Xiao Bai - French Concession

Behind the wall, the studio was bustling and brightly lit. Park knew nothing about making movies, and he couldn’t understand why Ku had planned this operation. He had looked at the Guide to Film Photography Ku had given him, scratched his head, and asked Ku about it. “Never you mind, just make sure you get us the man and his equipment,” Ku had said.

Before the guard could cry out, Park punched him in the throat. The black wolf dog pounced at him, but Park ducked, slitting it open along its belly with the dagger hidden in his leather jacket. Man and dog fell noiselessly to the ground.

Inside the studio they were working overtime on a movie slated to open in August. The Concession newspapers were already full of reduced-size posters in which Pearl Yeh was draped in a translucent shawl, reminiscent of the spider demon she had played in a previous movie. A thousand years later, she had accumulated enough Tao to be reborn as a beautiful woman. But just as she was about to lure some man to his destruction, a black-cloaked Taoist priest came to warn her against it. On the poster, he was whispering into her ear, his nose about to touch her shoulder, about a university somewhere in Jambudvîpa called Shanghai. The circle of life had sent Yeh to a big city as a university student. She kept causing trouble for herself and everyone around her, but this time she was a modern woman wearing dresses tailored by a White Russian designer.

They crept onto the set and hid in the shadows. No one noticed them because the three floodlights trained on the stage had large reflectors set up all around them. A technician in a white undershirt stood on the frame of the cardboard set with an eight-meter retractable pole in his hand, shining a spotlight directly onto the bathtub. The scenery depicted a bathroom with thin gauze curtains draped over the windows, outside which painted skyscrapers glittered.

But the bathtub was not painted, and the water in the tub was real. Someone hid behind the bathtub pumping fog into it. Pearl Yeh, who was sitting inside the bathtub, was real too. Her shoulders were white, and her knees floated in the water like jellyfish. They said it was worth buying tickets to ten showings in a row, just to see her.

Park hesitated. He stood there. He had never watched a movie from this point of view. You couldn’t see all this on-screen. The camera was propped against the bathtub, and the cameraman was sprawled on the floor. Park was standing behind the reflector, staring at the white shoulders that would appear on-screen in a swirl of steamy mist, but also at the warped refraction of Yeh’s body and her bathing suit. He watched her limbs float in the water.

The intruders squatted down, because most of the film crew was squatting on the ground, and politeness seemed to demand that they follow suit. Park was the only one left standing, except for one man on the opposite corner of the set, who was leaning on the wooden frame, and alternately staring down at his feet and looking up at a couple of sheets of scribbled-on paper on a wobbly table. On the left-hand side of the set there was a single wall with a door. An actor sat on the other side of the wall, getting ready for the moment when he would burst into the bathroom.

The director was talking loudly to the cameraman, and to Yeh. “Maybe we’ll sit you a bit higher up, with your head leaning back and your neck craning even farther back. Close your eyes and let your head sway a little. You’re supposed to be singing. Louder! Don’t you ever sing in the bath?”

“Of course not!” a shrill voice rang out from inside the bathtub.

“Well, imagine you’re a student and you’re relaxing in the shower. Sing out loud! Open your mouth wider!”

Her voice was uglier than Park’s own voice when he was drunk. But it was a silent movie, so all she really had to do was move her lips.

“No one move!” Park cried in his textbook perfect northern accent.

No one paid any attention to him. He sprinted into the spotlight and right up to the bathtub. “Who are you? Get out of here!” someone cried.

Park cocked his Mauser rifle and fired a single shot at the roof of the set. Ku had said he could fire a shot or two. It was a movie set, and none of the neighbors would notice a couple of loud noises. To assert control, you have to come on strong. Watch the director — he’s in charge, and if he defers to you, then you’re in charge.

The light wavered. It was the spotlight on the retractable pole. The technician standing on the frame had nearly fallen off. When the rest of the crew realized what was happening, they threw themselves on the floor for cover. The stage manager, who had been standing on one side of the stage, got down and crouched behind the table. Only Pearl Yeh screamed from where she was inside the bathtub. The bullet had burst a lightbulb, and the glass shattered onto her shoulder. She struggled to push herself up using the edge of the bathtub.

Park hoisted her out of the bathtub and flung her on the floor. Her bathing suit clung wetly to her skin, and the dark outline of her crotch showed beneath it. She curled up on the floor to hide her private parts.

Brandishing his pistol, Park pointed to the cameraman, whom he had picked out right away. “You. Come here.”

Park had Fu drag the cameraman out of that crowd of squatting people and point a gun at him while he got all the equipment he needed to shoot a film. Then he had the cameraman carry his heavy 35 mm camera to the truck. Park pointed to the spools of film on the ground — they would all have to go in the truck too.

“How many hours will these last?” he asked.

No one answered, and Park didn’t really care. They were going to take it all anyway. They hadn’t driven a truck there, because Ku’s sleuthing had revealed that the studio had its own truck, which was always parked outside at night.

Truss them all up, Ku had said. Don’t let anyone leave before three o’clock tomorrow. It’s a small studio, a tiny movie set, and no one will come looking for them. Filmmakers work at night and in the morning they’re all asleep, so no one will come barging in. Tie them up and leave a couple of people to stand guard. Easy.

We’re short-staffed as it is — do we have to do this? Is it really that important? he had asked.

“We do have to. It’s critical,” Ku had said. “You don’t understand how powerful movies can be. Have you heard of Eisenstein, the director of the movie October ? They said more people were killed or injured in the making of Eisenstein’s film about the storming of the Winter Palace than during the actual taking of the palace itself. Victory is easily forgotten, and a few deaths are easily forgotten. Only movies will survive.”

All this was incomprehensible to Park, but Ku was happy wondering out loud to himself about a theoretical problem.

A camera could turn one dead man into ten dead men by shifting slightly. It could make death look cleaner, elegant, no convulsions or splattered brains, as if death were a mere symbol. This Park could understand. A camera didn’t have to show a dead person below the shoulders.

He had them all tied up, including Pearl Yeh and the cameraman on the truck. Park tied the actress up himself. They had brought enough rope with them, and he did a thorough job. He tied her hands behind her back, and bound the ropes over her shoulders and under her arms to cross in front of her and loop twice around her thighs, before tying her ankles together in a secure dead knot. The ropes would grow tighter as they dried.

He deposited Pearl Yeh, now a mass of ropes, under the blinding light where the rest of the film crew was huddled together, thoughtfully draping a curtain over her. He left two people there guarding them. There was no need to stuff and gag their mouths. Even in daylight, they wouldn’t dare to make a sound, not with two pistols pointed at them.