by Xiao Bai
They were knocking at the door. The shadows near the garden side moved toward the wall. One man tried to open the little window from which the guards collected the mail, but Lin reached out and shoved his head down. His people were crowded to the left of the gate. One of them stood on the right side, with his gun trained on the crack in the gate. Another stood on the street with his back to the gate.
Young people did this the best. They were unafraid and treated the operation like a game. The guards who had come to open the gate were now under their control. The gate itself was half-closed, and the guards in their room on the east side of the building seemed to have overlooked the unusual scene on the lawn.
Morris Jr. was dragged into the dead center of the lawn. Now his legs had been tied up too. He really did look like a pyramid-shaped rice dumpling rolling onto the grass, with his head, ass, and legs at each vertex of the pyramid.
They were waiting.
The man who was about to be executed was waiting.
Ku was also waiting. He glanced at the dark mass that lay under a blue-patterned hotel tablecloth, one end stretched out over the edge of the balcony like the mouth of a giant carnivorous flower. Then he checked his watch and waited for the appointed time.
Eight o’clock. There was a red glow behind the villa, followed instantly by the sound of one explosion after another. The stout lantern seemed to quiver. Two light beams shot out of the guardroom, roving the lawn, and settled on the dumpling.
This was exactly what they had planned. At first they were going to use two hand grenades, but after Ch’i died they had come up with a more elaborate plan, including the fireworks that were going off on the lawn. A handful of their more alert neighbors had opened their windows or even ventured out onto their balconies. As guns rang out, Ku whisked the tablecloth away to reveal a gigantic horn loudspeaker. Holding the microphone firmly, he recited his speech by heart:
“Fellow citizens, fellow residents of Shanghai, on behalf of all my comrades from People’s Strength . . . I hereby declare that we are executing this counterrevolutionary.” He hadn’t realized that the loudspeaker would be so loud. The noise hurt his eardrums, and he could hardly hear his own voice. But sending a message was crucial. He took a deep breath and recited it again. These declarations were a Soviet invention, one of the methods that Mikhail Borodin had brought to Canton when he was advising the Party there.
As he was making his speech for the third time, he saw Lin take aim and fire at the center of the lawn. Guards were pouring out of the building, but they could not get to the black lawn in time. The nighttime dew made the lawn as slippery as the banks of a lake. Turning around, he bounded down the stairs, and jumped into the driver’s seat, with Lin and the others piled into the back. He started the car, and the engine began to warm up. At this very moment, outside the north gate of the building, Park would also be revving his car up and heading east.
CHAPTER 24
JUNE 22, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.
9:00 P.M.
Leng could not find a new apartment on short notice, so Ku booked rooms for her in the Singapore Hotel on Rue du Consulat. Of course, she couldn’t be spending too much time in crowded public places. This is only temporary, Ku had said. Keep moving. Don’t spend more than two or three days in one hotel. But being rootless made her resent her mission. She was no longer passionate about the revolution. How would she survive watching movies and sitting in teahouses with a young dandy?
There’s no turning back in what we do, Ku said, but our goal justifies any sacrifice. Any sacrifice is worthwhile. From the moment she accepted Ts’ao’s proposal in Lunghwa Garrison Command, there had been no going back. Maybe up until then, things could have been different. But reminding herself that it was all fated forced her to stop daydreaming and focus, like a despairing man who finds something trivial to obsess over, or the musicians on a sinking ship who spend the final hours of their lives picking apart a complex harmonic passage.
She was constantly dissatisfied with her own performance. At night she reeled back to her hotel room exhausted, as if she had just come from a movie set.
Now she was sitting by the dressing table and gazing into the mirror, thinking. She had switched off all the lights in the room and opened the windows to let in the street noises outside. Signs for Kuan-sheng Yüan, the candy manufacturer across the road, bathed her in neon red light. In the mirror, her face looked mysterious and changeful. When she got home at the end of the day, she often thought back to what she had said and how she must have looked. Did her frankness look too sudden and unthinking? she wondered. Would it have been better to let his questions brew unanswered for half an hour while steam rose from the dishes? She got notepaper and made a list of all the questions she wanted to ask him, so that she would be more sure of herself the following day, neither digressing too far nor panicking about running out of time and asking all her questions at once. He was perfectly aware that she only asked him questions because the cell needed the information, so she wasn’t worried that he would suspect her motives. But she did not want their meetings to feel too pragmatic. She cursed her own apathy. She had to be alert, to read the ambiguity in his every look and glance.
When it was over, she was always left feeling tense and worked up. But in just a few moments, her pretend emotions would vanish, as though they had been sucked out of a hole in her foot by an unknown underground force and were seeping into the ground. Then she would feel deflated, as if another self had leaped out of her body and were inspecting her. It would examine all her feeble exaggerations, and pronounce them unconvincing.
If Hsueh were a little more worldly, or if he could watch Leng in slow motion, then yes, her expressions might seem affected. Sometimes she glanced at him coyly while clutching his hand, and then quickly drew her hand back, as if something had just occurred to her. Sometimes she became unaccountably angry and ignored his teasing smile. When she was leaving, she would turn away immediately, but after only a few steps she would glance over her shoulder and grin. She would look up at the sky as though she was thinking about something, or cry in his arms, breathing down his shirt, under his collar. It wasn’t the first time she had been with a man, and she knew the effect that had.
Her performance was infectious. It made Hsueh exaggerate his own reactions, as if he was attuning his emotions to hers in order to perfect their double act. He started confiding in her more earnestly than she did in him, as if being earnest were his new game, one that allowed him to flirt even more shamelessly and tease her more mercilessly. He was always having to comfort her and apologize for offending her. It was then that he sounded most genuine.
They sometimes played at speaking lines from movies. That was when she felt truly tender toward him, as if the performance of a performance had to be real.
In the words of the movie Mata Hari:
“You want to die so badly?”
“I’m dead now. Just as surely as though there were a bullet in my heart. You killed me.”
“No. The brandy.” (Here she would playfully raise the coffee mug in her hand.)
“No, no. You.”
“Then why don’t you give me up?”
They could not count the number of times they had seen that movie. All the movie theaters were showing it. Besides, movie theaters made her feel warm and safe. The strain of being followed everywhere by prying eyes melted away. When she recited these lines, she felt just as beautiful as the secret agent in the movie, just as mysterious and confident.
Now that she knew which police department Hsueh’s friend was in, she asked him about the Political Section’s view of the incident on Avenue Foch, and especially about what the French thought.
“That was you people too?” Hsueh was cutting up a tenderloin steak with his knife. They were sitting in a restaurant called Fiaker, a small, expensive establishment on Avenue du Roi Albert that only served two tables per meal. It was pouring outside, and the rain licked the entire windowpane with a giant wet t
ongue that left a viscous trail. The waiter, who was also the chef and owner, served the food and then closed the door to the kitchen behind him, so that his guests could feel as though they were at home in their own dining room. A ceiling-to-ground glass window faced the street. Guests had to enter via the adjacent longtang and walk past the kitchen to reach the long, narrow room.
Instead of answering his question, she frowned and picked at the steak with her fork. It was several inches thick. “I can’t eat beef. It makes my heartbeat go faster, I can’t breathe, and I get hives here,” she said, pointing to her collarbone.
“Oh! I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, I should apologize. It must be so expensive, I should have told you earlier.”
“Not your fault at all. I didn’t say what I was ordering because I wanted to surprise you, to see how you would react to a gigantic steak on your plate.”
“Someone wants to meet you,” she said affectionately, staring at a stain on the table with an ant-size piece of meat at the center. She was about to pick it up when he caught her hand in his and used his napkin to wipe it up for her. She was touched, but also amused that he was treating her like a child.
She had never met anyone who cared as much about details as he did. He was easy-going and there was nothing he was passionate about, yet he actually thought of himself as a passionate man.
The following day, he told her that the police were consolidating the investigations for the Avenue Foch case and several other cases, and the Political Section would be responsible for the new investigation. A Chinese sergeant called Pock-faced Ch’eng was making inquiries regarding a man in his forties. It appeared a couple of Chinese council members had been making a fuss at the Municipal Office. If the police could not guarantee the safety of Concession residents, then why were business taxes being raised in the name of increased spending on public safety?
He told Leng that the French had set up a working group to investigate Communist violence in the Concession. His friend, the poet from Marseille, the one who always noticed colors and smells, was part of this group. He even brought a photo of the poet, whose expression seemed to indicate that he might be a little weary of his duties. The public water stove in the background was the one on the corner of Rue Conty, and Leng recognized it right away. Hsueh hinted that his literature-loving friend had a leftist bent ill suited to his position, which might prove awkward. The poet had been seen at meetings of expatriates who sympathized with the proletariat. He was known to read reports on the living and working conditions of workers in Shanghai.
Hsueh said they were good friends. He had spent hours listening to the poet’s ungrammatical and rambling story of why he had come to China, according to which it was because of a girl in Marseille whose hair smelled of roasted eel and fennel. He had heard the story dozens of times by now, and it always began that way.
That night in the cinema, he found himself scooping her up in his arms. They watched the same movie over and over again, and this time, she went to the bathroom halfway through. When she was coming out of the ladies’ room, he was standing at the other end of the red-carpeted corridor. The White Russian girl who worked as an usher leaned against the leather-paneled doors to the cinema and studied him. He stretched his arms out wide, uncertainly, like a sleepwalker. Finally he came up to Leng, put his arms around her, and kissed her. He probably didn’t hear her murmur, “What am I doing? What’s happening to me?”
CHAPTER 25
JUNE 24, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.
9:33 A.M.
It was nearing the end of June, and the rainy season should have started by now. But although the sky sagged with clouds, the rains never came. It was hot and muggy. When Hsueh walked into Lieutenant Sarly’s office, he saw that Inspector Maron was also there. There was too much moisture in the air. The walnut wood paneling was mottled with mold, producing a musty smell that mixed with the smoke from Sarly’s pipe. He kept stuffing yellow tobacco into his pipe, while shreds of tobacco leaf drifted onto his file. The table was covered with documents: photographs, forms, letters, and several neatly printed reports.
“That Russian princess of yours—Therese, what’s she been up to? Mended her ways? Retired early on her money?” The lieutenant was clearly in a bad mood. A change in weather would help, perhaps a dusty Sahara breeze, or a tropical rainstorm from Indo-China.
“Look who’s here. You’re still knocking about? I thought she’d chopped you into salad and had you for lunch,” Maron sniggered.
These days, the thought of Therese made Hsueh’s head hurt. Ever since she had extracted a confession from him at gunpoint—though heaven only knew why she had believed him—their relationship had changed unexpectedly. For almost a week after that incident, Hsueh had avoided her. He was afraid that if she kept pressing him for details, he would invent one lie after another until the whole fiction crumbled to pieces.
Maybe the problem would solve itself if he ended their relationship. Now that Lieutenant Sarly had read his file and found that he was the son of an old friend, he was no longer afraid of what the police could do to him, though he was still privately terrified of Maron’s motionless fish eyes. He had even less reason to keep following Therese. But just because he didn’t want to see her didn’t mean that she didn’t want to see him. The Concession was tiny, and she had no trouble finding out where he lived. When he saw her men outside his rooms, his heart sank. He must have been found out, he thought, and this time she wouldn’t be threatening him with an unloaded gun.
The Cossack bodyguards took him to Mohawk Road. They marched him into the longtang next to the stables, and through a corner gate into what looked like a warehouse. He hadn’t expected to be brought here. Did she want him executed by firing squad? Or hanged at the platform in the center of the room?
The building probably used to be a stable. In the center there was a platform with posts at its four corners, linked by ropes. A man stood on it and hollered at the room. The crowd was in a frenzy, and the air was thick with the stench of sweat, tobacco, and of vodka belched up after fermenting in hot stomachs. He stumbled along behind the guards as they wove their way through the outstretched legs, overturned benches, and piles of beer bottles, until he found himself standing in front of Therese.
Unexpectedly, she motioned to a rattan chair next to her. Once he sat down, he realized that this was the underground wrestling ring founded by Cossack gangs and ex-navy officers from Vladivostok. Both groups put up fighters and took bets, and the police saw to it that other gangs did not interfere.
They had the best seats in the house. If you reached out you could touch the corner of the stage, the damp boards beneath the chair in the corner where the wrestlers rested and caught their breath. The timekeeper’s bench had been positioned to his right, between the audience and the platform. A bell and a small clock lay on the table.
The wrestler took a heavy punch in the ribs. It sounded like a butcher’s hammer hitting a slab of meat. Sweat splashed from his back, and the crowd screamed. People were placing bets, spitting, and cursing at the top of their lungs, as if shouting would make them win.
Therese loved watching men get beaten to a pulp. She also loved betting. She was shivering, and she kept licking her lower lip. Her cheeks were glistening with sweat that could have been hers or the wrestlers’. The way she stared at them, you’d think she could smell their crotches.
Later that night, she screamed as she rammed her thighs at him and sucked the sweat from his shoulders. She got on top of him, and just before the climax, she thumped him on the shoulder.
For the very first time, not only did she permit Hsueh to return to her apartment with her, but they also spent the morning of the following day in bed. She asked Hsueh to lunch at the Odessa with her, and over lunch she declared that she would let Hsueh handle the deal if his boss ever wanted to buy anything else.
He realized he wouldn’t be able to just stop seeing her. She believed he loved her because she had been pointi
ng a gun at him when he said so, and the gun was now their witness. Therese was easily swayed by professional pride: if to love a housewife you had to like her cooking, or to love a seamstress you had to appreciate her embroidery, Therese would never be sure you loved her unless you were afraid of her gun.
But his affection for Therese was only one more reason to break things off. He would have to betray her if she had really been selling firearms to Leng’s cell. That reminded him of his own conflicting feelings. What was it that made him so desperate to get closer to Leng, to peel away her disciplined exterior, to explore her, analyze her, take her apart and put her together again?
“Your reports connect all these different incidents, from the arms dealer to the suspicious apartment on Rue Amiral Bayle, to the Kin Lee Yuen assassination, the street battle on Rue Paul Beau, and finally the fireworks on Avenue Foch. I’m expecting you to show us what you’re made of, to penetrate the cell and find . . .”
“A forty-year-old man, the boss. He usually stays in the shadows, but he’s been seen before. Your Therese is the only way we can get to him,” Maron added.
“They’ve never met. They both use agents,” Hsueh said. He did not want Lieutenant Sarly to target Therese, at least not through him. In fact, he no longer wanted to see her, although he could now see her whenever he wanted to instead of having to stalk her—not that he himself knew whether he had originally followed her because Maron wanted him to, or for other reasons. She had given him a key to her apartment and let him use the bathroom there. She told him that when he wasn’t around, she thought about him every day. In her own words, she was “horny as a peach ripe to bursting.”
“I may let this Russian woman off. At the right time, I may decide to overlook her business selling unlicensed firearms to terrorists.” Lieutenant Sarly tapped his cigarette ash into a copper ashtray. “The Concession authorities are always sympathetic to commercial interests.”
