Shanghai (72 page)

He went to turn to hide the imminent swelling of his sex but she said sternly, “Don't.” He turned back to her, his shame beginning to tent his trousers. “Ah,” she said, as her fingers slid across the bulge. “Ah,” she repeated as she applied pressure with her hand. He opened his mouth as if to let out a moan, but she stopped him with a sharp “No!” Then she expertly unbuttoned him and, without taking her eyes from his, touched him, then brought the clouds and rain as she murmured, “The most beautiful dresses that any courtesan has ever worn—no—has ever dreamed of wearing.”

After endless negotiations, Yin Bao finally decided to take matters into her own hands. She barged into her mother's private office and shouted, “Enough, Mother! This Charles Soon or Charles Soong—whatever his name is—is just a man, after all, so what could be so hard?”

Jiang feigned offence, but she had secretly been waiting for Yin Bao to declare her real intentions by taking action. She smiled simply and said, “I see.”

Yin Bao rang for her maid.

The girl appeared quickly and asked, “Ma'am?”

“Enter my name in the next Flower Contest that takes place at the race course.”

The maid was shocked. Yin Bao had always made herself available to the press but she'd shunned the Flower Contests that Charles Soong's newspapers
sponsored. Often the maid had heard her mistress make fun of the “Four Diamond Cutters,” the name assigned to the first four winners of the Flower Contests by the newspapers. The most salacious of Yin Bao's comments about the Four Diamond Cutters had become famous in the Flower World. “I have no wish to be a damned Diamond Cutter,” she'd said. “I only wish my lovers to have jade swords as hard as diamond cutters!”

“Scat!” Yin Bao said to the maid.

Jiang smiled at that.
Yin Bao sounds like my mother,
Jiang thought.

“You are smiling, Mother. What did I say to amuse you?”

“Scat—you said scat.” But before Yin Bao could question her, Jiang added, “I'm sure that the famous Yin Bao's entry into the Flower Contest will be front-page news for several days to come—never a bad thing for my business. Tea?” she asked.

“Please, Mother.”

As Jiang poured she asked, “Are you sure you'll win, Yin Bao?”

To Jiang's surprise, Yin Bao did not snap back with a sarcastic reply; rather, her baby girl didn't answer at all. Instead she drank slowly from her teacup and cracked the pointed big toe of her right foot inside its tiny satin slipper.

Then the girl winced.

Jiang had noticed her daughter's steps of late becoming smaller and more careful. “Are you in pain, Yin Bao?” she asked.

“Always, Mother. I am always in pain.”

“But is it more now than …?”

“Enough! Pain is the price I pay for my great beauty.”

Jiang nodded, happy to see the fire return to her daughter's eyes. “You will win, then?”

“Absolutely, Mother. I will win and be crowned Flower Princess by the great Charles Soong himself. But first I must have new clothing. Send for my dressmaker,” she said imperiously. Then, seeing her mother's face, she added the all-important, “Please, Mother.”

After a pause Jiang asked, “The ugly one?”

“Yes. The only one who can make silk into gold.”

—

Five days later, Chen sat with his head bowed carefully to keep his face out of the lamplight and spread three exquisitely painted sketches on the table in Yin Bao's bedroom. The woman sat catty-corner to him at the square, black table, her knees almost touching his, her right hand hanging limply at her side, but a few inches from his leg.

Then she put her left hand on the table and with a painted fingernail flicked the topmost of the striking sketches to the floor. “A dress for a whore, not a courtesan,” she said.

Chen swallowed and tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry to form words. He couldn't take his eyes off her right hand so close to his leg.

“Do you agree?” she snapped.

He nodded. It was all he was able to do.

Her right hand landed on his leg just above the knee. “Then again,” she said, sliding her hand farther up his leg, “perhaps it is the perfect thing to catch a Chinese Christian husband.” She leaned over and picked up the sketch from the floor with her left hand while she withdrew her right hand from his thigh.

He sat back in his chair, inadvertently allowing the lamp to light his features.

She put the drawing back on the table and said, “Make me this. Make me the most beautiful dress that Shanghai has ever seen … and I'll give you a special reward.” She allowed her right hand to land on the table, then she splayed her fingers.

Chen grabbed the sketches and held them strategically over his middle, then spun on his heel and left the room.

Yin Bao smiled.
Funny,
she thought,
he doesn't seem as ugly the second time you meet him
.

—

The Flower Contest drew a huge crowd and almost a hundred contestants. But from the moment Yin Bao descended the steps of her two-horse carriage wearing Chen's dress, the result was a foregone conclusion. When Yin Bao crossed the stage in her seductive, mincing steps, her hips swivelling, a cheer erupted from the Chinese in the crowd. The
Fan Kuei
in attendance were shocked by the response.

She nodded politely to the audience and then bowed her head demurely—something that had cost her considerable study and patience to master.

And the crowd went wild!

As she heard the swelling roar she recalled something else that had taken even more patience—sitting still for two hours as the doctor had carefully extracted the nail from the big toe of her left foot three days earlier.

“Must the nail be removed?” she had demanded.

“Yes,” the doctor had replied.

“Are you sure?” she'd pressed.

“Yes, the fungal infection has rotted the nail. But it's not the nail that concerns me. It's the toe. If the fungus pierces the skin and sets into the bone, I'll have to cut off your toe as well.”

Thinking of it now made Yin Bao shiver. What was a golden lotus without its protruding pistil?

—

When Charles Soong saw Yin Bao in the flesh, all his years of shame for desiring the company of White women that he had kept strictly under wraps during his time in America—especially at the seminary in North Carolina—vanished in an instant. Here, before him, was true beauty. Not fish-belly–white skin and round eyes, but real beauty—Asian beauty—a Princess of the Flower World. And within three months she would be his bride.

The years between 1899 and 1902 brought important change in Shanghai.

Charles and Yin Bao set about creating three daughters in almost record time. Silas and Mai Bao began to build their private world—a garden, as Silas had promised Miranda, surrounded by tall walls to keep both the world out and their twenty adopted street children in. Two of the children were Mai Bao's, retrieved from the peasants who had sheltered them. Never had a race track been put to a better use.

Jiang's precarious health continued to confound the doctor's predictions of her imminent demise—as did that of another powerful woman, this one in far-off Beijing, who continued her quest to find the Sacred Tusk. She sent her spies out to contact the most powerful of the
Tongs. And to the one who found the Tusk, she offered a reward “worthy of a Manchu Emperor.”

The Soong daughters, even as children, showed remarkable differences one to the next. They would before too long be known to all of China as “She Who Loves Wealth,” “She Who Loves Power,” and “She Who Loves China.” As they grew, their father continued to supply the money necessary for Dr. Sun Yat-sen's efforts—often foolish efforts—to overthrow the Manchus. As the Doctor proved himself over and over again to be incapable of organizing the required revolt, his right-hand man, Chiang Kai Shek, grew more and more powerful—and Charles grew more and more wary of the man and his obvious violence.

But there was another man, a powerful figure in Shanghai, a man known behind his back as Big-Eared Tu, who was not frightened by Chiang Kai Shek's violence. This man was waiting for an opportunity to take control of the city at the Bend in the River and as he had promised his grandmother, finally wreak revenge upon the
Fan Kuei
. And at long last, an opportunity dropped into his lap
.
All he needed to do was claim the reward “worthy of a Manchu Emperor.”

* * *

I HATE IT when Father does that.

In front of everyone. In front of the other workers. In front of baby brother. Come to think of it, Father never has any criticism of baby brother's work—only of mine. And then I went and split the jade block when I was only supposed to score it for Father. And soon Father will know. But it was, after all, only a second-rank piece of jade. Yes, but it was large enough and perfectly shaped to make a
standing Manchu bannerman. So I'm not good at this. So what? I've never been good at this. My hands are too big and my mind wanders and I can never figure out which tool to … damn it to hell. If Father is going to keep secrets from me, what does the old man expect? Father and baby brother—always huddling in the corner and whispering. Father showing carvers' secrets to the baby but not the eldest! Who ever heard of such behaviour? Then the sneaking off in the night. Oh, they think they are so clever. They thought that I wouldn't notice. Well, I noticed—and tonight I followed. All the way down into the tunnels.

The shudder that followed brought an end to the monologue that seemed to be constantly running in his head. The tunnels—the Warrens—had shocked him. Well, not the tunnels but what he had seen there. What, until that very moment, he, like the rest of Shanghai, had believed to be a fable. A silly children's story. In the flickering light before the others arrived he had seen his father open a mahogany case and show a Narwhal Tusk to his baby brother.

He had been around things of great beauty all his life, but this was a thing of wonder. It seemed to call out to him. And he had just barely avoided detection, first by the famous courtesan Jiang, and then by the silhouetted men already waiting in the back of the cavern, one of whom seemed young, while the other he'd have guessed was older.

He had taken one final peek, then carefully retraced his steps to the entrance against the south wall of the Old City.

That night he drank in the fanciest bar he could find. No more buying cheap liquor and drinking in a filthy alley. He had broken into his father's room and taken a handful of cash, and now he was spending it. Buying
drinks for the bar, being treated properly—like someone worthy of respect.

People listened to his complaints and nodded their heads in sympathy.

Hands slapped him on the back, people laughed at his jokes, and it seemed to him that the whole bar—every patron—at last knew that he was an important man. A man to be listened to and respected. An artist. Even if his father couldn't see it that way.

Just past midnight he ordered a third round of drinks for the bar, and to his chagrin realized that he didn't have enough money to pay for it. He started to apologize to the bar owner, to whom he had already paid hefty sums of money for the previous two rounds, and was amazed that the man called him names and threatened to tell his father.

“You wouldn't dare!”

“You owe me money. You owe me money, now!”

“I'll get you your money, I will. Just give me an hour.”

The bar owner took every
yuan
the young carver had left and one of his shoes to guarantee that he would return with the cash he owed.

As the young carver walked out of the bar with as much dignity as a one-shoed man could muster, a looming figure at the back of the room—a man who had not been drinking—got to his feet and followed him. People who could buy three rounds of drinks for a crowded bar always interested the disgraced Red Pole who used to be Gangster Tu's number-one lieutenant until Loa Wei Fen's arrival.

When the young man opened the door to the famous carver's workshop the disgraced Red Pole's interest grew. He knew that his Mountain Master, Gangster Tu,
bought sculpted pieces from this famous carver—and here was the carver's son clearly stealing from him. How to use this bit of knowledge was the question.

The young carver shortly re-emerged from the darkness of the workshop and started back toward the bar—one shoe on, one shoe off.

The Red Pole followed him at a distance, and after the young carver had paid off his debt to the bar owner the Red Pole stepped forward and demanded, “Aren't you going to give this fine young man a list of the drinks he's purchased?”

The bar owner stiffened and was about to respond when he noticed the angled Triad tattoo on the man's neck over his jugular and held his tongue.

The Red Pole nodded and smiled.

The bar owner shuffled a bit, then said quite loudly, “I seem to have made an error on your bill, young sir. Let me just …” The man slapped several rows of beads along his abacus, made a face that was supposed to show concern, then shook the thing and started again.

The Red Pole reached over and grabbed the abacus from the bar owner's hands. “Enough. You charged him twice as much as you should have, didn't you?”

The bar owner blanched but didn't speak.

“Didn't you?” the Red Pole demanded.

“Yes, I guess I did, I'm terribly sorry that—”

“So pay him three times what you owe him and we'll call it fair.” The Red Pole smiled.

The young carver looked from one man to the other, then back again, and then, to his amazement, the bar owner counted out a large stack of
yuan
bills and handed them over to him with a grunt that might well have been an apology.