Xiao Bai - French Concession

Zung told Therese that he had to arrange a delivery to a Korean client in Shanghai. He drew another invoice from his pocket, a white piece of paper with three lines typed on it:

Mauser 7.63 Auto Pistol

Spanish type.32 Auto pistol

Chinese (Browning).32 Auto pistol

“Five thousand seven hundred and thirty-two yuan altogether,” Zung said. “And of course, there’s Sir Morholt.”

Sir Morholt was Therese’s private nickname for the Prussian businessman, because he had a scar on his right wrist, a memento of fencing in his youth, which he liked showing to people. It reminded Therese of a certain picture book for children to read on sunny afternoons, which contained an illustration of Tristan cutting off Sir Morholt’s right hand. She had once mentioned this picture to Zung.

Carlowitz and Co. had put Therese in touch with Sir Morholt, and they arranged to meet in a bar on Chatham Road. He told her he worked for a German metals firm. As he spoke, he sketched out a diagram of a weapon she had never heard of, noting its name in German in a corner of the notepad. Before getting up to leave, she slipped the piece of paper into her handbag. He had talked incessantly about the gray mist on the Rhine.

Now Zung was handing her a real blueprint that was not a hasty sketch on a bar-table notepad. It had been cut carefully from a larger roll of drafting paper, like a child’s geometry homework or a sample diagram in a furniture catalog. There were three parts to the diagram.

“Looks dangerous all right. Who would buy it?”

“Yeah it’s dangerous.” Zung wasn’t really paying attention. He drew out his silver cigarette case.

“Everyone knows everyone in this business, and this will make us too conspicuous. It will get us in trouble.”

Since she got back from Hong Kong, Therese had been unable to shake the feeling that someone was following her.

JUNE 5, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

7:15 P.M.

Therese had a green eight-cylinder Ford Model B.

The car was usually parked in the backyard of the jewelry shop. A spare tire hung on the rear of the car, draped in white canvas. Dusk was settling on the longtang, someone had put a vinyl record on, and the sound wafted down the street from a second-floor window. It was a girl singing in a southern Chinese accent. Her shrill voice sounded syrupy — someone might have put too much wax on the Victrola needle.

Therese herself was driving, and she had not brought her bodyguards with her. She was going to the Astor House Hotel. It was a Friday, and she would be spending the weekend there. If she and Hsueh got hungry, they could simply take the car and drive along North Szechuen Road to find a restaurant near Lily Bar.

She drove north along Rue Paul Beau. The rusty gates to the longtangs along the road had been left ajar, and the scent of canola oil wafted out. Therese rolled up the windows. She soon turned onto a wider road. The light reflected illusory movie posters onto the windows of the car: the RKO Pictures musical Tanned Legs and His Glorious Night with John Gilbert in a mustache. In a lit shop window, a polar bear held a sign in his mouth that said SIBERIAN FUR .

Then the road grew narrower and the dark shadows of buildings loomed ahead. At night, the walls of flint and marble looked as though they had been hewn directly from the hillside. She drove across Garden Bridge, passing the Soviet consulate to her right, its tall tower resembling a gigantic helmet with the Soviet flag for a crest.

A few years before, the Cossacks who arrived in Shanghai with Captain Stark’s navy troops had attacked the consulate. Their wild revelry had ended feebly with a few old drunkards gathered outside the Astor, singing Orthodox hymns, and throwing rocks at the windows to revenge themselves against their class enemies. They had been reduced to drinking vodka that was crummier than the stuff workers swigged from their enamel mugs. The women crowded round to watch, but Therese could not be bothered to join them. She watched from her window in the Astor, sipping on half a glass of vodka with kvass while the Czech painter lay naked on the bed.

The consul himself had led the charge to protect Soviet sovereign territory. He shot and killed the Cossack captain who was trying to tear down the hammer and sickle flag at the gate. Therese would have loved to fit out and arm the Cossacks, but they were penniless. That was the day she first saw Hsueh, who was still taking photos when the Concession Police burst through to the consulate gates and the crowds had scattered. As soon as she saw him, she got dressed and rushed downstairs to ask for a copy of the prints.

Two days later, Hsueh gave her the photos in Lily Bar. She didn’t look closely at them until they were in bed at the Astor. Just leafing through them made her horny.

From then on she saw Hsueh occasionally and made love to him. Their trysts grew more frequent. She loved looking at the photos he took. She had never seen herself that way, watched her body dissolve into countless shifting parts, as though she were suddenly not one woman but many, all strangers to her. Some of the pictures made her look uglier, and some more beautiful than she really was. She was not even embarrassed by photographs of her ass sticking up in the darkness, like the ass of a spirited white mare.

She often asked Hsueh to meet her at the Astor, which resembled a ship with its maroon-paneled maze of corridors leading to hundreds of rooms, and delicate wrought iron flowers inlaid with frosted glass set in the doors. Her usual rooms were in what the steward called the forehold, which faced the waves and humid breeze of the Whampoa. When mist rose from the river at night, you could feel as if you were floating. A curved beam arched across the living room, which was furnished with solid teak furniture. There were rattan armchairs, a coffee table, and a mahogany floor lamp. Behind these living room furnishings, a set of double doors led to the bedroom.

The bedroom had an Oriental smell of fog on the Whampoa, moldy mosquito nets, and camphor wood, sandalwood, or cinnamon wood. The bottoms of the heavy teak drawers were made of scented wood, and whenever she opened one to retrieve a bathrobe and towel, its scent would fill the room. She opened the windows to let in the cry of gulls and whistle of ships.

The bathtub stood in the middle of the bathroom, surrounded by soft chairs, a ceramic basin, and a toilet bowl in the corner. The bars of the radiator had been polished by the hotel’s servants until they gleamed. A retractable chandelier hung so low that its arms almost touched her head. She dozed off.

Then the phone rang, waking her abruptly. Dripping wet, she stepped into the bedroom to answer it. It was Hsueh, calling to say he would be late. He sounded nervous and his voice was hoarse. But before she could ask why, he had hung up.

She didn’t hear from him again until after ten at night when he knocked at the door.

Therese looked at him in astonishment. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed while Hsueh lay fast asleep with his back to her. Bruises covered his face, legs, and waist, and there was a cut on his lip. It was not the bruises that surprised her. The type of man she could have for the price of a couple of drinks in a bar often appeared in her room battered and bruised.

No, she was surprised by how aggressive he was. He seemed to be angry about something.

He pushed her to the edge of the bed, lifted her legs roughly, and squashed her, ramming her face into the pillow. He wanted to turn her over, to expose her crotch to the light of the hanging chandeliers, as if she were a dancing insect that would freeze when in the light. She lifted her taut legs high in the air, and the light played on the sleep marks on her knees. Pleasure swept across her abdomen like a wave as she grasped at his arms and ass.