Shanghai (41 page)

On his raised bed the two dead girls lay in each other's arms. His little game of
show me yours and then I kill you
had been a great success as far as he was concerned.

And then the ghost took out a knife.

—

Maxi whipped around and stared at the feet hanging off the end of the pallet bed. The feet had the slightest glint of nail polish. He spun quickly and threw himself to the floor.

The Manchu's knife sailed over Maxi's prone body.

The Manchu rose to call for his guards, but he never got out a word as Maxi's fists crashed into his face and broke his nose. The droopy eye was no longer the most deformed part of the man's face.

Maxi grabbed the man's ceremonial sword from his sash. And as the General's droopy eye opened, Maxi raised the curved sword. The man turned his head to face his executioner and smiled.

Maxi's blow bisected the smile, and the man's life leapt from his skull like a canary finally released.

Then Maxi waited. Shortly he heard it—the sound of shouting and the sound of gunfire, as he had ordered. Crouching in the recesses of the tent he watched the guards race in and discover the humiliation of their General.

As Maxi had hoped, word of the Manchu's death loosed chaos in the ranks, and as the Manchus tried to restore order in their midst, Maxi made his escape.

The City of Shanghai May 1860

Richard couldn't help smiling. He was selling units in his new four-storey apartment buildings faster than he could get them built. And they were being built with incredible speed. Bamboo scaffolds sprang from the ground in leaps and bounds. Peasants carried the world on their backs up the bamboo ladders to the masons and carpenters and framers above. And all of them—all the Chinese workers—now fought to work for the Foreign Devils. There were almost seventy thousand Chinese living in the Foreign Settlement, and many more awaited housing there. Richard almost laughed out loud when he remembered how he'd nearly lost everything
he'd worked for because he couldn't find workers. Finding workers was no longer a problem.

He felt a tug at his sleeve and looked into Lily's brutalized face. The ear holes, all that remained after her ears had been cut off by the Manchus, were carefully covered with her hair, but there was nothing she could do about the absent nose—the dark blotch in the middle of her face. She indicated the metal thermos bottle in her hand. He nodded, and she poured dark musky tea into an almost translucent porcelain cup, then covered it with an equally translucent porcelain lid and handed it to him. The skin of the underside of her baby finger just grazed his palm and she smiled—inwardly.

He took the lid from the tea and drank deeply. The dense flavour, once so foreign to him, was now comforting. He looked at Lily and smiled as he remembered her help in the village where he was millstoned. And she had been with him ever since. Always there. Never demanding anything from him except the odd smile. He smiled again, and she seemed to smile back. It was hard to tell with her features.

She tightened the cap on the thermos bottle and retreated a few steps—and awaited another opportunity to help the man she loved.

* * *

“GONNA BE A FIGHT, a real big fight, and the Brits are going to help the Johnny Rebs to get back at the Yanks, and the Yanks are going to invade the Johnny Rebs, and the cotton's going to burn or be blockaded and Europeans are going to wear scratchy wool for the foreseeable future. You gonna finish that beer, son, or wha?”

Silas passed his half-finished mug of beer over to the man who he assumed was an American, although he hardly seemed religious, which most Americans, in Silas's experience, were. How religious could he be sitting in the whorehouse waiting his turn?

“First time, lad?”

Silas wasn't interested in answering the man's question and was pleasantly surprised when a hand landed on his shoulder and a lilting, French-accented voice said, “Don't bother with the fool's questions. Your brother tells me that he is buying you a birthday present.”

Silas nodded, intoxicated by Suzanne Colombe's perfume. He said, “Yes. It's my birthday,” then added quickly for some reason, “my twenty-first birthday.”

“Milo told me,” Suzanne said, then added with a smile, “he celebrated his birthday a few days early.”

“Did he? Why? We were born on the same day.” Then Silas added, stupidly, “We're twins.”

Suzanne smiled and said sardonically, “Really, I would never have guessed.”

“Is Milo here?”

“Usually, but not tonight.” She thought of telling Silas that his brother was in one of her opium dens but decided against it. She was enjoying speaking English. “Milo told me that you have never experienced the clouds and the rain?”

Silas didn't catch the reference and asked for it in Mandarin, which Suzanne supplied. He shook his head quickly, “No.” Then he added, “Not yet.”

Suzanne put an arm through his and walked him into the next room. The slightest trace of opium smoke scented the air. But Silas didn't notice. His eyes and senses were filled with the array of women sitting, lounging, laughing, playing cards.

Suzanne prodded him in the ribs with her elbow. “Is there anything here that you like?”

Silas had seen her the moment he walked into the room. Tiny compared to the French and English women, the Han Chinese girl sat quietly to one side. Her flawless skin drawn tight across her cheekbones, her beautiful tapered fingers arranging the cascade of her jet-black hair.

“Ah,” Suzanne said, “I see.”

—

The girl's skin was cool to the touch and her tongue a lightness almost indistinguishable from the air itself. But alive. Her mouth a warmth and her hands in motion, unbuttoning, caressing, pulling … then she stopped and stepped away from him.

Silas stood there, his pants and undergarments around his knees, not knowing what to do.

She pointed at his member.

For an instant he forgot how to speak Mandarin, then finally found his words. “Is something wrong?”

Still pointing, she asked, “Did it hurt when you lost it?”

He tried to smile, never having spoken of his circumcised member before, let alone to a girl who was pointing at it. “No.”

“Ah,” she said, and placed her hand, light as a feather, on its cap. Then she guided him between her thighs and put her arms around his neck. With her tongue deep in his mouth she gently put him on his back and then placed his hands on her small breasts and murmured, “We'll bring the clouds and rain, together.”

And her nimble body moved on his and heat came from her—and Silas felt all this happening to someone else—not him.

* * *

PATTERSON'S REPORT of Silas's twenty-first birthday celebration began with the charming phrase, “And there were all sorts of White whores and he chose the one Chinee twat in the place.”

Richard ignored him, wanting to talk about how to keep their work sites safe, but Patterson insisted on continuing, “It reflects on me too, sir. What young Silas does reflects on all of us in the Foreign Settlement, it does.”

Richard needed Patterson. The man knew building, and his willingness to mix it up with the Chinese contractors had saved Richard a small fortune. And although Richard never really trusted him, he paid him well enough that he expected some honesty from him. “So, my son's behaviour reflects badly on you, does it?”

Patterson drew himself up to his full height and said, “On all of us. All of us. We are as good as occupying their country, sir. And there are millions of them Chinee and only a few of us. How are we going to control them if we treat them like equals? They are not our equals. They are not Whites, and we are. Simple as that.” He looked away from Richard, whom he didn't consider a White at all but rather some kind of murky brown, then he muttered, “There are enough Chinee hotheads out there without shoving a hot poker up their butts by sleeping with their women. We need them to do what we say. We need them to work for us. We need them to accept our occupation. Your son doesn't seem to understand that.”

Richard didn't completely disagree. He'd heard the rumblings before, and he was aware that it was a delicate matter to appease the upper-echelon Chinese so that they would continue to help keep the lower orders—well, in order. “Go find him and send him to me.”

—

Milo entered with Silas. “I would like to stay, Father,” he said.

“That might be, son, but this is between myself and your brother.”

“But if it concerns him it concerns me, Father.”

“Sometimes, Milo, but not this time.” Richard pointed toward the door of his office, then made a “scat” gesture.

Milo turned to Silas, who shrugged his shoulders. “Go, brother mine,” Silas said in Yiddish.

“What?” Milo asked in the Common Tongue.

“Go,” Silas replied.

Milo left, and Richard made sure the door was firmly shut, then he turned to his son. Before he could speak, Silas challenged him in Farsi, “You wanted to see me, Father?”

“I did.” Richard met the challenge in Farsi.

“Why?” Silas asked, switching to English.

“Because we have much to talk about,” Richard replied in the Queen's tongue.

“Such as?” Silas asked in Mandarin.

“Don't question me, Silas,” Richard replied in Mandarin.

“Well then, perhaps you need to question me, Father,” Silas said in Cantonese.

“Enough of the games!” Richard snapped in Shanghainese.

Silas corrected Richard's use of the idiom, then said, “Fine,” naturally, in Shanghainese. They had at least agreed upon the language of the argument. “What is troubling you, Father? I have done what you asked. I now spend time in the stables shovelling horse droppings, which was what you wanted.”

“I want to understand what is going on with you.”

That stopped Silas. For a brief moment he thought about telling his father his dark secret, but then he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Nothing is going on with me.” Then he corrected Richard's word choice for the idiom “going on.”

“Stop that. You know what I meant.” Richard took a small cigar from a teakwood box on his desk and lit it. “You're not a boy any more.” A smile crossed his face. “How did you like your twenty-first birthday present from your brother and me?”

That surprised Silas. So his father had contributed to his night at the House of Paris. “It was a very thoughtful gift, Father. Thank you.”

Silas's formality brought a laugh to Richard's lips, but he suppressed it. “Why with her? Come on, son, answer my question. With all the French and English girls there, why choose the Chinese girl?”

Because I was trying to find someone who could make me feel something,
he wanted to shout, but couldn't. It would just sound stupid. So he said, “Did Mademoiselle Colombe report my choice?”

“In English or Mandarin. I don't speak French.”

“Sorry. Did Miss Colombe tattle on me?”

“No. An American who was there told Patterson and he—”

“The drunk who claimed that every European would be wearing scratchy shirts soon?”

Richard stopped and put down his cigar. “What's that about scratchy shirts?”

Silas told him of the man's claim of an oncoming civil war between the North and South in America and the inevitable blockade that would stop the cotton trade out of the Americas to Europe.

Richard picked up his cigar and allowed the smoke to float up through his fingers. Then he said, “Tell me that again, but slower, and any detail you can think of, no matter how small, I want to hear it.” He reached to the buzzer on his desk and pressed it. Instantly a secretary from the front office opened the door.

“Describe the man,” Richard ordered Silas.

The boy did.

Richard turned to the secretary. “Find him. Bring him here. Take as many men as you need. Kidnap him if necessary. My bet is a bottle of whisky should do the trick. And bring me any other American you can find who has arrived recently.”

The secretary nodded and left.

Richard turned to Silas. For the first time in Silas's life he felt that his father actually wanted to hear him speak. It was possible that his father was actually smiling at him as he laced his hands behind his head and said, “Now tell me again about this drunken American.”

* * *

AFTER TWO DAYS of interviewing Americans, Richard was ready—no, eager.

He barged into Eliazar Vrassoon's private office and announced, “You win. I'm willing to leave the property
game to you and your den of thieves.” He recalled Milo advising him to stay abusive to avoid suspicion. That's why he was reeking of opium, despite the fact that he was stone-cold sober.

Then Richard threw the deeds to all of his properties on Vrassoon's desk. Just as he and Milo had planned it.

“Get out,” the Patriarch said, with a steely cold that penetrated Richard's bones, and suddenly he wasn't sure he could pull it off, or that he wanted to pull it off. But he had lived his whole life walking on the edges of cliffs, going where others refused to go, and besides, he was there—actually in Vrassoon's office—so he charged on.

“What? Is it Shavuos? Sukkott, then? Damn, I never remember when … or is it Simchas Torah—fuck, I always miss Simchas Torah.”

“Get out!” the Patriarch repeated, but Richard noticed that the man's eyes were devouring the property deeds on the huge mahogany desktop.

“Maybe you're right,” Richard said, reaching forward and collecting the deeds together in a drunkard's pile. Then he felt a deeper coldness enter him as the old man's hand rested on top of his—the land deeds beneath both.

“How much do you want for these marginal properties? I'm willing to be generous, but there is a glut of property now on the market and …”