Night in Shanghai (17 page)

“Guiyang. Cheng Guiyang. Everyone calls me Wing Bean.”

“Guo Liwei,” Zhao lied, indicating himself. “Now listen, Wing Bean.” He moved closer. “I’d like to lay a proposition before you.”

The next night, when Du’s retinue walked out of the Royal at two
A.M
., Song slipped a scrap of paper into Thomas’s hand at the door. Neither acknowledged the other or made eye contact; to all who observed, each gave the appearance of not even noticing the other. She walked right past him in her gossamer-silk
qipao
of ivory white, embroidered all over with pale pink butterflies, while he continued his conversation with a British man in black tie. Yet their hands touched, and when he took the paper, he touched her fingers quickly, reassuringly, in return. She vanished, and he moved the slip discreetly to his pocket as he went right on greeting people, burning inside. She had something to say to him.

And he knew her secret.

It was not until he was going home in the back of a rickshaw, his privacy assured by the open night air, that he unfolded the note, and felt himself soar:

Hua Lian Teahouse

Avenue Hing and Route Alfred Magy

29 July, Thursday, 3:00

When the day came, he found that the address was a considerable trolley ride away, almost to the western edge of the French Concession. As he watched the city stretch out and grow leafier from the clanking, rocking car, he ran through all the possible reasons she might have for summoning him. He disembarked early and covered the last stretch to Avenue Hing on foot, just to calm his pizzicato nerves.

The half darkness of the teahouse was cool after the blazing street, and no one was in sight, no staff, no patrons. He walked through a series of empty lattice-screened dining rooms until he came to a circular tower room, in which an old-fashioned octagonal window looked down through meshed trolley lines to the street below. He barely saw the rose-patterned wallpaper, the white damask set with a steaming teapot and two cups, because there she was, rising from her chair to greet him, face opening in a smile. “You came,” she said, and reached across the table to clasp his hand in greeting. She wore a plain cotton
qipao
, the two-inch spool heels favored by Shanghai women, and no jewels except tiny pearls in her pierced ears.

The door clicked behind him and he was jolted to see they were alone together, for the first time. “Miss Song,” he said.

“Call me Song.”

“Isn’t your name Yuhua?”

“That’s a feudal name, Jade Flower. I have never liked it. My friends call me Song.”

“All right, I will too.” His big dark eyes clouded with concern. “Say, is everything all right?”

“Not really.” She poured tea and pushed a cup across to him. “I asked you to come because there is danger to you, very grave. It concerns that Admiral Morioka who has several times come into your ballroom.”

“That!” he cried. “Believe me, I know.”

“You know?”

“Yes. It’s not hard to figure out. They want to kill him, and here he is coming into my orchestra and sitting through set after set like a man in a trance! I get it.”

She relaxed a little. “I know Du is planning something—I suspect Lin knows too. I didn’t know if he had dared to warn you.”

“It would be very dangerous for him to do that,” Thomas said pointedly, as a way of explaining why he would not say any more. Neither would he reveal that Morioka also knew.

“I need not have come.”

“Not at all.” His eyes, fringed with curly lashes, were warm. “I’m glad you called me here. I want everything straight between us, everything honest. So—I know, okay? I know about you. But I won’t tell a soul.”

All her alarms screamed and she fought to keep her voice calm. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I know. You are a Communist.”

“What?”

“It’s all right.” He covered her hand with his. “No one will ever hear it from me.”

She felt her mouth opening and closing, and no sound came out. He knew. Her life was ruined if someone knew. She had to change everything. “I must leave Shanghai immediately,” she blurted.

“No! Don’t do anything. I told you, it’s all right. You are safe. I will protect this as carefully as you do.”

She looked at him for a long time, desperately calculating. If he kept her secret, what would she have to give him in return? The instant the question bloomed in her mind, she saw herself, in an involuntary dreamlike instant, in his arms, an image she pushed away. Would that be his price? If it was, she would pay it. She looked at the gentle slope of his shoulders beneath his suit. “Can I trust you?” she said quietly.

“One hundred percent.”

“Who else knows?”

“No one.”

“Lin?”

“No one.”

She was trapped, and she knew it. Tears stung behind her eyes and wobbled her vision.

He said, “Believe me. Even if we never see each other again after today, no one will know. I swear it.”

She rose, deciding, and he rose with her, and they exchanged the brief embrace of a promise.

“Please be careful,” she said into his ear. “My life depends on it.”

“I will.” They sat down again, Thomas electrified from that moment of holding her. “May I ask about this contract with Du? Lin Ming told me you have a contract related to your debt.”

“My family’s debt.”

“Under that, you cannot—”

“No,” she said miserably. “I cannot. Even though that is not what I am to him. He has other women.”

His look was patient. “And how much longer does this contract last?”

She felt sadness spring up to prick behind her eyes, and she hated the answer she had to give, since it would extinguish all his desire. And she badly wanted his desire to stay alive. “Ten more years,” she said.

She saw how he paled. Ah, there, she had him: deflated. He would have no further interest in her after this. Why should he? He would have better things to do for the next decade than wait around for a broken shoe such as she was. She corrected herself; the phrase was harsh, she was no prostitute, but there was no denying that she had sold herself, long ago, and now he knew. She half expected him to make excuses and leave.

Instead he said, “Ten years is a long time.” His words sounded sticky, as if his mouth was dry. “Would there be any exceptions?”

“No,” she said, smiling a little, in spite of herself, at his sweet persistence. This was a foreign thing she liked, the way he showed himself, and strangely, she felt safe with him, safer than she felt in the Party. She wished she could stay with him forever. The Japanese were coming, everyone said they were surrounding Peking at that very moment, waiting to enter, uncontested—the Chinese army had withdrawn. Tianjin had fought for only three days, and now Peking was not going to fight at all. Next was Shanghai. She wished she could be with him when it happened, instead of in her little room on the top floor of Rue Wagner, with her maid, Ah Pan. The words of an essay by Wang Tongzhao came back to her—
In both action and spirit, will you continue to resist or surrender to the enemy?
She would resist, she wanted to be part of it. If only Thomas were part of it too.

But it was not even his war. “If we see each other at the theater, you must look right through me,” she told him. “We cannot talk, or meet . . . whatever you want to tell me, tell me now.”

He smiled. There were no words really for his world, the marble steps of West Baltimore, the ringing sound of a piano in a conservatory practice room, his mother, his grandmother. It could be told in music; one day, if he played for her, he could make her understand. He could spin out the bent-note melody of poverty, the feeling of always being an outsider, an actor, of the turning road that had brought him across the United States and here to China. It was a kind of walking blues; he felt that if they were alone, and there was a piano, he would play it, and she would know everything about him. “We may not be able to even acknowledge each other. But I’m staying.”

“You are staying in Shanghai?”

“Until they throw me out. And if you ever hear me play, it’s for you. Remember that. And if anything changes, or you need help, come to me. I’m going to be here.”

Her face seemed to crumple. “Why are you so kind to me?”

He picked up the pot and refreshed her tea. Because she had wrested freedom from servitude. Because she had brains to match her beauty, and no man had ever yet had the chance to make her happy. “I just want to be part of your life,” he said.

Lin Ming surprised Pearl by arriving at the Osmanthus Pavilion in the late afternoon of August eighth, when the mansion was just stirring and the girls in their bright flimsy silks were sitting together in the public rooms to play cards, and listen to Yellow Music on the wireless. As he opened the front door, Zhou Xuan’s song
“Ye Shanghai”
was playing, and he felt a stab of fear for the fragility of his city’s fabled nightlife.

“Lin Ming,” he heard softly, behind him, and he turned to see his
qin’ai de Zhuli
, his dearest Pearl, waiting. He felt all the trouble and worry ease out on his breath as he moved toward her and took her in his arms, not even caring that they stood in the foyer, in full view. “Shall we go upstairs?” she said.

He nodded. “Yes. Order some wine, and an early dinner.” She clapped for the maid, and he hastened up the stairs, anxious to escape to her room.

In the upstairs hallway, the madam intervened. “You will be buying out Pearl for the night?”

“Yes,” he said, needing Zhuli beside him tonight, along with a warm crock of wine. The world was changing, the seas transforming to mulberry orchards and the mulberry orchards to seas, and he had no way to stop it, and certainly no power to protect Zhuli. But the Osmanthus Pavilion was the one place where that sort of promise was not required.

As soon as they were alone, she took off her robe and heavy earrings, leaving nothing but a clinging shift of apricot silk, and her glow of surprise. He rarely told her ahead of time when he would visit.

Food arrived, dark-marinated razor clams, fresh crab paste with leeks and chewy rice cakes, short ribs, and an herb-scented purée of broad beans. They served each other and ate as loved ones, sharing a cup of wine.

“I reached the age of twenty-eight last week,” Pearl said casually.

He immediately understood. At twenty-eight her lifetime buyout price came down to five thousand. Undeniably there was a current of happiness between them, and an ease, something like what the foreign people would call love. In their most intimate joinings she sometimes whispered that everything of her belonged to him, which always lifted him to the heights.

And she was becoming more affordable now.

She lowered her eyes and went on eating, as if what she’d said was an observation of time passing, no more, when he knew her entire life depended on this turning point. She had asked him to free her, without asking.

He froze, stuck between tenderness and reality. First, where would he get five thousand? And if he got it, how would he protect her and see to her well-being all her life? Because if he bought her out, she would be his, as surely as any bondmaid. War was coming, and even in good times, women like her had no way to survive. Almost all of them ended up back in the flower world no matter how much money the man spent, and grew old there, the way his mother had done. It was an old story in Shanghai.

He took her in the same way they had done it for years and fell asleep beside her as always. When he woke it was six thirty. Normally he slept with her until noon, but today he rose quickly to dress for the early meeting Du had called. Maybe it was the click of his watch that woke her, or the slipping sound of his shoes on the floor, but just before he walked out, he glimpsed her watching him.

They both knew he was answering her, for it was the first time he had ever left without embracing her. He could not buy her out, and there was no use discussing it. She was awake, he knew it, but when he looked at her one last time just before he stepped out the door to leave, she had her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.

He rode the trolley to the Cathay. Du was never awake at this hour; normally he began his days at noon in the steam baths, drinking hot tea while his back was scrubbed by Flowery and Fiery—it being unthinkable for a stranger to have personal access to the boss in a public place. But everything was different now, for Peking had been taken by Japan, surrendering in near-complete silence. Yes, lives had been spared, architecture saved, and most of the art treasures moved out, but it was still devastating. Lin, like everyone in the clubs the night before, was shell-shocked by it.

Meanwhile, the previous night had set a cash record. Even the most ascetic young students and partisans sought to lose their minds, float their senses, stay out all night—to
wan wu sang zhi
, play at trifles until one has exhausted one’s will. Why should they do anything else? The dwarf bandits were sure to storm Shanghai next, and nothing could stop them.

There were also more foreign men in his clubs now than ever before, men who had been living in Shanghai with their families, but had now sent the wives and children home for safety while they soldiered on. Gloriously unencumbered, they arrived nightly with fresh young girls, pretty things streaming into the city, running for their lives. Riding the elevator up to the restaurant, Lin Ming decided the girls were a reliable barometer of the war’s advance in rural China, just as the daily influx of Jewish refugees told of the conditions in Europe. Things were coming to a head, and that was surely why Du had called him at this hour.

The older man waited in a small private alcove that was really just a glassed-in balcony, tucked behind a waiters’ station so that even from the main dining room, its existence was not apparent. Inside, it was a large-windowed box cantilevered to look over the river, with its great vessels at anchor, flags flying. Du was eating
xi fan
, rice porridge, and he immediately filled a bowl and set it next to Lin’s spoon and chopsticks. It was jarring, the hint of family, and Lin had to remind himself that it was an illusion. Aside from sending him to an American boarding school, which had beyond doubt been the forging of him, Du had been no father at all. In control again, reality in place, Lin picked up his chopsticks and reciprocated by serving the boss with meticulous care, choosing from the onions, peanuts, pork bits, and pickled vegetables on the small condiment plates around the table.