The Luminaries

afternoon,’ he said.
    ‘What do you want?’ Anna whispered. ‘Yes—good afternoon. You know I’m not taking opium any more. Did you know that?’
    He peered at her.
    ‘Three weeks,’ she added, as if to persuade him. ‘I haven’t had a pipe in three weeks.’
    ‘How?’ said Ah Sook.
    She shook her head. ‘You have to understand it: I’m not the same as I was.’
    ‘Why you come no more to Kaniere?’ Ah Sook said. He did not know how to say that he missed her; that each afternoon before her arrival he used to arrange the cushions on the daybed just so, and tidy his belongings, and make sure his clothes were neat and his pigtail tied; that as he watched her sleep he had often been near-choked with joy; that he had sometimes reached out his hand and let it hover within an inch of her breast, as though he could feel the softness of her skin in that smoky space between his flesh and hers; that sometimes after she took her pipe he would wait some time before taking his own, so that he could watch her, and fix her image in his mind, to remember.
    ‘I can’t come to see you any more,’ Anna said. ‘You mustn’t be here. I can’t come.’
    Ah Sook studied her sadly. ‘No more smoke?’
    ‘No more,’ Anna said. ‘No more smoke, and no more Kaniere.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I can’t explain it—not here. I’ve stopped, Ah Sook. I’ve stopped it altogether.’
    ‘No more money?’ said Ah Sook, trying to understand. He knew that Anna had laboured under an enormous debt. She owed a great deal of money to Dick Mannering, and the debt mounted every day. Perhaps she could no longer afford the drug. Or perhaps she could no longer afford the time to make the journey, to take it.
    ‘It’s not money,’ Anna said.
    Just then a female voice called out Anna’s name, from deep in the well of the house, and asked, in a tone of impatient condescension , to know the name and business of the caller at the door.
    Anna turned her chin to the side but did not move her eyes from Ah Sook’s face. ‘It’s just a chink I used to know,’ she called. ‘It’s nothing.’
    ‘Well, what does he want?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Anna called again. ‘He’s only trying to sell me something .’
    There was a silence.
    ‘I bring to you—here?’ said Ah Sook. He cupped his hands together and proffered them to her, indicating that he was willing to deliver the resin himself.
    ‘No,’ Anna whispered. ‘No, you can’t do that. It’s no use. I just—the thing is—I can’t feel it any more.’
    Ah Sook did not understand this. ‘Last piece,’ he said, meaning the ounce he had gifted her on the afternoon of her near-death. ‘Last piece—unlucky?’
    ‘No,’ Anna began, but before she could speak further there were quick steps in the passage, and in the next moment a second woman had appeared at Anna’s side.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘What is it that you are selling? That will do, Anna’—and at once Anna melted back from the doorway.
    Ah Sook had also taken a step backwards—but in shock rather than submission, for this was the first he had seen of Lydia Greenway in nearly thirteen years. The last time that he had laid eyes upon her was—when?—at the Sydney courthouse, she in the gallery, he in the dock; she red-faced, fanning herself with an embroidered sandalwood fan, the scent of which had floated down to reach him, recalling, in a rush of emotion, his family’s warehouse on the Kwangchow waterfront, and the sandalwood boxes in which the merchants packed their bolts of silk, before the wars. She had been wearing a gown of pale green—this he remembered well—and a bonnet covered in lace; she had kept her face perfectly grave, throughout the trial. Her testimony, when she gave it, had beenshort and to the point. Ah Sook had not understood a word of it, save for when she pointed directly at him, evidently to identify him to the court. When Ah Sook was acquitted of the murder she had betrayed no emotion of any kind: she had only risen, mutely, and left the courtroom without a backward glance. Over twelve years had passed since that day! Over twelve years—and yet here she was, monstrously present, monstrously unchanged! Her copper hair was as bright as ever; her skin was fresh, and hardly lined. She was as plump and buxom as Anna was gaunt.
    In the next moment her features also slackened—which was unusual, for Lydia’s expressions were typically very artfully manicured , and she did not like to