The Nine Fold Heaven (11 page)

 

That night I flip-flopped in the hotel bed, thinking of the strange workings of fate. Then, as if on cue, my little Jinjin came into my dream.

 

 

I sat up in bed, more troubled than ever. Despite what she had done, I felt sad about Madame Lewinsky’s death. I decided I should visit her grave to pay my respects and bid her a final farewell. She’d stolen my baby to raise as her own, but she had cared for him, after all. She had delivered him and, most important, through her singing lessons, she had taught me how to feel.

PART FOUR

13

The Cemetery

S
o the next day I bought a bouquet of white orchids, my teacher’s favorite flower, and took a car to the graveyard a few miles north of Shanghai. The cemetery had a sentimental name: Returning Home. The phrase, though trite, stirred up deep feelings in me. The Chinese say, “Falling leaves return to their roots,” meaning that regardless of our situation, eventually we wish to find our way home. But I didn’t really have an earthly home to go back to and, of course, I was not ready to return to my heavenly home!

Unfortunately, having to live as a spy among gangsters meant that I was always aware that the door to the eternal home might open for me at any moment. And I had almost gone through that door when I impulsively jumped into the Seine. The suicidal thought had been triggered by Puccini’s opera
Madame Butterfly,
when Cio-Cio San’s husband, Captain Pinkerton, came back from America, but with a new American wife. Heartbroken, Cio-Cio San sent her young son to another room, then plunged a knife into her own heart. Imagine how great her pain that she would step onto the path from which no one returns, despite her son playing innocently next door, oblivious that he was now an orphan....

Bracing myself, I pushed open the iron gate and walked in. Graves laid peacefully, yet portentously, in rows, marked by the inevitable stone tablet. The dead wait patiently and uncomplainingly for us who are still living to pay our respects and burn paper offerings. But as I looked around, I was the only one of the living here to honor these invisible beings of the other realm.

I walked up to a tiny booth by the entrance and saw a puny man slumping on the desk.

I lowered my voice like a ghost’s. “Sir?”

No response. Was he imitating his neighbor’s silence?

So I projected my heavenly songbird’s high soprano voice. “Good day, sir!”

Still no response. I put a finger underneath his nose to feel his breath. Yes, this corpse looked like he was still breathing. I used the same finger to dig hard into his shoulder. Suddenly, like a vampire awoke from the other world, he jumped up from his chair.

“Help heaven! I never did anything wrong. Leave me alone!”

I could not help but laugh. He must have thought I was one of the neighbors, angry at having died a terrible death, now coming back for revenge.

“Relax, sir, I’m here to pay respect to a friend. Could you give me a little help?”

He stared at me intensely before the color finally crept back to his cheeks.

“Miss, you scared me halfway to hell! What do you want?”

“I need to find a friend’s grave.”

He sat up straight, adjusted his jacket’s collar, and smoothed his hair. Then he poured tea from his thermos, took a sip, cleared his throat, and gave me a once-over.

“All right, what’s the name of the deceased?”

“Madame Julie Lewinsky.”

He chuckled. “So a foreign ghost? Ha, so she was a ghost, then died to become a real ghost?”

Chinese refer to foreigner as
gweilo,
“ghost people,” because of their strangely colored eyes, and their pale, colorless, or ghostlike complexion.

He took out a book, flipped the pages till his skeletal, mud-rimmed finger landed on a page. “Here! Julie Lewinsky! The third to the fifth row. Go out here, turn right, walk about five minutes and you’ll see. Good luck.”

“Thank you.” But I didn’t ask what the “good luck” was for. Was it to find a ghost, or not find one?

Outside his little “office,” I heard him shout to my back. “Miss, take your time. I’ll be off duty soon. So when you leave, just close the gate. It’s never locked anyway. Nobody comes here and no one comes out, ha, ha, ha!”

I did not share his amusement, so I nodded to him and continued walking.

I passed gravestones to which were attached pictures of the deceased and descriptions of their life. I finally reached the one I’d been looking for, Lewinsky’s marked only with a small tablet with the inscription:

My first thought, upon reading this, was how come my former teacher had never mentioned that she had a son here in Shanghai? She’d always told me how sad she was being childless. Then I suddenly realized, Anton Lewinsky was my own son, Jinjin, whom she’s taken from me to raise as her own! She must have written this epitaph herself and then asked the nuns to have it inscribed on her grave after her passing.

I sighed, but then I thought, at least now I have a name to look for, even if it wasn’t Jinjin’s right one. Just then I realized I hadn’t even set down the flowers that I’d brought for my teacher. So I laid down the bouquet and, according to traditional Chinese customs, swept the grave—wiping dust from the tablet, pulling out weeds, and arranging the flowers I’d bought.

After that, I said to my teacher’s grave as if she were alive in front of me, “Madame Lewinsky, of course I am bitterly angry that you stole from me what a mother values more than her own life. But now you can’t hear me because you’re dead. I won’t forgive you. But instead of spitting on your grave, I’ll say a prayer to help send your soul to the Western Paradise so you can live in peace. But there will be no reunion with him for you. I will find Jinjin—who is
not
your Anton Lewinsky—and he’ll know his real mother.”

I was about to recite a prayer for my former teacher, when I suddenly realized I didn’t know any. Growing up in an orphanage, I was never a religious person and, never bothered to learn any prayers or sutras. So finally I just recited the ubiquitous
Namo Ami-tuofo,
Hail to the Buddha, as the best I could do to aid her soul.

Soon the sky was the color of pale ink and the weather was turning chilly. I pulled my thin jacket across my chest and hurried back to the gate. Damn, now I might not be able to get any vehicle in this deserted area to take me back to my hotel.

It began to drizzle as I walked outside the cemetery. On the dirt road, there was no sign of any car or pedestrian. Maybe there were a few ghosts out for an evening stroll, but fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t possess the
yin
eyes to see them.

Imagining the
yin
creatures might be arising from their residences as night approached, I felt a deep chill and quickened my pace. If I couldn’t get a car, it would be at least a forty-five-minute walk to reach the main road.

Just as I braced myself for the long walk, I heard honking and turned to see a black car, dust spraying from under its wheels. Should I wave for them to stop and ask for a ride back to the city? What about if it was not a real car but one from the other realm?

The car screeched to a wailing stop. A young woman’s head stuck out. “Miss, please come in, we can give you a ride.”

Figuring it would be safer to get inside a car with humans than to remain behind with ghosts, I crawled in just as the drizzle turned into pouring rain. Inside were the driver and two other women, all in trench coats, probably anticipating the rain.

“Thank you so much for stopping. I just need to go back to the city so I can take the tram home.”

The driver cast me a look from the rearview mirror. “No problem, miss, wherever you want.”

After that, no one talked and the air became eerily silent.

To my surprise, when the car entered the city, the driver didn’t stop at the tram station but continued south.

I asked, “Ma’am, please stop and let me off here, thank you.”

To my surprise, she pressed her foot on the gas pedal instead. The car sped off pass the tram station.

I placed my hand on the driver’s shoulder. “We’re at the tram station, so please let me off. “

She didn’t respond, so I turned to the other two girls next to me. “Can you tell. . .”

They all smiled darkly. It was then that I realized these three women were abducting me. “Let me off, or I’ll—”

The driver turned to me. “What, call the police? Ha! Don’t make me laugh! I’m sure you know you are the number one fugitive they want!”

“Who are you people?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“You mean you don’t know?” The driver scoffed.

The two girls at the back seat next to me took off their trench coats, revealing pink dresses. I realized they were the girls from the gossip columnist Rainbow Chang’s Pink Skeleton Empire!

“What do you people want from me?”

“We have plans for you. It took us a long time to track you down, and we are not going to let you slip through our fingers again,” one of the Pink Skeleton girls said, casting me a condescending look.

14

Pink Skeleton Women and a Mission

S
oon the car arrived at Rainbow Chang’s residence in the French Concession. The girl to my right got out and held the door open for me. I recognized Rainbow’s mansion from the time I’d visited it once as Shanghai’s celebrity Heavenly Songbird.

Inside, as before, the gossip columnist sat like royalty, leaning against the golden arm of her ivory-colored sofa. Several of her pink-clad skeleton girls—her bodyguards, informants, seductresses—were scattered around the living room. Some were sipping champagne from flutes, others chatted, yet others simply sat in elegantly seductive postures. Once Rainbow spotted me, she went up to kiss me on the lips.

“Welcome back to Shanghai, Camilla!”

I was well aware that this was, in fact, a threat disguised as a welcome. The unspoken message was, “You think anyone could escape the girls from my Pink Skeleton Empire, even you? You’re back when you should have stayed away!”

She went on. “But I am glad you’ve come to see me. Come sit with me so we can chat over a glass of champagne.”

She took my hand, invited me to sit beside her on the gold-framed white sofa, and signaled one of the girls to pour two flutes of the golden, bubbly wine.

Rainbow Chang gave me an appreciative once-over with her long-lashed, heavily mascaraed, purple-lidded eyes. “What wind blows you back to Shanghai, Camilla?”

“How do you know that I’m back? Maybe I was here all along.”

“But you weren’t,” she said, flicking her long cigarette’s ashes onto a silver ashtray.

“If you and your girls already know everything, why waste your time to ask?”

She smiled triumphantly. “Just to start a difficult conversation with a pleasantry, what else?”

“All right.” I took a sip of my champagne only to savor the bubbles ambushing my mouth. “Then let’s open the window and look at the mountain. What do you want?”

She tilted her face and sneered. “Ha! A beautiful woman who is also blunt and full of surprises, I love that.” She took another long inhalation of her murderous, pink cigarette, then said, “All right, Camilla, I want to protect you.”

“But I don’t need any protection. Anyway, why would you want to?”

“Everyone in Shanghai needs protection, Camilla, even if you think you don’t. You see the crowds inside the temples? What are they doing there, making friends with the gods and goddesses? Yes, so they’ll protect them.”

“Why would you think I need protection, from you or anyone else? I’m just fine.”

“Because you’re on the run and your life is at risk.”

I didn’t respond, because she was right. To make me feel even worse, now all the Pink Skeleton girls stopped what they’d been doing—drinking, chatting, smoking—to stare at me with pitiful expressions.

The gossip columnist went on. “Camilla, you’re an extremely cunning woman. So if you were already safe somewhere outside Shanghai, why come back? Only because you had to, even at the risk of your life. Am I not right?”

Scared, I remained adamantly silent.

She paused to sip her drink, then spoke again. “You must have done something wrong, something unspeakable, and that’s what I’m going to find out.”

I almost blurted out, “It’s none of your business!” but realized this was exactly what it was. As a gossip columnist, digging up dirt
was
her business.

Before I decided what to say, Rainbow was speaking again. “You were behind the war between Flying Dragons and Red Demons, am I not right?”

This time I inadvertently blurted out, “How do you know about Big Brother Wang?”

She tilted her head and laughed. “Ha-ha! Just guessing and I’m right!”

Damn! That’s why the Chinese say, “Through the mouth sickness comes in and misfortune comes out.” That’s why the great Daoist sage Zhuangzi said over two thousand years ago, “To know the truth is easy, not to talk about it is hard.” I’d momentarily forgotten that to protect myself, I must keep my mouth shut. Rainbow had only been guessing and I’d let the truth slip out!

“So you’ve been working as a spy?” The gossip columnist encroached another inch into my forbidden territory.

If I told her the truth, would she be my protectress? My mind was whirring like a ceiling fan. Could I somehow regain the upper hand?

But instead of answering her question, I threw her another. “What about Big Brother Wang now?”

“He’s mostly taken over Master Lung’s number one position.”

“Then how come it’s not in the newspapers?”

“If Big Brother Wang has replaced Master Lung, that means he is now Police Chief Li’s best friend. So you think Li wants this all over the newspapers?” She paused to sip her champagne, leaving on the flute a red lipstick mark that looked to me like a capsized boat smeared with blood.

“Then why don’t you write something about it, your column has always been fearless.” But this was not the time to offend Rainbow, so I swallowed the rest of my sentence, “And making things up anyway in order to sell more papers.”

Her answer surprised me. “Because I’m protecting you.”

“How?”

“Obvious. “If I fan the flames of this drama in my column, Chief Li will definitely use all his means to find and kill you.”

”But why would he do that?”

“To please his new partner, your old boss Big Brother Wang.”

“Then why hasn’t he already done so?”

“Because there’s no extradition law in Hong Kong. So he would be wasting his time to try to get you. But now you’re back. . .” She paused to give me a significant look, to suggest that I was stupid or that I was under her total mercy—or both.

I took a big gulp of my champagne to soothe my tightened nerve. “So you’re not going to write about—?”

“You think I have the heart to harm you, Camilla?” she said, her eyes filled with tenderness, or an imitation of it. “Have you heard of the saying, ‘A knife’s sharp tooth but a
tofu
heart’?”

This means though a person’s speech is vicious, her heart is tender.

“Then what do you want?”

“You know what I
always
want.”

Damn, of course I knew. She’d tried her best to seduce me in the past.

“Rainbow, but that’s not going to work and you know it.”

“Who’s talking about eternity here? Nothing is going to last forever anyway. As you well know, having studied the
Book of Changes
. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a few moments together, does it?”

I definitely didn’t want to have sex with her and even less to become her kept woman as the price of her keeping my secrets. But maybe I would have to until I could find a better way out. Anyway, as a spy, I’d had to endure far worse. In my life, the question was never right or wrong, but surviving. Compared to what I had been through earlier in my life, having sex with one more person, man or woman, should not be a big deal.

She went on. “As you well know, love cannot prevail against power. Believe me, Camilla, there’s no exception to this. You must have read stories of the high government scholar-officials who fell in love with the wrong woman? The courtesans would bewitch the besotted man with singing, dancing, playing music, and frolicking in bed. Everything that the scholar’s wrinkled old wife could never imitate. However, at the end, who’d be at this man’s deathbed? The wrinkled old wife, of course, whose rival would either go back to the prostitution house or enter a nunnery.”

“Rainbow,” I was getting impatient, “just tell me what you want to say instead of beating around the bush.”

She held up her champagne flute and looked at the bubbles, to create suspense, I supposed, or to annoy me. Then her next statement gave me a jolt.

“Camilla, I want you to be my spy.”

I’d planned so long and worked so hard to cut myself off from my former life, I was not going back to it under any circumstances!

“Is this a joke?”

“You came back to Shanghai. It’s your own fault.”

“Who could I possibly spy on?”

“Your new lover Edward Miller.”

“What?!”

“Don’t act so shocked, Camilla. If you could spy on a gangster, surely you won’t have any problem spying on an ambassador. Besides, he’s infatuated with you, so it should be an easy job.”

“How did you find—”

She smiled triumphantly. “Our spying Pink Skeleton Empire doesn’t get its name for nothing.”

“But I’m not going to harm him.”

“Relax. No one is going to harm anyone. You heard of the bombing at the embassy?”

I nodded. I did not tell her I had also witnessed it.

She went on. “Someone is not happy with the ambassador. Miller is new here and quite decent—really, I should say naive, or even stupid, for a diplomat. His predecessors, including the last one who had a heart attack and dropped dead, all reached accommodation with the black societies and made out rather handsomely as a result.

“But this Edward Miller wants to clean things up, especially the gambling. Can you imagine how many enemies he’s already making, eh?! Worse, he’s not even a real ambassador, only an acting consul! Why doesn’t he just have a good time here, including enjoying a few pretty Chinese girls, then go home to his erotic memories and his profits?”

I suppressed the itch on my hand, which was longing to give her a slap, but instead calmly asked, “So what do you want me to do?”

“See what his plans are and persuade him not to pull the tiger’s whiskers.”

“I don’t think I have that kind of power.”

“Don’t underestimate your power over him. Many less beautiful than you have toppled whole countries. You know the
Thirty-six Stratagems
—one of the best is the Beauty Trap. It worked on Master Lung, right? All you have to do now is get some information from a lonely American who happens to be the Consul General, or at least the acting one. That’ll be a piece of moon cake, right? Anyway, the gambling business has been going downhill for a while, so it’s time to profit from it while we can. You understand?”

I nodded. “Yes. But why do you care? Gambling and Edward Miller have nothing to do with you.”

“I have some interests here. I loan money to some of the gentlemen who gamble. But no one can know about this.”

”You’re not afraid that I’ll tell?”

She laughed. “Not at all. You shouldn’t forget that I have my poisonous pen.” She paused, then made a sweeping gesture. “And my Pink Skeleton girls.”

I sighed inside. Now I could feel the nails of the tiger’s paw.

She spoke again. “If Miller stops his silly crusade against the gambling dens, he can go home rich and it will be a win-win situation for all parties. If not”—here she stopped and gave me a direct look—“I don’t want to imagine the consequences.”

Raising one immaculately painted brow, the gossip columnist patted my hand sympathetically. “Now, go get some rest, Camilla, you look tired. You like Miller anyway, so you can have a good time while you carry out your assignment.”

I nodded. As if I had a choice.

 

It was not until almost two weeks after the bombing that Edward Miller had time for me. Because the consulate was still being heavily guarded by the Shanghai police, he suggested we meet at his governess Emily’s place.

“Jasmine.” Edward kissed me after we sat on the governess’s floral-patterned sofa. “Sorry that I couldn’t see you earlier. There were so many things to take care of after the bombing.”

“Do you know who did this?”

“Someone very evil. Just think about it, who has the guts to bomb a consulate? Of course, it could be the anarchists. Since I am new in Shanghai, this whole thing really alarms me. What goes on here is impossible for a foreigner to figure out. There are wheels within wheels. China is so complicated and entangled. Anyway, let’s not talk about unpleasant things.”

The ambassador tilted my chin and looked into my eyes. “Jasmine, tell me how have you been?”

Of course I wasn’t going to tell him I’d actually witnessed the bombing with my old lover, Gao. Nor about my search for Jinying. And certainly not that I was now being forced to spy on him.

“I’ve been worried about you, Edward. But things are fine with me,” I lied. “What about you?”

“Jasmine, don’t you worry about me. Henry and I are fine too. Only that I might not be able to see you as much as I want to. There are so many meetings and things to take care of.”

“It must be boring to be in meetings all the time.” I wanted to probe but not awaken any suspicion.

“It is. I am sure you wouldn’t be interested. Anyway, I can’t tell you.”

I nodded. “Edward—”

I really didn’t know where to start to warn him about his danger with the gangs without giving myself away. So instead, I asked, “Do you fear another bombing?”

He nodded.

I went on. “I hear that the gangs . . . I just wish this was not their doing . . .” I hoped my warning was subtle yet effective.

“Jasmine, I’m not going to be intimidated.”

Unlike me, he had no idea about the power of Shanghai’s triads.

“Then how do you plan to deal with them?”

“Jasmine, you know I can’t tell you that. I haven’t seen you for a while, so let’s not talk about this and have something to drink.”

He poured each of us a glass of white wine, took a meditative sip, then spoke again. “Next Saturday, I am having a reception to entertain both foreign and Chinese guests. This is to soothe the tension after the bombing. I would like you to come and sing again. I’m sure your wonderful voice would put everyone at ease.”

I hesitated. I couldn’t do this again, not when Chinese were being invited. Someone was bound to realize my true identity. It was bad enough that Rainbow had. But she would keep my secret—until it was to her benefit to let it out.

I had to make up an excuse, so I said, “My voice. It’s not doing very well lately. I really need to rest. I’m afraid I can’t sing for a while.”