That morning, Tinseng called in sick. He planned to spend all day at the library looking up references he didn’t know from Li Xifeng’s journal. Jinzhao listened from the kitchen and set down a mug of tea in front of him after he’d hung up.
“Do you think they believed me?” Tinseng picked up the tea and walked over to the dresser to pull out clothes for the day.
“No.”
“Oh, come on. I can be very convincing.” Jinzhao had no reaction, so Tinseng pushed. “You, for example, always believe my lies.”
Jinzhao slowly looked around. Anticipation crackled between them. “When did you lie?”
“When I said I liked that Proust you bought me.”
Jinzhao’s eyes flashed. “You loved the Proust.”
“Did I?” Tinseng asked neutrally.
“You did.” Around Jinzhao was a low buzz of irritation. Anyone else would have taken a step back. Tinseng stepped forward.
“How do you know? I’m a spy, you know. I’m a very good liar.”
Jinzhao snorted. “You are not.”
“What!?”
“You have a tell.”
“What! No I don’t! What is it? Tell me.”
“No.”
“Jinzhao!”
But Jinzhao walked away. Tinseng stood staring at him, mouth agape in shocked delight. “You’re going to regret that!” he called—and couldn’t stop grinning all morning.
The next day, though, that moment of joy felt as far away as his sister in Hong Kong. He’d had another row at work: Under pressure for results, the head of Paris Station had finally looped him in on Mei Hankong and his wife, and had rounded up some usual suspects for Tinseng to question. Tinseng had little interest in their machinations. Lately he’d begun refusing to do interrogations, asking for more translation work. They’d been reluctant to meet his requests.
“I hate them, Jinzhao, I really do. They’re shortsighted and reactive, yet somehow it takes a million years to do anything.”
“The others aren’t the same?” Jinzhao asked.
Tinseng opened his mouth to argue. Hong Kong had been better. Weir had been good, right? Or had Tinseng just thought that because he’d been twenty and eager to prove himself in the world? He thought of MI6, the CID, the CIA, the KGB. Lay out files from each, strip the names and locations, translate them into the same language—Tinseng bet not even the heads of service would be able to tell their work from the others. The same tactics, the same justifications. He sighed. He needed a drink.
“You know,” he said as he poured whiskey from his one cheap bottle and looked anywhere but Jinzhao, “I once saw a man named Cyril slice a man’s eyeball open. We had to tape his eyelids open first, and Cyril made me do that part. Told me I had to learn this kind of thing if I wanted to move up. The tape left this residue on my fingers, and I kept pressing my thumb and forefinger together, pulling them apart. That’s what I remember. That tape. The stickiness on the pads of my fingers.” He sat on the couch next to Jinzhao. “I can’t really remember anything else.”
“Tinseng.” Jinzhao’s face was blank, but they were sitting close enough that Tinseng felt the sharp rise and fall of his chest.
“That’s what Paris Station sees in me: a scalp hunter. They’d love to pay me to do that to their enemies. They all would.”
“Even Weir?”
“Well, no. Not him. But he told me when we talked that they’re pushing him out. He’s the only good one I know. If he’s gone, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Jinzhao watched him, waiting for more. Tinseng found himself saying, “I never wanted to be a spy, you know. But I thought I was doing something to help the people I loved. It was easier to think that in Hong Kong. But whose country is that, really? Which one is mine? You know,” he said, rubbing his nose, “I know I was on the recruitment list for the other side too. I never told you that? I think that’s why they were so pushy—trying to recruit me before the enemy could get me first. Originally, I wasn’t supposed to be a translator. Weir gave me that when he saw they were losing me. They wanted me to sign up for communist party activities and report back. A mole. A rat, that’s what they wanted me to be. But I wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I—” Tinseng hit a brick wall. He usually didn’t allow himself to think about any of this. How they’d wanted him to report back the names of innocent, curious people whose only crime was interest in the possibility of a better world. They’d wanted him to ingratiate himself in a community only to betray it—a community to which his brother belonged, and so had he once. But to which community did he belong now? Which of them came first? He was born in China, still thought of himself as Chinese, wanted to go back so badly sometimes his whole body ached from it. The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that he’d get himself thrown in jail or killed almost as quickly as his adoptive mother had. He ran his mouth too much, broke too many rules. But sometimes it seemed correct to die fighting to make that place better: his birthplace, his first home. Then he would think of Hong Kong, his ten years there. Didn’t all the people there deserve his efforts too? To whom did he owe his obligation? Which debts were most important to pay?
He laughed, amused at himself. Who was he to think himself so important? As if he could change the world. He shook his head and did what he always did when he encountered a wall: he climbed over it.
“Because I’m lazy and selfish,” he said. “Didn’t you know?”
Jinzhao frowned very prettily at that. “Tinseng.”
“Fine, you’re right,” he said with a gusty sigh, all the fight going out of him. “They’re exactly the same. Not in words but deeds. It’s not about philosophy in the end.”
“It is about philosophy. But not to them.”
“No, not to them.”
“To us. To us,” Jinzhao repeated, “it matters. It matters what you do on this earth; it is the life and death of our souls. Your talents, your mind, your heart, should not belong to them.” Jinzhao raised his eyes to stare at Tinseng. “It belongs to the people.”
Tinseng inhaled. “Which people?” he asked, not breathing, staring across the very short distance at Jinzhao.
Jinzhao did not look away. “The people in front of you,” he said, and then Tinseng was kissing him.
One Year Ago. June 1962. Bern, Switzerland.
