Night in Shanghai (12 page)

“Truly?”

“Yes. It was whispered to me that they don’t teach languages at all. Go there one day, and you will see, they look like everybody else.”

He drank more than usual that night, and barely remembered going to Anya’s room and finally arriving home at dawn. When he awoke at midday, it was to a thudding headache and a mouth that was swollen and parched. And something else, voices. He washed and hurried into his clothes.

Downstairs he found Charles and Ernest in his dining room, tucking into a lavish breakfast prepared by Chen Ma, grits and thick slices of ham and big creamy curds of scrambled egg.

“Oliver and Frank are leaving!” Ernest blurted through a mouthful of egg.

“What?” He sat heavily. “Those two? I thought they never saved anything.” A bottom-class ticket cost 150 U.S., but that was 450 Shanghai, a lot to save when you made 50 a week, and Shanghai lay before you, arms wide, every night. Few had done it. “Where’d they get the money?”

“Dog track,” said Charles. “Soon as they won, they got them two tickets. Say there is going to be a war here, we
all
got to get out.”

“Well,” said Thomas, leaning back for Chen Ma to serve his own breakfast, “there could very well be a war here, they are right. But I’m not sure we’ve all got to get out.”

“You’re not scared?” said Charles.

“Sure I’m scared. But I was scared back where I grew up, too, and I like it here better.”

They exchanged a look. “Us too,” Ernest said.

“If they invade Shanghai, we’re going to have to lay low. It could be bad. But we’re not in this war. And another thing—both sides love jazz. Whoever wins, however it comes out, we should still be able to play.”

The boys exchanged looks. “We’ll stay,” said Ernest.

“Never going back,” Charles agreed.

“Tails,” Ernest put in, “where were you last night?”

“How do you know I was anywhere?”

“Because Uncle Hua told me you came in at seven.”

“He did, did he? You’re a rascal, Ernest.” Thomas admired the boy; in a year and a half he had become agile enough at pidgin to rattle along endlessly with the locals, while Thomas had not learned more than a phrase or two of pidgin, and even less of Shanghainese or Mandarin, which were much harder. In fact, Thomas had not run into any American players in Shanghai who had more than a few words of Shanghainese or any of the other Chinese dialects.

Bright and enterprising though they were, the Higgins boys were too young to be alone. “Fellows, you can’t live in that house by yourselves. I think you should move in here with me.” As soon as he saw the relief on their faces, Thomas knew he was right. And he needed company, too. The house had too many empty bedrooms, and was oppressive now that the hot summer had set in. Zhu, the quiet man who in winter was the house’s master of heat, now opened windows and positioned fans to make the house comfortable.

“I’ll square it with Lin Ming,” he told the two brothers. “Get your things. Sleep here tonight.”

It was two nights after that, the third Wednesday in June 1937, when Morioka walked into the Royal for the first time.

Du Yuesheng was in the balcony box, along with Song, Lin Ming, and his bodyguards, but none of them noticed when he entered in plain, nondescript clothes, slid into a corner table, and ordered a whiskey. Their first inkling of his presence was a racket of footsteps, followed by Floor Manager Zhou yanking their curtain aside. “He’s here,” he said, panting, “the Admiral.”

“Is it so! Where?” said Du, and followed Zhou’s finger. “Ah! I see. Puffed-up plug!”

They all strained to see the dim figure under the balcony overhang opposite. “Motherless fornicator,” said Fiery.

“Is it true he is going around the city opening field offices?” Flowery asked.

“Yes,” Lin Ming answered. “Like Shanghai is already his.”

They all stared together, hating him, united for once in ill will.

“Damn that scar of his mother’s she calls a cunt,” Du said, to murmured assent. “Damn her crack to all the hells.”

“Let me take him,” Flowery Flag said impulsively. “Tonight.”

“Patience,” Du said abruptly, and Flowery fell silent.

The boss sat for a long time, staring at the Japanese officer below with the reptilian flicker of possibility that passed for engagement in his expression. Then before he spoke, he glanced with favor at the bodyguard, indulging him as one would a favorite pet. “First we find his weakness, his opening. Then we look for the moment when his assassination will most throw them off. Then we kill him—not before. Teacher will see to it.”

Lin’s knees shook as he listened. Morioka’s rapt focus on Thomas Greene was obvious; they could all see it.

His intestines chilled at the scene on the stage below, where Thomas, unaware of what was happening, was signaling a solo. Charles and Ernest took off on their reeds a major third apart, a bit of showmanship that, though well rehearsed, never failed to please the crowd with its sense of spontaneous intimacy and the simple optimism the major third interval always seemed to ignite. He was a good arranger, Little Greene, able to keep the band sounding polished even though he was down to nine, piano included. He was also popular, a moneymaker, and the first real friend Lin had found among his musicians in a long time. So why couldn’t this whore of a Japanese Admiral turn his attention someplace else? The question sounded plaintively in his mind as he watched.

Song, seated in front of Lin Ming, was equally horrified, and she also saw what Lin could not—the look of icy calculation hardening in Du’s eye as his gaze traveled from Morioka to Thomas and back again.

Down in the lobby, after the show, she followed her master’s gliding form through the crush of people toward the door. Ahead, Fiery and Flowery formed a wedge to clear a way through the crowd.

None of them noticed Morioka bearing down from the other side of the lobby. Song did not catch sight of him until she had almost reached the door, where Thomas stood, thanking well-wishers.

Morioka stepped into the crush just a meter or so in front of her, and she jolted back, her entire being on fire. She saw the way the hair grew down in two points on the back of his neck, where his skin was brown from the Japanese sun. She caught his aroma. It was unbearably tense to be so close to him.

And then he started talking to Thomas in English.

“How do you find China?” she heard him say. “Really? But so dirty, so primitive. No? That is why they need us, the Chinese, to keep order. Here—take my card. If you need help. Here.” And he pressed his calling card into Thomas’s hand before bowing and being carried by the crowd out the door.

Song glared after him. Keep order? How dare he? She let the crowd bear her to Thomas, averting her eyes from him while she checked the crowd in all directions, and then, in one quick, low, economical slice through the air that no one could see, she plucked the card from his hand and threw it on the floor. It disappeared beneath the crush of feet.

She kept her eyes straight ahead, but could feel the heat of his awareness as she passed.

Du felt it too, for at that instant, he turned to look back.
“Yuhua,”
he commanded.

“Wo lai,”
she answered, coming, and lowered her gaze once more, fully concealed, the good girl,
bu gou yan xiao
, no careless word or smile.

“What did he say to you?” Lin Ming asked Thomas the next day.

“That he thinks China is primitive.”

“Fornicator. Piece of turtle dung. And you threw the card on the floor?”

“The second he moved on.” Thomas said nothing about Song being there. He was thrilled to have had her cross his path, even just for that moment. No one had noticed her rip the card from his hand in the packed lobby, but he had been inches from her, and he caught his breath at the burn in her eyes, the glow that came from inside her. He seemed to be able to see straight into her in that loud, pushing crowd of people.

“You did well,” Lin said. “But back to Morioka. If he approaches you again, say as little as possible. Do not ever agree to meet him anywhere.”

“You’ve made that clear already,” Thomas said gently, though he failed to see what a Japanese officer would want with him anyway. He thought it unlikely that he and Morioka would ever have another conversation.

But that little scrim of security evaporated less than a week later, when Morioka returned to the Royal. This time he did not stay long, only one set, but before he left, he ventured up to the stage. Thomas was frozen, only half-risen from the piano bench, watching Floor Manager Zhou and Wing Bean scuttle into position to eavesdrop.

“Very beautiful playing,” Morioka said, somewhat formally, and Thomas answered, “Yassir, thank you, sir,” vamping up the plantation accent for the benefit of Zhou and Wing Bean. Morioka said no more, bowed to him, and left. Zhou and Wing Bean seemed satisfied.

Thomas was shaky, though, and he went directly to Anya’s rooming house and rang her bell. He rang over and over, and she never came down. The window light was on in her room, which usually meant she was out. Where? He checked his new gold watch. It was almost three
A.M
.

Yet much of Shanghai was still awake. In fact, though only two hours had elapsed since his conversation with Morioka, Du Yuesheng would by now have already parsed every word they said.

The next afternoon, Du summoned Lin Ming to Rue Wagner, and they met in one of the quietly carpeted second-floor studies, with wooden shutters tightly closed against the early summer heat. As usual, Du showed no discomfort, not even a shimmer of perspiration, and his voice was as cool as stone. “Twice in one week he has approached the American,” he told Lin. “We are moving ahead.”

“Moving ahead how?” Lin’s voice strained its fragile film of normalcy. “If I may—”

But Du interrupted him. “Your man will be watched all the time for the right opportunity.”

“Perhaps you don’t need Thomas Greene. Isn’t it excessive? Isn’t it using Mount Tai to crush an egg?” He knew his father was ever vulnerable to a classical idiom.

“You are here because I am showing you the respect of warning you,” Du said sharply. “Do not presume to question.”

Lin said nothing.

“We have to kill the blood-sucking ghost. It will throw them into confusion and put us on top, like overturning the river and pouring out the sea. Naturally we will try to keep your American safe. In the end, though, that is irrelevant.”

The words sliced through Lin. “And who is going to be watching him?”

“I’m bringing in an outside man for this job,” said Du. “His name is Zhao Funian.”

Lin Ming nodded, silent, thinking there was nothing left for him now except
bao tou shu cuan
, to cover his head and slink away like a rat.

That week, Avshalomov’s boy came to the door of the house with a note inviting Thomas to a rehearsal of the composer’s tone poem
Hutungs of Peking
. Thomas had the boy tipped and fed, as was proper, and a few days later sent back his own most junior servant with a reply that he would be honored. He greatly enjoyed his nights out with Anya, trawling the underside of Shanghai, but this was an outing of another sort; Avshalomov was a composer of stature.

They had seen each other six months earlier, when Avshalomov’s piano concerto had premiered at the Lyceum, the concert hall where Shanghai gathered on Sunday afternoons to hear music before going out to dinner. The concerto was performed by Gregory Singer, Avshalomov’s customary pianist, as the second half of a program that began with Beethoven’s Fifth. Greene attended the concert and afterward sent Little Kong over with a warm note of congratulations. Now Avshalomov had responded with this invitation.

Thomas had seen that there was music all over Shanghai, from pit orchestras for the film and recording studios to the Shanghai Symphony. The city teemed with classically trained players. Some musicians were Chinese, some were older Russian Jews who had come years before, and now younger, immensely talented European Jews were arriving too, players who had fled persecution and found their way to the city’s orchestras.

Avshalomov was different; he had been in China most of his life. “I am trying to capture everything you hear in the lanes of Peking,” he explained. “The chants of the vendors, the buzz of the barber’s fork, the temple bells, everything.”

“I loved your piano concerto, by the way.”

“Ah, thank you, I received your kind note. Did you notice the boy on the celesta? My son, Jack!”

Just then a loud buzzing tone filled the stage. “That is the
huan tou
, the barber’s tuning fork,” Avshalomov said. “That was how the barber announced his arrival in the neighborhood, and everyone who needed a trim or a shave would come outside. You could hear it from quite far away. Ah, we will begin now.” And with a small Old World bow, he excused himself.

Thomas watched him in front of the orchestra, pressing the trombones and tuba for bigger sound, directing the temple blocks and bells and Chinese drums, asking the violins to come in softly and crest in waves like insects on a summer night. He led the musicians through, explaining, correcting, singing. “Here,” he called out. “This is the operatic tune. I want that feel. Violins, play with one finger on the E string; accentuate your trills. Again.”

At the end of the run-through Thomas complimented him, and they talked for a bit. “It is clear what your training is,” Avshalomov said. “When you play,
ça se voit
. But this group you are in now—these Kansas City Kings—I feel this is the future. I hear jazz arrangements everywhere—do you not as well? Brass, more than anything else—in movies, on the radio, even in advertisements. I hear it but I do not always find beauty in it. In your playing, there is always beauty.”

“Thank you,” said Thomas. “But if I may ask, do you think it’s safe for us to continue playing here if the Japanese invade?”

Avshalomov looked sadly at him, only in his forties but older from the weight of all he had seen, his expression grave beneath the light hair that floated in an untamed aureole around his head. “No,” he said. “But if they take over, you will not want to play here anyway. I know. I am from the north.”