Night in Shanghai (23 page)

“A Japanese officer has arrived in Shanghai and insists on seeing me now, tonight. Just a few minutes, he says. Doihara is his name.”

“General Doihara? Head of the Japanese First Army in north China? The one who calls himself Lawrence of Manchuria?”

“The very one.”

“But you need no translation. He speaks Mandarin. And, they say, some Shanghainese.”

“I know. I have had him informed that I speak neither language. You and I will speak tonight in Suzhou dialect.”

Lin suppressed a smile;
Suzhou hua
, the language of his mother. Du was always a step ahead. “Isn’t Doihara the one who set up Pu Yi as puppet emperor in Manchuria?”

“That’s right. He has a lot of brass between his legs, coming here. Does he think I am corruptible? Perhaps he does not know that in Shanghai, thieves and police work together. The cat and mouse sleep entwined. We already
are
the government! It is an outrage—as if I would turn against my city.”

“When is he coming?”

“He is here now, the dog’s fart. I suppose we have kept him waiting long enough.” Du opened the room’s main door and stepped out into the corridor, at the other end of which was one of the larger studies, with a desk at one end and soft, antimacassared chairs squared around a low table in Chinese style at the other. The room had been deliberately overheated on Du’s orders, made stifling, and in the center of it, a compact sweat-beaded Japanese in full dress uniform, heavy with medals, waited uncomfortably on the Tianjin carpet.

As they entered, Lin’s father spoke to him in soft
Suzhou hua
. “Look at him. See how he smiles? He’s a liar! He pretends to come in civility, but even now they are sharpening their weapons for the fight.”

The General had a small, severe mustache and large, sad, droopy-lidded eyes, above which one eyebrow rose perennially higher than the other. He touched his heels with a light tap and bowed.

Lin bobbed his head in return, and said in Mandarin, “Please excuse us that I must translate for you. My master speaks only his native dialect.”

“No excuse needed,” said Doihara, “and please thank him. I know he is very busy.”

“Tell him of course I am,” said Du, masking his Suzhou dialect even further with a coarse country accent. “How can I rest for even a moment? Dwarf fiends are running amok.”

Lin said, “He says, he has an engagement tonight. But as you said this was a matter of importance—”

“We want to help you keep peace in your city,” said the General.

“That’s a damn lie. He needs to withdraw from our city.”

“We do not require your help,” Lin said.

Doihara sighed, as if dealing with a stubborn youngster. “Hostilities may have ceased, but we need a functional government. That is the important thing. Then Shanghai can return to normal. We will run things very well—deferring of course to you, Lord Du.” And he lowered his head.

Lin smiled inwardly. He had heard the gaffe, and he knew Du had too. No one addressed Du that way. Papa Du, and Teacher, but never Lord Du. Doihara’s Mandarin was excellent but his advance work incomplete.

“Tell him to fuck his ancestors.”

“What did he say?” said Doihara, the words in Suzhou dialect being a little too close to those he understood.

“Forgive my hesitation,” said Lin. “My master used an old-fashioned honorific, a form used between rulers and diplomats—” Ah, good, at this Doihara’s face brightened. “What he said was,
fen ting kang li
.” He is so happy to receive you as equals.

Lin was afraid he would not swallow this, but Doihara gleamed. “Tell him thank you. That is why I am here—to find a way to stop all the violence and restore order, which is better for everyone, is it not? But I do not want a Japanese leader for the city. No! For this is China.” Doihara stood taller, rising to his prepared remarks. “There must be one supreme leader, all-powerful, answerable only to the emperor. Leadership. Greatness. One man above all.”

Lin translated.

Du was furious. “Does he dare to imply that I will be his cursed dog’s legs? Am I a traitor, to lick the evil hand? No. He’s playing fiddle in his pants. Tell him that. Go on.”

“My master regrets his duties leave him little time to concern himself with city politics.”

“Not so!” said Doihara, seizing what he thought was an opening. “There is no citizen more august, more widely loved, more
trusted
by Shanghai people than Du Yuesheng.”

Lin found this so priceless that he had a hard time keeping the glimmer of a smile off his face while he put the words in
Suzhou hua
.

Du snorted. “He’s blowing the ox vagina so hard, isn’t he afraid it’s going to explode? Translate that.”

“My master says, you exaggerate.”

“Not at all,” said the General. “He is the one to lead. He deserves it. Please ask him to take his time, and think back and forth. Give me his answer forthwith.”

“I’ll give it to him now, the suppurating pustule! Tell him if he is not off my grounds in ten minutes, I’ll have his throat slit. Tell him.”

“My master regrets,” said Lin. But efforts to sanitize what the boss said had become useless.

Du’s face was reddening. He made a curt bow, a deliberate parody of the Japanese gesture.

Lin heard Doihara’s gasp. “If I may,” he said, and moved to guide their guest to the door, in at least some semblance of dignity.

But Du stopped him. “Flowery Flag will see him out.”

Another insult, for Lin was a son and Flowery a thug. Lin watched, his heart hammering, as the bodyguard clomped out the door with the General, every step seeming to seal his father’s fate. Of course the older man would never collaborate, having poured half his fortune into the Nationalist war coffers, but this?

The door closed. “I went too far,” Du admitted.

Lin bit back astonishment; never had his father acknowledged fault before. He had certainly gone too far, and now there would be retribution. But he had shown courage, too, which Lin admired. “Spilt water cannot be gathered,” he said gently. “You handled him just right.”

The messenger said Song was to meet Duke Kung in the lobby of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building on the Bund, but he did not say why. She assumed he would be relaying instructions from Du, whom she had not seen since they all fled Rue Wagner in the middle of the night after Du’s debacle with Doihara, following which the Japanese military circled the house with loud-droning fighter planes until Du finally abandoned it, bundling them all into cars, and dispersing them to safe houses around the city. He had been the last one out of the mansion, padlocking it before Song saw him climb into another car with Flowery, Fiery, Fourth Wife, and their children.

But that had been three nights ago, and since then Song, like the rest of Du’s staff, had heard nothing. At least now the waiting would be over, for Duke Kung would know everything.

Outside the bank, she surprised herself by pausing to give a good-luck rub to the paw of one of the two bronze lions on either side of the door. This was a custom of Shanghai’s poor, and the lions’ paws were polished to a bright gold by all their hopeful hands.
I’m one of the people
, she thought, but she felt no luck, only trepidation as she strode into the bank.

With its gilded columns and faraway ceilings, the lobby had the magnificence of a cathedral, the sounds of voices and telephones and leather shoes tapping the marble floors hushed by the immensity of space and money. Yet her eye found Kung instantly, his small, portly figure commanding attention. Then she turned and saw Lin Ming walking through the door behind her.
So it was the two of us who were summoned
.

Kung led them to a group of overstuffed chairs, and as soon as they sat down, a young woman appeared with a teapot and three lidded cups on a tray. She poured and retreated to a respectful distance.

“Old Du asked me to call you,” Kung said. “He’s gone.”

A muffle of silence seemed to fall as she and Lin threw shocked looks at each other.

“Gone?” Lin said. “Speak reasonably.”

“I am. He left last night on a French steamer.”

Song said, “To where?”

“Hong Kong. Eventually, Chongqing. But he has left Shanghai.” Kung picked up his tea, looked at it, and set it back on the low table between them, where their cups also lay untouched.

“Forever?” Lin said shakily.

“Forever”—Kung narrowed his expression ever so slightly as he paused, to convey the delicacy of his answer —“well. Naturally he hopes to return. But at the same time, by leaving, he knows he renounces his power over the Green Gang—and over you. That is forever, whether he comes back or not.”

“Both of us?” Her voice was sick with hope.

Kung pulled a key from his vest pocket. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

As soon as they rose from their seats, a fawning bank manager materialized to lead them to the safe deposit vault, and in a room with locked metal drawers stacked to the ceiling, they sat at a small wooden table while Kung opened the box. He handed each of them an envelope.

She gave hers to Lin. “I can’t. Tell me what it says.”

He tore it open. “You’re free. He renounces the claim on your family’s property.” She sagged in shock while he read his own. “Me too, free. He gives us each a thousand in severance pay.”

“Ge,”
she said quickly, Elder Brother. “Take mine. You need it for Pearl.”

His face twisted. “I need more than that for Pearl. And how could I take your severance? You have nothing,
Meimei
.”

Her face closed, pulling down the curtain. She could go with Thomas now, or north to join the cause, and in either case a thousand meant nothing next to the diamonds. But what she said was “I don’t care about the money. Just being free is enough.” And that was true.

“He could have kept you another—”

“Ten years,” she said abruptly, because she had always known, every day, every minute, how much longer it was. Now, after they had said dazed good-byes to Kung and stepped back out into the December cold, she tore the flowers from her hair and threw them on the sidewalk; never would she wear them again.

Lin watched the fragile blooms turn quickly to pulp under the careless boots of passersby. “What are you going to do?”

She could be with Thomas, walk into his arms right now, abandon her country and stay with him forever. The thousand was just enough to buy them two tickets, and she could surprise him with the diamonds at sea.

Or she could go north, and reach the culmination of the dream she had been living for all this time.

Not both.

“Well?” he said.

“I don’t know yet. But before I go anywhere, may I borrow the key to the padlock at Rue Wagner? I need to go back for something.”

“Du cursed the place. He said none were to enter it.”

“Du’s gone. One hour, and I’ll bring the key back to you.”

“Gowns, furs, what?” He dug in his pocket. “You always said you hated that stuff.”

“I do hate it. It’s something else, of no value to anyone but me.” She took the key. “Just a picture on the wall.”

That night, when the Kings closed out their last set and came back for the encore, Thomas was halfway through a highly embellished, rhythmically arch version of
Rhapsody in Blue
when he looked up and saw something he had never before seen, Song entering by herself. Instead of climbing the stairs to the balcony box, she walked straight into the ballroom, looking different, her delicate frame overwhelmed by a mannish wool overcoat. She stood watching him as he faltered, recovered his place in the music, and made it to the end only because he had played the
Rhapsody
so many times. When it was over, the applause roared up, crested, and dribbled away as the lights winked up and he flew to her, presto agitato.

“What’s happened?” She wore no earrings, no rouge, just her skin, clean and plain. She had never been more beautiful.

“Du’s gone.” She took both his hands in hers, something she would never have dared in public before.

“I ran to the mansion when I heard—it was locked up—I looked everywhere.” He blinked. “What do you mean, gone?”

“He insulted the Japanese General who came to negotiate with him, and now he cannot come back. I am free.”

“And your family’s debt?” he said.

“Forgiven.”

He took her hand then and led her straight out to the lobby, returning only to get his coat when she insisted. For the first time since the night they opened, he bypassed the crowds who congregated around the door, and fled directly into the street. “Du has put me in a small apartment for a week,” she said as she beckoned to a pedicab with an awning-covered seat. They spread their wool coats over them like blankets and nestled in deep beneath the awning, hidden from view, for the long ride across Frenchtown and then into the circular labyrinth of the Chinese City.
Finally
, was all he could think. He knew she had her life, her cause, and he wasn’t going anywhere near all that. But he also wasn’t going to let her go again, not if he could help it.

Once inside her room, they did not leave again until noon the next day, when the need for tea and something to eat finally drove them downstairs. Outside, Thomas found the world transformed, animated, vibrant, the lane bright and clattery with vehicles and voices. The winter walls on either side were strung with banners, and the cobblestones coursed with folk in padded coats. On the bottom floor of her building was a rice shop with gunnysacks of grain stacked almost to the ceiling, and it seemed like the center of the world, with customers streaming in and out all day. He was awake to life.

And hungry; he was sure he had never been so ravenous. “Here,” she said, stepping into a sesame cake shop, and soon they were sitting on porcelain stools, washing down crullers called
you tiao
with scalding tea.

“I love this,” he said.

“Me too,” she said, thinking he referred to the breakfast. “It’s simple. When I was a child, it made me proud to be rich. Not now. All that time I lived in Du’s mansion, I didn’t like any corner of it.”