The Chinese Assassin Read Online Free PDF

‘Please go ahead.’
    ‘How was it that you only found out about your homosexuality here in England? You are hardly an adolescent if you were born in 1934.’
    Yang leaned closer. The light from the desk lamp threw half his tense face into bright relief, leaving the other half in shadow. The one Cyclopean eye visible to Scholefield widened. ‘In China and Vietnam I had suspicions about myself because I did not fe el as other Comrades did about the opposite sex. But as you know the Chinese Communist Party does not allow its male members to marry until they are thirty-five—and became of this rule I could not be sure. But since I came to England and worked in the acupuncture clinic demonstrating the techniques to your own students I have been constantly confronted with the naked male body—’
    Yang paused for breath, blinking rapidly. The perspiration on his brow glittered in the lamplight His voice sank to a whisper again. ‘The problem then became intense.. I have also been studying English at Oxford and my tutor there is a homosexual. He wears a badge announcing this to the world. Many others wear badges in Oxford too and it was seeing such things openly flaunted in this way that made me realise and admit finally my own tendencies beyond any doubt’
    ‘Did you manage to conceal this from your Chinese Comrades from Peking?’
    Yang straightened up and looked round nervously at Nina. ‘No! Unfortunately not . What you call here “gay” literature was found in my room. Comrades from the Chinese Embassy here in London were called down immediately. I was denounced at a struggle meeting and sentenced to be returned immediately to China. But I escaped their surveillance and made my way here to the capital ten days ago.’
    Nina let out a sudden high-pitched squeal and jumped to her feet. ‘Good God, just look at that time.’ She stared at her wrist in disbelief ‘I should be in Shaftesbury Avenue now.’
    She snatched up her make-up bag and ran out of the room. Scholefield followed her into the ha l l. She wrenched open the door then stopped and turned, twisting her face into an anguished expression of puzzlement and nodding her head mutely towards the study. Scholefield , raised his eyebrows in silent mystification in return. She shrugged and smiled, kissing him quickly on the cheek, then on the way out bent and planted another kiss on he r nose of the grotesque dragon head on the ha l l table. ‘He’ll look after you,’ she whispered in its ear, and dashed out, slamming the door behind her.
    When Scholefield returned to the study Yang was scrutinising a scroll painting that hung on the wall by the desk, It depicted a group of Ming concubines playing a gentle game in the snow by a winter pavilion. In his hands he was holding a pale green jade figure of a mandarin and as Scholefield watched he turned from the painting and held the figure towards the lamp on the desk, twisting it back and forth so that the light reflected on the translucent stone. He looked up and smiled as Scholefield moved towards him. ‘A fine representation of a member of the exploiting classes of the old China, Mr. S ch olef i eld, produced no doubt by the sweated labour of a working class artisan. A good negative example—’
    ‘Mr. Yang.’ Scholefield cut in on hi m with deliberate rudeness ‘Perhaps you would care to tell me why you chose me to relate your troubles to. And where did you h ide for eight days while waiting for me to pick up my telephone?’
    Yang put the jade figure down. His manner suddenly seemed more confident with Nina gone. ‘Your work on China is well- known, Mr. Scholefield. Your articles in the quarterly journals of international affairs analysing our political problems are influential in Western government circles where China policy is set. You are no apologist for China, unlike certain British writers who have made it their business to ingratiate themselves abjectly with my go v ernment in