Night in Shanghai

2

BEFORE THE REHEARSAL ended, Lin Ming left with Song, and after putting her in a rickshaw, he crossed Frenchtown to see his father, who was at the Canidrome. Lin loved this part of the evening in Shanghai, the first hour of true dark, for night was when the city’s enchantments beckoned, from the genteel to the most depraved, anything, so long as you could pay. Shanghai at night was not a place, exactly, but a dream-state of fantasy and permission, and to Lin Ming, no place embodied it quite like the Canidrome.

The entertainment complex was by far the biggest place of its kind in which the Green Gang had a stake, though its profits were dwarfed by income from the Gang’s much larger criminal empire. Still, with its ballrooms, restaurants, gambling parlors, mah-jongg dens, and a full-sized covered dog track, it was Shanghai’s grandest and greatest palace of nightlife.

Lin Ming approached the grounds by the Rue Lafayette gate. “Who goes?” came the gruff voice of Iron Arms, one of the guards.

“Your mother’s crack,” Lin shot back genially. “I just came from her place.”

“My mother’s? Someone as puny as you would get lost in there. Ma gan,” Iron sniffed, sesame stalk, a nod to the long skinny frame Lin had in common with his father, Du Yuesheng.

Lin took the remark placidly. He knew he looked startlingly like Du; no one who saw the two of them together ever doubted their relationship.

“Pass,” Iron Arms said, gruff but indulgent, and Lin vanished into the dark path that led under bare-branched trees to the rear of the dog track. The air was cold, and he was well inside the walls, but still he could smell Shanghai-rotting waste, temple incense, diesel oil, perfume, flowers. He may have had no real home, owing to the fact that he had no clan behind him, but the smell of Shanghai was his anchor, festering, sweetly fecund, always drawing him back. He crossed the dog-track arena, an oblong bowl above which banks of louvered windows rose to a high, steel-trussed ceiling. Rimming the track were the tiered observation stands, finished with iron rails and matching light posts in old gas lamp style, every row jammed with gamblers talking and jostling.

The shot popped, the fake rabbit screeched off, and the dogs bounded after it. The noise of the crowd rose to a long roar, deafening, a wall of prayer and hope that fell away as fast as it started when the finish was crossed and the dogs fell back, slavering. The winners’ numbers were called off in a string of languages.

In the next building a long hallway led to the back of the ballroom stages. He had two bands at the Canidrome, the Teddy Weatherford Orchestra, which played from seven thirty to two in the large ballroom, and what remained of Buck Clayton’s Harlem Gentlemen after Clayton himself had been let go as a result of a brawl. In the matter of his dismissal, Lin’s hands had been tied, though fortunately the man had been able to find other work in the city to start earning his fare home. When it came to the rest of the Harlem Gentlemen, Lin simply waited a decent amount of time and hired them back, and they played the tea dances in the afternoon and early evening. Tonight, since he was here to see his father, he skirted the ballrooms and went directly upstairs.

He found Du behind a polished desk, chatting with H. H. Kung, who lounged in an armchair opposite him. Kung was the Minister of Finance, the Governor of the Central Bank of China, and an indecently rich man. For the moment, while Chiang Kai-shek was being held prisoner in the north, he was also the acting head of the Chinese government.

“Young Lin,” he said warmly, and grasped Lin’s hands, temporarily parking his cigar in his mouth to do so.

“Pleasure to see you,” Lin said. They understood each other well. Dr. Kung had studied at Oberlin and Yale, Lin Ming at boarding school; both were at home with the English language and the West-ocean mind.

Next he turned to his father, sitting straight and gaunt in his Chinese gown, skull clean-shaven as always. “Teacher,” he said politely. Du had founded a conservative school for Chinese boys, and he liked to be addressed this way.

Du accepted his obeisance without remark, and turned directly to the news Kung had brought. “The Generalissimo’s wife, and her brother T. V. Soong, will fly to Xi’an tomorrow with a large amount of money to purchase Chiang Kai-shek’s release. They will get him out.”

“Your in-laws,” Lin said to Kung respectfully, since he knew the man was married to the eldest Soong sister, Ai-ling. “I hope they are safe.”

“Oh, they’re safe enough,” said Kung. “The problem is getting old Chiang to listen to the demands of his kidnappers. He has to give up on beating the Communists now, and fight Japan.”

Du did not conceal his shock. “Give up fighting the Communists?”

“For now,” said Kung, puffing on his cigar.

“But I shall continue to execute them.”

Kung smiled, because Du Yuesheng would execute whomever he chose, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. “As you will,” he said amiably. “But your attentions are needed against our Japanese invaders, old friend. This is another reason I came to see you tonight-to tell you that a new, high-ranking officer has arrived from Japan. An Admiral.”

Lin strained forward with interest-an Admiral would automatically, at this moment, be the top-ranking Japanese officer in Shanghai.

“Morioka is his name,” said Kung.

“Our new Viceroy,” Du said sarcastically. “Yes, I know.”

“You do?” said Kung, drawing and relighting. “Regrettably, I have heard nothing personal about him yet.”

“Wait a moment.” Du knocked three times on the side of the desk, and one of his many secretaries came in, a senior Cantonese named Pok. “Sir,” he said to Du respectfully, and then again to Kung, “Sir.” Lin Ming he ignored. His fluent Shanghainese was stretched by the drawling tones of his home dialect as he spoke. “One of my men has an informant who works in the officers’ section of the new Japanese Naval Headquarters.”

Kung drew his brows together in thought. “The old Gong Da Textile Mill they took over and reinforced, that one?”

“Yes. The new Admiral has his apartments there. Here is what your servant has learned: Morioka goes out at night and drinks, but is never drunk. He is married, but his wife and children did not accompany him, nor does he have their pictures.”

“There will be something he cares for,” Du insisted.

Kung nodded. “His weak spot.”

“Yes, Teacher,” said Pok. “You are correct. There is indeed a thing he loves-music. His quarters are filled with gramophone records.”

“Really.” Du’s cold, serpentine gaze lit with interest, flicked to Lin, and then back to Pok. “What kind of music?”

“Jazz,” said Pok.

“You don’t say,” Kung said in English, sending a twinkle toward Lin Ming, not yet seeing how the news was strangling him with terror. “And for you, Teacher,” Kung went on, back in Chinese, “What a bolt of luck! You don’t have to do a thing. He’ll come to you.”

Lin stood in the center, feeling everything around him crashing. He did not ask for much, just to bring music from over the sea, to shepherd his musicians, to be with his favorite girl, Zhuli. He did not expect to be free; he understood that his father, and the Green Gang, controlled his life, and might even end up choosing the time and manner of his death. He also accepted the fact that he personally was powerless to stop Japan. But his musicians, his flock that he’d brought from America and nurtured here in Shanghai’s endless night-they should be left alone.

Pok backed out, with Du’s thanks. Du always treated his secretaries well.

“Lucky. As for you, do not worry so much,” Kung said to Lin. “There is no reason why they should sacrifice the plum tree for the peach tree.”

Kung’s kindly joke in turning the phrase around-in the old saying, the plum tree did get sacrificed-failed to allay Lin’s fear. Meanwhile, Du Yuesheng nodded approvingly, for ancient military strategy was the kind of traditional tidbit he loved.

Lin stood motionless. “Please,” he heard himself say, small and squeaky.

“What?” Du looked over sharply.

“There are so many jazz men in Shanghai, others could serve as bait-”

But his father held up a silencing hand. “It is not up to us. It is he who will decide. No one can resist Shanghai for long, including Morioka. He will be like a bird hovering over a field of flowers. Sooner or later he will light, and then we will have him.” He looked hard at Lin. “Wherever he comes to rest.”

Lin ducked his head, burning with hatred-for his father, for Japan, and for himself most of all-because he knew that no matter what order he received, even if-when-it put one of his own in danger, he would have to obey it.

Thursday was Christmas Eve, 1936, and after rehearsal, Thomas decided for the first time not to go home and practice, but to go out. He was not homesick, far from it; he remained glad to be far from America. Things here put his homeland to shame. Every day he woke up expecting to feel some nostalgia, yet it never came. He missed his mother, but that was different, for nothing was going to bring her back.

On Christmas Eve, he could not take the big house with its hovering servants. He had no privacy there, and no real company either. So he buttoned his overcoat and walked from the theater to Avenue Joffre, lit up with shops and restaurants. “Little Russia” was what the other musicians called this stretch, and beneath the signs in Cyrillic letters, the shop and restaurant windows were bright with holiday lights and crèches. The joy of it was touching; from the door of one restaurant, as it opened and closed around a laughing couple swathed in fur, he could hear clinking glass and the strains of a piano. Everywhere there were parties tonight.

Back on Creel Street, there would be lights in all the windows, and carolers up and down the sidewalks, and warm turkey smells in the hallways. A sharp sting went through him at the thought, and he pretended it was the cold, and clutched his coat collar a little closer.

He would go to hear another orchestra. Over in the International Settlement, which he had not yet visited on account of its race laws, white jazz groups from America were playing at clubs like the Vienna Garden and the Majestic Café. Those clubs, according to his band members, employed dance hostesses, mostly White Russians, which put them a rung below French Concession clubs like the Royal, the Saint Anna’s Ballroom, the Palais Café, and the Ambassador. Tonight he would pick a place in Frenchtown, with a black orchestra.

With the help of a city map he had bought, he saw it was a reasonably short walk to the Canidrome, where Teddy Weatherford was about to end his long engagement and move his orchestra to Calcutta for the winter season.

When he arrived, the gate to the complex was wide open, and most of what had probably been intended as lawn was filled with rows of boxy parked cars. He was able to stroll right in through the front door, which still exhilarated him. The Chinese hostess welcomed him with a smile, and, when he mentioned Teddy Weatherford, directed him toward one of the ballrooms.

By now, Thomas knew what to do. As soon as he entered the ballroom and spoke to the headwaiter, he had a tab, just as he did in every reputable establishment: Shanghai’s chit system. You signed for whatever you wanted-purchases, food, drink, women, anything that money bought. At the end of the month, messengers would come around with the totals, and he would dispatch Little Kong, the most junior of his servants, with payments. In this way, still awaiting his first paycheck, he was ushered to a table like any man of means, and a cold bottle of Clover Beer and a chilled glass were set in front of him.

The men in his own band had praised Teddy Weatherford, and he understood why as soon as the man strode out to cheers from the crowd. Weatherford answered them with calls for a Merry Christmas, then hopped on the bench and launched the set with a body-shaking burst of brio. Out walked his sidemen in a color-coordinated line, and Thomas recognized Darnell Howard on violin; he had seen him once with James P. Johnson’s Plantation Days Orchestra. They raised their instruments in perfect sync, while Weatherford drove his own piano storm system, thundering, crashing, clouds breaking, sun shining.

Thomas watched, mesmerized. He would never play with that kind of power. They were electrifying, and as soon as they took a break, he hastened over with congratulations.

Weatherford turned, whiskey in hand, face split in his trademark smile. “’Bout time you came up and said hello! Boys! This here’s the new bandleader over to the Royal.”

“Hello,” he said, “Thomas Greene.” He shook hands with each of the men who crowded around. “You were all terrific. I’d give anything to know how you do it. And you,” he said to Darnell Howard, trying to fluff up the appearance of connection, “I saw you on tour with James P. Johnson. Fine playing. Pleasure to see you on stage here. But I’m curious.” He turned back to the bandleader. “How did you know who I was?”

“Come on!” Weatherford laughed. “You think there are so many of us here? I knew you for fair soon as I saw you. Not Harlem, though-not from the look of you, or the way you talk. Am I right?”

“You are,” said Thomas, wondering what else about him showed. “I’m from Maryland, the Eastern Shore.” He was afraid to say Baltimore, in case Weatherford knew any musicians in the scene there. “A little place in the countryside near Easton.” At least that was true, for his grandfather’s farm was such a place, and a sort of home to him.

“Maryland! What’d I say?” Teddy exulted. “All-American, though.” Beneath his suit, congenially unbuttoned, Weatherford’s shirt showed spots of piano-sweat. “Let’s sit down,” he said, and they moved to an empty table. “Mr. Lin taking care of you?”

“Sure.” Everyone seemed to know Lin Ming.

“And you have somewhere to go tonight, for Christmas Eve? ’Cause you can go on out with us after midnight, if you want to stay around.”

“You’re very kind.” Thomas did not want to admit that he had nothing to do, that the only people he knew here were the fellows in the Kansas City Kings, none of whom had invited him over tonight. “I’m sorry-other plans. So tell me, where else do you play?”

“The whole circuit,” said Weatherford. “Here in the summer months, to the winter holidays. Then to the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, and the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. Midwinter’s the big season there. In between we go up the Malay jungle.”

“You mean to Singapore?”

“We sail to Singapore. But then we get in cars and drive up the jungle.”

“To where?”

“Big rubber plantations. British planters. Man, they give balls you wouldn’t believe! White folks coming from hundreds of miles around, gowns, tuxedos, diamonds, glamorous as you please, ballrooms with marble floors and great big chandeliers bigger and finer than what they got here-out in the jungle! They love the way I pound it!”

“So do the people here,” Thomas said, rounding up the ballroom in a glance. “What about the International Settlement, with the race laws?”

Weatherford shook his head. “Mr. Lin tells everybody to be careful, and I’ve heard of a few fights, but sure, you can go there. You might want to steer clear of the big hotels or restaurants, they won’t let you in the front door, but private parties are no problem a-tall. The Brits have villas out there with lawns and gardens out of a fairy tale.”

“What about Japan?” Thomas nodded toward a small group of uniformed soldiers, lounging on the edge of the dance floor.

The bandleader gave them a long look. “They like jazz, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve seen what they do when they take over. They seize Shanghai, we’re taking it right off our circuit, man. Just like that.”

“What have you seen? What do they do?”

“They take a city, they take over the nightlife and ruin it. They have this new drug they are pushing, heroin they call it, it comes from opium and they inject it with needles-that’s why they want nightclubs. Don’t do it. They take over, you get out of here. What?” He looked up at a signal from Darnell Howard, and drained his glass. “Sorry, man. I got to go beat out some blues.”

“Thank you,” said Thomas.

“To your sound,” Weatherford said with a salute, and Thomas smiled as he tried to quell his anxiety. He had no sound, and he probably wouldn’t be finding it in the next six days, either. The Kings had a sound, a big one; their songs rode on riffing, bluesy backgrounds, punctuated by spontaneous solos from the reeds and brass. Arrangements were already tighter now, under him, but as yet he had no idea what his piano could bring to it.

After the third stunning set he left, and stood shivering on the street, hand up for a rickshaw, thinking that he had work to do. This time he did not even blink at paying a man to haul him through the cold like a beast of burden; all the best people did it. He already knew better than to tip, too. If you tipped, they lost respect for you. As for being alone on Christmas Eve, jazz men were wandering men, men of the blues, and it was correct for him to be on the road. It fit.

On his front steps, he had barely touched the key to the lock when Uncle Hua swung the door back from inside. “Master have guest,” he said.

“Thank you.” Thomas stepped into the parlor, where the sight of Lin Ming, on the settee, sparked a grin. “Pleasure to see you!”

“You too,” said Lin. “Did you hear the news about Chiang Kai-shek?”

“No.” Thomas had heard people at the Canidrome talking about the kidnapping, but had not tuned in to it.

“They released him, because he promised to fight side by side with the Communists! And because H. H. Kung and T. V. Soong paid a huge amount of money. It is the big news.”

“That’s good, right? Maybe you can beat Japan now.” Thomas was thinking of the ruination Weatherford had predicted if they took Shanghai.

“Yes! Drive those bandits out!” Lin was reaching around inside his padded jacket. “Ah! Here.” He found the bottle he had been digging for, and uncorked it. “Tomorrow is Christmas, and that is another reason I came-I have nowhere else to go. Sit, Little Greene. Drink this with me.”

On opening night Lin Ming arrived early. The great curved ceiling was hung with cascades of light, and the clamshell behind the stage shone in radiating bars of ivory and gold. White-coated kitchen staff adjusted camellias in bud vases and straightened starched linens, and Lin saw that every one of them had his face scrubbed and hair slicked back. All his workers were refugees who had streamed in from the Japanese-ravaged areas up north, starving, desperate; every day there were more. War was written all over the faces of the jostling, sharp-boned workers who came begging for employment. He could have hired and fired every day if he wanted. “Kuai ma!” he cried with a handclap, spur the horse!

Zhou, his floor manager, had overseen so many cabarets that he rarely indulged in even a flicker of excitement anymore, but the size of the well-dressed crowd waiting outside made him catch Lin’s eye and mouth the words Zhen ta ma jue, damned incredible. When the hour came, they opened the doors to men in suits, tuxes, and long Chinese gowns, to qipao- clad Chinese women, and white ladies in full-length evening dresses. The wealthiest Chinese entered with pods of Russian bodyguards, rogue kidnappings and ransoms being a constant threat to anyone of importance. At exclusive venues like the Royal, thugs with guns on display were the norm.

The patrons were a mix of Chinese, foreigners, and Japanese, twenty thousand of whom lived in Shanghai. Among their ranks were not only jazz lovers but also the best jazz players in Shanghai, next to the Americans-not that Lin would ever hire Japanese jazz musicians. They had their own clubs up in Zhabei, now a heavily Japanese area. But he welcomed them as patrons the way he welcomed all people, for this was one of the unwritten rules of Ye Shanghai: politics and affiliations were left at the door. All were welcome, all were equal.

A parallel and less attractive truth was that no one wanted to face the facts of war, especially after dark, the time for enjoyment. To make this easier, people referred to every incursion, every skirmish-and-annexation as an incident: the Mukden Incident, the Great Wall Incident, even what people called the January Twenty-eighth Incident here in Shanghai, which was what led to the Japanese being the only ones allowed to bear arms in a Chinese city. But as long as each thing was an “incident,” people could go on working and playing and spending their money the way they were going to do tonight. “Hello,” Lin said to each guest who passed him. “Welcome to the new Royal.”

He recognized the head of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, and behind him the Tai-pan of the big trading house Jardine’s, with his longtime French mistress, whom he squired about openly these days now that his wife had passed over. The man had grieved long and decently, and now even the flintiest matrons tolerated the ripe, heavy-lidded Héloïse on his arm. Lin never ceased to find amusement in the habits of white people.

His smile lit even brighter when he saw the composer Aaron Avshalomov. Born in Siberia, the Russian had spent most of his life in China and wrote concert pieces blending Western and Chinese music; he was admired as a composer, and his presence here raised the tone. He was dressed as he often was in a black silk Chinese gown, which paired oddly with his large, forward-set blue eyes and his angled, leonine face. “Hello, Ah Fu! So nice to see you,” said Lin.

They closed the doors when every seat was taken and the dance floor was crowded with people talking, standing, waiting for the lights to dim. When they did, a single spot bathed the center of the stage, and Lin stepped up with raised arms. “New Year’s Eve!” he shouted, and a roaring cheer enveloped him. “Your waiters are ready to bring the finest food and the best liquors, as we bring in nineteen thirty-seven! The dance floor is yours!”

The crowd screamed again. Behind him, the first musicians strode out in their blue suits. He prayed that Thomas was going to be ready, and spread his arms wide. “Please welcome back the Kansas City Kings!”

The room exploded, and the words were lost as Thomas stepped out behind him into the light, somehow tall and imposing even though he was a man of slight and ordinary build.

He slid into place at the keyboard, under the spotlight, raised his right hand, and ran off a complex, instantly impressive Lisztian phrase that sent a gasp through the hall. As abruptly as the line had started, it stopped, a warm-up. The same hand lifted again, and tapping time with his feet, he counted down the opening bar of “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” which needed only a few notes to send the crowd prancing onto the floor in delight.

Good. Lin heard how the arrangement drew attention away from Thomas’s piano, which, after the showy intro, became all but invisible, keeping time, no more. He was young, green, just out of his thatched cottage, but he was already doing something fresh by quoting the classics. Lin hoped it would reassure those who still thought of jazz as a savage and dangerous current in the yang bang he, the river of foreign culture. No one listening to this could see jazz as something wild that came from the jungle. Yet despite Thomas’s style, the Kings were hot, especially the toe-tapping, knob-kneed young brothers, Charles and Ernest Higgins, who broke the song’s theme over and over on their saxophones in tight harmony, while the brass called out melody lines and the guitar slapped a rhythm underneath.

And the money was flowing: two songs in, the ballroom was over capacity and they were turning people away. Every time Lin passed the business office, he heard the safe opening and closing. Du was going to be pleased.

The boss arrived shortly after midnight, when ’thirty-seven took off with an ear-rattling fusillade of popping champagne corks, and a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.” The band had just started back in with dance music when Du appeared. He had Fiery Old Crow and Flowery Flag on either side, and Song bringing up the rear in a tea-length qipao like some calendar girl from the ’twenties. “Little Sister,” Lin said, and she gave him the warm smile they always shared as she vanished up the lobby stairs behind her master.

On the stairs, once Lin Ming was out of view, Song Yuhua matched her steps to the men climbing ahead of her, Teacher and his bodyguards. She always walked in last place in public, unshielded by his men. Not like the actress she remembered from a few years ago, whose dressing room door was always attended by a couple of Du’s dog’s legs. Each of his two most recent wives had her own security guard assigned to her apartments in the mansion, too.

Not Song. She lived up on the low-ceilinged top floor. Hot in summer, cold in winter. She had a bedroom, a small sitting room, and a tiny chamber just big enough to hold a cot for her maid, Ah Pan. Du had no intention of wasting either space or staff on her. All this because her father gambled away the family estate to the Green Gang, and Du Yuesheng, arriving to take possession, offered to take her into service instead.

As translator and arm-piece, she had tasks and obligations, but at least she was not one of his women. He had taken her twice that way, shortly after she entered his service at eighteen, and after, never touched her again. This was a blessing to her, and also a constant reminder of a failure she barely understood. Sometimes she watched the wives, and wondered what they knew about the house thing that she did not. Fourth Wife talked with her on occasion, and more than once Song had helped her look after the children, but though Fourth Wife was the youngest of the wives and closest to Song in age, they never spoke of private things.

Still, she was worlds away from the submissive girl she had been when she arrived in Shanghai. She had her own loyalties now. And this was where being out with Du had its advantages, for he was master of Shanghai, the fulcrum for all agreements legal or illegal, so she was positioned to overhear things. As she ascended the stairs at the Royal, last in line as always, she scanned the bubbles of conversation that floated out between the tied-back curtains of each box. Understanding English was her great advantage; foreigners babbled like fools in front of her.

Ahead of her Du paused at a box, and stepped inside to trade greetings. Flowery and Fiery assumed their positions. As she entered, she recognized the rotund form of H. H. Kung, and next to him a dissipated older Englishman she had seen in the papers-Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, sent by England to help China control its economy. Bloodsucking ghost capitalist. She looked with disdain at his few remaining white hairs combed over his bald head, at his face pouched and ruddy from drink.

Leith-Ross, meanwhile, was making little effort to conceal his distaste at the sight of Du’s trademark large ears, bald head, and long gown. “Shocking that they let him in here! And in a box! It’s a disgrace.”

“Of course he is a blackmailer or murderer or worse,” Duke Kung replied in his smooth English, “but my dear sir, one hundred thousand men in Shanghai obey his orders.” That was an exaggeration, Song knew-the number was closer to ten thousand-but Kung was rolling, and his eyes gleamed behind his round tortoiseshell glasses. “The only reason the Nationalists can even hold Shanghai is because of Du and his men. Why, what choice do we have? He could create a disturbance at any moment!” Switching to Shanghainese, he turned to address Du. Called “Duke” because of his direct descent from Confucius, he lowered his eyes respectfully. “Teacher. I am always and ever will be your servant.”

“Where? Where?” said Du, chiding him affectionately for his flattery, as was proper.

Kung switched back to English. “May I introduce Sir Frederick Leith-Ross?”

They both turned to the Englishman, who had now trained his rheumy eyes on Song. “Good God, his tart is young enough to be his daughter!”

Turtle egg. Stinking son of a slave girl. She stretched out a hand and spoke in English. “Forgive me, but I do not believe we have been introduced. I am Song Yuhua. You are…?”

He choked on his spittle. “Sir Frederick Leith-Ross.”

“Enchanted.” She turned to Kung, who kept the play going by raising the back of her hand to his mouth for a pretend European-style kiss. “Duke Kung,” she continued in English, “it is always a pleasure to see you.” And then she smiled sweetly and stepped back as Teacher made his magisterial Chinese farewells and swept out, surrounded by his men.

What she’d said had been flawlessly polite, yet the man’s choleric face showed that her arrow had found its mark, and Duke Kung was fighting down his laughter. Good; the foreigner was a toad, a parasite.

She settled into her chair in their box, and scanned the crowd as she always did, to settle the fear that she might see someone from her native place, where no one knew she had been sold to Du in payment for her father’s debts. That night she saw no one from Anhui, but she did notice quite a few Shanghai luminaries, bankers and shipping magnates and real estate barons-even Ah Fu, the Russian Jewish composer. Everyone on the dance floor below had their eyes on this new ghost pianist, who did not, despite the Chinese-language advertisements that had been trumpeting the club’s reopening for the past week, look like a man who had come straight from the cotton fields.

His playing had an upright feel that sounded familiar to her, carrying her back to when she was a child, and her Western tutor gave her piano lessons. Yet it was a dance orchestra too. She decided this was a fresh hybrid from America, and she liked it.

Sometime after two in the morning Lin Ming appeared in the box, his sleeves rolled up, exhausted, dazed. “Mou qu bao li,” he said, treasure and exuberant profit.

Du made a curt nod of acknowledgment, which was a lot for him, and Lin discreetly patted the sheen off his brow as he heard the first tinkly piano notes of the band’s signature song, “Exactly Like You.” They played it as an instrumental, with Charles and Ernest trading off voices, a two-saxophone duet of the melody Benny Goodman had made famous on the clarinet.

I know why I’ve waited, know why I’ve been blue,

Prayed each night for someone

Exactly like you.

The song’s end brought a cascade of applause and cheers, during which Lin Ming touched Song’s elbow in good-bye and slipped out. Then the house quieted, and even the air hung still, suspended, as everyone held their breath for the encore.

The piano player lifted his hands. A spotlight circled him, as all else went black.

A rising cry from the clarinet sailed out of the darkness behind him and resolved itself into the famous first notes of Rhapsody in Blue. Song recognized it from the radio, though she had never expected to hear it in a ballroom.

The clarinet walked atop the melody and the piano’s first chords rained down. For a while she listened, her eyes half-closed, and when she opened them and looked down, she beheld something she had not seen before, ever: a dance floor full of people in expensive evening clothes, perfectly still, all quiet as shafts of light, listening, all under the spell. She too sat motionless, suspended. To think of the hardship he had come from… and now he raised a tapered, aristocratic-looking hand to bring in the horns.

She noticed that the musicians were staring at him too, surprised, almost awestruck. A few stumbled slightly, before finding their way into the rhythm, which the pianist, in this piece at least, had in his keeping. A few seconds later, they were in his time, following him. She could feel the shift.

Too soon it was over, and applause exploded through the ballroom for the last time that night. Song turned to Du and said, feigning modesty, “Not bad. Wouldn’t you agree?”

He gave her a cold look. She should have expected it; jazz, like all Western music, was only noise to him. He wanted everything Chinese, and nothing foreign; everything old, nothing new. He was a gangster, a criminal, but in his mind he belonged to some lost aristocracy. He and his fellows hoped to silence composers, declare jazz dangerous, ban new plays, and remove dissenting editors from their posts. She hated him.

Most of the young people like her in Shanghai who joined the Communist underground felt as she did; they were struggling writers, actors, journalists, and musicians, living for the future. Whether they were of humble origins, or were the children of well-fed families who were leaning down to the workers’ cause, they were idealistic, typical of young “urban path” Communists, as opposed to those who found their way to the movement along the “rural path,” in the provinces. They were smart and passionate and sophisticated; they believed. That Song was one of them, secretly, made every day of her life worth living.

Du stood to go, and she rose with him, her lies contained and her surfaces flawless.

Two floors below, Thomas Greene stood by the brass-trimmed door. His head was spinning with relief as he thanked people and wished them well. The whole theater seemed to be surging toward him with compliments and congratulations.

“Happy New Year! Yes, thank you,” he said. “So kind of you. Don’t forget the rest of the Kansas City Kings, fine musicians, every one. Yes, thank you. The best for nineteen thirty-seven. Come again.” Lin stood next to him saying the same things in Chinese, and everyone in the theater had to squeeze past them.

Atop the sea of heads Thomas saw one man taller than the others, tall as Lin Ming, but older, and he knew at once it was the father, the crime lord, Du Yuesheng. Should he greet him? But people said he spoke no English.

Du did not give him the chance. Refusing to look at him, he stared straight ahead as he passed.

But behind him, trailing in the wake of his bodyguards, floated a woman with the most brilliantly intelligent eyes, and gardenias fixed at the back of her neck.

Thomas watched as she was carried toward him on the tide, forced ahead, laughing. When she came abreast, he held her eyes, just for a second, and then the crowd bore her away. After one last moment of clinging to her with his gaze, he turned back to the line of people.

Lin saw him staring. “Don’t look at her.”

“Why not?”

“You deaf in your dog’s ears? She belongs to him.” And he slid back into Chinese with the next man in line.

“Is she his wife?”

“Nothing like that,” said Lin.

Then like what? Thomas wanted to know, but he said no more, because playing his part properly meant giving in sometimes, as he had been taught from the beginning of his life. But that had always been irrelevant to what he thought, felt, and planned inside-and now he had noticed her, and he would be watching for her in the future. In his own time.

When at last the crowd thinned, he stepped outside, where musicians and well-wishers were still gathered. Among them he noticed a man Alonzo had pointed out across the ballroom, a slight, blue-eyed Russian Jew in a Chinese gown. Greene crossed to him and extended a hand. “Happy New Year. Thomas Greene.”

They grasped warmly. “Delighted, and the same to you.” The older man’s accent was a mash of European tones. “Aaron Avshalomov. The evening was most wonderful. I always say one should go to the classics first. Your Rhapsody was resplendent! The essence of America, with all its brashness. I conducted it in Tianjin a few years ago with a Russian cabaret pianist, but to you he did not compare! You were marvelous. We should meet again. We must, I insist. May we please? Let us agree to it for the new year.”

“I’d like that,” Thomas said, riding the sudden swell of acceptance, wanting the same thing he had always wanted, the respect of serious musicians like Avshalomov, who, after a quick good night, was borne away in a rickshaw, his light, unruly cloud of hair bouncing above the folded-back awning.

Thomas turned to see the two reed players beside him, Charles and Ernest. “Come on, Tails,” said Ernest-the nickname having arisen earlier that night on account of the cutaway coat he wore as bandleader-“You promised us on the night we opened, you’d go celebrate.”

“You’re right, I did.” He ruffled the young head, grinning at the fact that all the doors seemed wide open to him, for the first time ever; he could drink, dance, and sample women, for he had money, and here, where all men were at last created equal, that was the only thing that mattered. “Let’s go.”