A chill ran down her spine. This was her brother’s voice coming out of the priest’s mouth, and he was muttering the same nonsensical things he had said when he had been deliriously ill.
“What won’t work? Ah Jit, tell me, what won’t work?” Su Yi asked urgently.
“I can’t take that many. It’s too dangerous. We have to move very quickly, and we can’t fight back?”
“Ah Jit, slow down, who’s fighting back?” Su Yi wrung her hands in frustration, feeling them get sticky. When she looked down at the silk paisley handkerchief, she saw that it was covered in a strange weblike mucus mixed with blood. Suddenly her brother stopped his incoherent ranting and spoke to her in a clear, lucid tone. “I think you know what to do now, Su Yi. Trust your instincts. This is the only way we can atone for all that our ancestors have done. You can never tell anyone, especially not Father.”
In an instant, she knew what her brother meant. “How am I going to do all this by myself?”
“I have no doubt in you, sister. You are the last hope now…are you awake? Mummy, are you awake?”
Su Yi felt a hand on her shoulder, and suddenly she was no longer in that exquisite temple in Ranakpur, and the priest with the bluish eyes was gone. She found herself waking up in her bedroom at Tyersall Park, the morning sun glaring into her eyes.
“Mummy, are you awake? I’ve brought Bishop See to see you,” Victoria said chirpily.
Su Yi let out a low groan.
“I think she may be in pain,” Bishop See said.
Su Yi groaned again. This irritating daughter just interrupted me from one of the most vivid moments in my life. Ah Jit was speaking to me, Ah Jit was trying to tell me something, and now he’s gone.
“Let me call in the nurse,” Victoria said in a worried tone. “She’s pumped so full of hydrocodone, she really shouldn’t be feeling anything. They said there might be hallucinations, that’s all.”
“I’m not in pain, you just woke me up so suddenly,” Su Yi muttered in frustration.
“Well, Bishop See is here to say a prayer for you—”
“Please, some water…” Su Yi said, her throat as usual feeling so parched in the morning.
“Oh yes, water. Now, let me see. Bishop See, could you do me a favor and go into my mother’s dressing room? There are some Venetian glasses on a tray beside her dressing table, lovely handblown glasses with dolphin stems from a wonderful shop near the Danieli. Just bring me one of those.”
“Aiyah, there’s a plastic cup right here.” Su Yi gestured to the bedside table.
“Oh, silly me, I didn’t see that. Ah, Bishop See, do you see a water carafe by that table behind you? There should be an insulated silver carafe, with an art nouveau motif of stephanotis flowers carved along the handle.”
“Just get me the goddamn cup,” Su Yi said.
“Oh dear, Mummy, language. Bishop See is in the room,” Victoria said, trying to hand over the cup.
“Do you not see that my hands are tangled up in tubes? You need to help me sip the water from the straw!” Su Yi said in frustration.
“Here, do allow me.” The bishop stepped in and took the cup from a frazzled Victoria.
“Thank you,” Su Yi said gratefully after she had taken a few precious sips.
“Now Mummy, Bishop See and I were speaking earlier over breakfast, and I was reminded that you’ve never been baptized. The bishop has kindly brought with him a little vessel of holy water from the River Jordan, and I’m wondering if we might do a ritual baptism right here in this room.”
“No, I don’t want to be baptized,” Su Yi said flatly.
“But Mummy, do you not realize that until you are baptized, you can never enter the kingdom of heaven?”
“How many times do I have to tell you I am not a Christian?”
“Don’t be silly, Mummy, of course you are. If you’re not a Christian, you won’t be able to go to heaven. Don’t you want to be with Daddy…and all of us in the future that is eternity?”
Su Yi could not think of a worse fate than to be trapped with her eem zheem*2 daughter throughout all of eternity. She simply sighed, tired of having this conversation again.
“Er, Mrs. Young…if I might ask,” the bishop began gingerly, “if you aren’t a Christian, what do you consider yourself to be?”