Shanghai (68 page)

Charles acknowledged the challenge and said, “And for main courses?”

“Dog in brown sauce with pig intestines?” Silas suggested innocently.

“Absolutely,” Charles agreed, “with jellyfish.”

“Naturally. I always have dog with jellyfish.”

“Good,” Charles said. “And to drink?”

“Green pumpkin,” Silas said, his stomach taking a lurch.

“With the fried chicken feet or after them?” Charles asked.

“Well, after the snake-and-turtle stir-fry would be better, don't you think?”

“Yes, I do, but I think we have to add antler velvet to that.”

“Absolutely, or the turtle would be tasteless.”

“Agreed.”

“But I think we're a little short.”

“How's about thousand-year-old eggs?”

“Good, as long as they are on a bed of raw sea cucumber.”

There was a pause, and only the scratch of the owner's pen filled the silence. Then he stopped writing and said, “No cobra hearts?”

Both Silas and Charles had seen the extraordinary delicacy before and had passed on the opportunity. A live cobra was brought to the table and stretched to its fullest length by its handler and an assistant. Then the handler slit the belly of the serpent open and cut out the tiny heart, which was popped into the customer's mouth … still beating.

Silas considered it.

Charles considered it.

Then both at once said, “Maybe next time.”

“And rice?” the owner asked.

Both men shook their heads.

—

It took them just under three hours to eat their “exotic” dinner. When it was finally finished, both men pushed back from the table, and at last Silas asked, “Okay, now that we've stuffed ourselves silly, what is it that you wanted to speak to me about?”

Quickly Charles laid out his desire to stage the Flower World contests at Silas's racetrack.

“That's it?” Silas asked, clearly amazed.

“Yes.”

“You mean we made absolute pigs of ourselves, and will no doubt be sick for weeks, because you wanted to ask me that?”

“Yes.”

“Just that?”

“Yes.”

Silas sighed. He wished he could belch. Oh, how he wished he could belch. But all that came from his lips when he opened them were the words “Sure, why not?”

“Does anyone know who placed this notice in last week's paper?” Charles asked as he entered the room reserved for the writers.

The writers looked up and glanced at the full-page advertisement offering “To Buy Any and All Very Large Antique Ivory Pieces.” But none of them knew.

Charles turned to go, then stopped and said, as nonchalantly as he could manage, “Our Flower World contests are all set for the racetrack. I convinced the great Mr. Hordoon that it would be to our mutual benefit—and he agreed.”

The room erupted in applause. Then Charles added, “I think we should add Leaf competitions to our Flower contests.”

The looks on the men's faces changed to the very definition of nonplussed. One lit a Snake Charmer cigarette. Tzu Rong Zi stubbed one out in a large, standup, crystal ashtray, then spat on the floor. This was the writers' room; they could do as they wished.

“Leaf competitions to augment our Flower Competitions,” Charles explained. “Flower competitions for the courtesans, and Leaf competitions for their maids.”

Faces brightened. Although courtesans were beyond the financial wherewithal of most newspaper writers, the attentions of the courtesans' maids were within striking distance, and the Leaf competitions would be the perfect time to meet and impress these young women—not always an easy thing for newspapermen to do. Besides, courtesans' maids periodically became courtesans. The maids were the only chance that these men might have to couple with an actual courtesan.

“We could call the contests
Yebang,
” the youngest writer suggested. The idea was met with smiles all around.

“
Yebang,
” Charles said, savouring the name as he spoke it. “Why not add
Wubang
and
Yibang
as well?” he suggested.

Once again the faces turned nonplussed. None of them liked to acknowledge that they didn't know what in heaven's name Charles was talking about. So he explained, “Contests for courtesan singing and courtesan instrument playing.”

“Ahs” of various sorts greeted Charles's suggestion. Then the “ahs” turned to open agreement when it occurred to the writers around the table that if these contests were held twice a year, like the Flower contest, then there would be a contest almost every six
weeks, each of which would generate follow-up stories and letters sent to the paper. With any luck, they wouldn't have to do any honest reporting whatsoever for the entire year. As that thought circulated, support for the idea grew and grew in all the writers—as Charles knew it would. The only exception was Tzu Rong Zi, who seemed to be in the throes of a particularly angry hangover.

* * *

THE CHICKEN-FACED MATCHMAKER put Yin Bao's photograph down on Charles's office desk. Charles immediately rose and stepped away. “This is a courtesan,” he protested.

“Yes,” said the matchmaker, “but she, unlike the others who you rejected, is young and very beautiful, don't you think?” The woman actually seemed to cluck as she spoke.

Charles agreed with the crone's assessment but was loath to say as much, although he snuck a second look at the beguiling smile of Jiang's youngest daughter.

The matchmaker bowed her head and smiled inwardly. She had known, since first being approached by Jiang, that Yin Bao was the perfect solution to Charles Soong's bachelorhood. The crone recalled how much money she had extorted from Jiang in order to present “your compromised daughter to this fine gentleman,” and she wanted to smack her lips and rub her palms together—or perhaps peck at nonexistent grain husks on the office floor—but she refrained from both displays of glee.

“Maybe,” Charles said softly, “a discrete meeting could be arranged.”

The matchmaker bobbed her head slightly, then smiled a toothless smile as she responded, “Perhaps such could be arranged, although it is not a simple matter to …”

“How much would it cost to arrange such a meeting?” Charles asked icily.

The matchmaker posed an outrageous figure, at which Charles would usually have balked, but his eyes were glued to Yin Bao's picture, so he simply nodded agreement.

The matchmaker asked, “Would next Wednesday be convenient?”

Charles nodded again.

“Good. The details will follow in a missive from my second.” She was having fun; only with effort did she stop herself from crowing aloud. “Employing a second person is an additional expense …”

“Pay her what you need and bill me for it,” Charles said, then turned on his heel. “I suggest care in this matter. If my confidentiality is breached, I will refuse to pay you a single
yuan
.”

“Naturally, sir, your confidentiality is foremost in our concern,” she said as she considered to which of her gossips she'd first tell this juicy news. Then a new idea occurred to her, and she bowed her way out of the room.

Two hours later she was in Jiang's private office, apologizing that she was “completely unable to get Mr. Soong to even consider your daughter as a possibility. He's a Christian, you know, and as such has standards that are incomprehensible to those of us native to the Celestial Kingdom.”

Jiang smiled, then said, “Scat!” and waved her hand in the air. She knew that Charles Soong wanted a
Christian wife, but she thought it just a minor hurdle over which Yin Bao would have to jump, because twenty minutes before, she had been informed by her spy in the Soong offices that Charles Soong had pocketed Yin Bao's picture and cancelled all his meetings for the day.

Ah, men and photographs—a combination made in heaven,
she thought.

I first saw her on Bubbling Spring Road two days after the land auction. I retrieved her parasol from the mud. A pure white parasol in the thick muck of Shanghai—I'll never forget it. And now she is by me again—but this time in the smoke.

Bubbling Spring Road—so many of my dreams lead me to Bubbling Spring Road. In the light of day it is nothing more than a mule path leading from the Huangpo docks to the canal system in the west. But not in my serpent dreams. No. Here, Bubbling Spring Road is a wide avenue of stores and emporiums and carriages and women in fine dresses and Chinese eyes watching—always watching. Right from the start they were watching as if they knew something that we did not. Like this woman Jiang is watching me now through the serpent smoke. I know it is
her. Once Lily is asleep, it is she who brings me opium—but she only appears after I am deep in the coils of the smoke. I know it is her hand that wipes the sweat from my brow then. It is this Jiang woman. She is there. Has always been there. Was there when we first landed at the Bend in the River. She is something ancient and both seductive and terrifying—like the Middle Kingdom itself.

The smoke yanks me away and I am soaring. This night's voyage is toward the sky, not the holes in my back.

Boys, I've done the Devil's work! I've done the Devil's work! Don't do the Devil's work. Don't do …

She's standing there at the door, the light behind her. She steps past Lily's sleeping body and sits on the pallet at my side, her cool hand on my hot chest. “Tell me,” she says, “tell me of your sons.” I try to speak but I breathe out statues, not words. A statue of Milo on a horse. A statue of Silas. Blood on Silas's hand! “Tell me of your boys?” And I try. Milo so strong, so beautiful. Silas and his studies—then a thundering of horse hooves and blood on Silas's hands. So much blood. But her hand wipes away the blood and says, simply, “Tell me of Silas, the quiet one—your son Silas.”

“Do you speak English, madam?”

“I am teaching.”

“Learning, I think you mean.”

“Yes. I do mean ‘learning,' thank you.”

“Silas has been to your …”

“My establishment, yes. You and Milo paid for his first visit to a brothel.”

“Yes. It was a present.”

“Very thoughtful,” Jiang said with a smile.

That was my first time in all my years in China that the word
inscrutable
actually fit the situation. I really could not tell whether she was mocking me or congratulating me. Then she shocked me.

“You were angry that he went with a Han Chinese girl.”

“Not angry …”

“Disappointed, then? I heard that you were angry.”

How did she know this?

“Your anger disappoints me, Richard Hordoon. We honoured your brother, despite his Taiping activities. He honoured us. It appears that you do not. How very disappointing.”

And then she was there beside me, filling the pipe in my hands. Her cool lips on my forehead, the fourth opium ball opening me, tumbling me to my centre. My arm/wings are spread and I am searching, searching. Then I hear a laugh and force my eyes open and there is Jiang, as ancient and beautiful and eternal as China itself. She is standing over me, her lips moving, producing round bubbles of sound, “Search, if you must, Richard. Search.”

My lids are too heavy to keep open, but the moment the darkness is upon me again I find myself in front of a familiar door. Where do I know this from? I thrust up my hand, then turn it. I am facing the other way. Maxi is asleep in his bed. A little boy! I hear a deep voice say, in Farsi, “You drive a hard bargain, boy.” I turn and push open a door. Then I hear my own voice say, “Here. Here she is, sir.”

She laughs. Jiang laughs. I turn to her and reach for her. “Who are you?” Then she says the oddest thing. “You know who I am. I am Jiang, but I am also my daughter and my granddaughter and my mother and her mother before her—I am and have always been waiting, watching—attending.” Then she touches my chest with her left hand while she looses her blouse with her right. “Now help me do what you no doubt would call the Devil's work.”

—

Silas reread the end of his father's journal entry and said aloud to the empty room, “Why did you hide yourself from me, Father?” His soft words bounced off the walls of his study and flowed out the window, where they were plucked by the wind and carried east along the mighty Yangtze River to the sea.

But some of his words also sifted the collected dust on the three pages of his father's journals that he had inadvertently left on the topmost shelf of his book-case—only seven feet away from where he sat and cried for a father now dead that he had never really known.

Just over a month after she returned to Shanghai, Mai Bao was shocked to see her mother crying quietly in her office. Mai Bao had seen her mother in many moods, but never had she seen tears on Jiang's beautiful cheeks.

“Mother?” she asked cautiously.

Jiang raised her head, and another look that Mai Bao had never seen on her mother's face crossed her comely features—shock.

Jiang looked away from her daughter and grabbed a cloth, which she quickly dipped in rosewater and applied to her face. “Close the door.” Mai Bao did as her mother ordered. “I'm sorry you had to see that, and there's no reason for the girls to see me like this.”

Carefully Mai Bao asked, “What has happened?”

“They dug her up.”

“Dug up? Who did they dig up?”

Jiang named an old friend of hers who had passed away several years ago.

“They dug up her dead body? Who would do that?”

“The French from Siming Gongsuo Cemetery.”