French Concession (11 page)

Leng was lonely. No one had given her anything to do, and she also hadn't had a visitor in days. She felt abandoned. The night before, she had called Ku from the telephone in the hardware store across the street. This was a clear violation of the rules, but she could not help herself. She sounded like she was about to cry. Just stay put and Lin will be along tomorrow, Ku said. Leng felt a rush of hope.

She slept better than she had in days. Anyone would be miserable, left alone like that. The next morning, she put on makeup, and picked out a checkered cheongsam and a pair of white leather shoes. She would go to the market and buy fish. Lin liked fish. She considered him a real friend, the only person in the cell in whom she could confide.

As she drew the curtains, sunlight streamed across the table. She pushed the window open to let in the crisp morning breeze. Then she poked her head out and got a shock. That man was standing on Rue Amiral Bayle, at the end of the longtang next to the hardware store, looking up at her window. It was the man she had seen a few days ago—or rather, the man who had been standing at the railing of the
Paul Lecat
.

She calmly withdrew her head and put on her shoes. Don't close the windows or draw the curtains, she told herself. She reflected for a moment, and reached out to hang her thin blanket outside the window. Don't turn that way, don't look, she warned herself.

She hurried downstairs. There was only one way out of the longtang, which opened onto Rue Amiral Bayle. She had no way of knowing what this man wanted. They said her picture was in all the newspapers, and anyone could recognize her.

On the intersection of Rue Amiral Bayle and Rue Conty
,
she ran into trouble.

She picked Lin out right away. He was in a white canvas suit and clutching a magazine. Then she saw the two other men with him. She was dismayed to see a policeman standing in front of Lin, but immediately realized that this was a routine search. Lin's bourgeois appearance seemed to irritate the Vietnamese man in a bamboo hat, who searched him thoroughly. He grabbed Lin's magazine and gave it to the Frenchman with him, but the Frenchman only shook his head. At the end of the search, he paused before reaching his hand out to pat down the back of Lin's waist, as though he had saved the most important step for last, to catch Lin off guard.

On the other end of the roadblock, the Chinese detective opened up the seat of a rickshaw and rifled energetically through its contents. Passersby cursed and grumbled. The police soon lost interest in Lin, and waved him on.

To Leng's puzzlement, Lin did not leave right away. He hesitated, looking at the ground, and rolling up the magazine in his hand. He stared into space, as if he were wondering why the police were performing searches so early in the morning. Then he looked behind him and tapped his head with the rolled-up magazine, as though he had just thought of something and had to go back for it.

She had already raised her left arm to wave at him, but Lin was not looking toward her.

Just as he turned, a gunshot rang out, and everyone looked past Lin in the direction from which the shot had sounded.

Only she was looking at Lin. He turned around, the gun went off, and in the confusion he nearly tripped. For an instant Leng thought he had been shot.

Some people fled south along Rue Amiral Bayle, while others ducked into doorways and gaped at the runners. The police had
recovered from their shock, and the sound of police whistles and warning shots rang out. Chinese plainclothes detectives raced after the shooter.

He was still firing off rounds and looking over his shoulders at them. Then he began to skip along sideways, taunting his pursuers like a mischievous urchin. He twisted around to fire into the air behind him, obviously to create confusion.

Leng saw Lin run toward Rue Conty, and she hurried after him, trying to catch up. The shooter, who was trying to escape, had to be one of her own comrades, someone who had been there with Lin. More people appeared, crowding at longtang gates to see what the fuss was about. People poked their heads out of second-floor windows, as if the street were a movie set and gunfire were nothing to be afraid of.

Then, suddenly, no one was running any longer, and Rue Conty reverted to its usual morning stillness.

Lin had melted into the crowd. Leng had to slow down. Her mind was racing. She didn't know whether she could or should go back to her room. Luckily she had seen the man and left immediately, or she wouldn't have witnessed this incident. Right now the apartment would be a dangerous place to be.

She was annoyed that Lin hadn't gone straight there to give her the news and tell her what to do.

She was still scanning the backs of people walking ahead of her. Perhaps she should find a telephone and call Ku. But she dared not just borrow a telephone from a corner shop. She mustn't let anyone overhear her. She thought about calling from a hostel on the street corner but decided the phone at the reception was not safe—a few extra cents would not keep these people from talking. The Concession was crawling with police informers.

She cut through a longtang toward Avenue Dubail, figuring that she would find a public telephone booth there. During the day, the iron doors leading into the longtangs were all open, but the sunlight never penetrated beneath the third floor windows. Despite the breeze, the air was moist with the smoke from yesterday's dinner
and the smell of chamber pots left to dry in the sun. The narrow alleyways stank like the city's intestines.

She heard footsteps clicking on the glazed tiles behind her and echoing through the quiet longtang. When she turned the corner she stole a glance behind her and saw the man again, although this time he was not carrying his gigantic camera. She quickened her footsteps. Who was that man anyway? Why was he following her? She knew he had recognized her.

She suspected that the unusual search on the corner of Rue Conty had been no coincidence. It must have had something to do with the man. She was irritated at Lin for having made off so quickly. If only he were here, they could ambush that man, attack him with bricks or a stick, or somehow knock him unconscious.

He was clearly her enemy. He must have drawn the police there. Perhaps he was an informer. But she could not imagine how he could have found the meeting point on Rue Amiral Bayle unless he had seen her leave the safe house. They had been right, then, when they told her she was instantly recognizable. She had to get in touch with Ku. This was an emergency, and she must report it to the cell right away.

The next longtang led to Rue Lafayette. She stepped out of the longtang and waited impatiently for the Vietnamese policeman to turn the sign so she could cross the street. A fence painted black stood beneath the parasol tree, and behind it she could see the shrubbery inside the Koukaza Gardens, the sunlight glittering on grass behind the wooden lattice gates. The telephone booth lay to the west of the gates.

Two gangs of French urchins were fighting for control of the booth. When its hinged door swung into one tousled blond head, the boy collapsed next to the telephone booth, and the children scattered immediately. The old man who sold telephone tokens sat inside the booth, observing them impassively.

Only when Leng walked right up to the booth did the fallen warrior let out a loud cry, leap up, and scamper in the direction of the park gates.

The street was quiet, except for the breeze rustling the leaves of the parasol tree. Leng had no money. She had not brought her handbag, and she did not have a single cent on her.

Later, Hsueh would tell her that she had been standing in the telephone booth looking frantic, like a bird trapped in a cage.

And there he was, smiling through the windows of the telephone booth, just as he had smiled at her not too long ago at Wu-sung-k'ou, when the early morning sun was shining and there was a breeze on deck.

“I saw you on the ship.”

He opened the spring-hinged door, poking his head in to speak to her.

Leng thought it best to deny this. “What ship? I don't know you.”

“Sure you don't. But I can give you this.”

He retracted his head and held a telephone token against the window with his finger, making it slide up and down the glass.

She swung the door open and walked out. Yesterday's dew hung on the thick beams of the fence. He cut her off at the gate.

“Who are you and why are you following me?” Leng said loudly while a couple two feet away walked into the park, one after another. The young man turned to look at her, unmoved. Clearly he had his own troubles and no time for anyone else's, or why would he be in the park so early in the morning? Leng caught a glimpse of a red tassel out of the corner of her eye. The Vietnamese policeman was standing at a pavilion by the gate and yawning. The sunlight glinted off the wet grass roof of the wood and brick Romanesque pavilion. The policeman took an interest in them and began to meander over.

She panicked. Should she scream? Her photograph was in all the newspapers. In fact, it was probably in the police files and pinned on the wall of the police station with photos of all the other suspects. She turned around and walked into the park. She was furious that they hadn't given her a pistol. If she had one, she would shoot him dead right now, she fumed.

It was a Sunday, and the park was bustling with visitors. She paid
no attention to the people strolling about; it was the policemen she was worried about. The Vietnamese and Chinese policemen kept appearing from the wide path that ran north-south through the park, and a small policeman rode along on horseback, fully armed. His line of sight stretched from the south to the north gate of the park.

And the man was still walking two steps behind her.

Hsueh did not lack the imagination that Sarly was always saying a good agent had to have. Not that Sarly gave him much advice about intelligence work when they met that afternoon. He was nostalgic for the war, for muddy trenches, for the smell of burned grass mingled with the deep earthy scent of the fields after rain. So he spent most of the afternoon reminiscing about the trenches and his friendship with Hsueh's father, whom he referred to as Pierre, and whose photographs lay on the table. Anything I do for you, I'm doing for Pierre (may he rest in peace), he said. The Concession Police always needs new blood, and of course—Lieutenant Sarly had always valued patrilineage—you are French.

“To be a good agent, you must use your imagination,” said Lieutenant Sarly. “The facts won't just present themselves to you—all you've got are a couple of clues and your imagination. The sergeants each have dozens of agents working under them, and the inspectors have even bigger teams. But you will be different. You'll report directly to me.”

He had been terrified when Therese pointed her pistol at him that day, and had consequently told her a boatload of lies. In retrospect, he realized that a woman who sold explosives to Communists and the Green Gang could not possibly have been fooled by his amateurish excuses. That night he began to suspect it was only a matter of time before someone blew his cover. Therese would question Mr.
Ku the way she had questioned him, and between them they would soon work out that Hsueh had been causing trouble for them. Then they would come for him. They could batter the door down while he was fast asleep, they could ambush him at the end of a dark alley, they could even surprise him in the steamy public baths, and hold his head under the hot murky water to drown him.

In the middle of the night, he suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. He began to figure how much time he had left to escape. Therese would tell Zung about her suspicions, and then, like a zigzagging billiard ball, this story about an inquisitive young good-for-nothing would reach the ears of the two young men he followed in the cab, and Mr. Ku himself.

On the other hand, things were also going well for him now that he had become a police investigator with secret privileges. He was anxious to prove himself. Lieutenant Sarly wanted him to locate the dark longtang to which he had followed a Hong Kong businessman and a couple of other men, who then suddenly disappeared.

He used to make up stories to satisfy Inspector Maron, tell him whatever he thought he could get away with. But Hsueh was moved by Lieutenant Sarly's determination to honor his friendship with Hsueh's father, and he agreed to take a police squad to the apartment on Rue Amiral Bayle. When Maron started mobilizing his men, however, Hsueh began to have second thoughts. He still held a grudge against Maron, and he didn't want him getting all the credit for this case. He was gratified to realize that he would not be able to pinpoint the exact location of the apartment anyway, since all the longtangs on that street looked more or less the same.

Early that morning, he paced back and forth from one end of Rue Amiral Bayle to the other. Even the ordinarily composed Inspector Maron grew impatient. He had a few of his men set up a roadblock and frisk pedestrians. This was an old police trick: turn up the heat and flush out anyone who looks nervous.

He saw the woman stop in her tracks. A young man in a white linen suit was waiting by the police roadblock. Hsueh recognized him immediately as his old friend from Bendigo.

When chaos broke out, the woman did not stop to find out what was happening like other people on the street. She turned and began to walk away quickly, slipping past the police blockade. She tried to follow the young man, and he watched her lose her mark.

Lieutenant Sarly's comment about using your imagination came to mind. Hsueh thought the woman in the second-floor window might have something to do with the firearms deals, in which case the meeting the other night could have taken place in her rooms. He was pleased with himself for coming up with that. He had originally been forced to spy on Therese, and all the other people he came across were only characters he resorted to when he needed to make something up. But when he saw this woman, all the other figures began to find their proper place in the story taking shape in his mind.

He imagined how she must feel right then—frightened and bewildered.

While the police were falling over themselves chasing the shooter, he began to follow her. She walked briskly through dark alleyways lined with red brick walls half coated with rust-stained, mossy cement. In the sunlight, he could see wisps of cotton drifting onto her short, permed hair. On the ship, she had pinned her hair up in a braided bun. Her light wool coat was just a little shorter than her checkered yellow-and-green cheongsam. When she turned the corner, she would tip her head forward and sway slightly, as if she had caught sight of someone she knew and wanted to surprise them. When her arm swung and disappeared around the corner, her beige coat rippled as if a carp were squirming under it.

When he returned to Rue Amiral Bayle that morning and saw her standing at the window, he could already guess most of the story. But for reasons even he himself did not fully grasp, he had not told Maron the truth.

Hsueh caught sight of the Vietnamese policeman who was always grumpy, but even he didn't scare Hsueh anymore thanks to Lieutenant Sarly. He stretched out his hand, grasped her wrist, and cheerily yelled something in French in the direction of the policeman, but no one understood him, or cared.

She glared at him but allowed him to lead her along a pebbly path lined with knee-high fences, which cut through the field toward the lotus pond.

He barely knew why he was doing this, perhaps because he had seen her weeping on the boat, or perhaps because he did not believe that a beautiful woman could also be dangerous, because he always observed danger through the lens of a camera. Even though Lieutenant Sarly had told him that a Communist cell was behind the Kin Lee Yuen assassination.

“Why didn't you bring your camera?” she turned and asked abruptly. She seemed not to have noticed that this was tantamount to admitting that she recognized him.

Then she stared down at a magpie, at the rushes growing by the pond.

“I see you've been thinking of me?” He himself had thought back to that moment on the ship, shoals of fish gleaming in the sunlight, lifeboats draped in gray-green canvas, the walnut tables on the deck. She had been unhappy, his camera had surprised her, and then she had left angrily.

She looked just as angry now. She said nothing, giving him an icy look, and walked away.

“That's my job, I'm a photographer, a photojournalist,” Hsueh called behind her.

He was telling the truth, of course. He had always sold his photographs to newspapers and news agencies, and now he even had a newspaper job. You'll need another job, Lieutenant Sarly had said. I could give you a police badge, but then you'd have to work your way up from being a lowly junior detective, and earn your promotions based on years of service. Since this is the Political Section, I have discretion in hiring intelligence operatives. If I add a few words to your personnel file at the right time, the Concession Police could hire you directly as a sergeant, perhaps even as an inspector. So the best way to go about this would be for you to have an unrelated profession in public and work privately for me.

Lieutenant Sarly made a couple of phone calls and had drinks
with his friends at the French Club. The next day, the editor of the French newspaper
Le Journal Shanghai
sent word inviting Hsueh to visit their offices. As soon as he arrived, he was handed a contract to sign and a box of gold-edged name cards, printed in French on one side and Chinese on the other.

She stopped in her tracks, hesitated, and spun around with a gleam in her eyes. Hsueh's flippant words had gotten him in a dangerous situation.

The Concession tabloids had spent a whole week rehashing the Kin Lee Yuen assassination for scandal-hungry Shanghai residents. This woman was said to be an accomplice to murder, or perhaps even its mastermind. The editors produced photographic evidence that she was both beautiful and wicked.

A few of the foreign papers and the more serious Chinese papers speculated that the killing might be connected to Communist assassination squads. They also printed a statement provided anonymously by one such group claiming responsibility for the assassination.

He knew they were Communists. Lieutenant Sarly had told him so.

At this point, they were both standing by the lake, or rather, the pond. He took a few steps toward the pavilion in the center of the pond, which was supported by wooden planks planted in the mud at the bottom. On summer nights, the pavilion often hosted concerts featuring Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and the debonair composer Satie. Butterflies and other insects darted about in the sunshine.

He was not very afraid of the Communists. They belonged to another world altogether. For all he knew, they were hiding in a remote province somewhere outside the Concession. They were reckless students who had caused a great stir and terrified all the foreigners in Shanghai a few years back. The commotion had been amusing to watch, but it had soon died down. Their schemes had nothing to do with his. If anything, the Concession was his territory, and he should receive them like guests.

“You must know that I sympathize with your cause.” Hsueh regretted
these generous words as soon as they left his mouth. The wind blew, and his shadow began to shudder on the face of the pond, as though it were an informant, listening.

“I can see where you're coming from.” He tried a different way of putting it.

“I don't know what you mean.” That's right, don't admit to anything. He looked at her mischievously. The longer they were silent, the more flirtatious the silence became.

He liked imagining he was an incorrigible Don Juan. It gave him more confidence.

She arranged her hair with a gesture like a Boy Scout salute, four fingers pressed together and the thumb bent.

“What do you want?” She looked dispirited, and her question sounded not threatening but resigned.

“I've been following you all this way.”

“What do you want with following me?”

“I want to help,” he said earnestly. “I don't know what you are doing, you obviously don't want me to know, and I guess I don't want to know. But I know a few things you don't, which I would like to tell you. In any case, you can't go back to the apartment now.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Well, why haven't I already turned you over to the police? Why do you think they were searching people on Rue Amiral Bayle? And why do you think they haven't found out where you live yet? How do I know you are a Communist? Why shouldn't you trust me?”

His series of rapid-fire questions sounded like part of a monologue, and he felt as though he had pulled off a successful performance and deserved a round of applause.

“What I know will be useful to you. You must let me talk to you. Wait for me here. Today is a Sunday, and you can pretend you came here to read. I'll go find out what's happening on Rue Amiral Bayle.”

He turned to leave, but after a few steps he turned around, pointed at the pavilion, and cried, “Don't go anywhere. Wait for me here.”

He felt like a protective lover telling her to be careful. But she still looked worried.