by Xiao Bai
Leng’s face was white and she had a blank look in her eyes, as if she had already given herself up for lost. Detective 198 looked like a slapstick actor imitating a street portrait artist. He looked down at the document, up at her, and then down at the photograph. He scrutinized her in profile, as if being closer to the light filtering in through the blinds would give him a better view.
“I’ve seen this face before,” he commented blandly to the French detective. He might as well have been describing a photograph.
They left the building surrounded by detectives, who took them to North Gate Police Station in a police van. After just a few minutes inside the iron compartment, Hsueh was already sweating profusely. He kept wiping the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief. The seats for prisoners were narrow and low, and they were almost squatting on the floor. This was more embarrassing than being seen on the toilet. Leng kept her hands over the slits in her cheongsam so that Hsueh wouldn’t see her legs. She had been sweating, and the pores on her legs had dilated and looked ugly. She suddenly didn’t know what to do with herself, like an actress who was being dragged out of the limelight and kidnapped.
They were locked up in a wooden cage, and no one asked them any questions. She wouldn’t get away with it this time. Everyone would have seen those photographs of her, including the wedding photograph in which she was wearing so much makeup she hardly looked like herself. Ts’ao had insisted on having that photograph taken, as if he couldn’t believe she’d said yes, and needed to hang wedding photographs everywhere just to prove they were married. Now the photographs proved that she had been Ts’ao’s wife, just as he had wanted.
Although the sweat must have stung Hsueh’s eyes, he appeared to be deep in thought. He had noticed neither Leng’s imperfect legs nor the look of despair in her eyes.
He began to shout at the top of his voice, making Detective 198 rush over to the wooden cage.
“I am French! My father was a Frenchman! I want to talk to the sergeant! I have something to say!”
Detective 198 opened the cage with a key. He had already stripped his belt off, and put his keys, whistle, baton, and flashlight on the table. He was ready to teach this man a lesson for daring to cause trouble in the lockup.
But then the long-faced sergeant came in and had Detective 198 take Hsueh to his office. The detective was drenched in sweat. He couldn’t wait to finish work and find a bar where he could have a long cool draught of beer. He resented the place, his job, and the officers who were making him do all this work despite the weather.
CHAPTER 28
JUNE 24, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.
4:18 P.M.
Hsueh was brought to the sergeant’s office. His identity papers lay on the table open to the last page, alongside a wooden hat, a catalog of European furniture, and a vial of peppermint oil to keep the mosquitoes away. A green blackboard hung near the door, with a list of to-dos for the day scribbled on it in white chalk. A huge arrow had been added between 3:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M., hours that should have been spent drinking tea and smoking in the cool of the sergeant’s own office. The words SINGAPORE HOTEL had been circled.
The telephone was on the wall next to the blackboard.
“Was there something you wanted to say to me?” the sergeant said.
“I’d like to make a phone call to Lieutenant Sarly of the Political Section. Call and tell him Hsueh wants to speak to him.”
“So we think we know a few bigwigs, do we?” The sergeant stretched his legs out to let the breeze filter into his pant legs.
When he got Lieutenant Sarly on the line, he sounded impatient. Hsueh could hear rustling sounds that meant either Sarly was reading something, or there was static on the line.
“And what were you doing in the Singapore Hotel?”
“A friend of mine is staying there.”
“A friend.” The voice gave no hint of what Sarly was thinking. “A lady friend?”
Hsueh didn’t know how much to reveal, and he had to make up his mind quickly. The line kept crackling. With probably no more than a few seconds left, he remembered that it wasn’t Leng the lieutenant was after. She wasn’t the protagonist of the story. In that case . . .
“If you trust me, I’ll make sure you get everything you want.”
“If I trust you? Have you given me any reason so far to trust you?” The static disappeared, making room for a vast silence. Sarly’s voice sounded thin, like a piece of thread in the wind, or an echo in a distant corridor.
Hsueh felt his position weaken. He didn’t realize that he was shouting. “This is really important! When you come to your senses, you’ll see all my reports piled on your desk.”
He put the phone down and waited for Sarly’s answer. He felt sorry for Leng. He thought about how hard she had tried to pretend to be sophisticated, in the hope that he could be “useful” to her cell. Then he remembered her weeping by the ship railing, and the blank look in her eyes when she had seen him. She never forgot she was a woman. Even when she was terrified, she had held down the slits in her cheongsam, as if the gesture would anchor her in reality. He began to worry about her. For a moment, it seemed to Hsueh that it would be worth risking anything at all, Lieutenant Sarly’s trust, even his friendship with Hsueh’s father, just to keep her safe.
An hour later, the poet from Marseille appeared.
An hour and a half later, he and Leng were walking out of North Gate Police Station. The poet came to the wooden cages with him, and he noticed that Leng recognized his old friend right away.
The poet told him that the search at the Singapore Hotel had been a coincidence. That morning, a steward at the hotel had found a hand grenade under the dressing table in Room 302, and the manager, Kung Shan-t’ing, had telephoned North Gate Police Station to report the find.
The poet was one of the only policemen Hsueh liked, which was why Sarly had assigned him to be Hsueh’s contact point. He was shy. He had hair the color of dried hay, and a weakness for Mallarmé and Verlaine. Before getting in his car, he had privately complimented Leng to Hsueh: she looks so graceful when she is frightened, like a swan.
Leng herself was standing in Hsueh’s empty living room, like a swan resting during a long journey, sadness in her eyes. They had politely declined the poet’s offer to give them a ride in his car, and when they were sure that no one was following them, Leng had made a phone call from a telephone booth on Boulevard de Montigny. Through the glass window, Hsueh could see her covering the receiver with her hand, trying to explain what had happened. She was beautiful. He wondered whether he felt that way because he had just rescued her from prison. For the first time, he learned what it felt like to have someone look to him for protection.
As she was coming out of the telephone booth, she told him she had nowhere to go, and would have to live with him for now, just to be safe. Her voice was so matter-of-fact that Hsueh was almost a little disappointed.
Hsueh tidied up the table, which was the only thing that needed tidying, since his living room contained nothing but a table and a couple of chairs. He poured out half a cup of cold coffee, and as soon as he came back into the living room, he remembered that he had to boil some water in the kitchen. The old photographs and newspapers could be tossed in a heap in a corner with bottles of developer chemicals. Standing at the doorway, he chucked all his clothes into his bedroom. No sooner had he gotten Leng to sit down than the lid of the kettle clattered in the off-kilter beat of an Irish jig.
Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him until now that he owed her an explanation. Wouldn’t her cell wonder how they had managed to escape from North Gate Police Station? He told her about the hand grenade, but then he realized that it sounded even more implausible than a lie. He still didn’t know what he would say to Sarly. And he had barely given any thought to the fact that he would one day have to betray Leng and her cell to the police. It was true that his mind was always swirling with thoughts, but he would never learn to think ahead.
Right
now, he had to make sure he hadn’t left anything suspicious lying around. Though he shouldn’t have anything to hide—after all, he was a photojournalist, not a detective. All he had were piles of old newspapers and photographs, rolls of film and chemicals. Then he thought of something and shot into the bedroom, leaving Leng alone in the living room.
Ever since Therese’s Cossack bodyguards had found Hsueh’s rooms, she had been here a couple of times herself. She was the kind of woman who left a telltale trail wherever she went: lipstick smudges on wineglasses and cigarette holders, perfume suffusing the pillowcases and the very cracks in the wall, and of course, stained knickers.
He could not imagine what would happen if Therese were to walk in and find him at home with another woman. That hadn’t occurred to him as he was bringing Leng to his rooms. He had better go and meet her so that she wouldn’t take it into her head to come here.
Nor could he imagine why Sarly trusted him. In the police van that afternoon, it had crossed his mind that someone might have followed him to the Singapore Hotel, which seemed to be the only explanation for the police search of the rooms. But then he had gotten distracted by the fact that Leng wasn’t wearing stockings. It was hot and humid, and her legs had been glistening with sweat.
He was beginning to think that the search might have been a coincidence after all. One thing was certain: Sarly trusted him. Sitting in a trench and sharing a gas mask must forge strong friendships, Hsueh thought.
The sky was growing dark, but it hadn’t rained. They were still in Hsueh’s rooms on Route J. Frelupt, on the other side of the Concession from the police station, sitting across from each other and near enough to smell each other’s sweat.
“So that was the poet from Marseille. Who did you say I was?” He could tell that the performance she had kept up for so long had been shattered like a piece of porcelain and was all jagged edges now. It was her listless face rather than her vacant tone of voice that gave her away.
He looked at her face, her hands, her skin. You could see the pores because she had been sweating.
“My lover,” he said.
Her mouth was slightly open, as if she had just swallowed something bitter. He thought he heard her sigh. There was a stain on the side of her nose, from having been rubbed with grimy fingers. Her eyelashes cast long shadows on her pupils.
“Why did you rescue me?”
The pause would make what he was about to say more powerful.
“Because I love you.” The words slipped out as if he had been waiting to say them. There is never a good time to tell someone you love them. But then whenever you do, it usually sounds right.
She was weeping noiselessly. A breeze lifted the curtain. She shivered and got up. Then she looked at him and collapsed into his lap, clutching his sleeves and collar, and then punching his head and shoulders.
“But why? Why? Everyone who loves me comes to a bad end!”
It surprised Hsueh that no woman could withstand the power of those three words. They all seemed to be under the same spell, or to have drunk a potion that made them play the same part in the same movie.
CHAPTER 29
JUNE 24, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.
7:30 P.M.
Leng felt like a sorry piece of bait, rigged on the end of a line and dropped into the lake. Now that the fisher had abandoned his rod, she was starting to develop feelings for the fish. Her phone call to Ku was brief, and she neglected to mention that they had been arrested or taken to the police station. She was afraid he would expel her from the cell, which was her only connection to the outside world.
Luckily Hsueh had been there—this proved his friends at the police station were as influential as he said they were. Ku was intrigued by this, and repeatedly asked:
“Why would the Political Section be taking part in a North Gate police raid?”
“There wasn’t anyone but the North Gate police. The steward found a hand grenade and reported it to the police.”
“But you just said they got you out.”
“The police were about to burst into the room to check our papers, but Hsueh was standing at the door and started kicking up a fuss. Then he dropped the name of his friend in the Political Section.”
“So this poet friend of his must be an important man. Did you say you met him this afternoon?”
“They called the Political Section from the hotel, and confirmed that Hsueh was a journalist at a French newspaper. By the time his friend got here, the police had already left.”
This story doesn’t hold water, she thought. She felt guilty about lying to Ku for no reason. She felt like an incompetent actress who had forgotten her lines.
“So the police never came into the room? They didn’t see you? Didn’t his friend in the Political Section see you?”
She said this was all because Hsueh was there. She didn’t dare say that she had just been incredibly lucky. She herself could scarcely believe her luck. She might as well put it down to her new hairstyle or careworn face. When she looked in the mirror, she thought being sad made her look different.
Finally, Ku said: “You’ve got to work harder to win Hsueh over for the Party. We want him to join us. His connections to the police will be useful for the next stage of our work.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Just live with him. Remember your mission and the Party’s goal. You will spend time with him, observe him, and understand his relationships. This is important work.”
Leng knew exactly what Ku was hinting at, but she was getting tired of being told to hide her feelings. In movies, the charismatic double agent could develop feelings for the target she was flirting with, or at least trick herself into thinking so. The audience would sympathize as long as the agent believed she was working for good. Leng, on the other hand, always ended up falling into her own trap.
Her pretense had erected a thin film between her and Hsueh, which it was also her job to penetrate, although she didn’t know how. She told herself that the Party hadn’t ordered her to fall in love. They wanted her to crack the cynical exterior of this Concession dandy, and get at his deepest thoughts and feelings, so that they could gain control of him and make him useful to the cell. There must be something real under his carefully constructed image—if you stripped away the flippant comments, the conceitedness and constant scheming, you would find that he was vulnerable and innocent and naked as a newborn baby at the core. That Hsueh would be idealistic. He would be willing to fight for justice, to dedicate himself to the Party’s mission. It didn’t occur to her that a lover might thirst to understand Hsueh the way she thirsted to understand him.
She began to seduce him in a spirit of self-sacrifice, which made everything she did absurdly solemn. Making oatmeal for him, she poured the oatmeal into the pan from a rusty tin, and added water and milk powder. They hunted for the sugar jar together, but couldn’t find it. Eventually they found several lumps of sugar on top of the coffee jar.
They ate in silence. His mind was elsewhere. She looked exhausted, at the end of her rope. Frowning, she ate her oatmeal in tiny spoonfuls, as though she wanted it to be an anesthetic.
She couldn’t remember how she had first been introduced to Party ideals. She tried talking to him, beginning with the events of that afternoon. She pretended to be outraged by the cops’ insolence, although no one expected anything different from the Concession Police, because she thought he might be inspired to a simple hatred of imperialism. But then again, an imperialist had rescued them from North Gate Police Station. Making an abstract truth palpable was so difficult. She wanted him to argue with her, to say that there were good people in the police force, or something like that. Eventually she said: “Don’t think that your friend the poet is a good man. That may be, but he represents an oppressive system.” He looked at her with a crooked smile. I don’t think of myself as a good man either, he said.
“Of course you’re good! Why else would you want to help me?” She had raised her vo
ice, not realizing that her premise was a little shaky. But then she got caught up in the argument and stopped second-guessing herself or having to force herself to keep going.
As for Hsueh, now that there was someone in his room, in the space where he lived, he felt the need to demonstrate that he had a real profession, and was not a good-for-nothing who spent all his days flirting with women. He began to mess about with his chemicals and rolls of film. Simply drawing the curtains wouldn’t make the room dark enough, so he nailed a thick piece of cloth across the window, and lit a red lightbulb. She realized that time was passing, and talking at Hsueh would not help them understand each other any better. She came up to him and hugged him from behind, grasping his wrist, forcing him to put down the canister in his hand. It rolled along the table and came to a stop.
She wanted her voice to be pleading rather than commanding, but it came out sounding more like a whine: “I want some hot water—I need to take a bath.”
She was feeling virtuous as she started her bath, which may have been why she only asked for one kettleful of hot water. She could wait solemnly for the kettle to boil once, but having to wait twice would be preposterous. It was cold, but she was feeling too virtuous to notice.
She bathed in a dignified manner. If this were a scene in a movie, the Internationale might make for good background music. Only after she had bathed did a dissonant note of embarrassment creep in. She couldn’t find her gown or even a bedsheet anywhere. Her cheongsam was sticky with sweat, and she couldn’t face putting it on. But she couldn’t just come out of the bathroom naked either. Screw it, she thought, opening the door and striding out.
