Xiao Bai - French Concession

There was another woman in the apartment, Yindee Zung. The file said that she was related to Mr. Zung. The Zung siblings were staring at him. I should have phoned first, he thought. Therese had Ah Kwai show him into the sunlit sitting room attached to her bedroom. She had sent him to the bedroom, in front of her guests! He might as well be her gigolo.

It was rarely this sunny during the rainy season, and the little room was warm. The steam from the bathroom made him dizzy. He listened uneasily to the voices in the next room. Were they talking about him? It would only take one question from Therese: Have you seen this man at Mr. Ku’s? Then Zung would mention him casually some other time to some other people, and the game would be up for him, he would lose everything.

It had never occurred to him that a sunny day could make him this miserable. He let his thoughts wander.

The next thing he knew, Therese’s hand was pressing down on his head. Her silk nightgown gleamed silver in the sunlight, like the cape of a heroine in the legends. The sunlight hurt his eyes when he opened them. Therese’s guests had left, and it seemed as though only moments ago the nightgown was still lying on the bed. There was a distant rumble.

Almost as if he was thinking out loud, continuing the line of thought with which he had fallen asleep, he heard himself saying, “I saw him.”

“Saw whom?”

“Your Mr. Zung. I saw him again a couple of nights ago.”

He was making things up, as if his voice was not under his control. What he read in the police files had gotten all mixed up with what he had glimpsed in dark corners, in crowds, on unlit streets, and with his own inventions. He thrust the whole pile in front of Therese, like a gambler plunking a bundle of notes down to bluff his opponent.

Her eyes grew wide. She drew her hand back from his warm hair, and retreated to the recliner between the windows.

“So you say he is still doing business with your boss?”

He had said too much. Anything he said could entrap him, and he barely knew anything. He scoured his mind for any wisp of memory that would help him to answer Therese’s next question.

“The night before last, Mr. Ku arranged a meeting.”

“The night before last?”

Hsueh lit a cigarette while Ah Kwai sent a pot lid crashing to the floor in the kitchen. Therese frowned. Her hair looked brown in the sunlight.

Hsueh had not meant to disparage his rival. Now he would need to come up with a nebulous story that would buy him time and allow him to cover his tracks. Eventually, Therese asked him a question:

“What was the deal they were talking about?”

He instantly realized his mistake. Mr. Ku, Leng’s superior, the star of those police files, did not have a deal on with Therese. Their last deal had closed: it’s a pleasure doing business with you, sir, see you next time. Now he had to open the door, bring Zung in again, and have him sit and talk to the famous Mr. Ku about an entirely new deal. His alarming imagination had already created the scene in his mind. He could picture the dim chandeliers, the small table and steaming teacups, and a man sitting in an unlit corner — Hsueh himself, perhaps. Two people sat facing each other at a table beneath the electric light while others lurked in the dark alley downstairs.

But although he had been sitting so near them, just a couple of feet away, he hadn’t heard what they were saying. He needed evidence, even if it was tenuous, like a piece of paper he could have seen. In fact, he did recall a piece of paper with a few unfamiliar words on it. He began explaining it to Therese, gesturing with his hands:

“I saw a piece of paper with a cross-section of something that looked like a rifle, but had a mount like a machine gun. It’s the newest thing, they were saying, it’s extremely powerful.” He could barely recall the diagram, and his memory of it was all entwined with images of the Astor, a smell of moldy camphor, seagulls shrieking on the Whampoa. What could Therese be thinking about? What was she searching her memory for?

She appeared to be deep in thought. “Is it real? Does it really exist?” she murmured, as if repeating an ancient nursery rhyme.

“It’s apparently quite expensive.” Hsueh was regaining his confidence. “Very expensive, actually. Mr. Ku looked a little concerned.”

“Why does he have to have it? What would he do with it?”

He didn’t have to answer this question. As the architect of this story, his job was to invent the plot, not to explain his characters’ motivations to the audience. But the architect also needed answers to questions like this, if only for himself, even if he would never allude to them directly. And Hsueh didn’t have a clue what the weapon was for.

He realized that he had just unknowingly launched a side attack on Therese’s closest assistant, the comprador who liaised with all these dangerous men for her. He had hinted that Zung might be two-timing her by cutting deals behind her back, possibly even with her money. This was not a question of ethics — in the Concession, everyone had to play by the rules.

But the blitz was over, and he decided to clear the battlefield and tend to the wounded before his rival got even with him.

“Why do you keep asking me these questions? You make me feel like a traitor.”

He tried his best to sound nonchalant, pouting like the rich young men he saw in movies. Her silk nightgown was bunched up above her knees. She had kicked off her silk slippers, and she was barefoot. Her toenails were painted the same color as her lips. Only now did he notice that the white shape in the center of the colorful canvas, the curves of a huge body that expanded outward, depicted Therese herself in a state of excitement. The lines delineating the distinction between the top and bottom half of her body seemed to curve infinitely inward. But whereas the body in the painting had a black helmet of hair that tapered neatly on either side of her face, the real Therese had a shock of unruly hair. He noticed the calluses around her ankles and thought, there’s something the artist left out.

He felt sorry, especially when he remembered that Leng was still waiting for him at home. But then he thought — if it weren’t for the two of you, you and everyone else forcing my hand, would I be in this mess? You both wanted me to join your camp, and if I hadn’t agreed, chances are you would have had me killed. Come to think of it, that was exactly how he was most likely to have gotten himself killed.

He saw the surprised look on Therese’s face as she was distracted from her thoughts. She opened her mouth, and a puff of smoke escaped from the corner of her lips. He could sense Leng watching him from behind, her figure nearly transparent in the sunlight. He felt guilty, but the thought also turned him on.

Her calluses were rubbing up against his ears, and her clothes had been rolled all the way up to her shoulders, like a froth of silver bubbles engulfing her shoulders and arms. Both her hands were twisted awkwardly, cupped around her ass, as if she were a half-painted colored egg that could roll away any moment. And her head was rolling along the pillow like the head of a goddess on a pendulum.

“I feel like a hot water bag that’s been burst from the inside.”

“A hot water bottle,” Hsueh corrected her gently. Therese learned a new word in Chinese.

They both started daydreaming. He was still stroking her wetness. The trams jingling along Avenue Joffre made him shiver. His ears had become very sensitive to noises. Therese’s pubic hair was tougher and crisper than the rest of her hair. It rustled like the sugar curls on a pastry.

“Yes. Yes. Just two fingers. Pinch it from both sides. Tell me, if I let you do this deal, if. . yeah, that’s good. I’ll put you in charge of this deal. Could you do that for me?”