Xiao Bai - French Concession

“But he must have suspected you had something to do with it, or why would he have told you about the police?”

“Yes. He thought I had to be involved, but he couldn’t accept it. I told him that things were not as simple as he thought they were, but that I didn’t want to talk about it. He said that if talking about it stirred up painful memories, he would rather not ask.”

“As an old friend, did he give you any advice?”

“He said I should leave Shanghai right away, as quickly as possible. But he did not know whether I was at liberty to just leave, so he did not want to impose his opinion. He said he would make further inquiries at the police station.”

“At liberty?”

“If there was some reason why I could not leave, was what he meant.”

“And you couldn’t call because he was right there?”

“Yes.”

“So you spent the whole afternoon with him.”

“I did.”

“Where?”

“In a Russian restaurant with a name I didn’t recognize. On Rue Lafayette.”

It had been on the intersection with Avenue du Roi Albert. The restaurant had a sign on the corner that said ODESSA, after the port city on the Black Sea. Steps led down to the door, which he opened for her. The Russian waiter seemed to know him well, and they discussed the menu brightly, as if it were an important ritual.

“Whom does he know at the police station? What are their titles?”

“He didn’t say.”

“You must find out. That could prove to be important to us.”

Despite being exhausted, she was aware that Ku’s words constituted a mission with which the cell was officially entrusting her.

“You did well to stay calm. Keep in touch with him. His contacts at the Concession Police could be useful to us.”

“He isn’t one of us.”

He had been in high spirits, showing off his knowledge of cameras and Russian food. He had ordered barjark , fried beef, and shashlyk , lamb chop cut into round pieces and grilled. She had always been with ambitious, idealistic young men; even Ts’ao had fit that description. This man was good-looking — almost handsome — and impertinent, though he could also be gentle.

“What do you think he thinks of you?” Ku blew out the matchstick in his hand.

He had stared at her all that time. He ordered wine but did not drink it. She could tell he wanted to ask her questions but didn’t dare to. He pretended to rummage in his pocket for something, but all he pulled out was an expired betting slip. You must give me a way of contacting you, like a phone number. That way if something happens I can let you know right away. Then he produced a pen, as if he had a bottomless pocket, but he was too clumsy to be a magician. The pen was out of ink and drew nothing but white lines on the old betting slip. When she refused, he argued with her.

“He thought the police must have evidence against me, or they wouldn’t be coming after me. But to him I am only a frail woman, and he never did ask whether I had anything to do with the Kin Lee Yuen case.” She tried to make her reply sound objective.

“So did you figure out how to stay in contact?”

“He gave me his phone number at the editorial offices, but he’s hardly there. He’s a photojournalist, so he’s always out and about. He told me he would have some news for me tomorrow. We’re meeting at noon at the gate of the Koukaza Gardens.”

When they parted ways, she was careful to avoid being followed. Using the techniques she had learned, she would sometimes stop abruptly, or duck into a shoe shop and scan the passing crowd through the glass window. The trickiest thing was managing to shake off three operatives triangulating to pursue you. The man walking parallel to you across the road was the easiest to spot, and likely to be the most careless of the three. Because he had to keep his eyes fixed on you, even his stride would often fall into rhythm with yours.

Not until she was certain of not being followed did she make the phone call.

There were voices downstairs, but she could tell Lin’s laughter from all the other voices. Rue Palikao was noisier at night than during the day. She heard the crackle of vegetables being fried, the whirr of the stovetop fan, and a curious sound of running water that came from somewhere else.

Ku smiled the artificial smile of a humorless man who finds himself having to force a smile: “He’s in love with you, isn’t he?”

“We’ve known each other for a long time.”

“If he would risk giving you intelligence, he must have feelings for you.”

Her reflexes were always slower in the evening. She stared blankly at Ku.

The photojournalist had been wearing two-tone shoes stitched together from white and brown leather, and she could tell that he took pride in dressing well. He bent over, lifted the hem of his trousers, and retied the elastic band on his socks in a single knot, folding the top of the sock over so it would cover the purple flannel band and leave only a single strand hanging down. He was really quite handsome, much more attractive than she had noticed on the ship, and he knew it. To him, she must seem gawky and subdued. He sprang down the steps, turned to hold the door open with his elbow, and backed into the restaurant while beckoning at her.

“If your comrades are all this beautiful, I’ll have to join the revolution,” he had said loudly, appearing to have forgotten that they were in a small restaurant. She instinctively reached out and caught hold of his gesticulating hands to stop him from going on.

“You must think about how he can be useful to us,” Ku said soberly. “Of course, it all depends on whether he really does have connections inside the Concession Police. But if he does, they could be helpful to our cause.”

Before they left the restaurant, the man had warned her again not to return to Rue Amiral Bayle. If you don’t have anywhere to go, I’ll come up with something, he had said. “But of course, your people will have somewhere safer in mind.”

Just then there were noises downstairs, chairs being moved and boxes turned over. Lin’s steps squeaked up the bamboo ladder and his face appeared.

“What is it?” Ku asked sternly.

“A rat.” He grinned.

Leng felt numb to everything around her. She sat there, blankly, clutching a cup of tea that had gone cold, that feeling of bleakness spreading like a chill across her body.

JUNE 14, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

9:00 P.M.

As a matter of fact, Therese did not think Hsueh was lying. She believed him. After all these years living in Shanghai, she still hadn’t got a handle on the gangs, who really were everywhere. But she could tell he had lied about being friends with the gangsters. She remembered the night when Hsueh had arrived at the Astor covered with bruises. Clearly, they’d had him beaten up and forced him to spy on her. She relented.

She had always liked Hsueh, that half-Chinese bastard who smelled of jasmine. She loved his photographs. They were pictures of blood-covered corpses, vomit reeking of alcohol, female bodies. They exhibited an obsessive love of cleanliness, a sort of harmless irreverence, a bizarre sense of invulnerability.

The relationship also felt more real to her since Hsueh had intruded on the other half of her life. The bastard now stood out from all the other men whose pale naked bodies she had seen in the darkness. He wasn’t just a certain position, a scent that made her horny, a cock with a birthmark on it. She had handled many different cocks, some crooked like eagle beaks, some with foreskins that could be stretched endlessly like a nylon sock.