Night in Shanghai (15 page)

He knew it was right to stand with Kung on this. It was a kind of filial piety—going beyond his father, whom he could never venerate, to do something for his country, and for all the world’s people. “Here is what you do. Invite the boss to a late-night dinner, you and him and Sun Fo.” He saw Kung nod as the implications clicked into place; Sun Fo, a big supporter of Jewish rights in British Palestine, was also the son of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic, and therefore royalty. He was someone Du would take time to meet. “Then once you are there—”

“—persuade him to insist Chiang Kai-shek pressure the Nazis about the Jews,” Kung finished. “He ought to do it, you know—he is Master of Shanghai. He has ten thousand Jewish refugees in the city already, maybe twelve. More all the time. They are under his protection.”

“The trouble is, he does what he wants.”

“You’re right.” Kung puffed on his cigar. “But I have to try. Because if anyone can make Chiang go to the Nazis about this, it is Du.”

“And if anyone can make Du go to Chiang, it is you,” Lin answered. They squinted, barely able to see each other through the cloud of smoke, but they understood each other perfectly.

Eddie Riordan made his ticket money, and by the twenty-sixth of July, the Kings were without a drummer. Thomas scrambled things once again, moving Alonzo’s slapping bass into the forefront for its percussive feel. There were eight of them left, and the lineup was top-heavy, with two reeds and three men on brass. Cecil Pratt, the trumpet player, would probably be the next to go, since he had been saving, but even then, they would still be out of balance. Thomas was bailing a sinking ship, and he knew it.

After midnight the theater became more relaxed, as it always did, the security at the front door a little less stringent, and this was the hour when Morioka walked in. They were in the middle of a Duke Ellington piece called “Blue Ramble” when Thomas recognized his blocky shape in the archway to the lobby. So did everyone else, for no sooner was he seated than Thomas saw Floor Manager Zhou and Wing Bean move into position.

Thomas played through the sweat, bending over the keyboard and the slow prance-rhythm of “Blue Ramble,” propelled by the paddling, naughty-sounding circles blown by Charles and Ernest on their layered saxophones. Luckily the song was simple melodically—until that one moment in the twelve-bar B section when they came to the sudden sustained chord, six voices with a growling ninth on the bottom from the valve trombone, played by Errol Mutter. It was the key to the song, the unexpected ninth, the twist of fate, the turn, the dissonance. It was the misstep, the instant that changes the course of a life, and it came just at the moment Morioka walked in. They played to the end, and he called a break. Quickly the ballroom floor and stage emptied as dancers returned to their tables and musicians went off to refresh themselves.

The lights flickered up and Morioka rose and walked through the tables, Zhou and Wing Bean hovering as close as possible behind him. But once Morioka reached the empty dance floor, they could not stay so close behind, so they hurried around to the side of the stage where they could idle near a table and, from ten meters away, hear fairly well.

Morioka obliged them by talking loudly. “Mr. Greene, I give compliments.”

“Thank you.”

“I very like the jazz.”

“Thank you for listening.” Thomas felt himself shaking, as his voice pitched up a notch to match the Admiral’s.

“Jazz records, I get from diplomatic pouch.” Suddenly Morioka lowered his voice and spoke in a whisper, imperceptible from the distance at which Zhou and Wing Bean stood, his lips barely moving: “According my spies, some Chinese are watching you. They want to use you to kill me.”

“Diplomatic pouch? Lucky man,” Thomas said, in the same loud voice they had been using. Then, in the same thread of a whisper, he answered, “I know.”

“Yes. So I bring you this.” Admiral Morioka said at high volume, and held out a heavy, shellacked seventy-eight in a paper sleeve. “I present you.” In a whisper he said, “I will invite you somewhere. Say you will go. Do not go. Understand? Do not go.”

“You’re too kind. A new record?” Thomas peered at the label, and whispered, “I understand.” When he raised his face, he said, “Count Basie Orchestra! Several of my men came from his band.”

“Is it so?” Zhou and Wing Bean had edged closer, putting an end to the whispering. Morioka went on, “Now they have a new saxophone player, the name is Lester Young. I never hear any sound like this before! Please. Take this. Listen this musician.”

“All right,” said Thomas. He turned the disc over:
“One O’ Clock Jump.”
Count Basie Orchestra
. “Lester Young. I will listen to him. Thank you.”

Morioka made a slight, crisp bow, and turned away.

Zhou and Wing Bean bore down on Thomas instantly. His insides were shrieking, but he managed to speak calmly. “You heard him. He complimented my playing, and gave me a new record.” He held it up. “Told me to listen to this saxophone player, Lester Young.”

They appeared to accept this, and he finished out the night in a state of controlled panic. What really shocked him was that this plot, this ultra-secret plan Lin Ming had warned him about, had already been penetrated by Japan. He knew that until he had it sorted out, he should tell no one of the words he and Morioka had just exchanged, not even Lin.

But he did hurry straight home after closing, so he could crank up the parlor gramophone.

The first half minute of the twelve-bar blues was a long, frisky piano intro, building atop a light, sibilant drum line. But then the whole orchestra came in, and on top of it the most fully expressive saxophone solo he had ever heard, touched with pleasure and regret. He rocked back on his heels in awe, and cried out for more when it ended far too soon.

This Admiral was a music lover, the real thing. As soon as the song was over, Thomas set the needle back to the beginning, exhilarated, certain this moment would always stand as a before-and-after mark in his understanding of music.

A wry trumpet line came in, and by the second or third listening, Thomas felt sure he recognized Buck Clayton’s sound. It could be Clayton; he had finally left Shanghai after many months of saving while playing Yellow Music in an all-Chinese club.
They are fixing to have a war here
, he had said to Thomas over tea and blintzes at Rosie’s on Rue de L’Observatoire, two days before he left,
and I want no part of it
. He had sat across the table as urbane and perfectly dressed as ever, but gray from worry. “I put it to the rest of the Harlem Gentlemen, those who are still here playing the tea dances at the Canidrome, and they all agreed with me, all except one,” said Clayton. “They’re all leaving.”

“Who’s staying?” Greene had asked, curious.

“Stoffer, my pianist. He’s got himself hired on with Earl Whaley’s Syncopators at the Saint Anna. Earl says he’s staying in Shanghai, no matter what. Well, I wish him the best. You too.” And they drank to their futures, about to diverge. Buck left, and now here was his trumpet on “One O’ Clock Jump,” like a clarion call.
Fixing to have a war here
.

It was almost four o’clock when the teenaged brothers rattled their keys at the front door. They came in rubber-limbed and slurry from drink, but stood at attention the instant they heard the new saxophone solo. “Who’s that?” said Charles, and that was it, sweet land of liberty. They refused to go to bed that night until they had played the record at least fifteen times, hovering next to the sound box, its volume doors swung all the way open. Watching them, he could see a glimmer of the furious journey they were going to take with their reeds as they aged, and the music grew and changed with them. Their form was a young one, his was old. He envied them that.

And it was his job to see that they were safe.

In the third week of July, Du Yuesheng met H. H. Kung and Sun Fo for dinner at Lu Bo Lang, a venerable restaurant next to the Yu Garden in the Chinese City, to talk about the Jewish question. Du brought Lin Ming with him, for the same reason he often brought Song to these events, because men who had been educated abroad sometimes made references to that world, and used foreign phrases, and Du wished to miss nothing.

Over shark’s fin and water shield soup, sautéed abalone, and tofu-skin pastries of minced quail and wild mountain mushrooms brought from Yunnan, only pleasantries about health and family were exchanged, as custom demanded, while the gentle net of
guanxi
, relationship, was sewn into place. Finally, when the dishes had been cleared, a crock of warm Shaoxing wine brought out, and Kung’s first cigar lit, Sun Fo delivered a passionate denunciation of the Germans’ mistreatment of their Jewish citizens, now streaming into Shanghai by the thousands. Du listened and said nothing.

“These people are under your protection,” said Kung.

But still Du had no response.

“If I may, Teacher,” said Lin Ming, and all eyes went to him. Du nodded permission. “Were you to succeed at this, you would be remembered as a great benefactor. Not just now. Throughout history.”

As he had guessed it might, this kindled the glow of interest. Kung and Sun sensed it, and notched forward.

“What did Hitler say, when you raised this matter with him?” asked Du, since they all knew Kung had just returned from an audience with the
Führer
.

“He said, ‘You don’t know Jews.’ It’s strange, because he was an impressive man otherwise, quite smart.” Kung’s habitually calm expression was punctuated, as always, by the steady brilliance of his small eyes, which took in everything from behind his tortoiseshells. “But Chiang Kai-shek is his equal, his peer, he is the leader of China, so perhaps if he approached him . . .”

“What did Hitler say about helping us against Japan?” Du asked then, which was what they all burned to know.

Kung removed his round glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He was rich and powerful, but no longer young, and now he sagged with disappointment. “He refused,” he said, and pushed his frames resolutely back into place. “His advice was, give up and join Japan’s East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere immediately.”

“Hand ourselves over to Japan?” said Sun Fo incredulously.

“As if we would do that,” said Kung.

“Never,” Du agreed. To Sun Fo he said, “We’ll do our part. Tokyo has placed a new chief officer here, an Admiral, and we are about to kill him. I have brought an assassin in from outside, a man with no ties or temptations.” He turned to Lin, and indulged his shallow crescent of a smile. “And he is watching your piano player day and night.”

As a result of handing over the diamond, Song was bumped up a notch, and assigned a new guide. Most Party members in the city belonged to cells, kept small, so that if one person was caught, the others could scatter and start over. Song had no cell, since she lived as a spy. Thanks to her, they had periodic reports on the money flow from the Green Gang to the Nationalist armies, and twice had learned of a Green Gang plot against them in time to avert disaster. When she was a new recruit in 1933 and Du maneuvered a hostile takeover of the Da Da Steam Navigation Company to gain a fleet of merchant and passenger ships, the Party knew about it even before the public did. She had always seen her contact one-on-one.

All she had been told about the man she was meeting today, her new guide, was that he was a person of some import in Shanghai’s theater circles. She already knew she would be deferential, for the relationship was always vertical, never a meeting of equals. In this way the Party was like Confucianism, which unsettled her, because Confucianism was so traditional.

When she stepped off the trolley, she saw by the clock tower atop the Wing On Department Store that she was early; her destination, Cyrano’s on Peking Road, was nearby. So she wandered into the store, past gleaming counters of merchandise and smiling attendants, and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. There, a dim, slow-churning dance floor of tightly pressed couples swayed to a Filipino band. These were not prostitutes; those were on the highest floor. These were dance hostesses, and couples who came looking for a dark place to embrace. She stood on the side, her arms crossed in front of her waist, watching them clutch each other, seeing love the only way she could, as a spectator.

Thomas Greene had broken it off with his Russian girlfriend; she had read about it in the
xiao bao
, the mosquito press, which, in addition to its cheap scandals and gossip, also ran some of the city’s bravest anti-Japanese editorials.

So he and the gray-eyed Russian had parted company; she had set up a separate kitchen, as the Chinese would put it, and he had kept the studio by the river. And here, watching the anonymous couples press together in the false daytime darkness, she thought of him, and of dancing, something she had never done. She did not know how, just like she did not know how to do the house thing. Obviously she had done it wrong, because even Du did not come back for more, after he had bought her. She watched the dancers rock on their feet, embracing in public.

She thought of the meeting coming up, and moved her hand to her thigh. Her new guide was someone of known sophistication—there would be a conversation, reflections, thoughts. She missed those early years of talking with theater people in cafés while Du pursued his amours. She missed the companionship of people who thought and debated and visualized the future.

She remembered the day she was sworn in. Her directions took her up Henan Road, past the Mei Feng Bank of Sichuan, past Peking Road, and almost to Suzhou Creek before a young man she had never seen before fell into step beside her. She smiled as if she knew him, and they continued along the creek past the Shanghai Waterworks. Her sponsor, Huang Weimin, the editor and writer, had told her they were to look like any couple.

The man took her hand and led her into a narrow alley that ran between the Capitol Theater and Taylor Garage, where he knocked twice on a door that was quickly opened to a dim hallway. Down a corridor, up a narrow staircase, they came to an office where a man who looked like an ordinary clerk, the sleeves of his gown protected by cotton over-cuffs, looked up at them. “Yes?” he said, and put down his fountain pen. “Who is this? Eh, Huang Weimin’s candidate.” His eyes stayed on her as he picked up a memo with a few lines of flowing characters on thin, translucent paper. “He told us about you. Stand right there.” And in just a few minutes, with no fanfare, no ceremony, and certainly no acknowledgment of the danger to her life, she was sworn in and registered to the Shanghai branch of the Communist Party of China. She had joined.