Night in Shanghai (33 page)

In October of that year, Song was still returning to Baoding Village every three weeks, bringing new workbooks for the girls and teaching them new characters. Plum Blossom, the group’s ringleader, learned the fastest, and by the time autumn’s chill had descended, she had composed a short letter to Song, proudly sent down the mountain on a truck hauling casks of vinegar. The phrasing was off and some of the characters incorrect, but it brought Song perhaps her purest single moment of happiness since she came north. She expressed her happiness and pride in large, clear characters and gave the letter back to the vinegar seller to carry to Baoding, just as a messenger approached her. She was requested at a meeting.

She found herself delivered to a set of steps that zigzagged steeply up the canyon wall—a canyon she had never been in before, where higher-level cadres worked. She entered a large cave outfitted as a meeting room, with a low table surrounded by men in squared-off chairs, and gas lamps flickering from ledges on the walls. A Tartar rug covered the floor.

“Interpreter Song,” said the oldest man present, “I am Comrade Feng.” He waved her to a seat and continued. “We have news from our spies in Manchuria.”

Her eyes widened. Secrets, like power, had seemed so far from her in Yan’an.

“The Japanese have learned that the Nationalists have a plan to resettle Jews in Yunnan, and they have devised their own plan. A counter-plan they call the Fugu Plan.”

“For Jews?” she said, trying to follow.

“Yes. They want the sympathy of the West for themselves, not for China. So they are proposing to move the more than twenty thousand Jews now in Shanghai up to Manchuria.”

“What? Why?” She could not imagine why Shanghai’s Jews would want to go to that frozen tundra, when they had already built a successful community in Shanghai.

“They
say
it is to let them farm. A lie. According to our agents, they want them as a human buffer between themselves and hostile Chinese forces. They will exploit them. The problem is that they are going to try to introduce this Fugu Plan as a humanitarian act, so the West will support them in their conquest of China.”

“But how are they saving anyone? These people are already safe in Shanghai.”

“Exactly. We support the Chinese plan, even though it comes from the Nationalists. Bringing in one hundred thousand more people—to Yunnan.”

She nodded agreement. Ordinarily she would not expect the Party to back any Nationalist idea, but this Jewish Resettlement Plan was different.

“Here is where you are needed. We have learned that the Japanese are about to go to all the newspapers and magazines in Shanghai about this Fugu Plan, with a lot of big lies to get the Jewish refugees to accept it and move up there. We understand you knew foreign people in the past in Shanghai—no, no,” said Comrade Feng, “do not be frightened, it’s all right—and that you may know them still. Yes? Is it so? Then we need you to go there immediately, do whatever must be done to make the right contacts, and make sure Japan’s lies are not published. We cannot let the Jews be misled about this Fugu Plan.”

She soared inside. Shanghai! And Thomas. “Yes, Comrade. Of course.” Her mind raced with possibilities. “You wish to influence the press against the Fugu Plan as well?”

He gave a slight but discernible nod of approval. “If it is possible to plant our view of the matter in the press, even better.”

Three days later, having learned Thomas was to play that afternoon at the Central Hotel, she stood waiting in front, on Canton Road, scanning the crowds in every direction. He was due to appear at two thirty with a violinist, a Jew of all lucky things, whom she had just met inside. Now she waited, anxious, praying she would see joy on his face when he recognized her.

As Song watched, Thomas was approaching the intersection with Lin Ming beside him. He had been listening to Lin tell him about the months he had worked for Duke Kung. “I went looking for my mother, you know.” They waited at the intersection for the flood of rickshaws and carts and motorcars to cease so they could cross. “Look,” Lin interrupted himself, “old number-three redhead is about to change.”

The red-turbaned Sikh on the pedestal stopped the traffic in front of them with wide-swinging hand signals, and they moved out with the flood of pedestrians and vehicles that had clotted up behind them as they waited. “So I went to Jiangsu, looking for her,” Lin said, “but she is gone from this world. Old Du lives, but I am finished with him. All I have left is my friends, all of you—and though I do not know exactly where she is, somewhere I also have—”

Lin Ming stood a second in frozen silence before he stepped up on the sidewalk, “—Song Yuhua,” he finished.

Because there she was, waiting for them in front of the hotel, her smile so wide it lit the sidewalk. Lin reached her first, stepping quickly into her embrace, and then she turned to Thomas.

As they embraced he said, “How did you learn where I would be?”

She laughed. “
Ye Shanghai
has not been gone for so very long—your name is still known. All I had to do was ask where Thomas Greene was playing, and in two turns of the head I had the answer. As for him”—she smiled at Lin—“I was hoping you might have news of his doings. It was beyond my hope that you would bring him with you.”

Thomas felt a stab of sadness, for soon she would hear of Pearl’s fate, and Lin’s fall. Right now, however, he was late. “The three of us have so much to say, but you must forgive me—my partner and I were supposed to begin playing a few minutes ago. I finish at seven. Could we all meet after that, for dinner?”

“Wonderful,” she said, before Lin could speak. “What about De Xing Guan, at the bottom of Dong Men Lu, just off the Bund? It’s not far from here.”

“All right,” said Thomas, and Lin acquiesced too, as pedestrians flowed around them, old ladies in padded jackets, young women with sleek hair, sunburned country people straining under shoulder poles.

“So good to be back,” Song said, and sent Thomas a beam of excitement before she took Lin’s arm and walked away down the street. Thomas watched from the hotel entrance as Lin stopped her, and spoke, and she cried out and threw her arms around him. So he had told her.

Thomas was so keyed up that day that he forgot where he was several times, and came crashing down in the kind of discord that could not be passed off as creative interpretation. David grinned at him, knowing the reason, as she had come in asking for him.

“I knew it was her,” David said. “So beautiful. I see also it is you that she wants to see. She does not expect your Mr. Lin. He is your rival?”

“No, he is her foster brother.”

“Ah,” said David. “Then you will see her later, and all will be well.”

Thomas laughed at this simple forecast, and yet he was able to calm his flutters and play after that, keeping his eyes on the music. But never in all his months with David had he packed up his scores and left as quickly as he did that evening.

Soon he was on Dongmen Road, passing shop after shop where the merchants had folded back their shutters so the whole establishment lay open to the street, lit up now for the evening with tasseled lanterns of wood and painted glass. Shoppers laughed and talked as they browsed each proprietor’s goods: pyramids of fruits and bins of autumn vegetables, clothing hanging in rows from rafters, stacked-up enamel bowls and spittoons.

At the bottom of the street, facing the water, he found the restaurant and realized it was the same one in which Lin Ming had given him advice about Anya a lifetime ago; he remembered the rich seafood soup as he climbed the worn-down stone stairs to the second floor. Lin and Song were already there, at a table by the window. Below them, the river cacophony of Asia was subdued, as it had been in the two years since Japan invaded. The merchant vessels, tramp steamers, winged junks, barges, and foreign liners had come back to ply the river, but lights were trimmed and horns silenced. The exuberance was gone.

Yet in front of him now was Song, smiling, more lovely than he had ever seen her. Her eyes shone with humor and self-assurance, and her every move was fluid. Seeing her now, he could barely remember the tight, stiffly brocaded
qipao
dresses Du had made her wear. Her skin had darkened in the sun, and even here in the city, she wore the blue tunic and black trousers of a country woman, yet she was radiant.

Lin was the opposite, gray with sorrow, his constant companion these days. He was bent over the table, studying the
bai jiu
bottle and then measuring out the fiery liquor into three tiny cups. They drank to each other, and then she told them what she had come to do.

“But that is easy,” Lin said with a wave of his hand. “I will take you to the Sword of David Society.” They were the ones who had dispatched An Gong Geun and Amleto Vespa to Chongqing with the money; they would spread the truth about the Fugu Plan throughout Hongkou.

“And what about Mr. Pao, the editor of the
Shanghai Daily
who I went to see?” Thomas said. “He might like to write an article about the Fugu Plan.”

“You are right,” Lin agreed. “Don’t worry, Sister. Soon everyone in Shanghai will know the facts.”

“Thank you.” They all drank.

Lin became morose again. “It seems so long ago,
Ye Shanghai
.”

“Another world,” said Thomas, remembering the three-month battle, stealing glances at Song. Yes.

“The night is gone,” Lin complained. “The music. I walked all over last night, even through the
Daitu
, the Badlands—what a joke.”

The waiter brought a tureen of the fish soup, which sat between them. Lin shook his head. “We may be here again, the three of us, but this time we make the minor chord.” He drained his cup and refilled it. He had forgotten to make a toast.

Song met Thomas’s eyes. “Brother,” she said, half rising to ladle out the fragrant soup. “Eat something. You’ve had a terrible loss.”

“You need time,” Thomas said.

“No one has time now,” Lin said, tipping up his cup. “The war has eaten our lives. Though we try to escape it.” He poured again.

“Come on,” Song said to Lin, again meeting Thomas’s eyes. She slid Lin’s soup bowl a little closer. “The broth will restore you, the fish, the scallops and sea cucumber, tofu and mustard greens—such a Shanghai taste.”

Lin poured more
bai jiu
. “You know what is Shanghai taste to me? The shrimp dumpling and noodle peddler.”

“Oh yes,” Song agreed.

“He would come through our neighborhood with his own little kitchen on shoulder poles. He had his own song. You always knew when he was coming, for no one else had just that melody. All gone.”

“Not gone,” she objected. “These things will return in their time. Soon we start a new decade, 1940, and before you know it, the sour plums of late spring will be here, the ones sold on the street with a frosting of sugar.” To Thomas she added, “When they appear, it is the start of
huang mei tian
, the yellow plum rainy season.”

“Remember the hot roasted ginkgo nuts?” Lin cut in. “The vendor comes through calling—let me think—‘Hand-burning hot ginkgo nuts! Each one is popped, each one is big!’” Putting the chant in English brought at least a small lift to the corner of his mouth.

“Shanghai still lives,” Song assured him.

Thomas said, “I agree.”

And at last Lin pulled his bowl and spoon closer and began to eat. But after a minute he reached for the wine again and refilled his cup, shaking the last drops out of the small crock. “And the Resettlement Plan,” he said morosely. “What if Chiang Kai-shek cuts it off?”

“Why would he?” said Song. “It’s as fine an idea as anyone ever had. Even my side thinks so.”

“The Germans will hate it. And Chiang wants to please them. Why, he would lick Hitler’s running sores if he could get close enough!”

“Niu bi hong hong,”
Song said, meaning the ox vagina was steaming red, a way of saying he exaggerated.

Lin gave her a laugh as he pushed back and got to his feet, for this was the kind of language she would never have used before. “You’ve grown up,
Meimei
,” he said, and then he steadied himself against the tabletop and squared them both in the eye. “Don’t make my mistake. An inch of gold cannot buy an inch of time. You could die first, both of you.” Thomas reached for her hand under the table, humbled by love, while Lin closed his eyes and rocked on his heels, as if trying to remember something else he had wanted to say to them. He gave up, and dropped his voice to a mumble. “I should go.”

But then he remembered. “Oh. I know. There’s one more thing I miss. The vendor with the new corn, those tender baby kernels—you know—who comes down the lane singing, ‘Pearl-grained corn! Pearl-grained corn!’” He shook his head. “Gone.”

“It is past the time for corn,” Song said.

“I told you, no more time.” He turned for the door. A low, sustained boat horn sounded from the river below.

“We’ll see you home,” Thomas said.

But Lin raised a hand to wave him off. “I’m all right. See you tomorrow. We will go to Hongkou about your business, Song.”

“And I’ll call on that newspaper editor,” said Thomas.

With that, Lin settled his hat on his head with tipsy dignity, stepped out of the dining room, and vanished down the stone staircase.

Her hand trailed up Thomas’s leg, which made him tremble. “I know I come and go with no warning,” she said. “I never know when they will send me here. It’s unfair. I’m sorry. Sometimes I wonder if it is wrong, what I feel with you.” Her voice was very soft. “But if you still want, I have a room in a hostel, and—”

“Let’s go,” he said brusquely.

Much later she lay next to him, watching him sleep. She looked at his hand with love, so skilled, the exquisite fingers now thrown carelessly across her leg, and held her own hand next to it, smaller, paler, crude by comparison. Through his hands he was able to pour all he knew and felt, on the piano, on her body, on the map of her life. She was his, and every time she came back to him, she knew it again.

But. Her head was heavy with uncertainty, and she laid it down next to his on the pillow.