This story based on early 1970s musings about a newspaper report of a number of acts of vandalism in the United Kingdom involving the burning of the contents of letter boxes. In those days, mail was the prime form of distance communication. It took precedent over telephone and predated instant modern internet and e-mail communication. This being so this story speculates on the kind of devastation such vandalism might incur.

After the five-thirty pm collection few people used the letterbox next to the Civic Cambers on George Street, Edinburgh. They included a couple of tardy secretaries with large bundles of mail, a solitary man who drove up in a car to post his letter and a cleaner on her way to work. It was a standard box, the same as those scattered in their repetitive millions all over the United Kingdom. The surrounding monochrome grey granite buildings silhouetted its scarlet body. The absence of traffic and movement in the wide regal thoroughfare further accentuated its impact, so that its lonely splash of red radiated down wind-swept pavements. It exerted an uncanny attraction towards itself. Robert felt this attraction as he paused to look mechanically up and down the street for traffic before crossing on his way home from a pub in Rose Street. The friendly warm color beckoned and its familiar shape reassured. He idly changed direction and walked towards it.

The wind, a cold October “Norther”, now blew directly onto his beer-flushed face tingling his ruddy complexion. The gusty wind played on the regular Georgian facades of the street’s gaunt buildings and plucked a mournful tune from their harmoniously proportioned porticos and pediments. The lonely-whistled cries echoed across the street as the buildings asked each other why George Street, on this March night of 1971, should be so deserted when it had been designed to be Edinburgh’s main street. Their calls reminded each other of the irony of the Georgian New Town with its wide parallel streets, imposing squares, and series of residential crescents and circles whose purpose had all been eclipsed by the emergence of Prince’s Street as a main tourist attraction and shopping thoroughfare. Robert listened to the lonely cries, but to him the lamenting loneliness was not the buildings’ solitude but cries of a man’s loneliness. They were his cries of anguish due to the inactivity of unemployment in the young and healthy, his cries of frustration to be living at home in a tiny crowded two up two down, and his feeling of emptiness and uselessness when each day is the same and slips quickly and uneventfully away.

When he reached the letterbox he stopped and stood nonchalantly beside it hoping to draw comfort from its red side. But, when he touched it, it was cold, cold as steel. Feeling cheated he kicked it. He would have done so again except the impact telescoped thorough his thin shoe and hurt his foot. Then he took out his cigarettes and matches and, crouching beside the rounded body for shelter, lit himself one. As he inhaled a first soothing drag of smoke he noticed the letterboxes’ mouth. It was a wide-open gaping mouth asking to be fed. He thrust the lighted match into its jaws. Nothing happened, the street remained just as empty, the air just as cold, and the grey stone buildings just as somber, he felt just as bored and aimless. He lit another match and pushed it into the red mouth, then another and another until a small drift of smoke began to emerge, like a dragon’s breath, from the scarlet body. The wind whisked the thin wisps away in its embrace so quickly that they also seemed futile and insignificant.

He crossed the street and walked down the other side past the City Hall, to one of the many cross streets. He paused for a moment and looked back to inspect the result of his efforts. A small curl of smoke could be seen drifting out of its red lips. “Yes,” he thought “that is so in keeping with its color. I wonder why they don’t make them blue or green or yellow, then, I wouldn’t have to give them smoky breath.” His conscience appeased, he took in the whole street, half hoping to see another letterbox, but both pavements were empty, his box was the only one. He threw his cigarette butt into the gutter and thrust his hands in his pockets turning over the few coins which he had left. He walked up to Princes Street.

The still brightly lit Princes Street presented an equally cold sidewalk with a biting wind blowing across the Loch, or central valley, which runs adjacent to the street. The tourist season was over but a few people walked its well-used pavements, their bodies shrunken into their coats. Robert passed them by, his hands thrust even deeper into his pockets, his shoulders slouched, as he tried to coax a little extra warmth out of his old coat. Occasionally, he paused to look into the shop windows. As always, he stopped to gaze into an electrical shop opposite Waverley Station. He liked to watch the television figures moving across multiple screens, reproduced, soundless, like pictures in a kaleidoscope.

He walked on beside the station looking down on its massive pitched roofs, filling the entire valley incline with their organized lines. Then he turned to go down the Waverley steps. As usual, an exceptionally strong blast of icy air met him as he hurried down. The first shock almost knocked him over, and then, as he pushed downwards, it turned itself into a twisting upwards movement which gustily lifted his light coat and blew through his clothing to his skin. He cursed himself under his breath as he could easily have taken the other station entry for he knew that this wind was not exceptional. But he liked the place as it reminded him of Christine. He had met her at a party which he had gate crashed. They had danced all evening in an ecstatic whirl and then spent several weeks together enjoying a brief interlude of joy. Robert had not known real love or passion until those few idyllic days. Then, all too quickly, she was gone to take up a position in Glasgow. They had said a final goodbye on these same steps. He had wanted to keep in touch. She had insisted otherwise, partly because of her new position in Glasgow and partly as her family was a rather upstage affluent one who would sneer at Robert’s poverty. Now, it seemed, his only hope of ever seeing her again would be to win the Pools. Ah, if only he could do that, then he would marry her.

He entered the station and made his way to the station cafeteria which he knew to be warm, and open at this late hour. It was a typical British Railways place with a tall Victorian ceiling decorated with dirty plaster molding some twenty feet above its bare tables and polypropylene chairs. At one time it must have been a beautifully proportioned room but now a flimsy partition divided it into kitchen and cafeteria, making nonsense of the rich cornice and symmetrical windows. Tonight the warm room caused condensation to pour down the dirty windows and form dark pools on the window sills, while unsophisticated lights glared through the hazy air giving the occupants a bubonic plague-like green pallor.

He entered, and glanced around the room to assess the clientele: a few isolated travelers, their eyes sunken deep into grey sockets under the bright light, their clothes creased; and a couple tramps slowly eating large hunks of bread-and-butter which they washed down with thick tea. He went over to the counter and bought a cup of tea and some scones. He carried it away on a flimsy plastic plate and chose a corner table. He ate methodically without enjoyment; he thought that the scones tasted like play-dough. Just as he finished someone sat beside him.

The newcomer looked peculiarly out of place and, although now drunk, appeared to be unaccustomed to drinking. He had reached a lachrymose state of melancholy and grief quite unbefitting to his high position in his firm. Indeed, if he sober, could have seen himself now he would have been utterly disgusted. His well-cut blue suit hung from him in a crumpled mess and his expensive tie, tied in a tight knot was lost somewhere on his chest. He staggered so that by the time that he reached the table most of his tea had spilt adding sticky wet stains to his suit. Once seated, he guiltily produced a flask of whiskey from an inner pocket and poured enough into his cup to fill it to the brim. At that moment his glazed blue eyes caught Robert’s brown ones, so leaning over, he offered Robert a “wee dram” for himself. Robert willingly accepted.

Angus Macgregor badly needed a confident and introduced himself. He quickly launched into the saga of his misery, “I posted it to her today,” he said, “I wrote a letter to her telling her ‘never to come home again’. My daughter, my own flesh and blood, my own first baby, I wrote that she is ‘never to come home again.’” His voice trailed away in his misery and he took another drink of laced tea to renew his strength. “She is such a bonnie lassie, always so good. How could she have done this? My wee lassie, my wee Christine” He paused again to contemplate Christine. He had so wished her be perfect, indeed she had been so perfect, until this. Perhaps he ought never to have let her leave Edinburgh to live in Glasgow.

“Err, yes, you said ‘Christine’,” prompted Robert, his hands swirling his tea cup, his interest stirred by the name of his beloved.

“Ah, my Christine, my Christine‘s pregnant,” he gasped. The dreadful news almost choked him. The words hit Robert like a pistol shot, could this man’s Christine be his Christine? And, if so would this child be his child? He felt a sudden surge of pride, but checked himself. He couldn’t support himself, how could he possibly support anyone else?

Meanwhile Angus rambled on enumerating his sorrows. “She is going to have a child of her own. There’s no father.” Here Robert smiled at the mere thought of his possible paternity. “Earlier I couldn’t bear the thought of the humiliation. I argued with my wife. But what does it matter what people say? I don’t care about them. I care about my Christine she is far more important. But all I did was send fifty quid and wrote that she is never to come home again, never to come home again.” His moist eyes searched Robert’s face for help. “What should I do?”

“Telephone,” suggested Robert.

“I can’t. She hasn’t got a phone. Besides, I know that when she gets that letter she will never come home she so proud, so proud, just like her father. Once she has received that letter and read those words to never come home again nothing would make her come.”

Robert’s powers of sympathy were somewhat limited at the best of times and now, as Angus repeated his story, he let his mind race to the extraordinary possibility that this Christine might be his Christine and her child, his child. He wanted to be alone, but stayed, feigning concentration hoping to get another tot of whiskey and more information as a reward. As he sat there he mentally reviewed what he had put in his Pools coupon earlier in the day. It had taken time to work it out weighing up probabilities and matching his knowledge of the different teams against an intangible element of chance. He had felt satisfied when he given it to his mother to post. Now, he felt that meeting this drunken man was a good omen. Surely he was destined, not only win the Pools, but also to rush to Christine’s aid. He counted the days on his fingers, today was Wednesday, he would know on Saturday, and then it should only be a day before he found Christine. He had to win; it all depended on his wining. Surely, he had won.

They finished the whiskey, each immersed in his own world and then Robert left for his long cold walk home. First he called in at the Gents, then, comfortably at home with his body; he walked through the station to the Bridge exit thereby avoiding the cold Waverley steps, up across Princes Street, down past Woolworths past the General Post Office. He paused to look up at its Renaissance façade. He felt good as he thought of the morning collection, wondering what would be left on George Street for the bureaucratic system to sort out. He felt good that at least someone would feel the effect of his actions. He walked on towards home with a puffed up feeling of his own importance as a father, Pool winner and destroyer of letterboxes.

Christine lay in bed luxuriating in the pleasing thought that on Saturday she could lie there as long as she wished. She lay on her back letting her hand drift gently over her stomach which already seemed to be a little swollen. She wondered, as she cupped her palms over it, whether the baby was already large enough to be recognizably human. She mused, regretfully, over the father, Robert, whom she had only known that short idyllic time in Edinburgh. She knew that his circumstances were bad and so she had never tried to contact with him. After all, what could he do? Alone, or perhaps with her family, if only they would write, she thought that she could cope. Indeed, she almost looked forward to the challenge of coping. Robert, she remembered, seemed to be depressive and moody so, she concluded, he would never be able to face the strain of a baby. He would always be trying to win a million pounds on the Pools, or gamble thousands on the hounds. She bore him no resentment. She didn’t even want to see him again. It seemed as though the baby were completely hers and that by not being there he had surrendered his paternity.

Her drifting thoughts passed on to what to do today. While she was musing she heard the familiar thud of a letter falling on the hard floor at the front door. Perhaps, the letter from home had arrived. She feared the worst. She knew her father to be a proud man and would consider her illegitimate pregnancy a dishonor and disgrace. She fully expected him to allow his concern about his partner’s reactions to override his, and her mother’s parental love. Now, her earlier feelings of independence vanished and her heart beat overtime as she hurried to the hall with a remote feeling of nausea.

A strange letter lay on the floor; it was wrapped in an official envelope on which a clerk had written in a painstakingly-legible hand with neat forward-sloping letters:

The G.P.O. apologizes for the state

of this letter. It was burnt by vandals

in a letterbox in Edinburgh on the

evening of Wednesday March 10th 1971

Her hands trembled. She carried the strange envelope back to her bedroom. She smelt its aroma of ashes and tore it open. Inside she found such a mutilated mess that she was surprised that the post office had been able to piece together sufficient information to be able get it to her. The entire left hand side was obliterated either burnt or charred out of recognition. The words on the right hand side, written in her father’s unmistakable-tidy hand, danced on the page in a jumbled incoherent succession of disconnected phrases. She went over to the window and held the damaged page to the light to read as follows:

were horrified to
r some time have been
ere unable to write to
your situation as
, praying a good deal
hat as you have been
For some time now
o do so.
olutely out of the
t add another wrong to
, we do not wish
Our daughter would
are to have her
ttle something
come home again.

She tried to patch in the missing parts, but was unable to make out any meaning, except for the last words come home again. Suddenly, she knew just how much she had wished to go home, just how much she needed her parents’ love and support. Her previously swelling pride crumbled away in a rush of love. She hurriedly began to pack for going home. The words rang in her head like the lyric of a popular song, come home again, come home again.

Robert loved Saturdays, the day that he checked his Pools entry. Each time he was convinced that this time he had won. Today, the facts bore out his optimism. He attentively listened to the results and glued himself to the television commentary of the game in Glasgow. He spent the whole afternoon in their tiny front room glued to the screen, and although it was a dark room at the best of times, he had the curtains drawn to make the image seem brighter. He practically chain smoked increasing the stagnant stuffiness of the room. As time went on his excitement increased. All his predictions were correct, except this game in Glasgow which had all appearance of being a draw. He could kick himself in anger, hadn’t he thought that it might be a draw? His eyes followed the ball with the camera. Half time, no score, full time no score, penalty time, a goal, a goal.

“They’ve won; they’ve won” He yelled to his mother “A goal, a goal. I’m rich, I’m rich” He could hardly breathe in his excitement.

He neatly checked the results again. There was no doubt about it he had won. He rushed out of the house to the nearest post office to send a telegram. He had rehearsed this moment so often in his dreams that he hardly needed to read the winner’s instructions on the back of his entry copy. A win! A win!

Back home he dragged his mother in from her kitchen to tell her the good news. “I’ve won, ‘should be about one hundred and fifty grand,” he shouted. “Oh, Mum, I’ll buy gifts for all. I’ll get married; I’ll have a bairn of my own.” He hugged his mother. “How long do you think that it’ll take them to contact me? Today? It must be today!” Already he could see them arrive in a slick Daimler to talk to him. He wondered whether they brought the Champagne with them, or whether they saved that for the publicity of the handing over ceremony. Yes and the publicity would be an ideal way for him to find Christine who would, by now, be miserable having received her father’s letter.

The reply to his telegram didn’t arrive until late. He rushed to the door, tripping over the carpet in his excitement. The telegram was brief and to the point:

T—-‘S POOLS AKNOWLEDGES MR.R. MCNAB’S
TELEGRAM STOP REGRET HAVE NO RECORD
OF RECEIPT OF ENTRY AS MENTIONED STOP

He couldn’t believe his eyes, it just wasn’t possible. His mother couldn’t have forgotten to post it, not this week. “Mum,” he yelled “You did post the entry as usual didn’t you?”

“Oh course I did,” she affirmed soothingly as she stepped into the hall to watch him. “I posted on Wednesday night, as usual, when I went to my cleaning job. You know the George Street box.”

At twenty-five Kent was alone and unmarried, so when his mother died he faced the task of disposing of her things alone; alone, except for her cat, Mack, who he had reluctantly inherited along with everything else. He worked methodically and soon came upon her photograph albums. Although he had seen them before, he couldn’t resist looking through them again. He made a space on the dining table and arranged them in chronological piles. Mack jumped up on the table as though anxious to assist. He settled himself into a neat curl and sent cat hair wafting over the books. Kent sneezed twice and began to thumb through beginning with his baby pictures. He flipped the familiar pages quickly but, when he came to a faded photograph of two children in a bath full of bubbles, he paused. The pallid little boy was himself at six and the smiling little girl was Helen, his four-year-old niece. Even now, almost two decades later, he recollected his embarrassment. He recalled her laughter and his sullen pout as he tried to hide himself in the bubbles. He vaguely remembered her game in which she offered him a mug full of suds telling him, with a straight face, that it was hot cocoa. In the game he was supposed to take the mug and pretend to drink registering surprise when it turned out to be foam. He had been unable to comply and her father, his older step-brother, Kevin, had stepped in to make the appropriate moves. Then she had laughed her tinkling happy laughter which echoed off the bathroom walls. He had attempted to join in but his ongoing angst prevented him from any semblance of joy.

He found later photographs from 1995, the year that his father died. The family group pictures showed a somber gathering with full representation from his father’s two marriages and families. His mother, his younger second wife, wore an ugly black hat and his twelve year-old self stood stiff and erect next to her. He remembered the sadness of the day and how uncomfortable it was to wear long pants and jacket in Austin in August. Now, fifteen years later, with the pain of that day dulled, he looked intently at each photograph, but he didn’t look for his mother or himself he looked for Helen. She wore a pretty summer dress and smiled her radiant smile into the camera. Already you could tell that this ten-year-old girl was destined to the looks which turn heads. She had poise and vivacity. After the funeral Kent, Helen and two other children had played Monopoly together. Helen had won finishing the game with a ballerina’s spin and peals of sweet laughter. Her pleasure was so intense that Kent remembered how glad he had been that she had won.

The third album contained photographs from his mother’s 2005, fiftieth birthday celebration. She had invited the whole family, even her dead husband’s children from his first marriage. Her step-children, who were children to her in name only, stood in the photographs showing their age as all were already over fifty. Her step-son Kevin had come bringing his wife and daughter who, now a twenty-year-old college student was on Spring Break. During this visit the twenty-two-year-old Kent had realized the extent of Helen’s beauty. Her skin was perfect, her eyes deep dark pools, her eyelashes long and full, and her dark hair lustrous. She moved with grace and uninhibited spontaneity. Kent enjoyed watching her as he admired her flat belly, slender legs and nicely shaped breasts. What made her additionally attractive was her fun loving gaiety. Kent found her unlike any of the girls whom he had dated. She talked to him as an equal discussing literature and movies with intensity. He relaxed in her presence merely because she was so vibrant and seemingly carefree. How he wished that she were not related, that she was someone other than his niece. But then he would have been embarrassed and inhibited by his attraction to her. Might not the constant worrying about how he could invite her out, date her, become her boyfriend and even her lover, have detracted from his enjoyment of their time together?

All these memories went through Kent’s mind as he scoured the pages for images of her. He was not disappointed and found several taken the day after the big birthday party. It was the day that they had gone to Pedernales Falls State Park. The photograph which he liked best was the one of him and Helen standing beside the Park notice about swimming. The Park had several such notices posted; each admonished the public that bathing was strictly prohibited and would be prosecuted with fines. In the photograph the two stood with wet hair and damp clothing smiling sheepishly at the notice. As Kent looked at the photograph he closed his eyes and relived the afternoon preceding the photograph.

Every precious moment came back to him vividly. It began when they ate a picnic on a bluff overlooking the falls. After they had eaten they spilled out onto the rocks leaping, gazelle-like, from boulder to boulder. Kent followed Helen as she moved quickly exploring the many crevices and sparkling water. Eventually they came to a secluded pool snugly surrounded by smooth rocks. The water was deep, clear and inviting. Quickly Helen took her shoes off and dangled her painted toes in the water. Kent sat beside her and did likewise.

She turned to face him, her eyes as deep as the waters and asked, “Do you think that they are serious about bathing? The water invites us in. I am not sure that I can resist.”

“The signs are unavoidable so I have to believe that they are very serious.”

“Yes, but they have to catch you to prosecute. I don’t see any park rangers, do you?”

“I see none, unless there is one behind that rock over there.” Kent held his hand up over his eyes as through searching diligently and smiled as he pointed to a rock upstream.

She looked him in the face and joined in his mirth. “You are a big tease. No, I can’t see any rangers. I can’t even see my parents or your mum. So, – do you think that we should?”

“Should what?”

“Swim, silly.”

“But we don’t have towels or swimming things.”

“You don’t have to have towels and swimming suits to swim you know. Swimming in the buff is much better. It’s exhilarating.”

Kent looked at the wonderful girl beside him. Was she going to strip off in front of him without inhibition? Would he have to reciprocate and undress also? “Aren’t you embarrassed to undress in front of me?” he whispered in a voice husky with emotion.

“Nope, I have the right. Remember that when I was four and you six we bathed together, your mother has the photograph in an album. We are family. It has to be OK.”

“Well, I am not sure.”

“But I am. My mind is made up. I’m going to go behind that rock over there and undress and get into the water. If you want to join me you can make that rock over there your dressing room.” She pointed to a rock in the opposite direction.

Kent was not about to be upstaged by a girl and especially not Helen and so he nodded and walked to his designated rock. He undressed.

She slipped soundlessly into the pool and he followed her. It was crisp and fresh and for a moment his whole body tingled from the cold. The pure waters of the Pedernales caressed and stimulated all his secret extremities and he liked it. Immediately he knew that this precious moment, the startling sensation of the cold water and vision of the nymph before him would stay with him always. She was already swimming toward the opposite side. He followed her lead, glad that he swam well and pleased that he looked as at home in the water as she did. They swam quietly parting the water with gentle strokes letting it ripple without splashing. It glided over their naked bodies shining and glistening in the afternoon sun. When they reached the far side they trod water facing each other.

“You are right, it is wonderful,” he whispered. He was almost afraid of speaking and hoped that the sound of his words would not break the magic of the place.

She murmured back, “It is idyllic. It is so cool, so clear, and so peaceful.”

He looked down through the crystal deeps to the scoured rocky bottom and nodded. “I can see to the bottom.”

“This is the best that it gets. This is Eden.”

The chased each other across the pool several times before each discretely swam to their designated rock and climbed out. They came back together when they were dressed their hair still wet and clothes damp. They didn’t allude to their dip but silently took hands and walked back across the rocks. Her hand was almost as cold as the water. By the time that they were under the steep bank on the far side it had begun to warm up. He wanted to prolong the entrancement but she suddenly let go and began to race. “Last one up is a rotten egg!” He followed her up the steep cliff happy to let her win so that he could watch her climb from behind.

Mack got up and unexpectedly rubbed his body against Kent’s hand. The surprise of the warm fur roused Kent from his reverie. He sighed. All that had happened five years ago. That evening Helen and her parents had flown home and Kent had spent hours on the Internet trying to unravel the legalities of uncle and niece marriages. He read blogs written by people who were disgusted by the idea and eventually tunneled down to find that in Texas, along with Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Rhode Island such marriages are legal. He thought it strange to find that Leviticus 18 bans nephews and aunts but not uncles and nieces. He deduced that the Leviticus admonition has something about the probable age differential and an ancient culture in which the bride is always required to be the groom’s junior. He obtrusively discussed his longing with his mother. She encouraged him to forget Helen and he had tried. For the last five years he had tied. Every day he had tried but the trying had only served to intensify his longing for her.

Now, as he gathered up the albums he noticed a small snippet of paper torn from a newspaper lurking under Mack’s paw. On it he read the word Helen accompanied by an e-mail address. It was written in his mother’s unmistakable hand. The newspaper date was a few days before her death. Kent wondered, if this was a subliminal message from his mother that a liaison with Helen was acceptable. The more he thought the more he knew that she was encouraging him from the grave. He decided that he should waste no time and put his computer on the table and began to type.

The first time I saw the Chinaman, he stood in the middle of the Peters’ dining room table. Immediately I sensed something special about him. I don’t mean special in the artistic sense, although even someone as ignorant about ceramics as I am could tell that he was an unusual piece, no, I mean special in another sense. He seemed animate. His entire eighteen inches radiated life and a spell-like beauty, while his face had an arresting look of exalted malevolence. I never saw such an enigmatic countenance; even the Mona Lisa’s mystery is one of goodness, a hinted smile. But this face’s depth lay in its veil of sweetness, so fragile that evil appeared to be lurking, indefinable, in all his features; in the dark piercing eyes, on the hollow yellow cheeks, and around the half-smiling mouth.

The Peters’ home in Durham City is full of valuable ‘objets d’art’. Professor Peters, part of the Durham University Faculty of Arts and Humanities, collects oriental artifacts, and Mrs. Peters, anything old and beautiful. The Chinaman stood, at that moment, on a priceless Chippendale table, so highly polished that his reflection curved away from him almost as perfect as himself, while above, on a pastel green wall, hung an original oil painting of a young girl who gazed down, questioningly, upon him. He stood aloof from all this as though alive. His vitality was not exclusive to his face; it began at the top of his close-fitting skullcap and extended to the tip of his tiny feet in their black pointed shoes, peeping roguishly out from under his robe. He stood with his back slightly bent, wearing a yellow and green robe covered in rich oriental designs; an exotic fish slung over one shoulder. The fish looked wet and scaly as though freshly caught, and yet seemed oddly in keeping with his expensive garb, which I am sure, could never have smelt fishy. At a first casual glance, he momentarily reminded me of the old Chinaman in Cannery Row as he daily shuffled up from the beach, making a characteristic flap-flapping sound with his feet. Steinbeck wrote: People sleeping heard his flapping shoe go by and they awakened for a moment. It had been happening for years but no one ever got used to him. Some people thought that he was God, and very old people thought he was Death ……. for he carried a little cloud of fear about with him.

This Chinaman on the table brought back the memory of the soft flap-flapping sound of feet shuffling between street and shore. Even his hair hanging in a black pigtail to his waist and his long droopy Chinese moustache and beard seemed to fall from his head like symbols of feigned repentant sadness, weirdly serving to emphasize his malice.

It was the spring of 1965 and I, an aspiring young architect, traveled on my way from London to the firm’s Edinburgh office to act as the field representative on a new hospital we had designed. The new position challenged and excited me, even though, up until then, I had regarded anywhere north of Watford as part of the “Black Industrial North,” stretching in a state of uncultured wilderness to the Outer Hebrides. I had already been up a couple of times to visit the site and get things ready for my move. On both occasions I had enjoyed a magnificent view of Durham City from the train and saw it as a medieval town that looked neither black nor industrial. This view aroused my architectural curiosity and tempted me to break my journey to have a closer look at the famous cathedral. On an impulse, I telephoned the Peters, who are remote cousins of my mother’s. They greeted my call with such warmth that I accepted their invitation to come to dinner. As I needed to make an early start the next day, I turned down their offer to spend the night and booked myself into the County Hotel.

They met me at the station, and my visit started with a tour of Durham. If the cathedral is beautiful from the railway, it is many times lovelier at close quarters. On this day its sandstone glowed a pinkish yellow in the late afternoon sun, while its majestic Norman interior impressed me with its proportions and detailing. My tour of the Peters’ home was no less interesting. It began in Professor Peters’ library. Here the grey-haired professor with his bushy beard and sparking blue-grey eyes started by opening his drink’s cabinet and made me one of his special concoctions, the “Gin and It”. This drink consisted of a liberal mix of gin and Italian vermouths, lovingly stirred with lemon rind and ice. While we drank, he fondled his glass in his long well manicured fingers and told me about his lifelong passion for oriental artifacts. His collection included a stalwart pair of T’ang Dynasty tomb figures which stood in a lighted silk lined corner cabinet. He told me that the dynasty ran from 680-907 making the figures older than the Norman cathedral which we had just visited. As I admired his museum-like treasures I shared his special regard for an exquisite white china Quan Yen with delicate fingers and flowing china robes. He had her standing on an open display table in a corner opposite the door so that she would be the first thing to be seen on entering the room.

It was fortified by alcohol and imbibed with culture that I first saw the Chinaman. Looking back, I cannot be sure whether it was his face which initially disconcerted me or whether it was his strange presence in the middle of the table, presiding uncannily over the meal and directly obstructing my view of the Peters’ pretty teenage daughter, Vivien. The food itself was a disaster: the prawns in the cocktail were still slightly frozen, the chicken burnt, and the strawberry mousse had separated into a thick pink jelly floating on a sloppy red sauce.

Mrs. Peters kept nervously catching a stray lock and pushing it behind her ears to get closer to her brown bun, as she interrupted the conversation to interject her profuse apologies, “I’m terribly sorry, Michael. I just can’t imagine what could have happened. It is simply dreadful! Please don’t let this put you off, will you? You must visit us again! Viv, my dear, are you sure that you waited until the gelatin was almost set?”

To keep the faltering conversation going, I asked about the Chinaman. Mrs. Peters’ face lit up as she launched into the conversation like a galleon with a sudden trade wind, her eyes aglow with pleasure. The Chinaman was hers.

“Yes, Michael, he is a beautiful piece,” she said. “I inherited him from Father when he died a few years ago. But I first saw him in my Mother’s older brother Uncle Charlie’s rooms in Cambridge. It was during the war when I worked as a nurse at St. Thomas’, nursing bomb casualties. One day Mother, incapacitated due to a broken leg, implored me to go to his bedside. I remembered Uncle Charlie as an outgoing, fun-loving person who always had time for me when he visited. So I asked for some leave and hastened to Cambridge. When I got there I found things far worse than we expected. Uncle Charlie, although only fifty, lay alone and clearly dying and had already stopped eating. His high living and profligate lifestyle left him bereft of friends and possessions. His bare rooms gaped in their emptiness. The only thing of beauty was the Chinaman who stood serenely aloof from the squalor around him.

“I did what I could to make him comfortable. He even seemed to rally a little and became more coherent. It was during one of his better spells that he tried to tell me about the Chinaman. I honestly didn’t catch everything that he told me, for he spoke in jumbled, confused snippets. However, he did manage to impress upon me that he wished to bequeath the Chinaman to my Mother as he believed him to be a harbinger of good luck.”

At this point her narration was interrupted while she and the professor served cheese, crackers and port as a much-needed closure to the meal. It gave me a chance to muse to myself that it seemed strange that a dying man who had lost everything to gambling should assert that anything brought him good luck.

As we ate our cheese and sipped port, Mrs. Peters continued. “Well, as I said, Uncle Charlie wished the Chinaman to go to Mother, so after he died and I had finished taking care of his affairs and funeral, I hurried back to London, taking him with me. When I got back I placed him on my bedside table.

“Now here’s where I got proof that he is a harbinger of good luck. Every night the Blitz raged with bombs and sirens. Each day we had more casualties and so I nightly fell into bed exhausted. Generally I slept through the raids and rarely took refuge in the underground. One night it was especially bad, and a bomb hit the adjacent building. The impact was so forceful that the floor above me collapsed, sending a beam into my room. It fell across the floor and narrowly missed both the Chinaman and me. I knew right then that I owed my escape to the Chinaman!”

Mrs. Peters looked flushed as she mused about her narrow escape. I wondered about the significance of both Mrs. Peters and the Chinaman being saved.

After our meal we withdrew into the sitting room and there, while Mrs. Peters busily made coffee and the Professor rushed off to give a student a late tutorial, Vivien told me the rest of the story, “Mummy generally skips this part,” she said. “Grandmother died soon after the end of the war and left all her possessions to Grandfather. He associated the Chinaman with her death and had him wrapped and put away in the attic. Sometime later Grandfather had a stroke and Mother had to rush down to Sussex to visit him. When she got there she was surprised to find the Chinaman had been rescued from the attic and was standing on his bedside table. Sometime later Grandfather had a second stroke and died. Mother inherited all his possessions, including the Chinaman.”

The next day I went on to Edinburgh and took up my assignment with little thought of the Peters in Durham. About a month later a beautiful young woman came to Edinburgh to provide some interior consultation on the hospital. I showed her around the City and took her to dinner. We hit it off immediately, and began a long distance romance. The urgency of our courtship and my work schedule kept me preoccupied, which meant that any trips which I did make to London were by train to maximize my time with Katrina. The closest I got to Durham was the magnificent view from the railway. However, when Katrina invited me to visit her parents in Oxford, I decided to combine a business trip with a long weekend and felt that, for such a trip, a car would be invaluable. I visited the Peters on my return journey.

The first thing that I noticed when I went into the professor’s library was the Chinaman, standing, still bent slightly under his fish load, in the exact spot where the professor’s treasured QuanYen had stood. The professor caught my eye and sighed:

“Yes, we had them both there for some time! But, then, one day, the Quan Yen fell over, and broke to smithereens. I’ve kept the pieces, but I cannot bear the thought of cracks across her. I loved her perfection, her slender white fragility. We all wonder how it happened as nobody was in that day and nobody confesses to have even been near the room.” He shook his grey head and sighed. “We will never know what it was just one of life’s little mysteries.”

“And now, how about the other half?” he asked as he stretched out his hand to replenish my drink.

The rest of the visit was highly successful. We had a delicious meal. I enjoyed their company so much that I stayed longer than I had intended and arrived back in Edinburgh after midnight. I, therefore, decided that the next time I had to go through Durham, I should not stop. Fate had things worked out otherwise, and coming back from a weekend visit when Katrina and I met half way in York, my car broke down about fifteen miles south of Durham City. Marooned, I decided to stay in the area overnight so that I could talk to the garage personally in the morning. I called the Peters, who seemed delighted to hear from me and insisted that I spend the night. We again had a superb meal. This time I did not see the Chinaman and said nothing thinking that they had perhaps banished him to the attic. But he still greeted me on this, my unlucky day. First a broken down car and now, when they ushered me into my room, I found him standing next to my bed.

The attractive room had pale yellow walls, the color of the Chinaman’s robes, and scarlet Titian red velvet curtains with matching bedspread. It had Venetian cut-glass light fittings which gave an oriental cast harmonizing remarkably well with the Chinaman. Being very tired I tried to ignore the Chinaman and fell asleep.

I dreamt that I drove along a red road through a town of pagoda-like houses. The upturned eaves laughed at me as I drove. Then they morphed and stretched themselves out like hands trying to halt my progress. As I drove faster and faster, they became more and more agile, stripping off parts of my car in their attempts to stop me. I pushed my foot so hard on the accelerator that it ached. I began to panic, and then, in my frenzy, I heard an unmistakable noise behind me. Coming towards me I heard a flap-flapping sound accompanied by big thuds as though something large and flat were being struck forcibly on the road. I looked around to see how close the Chinaman could be while still urging the limping car to go faster. But he gained on me, loping as a giraffe runs, with no apparent effort and great speed and, as he approached, he flailed the road with his fish. He grew bigger and bigger. He got so close that his figure filled the sky and it began to get difficult to see. I could still hear him coming and now realized that the car had evaporated and that I stood paralyzed, like a frightened rabbit, waiting to be encompassed by his billowing robe and flattened by the huge fish which I heard swishing through the air toward me. I struggled, frantically waving my arms, and awoke to find that the eiderdown had worked itself up over my face. It was good to be back to reality.

The following morning, over toast and marmalade, I could not resist mentioning that I had dreamt about the Chinaman. The professor gave me a mischievous wink.

“Yes,” he said, “I don’t seem to get on with him either. Hey, Viv, did you hear that? The Chinaman has been upsetting our guest!”

“Only a dream,” I said, but the professor continued unabashed.

“Viv, couldn’t you get your mother to put him somewhere else? He is not the right sort of ornament for a bedroom.”

“But Daddy, you know that we’ve tried everywhere else! There is nowhere suitable for him in the dining room. He is so odd on the table, and you said that you don’t like him in the library, and the drawing room looks like a junk shop when he is in there!”

“I know you are right. I’ll have to have a word with your mother. Perhaps we can sort something out!”

My next visit was not until after Easter. This time I was surprised to find a much-altered household. Mrs. Peters was critically ill. In February she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now she lay in her upstairs bedroom, surrounded by books and sweet-smelling flowers, looking serene. I couldn’t help but notice that there, by her bedside, stood the Chinaman. I gasped as I remembered that all her close family members had died with him by their sides. I again privately wondered whether this could be the source of his enigmatic countenance.

“So, you finally moved him in here,” I said, indicating the figure with a nod of my head.

“Yes,” she said, her face lighting up attractively in spite of her illness. “He didn’t fit anywhere else, so I decided to have him in here beside me.” She glanced over to the table where he stood. “Flowers always seem to wilt on that table. Anyway, he looks better on his own. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind putting the flowers on the other table?”

After that I avoided visiting them again, as clearly the dying Mrs. Peters needed to be left in the hands of her close friends and family. I felt that it would have been presumptuous of me to barge in on their privacy. My personal life had also taken a wonderful turn when Katina had accepted my proposal of marriage and we began to make plans for my move back to London and our wedding.

In July, I heard of Mrs. Peters’ death and private funeral, and shared my condolences with the grieving family. Things were moving fast between Katrina and me, and we decided that we should get married as soon as my Edinburgh assignment was completed. By September I returned to London. Katrina and I spent our weekends getting to know the city, visiting museums and walking. On one of our long, meandering walks we ended up going to Sands in New Bond Street for coffee and cake and then, walking up Piccadilly, happened to pass Sotheby’s auction house. I had never been in the saleroom before, although I had often seen the catalogues which my mother collected, so we grabbed the opportunity and went inside.

I saw him the moment we entered the China and Ceramics department. I gazed at him for some time, mesmerized by his countenance, and then went and got a catalogue. There was little about him in the catalogue, just a short description and a listing of an anonymous vendor. I looked at him again; surely there could be only one such figure. He stood alone, as usual, on a display shelf with his body still bent slightly under his fish. He still maliciously, enigmatically, half smiled, half frowned, his wicked eyes still flashed strangely in tune with his black moustache, which still hung, almost sadly, from his mouth. I knew that I recognized him and that Professor Peters and Vivien disliked him, so I suspected that they were selling him to ostracize his malice from their home. Katrina seemed to enjoy my fascination and watched me with a happy, almost smug, smile as I gazed, questioningly, at him.

Soon afterward the headaches began. At first, infrequent, but then they gathered in momentum. Katrina and I surmised that they must be stress-induced due to the move and the wedding preparations. I am unconvinced, as I have never suffered from headaches and weathered the stress of architecture school unscathed. Christmas approached and Katrina and I had neatly wrapped gifts for each other nestled under our Christmas tree. The excited Katrina claimed to have found the ‘perfect’ gift for me. On Christmas Eve, I opened her present, as I watched her eyes dance with excitement.

“Michael, my darling, it took some doing to get him without your knowledge, but when I saw how much you like him. I knew that you’d love him. He is perfect, isn’t he?”

My hands tremble, my head aches, and I wonder what I should do next.