by S. J. Rozan
“Ms. Chin, I must remember you if I’m ever in need of investigation services. Yaakov Corens. That gentleman passed away twenty-five years ago. A lovely man, truly a gentleman.”
“So we understand. An excellent jeweler, too.”
“Indeed. Fine work, precise and delicate.”
“He made the Shanghai Moon.”
“Yes, he did.”
“And you went to him in 1967 and asked him not to speak about it. And your brother never knew you’d found him. Did you tell your cousin? And why did you ask Mr. Corens to keep quiet?”
Mr. Zhang sighed. “To answer this, and the other things you’ve asked, I must tell you a story both long and sad. Shall I?”
In my head rang out: This is a question? Before I could say anything, Bill spoke. “If it’s going to be long,” he asked Zhang Li, “do you mind if I smoke?”
Zhang Li rummaged on his desk, lifting a geomancer’s compass to find an ashtray, which he handed to Bill. “Most of my customers smoke. It’s a habit Chinese people seem unwilling to abandon.”
“Lydia doesn’t like it, though.” Bill got up. He perched on the windowsill beside a terra-cotta soldier, who took the intrusion stoically.
Zhang Li turned back to me. “Do you share an office? This must make your partnership difficult at times.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.
Zhang Li nodded, his smile fading as he stared at nothing. After a moment he began.
“It is natural for the passage of time to soften difficult memories and ease pain. For me, this has happened. For my cousin, it has not. When the Shanghai Moon vanished, I was nine years old, he a boy of six. The Shanghai Moon was only part of Lao-li’s loss that day. He also lost his mother. Rosalie Gilder died in the . . . incident . . . when the gem disappeared. The pain those memories cause my cousin gave rise, many years ago, to an agreement between us that we should never, ever speak of it. To each other, or to anyone.”
“Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”
“Yes. The current circumstances may justify my breaking that vow, but not causing my cousin the pain that would surely be his if I spoke of it in his presence.”
“Current circumstances” including, obviously, my threat to go over and camp in Mr. Chen’s shop.
Cradling his tea, Zhang Li looked over his shoulder to Bill, then back to me. “The days at the end of the civil war were dark and hard. We—Aunt Rosalie, Uncle Paul, Lao-li, and myself—were living with Grandfather Chen in the villa in Thibet Road, to which we had returned after the Japanese surrender. In former times, the avenue had been elegant and serene, the villa well staffed and luxurious. Shanghai had never been a placid place, but in the International Settlement a certain order was kept. In my earliest memories I see wide, bright rooms, soft carpets, and scroll paintings of scholars’ huts among pines. But by 1945, when we returned, all but one of the servants had fled. The automobiles and carpets had been sold to buy rice and cooking fuel. Where manicured lawns had swept up to the house, scrawny chickens scratched the dust between sweet potato vines. The acacia tree still bloomed, but flowers had given way to carrots and onions. The paintings and family treasures that remained were buried under the gardens in places only my grandfather knew. This situation continued through the next four years, until war’s end. Things then became more normal—you might say, more civilized—but the elegance never returned.”
Zhang Li, I could see, was circling, reluctant to close in on a subject that was still painful no matter what he said about time and memories. “You came back after the Japanese surrender,” I said, helping him circle. “You’d been living in Hongkew, in the Jewish ghetto, is that right?”
“Yes.” He looked at me curiously. “How did you know that?”
“We’ve spoken to your brother. Mr. Zhang, why didn’t you tell me about him yesterday?”
“You came to ask whether my cousin had been offered Aunt Rosalie’s jewelry. What reason would we have to mention my brother?”
Asked directly like that, I couldn’t think of one, but it still felt weird. Maybe Mr. Zhang saw that in my face, because he said, “My brother brought us to America. For that we will always be grateful. But since our arrival—and it is now many years—we haven’t been close in the way of families. At first I tried to involve myself in his activities, and him in ours. But neither I nor my cousin has ever felt comfortable in his presence. I tried to ignore my feelings and extend the hand of friendship as family ought, but we never forged the bond I know my brother was hoping for.”
“He told me that. He still regrets it.”
“For that, I’m sorry.”
In the pause that followed, Bill rubbed out his cigarette but didn’t leave the windowsill. With a small sigh, Zhang Li resumed his story. “In early 1943, the Japanese ordered the Jewish refugees to relocate to Hongkew. Uncle Kairong had been arrested, then released, and had left Shanghai. Grandfather Chen tried to intercede on Rosalie’s behalf—she was pregnant, you see—but the Japanese wouldn’t hear him. I, of course, did not have to go to the ghetto, and Grandfather Chen would have preferred that I stay with him; but I had been entrusted to Aunt Rosalie by my mother, and she refused to leave me. I doubt”—he smiled—“that a Chinese daughter-in-law would have defied Grandfather Chen as Aunt Rosalie did. But she sat with him and argued, matching him point for point, in the way of her tradition. And one morning she and Uncle Paul packed boxes, hired rickshaws, and trundled me off to Hongkew.”
“Why did your grandfather let it happen?”
“Things had gotten steadily worse for Shanghai’s Chinese. The alliance with Germany had hardened Japanese hearts, never warm toward Chinese to begin with. But the Japanese respected the Jews. They created the ghetto but refused what to the Germans was the logical next step: extermination. They kept strict control over the ghetto with identity cards and curfews, but they managed Hongkew with a lighter hand than they did the International Settlement. Wealthy Chinese like my grandfather were in danger of being arrested, their property confiscated. My grandfather had already lost his factories and warehouses, as the Japanese took what would aid their war effort, or what their commanders fancied. Aunt Rosalie made the argument that I was safer in the ghetto than with him.”
“Was that true?”
“How am I to know? I did survive the war, so perhaps she was right. So did my grandfather, but not without being jailed twice. He paid large bribes to secure his release. What would have become of me if I’d been there, either to be taken away with him or left with the one remaining houseboy, I don’t know.
“In any case, soon after we set up house in Hongkew, my cousin was born, at a hospital the Jewish refugees had built for themselves. Although my grandfather’s own life grew more and more difficult, he sold family treasures on the black market to help look after us. For Hongkew, our quarters—four people in two rooms, with cold running water and a flush toilet under the stairs shared with just two other families—were luxurious. He sent food also, and books, and he came to see us. But he could not bring us out of the ghetto.
“Then in 1945 the Japanese surrendered. The ghetto was opened. Uncle Kai-rong came back and moved us to the villa. He left again, returning every few months. Until finally he came home for good, at the civil war’s end.”
Zhang Li refilled our teacups, rising to take the pot to Bill. When he sat again, I thought maybe he’d circled enough. “Mr. Zhang?” I asked. “The Shanghai Moon?”
He nodded and again looked off into nothingness. “By the war’s last days, wild chaos reigned. Shanghai was one of the last cities to fall to Mao’s army and therefore one of the last refuges of the desperate remnants of Chiang’s. Nationalist soldiers rampaged through the steets. They stole food because they were hungry, money to buy passage to Taiwan, clothing so they could discard their uniforms. They stole anything. They burned, they smashed, they beat, ravaged, and killed.
“It was a matter of time until our villa was struck. Three armed me
n . . .” He stopped to swallow some tea. In a voice creaky and fast, he said, “They burst in. Rags hid their faces. They rounded us up—Grandfather, Uncle Paul, Aunt Rosalie, Lao-li, the old houseboy, and myself—and demanded our precious possessions, even as they gaped at the empty walls and bare floors.”
Zhang Li’s unsteady hands clinked the lid off his teacup. “Forgive me. This is the first time I’ve spoken of that day. As children, even allowing ourselves to think about it put Lao-li and myself in terror of calling down more bad luck, of causing the loss of someone else dear to us. We’ve never spoken of it, and I’ve done everything I could to avoid revisiting it in my own mind. The oddness is this: Through the years that day has come back at times, unbidden, as terrible moments will. I’ve always thought every detail engraved on my memory so deeply that I’d never forget a single sight, a single sound. But when I look closely, to try to explain it to you, events appear jumbled and confused. Sounds evade my hearing, sights are inexplicable. I find only fragments.” After another moment: “I remember this: Grand father ordered the intruders out. There was shouting. Their leader swung at Grandfather with his rifle butt. Grandfather slumped and there was blood . . . Uncle Paul ran at them, screaming they could see for themselves we had no riches, everything was gone. One of the men punched his stomach, knocked him down. Lao-li was shielded, as I was, behind Aunt Rosalie, but at the blood, the blows, the shouts, Loa-li began to scream.
“In my next memory, one of the men has seized Lao-li and is slapping him repeatedly. Aunt Rosalie threw herself on him, this man. A second man tore her away, but she didn’t stop shrieking and struggling. It took both the men to force her to the ground. All this time the leader was beating Grandfather and shouting for treasures.
“Then the old houseboy—Number One Boy, who had been with the Chen family for decades, a thin man made skeletal by hard times—Number One Boy lifted a stool and smashed one of the men holding Aunt Rosalie down.
“The man crumpled. The other released Aunt Rosalie and ran at Number One Boy. Aunt Rosalie, hair wild and clothing torn, scrambled to her feet.
“The leader shouted, spun around, and fired.” Zhang Li’s eyes closed. He was silent so long I thought he’d finished, and I wondered whether I should say something, but Bill caught my eye and shook his head. Finally Zhang Li spoke again.
“Aunt Rosalie fell. Everyone turned to stone. Then Number One Boy seized the fallen man’s rifle and fired at the leader. But he was a houseboy, not a soldier. He missed his mark. The leader shot back, also wide, splintering a chair. The fallen man crawled to his feet. Their leader shouted an order, and they all turned and ran. Number One Boy chased after. I heard more shots, and finally silence. Number One Boy didn’t return.
“After that . . . I have a picture in my mind of myself and my cousin kneeling beside Aunt Rosalie, in silence. I thought he’d reach for her, try to embrace her, start to cry. He did none of those things. He didn’t move at all. I recall Uncle Paul saying in a soft voice that Grandfather was alive, then taking Aunt Rosalie’s hand. But I’d reached her first, and I knew she was not.
“Uncle Kai-rong returned two days later. We were barricaded in the kitchen. When we heard voices in the house, Uncle Paul told Lao-li and myself to hide in a cupboard. He and Grandfather Chen seized cleavers and waited. Only when they were sure it was Uncle Kai-rong did Uncle Paul unbar the door.
“Uncle Kai-rong was devastated. Disbelieving. He wept over the garden grave Uncle Paul and I had dug for Aunt Rosalie in the dead of night. He begged her forgiveness. Then he gathered Lao-li and myself to him and said, ‘You are the treasures.’ He repeated it: ‘You are the treasures.’
“Within days, Mao’s army arrived, and order was restored in Shanghai. Number One Boy, who had been shot dead beside the gate, was sent back to his ancestral village for burial. Aunt Rosalie was given a proper funeral and reburied in the Jewish cemetery, though there were so few Jews left in Shanghai by then that some rites could not be performed.
“Uncle Paul left Shanghai a few months later, to go to America, after Mao Tse-tung made it clear Europeans were not welcome in the People’s Republic. Lao-li and I grew up in the villa, watched over by Kai-rong, whom I called uncle but who treated me like a son. Until, as young men, we came to America.”
A New York silence—quiet framed by a distant siren, an air conditioner’s hum—suffused the room. “An old story,” Mr. Zhang said softly, “from long ago. But”—he reached for my teacup, to refill it—“you are still wondering about the Shanghai Moon.”
In truth I hadn’t been. I’d been thinking about Rosalie and Kai-rong, and how they’d never gotten to say goodbye.
“Uncle Paul,” he said, “cradling Aunt Rosalie after the intruders fled, found red marks at her throat. To Grandfather, or perhaps to himself—certainly not to Lao-li or to me—he said, ‘The Shanghai Moon. They were after the Shanghai Moon.’ Weeping, he called down curses upon the gem and swore he wished it had never been made.”
“She’d been wearing it?” I said. “I thought—”
“Though the intruders found the villa empty and bare, they continued to scream for treasure. Then suddenly, after the struggle with Aunt Rosalie, they fled. Why? Unless by ‘treasure’ they meant the Shanghai Moon, and they’d gotten what they came for. Such was Uncle Paul’s reasoning. Uncle Kai-rong agreed. He cursed the gem as Uncle Paul had, and called on it in turn to curse those who now possessed it. He ordered us never to speak of it again.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling how tissue-thin the words were. “What terrible things for a child to live through.”
“Many children live through terrible things. The world is a harsh place. All we can do is try to ease one another’s way.”
“I suppose you’re right. And I have to say, the loss of a brooch seems so . . . trivial, in the context of this story. Of those terrible days.”
“Yes. And no. Uncle Kai-rong would have given a dozen, a hundred, Shanghai Moons, to have his Rosalie back. But it took on a different meaning to my cousin. In Uncle Kairong’s presence we never spoke of it, and we never spoke between us of that day, but repeatedly, to me, in the months that followed, Lao-li vowed he would recover the gem. He was a young child who, as you say, had seen terrible things. The dream of recovering the Shanghai Moon gave him comfort. I—a child also, not much older—saw no harm in his taking refuge in that dream. I did not forsee the obsession it would become, or the trouble it would lead to.”
“Trouble?”
“As we grew to manhood, my cousin’s attention was absorbed in the study of gems and precious metals. The Shanghai of the People’s Republic, gray and stern, bore little resemblance to the wild city of the years before the war, or to the war years’ profiteering frenzy. Luxury and opulence were banished. The European jewelers had fled, and Chinese jewelers found themselves doing little beyond repairing senior cadres’ watches. Nevertheless, Lao-li found a jeweler willing to take an apprentice. After a day of Piaget screws and gears, by night he instructed Lao-li secretly on gems, their cuts, weights, colors, and flaws.
“Uncle Kai-rong was himself a senior cadre, busy with extending the generous, fierce hand of revolution to all of China. We remained in the villa—shared now, in correct Maoist fashion, with three other families—planting bok choy and beans among the sweet potato vines, giving to the poor the eggs from our chickens. For a long time, life was difficult but satisfying. Uncle Kai-rong assured us the sacrifices we were making would uplift the Chinese people through a thousand generations.”
“Why didn’t you dig up Rosalie’s jewelry? And what about the treasures your grandfather had buried?”
“Grandfather Chen’s scrolls and porcelains were retrieved and sold abroad to feed the masses. But the villa garden itself was nourishing many mouths. Uncle Kai-rong would not permit the destruction of crops to search for the jewelry, the location of which none of us knew. He felt Aunt Rosalie would have wanted it that way. As crops were plowed under or new furrows
dug, of course we searched, but we were never successful.
“Then, as my cousin and I entered our twenties, the winds of the Cultural Revolution began to blow. Everyone was scrutinized, anyone could be denounced. Uncle Kairong was a powerful man, but his class background was incorrect. And powerful men have enemies. Being cowards, his did not take aim at him directly but whispered and hissed, inflaming others. We started to hear rumors, threats. One day, returning from his work, Lao-li was set upon by a mob in the street. Perhaps you can imagine the attitude of the Red Guards toward a young Eurasian jeweler from a landowning family?”
I could. “What happened?”
“These were the Cultural Revolution’s earliest days. Some people were not yet terrified and cowed. He was rescued by neighbors and returned to us, not badly hurt. But over the months the direction of things became clear. Uncle Kai-rong, forseeing dunce caps and years of reeducation in the countryside for Lao-li, sent him to America, and me with him. He did this at great risk and no doubt would have paid a high price. But he cheated the Red Guards: He fell ill, and died not six months after I and my cousin arrived here.”
“How did he die?”
Mr. Zhang smiled sadly. “We were told his heart failed him. I have no doubt that is true. Many years before, he’d lost his Rosalie. Now he lost his son, and myself. And finally, to the Red Guards, he lost his greatest love: China. I think he saw no reason to go on.”
“Mr. Zhang, your family’s story is extraordinary.”
“No, Ms. Chin. There are many like it. Every family has its own tangles of love and consequences.”
“But not all families’ stories run through times like those.”
“That may be, though from what I’ve seen that makes their stories no easier. In any case, do you now understand why it’s implausible that this ministry official who stole Aunt Rosalie’s buried jewelry—”
“Wong Pan.”
