French Concession

by Xiao Bai

  “I don’t want you to die,” Li said, looking at her tenderly. “The White Russian woman came to the Astor this morning with her people, and they nearly killed Park. When we got the news, Ku said you must have warned her. He’d been worried ever since he found out that you’d disappeared, and then we heard about what happened at the Astor.”

  “I didn’t betray the cell.”

  “Well, there’s no point arguing over it. You’d better go.” Li was one of the cell members who had come to visit her when she was in Rue Amiral Bayle. He would haul bags of coal upstairs for her, and bring her water from the public water stove in a neighboring longtang.

  “Where’s Mr. Hsueh?” she suddenly asked.

  “Park brought him back. He is at another safe house. Ku says he is afraid this Hsueh may be a dangerous character too. A man appears out of nowhere, claiming to have contacts at the police station, and the next thing we know, you’ve betrayed the cell. Ku says he hasn’t decided whether Hsueh might turn out to be useful. But you are to be shot on sight. Park shot the White Russian woman, but we heard the bullet didn’t kill her, and she was taken to the hospital. Once the operation is over, she will have to be executed too. All three of you are severe threats to the cell, he says.”

  “Mr. Hsueh is determined to join the revolution. And the White Russian woman helped us too—we can’t just kill innocent people.”

  “Don’t you remember the oath we swore? The manifesto of People’s Strength? There’s no use talking, you’d better go. I won’t come after you. Don’t go upstairs.”

  He gave her a gentle nudge, but when she started walking away, he called after her. “Wait!” Rummaging in his pocket, he turned up a handful of coins, a foreign silver coin, and several banknotes. He gave them to her. Then something else occurred to him, and he felt under his shirt for his pistol, and gave that to her too. It was a Browning the size of her palm.

  She went back to Hsueh’s rooms on Route J. Frelupt, and sat by the table in a daze. Her legs were too sore, and she didn’t have the energy to go anywhere. She also didn’t know where to go. She buried her face in the pillow to weep. But it smelled of Hsueh’s hair, and she suddenly panicked.

  He had fallen into Ku’s hands. She soon realized she had to rescue him—it was the only thing she could do. She didn’t want him to become collateral damage, as she had. She could plead with Ku. She didn’t believe that the cell would really harm her, or that Ku would have her killed. This was far from being the hardest decision she had made. But by the time she finally left Hsueh’s rooms, found a telephone booth, and made the call, it was almost sunset.

  She found the candle store on Rue Palikao using the address she took down during the phone call. Neither Ku nor Park was there, and she hardly knew anyone else in the cell. Strangers took her upstairs and politely bound her to the bed.

  There was nothing she could do but lie there and wait.

  As it grew lighter, the sky turned a deep blue. She could hear the planks across the door being taken down, and soon the bamboo ladder was creaking with the sound of someone coming upstairs. It was Park.

  He sat by the table looking at her.

  “Why did you sneak away?”

  She looked obstinately at him.

  “Why did you warn her? Why betray the cell?”

  She didn’t think she was in danger. She simply felt humiliated. She had made real sacrifices for this cell. She had been lonely, feigned emotions she didn’t feel, and made hard decisions. She looked at Park’s haggard face. He hadn’t slept or shaved. She thought about how many haggard faces she saw in the cell. They were tense, drained, high on exhaustion, and a little ridiculous. She suddenly saw herself as if she were observing herself from a distance.

  Those were faces absorbed in the private world of their top secret missions. They were pale faces glimmering in a dark crowd, full of pride, fear, contempt, and yearning.

  Looking at it from an outsider’s point of view made her realize that it was all meaningless, but she didn’t have the words to explain why. She couldn’t help forgiving them—they didn’t know what they were doing, she thought. Besides, she also had a pale, haggard face, she hadn’t slept a wink all night, and her face betrayed that she was sore all over.

  She was thinking about the word Park had used, betrayal.

  It was words like betrayal that tormented them all. They gnawed at your soul, crushing you or filling you with passion, keeping you up all night. Most people never used words like that, but letting them into your life could change it overnight. As soon as she started thinking, a whole slew of words poured out: operation, manifesto, country, oppression, and—love.

  Would she have gotten along better with Hsueh if the word love didn’t exist? Would she have had to pretend less, if it weren’t for the words boxing her into a role she was too tired to keep up?

  When it was almost light, she could hear Ku speaking downstairs. She wanted him to come so that she could tell him she hadn’t really betrayed them. She had only wanted to make sure Hsueh wouldn’t be hurt. She didn’t believe that Ku would really have her killed. In fact, she thought Ku might not want to come upstairs because he was sorry, as if it had been his fault that she had sneaked out to warn the other woman. She was no longer ashamed of what she had done; she was beginning to be ashamed for him.

  “Ku! Ku!” she cried. Park came up the stairs to tell her that Ku had already left. He untied her and gave her a cup of warm water. She wanted to wash her face and rinse her mouth and change into some new clothes, but most of all she wanted to know how Hsueh was doing.

  Park was standing by the table with his back to her. He appeared to be studying the lightbulb.

  “Let me take you to see Hsueh,” he told her.

  She cheered up right away. There would be time to explain everything. Tomorrow, when the operation had been completed, this would all be over. In the meantime, she could go and see Hsueh. As for the White Russian woman, Therese, wasn’t she in the hospital? A little pain might even do her some good.

  It was early, and Rue Palikao was completely empty. A rat clambered over the heap of coal in the bathroom, on its last scavenging trip before dawn. A pickup truck was parked across the street, with a tarp covering its cargo bed. The tailgate wasn’t fully closed. Park opened it to let her get in, and gave her a shove. She fell into the rear bed of the truck.

  Park leaped in behind her. She turned in fright to look at him, but the tarp had already been let down, and it was pitch-black. Before her eyes could adjust, there was a stranglehold around her neck. Suddenly it all made sense. She realized that Park was going to strangle her in the truck, so that he wouldn’t have to lug her downstairs. But that thought only lasted an instant, because her brain was already short of oxygen, and she couldn’t breathe. She started struggling, but he had shoved her into a corner against the tailgate, and he had his knee against her stomach. She tried to kick him, but he was sitting on her legs.

  Her hands were empty, but just as she was about to lose consciousness, they brushed against the pistol. In Hsueh’s rooms, she had taken off her cheongsam and changed into pants so that she could stick the gun in the back of her pants the way Lin did. Luckily she hadn’t left it in her handbag, and no one had searched her.

  She pulled the gun out, but she didn’t want to kill him, and in any case, the safety was still on. As she flailed, the pistol butt came crashing down on Park’s temple, and the hands strangling her loosened their grip. Without stopping to so much as cough, she tumbled out of the cargo bed, and started running toward the front of the truck. She heard the tailgate slam, and something heavy crashed to the ground, but she dared not look back as she dashed across the street.

  She saw Lin standing on the corner of Rue du Weikwé. Then Hsueh appeared behind him. She thought she was shouting at them, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. She couldn’t seem to breathe. She saw them turn to look at her from where they were standing on the curb. She stumbled toward them, waving. She could hear a
n engine starting behind her. The truck shot out from behind her, its left wheel slamming into the sidewalk. It made a sharp right turn, leaving a twisted skid mark at the street corner, sped onto Rue du Weikwé, and disappeared.

  She felt weak all over. She was trembling, crying, coughing. Hsueh clutched her by the arm as she leaned against him. She wanted to stroke his face, but she still had the pistol in her hands. She had nearly died. She didn’t have to be embarrassed anymore, or wonder what Lin would think. After all, she had almost been killed, he was handsome, and she’d thought she would never see him again. She hung on Hsueh’s neck and wept.

  CHAPTER 52

  JULY 14, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

  6:55 A.M.

  Lin hadn’t wasted a single moment, and yet he had almost come too late. A minute later and he would only have been in time to see Leng’s corpse. He couldn’t let any more of his comrades die. When Hsueh told him what Ku had said as he was leaving, Lin realized that Leng would be in danger. Ku wouldn’t want Hsueh to see Leng, so he would kill her and blame the White Russian woman. But later he found out that Li, a member of his own unit, had run into Leng. When Li got back to the safe house on Boulevard des Deux Républiques, he had told Lin that Leng was no longer in danger.

  So Lin forgot about Leng. There was too much to do, and he only had one night in which to do it. He sent Ch’in and a few others to gather all the members of his unit for a meeting at the safe house, so that he could tell them the truth. A few were missing because Ku had split up the unit, taking several of its members to Pu-tung with him.

  Reaching Lin’s own unit was the most important thing, Secretary Ch’en had said. Many of them were students about twenty years old. Ku had deceived them, but they could all play a valuable part in the revolution. He had to find them and tell them the truth. All of Ku’s pluckiest fighters belonged to this group. Although he claimed to have several units under his command, these young people did most of the work. Secretary Ch’en told him that the Party had investigated Ku’s two other units, and that they consisted mostly of thugs, muscle for the company unions, or ruffians who used to run streetside posts for Hua Hui betting and were wanted by the Green Gang for having absconded with the money. Ku had also attracted an assortment of foreigners: Koreans, Indians, White Russians, and criminals who had fled to Shanghai from all over Asia.

  Lin didn’t know how to reach all the other comrades he couldn’t get in touch with right now. Secretary Ch’en had told him to do anything he could to expose this conspiracy against the Party. After their meeting, he asked everyone to split up and find more members of the unit. He himself stayed to speak to Hsueh. They would have to make the police aware of this intelligence, and he wanted to know what the police would do with it.

  “Where’s Leng right now?” Hsueh blurted out. The selfish bastard thought of nothing but his own problems. Lin couldn’t understand what made Hsueh tick. He might as well belong to a different species. Hsueh had been visibly relieved when he heard that the White Russian woman was taken to the hospital, but now he was asking after Leng. Lin couldn’t understand how a man could spend his days chasing two women. He thought it very vulgar.

  “She is safe. One of the comrades has told her what is happening, and warned her to stay away from Ku Fu-kuang.”

  Lin could tell that Hsueh really cared about Leng, but he still couldn’t understand how one man could love two women at once.

  “Ku isn’t a real Communist. He is planning a dangerous robbery, and he wants the Communists to take the blame for it. You should tell the police, via your friend.”

  Hsueh looked as though he had something to say. Lin stared at him, his own lips salty with sweat. Hsueh was reaching into his pocket, and Lin knew he must be craving a cigarette. Lin himself wouldn’t mind one either.

  “Why would they believe me?” Hsueh asked. The elegant woman in the Hazeline Snow advertisements on the wall gazed down at them, surrounded by flowers that looked a little lackluster in the dim electric light. Why would the police believe him? The imperialists in the Concession were terrified of Communists, not of ordinary criminals—what incentive did the police have to set the record straight?

  Hsueh was deep in thought. Lin gazed at him with a well-meaning smile. Even though Hsueh was selfish and bourgeois, even though his conscience had never been captured by Communist ideals, they were both young men, and Lin hoped to win him over.

  “I have an idea,” he finally said. Lin waited. “We’re in Shanghai. It’s a big city, and cities have their ways of getting the word out. We could write to the newspapers. We could draft an urgent press statement exposing the conspiracy, or send an open telegram. And then there are the radio stations,” he said, thinking out loud. “All those places will be busy now, but tomorrow’s paper won’t have gone to press yet. We can write something up, make a few dozen copies, and have it delivered to the newspapers and radio stations. Then the news will be on the wireless and in tomorrow’s papers.”

  It was a brilliant plan. The more Lin thought about it, the better he liked it.

  They were up all night, writing and rewriting the press statement. Lin had no way of getting a go-ahead from his Party superiors, so all he could do was write the opening lines himself, with some trepidation.

  From the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese Communist Party to all residents of Shanghai:

  Hsueh said the newspapers would never get away with running that statement on its own. It would be best to attach an article that framed it as a story. That way, newspapers and radio stations would take the risk of running it because Shanghai people loved “shocking crime stories.” Lin glared at him.

  Lin hesitated to reveal the operation taking place the following day. He was worried that his message hadn’t gotten through to a few of his comrades. But he eventually decided to put it in. He copied the statement out twenty times, and Hsueh did some copying too.

  Then they got on their bikes and delivered all those copies to various newspapers and radio stations. Hsueh went with Lin, because he knew where all the offices were. They got back at around four in the afternoon.

  A comrade who had just returned from Rue Palikao gave them the startling news that Leng had been seen in the candle store. Park had told him to come back to the safe house and summon the rest of their unit to a meeting at the candle store. But when Lin told him what was going on, he immediately reported that Leng had been tied up and was being held there.

  Lin didn’t stop to think. He rushed out to Rue Palikao, with Hsueh close behind.

  They got there just as Leng was escaping from Park.

  Lin now looked at the untidy storefront. It was littered with half-eaten food and cigarette butts, and the neatly stacked cardboard boxes had all been overturned. The guns and explosives hidden beneath the floorboards in the corner had disappeared.

  Lin was afraid his cover had been blown. He must have sparked Ku’s suspicions by openly calling everyone in his unit to a meeting. Park had sped off as soon as he saw Lin, which meant that Ku knew the truth was out, and he would be desperate.

  Lin didn’t know what Ku planned to do with the new weapon. He didn’t know Ku’s target, or when he would attack. The plan existed nowhere but in Ku’s brain. One of the comrades Lin had summoned to the meeting said the target was a bank. Another said they were supposed to meet at the stables opposite the Race Course. But there wasn’t a single bank anywhere near Mohawk Road. Ku always operated this way—he never revealed his whole plan to his operatives until seconds before it was meant to go into action.

  They went into the warehouse behind the store. Ku must have held a meeting here—there was a tin stuffed with cigarette ends, and no one but Ku smoked this many cigarettes. Leng sat on a wooden shelf in the corner, clutching Hsueh’s hand.

  Lin looked around the dark warehouse. All the windows had been nailed shut. The morning light and smoke were seeping in between the cracks, and the heap of coal smelled smoky in the humid air. He could hear someone scrubbing a to
ilet next door in Yu-i Alley. One of the boxes was only half full of firecrackers. A piece of paper lay on the side of the table where Ku usually sat.

  Lin held it up to the light. He knew what this diagram was for. Ku always planned each operation very carefully. He would explore every inch of the location, and make a pencil sketch of the width of the streets, the doors and windows of each building, where to post an ambush or provide backup with a car.

  But Lin couldn’t tell what the rows of little squares on either side of the street meant. He could see that Ku was planning to post his men by the squares, two on one side of the road, and one on the other. The target was on the near side of the road. Ku always drew a pig face for the target, with two large ears taking up half the pig’s face, and two black dots for nostrils. The triangle on one side of the diagram probably indicated a guard post. And there was a word written very small opposite the pig’s head. Lin peered at it closely. It was the word Kuan.

  The sunlight filtering in between the planks grew brighter. Lin put the piece of paper back on the table. Leng came over to look at it, and suddenly cried: “I know where this is—it’s Rue du Consulat.”

  “This is Rue des Pères, and this is Rue de Saigon,” she said, pointing them out. “The word Kuan is for Kuan-sheng Yüan. The squares are columns lining the arcade. The target must be the National Industrial Bank! And the Singapore Hotel is right there on the corner.”

  Lin turned to look at her. He had to ask her this question directly, so as to get a direct answer.

  “When you were arrested at the Singapore Hotel, you were taken to North Gate Police Station. Why did you lie? Why didn’t you tell Ku the truth?”

  “I don’t know. I was afraid that if I did, the cell would expel me.”

  “And could you tell me,” said Lin, turning to Hsueh, “what precisely is your relation to Inspector Maron? Why did you make contact with Ku via Leng?”

  Hsueh couldn’t answer his question. “We’re friends, just friends,” he stammered. “No, actually, we’re good friends.”