Xiao Bai - French Concession

The narrative taking shape in Lieutenant Sarly’s mind linked the recent assassinations to a firearms company that operated across Asia and an amateur photographer in the Concession. Further intelligence suggested that the head of the assassination squad in question had a Soviet background. He thought he could see Fate winking at him.

Best of all, it turned out that the photographer, Hsueh, was the son of an old friend. Hsueh’s father and Lieutenant Sarly had served in the same company of a colonial regiment during the Great War. They had spent all summer smoking Lieutenant Sarly’s beloved pipes in the wet mud of the trenches. Hsueh’s father loved to take photographs, and Lieutenant Sarly still had a few of them. That winter, Pierre Weiss’s trench had been bombed. Sarly had forgotten all about him until the police station sent him a stack of photographs culled by Inspector Maron from Hsueh’s collection. Maron said this Hsueh character had other, more vulgar tastes.

There was no way Inspector Maron would have recognized the much younger Sarly in the photographs. In them he was shabbily dressed, having torn off his uniform sleeves at the shoulders, as men often did in the trenches. Left to steep in sweat, the flesh of their underarms could develop sores and rot.

He did not mention any of this to the consul, partly because it involved a personal matter, but mostly because his opinions were as yet unformed.

JUNE 14, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

8:35 A.M.

Leng was lonely. No one had given her anything to do, and she also hadn’t had a visitor in days. She felt abandoned. The night before, she had called Ku from the telephone in the hardware store across the street. This was a clear violation of the rules, but she could not help herself. She sounded like she was about to cry. Just stay put and Lin will be along tomorrow, Ku said. Leng felt a rush of hope.

She slept better than she had in days. Anyone would be miserable, left alone like that. The next morning, she put on makeup, and picked out a checkered cheongsam and a pair of white leather shoes. She would go to the market and buy fish. Lin liked fish. She considered him a real friend, the only person in the cell in whom she could confide.

As she drew the curtains, sunlight streamed across the table. She pushed the window open to let in the crisp morning breeze. Then she poked her head out and got a shock. That man was standing on Rue Amiral Bayle, at the end of the longtang next to the hardware store, looking up at her window. It was the man she had seen a few days ago — or rather, the man who had been standing at the railing of the Paul Lecat .

She calmly withdrew her head and put on her shoes. Don’t close the windows or draw the curtains, she told herself. She reflected for a moment, and reached out to hang her thin blanket outside the window. Don’t turn that way, don’t look, she warned herself.

She hurried downstairs. There was only one way out of the longtang, which opened onto Rue Amiral Bayle. She had no way of knowing what this man wanted. They said her picture was in all the newspapers, and anyone could recognize her.

On the intersection of Rue Amiral Bayle and Rue Conty, she ran into trouble.

She picked Lin out right away. He was in a white canvas suit and clutching a magazine. Then she saw the two other men with him. She was dismayed to see a policeman standing in front of Lin, but immediately realized that this was a routine search. Lin’s bourgeois appearance seemed to irritate the Vietnamese man in a bamboo hat, who searched him thoroughly. He grabbed Lin’s magazine and gave it to the Frenchman with him, but the Frenchman only shook his head. At the end of the search, he paused before reaching his hand out to pat down the back of Lin’s waist, as though he had saved the most important step for last, to catch Lin off guard.

On the other end of the roadblock, the Chinese detective opened up the seat of a rickshaw and rifled energetically through its contents. Passersby cursed and grumbled. The police soon lost interest in Lin, and waved him on.

To Leng’s puzzlement, Lin did not leave right away. He hesitated, looking at the ground, and rolling up the magazine in his hand. He stared into space, as if he were wondering why the police were performing searches so early in the morning. Then he looked behind him and tapped his head with the rolled-up magazine, as though he had just thought of something and had to go back for it.

She had already raised her left arm to wave at him, but Lin was not looking toward her.

Just as he turned, a gunshot rang out, and everyone looked past Lin in the direction from which the shot had sounded.

Only she was looking at Lin. He turned around, the gun went off, and in the confusion he nearly tripped. For an instant Leng thought he had been shot.

Some people fled south along Rue Amiral Bayle, while others ducked into doorways and gaped at the runners. The police had recovered from their shock, and the sound of police whistles and warning shots rang out. Chinese plainclothes detectives raced after the shooter.

He was still firing off rounds and looking over his shoulders at them. Then he began to skip along sideways, taunting his pursuers like a mischievous urchin. He twisted around to fire into the air behind him, obviously to create confusion.

Leng saw Lin run toward Rue Conty, and she hurried after him, trying to catch up. The shooter, who was trying to escape, had to be one of her own comrades, someone who had been there with Lin. More people appeared, crowding at longtang gates to see what the fuss was about. People poked their heads out of second-floor windows, as if the street were a movie set and gunfire were nothing to be afraid of.

Then, suddenly, no one was running any longer, and Rue Conty reverted to its usual morning stillness.

Lin had melted into the crowd. Leng had to slow down. Her mind was racing. She didn’t know whether she could or should go back to her room. Luckily she had seen the man and left immediately, or she wouldn’t have witnessed this incident. Right now the apartment would be a dangerous place to be.

She was annoyed that Lin hadn’t gone straight there to give her the news and tell her what to do.

She was still scanning the backs of people walking ahead of her. Perhaps she should find a telephone and call Ku. But she dared not just borrow a telephone from a corner shop. She mustn’t let anyone overhear her. She thought about calling from a hostel on the street corner but decided the phone at the reception was not safe — a few extra cents would not keep these people from talking. The Concession was crawling with police informers.

She cut through a longtang toward Avenue Dubail, figuring that she would find a public telephone booth there. During the day, the iron doors leading into the longtangs were all open, but the sunlight never penetrated beneath the third floor windows. Despite the breeze, the air was moist with the smoke from yesterday’s dinner and the smell of chamber pots left to dry in the sun. The narrow alleyways stank like the city’s intestines.

She heard footsteps clicking on the glazed tiles behind her and echoing through the quiet longtang. When she turned the corner she stole a glance behind her and saw the man again, although this time he was not carrying his gigantic camera. She quickened her footsteps. Who was that man anyway? Why was he following her? She knew he had recognized her.

She suspected that the unusual search on the corner of Rue Conty had been no coincidence. It must have had something to do with the man. She was irritated at Lin for having made off so quickly. If only he were here, they could ambush that man, attack him with bricks or a stick, or somehow knock him unconscious.