Mandarin by Robert Elegant

Author:Robert Elegant [Elegant, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BA
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

October 5, 1861

SHANGHAI

Lionel Henriques did not return to the Nest of Joy that night. While her household pursued its normal routine the following day, Fronah sat in the yellow velvet chair in the morning room and listened for his footsteps in the hall. The servants revealed their knowledge of her tragedy only by their excessive desire to please, a flicker of subservience alien to independent Chinese. Mutual reticence preserved the decencies, though she knew they considered neither opium addiction nor, even, pedophilia a gross perversion—indeed, hardly unnatural. They respected her grief, though they could not comprehend it.

Curiously, Lao King, the number-one houseboy, appeared least affected. He was, as always, brusquely efficient, though his eyes slid away from her gaze. He would not apologize for the injury he had done her by pandering to the master’s tastes, because he had done so to preserve his own daughter. She would have to sack him, Fronah decided, but she would find him a good job.

Though the servants neither quarreled raucously nor cracked ribald jokes in their accustomed manner, the Nest of Joy otherwise maintained its normal efficient buzz, punctuated by the clanking of the cast-iron polisher on the teak floors. But Lionel’s betrayal had destroyed the purpose of the villa. The ritual of housekeeping was as pointless as a play performed to an empty theater. What, Fronah wondered hopelessly, would she say when he did return?

Fronah slept little the next night, despite the bitter draught Maylu forced on her, and she insisted on having Judah’s cradle beside her bed. She lay awake long after midnight, haunted by her bleak vision of the future and her fears for Lionel. She only knew what she must not do. Confiding in her parents would cause them anguish but would not help her. She rose repeatedly to look into the cradle each time she believed she heard Judah whimper, though her son was sleeping soundly.

Could Lionel, she wondered, have done something desperate? However, he lacked the passionate disposition of men who took their own lives. She had, she reflected bitterly, thought him also lacking in carnal passion. Yet that passion, withheld from herself, had been spilled out on prepubescent harlots.

After a few hours of troubled dreams, she awoke to a sense of overwhelming deprivation. It was a minute before she remembered the reason.

That lapse cheered her slightly. The great world had not come to an end with her discovery of her husband’s perversions, but continued to revolve as usual. Nor was that discovery necessarily the end of her personal world.

Somehow, she would cope. Perhaps William MacGregor could cure Lionel’s depravity. Perhaps her husband was only emulating Chinese men’s passion for unbudded virgins. Perhaps he and she would now go away, leaving the vices of Shanghai behind him. Having made that tentative decision, she was almost cheerful as she dressed.

Fronah did not hear the tread in the hall for which she had waited so long. She was not aware that Lionel had finally returned until she heard him asking the houseboy for a pot of coffee.

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