handkerchief. Mosquitoes buzz around his temples. The skies grow even redder, as though someone has slashed their wrists into a bowl of warm water.
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THE TONY IN KROKODILSPRUIT is a little younger than the Tony in San Telmo. Less broad in the shoulders and narrower at the waist. His hair is lighter and shows a greater tendency to curl, his lips are slightly fuller, and his face has a permanently injured expression, verging on the pained. But they are of similar height; their eyes are the same indeterminate brown. There are brothers who look less alike.
Perhaps there are even third and fourth namesakes of a similar age somewhere in the world. Hanssen is a common surname in their country of origin; a lot of men of their generation are called Tony. Maybe the third and the fourth share certain physical characteristics, too. But there will never be a bond between them as there is between these two. One despairs, the other takes aim and grits his teeth, and neither of them knows the other exists. Even less do they suspect their paths will cross on a different continent in just a few days’ time. The crucible of the future.
But we’re not there, yet. For the moment, African ants are making their way across Tony’s dusty safari shoes. And, for the moment, the springs in Tony’s South American mattress are squeaking as quietly and persistently as tortured rats.
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PART ONE
Decline
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1
Buenos Aires
What would Mr. Bo Xiang think of this? Tony wonders anxiously in San Telmo, as he presses the soles of his feet against the bedpost, bracing to give his labour of love more traction and depth. With good results. The hitherto polite, restrained panting of the matron beneath him turns into moaning. Something low and bestial. Unreserved.
In social intercourse, Mrs. Bo Xiang is the picture of reserve. The eternal smile that people ascribe to Orientals has been bestowed upon her. The grainy layer of pale make-up she smears on her face each morning, over her shaven eyebrows, shows more and more cracks as the day progresses, as fine as the veins in an antique tile. They follow a double pattern: her age lines and the craquelure of her smile. A double map, a palimpsest of an eventful life.
God knows what that poor thing has had to go through in that outsized country of hers, thought Tony, a little less than a week earlier, in the plane on the way over, as he observed his benefactress from close up. She lay next to him in her reclined seat, hanging crookedly in her seat belt, an insect caught in a web, her eyes closed, her small mouth obscenely open. From time to time, she snored or smacked her lips. The Boeing thundered through the freezing, anoxic atmosphere in a composed, almost noble manner.
It was Tony’s first opportunity to inspect Mrs. Bo Xiang undisturbed from this close up. There were several holes in her earlobes. Just before falling asleep, she’d removed her latest purchase—a pair of silver butterflies with a diamond on each wing—and put them away in her Louis Vuitton handbag, along with her rings, her bracelets, and her Breitling watch. What was she afraid of? Pickpockets in first class? Her breath smelled of peppermints and her teeth looked like ivory jacks that had seen too much use. Tony had to stop himself from putting his hand over the obscene, wrinkled mouth until the breathing stopped.
A hell of a life, he thought at the same time, not without compassion—to be born in China, shortly after the war, a woman. He inhaled through his mouth to escape the odour of peppermints. Starvation, refugees, propaganda. Days and days of banging on pots and pans until the sparrows fell out of the sky in exhaustion. Now and again, a purge, or a week of euphoria. How many bullet-riddled bodies had she seen, how many show trials and rapes? And still she carried on smiling from early in the morning until late at night. Perhaps she was already growing senile. And that’s the person giving me orders, that’s the person responsible for my fate. His hand itched again.
But he turned his gaze away from her and asked the stewardess for a gin and tonic. Bombay Sapphire, please. A double.
In daylight, observed from a distance, Mrs. Bo Xiang resembled a flawless porcelain doll, as white as gristle. She drew on new eyebrows, blacker than engine oil. She painted her lips with a red that shone like the bodywork of an Italian sports car. She had everything her heart desired. She bought her clothes in Paris, her shoes and handbags in Singapore, her smartphones and cameras in Tokyo. Plastic surgery was the only thing she didn’t subscribe to. The one time her smile vanished was when Tony cautiously enquired about it.
Four days ago, as they strolled along the widest boulevard on earth, the Avenida 9 de Julio, her countenance had already cracked by mid-morning. She had burst into peals of laughter. Just like that. All Chinese people had that affliction, Tony knew by now, and the women most of all. A high-pitched, hiccupping laugh with a vengeance. He wondered whether there was a reason for it. Usually, there wasn’t.
That same morning, during their very first breakfast on Argentinian soil, Mrs. Bo Xiang had explained her plans. This short trip would be no beach holiday, she’d warned. Idleness was the privilege of the young. She had no time to lose. She wanted to tick off as many sights as possible, with Tony as her guide. She was giving him a free hand. Wherever he went, she would go. It was all the same to her. Even so, she handed him a brochure with the top attractions circled in red pen. And, oh yes! Dear Tony! She laid her small, ringed hand on his. The claw was heavier than expected and felt cold and clammy—a bunch of wilted asparaguses just out of the fridge, pale against the Prussian-blue breakfast linen, the little vase containing a rose, the bowl of fresh strawberries. At the time, they were still staying in the Hilton on the Puerto Madero, the spectacularly modernized harbour district. Don’t worry, dear Tony! The claw gave a couple of soothing pats and then remained on his hand. She’d pay for everything! As though she didn’t always pick up the bill. There were more credit cards than banknotes in her purse, but there were a lot of banknotes, all the same. A whole range of currencies. She showed them off like a pimply boy with a handful of football stickers. Her complete collection—at home in Guangzhou—included a banknote in the largest denomination from every country she’d ever shopped in.
They don’t have the same sense of pride as we do, Tony thought, nodding amicably as he carefully extracted his hand from under the claw. They imitate us. They imitate everything. They are delighted to forsake who and what they are, and they don’t feel threatened for a second, because they are convinced they’ll win in the long run. We think in centuries, they think in millennia. We swear by the loner, they know better. They believe in hordes. In billions. No one is closer to the cockroach. He startled himself with his vitriol, but didn’t tone down his thoughts. He quickly stuffed two strawberries into his mouth and stood up, shoving his chair away with the backs of his knees.
When she started to laugh on the Avenida 9 de Julio, Mrs. Bo Xiang was hanging on his arm. Her chubby flank was pressed against him as she pointed, gasping like an overgrown adolescent, at the Obelisco—a tall, chubby memorial column which rose up pontifically in the middle of the boulevard, as misplaced as a strap-on penis on a child’s belly. Patriotic borders and lawns had been laid around the foot of the obelisk, full of flowers and dog shit. This was it, then, the famous Plaza de la República. The obelisk was not rounded off at the top, but crowned with a small, comical pyramid. If you felt compelled to worship a penis as a totem of your fatherland, Tony groaned—sullen and pale from the jet lag—at least do it right. Chop off that pyramid and put a proper bell end on top. He had woken up with a headache and a nauseated feeling, neither of which had subsided after the much-too-saccharine breakfast coffee, the strawberries, and the croissants that had been cloyingly sweet, too.
On either side of the Obelisco, hundreds of cars came and went along a full twenty lanes of traffic, most of them honking angrily. It wouldn’t take much more to
