I really have lost my mind, Nina had to admit. There is no Daniel Bernard. I must have imagined it all.

She spent a long time moping in her compartment, convinced that her life was essentially over. Her past no longer existed, she had no control over her present, and the only realistic future that awaited her was a Chinese prison and not some imagined romance with a rich handsome stranger.

Just when Nina thought things couldn’t get any worse, the electricity had failed. But as she descended the steps of her car, she was met by a man she had never imagined she would see again.

3

Klim woke up and discovered that Nina had moved to her bed; the couch had been too narrow for the two of them.

Outside, in the world beyond the window shade, bustle, voices, and the snorting of a steam engine could be heard. The sun was shining and the morning was in full swing. But here, in the cocoon of the compartment, a gentle restorative twilight still reigned.

Klim leaned on his elbow and drank in the sight of his sleeping wife. What incredible and improbable circumstances had thrown them together?

Strong, stunning, and impossible, Nina hadn’t changed an iota. The shadow of her eyelashes flickered imperceptibly, and the skin on her neck and rounded shoulder shone like a dusky and ethereal pearl.

Klim looked around him. Someone had paid for Nina’s luxury compartment, her perfume and outfits. Most likely, she had had a fight with her sugar daddy and decided to cheat on him to get her revenge. Meeting Klim had just provided her with the perfect opportunity. What role could he ever play in her current life? An occasional guest lover? The ring on her finger alone cost more than he could earn in six months.

Klim glanced at his watch and hurriedly started to dress. It was five to eight, and he was in danger of missing the meeting with Roy Andersen.

He took his suitcase from the luggage rack, slipped out of the compartment, and stopped for a second in the middle of the corridor. Should I wake Nina up? he thought. No, let her sleep. We can talk when I get back, and then what will be, will be.

He went out onto the platform and squinted in the bright May sun. People were rushing past in one direction as if hurrying to see a house on fire.

“Have you heard the news?” Ursula cried, rushing up to him. “Daniel Bernard has managed to escape from the bandits.”

“Edna’s husband?”

“Come quickly. He’s just about to recount his story to the press. He’s very fair, and his face became so severely sunburned that the bandits thought he had contracted a dangerous disease. So they left him for dead in the forest.”

There was a huge crush of people by the station building, but the guards were only letting journalists in. Klim entered the waiting room where a blond man was sitting in a dense circle of photographers and reporters. Daniel Bernard was dressed in dirty striped pajamas, someone else’s coat had been thrown over his shoulders. His face was a livid red, and the skin on his nose and forehead was peeling in small white scales.

Daniel Bernard was dead on his feet: he had been wandering the mountains for two days before he met a search party of soldiers who finally brought him to the station.

“The bandits lined us up in rows and drove us into the mountains,” he said. “But with three hundred of us, they had bitten off more than they could chew. We didn’t have any food or water supplies, and many of us didn’t even have shoes. The gentleman who was walking by my side knew the local dialect, and he overheard the bandits talking about letting the women and children go free. To their way of thinking, men are much more valuable hostages and can command much higher ransoms.”

Ursula was too small to be able to see Daniel from behind the scrum of other reporters. “The authorities have tried to provide the hostages food and water supplies through envoys,” she cried from behind the reporters’ backs. “Did anything get through?”

Daniel shook his head. “The bandits threw everything away except the canned stew. They thought that the food might contain sleeping drugs.”

“Do they have any political demands?” Klim asked.

“No. These villagers haven’t become robbers because of politics. It’s purely out of desperation. The local peasants have five to eight children and live in utter poverty because they have no land rights. The bandits are young men who can only provide for themselves by robbing others.”

At that moment a short plump man with a doctor’s bag under his arm rushed into the room, barging through the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Dr. Piper and I must insist that you leave Mr. Bernard alone immediately. He needs medical attention and rest.”

Klim and Ursula went off to the telegraph office to send their cables, but there was a huge queue, and they ended up waiting for hours.

“Edna is so lucky that her husband has managed to escape from the bandits,” Ursula kept saying.

Klim nodded, but he was thinking about something else. What if he was to offer Nina a fresh start in life? Would she agree? What if she had meant it when she had said that they couldn’t get a divorce?

After sending his telegram, Klim raced back to the station, but when he reached the platform, he didn’t recognize the place. There were only empty freight cars on the tracks.

“Where is the Shanghai train?” Klim asked a young Chinese dressed in a railway uniform.

He looked at him over his round glasses. “I’m sorry, sir. It left a long time ago.”

4

A woman always knows when intimacy with her becomes very special for a man and when he is overwhelmed with happiness just because he has had a chance to hold her in his arms. That was what had happened between Nina and Klim that night, and she was surprised that he had disappeared, without saying a word to her.

She was sitting by the window, waiting for him, but an hour passed, then another, and another—and still Klim hadn’t shown up. There could only be one possible explanation: he had wanted nothing but to teach Nina a lesson and show her what she had lost.

How could she have doubted Klim? In less than a half a year he had settled in Shanghai and, apparently, was making a much better job than his ne’er-do-well wife.

There was a knock on the door, and Nina sprang to her feet.

But it was only Jiří. “Daniel Bernard has just escaped from captivity,” he said, excitedly. “He’ll be traveling to Shanghai on our train.”

Utterly crushed, Nina sank back down on the couch. She no longer gave a damn about Daniel Bernard.

The attendant appeared at the end of the corridor. “Ladies and gentlemen, the train will be leaving in fifteen minutes. Please, have your return tickets ready.”

Nina looked at her watch. It was half past one. Klim was not about to return. He had, after all, said that he wanted a divorce.

“Are you all right?” Jiří asked, looking into her eyes.

“Let’s just go home,” Nina replied, barely audible.

5

Every now and then, Jiří would knock at Nina’s door and tell her about Daniel Bernard. First, he went to the dining car, and then the train master visited him, and after that—

Nina couldn’t stand it any longer and rushed to the open smoking area at the end of the last car, just to have a chance to be alone.

The wheels clattered rhythmically, and the wind eddied over the vast green fields of sorghum. Nina stood, clutching the handrail, and wept silently.

Eventually, her remorse gave way to anger. “We’ll see who wins,” she whispered. “And boy, are you going to regret it.”

The doors parted slightly. Nina turned her head and recoiled as a man with a red scaly face stepped into the smoking area. To top everything, this was the “prince” she had been dreaming of—Jiří had already told Nina about Daniel’s misadventures in the forest.

Daniel lighted his cigarette, and he and Nina stood in silence for a while. From time to time, she gave him a puzzled look. In real life, Mr. Bernard was an angular, disheveled man with a rather abrupt way of moving. He constantly shrugged his shoulders, and the hand that held his cigarette jerked upward every now and then.

He had been sneaking secret glances at Nina, too.

“You know, you have a remarkable complexion,” he said. “I’ve really never seen anything like it before.”

Nina looked at her reflection in the glass door and gasped: her face was as filthy as a chimney sweep’s. The handrail she had been clutching had been smeared in soot, and she had soiled her face while wiping away her tears.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” she asked. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

Daniel smiled. “I do, but I daren’t give it to you. If you end up transforming yourself into a beautiful woman, I’d never be able to summon up the courage to talk to you. As things are, I think we rather complement each other. After all red and black do go rather well together.”

Nina was confused. Was he laughing at himself or her?

“We’ll just have to pass ourselves off as ‘a pair of rough diamonds,’” Daniel suggested. “Have you ever heard the story of the Imperial Seal of China?”

“Do you really have no one else to talk to?” Nina said, frowning.

Daniel shrugged. “I think I’d rather converse with you than the train master. He’s so dull, he could bore a man into an early grave. So I fear you have little choice but to listen to my story: A long time ago, a man called Bian He found a piece of jade in the hills and brought it to the king. Alas, the poor man was soon chased out of the palace without a word of thanks for his pains, his lump of jade tossed after him in contempt. When the king died, his younger brother ascended the throne, and Bian He repeated his long journey but again to no avail. Only the third king recognized the value of the treasure laid before him. Out of this stone, he ordered that a special ritual disc be made, known as bi, the symbol of the sky. It was so beautiful that it became an object of envy throughout China. Other rulers coveted it, and to obtain it, armies and even cities were lost. Many wars were waged for it and much blood shed for its sake. Long centuries passed, and the disc happened to fall into the hands of Qin Shi Huang, who turned it into the Heirloom Seal of the Realm. From that time forth, whoever possessed it was granted a mandate of power from the Heavens to rule the Empire. So the moral of my story is: Do not rush to reject a thing that might at first appear unsightly.”