The Year of the Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

younger man began angrily, only to pale in terror as the other lifted a hand. Silence was prolonged. The senior almost looked at him but didn’t turn his head.
    The younger man mumbled an apology, using the
pay-yan
term for himself to show humility.
    “Profound apologies, Min
Sin-Sang
.”
    The boss waited to some satisfying count on an inner scale of horror, then addressed KwayFay. Both men kept glancing at a vast wall mirror to their left as if at aninvisible observer.
    “Can you kill?”
    KwayFay felt her cheeks go grey and could not speak.
    “Let me be clear. Can you predict death?”
    “No,
See-Tau
.”
    “You told HC of a man who would be late.”
    “Late?” KwayFay bleated in panic. Had she? Who? She’d thought she was here because of someone in a carpet warehouse.
    “For Happy Valley, the horse races. HC went to meet a friend. They were to gamble. You told HC that you’d taken a message from his friend who was going to be late.”
    “I did?” She struggled back over the office’s chaotic entanglements. To her relief something came to mind.
    “Ah, yes, First Born. I remember.”
    It had been three months before. She had been working through a London broker’s instructions about a Tokyo transfer through Sydney, Australia, when she had come on suddenly, her menses as ever taking her by surprise . She’d made a run for the loo. HC interrupted her flight with some diatribe – if this man rings take a message , if that person calls say I’m out, HC’s usual nonsense .
    She remembered telling HC a lie, swiftly invented.
    “Somebody rang just now, said he’ll be late.”
    And made it just in time, leaving HC flummoxed. When she finally emerged he had left the office, to her relief.
    That hadn’t quite been the end of it. He called her in next morning, a strange look on his face. Sweating, every split second adjusting the air-conditioning, doinghis irritating finger-snapping ritual and jumping when the phone went. He grilled her about her made-up message for almost an hour. It was weird. During the session some new Englishman, an arrival so recent his face was still not sun-scarlet, dropped in from an investment company beyond the Hang Seng Bank, and had gone away baffled by HC’s stutteringly inept answers. As he left, he’d given KwayFay a look that spoke volumes: And this Colony is a pre-eminent trader with blokes like your Business Head?
    Several times during that puzzling interview, the distressed HC had gone over the phoney message. Distraught, she’d had to stick to her lie, agreeing that, no, it might not have been HC’s friend phoning himself. No, she’d never seen his friend. To keep the lie consistent – essential for lies – she stayed definite. No, the man gave no name. With so many people in and out bringing orders, requests, checking on Unit Trust sales halfway across the world, London brokers forever on the phone, investment urgency across International Time Zones, how on earth could she pick out one memory among so many?
    In the end HC let her go, but he’d made mistake after mistake all week. Twice he’d hidden from unexpected visitors, scared out of his wits. He’d done exactly the same once, when the US dollar exchange rate changed. KT vomited all that week because the American Federal Reserve suddenly did a policy switch. It could be counted normal office behaviour.
    Except now this man’s questions about her lie.
    He was waiting.
    “I needed to go to the bathroom,” she explained,embarrassed. “HC stopped me. I was hurrying.” The man gestured, get to it. She babbled on, “I hadn’t time to stand and talk. I invented that somebody had phoned, said they would be late.”
    “Who?”
    “I told HC a man.”
    She tried to quilt up a truth to fit the occasion, so the man would let her go. She narrated through HC’s interrogation . Ah Min listened. He must have had the features of a cherub when young, like babies on those terrible Christian Christmas cards printed in