Xiao Bai - French Concession

But Hsueh was petrified. His targets sold guns for a living — that was what Inspector Maron had said. In fact, Hsueh wished he could bring himself to run away. He quickly turned the corner into another longtang, and as he was hurrying into the alley at the end of the longtang, he realized why he was still here: he belonged here. Born a Concession man, he would die a Concession ghost. That was a good line. He could have it engraved on his tombstone. Actually, he should write it on a piece of paper and keep it in his wallet, so that if he were ever found dead on the streets, they would bury those words with him.

When they left the Astor the previous afternoon, Therese had driven to the door of the YMCA. They parted there, and she went inside while he crossed the road.

Thirty seconds later, he remembered what he had to do. He turned and followed her surreptitiously into the YMCA building. Luckily for him, it had been open to Chinese since the previous year.

She went into the changing room, while he went through a different corridor to the side door of the swimming pool. It was the beginning of June, a little too cold for swimming, so the pool was almost empty. He saw Therese’s body shimmer in the water like a white-green fish, the hem of her swim skirt floating just beneath the surface like an aquatic plant. Her legs thrashed about in the water as though they were in bed in the Astor. At this moment, he could not imagine how she could possibly be a dangerous woman. She was happily swimming around and getting drunk.

But then that man appeared. Just seeing him made Hsueh’s blood boil.

He was definitely one of Therese’s wicked friends. The whole thing must have been his idea. Hsueh knew these characters when he saw them. If the man hadn’t tricked Therese into getting involved, she would still be running her jewelry business. First he had tempted her into a dangerous business, and then he had seduced her. He must have slept with her. Therese climbed out of the pool, dripping wet, and the man began to towel her off. She put her feet up on a chair, nonchalantly, and the man actually dried her thighs with his towel, like a lover making a point of being attentive.

Now he stood at the side of the pool, chatting with Therese as if they were old friends. For the first time, he began to think that Inspector Maron’s orders might not be such a bad idea — this man was a shady character. Forget Therese, he would follow this man instead.

The man came out of Peter Poon Tailors and went into De Luxe Shoes, and then into a White Russian tobacco and alcohol store that sold Luzon cigars. Hsueh could deduce this man’s tastes, and it infuriated him that they were nearly identical to his own.

Finally, the man went into a restaurant. Hsueh had to roll a newspaper up, stuff it in his pocket, and duck into a shop selling magical props on Rue Bourgeat, feigning a sudden interest in its stacks of empty boxes. Apparently, you could make all kinds of things appear from the boxes: a bunch of fake flowers, a toy car, a porcelain bird, anything at all.

He should have folded earlier when he’d been playing poker that night. He should have known that the Japanese guy — Barker had said he was a Hawaiian — was up to something funny. That odd Japanese name came to mind, Zenko. Zenko should have folded, and so should the Portuguese player, in which case Barker would not have gotten the ace. Barker was definitely a cheat. Maybe all three of them had been playing him. He sometimes thought of that card game as the root of all his troubles. If they had not won hundreds of yuan off him in that one card game, he would not have vowed not to touch a playing card for three months. Had he not vowed not to touch cards for three months, he would not have agreed to go with Therese to Hanoi — except that the logic did not work, because he immediately had to admit that he would have gone anyway.

These were dangerous men, Maron had warned him. Gun dealers. Hsueh had watched many people die from gunshot wounds. He could picture their legs twitching like the legs of dying insects. He didn’t understand himself. He was terrified of death, but that didn’t stop him from being quite reckless. Yet come to think of it, the world was full of people like him — the Concession was full of people like him. He once read in a magazine that some people had a tendency to self-destruct. These people couldn’t seem to just settle down and live perfectly good lives. They were earnest young students who had to go and become revolutionaries, diligent shopkeepers who couldn’t stay away from a roulette wheel, prim society wives who spent their days reading women’s magazines full of quack articles about painless delivery, who had to go and have affairs.

A bespectacled Frenchman from Marseille who worked for Maron had told Hsueh: don’t worry, we’ve got your back. You matter to us more than the other hired snoops — you have French blood in your veins.

At the door to Bendigo Restaurant, he was almost discovered. In retrospect he realized that the man in a black leather coat must have seen him. Although the man’s mouth was obscured by a huge beard, you could tell he was quite young.

They were having dinner at an expensive restaurant while he shivered in the night breeze. That irritated him, and he stood at the vestibule of the theater staring at them, almost daring them to spot him. He wanted to know whom his man was meeting for dinner. He guessed they would be keeping an eye out for him. The man in a black leather coat stood in the shadows with his back to the wall for a long time, scanning the street corners.

Yes, they must have seen him. Now they would be careful. He dared not follow their car, and he could not keep up with a cab on foot. As for hiring another car to follow them, that was for the movies. No, Hsueh had another plan.

He ran up the steps of the Lyceum Theater, and watched the road from its vestibule. He waited for their cab to drive by and memorized its license plate. When it returned to the garage, he ran up to the counter to hire the same cab. He sat in the passenger seat next to the driver, and by paying only double the standard price, two yuan, he got the driver to take him to Rue Amiral Bayle, where his previous passengers had alighted. The driver even remembered which longtang the men had gone into.

The previous night, Hsueh had hidden at the end of the longtang until they all left. He went back the following morning.

At just past nine, he was standing outside the hardware store on Rue Amiral Bayle opposite the entrance to the longtang, pretending to make a phone call, when he looked up and something unbelievable happened.

Unbelievable! Much later, when Hsueh thought back to it, it still seemed incredible. Above the curved beam that stretched across the alleyway and the peeling red paint of the walls, a second-floor apartment had been built directly across the alleyway, bridging the two buildings on either side. The flowery curtains at its window opened, and a face appeared in the darkness. It was a woman, poking her head out of the window. She withdrew hastily, slammed the wooden shutters, and drew the curtains. Hsueh recognized her!

She was the woman who had been standing by the railing. He had developed that photograph of her, but even staring at it he still could not remember where he had seen her. It dawned on him that this was the place he had been looking for: this second-floor window. Despite being an amateur, he could tell it was no coincidence that a firearms dealer and the chief suspect in an unsolved murder could be found haunting the same longtang.

That was when he decided to follow this woman instead. She came out of the longtang, and he followed her along Rue Amiral Bayle, walking nearly parallel to her. Then he watched her walk west along Rue Conty and stop at the street corner, forcing him to turn east instead.