke, they trail behind them the perfume of-"

"He bought something from you," Rafferty says.

"Once," Heng says, unfolding a single finger in case Rafferty has trouble with lower mathematics. "Perhaps. But he might have come back many times."

"But if he did, he didn't buy."

"In a nutshell." Heng opens his arms to take in the extraordinary collection of objects that crowd his shop: statues, sections of carved temple walls, gilt Buddhas and monks, panels of carved wood, antique ivory. "But you speak of buying." He allows a ten-percent tincture of disapproval to darken his tone. "These things belong to the world. They've been here for ages. How long can a statue of a god absorb the gazes of the faithful without becoming a god, Poke? Don't you think holiness can be cumulative?"

"Why didn't he buy again?"

"The small-mindedness of our times," Heng says, with a snap that verges on ire. "The idea that these treasures can be tricked out with pettiness like permits and provenances, pieces of paper pasted to the eternal. Like giving a mountain a nickname. 'There's a nice mountain. Let's call it Bill.'"

"The documentation costs money," Rafferty clarifies. "Prices have gone up."

Heng emits an admiring puff of air. "You have a gift, Poke. That's the writer in you."

"And Ulrich is cheap."

"Is that his name? Anyway, not my judgment to pass," Heng says virtuously.

"Do you know a Madame Wing?"

Heng's face slams shut. It is as though the plug has been pulled from the wall. "No," he says, not even circling his lips around the o.

The lie is so transparent that Poke has only to wait.

"A woman, I suppose, by the title you give her," Heng says, looking extremely uncomfortable. He tries to bounce but succeeds only in jiggling. "Chinese, I presume? No, no, I don't know her. Never heard the name. Completely new to me, not a whisper of an association."

"But she's a collector. And-as you say-it's such a small community."

"I did?" Heng's eyes are darting around the shop as though he's afraid one of the antiques might contradict him. "Doesn't sound like something I'd-"

"Madame Wing, Heng. She's here. She's rich. She's got some of the best Khmer art-"

"Doesn't matter," Heng says, with renewed resolve. "I am telling you I haven't heard of her, and nothing you can say will change the fact that I am telling you I haven't heard of her."

Rafferty replays the sentence. "I understand you're telling me you haven't heard of her-" he begins.

"Yes," Heng says, nodding with some vehemence. "That's what I'm telling you. And that's what I will tell you, no matter how many times you ask, even if you try to help me identify her by telling me she lives by the river with a manservant named Pak."

"Got it," Rafferty says.

"No matter how many times," Heng repeats. "And please don't ask again. It makes me very nervous."

"Sorry. Back to Claus Ulrich."

"Claus Ulrich, yes," Heng says with evident relief.

"When was the last time you saw him?"

Up on the toes again. "If I saw him, it was months. Just months and months."

"Did he ever come in with anyone?"

"Solitary as a spider."

"What do you know about him?"

"If it's the same man, he's a bachelor. I always make it a point to find out. You wouldn't believe, Poke, the number of times a man buys something wonderful and the little woman makes him bring it back. Takes one look at it and sees-I don't know, a garbage disposal or a trip to some dreary European capital, all cobblestone streets, odd toilet paper, and strange electrical plugs."

"Must be heartbreaking. Anything else?"

"He has a niece in Europe or somewhere," Heng says, emphasizing the effort involved in dredging up the fact. His eyes almost disappear with the sheer strain of it. "He loves her very much. He talked about her several times."

"Did he?"

"Oh, yes." Heng leans forward and puts a hand over his heart, mirroring the traditional posture of compassion depicted on so many of the artworks surrounding him. "I had the feeling he lived for her."

Rafferty raises his eyes from the hand to Heng's own eyes, wide with fraudulent sincerity. "It's hard to tell what anybody lives for," he says.

Even at midday the bar is dark enough to let people change their clothes in privacy.

"I have no idea where he is," Rafferty tells her. "But I know that the maid is involved somehow."

Clarissa Ulrich is wearing a different blouse, but her tolerance for the heat has not increased. Her face is red and wet, and when she barely glances at him as he sits down, he attributes it to exhaustion. They have taken Mac O'Connor's booth in the Expat Bar to get away from Hofstedler and the others, who are having their recurring conversation about playing a game of darts. In more than a year, Rafferty has never seen any of them actually pick up a dart.

"The maid?" she asks. "Are you sure?" She seems not so much exhausted as distracted, as though she is only half listening to him.

He tells her about the arrangement at Bangkok Domestics. She listens with her eyes closed, and when he is finished, she says, "This woman-this Doughnut-I mean, do you think Uncle Claus and she were-"

"It's too early to say. I have to tell you, your uncle Claus lived very quietly here. I've only been able to find a couple of people who actually knew him."

"Who?"

"A dealer in Khmer antiquities and a…uh, a bookseller."

She catches the hesitation. "You were going to say something else."

"No. I just wandered off there for a moment. Everything I learn only leads me to new questions."

She has a glass of tomato juice in front of her, which she has not touched. She moves it and puts both hands on the table, folded in a businesslike fashion. The tension flows from her in waves. "I need to talk to you about something."

Rafferty lifts his beer. "Talk away."

"This is more complicated than I thought it was going to be. I don't feel right asking you to go any further without…well, without discussing payment of some kind."

"Forget it. I'm having a good month."

"But I…I didn't know what I was getting you into. And I want to make sure…" Her eyes are everywhere but on him. "Please don't take this wrong. I want to make sure you don't write about this."

Whatever he was expecting, this isn't it. "Write about it?"

She picks up the tomato juice, slowly wipes the condensation away from the bottom of the glass with her forefinger, and puts it back down untasted. She centers it on the napkin. Then she centers the napkin in front of her. He wonders whether she is going to center the table. "I know you probably wouldn't. But it's important to me that Uncle Claus is-" She breaks off, and her face tightens into a mask of control. "That he's not slandered. His life shouldn't be trashed, just because he…he made mistakes, or had problems. He did too much good for that."

A silence falls between them. At the end of the bar, Hofstedler laughs, a sound like colliding echo chambers. "You've been to the apartment," Rafferty says.

"Last night." A tear snakes down her cheek.

"How did you-Oh, Jesus. I didn't lock the door, did I?"

"No," she says. She puts one hand around the glass of tomato juice as if to cool it. "Or the filing cabinet."

"I'm so sorry. I banged it up too much to close it." He feels personally responsible.

"Were you going to tell me about it?" she asks. She lets go of the glass and wipes her nose on the back of her hand.

"No."

"Thank you for that. I mean it, that's very sweet of you."

"It didn't have anything to do with you."

"No," she says. "No, you're right. It doesn't. It has nothing to do with who Uncle Claus was to me. He was never anything but wonderful to me." Then she is weeping, not delicately or discreetly, just great gulping sobs and a line of clear snot running down from her nose. She puts both hands over her face, and Rafferty reaches over and pats her shaking shoulder with a hand that feels as fat and heavy as a Smithfield ham. The fine, uncontrollable hair frames her hands like spun candy. It is a child's hair.

"I'm all right," she says after a moment. "Everybody has to grow up sometime." She takes the napkin from beneath her glass and blows her nose in it, then uses it to wipe her face. "People need to know the truth about things, I guess."

"I suppose," Rafferty says. It's not a doctrine to which he necessarily subscribes.

"Can I pay you, then?"

"No."

She nods, conceding. "Do you think you can find him?"

Rafferty considers it. "Yes."

She lifts his glass and takes the napkin, uses it to blot her forehead. "Do you know what you'll find?"

"Well," Rafferty says, "you want the truth, right?"

Her eyes come up to his. "Right."

"The truth is that I haven't got the faintest idea."