Shanghai (103 page)

He carefully turned the ancient text to its final page and dipped his brush in the ink of his writing stone. He would continue to support the Compact, as all the other Confucians before him had, only if the Compact was going to produce a China in need of Confucians—no,
ruled
by Confucians.

He allowed the excess ink from his brush, then wrote his notes on the figures in the second portal, identifying himself as the Man with a Book and pointing out the potential importance of the Soong sisters.

He set out to find everything there was to know about Charles Soong's daughters. He received reports from dozens of different sources. Every report about the eldest daughter, Madame Chiang Kai Shek, confirmed the fact that she was completely obsessed with her desire to possess every article of value she saw. The evidence entirely supported her popular name: She Who Loves Money.

The reports on the third daughter, the widow of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, bore out her selfless goodness. She was evidently, in both word and deed, She Who Loves China.

But it was while investigating the second daughter, Mao's mistress—She Who Loves Power—that he
came across valuable tidbits, tantalizing clues to a dark soul. A Confucian scribe reported that one of his young, handsome classmates had become a “favourite” of She Who Loves Power. And the Soong girl had pursued him to the point of appearing, uninvited, in his bed. He had resisted her advances, but she had insisted and had her way with the young man—and, the next morning, with the young man's even more handsome brother. Three different Confucians detailed incidents confirming that Soong's second daughter had inherited her mother's, Yin Bao's, sexual appetites. And finally there was an odd report from a Confucian who had seen her slip into a bumboat in the depths of night and head toward the Pudong, with its mountebanks, pirates—and abortionists.

The Confucian sat very still and allowed the various pieces to align. A sexually aggressive Soong daughter who was presently the mistress of Mao Tze-tung, and his need to find a powerful soldier as an ally. Could he use the Soong girl to harness this soldier—to ride him to glory?

He had his Confucians in place, and even the support of the Chosen Three and the Carver—naturally without their knowledge of his deeper ambition. Now he needed to settle on and activate a plan.

He took his brush from his writing stone and composed a note to the young Communist Confucian. Then he dressed carefully, as he had an appointment with Madame Sun Yat-sen, She Who Loves China.

He looked in on his sleeping sons. Almost from the time of his younger son's birth he'd known that this boy would succeed him, and so he had insisted that he be schooled early. At nine he already knew much of the
Confucian canon and was fluent in Cantonese and English. He would shortly be ready to assume his place, at his side, as Confucians ruled China.

As he bathed he reviewed his situation. The Assassin was still in Nanking, where rumours of a sanctuary were finally being confirmed. Jiang was busily running her brothels that now had to cater to Japanese tastes—not always easy—and several times she had come afoul of the authorities. “Good,” he said aloud, with a viciousness that would have surprised him had he heard it from others.

Thinking of Jiang, he rubbed the smooth quartz stone over his body and stretched. It was going to be a good day. A good day for China—and a good day for Confucians.

As he made his way past a Japanese guard post he bowed deeply—he had no desire to arrive at his appointment bloodied and beaten. The Japanese guard waved him through, and as he walked he sensed every other Confucian walking behind him—toward their destiny.

* * *

F
ROM THE
N
OTEBOOK OF THE
H
ISTORY
T
ELLER
:

 

Only in darkness are myths forged.

From dreams of power—monsters.

From dreams of justice—monsters.

Control banishes nightmares but ends dreaming.

I am the seed of dreams.

You will chase me away; hunt me down; but I live inside your nightmares and I light the fire that shows you the monster's face in the mirror of your bedchamber.

Rebirth comes—I feel its icy approach—whether from the melting snow of spring or from ashes of burned flesh—but what baby is born from such a birth?

Fire cleanses and makes way for the purity to come—or the horror.

The History Teller looked up from his writing and said “horror” aloud. The wind picked the word from his lips and carried it east—toward the sea. The intense midsummer sun beat down on his shoulders, but it didn't warm him. He felt it approaching—from far away it was coming—and he knew it. His hand shook as he reached for his brush.

* * *

AS THE CONFUCIAN WALKED THE BUSY STREETS he relived all the insults that the city at the Bend in the River had heaped upon him. How Confucians' positions had been taken from them. How their knowledge of traditional literature meant nothing here—their years of study meant nothing to these merchants. How newspapermen and pornographers were the only writers valued in this place. How merchants now paid for courtesans while scholars were left alone in the gardens under trees, mocked, as they pined for what was rightfully, and had historically always been, theirs. That the Flower World whose very underpinnings and mythic reach came from scholars was now a place for petty whores,
Fan Kuei
sailors, and merchants—always merchants. And the romantic centre of the Flower World that scholars had fostered with centuries of their writing was ridiculed with harsh laughter and brutish sex, no more elevated than a bull mounting a cow.

A vision of Jiang floated through his head, and he allowed himself to revel in her presence, but could not maintain it. He cursed. Only money mattered here. Only that. In this place at the Bend in the River, in this Shanghai, a scholar was a useless appendage—like a sixth finger.

He sidestepped a beggar and ducked into the cool dampness beneath the wharf. It was not quiet—nowhere in this awful place was there any real quiet—but it was at least not roaring. He sat and pressed his forehead against the cool, damp timbers and thought of the task ahead.

It was time to visit the martyr's grave in the Pudong to offer his thanks and there to think carefully about his next move. All Confucians eventually visited the grave, when faced with crucial decisions. Its secret existence and location were in the private notes that each Confucian in the Compact passed down to the next.

He heard a loud buzzing beside his head. He reached out and cupped the large dragonfly in his hands. He smiled as he felt its life flutter against the skin of his palms before he slipped it into his shirt pocket and buttoned the flap.

A good omen,
he thought,
a very good omen.

He rose and walked quickly through the dense crowds on the Bund toward Beijing Lu. At the corner he spotted a scribe taking dictation from an illiterate workman—very likely a letter back to his village. The Confucian cleared his throat. The scribe looked up at the Confucian and then dismissed him with a wave of his hand and a large, dark puddle of spittle.

The Confucian controlled his temper. Scribes, of all people, should acknowledge Confucians.
And they will,
he promised himself.
Who would have taught these
imbeciles to read and write but Confucians? Were we not their teachers?
He took careful note of the man's face and stepped on the spittle, sending a curse into the ground. Then he said, “Soon enough you will all be put in your places—for good.”

He turned from the scribe and proceeded up Beijing Lu. Finally finding a street tailor, he told the crippled man what he wanted. The man nodded and produced a long needle that he threaded with a length of black yarn. The Confucian held out a coin, which the tailor took before handing over the threaded needle.

The Confucian returned quickly to the wharf and waited for an appropriate boat to take him across the Huangpo to the Pudong, where the martyr's grave awaited his offering.

He reached into his pocket with his thumb and index finger and withdrew the live dragonfly. For a moment he watched the insect's rainbow wings thrum the thick Shanghai summer air, called tiger heat by the locals. Then with his other hand he took the threaded needle and jabbed it through the insect's thorax. The eye of the needle, in Chinese the nose of the needle, needed a quick, sharp tug to get it through the living flesh. The dragonfly arched against the pain, but the Confucian ignored it. He pulled the yarn all the way through and tied a large knot tight against the insect's body. He held the needle end and released the dragonfly. Instantly the creature sought its freedom, only to come to the end of its tether and be jerked to a halt, making it fall before it righted itself and tried to fly away again. Over and over it snapped the yarn to, then fell. Until finally it flew to the end of the thread, then circled around and
around, above the head of the Confucian—who smiled. The dragonfly had learned its place. This was good, this was very good.

He selected a boat and barked a command at the boatman, then ignored him for the rest of the crossing, keeping his eye on the endlessly circling insect on the end of the thread.

Once in the Pudong he headed east and north. Two hours later he found the five banyan trees that had been carefully planted in a circle within sight of the river. The tree's ancient aerial prop roots formed a kind of boundary within which the grave lay.

Since the Boxer Rebellion, every Confucian in the Compact had made this journey. Every one had sought advice and solace here.

The dragonfly buzzed angrily over his head as the Confucian used his hand to dig into the loose earth of the grave. In a few moments his fingers found what he sought. He pushed the ground aside and extracted an old photograph in a glass-fronted frame. He gently brushed the debris aside.

The young man in the yellowed photograph stared right into the camera's lens. He had a large blotch on the left side of his face—a discoloration that, if the photograph had been in colour, would have stood out as a lurid raspberry stain.

“We are coming—we are ready to assume our rightful place,” the Confucian said. “We all appreciate the effort you made all those years ago. But this time,” he paused as he looked up at the angry dragonfly over his head, “we will not fail.” He took the needle and threaded it through the hook at the top of the photograph's frame, then covered it with earth once again, so that only the circling dragonfly marked the grave of the martyr.

The Confucian had never even heard of the diaries of Richard Hordoon, but he would have agreed with the famous opium addict's warning: “When the peasants get together with the scholars, the end is near.”

“We are rising as one great thing,” he said. “All that is needed is a leader, and a Confucian to guide his hand.”

World War

It was early in the morning of December 7, 1941.

A Japanese submarine was spotted trying to enter Pearl Harbor. Then a second submarine was seen.

7:02 a.m.
: Opana Radar Station. Privates Joseph Lockhard and George Elliott sight Japanese planes 132 miles north-east.

7:20 a.m
.: Lt. Kermit Tyler dismisses radar sightings as B-17s due from California.

7:49 a.m.
: Admiral Fuchida radios his planes to attack using the command:
Tora Tora Tora
.

7:55 a.m.
: The first wave of 183 Japanese planes led by Fuchida attack Pearl Harbor from the north-west.

9:00 a.m.
: The second wave of 167 Japanese planes led by Shimazaki attack Pearl Harbor from the north-east.

9:45 a.m.
: Of the 96 ships in harbour, 18 are sunk or seriously damaged. Of the 394 aircraft at Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows airfields, 188 are destroyed and 159 are damaged. Of the United States military personnel, 2,403 are killed (1,102 onboard the USS
Arizona
) and 1,178 wounded.

¨ ¨ ¨

More importantly for the people at the Bend in the River, the United States and Britain declared war on Japan the next day, and Japan promptly declared war on the United States and Britain and … Japanese soldiers crossed the invisible boundary between Chinese Shanghai and the Foreign Settlements, and so took complete control of the city at the Bend in the River.

One hundred and one years after the signing of the shameful Treaty of Nanking that created Shanghai, the city was finally unified under an Asian flag—the Japanese flag.

The
Fan Kuei
awoke to the sound of sirens. The British gunboat
Petrel
was ablaze in the harbour, and the American ship
Wake
was swarming with blue-shirted Japanese soldiers.

Within hours of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, diplomats from every foreign power were put under house arrest in the Cathay Mansions in the French Concession.

And that very evening, the Japanese officer whom Jiang had shamed appeared in her foyer with his interpreter.

Jiang approached with a nod and a small smile.

The officer turned to his interpreter and said, “Tell the whore she is to take me to her most private and most soundproof room.”

Jiang did, passing by the bouncers she had drawn from Gangster Tu's men, and that night she experienced what so many Chinese women had experienced at the hands of their conquerors—rape and a beating that left her near death for almost a week. All that she thought about during that awful week was that she had not yet produced a girl child for the Compact. It kept her alive.

Life changed quickly for foreigners in Shanghai. They were all forced to register as “enemy aliens” and wear armbands that identified their nationalities. The Japanese froze all foreign bank accounts. The Shanghai Club, a British favourite that boasted the longest bar in the world, was taken over by Japanese officers, while the American Club became the headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Navy. The Union Jack that flew proudly over Silas's Hong Kong Canton Bank was replaced by the Empire of the Sun's red-and-white flag.
Fan Kuei
cars were confiscated.