The Eternal Wonder

  He never asked their names. He did not care to know their names.

  They were human beings and that was enough for him. It was an endless pursuit, one continuing wonder. Meanwhile he had little interest in himself beyond this accumulating knowledge of human beings.

  Today, being fine, the sidewalks were crowded as they had not been in recent weeks. His gaze moved swiftly from one face to another, until a girl passed and her eyes met his. For an instant their eyes caught and held and this time he smiled. She hesitated, then stopped.

  “You are keeping this chair for a friend?” she asked.

  The tables were filling and the question was a natural one. She was an unusual-looking girl—an Oriental, or at least partly so. Her dark eyes were long and slanted.

  “No, mademoiselle,” he replied. ‘‘Please seat yourself.”

  She sat down and drew off her short white gloves. That was unusual too, the gloves—most girls no longer wore them, even in Paris. She studied the menu and did not look at him. He looked at her with his usual frank curiosity, wondering if she would be willing to talk. Her oval face was interestingly different from the usual pretty girl’s face. The features were delicate, the nose low-bridged and straight, the lips delicately cut, the skin cream-colored and very fine. Her hands, as she drew off the gloves, were long and narrow. When she had given her order, she caught his steady gaze and gave him a slight, quick smile and looked away.

  “Forgive me,” he said, “but you are not French, mademoiselle?”

  “I am a French citizen,” she said, “but my father is Chinese. That is, he was born in China, where his father’s family remains—that is, as many as are still alive.”

  She paused to reflect, and then went on, slightly frowning. “I suppose that even the dead still remain there, but we do not know where. Certainly not in the family burial grounds, since they were—since they died in … unusual ways.”

  She took a sip of wine from the glass that had been brought her. He studied her face, a thoughtful, abstract face, not thinking of him, but certainly of something very far away, having nothing to do with him. He was overcome with his usual wondering curiosity.

  “China,” he repeated. “I have not been there but my grandfather was there, long ago, and he has told me many things.”

  “Your grandfather is—American?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Your French is perfect—but almost too perfect for a Frenchman! You understand?”

  He laughed with her laughter. “Is it a compliment or not?”

  “Take it for what you please,” she said. “The fact is we are both somewhat foreign, on opposite sides of the world. But you have the advantage, I think. You have lived in your ancestral country. I have never been in China. I speak Chinese, but badly I fear, though my father has tried to teach me. But my mother, who was an American, talked with me when I was a child more than my father did, and so I know English also. Would you prefer we speak English?”

  “Would you?”

  She hesitated. “I am more easy in French. Besides, even my American mother spent a lot of time here in Paris and she also spoke fluent French, even to me sometimes. Alas, she never learned Chinese. There was a prejudice. I never understood it. But my father has taught me Chinese also after—well! I have little chance to speak English. But I speak English also. Let us speak in English, for my practice! I don’t have any English-speaking friends.”

  “What does your father do here?” he asked in English.

  She replied in his language, a trifle slowly but precisely. “He is a collector and dealer of Oriental art objects, but of course especially of the Chinese. Unfortunately it is not so easy now to get art objects out of China. But he knows the necessary people in Hong Kong.”

  “Have you been in Hong Kong?”

  “Oh, yes—I travel with my father. Of course, being Chinese, he hoped I’d be a son. When I wasn’t, still being very Chinese, he made the best of it. But then I’ve tried, too.”

  “You have tried—”

  “To take the place of a son.”

  “Very difficult, I should say—when a girl is as beautiful as you are!”

  She smiled but did not reply to this obvious small talk.

  He discerned in her something of his own aloofness and remained silent. Now it was her turn to ask questions if she had any curiosity about him—that is to say, if she were interested in him. He wondered how old she was and resolved to conceal his own age. He was in years so distressingly young. How often he would have liked to lie about his age, to say, for example, that he was twenty-two or -three! He was never able to lie. Honesty was an absolute—but then he could be silent. He watched her as she sipped her drink meditatively, meanwhile gazing about her at the people.

  She was looking at him now. “It is your first visit here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you came from—”

  “I was in England all winter.”

  “You have a slight English accent but not quite English!”

  He laughed. “That’s clever of you! No, as I said, I’m American—from the very heart of my country.”

  “Where is that heart?”

  “The Midwest—if we’re speaking geographically.”

  “You are here to study something?”

  “I suppose one could say so.”

  She lifted her delicate eyebrows. “You are very mysterious!”

  He was smiling at her serious eyes, dark eyes, set in long straight black lashes. “Am I? But you are rather mysterious yourself, half-American, half-Chinese, but speaking perfect French, too, with only the slightest accent—an accent I can’t recognize.”

  She shrugged. “It’s my own. We Chinese speak languages easily—not like Japanese, who have thick tongues. I speak also German and Italian and Spanish. It is possible for me to understand other languages—we live so close here in Europe.”

  “Do you consider yourself Chinese?”

  “As my father’s daughter, of course I am Chinese. But—”

  Again the slight shrug, and he leaned his elbows on the table the more closely to examine her exquisite face.

  “But what do you feel you are, inside yourself?”

  Unconsciously he was back in his old habit of asking questions. Yet how did it indeed feel to be the child of nations and peoples, speaking many tongues as one’s own?

  “How you do ask questions!” she exclaimed, half laughing. Then suddenly she was serious. The lovely mouth closed; her eyes were thoughtful and she looked away from him. “How do I feel inside—,” she murmured as though asking herself. “I suppose I feel I belong nowhere and everywhere.”

  “That means you are unique—you are a new kind of person,” he declared.

  She shook her head. “How can an American say such a thing? Are not Americans something of everything? I have heard my father say that Americans are the most difficult people to understand. When I asked why, he said it is because they are all so mixed, having roots in every country. That is what he says. Is it true?”

  He reflected, gazing straight into her eyes as he did so. “Historically, yes, individually, no. Each of us belongs, beyond family, to his own region, his own state, and to the conglomerate, the nation. We are a new people, but we have our own country.”

  “How intelligent you are,” she exclaimed. “It is so pleasant to speak with an intelligent man!”

  He was laughing at her again. “You don’t find men intelligent?”

  She gave the characteristic little shrug, very pretty, very French, “Not usually! It is customary for men to remark on one’s face, et cetera. Always the looks!”

  “And then?”

  “Then? Oh, something like where is one going, where does one live, will one have a drink and so on. Always the same! But you, although we are strangers, not meeting until fifteen
minutes or so before now, you have given me a sensible thought. I know more about Americans. Thank you, monsieur—”

  She was entirely serious, as he could see. And he might have thought of her sexually, with that lovely face and the long narrow hands she used with unconscious grace, except that somehow Lady Mary had helped him to put sex in its place. She had given him nothing but sex and in so doing she had made it extraneous, having nothing to do with anything else in life, an act merely physical. She had surfeited him until he knew that sex was not enough for him. Healthy male that he was, he knew the limitations of sex. There were many other aspects of life for the human animal, and these he must explore. His curiosities were far beyond sex, and in this Lady Mary had served him well. He did not hate her but he doubted that he would ever return to her or indeed ever see her again. Meanwhile here, facing him, was a new and beautiful female creature, one for whom he had not sought but had found as one accidentally finds a jewel.

  “And you,” she was saying. “Tell me who you are and truly why you are here. It seems to me that I can like you as a friend, and I don’t find many.”

  How could he explain himself to her? And yet he wished very much to be able to do so. It was the first time in his life that he really wished to explain himself to someone else. For that matter, he had never tried to explain himself even to himself. Driven by question and wonder and the insatiable hunger to know everything, he had omitted explanations even to himself!

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said slowly. “I have not had time to think much about myself. Wherever I have been—at least until now, I have been mostly alone. The others were always much bigger—much older.” He paused to consider himself in the past. “Older in years, that is,” he amended. “I’ve always been too old for myself.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “Then you have an old soul. We know about such things in my father’s country. Would you like to meet him? I think he would like you. Usually he doesn’t like young men—especially Americans.”

  “Then why me?”

  “You are different from the others. You’ve said so yourself—in effect. Even your English isn’t American.”

  He thought again of the many months he had spent with Lady Mary. Had she indeed left even the mark of her language upon his tongue? Yet why should he speak of her to this girl? He did not want even to think of Lady Mary.

  “I would like very much to meet your father,” he said.

  “Then let us go,” she said. “He will be wondering where I am. When he sees you he will understand. At least he will forget to ask me why I am late!”

  THE HOUSE WAS ENORMOUS. It was on the outskirts of Paris and on the borders of a wood, a man-made forest, as he could see, so orderly the trees stood, with shrubbery massed at their feet.

  “My father loves his gardens,” she said. “Not flowers—only trees and rocks and water—flowers are for pots and vases in the house. He’s very old-fashioned—formal and all that. You’ll see when you meet him. Yet he’s very good with people—not everyone, of course, but with special people.”

  She circled the drive smartly in her small Mercedes and drew up in front of the house. A wide walk of marble led to the front door, which opened, it seemed, automatically until he saw the slender black-robed figure of a Chinese manservant.

  “Father brought his own servants to Paris,” she said. “Of course, that was before I was born. Their children have grown up here and some of them still serve us in the house. Others of them help my father in the business. He doesn’t trust white people.”

  “Though your mother is American?”

  “I didn’t tell you,” she said almost casually. “She left us when I was six. She went away with an American—a very rich man’s son, younger than she. He divorced her later—several years later—and she asked my father to take her back. He refused.”

  “And you?” he asked.

  Against his will he asked, for what right had he to inquire into her personal life? But the old insistent demand to know, to know everything about life and people, impelled him. The demand was not mere curiosity. It was a necessity to follow action through reaction to final resolution. He had to know the end of the story.

  “I have not seen her since she left. I have not forgiven her, I suppose, for leaving us, and my father has provided all I have ever needed and I am entirely loyal to him. It is as though she were dead, to me, and indeed she could be for all I know,” she said.

  They were at the top of the several steps leading to the marble terrace before the great door, now open and waiting to receive them. She paused and they stood looking out over the formal gardens through which they had passed.

  “And?” he asked remorselessly.

  “My father said I might go to her if I wished, but if I went I must know I could never see him again. So I stayed.”

  “Because?”

  “I’ve always known I was more Chinese than anything else—because I want to be, I suppose. Come—let’s go in!”

  They entered a wide hall facing a great stairway that divided at its upper half into left and right. Now he saw a tall, slender man in a long Chinese robe of silver-gray satin descending from the right, to the main stairway.

  “Stephanie!” he said, and then followed words in Chinese.

  He listened to the unknown language, a mellifluous flow of vowels they seemed, and he looked at the handsome, silver-haired Chinese gentleman who spoke them and noticed his strong, beautiful hands. Then it occurred to him that he now heard her name, and at the same instant she turned to him, laughing.

  “I want to introduce you to my father—and I don’t know your name!”

  “And I have heard yours for the first time!” he said, laughing. Then he turned to the father.

  “Sir, I am Randolph Colfax—Rann, for short. I must admit to being an American, for your daughter says you don’t like us, but my grandfather was in China in his youth, and he has taught me to admire your people—and so your daughter and I became acquainted today, and she told me about you and was so kind as to—” Here he turned helplessly to her. “How did you?”

  “I feel he is different, somehow, Father.”

  French was the language again, and the father answered in that tongue, a stilted accented French.

  “And you asked him, not even knowing his name?”

  “He doesn’t know mine, either,” she retorted, and began laughing again as she turned to him. “How stupid I am and you are so polite, asking nothing! I am Stephanie Kung. You will ask why Stephanie instead of Michelle or some such name, but as I told you I was supposed to be a boy, who was to be named Stephen.”

  “Quiet!” her father commanded.

  She stopped, looked at her father, and then went on. “Well, as you see, I disappointed my father and he punished me with this long name!”

  “Be silent, my little one! And why are we standing here in the hall instead of proceeding into the library? Besides, it grows late. It will be better if we prepare ourselves for dinner. You, sir, will you spend the night with us?”

  “Oh, yes—Rann Colfax, is it? Do stay the night! We will have so much good talk together, the three of us!”

  He was bewitched, he was enchanted, he felt as though he were being led into another country—one unknown and perhaps long sought.

  “It is too good to be true,” he said. “And of course I will stay, at least for dinner. But I have nothing with me—no change of clothes. I shall have to go back to the hotel to get my things.”

  “That is easily mended for now,” Mr. Kung said. “I have clothes—suits I wear to business—we are not too different in height, or weight. I can guess we can enjoy tonight with no thought to details and then tomorrow my car can take you to pick up your bags.”

  He turned to the waiting servant and spoke a few words in Chinese and then again to Rann.

  “Thi
s man will take you to a guestroom and bring you anything you need. In an hour he will come back for you and lead you to the dining room.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Rann said, and knew that he was indeed entering another world.

  TIME HAD PASSED, DAYS MOVED INTO WEEKS, and now months. Even as he had stayed timelessly in the castle in England, he now stayed in this old French château on the borders of Paris. Wherever­ he found life he stayed in this timeless fashion and felt himself welcome­. As long as he felt himself welcome he would stay, and yet even this was not conscious and perhaps not even true. As long as he was learning­, as long as he was satisfying his insatiable wonder about the world, people, everything, there he stayed.