French Concession

by Xiao Bai

  Therese was the kind of woman who was capable of making decisions and acting on them instantly. The previous afternoon, as soon as Hsueh had left, she had phoned the Zung siblings and summoned them to her apartment to tell them that someone from Ku’s gang had contacted her to order the new weapon, and that Zung should return to Hong Kong to prepare the shipment. She didn’t look directly at him, and she let the cigarette smoke obscure her eyes. She was proud of having chosen Zung as her comprador: his surprise barely registered on his face. She could also tell that Yindee knew nothing of all this. Therese warned Zung not to get in touch with the customer again. She would take charge, so as not to confuse their counterparty.

  “Get moving and buy your tickets at Kung-ho-hsiang Pier tonight,” she said.

  “Are you going to deal directly with them?” Zung asked her.

  “Someone here will take care of that. I want to train a couple of new people. We’ll need them as we expand,” she said gleefully.

  “All right then.” He sounded a little disappointed, but resigned.

  This morning she had gotten up early. It was another humid, sunless day. She had been sitting at home for almost two whole hours. It was a Friday, and by now she would usually have called the Astor to reserve a room. She stared into space for a while, and felt an urge to reopen the bundle of letters, but decided against it. She did not want to have to remove her makeup, and she decided that it was, in a way, appropriate for her friend’s funeral. Here I am again, alone and friendless, she thought. In all these years in Shanghai, Margot had been her only friend. Therese was immensely lonely, and she considered asking Hsueh to move in with her. But she eventually decided against the idea.

  CHAPTER 32

  JUNE 27, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

  4:00 A.M.

  For one whole day, Hsueh had almost completely forgotten about Leng. He had left her at home as if she were part of a different strand of the plot and could be put aside for now. Or rather, as if she were a character in a completely different novel, and could be left under his pillow for another day. When he got home in the early hours of the morning, and saw her tear-stained face, he felt a little guilty.

  When he left Therese’s apartment in the afternoon, he had gone straight to the police headquarters on Route Stanislas Chevalier. There was one other thing he had to do that day. He’d been forced to call Lieutenant Sarly from North Gate Police Station, and now he would pay for it.

  Lieutenant Sarly had been so readily helpful that day that Hsueh was a little nervous. It felt like a trap. But he intuitively felt he should talk to Sarly, which was why he was going to see him, not because he was feeling brave.

  Sure enough, Sarly shouted at him.

  “Tell me, what were you doing in Singapore Hotel? There were a thousand better things you could have been doing. What were you thinking, running off with some woman? Who is she anyway? What prompted the sergeant to arrest her? What did she have to do with your work? Why are there so many mysterious women? First the White Russian woman, then the woman in that apartment, and now—aren’t there any men in Shanghai?”

  Sarly might be pretending to be angrier than he really was, but Hsueh couldn’t be sure.

  “You’re an embarrassment to me!” Sarly raged. “The Political Section, vouch for a couple of philandering lovebirds? The police were extremely suspicious of this woman. Her identity papers were probably forged. Who on earth is she?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you right now.” Hsueh’s knees wouldn’t stop quivering. He stared at the teak floor, as if that would make it the floor that was quivering, and not his legs. He would tell Sarly everything if it would only make him stop shouting, never mind what would happen to Leng.

  “Why can’t you tell me? Why not? Have you no shame?” Sarly was scolding like a Chinese market woman.

  “Because I am in the process of cultivating this woman as a contact!” Hsueh decided to risk it. He became eloquent like one of those reporters who procrastinated all day and wrote his articles in a single burst of inspiration right before the paper had to go to press:

  “This is the biggest breakthrough I’ve had so far! I’ve only just gained her trust. Lady Holly wanted me to contact someone from an illegal organization on her behalf. I knew it had to be the Communist assassination squad you’re after. The woman at the Singapore Hotel and the one who ran away from Rue Amiral Bayle are the same woman. I saw her on the ship and I’m not mistaken. But you can’t arrest her now—this is Shanghai, and you must have patience like the Shanghainese. You must do as we do here. The man hiding behind her is the man you are looking for.”

  “Then why didn’t you just tell me?” Lieutenant Sarly’s voice softened, as though his anger had suddenly been deflated. His face grew paler, and his expression was indistinct, like a camera close-up fading out. He gazed at Hsueh, backlit by the sun. He seemed to be talking to himself, or perhaps confiding in Hsueh, explaining something to him, or deliberately making an ominous suggestion.

  “Maybe I could have her arrested instead. I’d interrogate her and turn her over to Maron and his detectives. They know how to make people talk.”

  “But then their operation would screech to a halt! And the ticking bomb would stop ticking.” Hsueh thought it was ridiculous to be speaking in elaborate metaphors at this time, but he had to let his inspiration do the talking, let his thoughts swirl between imagination and memory. “It’s the boss you want, not one of his underlings. They’re planning something big, something that will shock the whole city. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s going to be huge.”

  He chose carefully from the words he remembered: “In fact, my guess is that they are buying a powerful new weapon.”

  “A weapon? What weapon?”

  “I don’t know, but I saw a diagram of it. It looked like a machine gun on a mount.”

  “A machine gun? What would they do with it?”

  “I don’t know yet, but when I do know I promise I’ll tell you everything. This is going to work, but you’ll have to trust me.” Hsueh decided that the situation was temporarily under control. He now had time to think about other problems, such as how to protect Leng. But there his innate optimism prevailed, and he brushed these worries off. I’ll find a way to fix that, he thought. If it ever came to it, and if Sarly really trusted him, he could ask him to release Leng and Therese. Of course, he couldn’t be responsible for all the others.

  “How much of the diagram do you remember?”

  It turned out that Hsueh remembered most of it. His photographer’s brain had unconsciously absorbed the shapes and lines of the object despite not knowing what it was. He made two drawings on the notepad Sarly tossed at him. But it was a precise diagram he was reproducing, and he kept drawing the mount too big, so that it looked more like a camera tripod. When he had finished sketching, he was sure it was a machine gun.

  There were also a handful of German words on the page, he said. Sarly agreed that the device could be a machine gun. Hsueh also vaguely remembered something that looked like a cylinder split in two, but he had to put it at the bottom of the page because there was no space on the side. Then he drew the other shape he remembered beneath the mount. That shouldn’t matter, he thought, since the two components are completely separate.

  Lieutenant Sarly said he would have a weapons specialist look at it. The most important thing was to work out how it would shape Ku’s plan.

  “What about that woman, where is she hiding now?” he asked.

  “She’ll get in touch. She won’t give me her address or phone number.” Having lied to Sarly made him afraid to go straight home after he left the police station, as if the rooms on Route J. Frelupt didn’t exist as long as he wasn’t home, and no one would realize Leng was hiding there. Of course, he was also reluctant to see Leng. He was the kind of person who liked to bargain with life, and if he could put something off, he always would.

  He went to Haialai, the jai alai court on Avenue du Roi Albert. They ha
d started holding enough contests that there was betting going on almost every day. But the contests were over for the afternoon. He was sitting in Domino Café, a small Spanish restaurant opposite the courts, watching men with names like Juan and Osa holler at the top of their lungs. The air was heavy with the scent of fried onions and chorizo. The handle of the slot machine creaked every now and again, and a coin would drop with a clang. A pile of cestas lay on the table in the corner, like a heap of beaks cut from the corpses of giant slaughtered birds.

  As soon as he sat down, he saw Barker, the American, all in white like most of the players. But Barker seemed to be sweating more than they were, and his white shirt had two large yellow underarm stains. He was standing at the players’ table, shouting that he would buy everyone a round. If he weren’t so loud, Hsueh wouldn’t have noticed him right away. A balding man stood to his left; the hairy man to his right looked as though he had shaved this morning but already had a five o’clock shadow.

  When Barker saw him, he began to elbow his way out of the crowd. He came right up to Hsueh, and sat down so violently on the chair next to him that he nearly burst the seams of his pants.

  “It’s been ages, how have you been?” Barker was as loud as ever. A few years in American prisons hadn’t taught him the value of peace and quiet. He didn’t have the look of a wanted man who had fled to China across the oceans—he could easily have been a businessman chatting in front of any one of the trading houses on the Bund.

  Just then, a red armored vehicle sped right past them, outside the glass doors, its machine gun pointed at the sea of people, like Poseidon’s trident or Moses’s staff parting the Red Sea, the shrill police whistle piercing the glass and hurting everyone’s ears. If it weren’t for that car, Barker wouldn’t have told his story about Dillinger.

  The armored vehicle turning onto Avenue du Roi Albert was carrying the newly issued silver yuan from the Shanghai mint to the central bank’s treasury. This was neither its usual route nor the usual time of day. Barker spat on the wooden flooring and muttered: If John Dillinger were here . . .

  Barker’s words made the famous outlaw appear in the room, darting among the coffee cups and ham platters. They had done time in the Indiana State Prison together and were great friends, Barker said. (He was probably lying.) He talked too much, said Barker, you’d never think he was a real robber. (Hsueh wondered whether anyone could talk more than Barker himself.) Dillinger was always daydreaming about bank heists, about barging in somewhere and scaring the daylights out of the guards and customers. The few minutes after someone called the cops and before they got there were the best. Of course you’d tweak the engine on your car to make it go faster than the police cars. You had to be better armed than they were, so that you could be sure of winning a shootout. Barker said he couldn’t imagine how Dillinger eventually pulled it off. He also didn’t think that Dillinger would actually manage to escape, taking Barker and a few others with him as they dashed out of the prison gates.

  Barker talked about Baby Face Nelson and Bonnie and Clyde as though they were all his friends and he was proud of them. He kept talking when they were sitting behind the wire fence in the jai alai court. When the server in a blue shirt ran over to give them their bill, he didn’t even look at the number on the man’s nameplate.

  Hsueh won his bet that evening, guessing both the first and second places right. Everything seemed to be going his way. But when he got home in the early hours of the morning, and saw Leng’s tear-stained face on the pillow, he began to doubt whether things were going as well as he’d hoped.

  CHAPTER 33

  JUNE 27, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

  7:35 A.M.

  The day after what happened at the Singapore Hotel, Leng began to doubt her own influence over Hsueh. In fact, she started doubting Hsueh himself. It all came about because she found herself alone in Hsueh’s rooms that morning, after he went out. The sun had come out from behind the clouds, and she was overcome by affection for Hsueh.

  When she started cleaning his room, she found a pair of dirty drawers under the bed. They were made of Cantonese crepe silk with lace edges. In the sunlight, they gave off a dusty, moldy scent of old perfume, and a musky smell.

  There were other signs. Lipstick stains on a cigarette holder, a scrunched-up powder puff in his woolen Fintex vest, and a photograph slipped under the cover of a notebook in his suit pocket. The woman in the photo was smoking, and a five-digit number was scrawled on the reverse. Leng realized she knew nothing about Hsueh. It wasn’t the other woman who upset her, she told herself; she was upset that she had trusted Hsueh.

  She told herself not to cry, but she did—though not until late at night, when she collapsed on the bed and found herself sobbing with loneliness into the pillow, too exhausted to be repulsed by thoughts of the scenes that pillow might have witnessed.

  But when she woke the next morning to see the sunlight stream through the window onto Hsueh’s face, she felt like a new person. Later she would learn that it was officially the last day of the rainy season. The air was fresher. Actually, this will simplify things, she thought. Her duty loomed before her like a mountain. She was no longer feeling lethargic, and she felt she could outdo the owner of the dirty lingerie. She didn’t ask him about it until two days later. She had started thinking of Hsueh as an enemy to be conquered. Keep your distance, she told herself. Provoke him—make him pursue you. It was a pity she couldn’t just get up and leave, since she had nowhere else to go. Still, he was confused by her aloofness, which meant her plan was working.

  He was out all the time. She didn’t ask where he was going. Two days later, he asked abruptly when they were in the kitchen: “Didn’t you say your boss wants to see me?”

  Then he glanced away without looking her in the eye. He’s feeling guilty, she thought. She had been avoiding him for a few days. He kept wanting to say something, and then not saying it. Maybe he had noticed the difference and felt bad about it. Maybe he subconsciously wanted to prove he cared by doing something for her.

  “There’s no rush. They’ll tell us when.”

  He was grinding coffee beans, and she was cooking oatmeal. The kitchen was full of delicious smells. They could have been an ordinary couple making breakfast together.

  “What is he like?”

  She looked at Hsueh. His shirt wasn’t tucked in at the back.

  “Your boss—I mean, Mr. Ku.”

  “You’ll find out when you see him.” She could tell he was trying to make small talk. Her plan was working.

  “But how will he get in touch with us? Can he call us? He doesn’t have a phone number for us here. You didn’t give him the landlady’s number, did you? It’s not like you can have a real conversation in her room, anyway.” Hsueh was basically talking to himself. Coffee beans clattered in the grinder.

  “I’ll call him.”

  “But you haven’t called him yet. Did you call yesterday?”

  Leng was suddenly irritated. Hsueh was sounding like one of those men who get up in the morning and start nagging, finding fault with everything.

  “How do you know I didn’t call him?” She threw the wooden spoon into the pot and began to scream. “You weren’t even home! You’ve been out all day! Why are you so anxious to see him? Are you—” She cut herself off.

  Hsueh was alarmed. She watched his shoulders slump and waited for him to turn around. He looked about wildly, like a thief caught in the act. Ask him now while you have the upper hand, she thought. She grew calmer, and lowered her voice.

  “Is there something you should be telling me?” she said slowly. She could tell that he wanted to talk to her, and she was forcing him to talk. But she didn’t want him to lie, so she added:

  “Why have you been out for the past few days? Why did you leave me at home all day? You have another woman, don’t you?”

  He sighed, slumping like a tabby cat slinking away from a fight. He can’t hide it any longer, she thought—he’s going to tell me the
truth.

  But Hsueh had one last idea. He dashed out of the kitchen to find the evidence. That didn’t worry Leng; she knew she would win this round. Striding into the bedroom, she saw him rummaging under the bed, and thought, silly you. Did you toss it under the bed and then just forget it was there?

  Reaching into the gap between the closet and the wall, she drew out a package wrapped in an old copy of the Ta Kung Pao, the newspaper she was reading. There was a headline about the victory of the Red Army in Kiangsi, where the Communists had executed a local official and put his head on a raft to drift past the town, scaring the remnants of the Kuomintang Army off. She put the package on the table and opened it. The rumpled crepe silk unfurled like a bundle of wilted petals. A moldy powder puff quivered in the sunlight. The victory of the Red Army seemed to echo her own victory over Hsueh.

  She sat down, waiting for his confession.

  “You probably saw her on the ship,” he began. “She’s a White Russian in the jewelry business. But you’d never guess she also sells firearms on the side. I only found that out later. It’s true I loved her, but I don’t anymore. By the time we were on the ship, I wasn’t in love with her.” His voice was calm. “You may have seen us bickering onboard.” Leng could believe this—she had heard him cursing under his breath by the railing. “Then she slept with someone while we were in Hong Kong, a Chinese man from Vietnam, her business partner. It’s true I liked her a lot, but she couldn’t stop sleeping around. I came home a day early from Canton, put the key in the lock, and caught them in the act. The couch was shoved up against the window and her legs were propped up on the windowsill. The man looked up at me with a sneer, which was even more humiliating than the thought of her with someone else.

  “Do you think that’s why I came to talk to you? I can’t pretend it had nothing to do with it, but I’d rather you didn’t think that. You’re such different people. That night, when we escaped from the police station, I thought I was over her. Not just because of you, but because that’s all history now. Meeting you felt like a gift, a sign that things would be different. But just to be friendly, I went to see her yesterday. I thought it would be good for me, and it might help you.”