Shanghai (89 page)

The large doors of the old building creaked open and black-hatted men appeared, putting prayer books and taphilen along with prayer shawls into blue silk pouches. The men talked as they left morning prayers, and passed by the strangely dressed man on the bench without giving him a look.

That was fine with Silas. He wanted to see the head rabbi, not these men, and he had crossed river and
mountain, desert and dusty plain to get here with what he now thought of as his two sacred objects: the Narwhal Tusk and his father's journals. He had left Shanghai in spring, and now it was the dead of winter. He had protected the Tusk from thieves and brigands, from the curious and the dangerous. He had slept on it, beside it, with it clutched in his arms. It had never been out of his sight these ten months. He was thinner than he'd ever been—and stronger—and more aware of the world beyond the Bend in the River than he had ever thought he would be.

The door of the synagogue opened slowly and an elderly man, bent by years, turned to close the door behind him. Silas climbed the steps quickly with the large rug under his arm and said in Farsi, “Is the Rabbi still in the synagogue?”

The man stared at him, then said, “Say that again?”

Silas repeated his question, and the man laughed, a deep belly laugh.

“What is it?” Silas asked.

“Do you really speak like that? I haven't heard Farsi spoken that way since my great-grandfather died.”

“I'm sorry, but it's the only Farsi I know.”

The man shrugged his shoulders and pointed within. “He's in there. You can't miss him.” He turned to go, then turned back and said, “Say something else to me, will ya? No one will believe me when I tell them how you speak.”

Five minutes later Silas was standing in the Rabbi's private office watching the old man read the letter of introduction. The old man handed the letter back and looked at Silas.

“You were waiting for me? Waiting until services were over?”

Silas nodded.

“Why not come into services?”

Silas bowed his head and let out a long line of breath. “I am a Jew by birth, not by inclination. If I am still a Jew, it is not the kind of Jew that you are. I don't believe God made a covenant with us as a people, or if He did He surely broke it.”

The Rabbi chuckled.

“Is my Farsi so funny?”

“It's wonderfully archaic. They should keep you in a museum. And your thoughts are not new to me, or to any Jew who thinks.” He got up from his desk. “Now, what is it you want from me?”

Silas showed him the deed to the house that the Vrassoons used to own and that his father had given to him. He told the Rabbi of the need to hide a valuable object in that place.

“Are there people living there now?” the Rabbi asked.

“Yes, to the best of my understanding, a large family called the Abdullahs.”

“Are they squatters?”

“I don't care. I don't want to take their home from them. I only want them out of the house for a month. It is after all my property, not theirs.”

“And when they are gone for the month?”

“I want a trustworthy architect to hide what is in this rug in that compound.”

The Rabbi made a few notes on a pad of paper, then called for an assistant. Tea was brought, strong black tea, not the delicate oolong that Silas so favoured. They chatted while Silas waited to be informed of what was going on.

A full half hour later three well-dressed men arrived and were introduced to Silas. The first was a lawyer, who
examined the deed to the compound and said curtly, “How long do you want them out?”

“For a month at most, and I am willing to pay for their hotel expenses while they are gone, and whatever you think fair as recompense for their trouble.”

The lawyer shrugged and said, “It's a good deal you offer. The Abdullahs are merchants, so I assume they'll know a good deal when they hear one. I see no problem. I'll go see them now.” He left.

The second man, an architect, listened to Silas's request: that the object in the rug was not to be taken from the rug but was to be hidden in the compound in such a way that the residents there would never suspect that it was there. The architect nodded and said, “Once they are gone, this is not a problem. I will do the hiding myself. I'll find an appropriate place, have my men do the heavy lifting, and I will go in myself in the night.”

“With me,” Silas said.

The architect was clearly surprised but quickly agreed, then left with a promise to start work as soon as the Abdullahs were safely in a fine hotel.

That left the Rabbi, Silas, and the final man. The man never introduced himself but started right in. “This is a significant favour you ask of us. And what do you have in mind for payment in return?”

Silas was prepared for the question. What he offered was sanctuary for fifty of the finest Jewish scholars in all of the Diaspora, their fare to the Garden, and their room and board in the Garden for as long as they wished to stay.

The attorney was obviously pleased with the offer. The Rabbi nodded, then added, “And we will bury ten of our sacred scrolls in the compound with your sacred object.”

Silas stared at the man.

“God's wrath is growing and will crash upon us, perhaps even in my lifetime. We have sinned against the covenant that you don't believe in.”

—

The work on the compound went faster than Silas had expected, so he found himself on a cold night only a few days later carrying the Narwhal Tusk in the rug through the streets of Baghdad, right past the house in which Teacher had raped Maxi, to the Abdullahs' compound. A peacock's shrill cry greeted his knock on the front door. The architect met him, and shortly after the Narwhal Tusk was safe in its new hiding place.

And Silas was free to go home to Mai Bao, who at that very moment stood at the door of his study watching three pages fall from the topmost shelf of her husband's bookcase and land face up on his desk. She crossed to the desk and shook the dust from the pages. She recognized the writing as that of Silas's father, but she could only guess at the language. These were certainly not Mandarin characters or the elegant scrawlings of Farsi. She knew many English words but recognized none on the pages. For a moment she considered asking others—then rejected the idea. Instead she smoothed out the three pages on Silas's desk and secured their edges with small pieces of jade. They would just have to await the return of her husband.

Silas Hordoon's return to Shanghai was as modest as a monk's arrival in a tribal village. Silas had had an uneventful two-month return trip, initially overland to Abadan, then aboard ship in the Persian Gulf, through the Gulf of Oman and into the Arabian Sea, passing the southern tip of India north of the Maldives and entering the Indian Ocean, through the dangerous Straits of Malacca, then turning north, past the wild territories of Malaysia and Borneo and Viet Nam before entering the Celestial Kingdom at a point guarded by the Triad-dominated island of Hainan. Eventually his ship passed the entrance to the Bogue access to Canton, then farther up passed Taiwan on the starboard side, continuing until finally Woosung appeared one morning on the port side and the mouth
of the mighty Yangtze River beckoned him, as it had the British Expeditionary Forces in 1842.

A day later Silas stood on deck and watched the far reach of the Yangtze as it passed by the mouth of the Huangpo River. He allowed his eyes to scale the cliff on the south side of the mighty river, knowing that three graves and one mound looked down upon him as he returned. As the European towers on the Bund slid into view, Silas felt the exquisite rush of a traveller finally returning home. With only a small canvas bag containing his father's journals and the Bible the junk's Captain left him, he walked down the gangplank, no more impressive than any man who had travelled to the Middle Kingdom in steerage.

He had not cabled ahead.

He arrived as the sun set and sidestepped the proffered rickshaw rides. He didn't head toward his office on the Bund or his offices on Bubbling Spring Road. Instead, he walked slowly through the drizzling rain in the general direction of the Garden. The heat of the day had finally backed off a pace, although it would most assuredly return with the dawn. The evening was just beginning to soften. As he walked, he marvelled at the human reality that was Shanghai. His home. He passed by sidewalk barbers cutting the hair of customers seated on small, three-legged bamboo stools; sidewalk bicycle repairmen, often referred to as “maestros,” who busied themselves stuffing fat red rubber tubes back into tires; sidewalk cobblers repairing shoes while surrounded by neat rows of upturned high heels from women's pumps; sidewalk seamstresses working on their foot-powered sewing machines; sidewalk physicians practising their ancient art. His heart swelled. Shanghai lived on its sidewalks.
Silas passed by sellers of sugar-covered fried dough and soup and full meals prepared by cooks who carried their kitchens on their backs. Old couples sat on ratty chairs with their pant legs rolled up to their thighs. A five-spice egg seller blocked one nostril with a filthy thumb and discharged the contents of the other nostril onto the cracked pavement just millimeters to one side of her cook pot, then looked up at Silas. “You missed,” he said, as laughter filled his voice. An attractive young woman paraded as if she were the only person with shapely legs in the Celestial Kingdom.

Passing into the French Concession, the ratio of automobiles to rickshaws increased, as did the number of pimps selling their wares. His eye was drawn to a shop window almost entirely covered with snakes coiling upwards, their blunt snouts pushing against the uppermost pane. He'd always liked snake—in brown sauce, naturally. The large glass jars of dried country roots and herbs in the next store bespoke magic and history in bottles. A country woman carrying a filthy baby barely covered in rags approached him with a hand out and a plea for help. He gave her all the money he had in his pockets. She was astonished and probably would have kissed him if he hadn't been a
Fan Kuei
. The over-pruned sweet olive trees in front of a walled French estate released their scent to the night air, adding a sweetness not there only moments before. Silas stood still and felt the world turn. For the first time he realized a lightness about him. The great burden had been plucked off his shoulders and was no doubt, even now, being carried by the wind, down the Yangtze, to the sea.

Two elderly Go players attracted a crowd filled with Shanghai's most abundant commodity—unsolicited
advice. A young street-sweeper with a mask across her mouth moved her bound-twig broom slowly as she breathed in the street fumes that would first make her prematurely old, then collapse her lungs before she turned thirty. The heat backed off another pace, allowing in the gentle breeze from the mighty Yangtze. A child in new clothes played with a large wooden toy to the glee of his parents and all four grandparents.

In darkened doorways couples stole kisses—hands caressed curves and clutched hardness—only to be laughed at by the local crone. Silas wanted to cheer. A young man held onto a lamp post and vomited in the gutter as others watched, but no one helped. The fear of disease was now alive on the streets of the great city.

A dark alley's mouth emitted sounds of anger and a whimpered apology. Floral wreathes outside a storefront announced the opening of a new business and pleaded for good luck from whichever gods had not yet forsaken the city at the Bend in the River.

He passed by the Temple of the City God and the Old Shanghai Restaurant, then turned down an alley and emerged at the Garden. He removed his key from his pocket and opened the back gate—and stepped inside.

The entire compound was silent. He looked up; the moon was setting. He entered his house and saw a light coming from beneath his study door. He opened the heavy oaken door and there, on his desk, his green baize lamp threw a pleasing square of light onto the three pages Mai Bao had put there.

He rubbed his eyes, took off his coat, and sat. Immediately he recognized his father's handwriting—his sober handwriting, large and round. But for a moment the language stumped him. Not Farsi, not English—Yiddish!

He pulled the first page toward him and slowly translated his father's words.

¨ ¨ ¨

 

I told you of your mother. But I never told you of my sister. My sister Miriam—whom I begged Eliazar Vrassoon to take instead of me. I even offered him Maxi. Even then I was doing the Devil's work.

Vrassoon took Miriam and raised her as his own. But as she grew she became beautiful, and he moved her to his bed.

They had a daughter that he took from her and sent to be raised in the English countryside around Hereford.

My dear sister, Miriam, descended into madness and lived the rest of her wretched life where Vrassoon had put her, in Bedlam.

I don't know exactly when she died. And all I know of her daughter, your first cousin, is that she was named Miranda.

I have done the Devil's work. Do not do the Devil's work.

—

Silas found himself on his feet, not knowing how or when he stood. His head began to move involuntarily back and forth. Tears struck the floor at his feet and the word
Miranda
came from his mouth, over and over and over again.

Out the window the slash of red flowers that marked Milo's fall on the racetrack seemed suddenly alive with light. Silas backed away from the window.

Then he felt it.

He was closing down. Returning to the place he had been as a boy. Milo murdered. Impregnating his own cousin. He was falling, falling, falling to a dark, sealed place within himself.

He raced to the attic and threw open the window. He saw Shanghai, but suddenly and completely he was not
of
Shanghai. He ran out into the Garden. He smelled its dense, exotic aromas, but they did not touch his heart. He heard the sounds of the city as one hears a familiar but unimpressive singer. It was only when he realized that as he walked he was breathing the air that Milo had breathed and that his body was breasting aside the same air that Milo's body had breasted that he had a momentary surge of feeling—but it did not last.