Shanghai (27 page)

* * *

JIANG LOOKED at the slowly lengthening shadows outside the window as she gently put the dark, hot beverage, untouched, to one side of the table. Suzanne had proudly presented it, through her translator, as a drink called coffee. Jiang had taken a sip and found it bitter. Suzanne had immediately ordered that tea be served.

When the tea arrived Jiang smiled and said, “Very considerate of you.”

“My apologies. I thought the coffee might be a treat.”

“Perhaps, like so many things, it is an acquired taste.”

“Perhaps.”

The two women drank their respective beverages in silence. Finally Suzanne said, “The men in this city have no idea how much money there is to be made in our trade.”

Jiang didn't totally agree, but she nodded and said, “Let us hope they stay so blind.”

“You and I both make our living off the folly of men.”

Jiang didn't completely agree with that statement either, but she nodded.

“As long as men feel they are in command they can be manipulated in any manner that a smart woman—or two smart women—want.”

Jiang agreed more with this statement.

“But men can also be the enemy. They can sense that we are making money and insist upon taking a portion for themselves.”

“In return for their protection,” Jiang said sarcastically.

“Yes. Extortion. And it never ends. And it always increases. It is the one serious downside of our business.”

Jiang agreed completely with this assessment.

“What if there were a circumstance under which this extortion could be regulated? In which the government, not gangs of thugs, offered us protection? And what if the extortion money were an agreed-upon percentage of our gross income?”

Jiang looked at the long tea leaves, like tall sea grass, moving with invisible currents. She knew, as all Chinese knew, that change was a serious part of life. She allowed herself to breathe deeply. Beyond the heavy smell of the coffee and the gentle aroma of the tea she detected the unmistakable reek of ozone in the air. Change was near.

“What percentage?” Jiang asked.

“Three percent, delivered at the end of each month in cash. Never taken out in trade on our girls. Never varying. Based upon figures that we supply for them at the end of the third week of each month.”

“We supply the figures upon which the percentage is based?” Jiang asked, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.

“We do,” Suzanne affirmed. “You see the advantage of this regulated system to us, I assume, over the randomness that we put up with presently.”

“I do,” Jiang offered carefully. “But we would need a powerful government person with whom to deal.”

“Absolutely. I have a very loyal customer at the House of Paris who happens to be the head of the governing unit of the Concession—the French Concession. Do you think that would be powerful enough?”

Suzanne proceeded to outline her plan. It would work only if Jiang moved into the Concession, where the protection could be offered. Jiang could either keep her house in the Old City and open a new house in a building just down the road from the House of Paris, or she could move her entire operation into the Concession.

“I need to think about this,” Jiang said.

“Absolutely. Take all the time you need. But this evening, let my house entertain you.”

Jiang angled her head slightly and asked, “At what time would you like me there?”

* * *

A MERE SIX WEEKS LATER, the Foreign Settlement and the Concession were abuzz with the opening of
Jiang's new house. The name was taken from ancient Chinese literature and was understood by very few. It translated as “It will happen at the Bend in the River,” but the house, from its opening, was known simply as “Jiang's,” the finest house of ill repute and opium den in all of Asia.

Jiang's opened on a beautiful spring evening in late April, when the wind moved softly up the Yangtze, bringing the scent of the sea into every room of the elegant house. French opera singers mingled with buccaneers who stood to have their portraits taken by a thin-faced Englishman who was showing off the newest of new inventions—the photographic camera. Two French painters mocked the newfangled thing as blasphemy, claiming that it would never replace their art.

The centrepiece of the evening was the premiere of a selection from the first act of Jiang's daughter's
Journey to the West
. Maxi was completely entranced by the singing, dancing, tumbling miracle of what would eventually be called Peking Opera. He was completely incapable of escaping the power of
Journey to the West
. Over and over he rose with the others in the audience and howled out “
Hoa!
” then whistled and shouted his pleasure.

As Maxi fell into the heart of
Journey to the West
, Richard signalled to the English photographer to follow him back to his office. He had already had an interesting conversation with the man, and there was more he wanted to know.

“Do you have the pictures you mentioned earlier?” Richard asked.

The young man reached into his leather satchel and drew out a neatly wrapped package. Untying the string
knot, he folded back the brown paper and spread out the twenty photographs of which he had spoken.

“This is Eliazar Vrassoon's eldest boy?”

“Well, he's a man, sir, not a boy, but it's him.”

“How did you get these?” Richard demanded.

“He paid me to take them.”

“Yes, but how is it that you have them and not him?”

“He has the originals, but I have the negatives.” He laughed. “He neglected to demand them from me.”

Richard doubted the Vrassoon heir even knew there were negatives. “Where did you take these photographs?”

“In the anteroom of his favourite whorehouse in London.”

“He let you …?”

“Shit, yes! He wanted to pose with the little thing, but she cried and refused.”

That stopped Richard for a moment. He stared at the photographer, then asked, “Little thing?”

“His whore.”

“How young was she?” Richard's voice was only slightly more than a whisper. His mind was reeling with the possibilities that fate had presented him.

“Ten. Maybe twelve.”

Richard spread out the photographs. Three showed the Vrassoons' eldest son without a shirt and a leg up on a stool, flexing his not inconsiderable muscles.

“Is it possible to put two pictures together?” he asked.

“You mean rip one or both and paste them together?”

“No, I mean take the subject of one photograph and include it in another photograph. So that it looks to the viewer as if the two were photographed together at the same time and in the same place.”

The young photographer scratched his head. Richard was glad that nothing living crept out of the man's curls. “In theory I guess it's possible, sir, but the two photographs would have different backgrounds, so it would be obvious that the picture had been monkeyed with.”

“Really?” Richard said, as he took a pair of nail scissors from his desk and proceeded to cut the figure of the eldest Vrassoon son from one of the photographs. Then he turned to the younger man and said, “What if you took a photograph of someone else and kept that person's figure on the right side of the image. Then you could paste this figure of the Vrassoon boy here on the left side of the photograph, and then re-photograph the pasted picture to get an image with both figures against the same background.”

“I guess I could do that, but why would—?”

“Because I'd pay you more for that one photograph—and its negative—than you've been paid for all the photographs you've ever taken.”

The younger man smiled and said, “I'm listening, Mr. Hordoon. Who's the other figure to go with the Vrassoon boy?”

Richard turned toward the large window and stared out at the wave of Chinese men and women moving past on the street outside his office. “How young was the bastard's whore?”

“Ten, maybe twelve, as I said.”

Richard thought again. “And she cried?”

“I got the feeling that he hurt her, sir.”

“Ah,” Richard said. “The second figure will be a girl. A ten- or twelve-year-old girl. A hurt girl. A naked, hurt, Chinese girl. I'll send her to your hotel room to photograph.”

The young photographer blushed. “I'll not hurt her, Mr. Hordoon.”

“Nor will I. It'll be pretend. Only your photograph will make it appear real.”

“But in my room, it's—”

“Improper. Certainly. This girl will have a chaperone, naturally.”

“And what will you do with—”

“That's my business,” Richard said. He dismissed the young man. Once alone he stood very still, sensing the world in motion all around him. He thought about revenge and then reminded himself to be patient—very patient.
It took fifteen years to get to Shanghai, what's a few years more?
But he didn't bother answering the question because he sensed there was something else, something larger than the need for patience, at play. Something more significant than revenge. Something that he could only catch a fleeting glimpse of while in the coils of the serpent smoke. Something about a young girl.

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING the young photographer was awakened by a loud knocking at his door. He opened it and stepped back in horror.

Lily was used to people being startled by her noseless, earless appearance so she ignored the young man, reached behind her, and shoved forward what looked like a ten-year-old Han Chinese girl—a beautiful ten-year-old Han Chinese girl.

When the girl stepped into the photographer's room she pulled on the ribbon tie of her robe and it fell to the ground. As Madame Jiang had instructed her, she
played at being a young girl—a hurt young girl—while the flustered photographer began the complicated calculations that could produce a picture that might, if put in the “wrong hands,” send the Vrassoon boy directly to hell.

That evening while Richard carefully secreted the photographic plate in his desk's hidden compartment, Maxi paid the photographer to take pictures of the boys. Dressed in Chinese silk robes, pantaloons, and slippers, Milo and Silas were photographed with huge smiles on their faces and their arms around each other. Within weeks the pictures appeared in newspapers around the world and, along with dozens of the young man's other photographs, gave the outside world its first views of the Wild West of the East—Shanghai. Silas loved the photograph of himself and Milo and wanted it framed and hung in their room. When he mentioned it to Patterson, though, the man turned on him and, ripping the photograph in half, screamed, “You're not fuckin' monkeys, heathen!”

Shanghai 1847

Rachel stood just inside the doorway, unexpectedly taken aback. Lily, instead of Richard, had opened the door to her knock.

“I'm sorry, she frightened me … her face …” Rachel's voice disappeared into a whisper, then was nothing more than breath.

“She's … excuse me,” Richard replied, then gently instructed Lily to leave them alone.

After a slight hesitation the woman left the room.

“Careful of her, Mr. Hordoon, I think she cares for you,” Rachel said.

“Foolishness.”

“Not so foolish. Take care. After all, what could be more dangerous than a woman scorned?”

Richard smiled and said, “A fallen woman, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” Rachel said with a slow smile as she thought of her time with this man's brother.

Rachel hadn't seen Maxi for over a month. And the last time they were alone he'd spent their precious time either brooding sullenly or talking excitedly about some play he had seen called
Journey to the West
. She sensed that he was trying to tell her something, something important to him, but he couldn't find the words. Then after that, nothing—not a single word for almost five weeks. She needed to see him but had no way of contacting him. She did, however, have a way of getting in touch with his brother, Richard.

They had grown close on their three-month trek upriver, but they had never been free of the ever-watchful eyes of her father and his men. When they were together they talked of books and writing. He had shown her some of his journals, and she had been helpful in editing certain passages. She also had a vast knowledge of Shakespeare, and they'd enjoyed many a lively conversation on what both agreed was the most problematic, although fascinating, of the Bard's plays,
Cymbeline
.

“And you are here now, Rachel, to …?”

“Continue my work on your journals, naturally,” she lied.

Richard took her wrap, showed her to his desk, and handed her his journal. She turned to the page they'd left off at and began to read. Richard watched her from across the room and said her name, silently, over and over again.

Rachel came to an entry wherein Richard responded to Thomas De Quincy's final letter, and after reading it carefully she corrected a line.

“What have you excised?”

“Your use of several subordinate clauses back to back lacks elegance.”

“Ah,” Richard said as he turned down the flame in the oil lamp.

“How am I to edit without the light?” she asked, putting down her pen.

Richard couldn't take his eyes off her. Her pale skin and green eyes were somehow luminous even in the half-light. He had trouble restraining himself from reaching over and touching the strand of auburn hair that had fallen across her face. After what seemed a very long silence, he said, “And you came over here, to my home, just to edit my writing, did you, Rachel?”

“Why else would I be here, Mr. Hordoon?” She met his eyes and held them. “You are staring, Mr. Hordoon.”

“It's just the light,” he said, as he reached over to turn the flame up—but her hand stopped his.