Bamboo and blood

3

The room was frigid. It hadn't been heated since the last time the sun shone directly in the windows, and that had probably been in September. The girl was young; she might be pretty one day, but it was far too soon for that. She kept her hands in the pockets of a thin blue coat that couldn't have done much against the cold. She shivered once or twice.

"I thought you weren't going to come here anymore, that's what you promised." She kept her voice toneless, though it was with some effort. She was holding back. "The last time you showed up, someone almost saw us. If anyone catches me talking to you, I'll be ordered to leave. You say it's all been worked out, but that's not true. Local security will report me, and then I'll be sent home. You know I'm only supposed to talk to the assigned security people. Why can't you stay away from campus, like you promised?"

I considered this for a moment. It was gutsy of her, telling me off. Maybe that's why I picked her to begin with. Her file said she was always outside the group. She'd only been accepted at the university from a nowhere village near Hamhung because she was good with languages, and because she was considered an exceptional pianist. Where she found a piano to play out there in the countryside, I couldn't imagine. "You like Rachmaninoff?" I looked around the room. The walls were bare. The instructor's desk had been moved to one side, and there was a three-legged easel with a piece of gray cardboard on it standing at the front. The cardboard had several names printed on it. The last one was Rachmaninoff. I figured she'd like whatever was listed last.

"I do. I want to play his music someday."

"Which piece?"

"What's it to you?"

"You think I don't like music?"

"Do you?"

Four questions in a row. With her, I could keep it up all afternoon, all questions. It would be interesting one day to see how long she could play the game, until she slipped and actually said something. This afternoon, though, I didn't need anything from her. I just needed to be here. It bothered me a little that someone might see the two of us together. Sent back to the east coast, she might not survive, or she'd leave for China and end up selling herself. I moved away from the window. "This may surprise you, but I have been known to listen to music. More than that, I've heard some Rachmaninoff."

She took one hand out of her pocket, her left one, and looked at her nails. They were broken and dirty. She flexed her fingers. She was aching to get out of the room, but her hands were important. If she took them out for me to see, it was a gesture. She might not know it, but that's what it was. It wasn't trust, exactly, but it was coming close.

"Which piece? You have a tape? I like him a lot better than Shostakovich. That's mostly what we listen to. I think he's overrated." She said it as a challenge, but I didn't pick it up. She sighed. "We had a German conductor here a couple of months ago. All of a sudden he appeared, like he dropped from the sky. He brought some music for us to play, tapes for us to hear. One of the pieces was Rachmaninoff. I cried when I listened to it. How could anyone imagine anything so beautiful? How could he have heard something like that in his head?" Her voice wasn't toneless anymore. "I want that, I want to know something that beautiful." She stopped suddenly and looked at me intently. "He left Russia, you know, after the revolution. Do you know where he went?"

That's my girl, I thought. Smoldering like a pile of juniper branches. If I didn't say something to cool her down, she might burst into flames right here in front of me. Maybe she would survive after all. "Musicians are strange," I said. She frowned, and I hurried to cover my mistake. "What I mean is, they aren't moored to one place. Art is universal, isn't that what they say?"

She hummed something.

"Rachmaninoff?"

I was rewarded with a quick smile. "You guessed that, didn't you? It must be your security training." The smile disappeared. "Well, you left your spoor. That's what you wanted to do, wasn't it? You see, Inspector, I've figured you out." She pulled her hands out of her pockets and walked to the door. "I have, you know."

"I know." I waited until she had left the room and I could hear her footsteps in the cold hallway. "I'm betting on it."

Both hands out of her pockets-maybe not trust, actually; maybe defiance. It came down to the same thing.