Xiao Bai - French Concession

Park was standing by the table with his back to her. He appeared to be studying the lightbulb.

“Let me take you to see Hsueh,” he told her.

She cheered up right away. There would be time to explain everything. Tomorrow, when the operation had been completed, this would all be over. In the meantime, she could go and see Hsueh. As for the White Russian woman, Therese, wasn’t she in the hospital? A little pain might even do her some good.

It was early, and Rue Palikao was completely empty. A rat clambered over the heap of coal in the bathroom, on its last scavenging trip before dawn. A pickup truck was parked across the street, with a tarp covering its cargo bed. The tailgate wasn’t fully closed. Park opened it to let her get in, and gave her a shove. She fell into the rear bed of the truck.

Park leaped in behind her. She turned in fright to look at him, but the tarp had already been let down, and it was pitch-black. Before her eyes could adjust, there was a stranglehold around her neck. Suddenly it all made sense. She realized that Park was going to strangle her in the truck, so that he wouldn’t have to lug her downstairs. But that thought only lasted an instant, because her brain was already short of oxygen, and she couldn’t breathe. She started struggling, but he had shoved her into a corner against the tailgate, and he had his knee against her stomach. She tried to kick him, but he was sitting on her legs.

Her hands were empty, but just as she was about to lose consciousness, they brushed against the pistol. In Hsueh’s rooms, she had taken off her cheongsam and changed into pants so that she could stick the gun in the back of her pants the way Lin did. Luckily she hadn’t left it in her handbag, and no one had searched her.

She pulled the gun out, but she didn’t want to kill him, and in any case, the safety was still on. As she flailed, the pistol butt came crashing down on Park’s temple, and the hands strangling her loosened their grip. Without stopping to so much as cough, she tumbled out of the cargo bed, and started running toward the front of the truck. She heard the tailgate slam, and something heavy crashed to the ground, but she dared not look back as she dashed across the street.

She saw Lin standing on the corner of Rue du Weikwé. Then Hsueh appeared behind him. She thought she was shouting at them, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. She couldn’t seem to breathe. She saw them turn to look at her from where they were standing on the curb. She stumbled toward them, waving. She could hear an engine starting behind her. The truck shot out from behind her, its left wheel slamming into the sidewalk. It made a sharp right turn, leaving a twisted skid mark at the street corner, sped onto Rue du Weikwé, and disappeared.

She felt weak all over. She was trembling, crying, coughing. Hsueh clutched her by the arm as she leaned against him. She wanted to stroke his face, but she still had the pistol in her hands. She had nearly died. She didn’t have to be embarrassed anymore, or wonder what Lin would think. After all, she had almost been killed, he was handsome, and she’d thought she would never see him again. She hung on Hsueh’s neck and wept.

JULY 14, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

6:55 A.M.

Lin hadn’t wasted a single moment, and yet he had almost come too late. A minute later and he would only have been in time to see Leng’s corpse. He couldn’t let any more of his comrades die. When Hsueh told him what Ku had said as he was leaving, Lin realized that Leng would be in danger. Ku wouldn’t want Hsueh to see Leng, so he would kill her and blame the White Russian woman. But later he found out that Li, a member of his own unit, had run into Leng. When Li got back to the safe house on Boulevard des Deux Républiques, he had told Lin that Leng was no longer in danger.

So Lin forgot about Leng. There was too much to do, and he only had one night in which to do it. He sent Ch’in and a few others to gather all the members of his unit for a meeting at the safe house, so that he could tell them the truth. A few were missing because Ku had split up the unit, taking several of its members to Pu-tung with him.

Reaching Lin’s own unit was the most important thing, Secretary Ch’en had said. Many of them were students about twenty years old. Ku had deceived them, but they could all play a valuable part in the revolution. He had to find them and tell them the truth. All of Ku’s pluckiest fighters belonged to this group. Although he claimed to have several units under his command, these young people did most of the work. Secretary Ch’en told him that the Party had investigated Ku’s two other units, and that they consisted mostly of thugs, muscle for the company unions, or ruffians who used to run streetside posts for Hua Hui betting and were wanted by the Green Gang for having absconded with the money. Ku had also attracted an assortment of foreigners: Koreans, Indians, White Russians, and criminals who had fled to Shanghai from all over Asia.

Lin didn’t know how to reach all the other comrades he couldn’t get in touch with right now. Secretary Ch’en had told him to do anything he could to expose this conspiracy against the Party. After their meeting, he asked everyone to split up and find more members of the unit. He himself stayed to speak to Hsueh. They would have to make the police aware of this intelligence, and he wanted to know what the police would do with it.

“Where’s Leng right now?” Hsueh blurted out. The selfish bastard thought of nothing but his own problems. Lin couldn’t understand what made Hsueh tick. He might as well belong to a different species. Hsueh had been visibly relieved when he heard that the White Russian woman was taken to the hospital, but now he was asking after Leng. Lin couldn’t understand how a man could spend his days chasing two women. He thought it very vulgar.

“She is safe. One of the comrades has told her what is happening, and warned her to stay away from Ku Fu-kuang.”

Lin could tell that Hsueh really cared about Leng, but he still couldn’t understand how one man could love two women at once.

“Ku isn’t a real Communist. He is planning a dangerous robbery, and he wants the Communists to take the blame for it. You should tell the police, via your friend.”

Hsueh looked as though he had something to say. Lin stared at him, his own lips salty with sweat. Hsueh was reaching into his pocket, and Lin knew he must be craving a cigarette. Lin himself wouldn’t mind one either.

“Why would they believe me?” Hsueh asked. The elegant woman in the Hazeline Snow advertisements on the wall gazed down at them, surrounded by flowers that looked a little lackluster in the dim electric light. Why would the police believe him? The imperialists in the Concession were terrified of Communists, not of ordinary criminals — what incentive did the police have to set the record straight?

Hsueh was deep in thought. Lin gazed at him with a well-meaning smile. Even though Hsueh was selfish and bourgeois, even though his conscience had never been captured by Communist ideals, they were both young men, and Lin hoped to win him over.

“I have an idea,” he finally said. Lin waited. “We’re in Shanghai. It’s a big city, and cities have their ways of getting the word out. We could write to the newspapers. We could draft an urgent press statement exposing the conspiracy, or send an open telegram. And then there are the radio stations,” he said, thinking out loud. “All those places will be busy now, but tomorrow’s paper won’t have gone to press yet. We can write something up, make a few dozen copies, and have it delivered to the newspapers and radio stations. Then the news will be on the wireless and in tomorrow’s papers.”