French Concession

by Xiao Bai

  Between the beak and the naked woman’s breast hung a mirror with a gaudy frame. Just what she wanted. She studied the mirror carefully. Sunlight streamed onto the wall. The rickshaw man had left his rickshaw on the curb while he squatted in the corner, smoking a cigarette. There was no one else under the parasol tree.

  Back at her apartment, Therese turned the key in the copper Eveready lock. Yindee stood in the middle of her living room while Zung was sprawled on the sofa. Ah Kwai put a cape jasmine on the round side table by the window, filling the room with its dank scent.

  Zung had just arrived from Hong Kong. He was examining a book of movie posters with his chin pressed to it, peering at the photographs from different angles. He had a sharp chin that reminded Therese of pictures of Chinese concubines.

  Running in to serve them tea, Ah Kwai laughed and dashed out again. She had come to Shanghai with Therese from Hong Kong, and Zung sometimes brought her Cantonese sweets. The room was heavy with the scent of Chinese jasmine tea, which Therese loved. Zung was always teasing her, claiming that Russian tea stank of camel piss. Apparently the Russians had complained that tea tasted different when it was shipped in by train, having gotten used to tea saturated with the sweat of camels carrying merchants across the Gobi Desert from Shan-hsi. Wily Chinese merchants consequently began soaking their sacks of tea leaves in camel urine for a few days before delivering it.

  Zung typed out invoices on a stack of light-blue paper with his Underwood typewriter. Each month he brought large sums of cash from Hong Kong and deposited it in her personal account. She never asked him how much he kept for himself. For the past hundred years, foreign businessmen who prospered in China had refrained from asking such questions of the compradors, their middlemen, and everyone had done well out of the bargain.

  Therese herself sourced the goods. Recently a man called Heinz Markus had written to her on behalf of Carlowitz and Co. from Berlin. He reported that Carlowitz was prospering, especially now that it was officially sponsoring the National Socialist Party. As long as Therese’s firm brought in the orders, Carlowitz could fill them. The Germans had lost a large share of the Asian market during the Great War, and they were anxious to make up lost ground. It was rumored that the National Socialists didn’t much like Jewish people, but Therese ignored them. This was Asia. If you made money, no one could touch you.

  At least she no longer had to sleep with the skippers in exchange for lower shipping rates. They all came ashore horny and exhausted from steering their run-down freighters all through the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Once her shipping lines had been set up, the money started flowing in, and she now had a steady stream of business. In Hong Kong, Shanghai, and even in Hanoi, Zung had friends he could count on. He and his family had collaborated with foreigners for a century. As long as the Europeans were willing to contribute their cash and connections, they could cut a deal with anyone: the government, warlords, the police, the gangs, and an assortment of big-time and small-time crooks.

  In Hong Kong, Zung ran a wholesale hardware store on Chatham Road that also dabbled in retail. His light-blue records listed a curious transaction.

  “Why did it have to be customized? And did it have to cost that much?” she asked.

  “It was a birthday present for the mistress of an eccentric Indian businessman,” he explained.

  The pistol had been set with precious stones and covered with gold leaf. The businessman specially requested that a piece of ancient Chinese jade with an etching of a belly dancer be set in the stock of the gun. The man smelled of curry. He wanted a thin line etched into the jade inside the folds of her dress—he apparently believed that his mistress had been a virgin until they met, which was what her mother had told him.

  Zung told Therese that he had to arrange a delivery to a Korean client in Shanghai. He drew another invoice from his pocket, a white piece of paper with three lines typed on it:

  Mauser 7.63 Auto Pistol

  Spanish type .32 Auto pistol

  Chinese (Browning) .32 Auto pistol

  “Five thousand seven hundred and thirty-two yuan altogether,” Zung said. “And of course, there’s Sir Morholt.”

  Sir Morholt was Therese’s private nickname for the Prussian businessman, because he had a scar on his right wrist, a memento of fencing in his youth, which he liked showing to people. It reminded Therese of a certain picture book for children to read on sunny afternoons, which contained an illustration of Tristan cutting off Sir Morholt’s right hand. She had once mentioned this picture to Zung.

  Carlowitz and Co. had put Therese in touch with Sir Morholt, and they arranged to meet in a bar on Chatham Road. He told her he worked for a German metals firm. As he spoke, he sketched out a diagram of a weapon she had never heard of, noting its name in German in a corner of the notepad. Before getting up to leave, she slipped the piece of paper into her handbag. He had talked incessantly about the gray mist on the Rhine.

  Now Zung was handing her a real blueprint that was not a hasty sketch on a bar-table notepad. It had been cut carefully from a larger roll of drafting paper, like a child’s geometry homework or a sample diagram in a furniture catalog. There were three parts to the diagram.

  “Looks dangerous all right. Who would buy it?”

  “Yeah it’s dangerous.” Zung wasn’t really paying attention. He drew out his silver cigarette case.

  “Everyone knows everyone in this business, and this will make us too conspicuous. It will get us in trouble.”

  Since she got back from Hong Kong, Therese had been unable to shake the feeling that someone was following her.

  CHAPTER 7

  JUNE 5, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

  7:15 P.M.

  Therese had a green eight-cylinder Ford Model B.

  The car was usually parked in the backyard of the jewelry shop. A spare tire hung on the rear of the car, draped in white canvas. Dusk was settling on the longtang, someone had put a vinyl record on, and the sound wafted down the street from a second-floor window. It was a girl singing in a southern Chinese accent. Her shrill voice sounded syrupy—someone might have put too much wax on the Victrola needle.

  Therese herself was driving, and she had not brought her bodyguards with her. She was going to the Astor House Hotel. It was a Friday, and she would be spending the weekend there. If she and Hsueh got hungry, they could simply take the car and drive along North Szechuen Road to find a restaurant near Lily Bar.

  She drove north along Rue Paul Beau. The rusty gates to the longtangs along the road had been left ajar, and the scent of canola oil wafted out. Therese rolled up the windows. She soon turned onto a wider road. The light reflected illusory movie posters onto the windows of the car: the RKO Pictures musical Tanned Legs and His Glorious Night with John Gilbert in a mustache. In a lit shop window, a polar bear held a sign in his mouth that said SIBERIAN FUR.

  Then the road grew narrower and the dark shadows of buildings loomed ahead. At night, the walls of flint and marble looked as though they had been hewn directly from the hillside. She drove across Garden Bridge, passing the Soviet consulate to her right, its tall tower resembling a gigantic helmet with the Soviet flag for a crest.

  A few years before, the Cossacks who arrived in Shanghai with Captain Stark’s navy troops had attacked the consulate. Their wild revelry had ended feebly with a few old drunkards gathered outside the Astor, singing Orthodox hymns, and throwing rocks at the windows to revenge themselves against their class enemies. They had been reduced to drinking vodka that was crummier than the stuff workers swigged from their enamel mugs. The women crowded round to watch, but Therese could not be bothered to join them. She watched from her window in the Astor, sipping on half a glass of vodka with kvass while the Czech painter lay naked on the bed.

  The consul himself had led the charge to protect Soviet sovereign territory. He shot and killed the Cossack captain who was trying to tear down the hammer and sickle flag at the gate. Therese would have loved to fit out and arm the Cos
sacks, but they were penniless. That was the day she first saw Hsueh, who was still taking photos when the Concession Police burst through to the consulate gates and the crowds had scattered. As soon as she saw him, she got dressed and rushed downstairs to ask for a copy of the prints.

  Two days later, Hsueh gave her the photos in Lily Bar. She didn’t look closely at them until they were in bed at the Astor. Just leafing through them made her horny.

  From then on she saw Hsueh occasionally and made love to him. Their trysts grew more frequent. She loved looking at the photos he took. She had never seen herself that way, watched her body dissolve into countless shifting parts, as though she were suddenly not one woman but many, all strangers to her. Some of the pictures made her look uglier, and some more beautiful than she really was. She was not even embarrassed by photographs of her ass sticking up in the darkness, like the ass of a spirited white mare.

  She often asked Hsueh to meet her at the Astor, which resembled a ship with its maroon-paneled maze of corridors leading to hundreds of rooms, and delicate wrought iron flowers inlaid with frosted glass set in the doors. Her usual rooms were in what the steward called the forehold, which faced the waves and humid breeze of the Whampoa. When mist rose from the river at night, you could feel as if you were floating. A curved beam arched across the living room, which was furnished with solid teak furniture. There were rattan armchairs, a coffee table, and a mahogany floor lamp. Behind these living room furnishings, a set of double doors led to the bedroom.

  The bedroom had an Oriental smell of fog on the Whampoa, moldy mosquito nets, and camphor wood, sandalwood, or cinnamon wood. The bottoms of the heavy teak drawers were made of scented wood, and whenever she opened one to retrieve a bathrobe and towel, its scent would fill the room. She opened the windows to let in the cry of gulls and whistle of ships.

  The bathtub stood in the middle of the bathroom, surrounded by soft chairs, a ceramic basin, and a toilet bowl in the corner. The bars of the radiator had been polished by the hotel’s servants until they gleamed. A retractable chandelier hung so low that its arms almost touched her head. She dozed off.

  Then the phone rang, waking her abruptly. Dripping wet, she stepped into the bedroom to answer it. It was Hsueh, calling to say he would be late. He sounded nervous and his voice was hoarse. But before she could ask why, he had hung up.

  She didn’t hear from him again until after ten at night when he knocked at the door.

  Therese looked at him in astonishment. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed while Hsueh lay fast asleep with his back to her. Bruises covered his face, legs, and waist, and there was a cut on his lip. It was not the bruises that surprised her. The type of man she could have for the price of a couple of drinks in a bar often appeared in her room battered and bruised.

  No, she was surprised by how aggressive he was. He seemed to be angry about something.

  He pushed her to the edge of the bed, lifted her legs roughly, and squashed her, ramming her face into the pillow. He wanted to turn her over, to expose her crotch to the light of the hanging chandeliers, as if she were a dancing insect that would freeze when in the light. She lifted her taut legs high in the air, and the light played on the sleep marks on her knees. Pleasure swept across her abdomen like a wave as she grasped at his arms and ass.

  When he turned, his dick flopped over like a worm. She reached out to touch it, and it became hard before he even awoke.

  His voice came from near her feet, sputtering as though it was bubbling up from somewhere near the muddy bottom of the Whampoa.

  “Tell me, tell me, do those wicked friends of yours do this to you?” She caught his head between her knees, as if she could capture that brain of his that constantly distracted her. She wanted to rub the wet sponge of her body against the bridge of his nose. She refused to stop and listen to him. If he was jealous—well, let him be.

  Half an hour later, she thought about the “wicked friends” he had mentioned. Did he think she was having sex with Zung? Then he was mistaken. All this time she had resisted Hsueh. He wanted to unsettle her, and the more she resisted, the more deeply he seemed to penetrate her. She could not force herself to like him any less, but she was afraid of leading him on. She did not want to disappoint him. Recently she had found herself mellowing with age, becoming reluctant to let go of things that made her happy. She was afraid of loss, and happiness no longer seemed to lie within easy reach. She had come to see that happiness for her consisted of a certain inward thrill.

  “He’s not a wicked man. He’s just my business partner,” she explained.

  “What kind of business?” As he leaped off the bed, his spinal dimple was visible and bruised all over.

  “It’s not important,” she said angrily. “It’s none of your business. It wouldn’t do you any good.”

  “I want to know all about you! I have drinks with you, sleep with you, and travel with you. But you make me feel like a gigolo—I don’t know what you’re doing or where you’re going, and you always slip out of the room when I’m asleep.”

  He had started shouting. “I don’t even know where you live or the line of business you’re in. What’s the gun for, buying emeralds?”

  “I told you, that isn’t an emerald, it’s a garnet stone from the Urals.”

  He reached into her handbag for her cigarette case and tipped out its contents. The cigarette case, a pistol, and a pale blue sheet of paper fell onto the wet sheets—a blueprint for a machine gun that looked not unlike an elaborate clotheshorse. A present from Sir Morholt, who had cut it out carefully and entrusted it to her in a bar in Hong Kong.

  She snatched it up along with her gun and stuffed it back in her handbag. Glaring at him, she thought of the kick she had given him on the ship. She thought about how much she liked everything about him.

  “Okay, a garnet stone. That doesn’t call for a gun.” Lighting a cigarette, he handed it to her.

  “Maybe one day you can come with me to see him, but not now. I’ll tell you more about my business some other time. But you’ll have to behave. Don’t ask questions. Don’t talk too much.”

  She had reached her hand between her legs and was playing with his dick, kissing his nose and ears. Her mouth tasted of smoke. Now his body smelled of her body. Defeated, he collapsed onto the pillow, and the bruise on his shoulders made him gasp in pain. She stroked his bruises and the scars on his neck.

  It was past midnight, which meant it was Saturday, and they were about to spend the whole day in that room.

  “Now, tell me who did this to you?”

  CHAPTER 8

  JUNE 7, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

  7:15 P.M.

  The restaurant was called Bendigo. It lay on the corner between Route Cardinal Mercier and Rue Bourgeat, on the ground floor of the Cathay Mansions. The window seat in the northwest corner faced the French Club and Lyceum Theater across the road. It was the best Western restaurant in Shanghai, and it was owned by a Jewish couple.

  The steps behind a set of glass doors led down to the restaurant. Its semibasement had not been constructed according to any particular architectural style, or to prevent lowland dampness, or to keep servants from being distracted by goings-on outside. Rather, the contractor in charge of building the foundations had chosen the cheapest steel bars he could find, causing the entire building to begin sinking into the ground not long after it had been built.

  The owner of the restaurant was a German Jew whose portrait hung on the wall by the steps leading to the restaurant. He used to have a magnificent beard, which made him look like Karl Marx in one of the posters that used to hang on every street corner, but he had shaved it off when he opened a restaurant. He was a legendary figure, and there were many stories about him. For instance, it was said that he had made the first rent payments on the restaurant using money he made as a young man panning gold in Australia—didn’t the name Bendigo suggest as much?

  But longtime residents of the Concession could tell you a different
story. More than twenty years ago, old Romantz had been a penniless Jewish tramp who did not have so much as a suitcase to call his own. It was said that every one of the wretched foreigners who arrived in Shanghai traveling below deck in great ships came ashore with a couple of tattered trunks, but that wasn’t true. Romantz had been pacing along the Whampoa, close to despair, when Fate thought of him, and a large wallet fell from a rickshaw. A chance like that is what you make of it. If Romantz had kept the wallet, it might have paid for a couple weeks’ worth of beer. Instead he snatched up the wallet and dashed after the rickshaw, and things turned out very differently.

  The owner of the wallet was the old captain who managed Astor House Hotel. He was so impressed by Romantz’s honesty that he offered him a job on the spot. Romantz spent twelve years at the hotel as a steward, in charge of the silver cutlery and French porcelain. After ten years, Fate thought of him again, and this time she sent him a wife. Mrs. Romantz was a Russian Jewish woman who kept rooms in the hotel to entertain single foreign men. Finding that Romantz could be as attentive to her as he was careful with the captain’s French porcelain, she agreed to marry him. They decided to marry in secret, outside the synagogue, because as long as they did not declare their marriage before the Lord, Mrs. Romantz could continue pursuing her lucrative profession. They would tell Him when they had scrimped and saved enough money for the restaurant. Sure enough, on the very same day Bendigo opened, they had a proper Jewish wedding at the synagogue.

  Romantz was a legend. Perhaps because the Concession was something of a floating city, rootless, without a past and with no guarantee of a future, it functioned like a huge vat of dye that tinted all its characters with the quality of timelessness, which turned them into legends.