Xiao Bai - French Concession

“So the police never came into the room? They didn’t see you? Didn’t his friend in the Political Section see you?”

She said this was all because Hsueh was there. She didn’t dare say that she had just been incredibly lucky. She herself could scarcely believe her luck. She might as well put it down to her new hairstyle or careworn face. When she looked in the mirror, she thought being sad made her look different.

Finally, Ku said: “You’ve got to work harder to win Hsueh over for the Party. We want him to join us. His connections to the police will be useful for the next stage of our work.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Just live with him. Remember your mission and the Party’s goal. You will spend time with him, observe him, and understand his relationships. This is important work.”

Leng knew exactly what Ku was hinting at, but she was getting tired of being told to hide her feelings. In movies, the charismatic double agent could develop feelings for the target she was flirting with, or at least trick herself into thinking so. The audience would sympathize as long as the agent believed she was working for good. Leng, on the other hand, always ended up falling into her own trap.

Her pretense had erected a thin film between her and Hsueh, which it was also her job to penetrate, although she didn’t know how. She told herself that the Party hadn’t ordered her to fall in love. They wanted her to crack the cynical exterior of this Concession dandy, and get at his deepest thoughts and feelings, so that they could gain control of him and make him useful to the cell. There must be something real under his carefully constructed image — if you stripped away the flippant comments, the conceitedness and constant scheming, you would find that he was vulnerable and innocent and naked as a newborn baby at the core. That Hsueh would be idealistic. He would be willing to fight for justice, to dedicate himself to the Party’s mission. It didn’t occur to her that a lover might thirst to understand Hsueh the way she thirsted to understand him.

She began to seduce him in a spirit of self-sacrifice, which made everything she did absurdly solemn. Making oatmeal for him, she poured the oatmeal into the pan from a rusty tin, and added water and milk powder. They hunted for the sugar jar together, but couldn’t find it. Eventually they found several lumps of sugar on top of the coffee jar.

They ate in silence. His mind was elsewhere. She looked exhausted, at the end of her rope. Frowning, she ate her oatmeal in tiny spoonfuls, as though she wanted it to be an anesthetic.

She couldn’t remember how she had first been introduced to Party ideals. She tried talking to him, beginning with the events of that afternoon. She pretended to be outraged by the cops’ insolence, although no one expected anything different from the Concession Police, because she thought he might be inspired to a simple hatred of imperialism. But then again, an imperialist had rescued them from North Gate Police Station. Making an abstract truth palpable was so difficult. She wanted him to argue with her, to say that there were good people in the police force, or something like that. Eventually she said: “Don’t think that your friend the poet is a good man. That may be, but he represents an oppressive system.” He looked at her with a crooked smile. I don’t think of myself as a good man either, he said.

“Of course you’re good! Why else would you want to help me?” She had raised her voice, not realizing that her premise was a little shaky. But then she got caught up in the argument and stopped second-guessing herself or having to force herself to keep going.

As for Hsueh, now that there was someone in his room, in the space where he lived, he felt the need to demonstrate that he had a real profession, and was not a good-for-nothing who spent all his days flirting with women. He began to mess about with his chemicals and rolls of film. Simply drawing the curtains wouldn’t make the room dark enough, so he nailed a thick piece of cloth across the window, and lit a red lightbulb. She realized that time was passing, and talking at Hsueh would not help them understand each other any better. She came up to him and hugged him from behind, grasping his wrist, forcing him to put down the canister in his hand. It rolled along the table and came to a stop.

She wanted her voice to be pleading rather than commanding, but it came out sounding more like a whine: “I want some hot water — I need to take a bath.”

She was feeling virtuous as she started her bath, which may have been why she only asked for one kettleful of hot water. She could wait solemnly for the kettle to boil once, but having to wait twice would be preposterous. It was cold, but she was feeling too virtuous to notice.

She bathed in a dignified manner. If this were a scene in a movie, the Internationale might make for good background music. Only after she had bathed did a dissonant note of embarrassment creep in. She couldn’t find her gown or even a bedsheet anywhere. Her cheongsam was sticky with sweat, and she couldn’t face putting it on. But she couldn’t just come out of the bathroom naked either. Screw it, she thought, opening the door and striding out.

Hsueh nearly fell off his chair. He had been sitting with his legs up, facing the bathroom door and rocking the chair absentmindedly. Then his eyes opened wide, and he fell backward, clutching at the air for support. Only when the back of the chair hit the table was he able to steady himself. She had pictured going boldly up to him, taking him by the collar, steering him into the bedroom and onto the bed. Somehow she had gotten the idea that she would take his clothes off. But she could only picture undoing his buttons — she imagined the rest would peel off as their bodies pressed together.

What happened next was a sheer accident that interrupted her plan. She covered her face with her hands and dashed into the bedroom by herself, like an actress forgetting her lines and rushing off the stage.

Up until then, she had never thought hard about how to make this happen. You can sometimes be so focused on a goal that you lose sight of the concrete steps toward it. Not that she was completely naïve, like a trapped bird. She had been married twice, and if it were not for a mechanical difficulty of Ts’ao’s, she would have a child by now.

Up until then, she had never actually thought hard about how to seduce him. Her mind was empty. She lay on the pillow and tried to take deep breaths. She could detect the sweetness of milk powder on her own breath, and when things came unblurred, she noticed a speck of Quaker Oats on her left nipple. She tried to will herself not to say anything corny, but the trouble was that she believed what she was about to say: “That was good. I didn’t know sex could be that good.”

JUNE 25, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

9:45 A.M.

When he arrived in Therese’s living room, Hsueh saw the man he had been following. Now Hsueh knew his name, Zung Ts-mih, because Lieutenant Sarly had let him read a few of his prized files in the secretariat of the police headquarters. He had rushed to Therese’s apartment first thing in the morning because he was worried that Therese would come barging into his own rooms on Route J. Frelupt. Needless to say, Therese could be venomous, and she would have little patience for a man who told her that he loved her while he kept another woman at home.

Things weren’t going much better with Leng. These two women had such complicated backgrounds that he felt as though he had been caught between the cogwheels of two sophisticated killing machines, and would answer for his first mistake with his life. Hsueh’s life had turned into a terrifying game of mahjong, and he had no idea when he had been dealt this hand or how he had been duped into staking everything he had on it. He had always thought of himself as a gambler, but this time he really was playing for his life.