AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"I hope I make you miserable," said Wang-mu. "It's only fair, considering."
"I think Jane brought us here because the local costumes reflect who we are. Puppet though I am, I take some perverse pleasure in life. While you--you can turn anything drab just by talking about it."
Wang-mu bit back her tears and returned to her food.
"What is it with you?" Peter said.
She ignored him, chewed slowly, finding the untouched core of herself, which was busily enjoying the food.
"Don't you feel anything?"
She swallowed, looked up at him. "I already miss Han Fei-tzu, and I've been gone scarcely two days." She smiled slightly. "I have known a man of grace and wisdom. He found me interesting. I'm quite comfortable with boring you."
Peter immediately made a show of splashing water on his ears. "I'm burning, that stung, oh, how can I stand it. Vicious! You have the breath of a dragon! Men die at your words!"
"Only puppets strutting around hanging from strings," said Wang-mu.
"Better to dangle from strings than to be bound tight by them," said Peter.
"Oh, the gods must love me, to have put me in the company of a man so clever with words."
"Whereas the gods have put me in the company of a woman with no breasts."
She forced herself to pretend to take this as a joke. "Small ones, I thought you said."
But suddenly the smile left his face. "I'm sorry," he said. "I've hurt you."
"I don't think so. I'll tell you later, after a good night's sleep."
"I thought we were bantering," said Peter. "Bandying insults."
"We were," said Wang-mu. "But I believe them all."
Peter winced. "Then I'm hurt, too."
"You don't know how to hurt," said Wang-mu. "You're just mocking me."
Peter pushed aside his plate and stood up. "I'll see you back at the apartment. Think you can find the way?"
"Do I think you actually care?"
"It's a good thing I have no soul," said Peter. "That's the only thing that stops you from devouring it."
"If I ever had your soul in my mouth," said Wang-mu, "I would spit it out."
"Get some rest," said Peter. "For the work I have ahead, I need a mind, not a quarrel." He walked out of the restaurant. The clothing fit him badly. People looked. He was a man of too much dignity and strength to dress so foppishly. Wang-mu saw at once that it shamed him. She saw also that he knew it, that he moved swiftly because he knew this clothing was wrong for him. He would undoubtedly have Jane order him something older looking, more mature, more in keeping with his need for honor.
Whereas I need something that will make me disappear. Or better yet, clothing that will let me fly away from here, all in a single night, fly Outside and back In to the house of Han Fei-tzu, where I can look into eyes that show neither pity nor scorn.
Nor pain. For there is pain in Peter's eyes, and it was wrong of me to say he felt none. It was wrong of me to value my own pain so highly that I thought it gave me the right to inflict more on him.
If I apologize to him, he'll mock me for it.
But then, I would rather be mocked for doing a good thing than to be respected, knowing I have done wrong. Is that a principle Han Fei-tzu taught me? No. I was born with that one. Like my mother said, too much pride, too much pride.
When she returned to the apartment, however, Peter was asleep; exhausted, she postponed her apology and also slept. Each of them woke during the night, but never at the same time; and in the morning, the edge of last night's quarrel had worn off. There was business at hand, and it was more important for her to understand what they were going to attempt to do today than for her to heal a breach between them that seemed, in the light of morning, to be scarcely more than a meaningless spat between tired friends.
"The man Jane has chosen for us to visit is a philosopher."
