Lust, Caution Read Free Page A

join us. When he said they were waiting for guests of their own, I told him they should all join us. After all, it isn’t often that Liao Tai-tai gives dinner parties. Then it turned out Mr. Lee had invited so many guests we couldn’t fit them all around our table. Even with extra chairs we couldn’t all squeeze in, so Liao Tai-tai had to sit behind me like a singsong girl at a banquet. ‘What a beauty I’ve picked for myself tonight,’ I joked. ‘I’m too old a piece of tofu for you to swallow,’ she replied. ‘Old tofu tastes the spiciest,’ I told her! Oh, how we laughed. She laughed so much her pockmarks turned red.”
    More laughter around the mahjong table.
    While Yee Tai-tai was still updating Ma Tai-tai on the goings-on of the past couple of days, Mr. Yee came in, dressed in a gray suit, and nodded at his three female guests.
    “You started early today.”
    He stood behind his wife, watching the game. The wall behind him was swathed in heavy, yellowish-brown wool curtains printed with a brick-red phoenix-tail fern design, each blade almost six feet long. Chou Fo-hai, Wang Ching-wei’s second in command, had a pair; and so, therefore, did they. False french windows, and enormous drapes to cover them, were all the rage just then. Because of the war, fabrics were in short supply; floor-length curtains such as those hanging behind Mr. Yee—using up an entire bolt of cloth, with extra wastage from pattern matching—were a conspicuous extravagance. Standing against the huge ferns of his backdrop, Yee looked even shorter than usual. His face was pale, finely drawn, and crowned by a receding hairline that faded away into petal-shaped peaks above his temples. His nose was distinguished by its narrowed, almost ratlike tip.
    “Is that ring of yours three carats, Ma Tai-tai?” Yee Tai-tai asked. “The day before yesterday, P’in Fen brought a five-carat diamond to show me, but it didn’t sparkle like yours.”
    “I’ve heard P’in Fen’s things are better than the stuff in the shops.”
    “It is convenient to have things brought to your home, I suppose. And you can hold on to them for a few days, while you decide. And sometimes she has things you can’t get elsewhere. Last time, she showed me a yellow kerosene diamond, but he wouldn’t buy it.” She glanced icily at Mr. Yee before going on: “How much do you imagine something like that would cost now? A perfect kerosene diamond: a dozen ounces of gold per carat? Two? Three? P’in Fen says no one’s selling kerosene or pink diamonds at the moment, for any price. Everyone’s hoarding them, waiting for the price to get even more insane.”
    “Didn’t you feel how heavy it was?” Mr. Yee laughed. “Ten carats. You wouldn’t have been able to play mahjong with that rock on your finger.”
    The edges of the table glittered like a diamond exhibition, Chia-chih thought, every pair of hands glinting ostentatiously—except hers. She should have left her jadeite ring back in its box, she realized; to spare herself all those sneering glances.
    “Stop making fun of me!” Yee Tai-tai sulked as she moved out one of her counters. The black cape opposite Ma Tai-tai clatteringly opened outher winning hand, and a sudden commotion of laughter and lament broke the thread of conversation.
    As the gamblers busily set to calculating their wins and losses, Mr. Yee motioned slightly at Chia-chih with his chin toward the door.
    She immediately glanced at the two black capes on either side of her. Fortunately, neither seemed to have noticed. She paid out the chips she had lost, took a sip from her teacup, then suddenly exclaimed: “That memory of mine! I have a business appointment at three o’clock, I’d forgotten all about it. Mr. Yee, will you take my place until I get back?”
    “I won’t allow it!” Yee Tai-tai protested. “You can’t just run away like that without warning us in advance.”
    “And just when I thought my luck was changing,” muttered the