Shanghai (69 page)

Mai Bao knew that Siming Gongsuo was a cemetery exclusively for women from the Flower World. Jiang had given the seed money for the cemetery years ago. Many other courtesans eventually offered up money to complete the project. It hadn't been easy to organize, since competition between the courtesans was intense and constantly being whipped into a frenzy by the newspapers. But now this outrage.

“Why would the French do that?” Mai Bao asked.

“Because they claim we bury our dead in temporary coffins and that it is illegal in the French Concession to bury anyone except in a permanent coffin.”

Mai Bao looked at her mother, stunned. Finally she said, “A permanent coffin? That's ridiculous. No coffin is permanent. And even if there were such a thing, why would one want a permanent coffin of any sort?”

Jiang nodded. Every Chinese person knew that the earth always reclaimed that which came from it.

“Besides, what the French claim are permanent coffins are ludicrously expensive, Mother. And for what?”

Jiang's composure had returned, and now she was just angry. “It makes me furious, this stupidity of spending good money to put someone in an expensive box into the ground and then cover it over with dirt. Ridiculous!” she said, then mumbled, “The
Fan Kuei
are ridiculous.”

Mai Bao agreed. “It makes no sense what they want.”

“None,” Jiang agreed. “When will they finally learn to be practical?”

Which was exactly what Mai Bao was now being. She began to think of how exactly to go about starting a new courtesans' cemetery. She already had a name: The New Hundred Flowers Cemetery. Her incisive mind quickly ordered the issues that faced her, and then she laid out the basics of a plan to buy the land outside the French Concession that she'd need.

“Mother, I'll sell my famous orchid paintings, and hopefully by the end of the month other courtesans will donate enough money—and perhaps the newspapers will also contribute—so that I can make a down payment on a land purchase.”

Jiang admired the basics of the plan but kept a sad look on her face until Mai Bao had finished and left her chambers. Then Jiang smiled. Producing tears was the hardest thing she'd had to do in years. The ointment the doctor had given her to force the tears still stung. But it was worth it to get Mai Bao on a track that would inevitably bring her to the attention of the largest land owner in all of Shanghai and the city's most eligible
Fan Kuei
bachelor—one Silas Hordoon, a Man with a Book.

For a moment she wondered if it was necessary to trick Mai Bao into this course of action. She had, after all, always been an obedient daughter. But marrying a
Fan Kuei
—well, that was different, and not the kind of order even Mai Bao would readily obey.

Jiang allowed a moment to pass as the pain in her intestines shifted slightly. Her doctor had told her that she might not live long enough to see the first snow. She sighed. Although she sensed destiny's portal approaching, she knew that she had several years left. As her
mother had said to her, “It takes more than a cancer to kill a Jiang, dear … much more.”

She thought of Mai Bao's two girls out in the country, and then of Yin Bao. Perhaps Yin Bao would give birth to a girl before too long. Perhaps not. In either case, each of her youngest daughters was, in her own way, pursuing contact with a potential Man with a Book.

Mai Bao appreciated Silas's formal deference in dealing with her. She was also impressed with his beautifully spoken Shanghainese, and complimented him on it.

“I have always found great beauty in Shanghainese—roughness, but great beauty.”

She nodded and replied, “Like the city at the Bend in the River itself.”

Silas Hordoon nodded in turn, then gestured for her to sit. He noted the grace with which she manipulated her formal attire and the simple elegance of her movement into the chair. Then she smoothed the outer sash of her garment with long, tapered fingers.

He felt clunky and thick in her presence and found himself pulling in his stomach as he sat.

It surprised him—she surprised him. “Miss Mai Bao, what is it that I can do for you?”

Mai Bao heard the soft underside of his words and took her fan from her sleeve. With a gentle snap she opened it and stirred the air in such a way that he received as much of the relief as she did. Finally she said, “We in the Flower World have suffered a great loss.”

Silas wondered if Mai Bao's famous mother had finally passed away, although he thought it unlikely since there had been no mention in the Chinese press of her passing—and Jiang's death would have filled the pages of those papers for days. Suddenly he found himself flooded by the odd warnings from his father's opium diaries and a sweat sprang to his forehead. He reached in his pocket for his handkerchief only to find that Mai Bao was holding out a delicate square of Chinkiang silk. He took her proffered kerchief and, without thinking, breathed in its scent before saying, “I wouldn't think of soiling so fine a piece of cloth, but thank you.” Nevertheless, he held on to the silk longer than was necessary—and she saw it.

Mai Bao had dealt with many
Fan Kuei,
although she had never permitted a
Fan Kuei
into her bedchamber. However, unlike most Han Chinese women, she didn't find them particularly repulsive. She had long ago trained herself to ignore the odd growths of hair that so many Chinese found abhorrent, and she was not offended by the largeness of their features. She did still find the smell of their skin odd and couldn't fathom their desire to drink milk or eat cheese, although she liked the smell of tobacco that encircled many of them. Being tall, she was often the first of the courtesans that attracted foreigners' eyes. But she was discrete and old-fashioned so she seldom had to deal with their advances. The
closest they came to her was when she performed. Chinese men valued her arhu playing and her singing, but it was her experience that
Fan Kuei
were both puzzled and often put off by her artistry.

“I've seen you play,” Silas said.

That surprised her. “Where, if I may ask?”

“The Dangui Theatre a few times,” he said, putting the handkerchief down on the desk between the two of them.

“Was this recently?”

“No. Several years ago.”

She smiled and said, “I am not that old that you could have seen me several years ago, Mr. Hordoon.”

“True,” he said, then quickly added, “I meant no slander.”

“None was received. But you say it was several years ago?”

He sighed heavily and looked away from this extraordinary creature. He had a terrible desire to tell her his history, or at least the history of the death of his wife and unborn child.

She looked at this strange man and read the distress as it raced across his features. Like everyone else in Shanghai she knew the story of Silas's first marriage and his wife's death in what some might call childbirth. Could that be what was on his mind? She folded her hands in her lap, then said, “Death creases time and turns it on itself so that what took but a day can feel as if it happened over the course of a year or more.” She held her breath waiting for his response, but there was none. He just stared past her. “Was it your wife's passing that brought you to the Dangui Theatre?”

He looked at this strong, handsome woman and said, “Only your playing stopped the pain. I lied to you about coming to see you play.”

“I am sorry, I don't understand. About what did you lie?”

“I didn't go to listen to you three or four times. I was there every night for months on end. Every time you played I was there.” His hands seemed to fly up like doves suddenly loosed from their cages, and unexpected tears flooded his eyes. “Your music allowed sleep back into my life.”

Mai Bao was astonished. She'd had no idea. When she performed, the limelight was often in her eyes, which she usually kept closed. But why had no one told her? Here was a man to whom she had been speaking with her music for all that time—and she hadn't even known!

“Where did you learn those songs? You're the only person who sings them.”

“They were written by my great-aunt, the History Teller.”

“Did she write the song you call ‘The Tears of Time'?”

Mai Bao nodded, although she had in fact written the song after reading her great-aunt's notes on an unfinished play about an arhu player who induces love in others but is without love himself. The actual title “Tears of Time” she intuited from her great-aunt's musings, although it did not appear in the History Teller's notes.

Silas rose and turned away from her. She noted that he wasn't as big as many of the successful
Fan Kuei
were. Somehow the fools felt that getting fat was a sign of true success. This man in front of her was certainly not fat, although he had the thickness that attended late middle age. There was a surprising grace to his step and at times a clarity in his eye that she found interesting. He turned back to her.

“I apologize for being personal,” he said.

She bowed her head slightly.

“Your note said that there was a business matter that you wished to discuss with me. Your mother's business is well known to me. Please send her my best wishes.”

“I will, Mr. Hordoon,” she said with a smile as she recalled stories of Silas as a young man at Jiang's.

“Good. Now, what can I do for you, Miss Mai Bao?”

“Do you know of the Siming Gongsuo Cemetery?”

Silas knew of the desecration of the courtesans' graves and had fought unsuccessfully to convince the French authorities that their actions were dangerous for the safety of the entire Foreign Settlement. He hadn't bothered adding that they were also stupid and offensive. But the French had ignored him, pawning off his comments as those of a heathen butting his fat nose into church business.

“Yes, I'm sorry about the French actions in this case.”

Mai Bao tilted her head forward to accept his apology for the actions of other
Fan Kuei
, and then she lifted her face.

Now it was his turn to be surprised that tears streaked the flawless skin of her cheeks.

“My mother is nearing her end, and with Siming Gongsuo Cemetery closed I will have no place to lay her remains. We who are of the Flower World need a place to bury our dead, and I had hoped that you would help me find an appropriate piece of property within the confines of the Foreign Settlement for us to open a new cemetery. A place not controlled by the Catholic French and their foolish rules about permanent coffins.”

Silas momentarily recoiled. Was he being conned? Despite all his efforts, Silas had become a hard-nosed businessman and knew a pitch when he heard one. He stared at Mai Bao and finally asked, “Are you asking me to donate land that I own?”

She heard the voice of the scholar, her one-time lover, shouting in her ear,
They think they own land here. They think this land is theirs. This land is ours and will always be ours!
but she ignored the angry voice and said, “No, Mr. Hordoon, I come to purchase land. We in the Flower World are neither beggars nor penniless. We pay our way and have always done so.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Would you like me to show you prospective sites for your cemetery?”

“Very much,” she said, rising.

He offered her his arm and she took it, resting her hand lightly on his forearm, as they walked toward the door. Once there he stopped and turned to her. She was only an inch or two shorter than him. Her perfume rose up and surrounded him. He found himself tilting toward her, and for the first time since he'd buried Miranda on the high hill overlooking the Yangtze he felt an ancient stirring—a calling—a plea for him to live his life, to rejoin the “chase of the hart.”

“What do you propose to call the cemetery?”

She smiled and said, “The New Hundred Flowers Cemetery.”

—

As they left his office, eyes followed them. Many eyes—one pair of which belonged to a young man with a wine stain on his face and rage in his heart.

—

Jiang listened to her spy in the Hordoon household as the woman described in minute detail the leaving of
Mai Bao with Silas and the private carriage they took to the various possible cemetery sites.

Jiang thought of Silas's father and all the nights her mother had spent in the man's presence once the disfigured woman had gone to sleep. Several times her mother had called her into the room and spoken to her of this man. Then one late night, Jiang had called her to see Richard Hordoon asleep in the grip of the opium snake. She'd told her, “We have expected them. We knew they were coming. They will bring on the darkness, but it is your obligation to bring on the light.”

And now the second portal had been opened. Finding the Man with a Book was the next step. She had seen the diary that Richard Hordoon kept by his side in his opium stupors. And she knew that book had been given to his son, Silas. That was why she had set Mai Bao on her path toward Silas Hordoon.
Perhaps they brought the darkness, and one of their own will bring on the light,
she was thinking as her spy from the Hordoon house said, “They stopped for tea at the Yu Yuan Gardens.”

Jiang raised a single eyebrow. “And did they talk there?”

“Indeed, Madame Jiang. They talked of gardens—and children.”

Jiang nodded. She felt a movement in her gut and knew that the pain would begin again shortly, so she dismissed her spy with thanks and a handsome reward. Afterwards she retreated to her chamber and soothed her pain with the tincture of opium her doctor had given her, but soon the pain returned, and only her feather pillow could smother her cries.

—

As Jiang screamed into her pillow, Silas stood silently in the back of the Dangui Theatre and waited for Mai Bao to play. The audience had grown steadily in anticipation of Mai Bao's arrival, now a rarity. When she walked out on the raised stage a hush fell over the large crowd and people strained to get a look at the famous classic courtesan.