The Nine Fold Heaven

by Mingmei Yip

  With the newspapers under my arm, I set out for a walk in the crisp Shanghai air, hoping to clear my mind. I was still hungry, so I stopped at a street vendor selling fresh-out-of-the-boiling-wok doughnuts. The snack looked fresh and golden. Just what I needed: a fresh start and an golden opportunity! After I paid, the vendor wrapped the doughnut in an old newspaper, then handed it to me. Soon I was savoring golden hotness, both in my hand and my mouth. Then, when I had finished and was about to throw away the paper, I saw the word Camilla—my name.

  Heart beating fast, I unfolded the paper and read the headline:

  Police Chief Li Suspects Shanghai’s “Heavenly Songbird” Killed Lung, Chief of the Flying Dragons

  After an intensive investigation, Police Chief Li has announced that the famous nightclub singer is now hiding in Hong Kong. But even if Li is right, the police cannot arrest her because China has no jurisdiction in the British Crown Colony.

  Police believe Lung has been killed because he has not been seen in Shanghai since the shoot-out in his secret villa.

  Master Lung’s Harvard-educated lawyer son, Lung Jinying, refuses to say anything about his father, or his mistress, Camilla. He says he knows nothing about the shooting, except what he’s read in the newspapers. But Chief Li is sure the son knows a lot more than he is saying—

  Damn. The rest of the article was cut off, just at this crucial place. I looked at the dateline: It was more than two months ago, three weeks after my escape. But no more news. It seemed I would have no choice but to see if Jinying was holed up in his apartment.

  It was good that Police Chief Li thought I was still hiding in Hong Kong when I was actually back in Shanghai. As in the saying, “The most dangerous-seeming place may actually be the safest.” But not always. To go to Jinying’s place would really be dangerous, but I knew I would go there anyway. But I waited until midnight before I took a tricycle rickshaw to my lover’s flat.

  My first worry was the police would still be watching, even though it was unlikely after three months. So I kept my disguise as a man, wearing a suit, glasses, a hat to cover up my hair, even a mustache. I was well aware that the chance Jinying would be staying in the same place after all that had happened was close to zero, but I had to see for myself—and even if he was long gone, I might find a clue as to his whereabouts.

  I sighed with relief that there were no police, nor any pedestrians near Jinying’s place. Looking at the building, bittersweet memories rose up in my chest. This was where Jinying and I had first consummated our forbidden love, despite my being his father’s mistress—with little lost Jinjin the result.

  Blinking back tears, I took my time walking up the stairs, savoring my memories. Arriving at his floor, I took a deep breath, smoothed my hair, and knocked, preparing for anything and everything. I could feel the beatings of my heart like that of a lost deer bumping around in the dark. But what if he was there? How would he react to me as a man? I had no chance to find out, for despite more and more knockings not a sound came from inside the apartment.

  Finally, I decided to make use of my spy training. I took out my Open-One-Hundred-Doors key, the same one I’d used to open Shadow’s apartment to steal her magic secrets. This key proved itself so worthy that with just one twist, Jinying’s apartment opened like the sore legs of a desperate prostitute. I pushed the door open just a crack so as to see what was inside, in case someone else was now living here. After making sure that his sofa, redwood dining table, landscape paintings, bookcases, and the upright piano with its decorative objects were in their familiar places, I went inside.

  “Hello, anybody here?”

  Not even a ghostly response.

  “Jinying, are you there?”

  The ghosts, if there were any, remained stubbornly silent. I looked at the bedroom, the restroom, and kitchen; there was no Jinying, not even his pleasant body scent. Disappointed, I sat down on the sofa to think. It was late, why wasn’t he home? Suddenly a chill rose in my heart—perhaps he had forgotten me already and was now in a nightclub admiring another pretty singer. After some disheartening thoughts, I started to search his apartment for clues of his whereabouts.

  I started with his drawers, then methodically went through his writing desk, cabinets, and closets. But there were only piles of bills, receipts, old magazines, and newspaper clippings, mostly about me. Then my wandering eyes landed on his upright piano and I dashed over to open its lid. Yes, a notebook, almost new, was staring at me like an orphan baby begging to be picked up. I snatched it out and opened it to discover that it was a diary filled with Jinying’s irregular, agonized handwriting. There were also some drawings of a naked woman who actually looked like me with phoenix eyes, a watermelon-seed face, and long, curly hair swept to the side. And the woman was pregnant! More surprises came when I saw what was written underneath two of the drawings of the woman’s bulging belly. The first one read:

  Precious Baby formula:

  Medicine to protect the embryo: ginseng, red dates, white fungus, bird’s nest.

  Note: Taking these, both the mother and her baby will have fair, clear skin, thick, dark hair, and strong qi circulation.

  The second read:

  To dear Jinjin,

  Son, even if I never meet you in this world, your baba still loves you wherever you are.

  The next few pages had been torn out, leaving me wondering what more Jinying had written about me and our baby: stillborn, according to my singing teacher Madame Lewinsky, but alive somewhere according to my dream.

  So I flipped back to the beginning of the diary and started to read.

  Whether dead or alive, the people closest to me have eerily vanished. My father, gone. Camilla, gone. Our little Jinjin, gone.

  Even my father’s trusted bodyguard Gao, gone. He’s probably taking care of Father, but actually, I don’t care. He hung around Camilla too much. But I’m afraid to ask Camilla about him, because her answer might crush me.

  The newspapers said that Police Chief Li suspects Camilla was involved in the gang shoot-out at my father’s hideaway. When we thought we would both be killed, Camilla confessed to me that she was working as a spy for my father’s bitter rival Big Brother Wang.

  So she’d been using me to kill my father! Although I hate my father and his evil deeds, heaven would strike me if I’d have him murdered!

  But I miss Camilla terribly, can’t sleep, and have no interest in other women. I’m afraid to talk to reporters, lest I let slip secrets about her.

  I must find Camilla. If she truly loves me, we’ll find a way to start a new life together. If she doesn’t, I’ll go back to America and never return to Shanghai.

  I think Camilla must have left Shanghai. She must be hiding in Hong Kong—that’s what Chief Li thinks too. And, of course, he can’t go after her there. So I’ll go there myself to look for her.

  I have no idea what I’ll do if I leave Shanghai. I definitely won’t practice as a lawyer. My father sent me to law school at Harvard, but that was really for him, not for me. He wanted me to be a lawyer for the prestige, and especially for me to help his business. My father sent me to the most prestigious law school to help him break the law!

  On the next page was a cutout newspaper photo of me, but the rest of the page was missing, like some of the others. I set the diary down on the coffee table, feeling anxious but also touched by Jinying’s drawings of a pregnant me with all the nutritious herbs for our baby, and his loving note to little Jinjin.

  Then I rubbed my temples and thought. I had just risked my life coming back to Shanghai to find Jinying—and now he was in Hong Kong looking for me? Heaven really enjoys playing games with us mortals!

  Would we ever meet again? I thought of the Chinese saying, “Five hundred incarnations of looking at each other just to rub shoulders in this Dusty World.” But we didn’t just rub our shoulders, we had a son together! So we must have turned to look at each other much more than five hundred times in our past lives to be awarded a son in this
one. I hoped Jinying and I would be reunited and have a chance for happiness. But I also knew this would be determined not by what I wished, but by the mysterious working of karma.

  And I was all too aware that my karma was bad, very bad.

  I remembered the pessimistic Chinese saying, “Husband and wife are like birds in a forest, when disaster strikes, they will fly their separate ways.”

  But Jinying, instead of ignoring me and going his own way, traveled to Hong Kong to look for me. But how could he possibly expect to be able to find me there? Of course anyone could post a flyer or buy a newspaper ad for Xunren, “Finding a Missing Person.” But I didn’t think he’d be so naive as to give away my name so my enemies could find out where I was.

  Worse, I’d already changed my name from Camilla to Jasmine Chen and Shen Wei when disguised as a man. Therefore, Young Master, your effort would prove to be futile one more time! So maybe we were not destined to be together after all, and I should accept that our brief encounter was like a failed magic show. Just like my former rival and partner Shadow, who was about to disappear from a water tank, but instead nearly drowned in it!

  Feeling an unbearable sadness, I went to his piano and sat down, but afraid of alerting the neighbors, I did not touch the keys but began to hum very softly.

  It’s only those love truly who suffer from separation.

  Worse, when it takes place in the cold and lonely season.

  Where am I when I wake up from my drinking?

  Willows sway by the shore where the half-moon shines and the dawn breeze chills.

  Gone for so many years, the happy times now only illusions.

  A thousand kinds of amorous sentiments,

  But to whom could I express them?

  After that, I went to put a disc on his gramophone and turned the volume to the softest. My singing of “A Wandering Songstress” flooded the room with bittersweet emotion. All I could hope was that “wandering” would lead to something sweet, not bitter.

  That evening, after I returned to the hotel, I decided not to go back to Hong Kong to look for Jinying. For if I did, how could I find him, or him, me? It would be what the Chinese call “looking for a needle on the sea bottom.” Anyway, sooner or later, he would have to come back to Shanghai.

  Instead, I would look for Jinjin. The first step was to pay my singing teacher, Madame Lewinsky, a visit.

  4

  Running into an Ambassador

  The next morning, I dressed up like a student: white shirt, black skirt, my hair in two short pigtails, and no makeup. I didn’t disguise as a man because I didn’t want to shock Lewinsky or arouse her suspicion by cross-dressing.

  I took a rickshaw to her apartment building in Avenue Petain, a short distance from my hotel in the French Concession. The puller trotted through the busy boulevard bustling with hawkers, rushing pedestrians, bicycles, and buses. “Hurrying to reincarnate” is how we describe people hurrying about these crowded cities.

  Amidst blowing horns and screeching brakes, we passed shops, restaurants, two colleges, a library, a conservatory, and a cathedral before we reached a residential district with neat and clean apartment blocks.

  I told the puller to stop in front of Lewinsky’s building, paid him, and hopped off. I climbed the stairs to her apartment, remembering her patient teaching, polished piano playing—followed by homemade cookies with warm milk.

  Before knocking, I hesitated. What would I say to her? And what if my baby was really dead as she’d told me? Would she report me to the police? And if Jinjin was really alive and living here with her, what should I do? Grab him, dash down the stairs, hail a car to the harbor, and find a way to leave Shanghai? Although Jinjin called me mama in my dreams, in real life, he’d think his mother was Lewinsky. So when I took him into my arms, he’d probably cry and struggle to get free so he could go back to his “real” mother.

  With these thoughts, my heart sank, but I raised my fist to knock on my teacher’s door. Just like my visit to Jinying, the only response was a ghostly silence. Disheartened, I was about to leave when a neighbor’s door opened and out peeked a middle-aged woman, with a puffy face, disheveled hair, and faded pajamas.

  She gave me a suspicious once-over. “Are you looking for the Russian ghost?”

  I nodded. “Yes, do you know her whereabouts?”

  “Oh, you don’t know?”

  “No, what happened?”

  “She moved away. I heard that she was sick. She’s probably dead now.”

  My heart fell inside a dark well. “Then what about the little boy?”

  I was surprised that I asked the question naturally, as if I was sure that my little Jinjin was alive.

  I felt faint as she went on, “Oh, yes, that’s the cutest baby I’ve ever seen. But”—she leaned toward me—“I always wondered how that woman could have a baby at her age? She didn’t look a day under fifty, if you ask me. And the baby looked Chinese to me—”

  I cut her off. “You know where this baby is?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I don’t want to pry into other’s business, especially not a ghost’s. And especially not if the baby was stolen, which happens so often nowadays. Anyway, I didn’t see them much. She seems to be very secretive about herself and the baby, so I’m sure he’s stolen goods.” She paused, then said, “You know what? That’s why she moved out.”

  My heart was now almost at the bottom of the well. “When was that?”

  “About three months, I can’t really remember.”

  Suddenly she cast me a wary look as her tone turned belligerent. “Who are you anyway?”

  “Oh, one of her music students.”

  “How come I never saw you?”

  I smiled. “But I never saw you either.”

  She smiled back, wrinkling the corners of her darting eyes. “Yes, I’ve only lived here for a few weeks.”

  Once outside Lewinsky’s apartment, I could only wander around the streets aimlessly, unable to calm myself, feeling both elated and devastated. Yes, little Jinjin was alive somewhere! But where? And if Lewinsky was really dead, as the woman suggested, how and where was I going to find my baby? And what if I never found him?

  Without a mother, anything might happen to him. He might be abandoned, like a stray dog, crawling around garbage bags scavenging for food. Or, like me, raised by some gangster for evil purposes. Or deliberately crippled to beg for his master. The baby I’d rescued in Hong Kong, dangling on a ledge about to fall to… Could this be an omen about my little Jinjin?

  Trying to push these disturbing images out of my mind, I continued to walk with a heavy heart and brimming tears. I was oblivious to everything around me, until I felt something bump my arm, waking me from my reverie. It was a young man who cast me a dirty look, then hurried away.

  “Jerk!” I spat.

  An old woman with a cane wobbled past me, casting me a disapproving look. I reminded myself not to lose my temper. I had to keep in mind that now I was not an admired celebrity in Shanghai, but a fugitive, a wanted criminal, the main suspect in the bloody shooting of a gangster head. During the uproar, I’d also helped myself to gobs of my boss Big Brother Wang’s rival Master Lung’s money and treasure.

  I suddenly realized that the young man hadn’t bumped into me by accident. I looked down at my handbag and found that it was open and my wallet gone!

  I was carrying two thousand dollars in cash, and that was most of what I had in Shanghai, the rest was sitting in a bank in Hong Kong. I had plenty of money, which I had helped myself to from Master Lung’s safe hidden in his secret villa. This was just in the nick of time, as moments later shooting broke out between the Flying Dragons and the Red Demons.

  The money I took to Shanghai was not just for daily expenses or emergencies, but also in case I needed to bribe my way around. Fortunately, I’d only put five hundred in the wallet, the rest was in a zippered compartment in my handbag. I also had some cash back in the hotel hidden on top of the ceiling fan. But
I was worried I might need more cash suddenly.

  Feeling completely drained and unbearably sad, I stepped into an empty alley to release my tears to the outside world. Afterward, walking back to the main street, I felt a hand, warm and large, placed on my shoulder. I was about to grab the hand in case it was trying to steal from me again, but instead, when I turned I saw a refined-looking foreigner. I guessed he was in his late thirties or early forties, tall, with blond hair and a neatly trimmed mustache.

  He looked at me sympathetically. “Young lady, something wrong? Any way I can help you?”

  To my surprise, this white ghost spoke accented, yet fluent, Mandarin. “Thank you, sir, but I don’t think so.”

  “Miss,” his tone was serious, “you look too sad to be left alone all by yourself. Besides, it might be dangerous here. Can I take you home?”

  I almost blurted out that I didn’t have one to go back to.

  But my answer was: “Sir, I don’t know you.”

  He swiftly took a card from his pocket and handed it to me.

  EDWARD MILLER

  CONSUL GENERAL, ACTING

  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Wah, Consul General, something like an ambassador, a very high position. My spy’s mind clicked swiftly like an abacus calculating what was transacting. If I could befriend him, I might get some protection in case my identity was revealed and my life was endangered again. I smiled inside—not to mention this man was nice looking and refined acting.

  Everyone knows that in a prosperous, sophisticated, evil city like Shanghai, “having a protector” is of utmost importance. That was the reason all the gangsters bribed the most influential politicians, and the entertainers, in turn, paid off the gangsters. It is never clear who ends up ahead, but the relationships are necessary to all involved.