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1 3 8 Y T H E S H O E K I N G O F S H A N G H A I J O N A T H A N T E L High columns and gleam and the drapes paper-white, the color of mourning, and murmured conversations and sweat and several varieties of important people, whose definitions he can only guess at, who are mostly dressed in black, negative spaces marking o√ the histories and levels and types of white, and the absence of tears, the absence of wailing, nobody who seems to be a relative or close friend, midday outside but inside a late afternoon, the light confused and hazy, everyone’s breath rising and gathering in the high-ceilinged hall, This place is a city of its own (the same thought he had a month ago when he stumbled out of the train and there he was at last in Beijing West station), a condensed city, yes, large enough and small enough to generate a smog of its own, and meanwhile wreath-deliverers enter at intervals, trailing their lavish aromas, which mingle with incense and floor polish and an undersmell that might be rotten fruit and money as well as feet, for everyone is shoeless and so slightly abbreviated, celebrities in close-fitting suits are inches shorter than normal, a leading businessman is flanked by two bodyguards, dangerous and shuΔing in their nylon socks, and he among them (he is the kind of man who is not looked at), painfully aware of his faded shirt and trousers 1 3 9 R and the hole in the left sock through which the smallest toe pokes, and he is trudging in flip-flops along the dried-up irrigation ditches of Sichuan, midsummer, white dust everywhere, the sheep trailing after, and from curls of conversation he gathers the man’s name was Qin, he was a financier of some sort, at any rate he had financial links with those who have come to commemorate him, debits and credits, it was an overdose of sleeping pills, an accident it is suggested, and nobody seems upset about this, there are small smiles when death is mentioned, along with long time no see and handshakes, for above a certain income level death is of less account, the rich maintaining their network of connections in heaven and hell, whereas in Sichuan there is sorrow and music, the mourners screeching How could you leave us just when things were starting to get better? and here not only is there no particular sadness there is not even a body, who knows how death is done in Beijing, perhaps Qin is laid out deeper within the villa, perhaps that is where the true funeral is taking place (even financiers have relatives, and people who love them), but he jumps out of his own body and back in time five minutes or so, the long brilliant dark cars double-parked like shoes along the drive, the chau√eurs smoking alongside, and clutching a wreath up against his body as a shield he shuΔes toward the marble stairs, the doorway, and by the shoe rack he nudges o√ his worn Flying Forward sneakers, and a servant relieves him of the wreath, taking it from his arms, exposing him, peeling o√ his disguise (yet he remains reasonably invisible), he steps onward and inward till he is back in himself, here and now, he takes one deep breath, holding the moment, and now he stays in this time but reverses space, and without ever having reached the vicinity of Qin, whoever that man might be, or his ghost, or the sly greedy god he will turn into, the migrant returns to the shoe rack, and slides his socked feet into a pair of rather too large solid black brogues with a decoration of piercings on the upper and an obvious aura of expense, and, taller now, at least part of him wealthy, hardly limping at all, he strides out of the building and back down the drive past the sculpture of a turtle with a snake on its back and into the wreath-shop...

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