Xiao Bai - French Concession

The Party finally, abruptly, made its decision: We trust you, said Ku, breaking the silence. The cell believes you. You were immensely relieved. Actually, you were overcome with gratitude. Your loyalty had been confirmed.

But from then onward, the comfortable life you had led since leaving prison vanished. The house with a garden in suburban Kweilin, the ormosia tree, the servant Hwang and his family, failed attempts at getting pregnant, and Paris. .

Without warning, Leng was plunged back into her old lifestyle, which was so frenetic she was almost happy. She had not rediscovered revolution — it had rediscovered her.

No. 13: He who has any sympathy for the world cannot be a revolutionary. The revolutionary cannot hesitate to destroy the world and everything in it. He must hate all things equally.

In accordance with Ku’s directions, she and the other members of People’s Strength memorized the manifesto, recited it aloud, and debated it. When they first started, she found the exercise ludicrous, but slowly she came to see that it was actually strangely effective. Words can purify you, uplift you, make you strong. But she was weak, and when she went back to living with Ts’ao in Nanking and Kweilin, she began to have second thoughts. Whenever she wavered, she would argue with herself. At the pier in Hong Kong, she even thought about trying to stop Ts’ao from getting on the ship, though she would not know what to say or how to explain what was going on. Even when the passenger liner stopped at Wu-sung-k’ou, and they were waiting for the boats to pick them up, she was still wondering whether it was the right thing to do, whether she had imagined it all. She found herself weeping by the ship railing because she despised her own indecision, and as the sun shone on her, she kept whispering the words of the manifesto to herself. A wealthy young man had stared at her inquisitively.

Daylight.

She hardly ever ventured out. She felt abandoned. They had asked her to stay in this room on Rue Amiral Bayle and not to leave, especially during the day. She yearned to be given a mission, but she didn’t get one, and no one came to see her. The neighbors probably thought she was an abandoned wife or a single woman. There’s nothing wrong with spending all day at home, but if you never leave the house at night, or ever, people start asking questions.

They told her that since she had disappeared exactly when Ts’ao was assassinated, the newspapers were full of reports of her, and her photograph would be everywhere. She was a top-priority suspect on the police’s wanted list, and they could be pinning her photograph up on notice boards in police stations this very moment. Anyone who bothered to look up her name would know everything about her — Lunghwa Garrison Command had a complete file on her.

The apartment on Rue Amiral Bayle had been rented in Lin’s name. When Leng first moved in, they had told her that this was one of their safe houses. Ku appeared frequently, and whenever he did he would set up a table by the window and tip mahjong tiles onto it. If they heard the clatter of mahjong tiles, the neighbors would ask fewer questions about the unfamiliar faces upstairs.

Lin looked like a wealthy young dandy. For one thing, he walked around with a couple of books under his arm, like a university student. For a man like him to rent a room and keep a pretty woman in it was not unheard of, even if she did happen to be a few years older than he. At most, the neighbors might smile knowingly at him. Be careful of this kind of woman, young man, their looks said.

But then her comrades stopped visiting. Her days were strangely quiet, and at night she had trouble falling asleep. She woke late, and even after waking up, she couldn’t go out, so she usually sat by the window daydreaming, whiling the day away. Finally, last night, they had come back. No, the cell had not forgotten about her. They knew she was here, and Ku said they had only temporarily stopped using the apartment as a safety precaution for her own good.

This morning, she felt alive again. She felt that she could not go on like this. She had to be part of their work. She would speak to Ku. She decided she would go out for a walk, because if she kept hiding in fear of being recognized, she would really turn into a coward. She would forget what it was like to walk fearlessly on the outside. She would be terrified of strangers and panic whenever someone so much as glanced at her. Then she would really be unfit for urban undercover work.

She got dressed, put on makeup, and decided to buy some vegetables at Pa-hsian-ch’iao Market. When she stepped out of the longtang at nine, Rue Amiral Bayle was its usual sleepy self. The corner store had just opened, and the hardware store was still shuttered. The storekeeper’s assistant was squatting on the sidewalk washing his face. She stood at the gate, waiting to flag down the first rickshaw that passed.

It was eerily quiet. The sunlight fell cold at her feet. The water in the man’s basin splashed onto the asphalt and was absorbed immediately. All eyes were on her. She felt intensely uncomfortable, but she knew it was because so many days had passed since she last ventured out. Even so, shivers ran all the way up her back, from her knees upward, giving her goose bumps beneath her cheongsam.

The men standing on the street corner must be enemies of the cell too. They certainly were not ordinary passersby. They lounged about, one pretending to study the physicians’ ads on the wall, while another was smoking with his arms crossed and looking toward her side of the road.

She turned around and decided to hail a rickshaw on the other end of the street.

But then she saw a man she knew. On the opposite sidewalk, turning east. He glanced over his shoulder, and she saw that he had a camera. She recognized him, but she could not tell if he had seen her. She quickly turned and left.

JUNE 8, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

9:30 A.M.

Don’t look right at her, Hsueh reminded himself. He had become a self-taught private detective. His target kept shifting, and it was currently the woman he had seen standing by the ship’s railing. He still could not remember which movie he had seen her in.

Don’t stay on the same side of the street as your target or follow them from behind. You’re more likely to lose them that way. Walk on the opposite sidewalk, parallel to your target, even though that doesn’t guarantee you won’t be caught. You’ll find yourself sneaking around as if everyone on the street despises you, as if casually lighting a cigarette might attract your target’s attention.

He could always just leave on the next train to Nanking, or the little steamboat to Soochow. Nanking might be better. He could get a job there. But he quickly dismissed the idea. Where could he go? He was half French, half Cantonese, and a bastard. The half-breed cities of Asia were the real homes of bastards: Hong Kong, Saigon, Shanghai. And even in Hong Kong or Saigon, he would be well within their reach. Maybe he was staying put simply because he didn’t want to move. He was used to this city. He was the parasite, and it was the host.

Sergeant Maron, who smelled of curry, said he liked him. Inspector Maron, rather. He told Hsueh he had been appointed the head of a newly established detective squad within the Political Section of the Concession Police. He confided that he had worked at the Concession Police for seven years without ever winning the esteem of his superiors and peers. As a result, he became the least corrupt foreign detective in the entire police force. He looked down on the policemen who were buddies with all the gangsters and spent their days in gambling dens and brothels, and they had looked down on him — until Lieutenant Sarly became head of the Political Section. Lieutenant Sarly is a good man, he told Hsueh. If you do a good job for him, he will look after you.