Xiao Bai - French Concession

Now she was sitting by the dressing table and gazing into the mirror, thinking. She had switched off all the lights in the room and opened the windows to let in the street noises outside. Signs for Kuan-sheng Yüan, the candy manufacturer across the road, bathed her in neon red light. In the mirror, her face looked mysterious and changeful. When she got home at the end of the day, she often thought back to what she had said and how she must have looked. Did her frankness look too sudden and unthinking? she wondered. Would it have been better to let his questions brew unanswered for half an hour while steam rose from the dishes? She got notepaper and made a list of all the questions she wanted to ask him, so that she would be more sure of herself the following day, neither digressing too far nor panicking about running out of time and asking all her questions at once. He was perfectly aware that she only asked him questions because the cell needed the information, so she wasn’t worried that he would suspect her motives. But she did not want their meetings to feel too pragmatic. She cursed her own apathy. She had to be alert, to read the ambiguity in his every look and glance.

When it was over, she was always left feeling tense and worked up. But in just a few moments, her pretend emotions would vanish, as though they had been sucked out of a hole in her foot by an unknown underground force and were seeping into the ground. Then she would feel deflated, as if another self had leaped out of her body and were inspecting her. It would examine all her feeble exaggerations, and pronounce them unconvincing.

If Hsueh were a little more worldly, or if he could watch Leng in slow motion, then yes, her expressions might seem affected. Sometimes she glanced at him coyly while clutching his hand, and then quickly drew her hand back, as if something had just occurred to her. Sometimes she became unaccountably angry and ignored his teasing smile. When she was leaving, she would turn away immediately, but after only a few steps she would glance over her shoulder and grin. She would look up at the sky as though she was thinking about something, or cry in his arms, breathing down his shirt, under his collar. It wasn’t the first time she had been with a man, and she knew the effect that had.

Her performance was infectious. It made Hsueh exaggerate his own reactions, as if he was attuning his emotions to hers in order to perfect their double act. He started confiding in her more earnestly than she did in him, as if being earnest were his new game, one that allowed him to flirt even more shamelessly and tease her more mercilessly. He was always having to comfort her and apologize for offending her. It was then that he sounded most genuine.

They sometimes played at speaking lines from movies. That was when she felt truly tender toward him, as if the performance of a performance had to be real.

In the words of the movie Mata Hari:

“You want to die so badly?”

“I’m dead now. Just as surely as though there were a bullet in my heart. You killed me.”

“No. The brandy.” (Here she would playfully raise the coffee mug in her hand.)

“No, no. You.”

“Then why don’t you give me up?”

They could not count the number of times they had seen that movie. All the movie theaters were showing it. Besides, movie theaters made her feel warm and safe. The strain of being followed everywhere by prying eyes melted away. When she recited these lines, she felt just as beautiful as the secret agent in the movie, just as mysterious and confident.

Now that she knew which police department Hsueh’s friend was in, she asked him about the Political Section’s view of the incident on Avenue Foch, and especially about what the French thought.

“That was you people too?” Hsueh was cutting up a tenderloin steak with his knife. They were sitting in a restaurant called Fiaker, a small, expensive establishment on Avenue du Roi Albert that only served two tables per meal. It was pouring outside, and the rain licked the entire windowpane with a giant wet tongue that left a viscous trail. The waiter, who was also the chef and owner, served the food and then closed the door to the kitchen behind him, so that his guests could feel as though they were at home in their own dining room. A ceiling-to-ground glass window faced the street. Guests had to enter via the adjacent longtang and walk past the kitchen to reach the long, narrow room.

Instead of answering his question, she frowned and picked at the steak with her fork. It was several inches thick. “I can’t eat beef. It makes my heartbeat go faster, I can’t breathe, and I get hives here,” she said, pointing to her collarbone.

“Oh! I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, I should apologize. It must be so expensive, I should have told you earlier.”

“Not your fault at all. I didn’t say what I was ordering because I wanted to surprise you, to see how you would react to a gigantic steak on your plate.”

“Someone wants to meet you,” she said affectionately, staring at a stain on the table with an ant-size piece of meat at the center. She was about to pick it up when he caught her hand in his and used his napkin to wipe it up for her. She was touched, but also amused that he was treating her like a child.

She had never met anyone who cared as much about details as he did. He was easy-going and there was nothing he was passionate about, yet he actually thought of himself as a passionate man.

The following day, he told her that the police were consolidating the investigations for the Avenue Foch case and several other cases, and the Political Section would be responsible for the new investigation. A Chinese sergeant called Pock-faced Ch’eng was making inquiries regarding a man in his forties. It appeared a couple of Chinese council members had been making a fuss at the Municipal Office. If the police could not guarantee the safety of Concession residents, then why were business taxes being raised in the name of increased spending on public safety?

He told Leng that the French had set up a working group to investigate Communist violence in the Concession. His friend, the poet from Marseille, the one who always noticed colors and smells, was part of this group. He even brought a photo of the poet, whose expression seemed to indicate that he might be a little weary of his duties. The public water stove in the background was the one on the corner of Rue Conty, and Leng recognized it right away. Hsueh hinted that his literature-loving friend had a leftist bent ill suited to his position, which might prove awkward. The poet had been seen at meetings of expatriates who sympathized with the proletariat. He was known to read reports on the living and working conditions of workers in Shanghai.

Hsueh said they were good friends. He had spent hours listening to the poet’s ungrammatical and rambling story of why he had come to China, according to which it was because of a girl in Marseille whose hair smelled of roasted eel and fennel. He had heard the story dozens of times by now, and it always began that way.

That night in the cinema, he found himself scooping her up in his arms. They watched the same movie over and over again, and this time, she went to the bathroom halfway through. When she was coming out of the ladies’ room, he was standing at the other end of the red-carpeted corridor. The White Russian girl who worked as an usher leaned against the leather-paneled doors to the cinema and studied him. He stretched his arms out wide, uncertainly, like a sleepwalker. Finally he came up to Leng, put his arms around her, and kissed her. He probably didn’t hear her murmur, “What am I doing? What’s happening to me?”

JUNE 24, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.