Night in Shanghai (9 page)

“This?” She tipped the frame up so the old lady could see the pouch, glad the maid was out washing the sheets and no one was in the room at this moment but Taitai and herself.

“It’s mine,” Taitai whispered. “From my mother. No one knows, not even him.”

Song separated the fraying threads and removed the pouch. “Here.” She held it out to Taitai.

The translucent little fingers could only flutter weakly. “You open it.”

It was closed with no more than a drawstring. Song leaned over the dark blue quilt cover, opened the bag, and gently turned it over. A small river of white diamonds poured out, capped by the sharp sound of her own breath.

“Take one,” the lady said. “Trade it for the medicine. Will it be enough? No. Take two or three.” She might sound more lucid than Song had ever heard her, yet she still seemed to think it would take two or three diamonds to buy a week’s herbs.

Song was certain Taitai had forgotten about these diamonds long ago, for the story around Rue Wagner was that when she was younger, and first starting to use the Big Smoke, she and Du had many arguments about money. He limited her cash to try to slow her addiction. As sure as it was that she had forgotten the gems, it was just as sure that Du did not know they existed, for if he did, they would be gone.

Song stared at the stones, a pool of glinting light against the dark silk. It gave her a new jolt of power to think that Du was in this room at least once a week, visiting Taitai, sitting here on this bed, and he knew nothing of the diamonds.

When Du came, she knew he told his wife news of the family, as if she could still listen. To him, she was ill, for was it not true that millions used opium with no problems? As her husband, he took care of her, sitting by her for an hour a week, for which he was as faithful as the changing moon. Song could find no fault in how he ministered to his wife; it was something she had to admire about him.

The wave of sadness drowned her again, disappointment that she had been sold to an old man, one who perceived her not as a woman but as a tool. She was grateful for that, she did not want him anywhere near her, yet at the same time, it hurt that her womanhood had never been allowed to develop. Du would release her one day, but she would be past thirty then, and would have nothing.

Except for the Party.

She looked at the jewels, and remembered what she had said:
I will pray to the gods to send a solution to your dilemma
. Was this the moment to which her vows had led her? She rolled the diamonds in her hand, unable to take her eyes from them, thinking back once more to her reasons and her commitment.

Du’s affair with the actress had continued for much of 1932, and she’d sat through many evenings at the Vienna Garden listening to Huang Weimin, a well-known editor and playwright who, she realized as they spoke around the cigarette-clouded table, was also a secret leader of the Communist underground. She remembered the whiff of danger, but above all the fun of interacting with a like mind as they spoke of literature, and matched each other with lines of poetry. She had been there for almost an hour when she realized the beautiful, bold, and pregnant Miss Zhang was not present. “What happened to that Miss Zhang?” she asked. “Did she give in and stop the baby?”

“No,” said Huang, “she held her ground. In fact she was here, earlier this evening. I saw her.”

So Song watched, curious, thinking the girl might return at any moment to join the others being paid dance by dance, ticket by ticket. The left-wing debate continued and the pregnant girl did not appear; instead, sometime later, Song saw Teacher, coming down the hall behind Flowery Flag.

“Zou ba,”
he said abruptly when he reached her, let’s go. She jumped up and followed him, noticing that his other bodyguard, Fiery Old Crow, was not with him.

At the car, she saw Fiery was already inside, waiting in the front passenger seat. He leaped out to hold the door for the boss, who climbed in the back, next to Song, and they headed out Bubbling Well Road. The driver, as always, was Flowery Flag, who had earned his nickname by once having worked as chauffeur for the American Embassy.

But he did not take any of the expected streets back into the French Concession that night. Instead he turned north into the side streets, until he reached the banks of Suzhou Creek. He turned at the top of the bank, and followed the waterway out to the suburbs, where wooded stretches and farming plots alternated with huddles of darkened houses. No one spoke in the car, and she kept her face set, while fear clawed at her inside.

Flowery left the road and followed a short gravel driveway to the riverbank, where they ground to a stop beneath the bare trees. “Get out,” Du ordered.

Around back, he unlatched the trunk and then stepped aside. “Go ahead. Raise it.”

She did, and looked down into the agonized, pleading eyes of Miss Zhang, the pregnant dance hostess, who shook, rags tied around her mouth, her ankles, her hands behind her back—

“Please,” Song said, her voice cracking. “Don’t do it.”

“Step back,” he ordered, each word a separate blow. “I want you to watch.”

Fiery and Flowery bent over the trunk and attached cement blocks to her feet with lengths of chain while she squirmed and squealed through the rag. Song stood with tears running, hating herself for her powerlessness, while they hauled the girl out, still struggling, and then counted to three in a good-natured, almost boyish way over her muffled shrieks, swinging her back and forth in order to land her out in deep water, where she hit with a massive, heaving splash. The water boiled, and frothed with bubbles for a minute, before it settled and returned to its dark placidity.

Flowery and Fiery had already turned back to the car. She followed, trembling, agonized, certain she would never get the girl’s eyes out of her mind.

“We call that ‘growing water lilies,’” Du said.

In the car, riding back that night, staring straight ahead through the windshield, she had decided that this was the last time she would feel so impotent against evil. She would join. She would work the rest of her life against people like Du, and against Japan, as long as its army fought on Chinese soil. She remembered how a deep and unexpected sense of calm, of resolution, settled over her. It was the beginning of her new life.

Now, as she sat in Du Taitai’s room, she made a silent vow to Miss Zhang, the poor dance hostess who had opened her heart to the son of a powerful family, conceived his child, and met her death while Song looked on. She had been a helpless girl then, no better than a slave, not the canny woman she was now. She would take these diamonds, and she would keep them for Miss Zhang. For herself, too.

She shook four diamonds into her hand like fractured light. She deserved them, she pleased the old lady. The maids said Taitai responded to her as to no one else, not even her husband. When Song was not present, she lay in bed, an empty seedpod, rattling on life’s last puffs of wind. Song fixed the pouch back in its place and resettled the picture on the wall.

She turned to see Taitai watching her, puzzled. “Was the picture crooked?”

Song searched the old face, her heart pounding.
Already she has forgotten
. “A little,” she lied.

Taitai gave the fan painting a blank look. “Pretty.” The lucidity had been like a flash of light in a forest.

The maid came back in, and observed that First Wife was tired. They settled her more comfortably on the pillow.

When the Supreme One slept, Song tilted open the wooden shutter slats and cranked out the windows for a few minutes to release the heavy smell of the opium and bring in the scent of the city. She straightened the chairs and dusted the bureau, which held all that was left of Taitai’s life: the wedding picture, a bronze pocket-plaque inscribed with sutras for some long-ago journey, a pair of jade earrings, and several books which had not been opened in many years. The old lady had lost interest in these things, in the room, in everything but the drug.

After the first couple of years, Song stopped asking herself what had made Taitai this way, whether it was the marriage to Du or something that came before; she saw only a sweet old lady worn thin as a ghost. She smoothed the paper-dry brow and turned the light down, sitting quietly for a while before she latched the window, darkened the shutters, and eased out.

In April of that year, the Kings lost their first member to the war when their violinist, Solomon Kirk, told them he was going home. This revelation came midway through an uncomfortable rehearsal, in which the brass players started talking disrespectfully about Mr. Hsu, who had not yet arrived.

Thomas got right up from his piano bench. “What was that?” He knew it was Errol Mutter who had spoken. “You want to tell everyone?”

“I said, your boy’s not here yet. Maybe you can’t work without your boy.”

“Mr. Mutter. Mr. Hsu is the reason I can give you written music.” Thomas had slipped into his angry voice, crisp and a little controlling. He did not like to deploy it, it was not part of his jazz man persona, but Mr. Hsu worked tirelessly for his eight dollars a month. That was exactly the wage he had asked for, too; Thomas never once tried to bargain with him. He wondered how Mr. Hsu could survive on that amount, but Lin Ming had told him that the copyist lived in a
tingzijian
, a pavilion room or scholar’s room, which was a small, closed-off loft above another room. “Of his skills none of you can possibly have the slightest doubt,” Thomas said.

“But can you play without him?” Errol pressed.

“It’s not him. It’s written music I cannot play without. I told you that at our first rehearsal.”

“He did tell you that.” The voice came ringing down over the empty seats from Lin Ming, who had climbed the stairs quietly and taken a seat in Du’s box without anyone noticing. “Mr. Hsu is here, standing in the lobby, you know. He just arrived. He heard what you said.”

Appearing in the archway, Mr. Hsu let loose a stream of light, consonant-tapping Shanghainese.

Lin translated to the group. “He wants to know what is the meaning, calling him ‘boy’?”

The men shifted in their seats. In Shanghai, male servants, hotel attendants, rickshaw pullers, and the like were called “boys” regardless of age, but Mr. Hsu was an educated musician, and they all knew it. Thomas waited for Errol to answer.

“It’s an insult,” Errol mumbled at last, and Mr. Hsu immediately turned toward the lobby door to leave.

“Wait!” Thomas said. “Please.” He saw Mr. Hsu hesitate.

Lin Ming jumped in, cajoling Hsu with wave after wave of appeasement, until finally the man unrolled his paper, uncapped his pen, and sat down to work.

“You must be more polite to Mr. Hsu, or he will not stay,” Lin said from the balcony.

“We will do better,” Thomas said humbly, pretending to take the blame, because here, everything was vertical authority, and as bandleader, he stood for the behavior of his men. It was Lin’s obligation to upbraid him, and Thomas’s to absorb the blame.

The rehearsal had barely teetered back on track when Solomon got up and made his announcement, saying he was sorry to leave, but the Japanese were everywhere, and to him it did not look good. He had saved his fare—that was what they had all agreed to when they came over on the one-way ticket. He wished them well. They were braver than he. He played his heart out for the rest of the rehearsal, even though he would be gone by Saturday night.

The first night they played without Solomon was the night a pretty, dark-haired white woman came into the ballroom, wearing a simple but close-fitting satin gown. She sat alone, unusual for one so attractive, and Thomas noticed she refused several offers to dance, instead sitting regally at her table, posture perfect, eyes bright. He felt a pull to her growing stronger through the evening, until finally, after the last set, he took a deep breath and introduced himself.

She smiled and extended a slim, white hand. “Anya Petrova, of Saint Petersburg. Your playing is very beautiful.”

“Thank you.”
Saint Petersburg.
Those who used the old name were White Russians, he remembered, as he took in her shiny dark bobbed hair and disconcertingly pale gray eyes. “Not as beautiful as you.” Normally, he was too worldly to say such a thing, but in her case, it was the truth.

“Pfft.” Unimpressed, she flicked at the air with two manicured fingers. “Do you know, when I was a girl, I was the plain one in the family? My parents, the servants, even the coachmen, all they talked about was how beautiful was my sister Elena. Never me.”

Servants. Coachmen
. “Then they were wrong.”

“Flatterer.” She flashed a smile. “You are sweet. I must go now. Good night.”

“Please come again.” He watched her walk away across the ballroom, deliberately bewitching, moving her hips for him, making sure he would remember. It was a good bet she would be back.

She was, in less than a week, and he asked her to dinner after the show. Back in the dressing room, Alonzo said, “Who is that girl? I’ve seen her somewhere before.”

“Her name is Anya.”

“I know, I saw her on stage somewhere. She sings. Say—Mr. Lin was looking for you. Said he had something to talk to you about. He catch up with you?”

“No.” Thomas bounced on the balls of his feet, encased these days in top-grade Italian leather; he was eager to get back to Anya. “You choose,” he told her when he did, and she selected an all-night Chinese restaurant called Golden Tripod Kitchen, which surprised him. His expectations were further upended when, on their arrival, she greeted the staff in peremptory Shanghainese, to which they responded in the same tongue. Fascination bloomed. “How many languages do you speak?”

“Six,” she said.

Back home, Thomas had never met anyone who spoke another language, other than high school teachers at Mergenthaler. It was not like music, which was everyone’s second language back on Creel Street. Many people could play a simple song. The I-IV-V song form was easy, abbreviated; a child did not have to go on in music in order to know it. A song could be bent any which way and filtered through any kind of lens, but it was still a song, and still the spirit of America, as Thomas was increasingly coming to see. Strange he had to leave America to grasp it. So he had only this one language, music, the song, whereas she had mastered all these others. And she was beautiful. “Tell me,” he said, his admiration pulling him forward on his elbows, across the table, closer to her. “Your languages.”