Night in Shanghai

4

ANYA WAS HIS girl through that spring of 1937, and she came to the club most weekends. He loved having her sit up tall and lovely at his table, his for all to see. Song and Du still had not come in, and while at first he had watched in hopes of seeing her, now he was glad they had not returned. Anya was a lovely bird whose plumage was always on display.

She lifted his spirits, which he needed, because the war was chipping away at his Kings. Now Eddie Riordan, the drummer, had stopped going out and was eating at noodle stalls in order to finish saving his passage home. The trumpet player, Cecil Pratt, was starting to talk about the same thing. Cecil had a Japanese girlfriend, and he went up to Zhabei most nights to stay with her, in a sector that had become almost entirely filled with soldiers and civilians from Japan. Much as he hated to leave her, Cecil said the sight of so many men in uniform unnerved him.

On the nights Anya came to the club, Thomas went back to her room with her, always leaving before dawn so he could sleep at home. He liked it that way, separate. When Alonzo and Keiko invited them all over for lunch, he never mentioned it to Anya. Keiko was different, part of their lives, almost Alonzo’s wife, though they all knew he had a real wife back home and children in college, to whom he sent most of his money. But here in Shanghai, Keiko was his woman and everyone’s older sister, cooking Japanese food, homey in her scuff slippers and apron, shiny black hair tufting from her neck-knot. While Alonzo sat back in his chair like a potentate, she plied Thomas and Charles and Ernest with grilled fish, vegetables cooked in soy and wine and vinegar, and steaming mounds of rice. Those were happy afternoons, which he enjoyed without Anya.

But on his nights off, the two of them went out together, and he let her take him into other worlds, to be with dancers and drug addicts and gamblers, philosophers and utopians, and assorted secret plotters who hoped to take over China. In her company he met actors, artists, and poets, drinkers and pleasure seekers.

“And yet none of them are Communists,” he said to her one night.

“Of course some of them are,” she retorted. “We’ve discussed this. One third of Shanghai is-”

“I know,” he said, “but who? I never seem to meet any.”

“No one wants to admit it,” she said. “They kill Communists.”

“It’s a conundrum. I cannot be sure they really exist.”

“Listen.” She leaned in and dropped her voice. “I know all kinds of people-people who know Shanghai’s secrets. And you know what they told me? Very hush-hush? That the Foreign Language School at number six New Yuyang Lu is a Communist front.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. It was whispered to me that they don’t teach languages at all. Go there one day, and you will see, they look like everybody else.”

He drank more than usual that night, and barely remembered going to Anya’s room and finally arriving home at dawn. When he awoke at midday, it was to a thudding headache and a mouth that was swollen and parched. And something else, voices. He washed and hurried into his clothes.

Downstairs he found Charles and Ernest in his dining room, tucking into a lavish breakfast prepared by Chen Ma, grits and thick slices of ham and big creamy curds of scrambled egg.

“Oliver and Frank are leaving!” Ernest blurted through a mouthful of egg.

“What?” He sat heavily. “Those two? I thought they never saved anything.” A bottom-class ticket cost 150 U.S., but that was 450 Shanghai, a lot to save when you made 50 a week, and Shanghai lay before you, arms wide, every night. Few had done it. “Where’d they get the money?”

“Dog track,” said Charles. “Soon as they won, they got them two tickets. Say there is going to be a war here, we all got to get out.”

“Well,” said Thomas, leaning back for Chen Ma to serve his own breakfast, “there could very well be a war here, they are right. But I’m not sure we’ve all got to get out.”

“You’re not scared?” said Charles.

“Sure I’m scared. But I was scared back where I grew up, too, and I like it here better.”

They exchanged a look. “Us too,” Ernest said.

“If they invade Shanghai, we’re going to have to lay low. It could be bad. But we’re not in this war. And another thing-both sides love jazz. Whoever wins, however it comes out, we should still be able to play.”

The boys exchanged looks. “We’ll stay,” said Ernest.

“Never going back,” Charles agreed.

“Tails,” Ernest put in, “where were you last night?”

“How do you know I was anywhere?”

“Because Uncle Hua told me you came in at seven.”

“He did, did he? You’re a rascal, Ernest.” Thomas admired the boy; in a year and a half he had become agile enough at pidgin to rattle along endlessly with the locals, while Thomas had not learned more than a phrase or two of pidgin, and even less of Shanghainese or Mandarin, which were much harder. In fact, Thomas had not run into any American players in Shanghai who had more than a few words of Shanghainese or any of the other Chinese dialects.

Bright and enterprising though they were, the Higgins boys were too young to be alone. “Fellows, you can’t live in that house by yourselves. I think you should move in here with me.” As soon as he saw the relief on their faces, Thomas knew he was right. And he needed company, too. The house had too many empty bedrooms, and was oppressive now that the hot summer had set in. Zhu, the quiet man who in winter was the house’s master of heat, now opened windows and positioned fans to make the house comfortable.

“I’ll square it with Lin Ming,” he told the two brothers. “Get your things. Sleep here tonight.”

It was two nights after that, the third Wednesday in June 1937, when Morioka walked into the Royal for the first time.

Du Yuesheng was in the balcony box, along with Song, Lin Ming, and his bodyguards, but none of them noticed when he entered in plain, nondescript clothes, slid into a corner table, and ordered a whiskey. Their first inkling of his presence was a racket of footsteps, followed by Floor Manager Zhou yanking their curtain aside. “He’s here,” he said, panting, “the Admiral.”

“Is it so! Where?” said Du, and followed Zhou’s finger. “Ah! I see. Puffed-up plug!”

They all strained to see the dim figure under the balcony overhang opposite. “Motherless fornicator,” said Fiery.

“Is it true he is going around the city opening field offices?” Flowery asked.

“Yes,” Lin Ming answered. “Like Shanghai is already his.”

They all stared together, hating him, united for once in ill will.

“Damn that scar of his mother’s she calls a cunt,” Du said, to murmured assent. “Damn her crack to all the hells.”

“Let me take him,” Flowery Flag said impulsively. “Tonight.”

“Patience,” Du said abruptly, and Flowery fell silent.

The boss sat for a long time, staring at the Japanese officer below with the reptilian flicker of possibility that passed for engagement in his expression. Then before he spoke, he glanced with favor at the bodyguard, indulging him as one would a favorite pet. “First we find his weakness, his opening. Then we look for the moment when his assassination will most throw them off. Then we kill him-not before. Teacher will see to it.”

Lin’s knees shook as he listened. Morioka’s rapt focus on Thomas Greene was obvious; they could all see it.

His intestines chilled at the scene on the stage below, where Thomas, unaware of what was happening, was signaling a solo. Charles and Ernest took off on their reeds a major third apart, a bit of showmanship that, though well rehearsed, never failed to please the crowd with its sense of spontaneous intimacy and the simple optimism the major third interval always seemed to ignite. He was a good arranger, Little Greene, able to keep the band sounding polished even though he was down to nine, piano included. He was also popular, a moneymaker, and the first real friend Lin had found among his musicians in a long time. So why couldn’t this whore of a Japanese Admiral turn his attention someplace else? The question sounded plaintively in his mind as he watched.

Song, seated in front of Lin Ming, was equally horrified, and she also saw what Lin could not-the look of icy calculation hardening in Du’s eye as his gaze traveled from Morioka to Thomas and back again.

Down in the lobby, after the show, she followed her master’s gliding form through the crush of people toward the door. Ahead, Fiery and Flowery formed a wedge to clear a way through the crowd.

None of them noticed Morioka bearing down from the other side of the lobby. Song did not catch sight of him until she had almost reached the door, where Thomas stood, thanking well-wishers.

Morioka stepped into the crush just a meter or so in front of her, and she jolted back, her entire being on fire. She saw the way the hair grew down in two points on the back of his neck, where his skin was brown from the Japanese sun. She caught his aroma. It was unbearably tense to be so close to him.

And then he started talking to Thomas in English.

“How do you find China?” she heard him say. “Really? But so dirty, so primitive. No? That is why they need us, the Chinese, to keep order. Here-take my card. If you need help. Here.” And he pressed his calling card into Thomas’s hand before bowing and being carried by the crowd out the door.

Song glared after him. Keep order? How dare he? She let the crowd bear her to Thomas, averting her eyes from him while she checked the crowd in all directions, and then, in one quick, low, economical slice through the air that no one could see, she plucked the card from his hand and threw it on the floor. It disappeared beneath the crush of feet.

She kept her eyes straight ahead, but could feel the heat of his awareness as she passed.

Du felt it too, for at that instant, he turned to look back. “Yuhua,” he commanded.

“Wo lai,” she answered, coming, and lowered her gaze once more, fully concealed, the good girl, bu gou yan xiao, no careless word or smile.

“What did he say to you?” Lin Ming asked Thomas the next day.

“That he thinks China is primitive.”

“Fornicator. Piece of turtle dung. And you threw the card on the floor?”

“The second he moved on.” Thomas said nothing about Song being there. He was thrilled to have had her cross his path, even just for that moment. No one had noticed her rip the card from his hand in the packed lobby, but he had been inches from her, and he caught his breath at the burn in her eyes, the glow that came from inside her. He seemed to be able to see straight into her in that loud, pushing crowd of people.

“You did well,” Lin said. “But back to Morioka. If he approaches you again, say as little as possible. Do not ever agree to meet him anywhere.”

“You’ve made that clear already,” Thomas said gently, though he failed to see what a Japanese officer would want with him anyway. He thought it unlikely that he and Morioka would ever have another conversation.

But that little scrim of security evaporated less than a week later, when Morioka returned to the Royal. This time he did not stay long, only one set, but before he left, he ventured up to the stage. Thomas was frozen, only half-risen from the piano bench, watching Floor Manager Zhou and Wing Bean scuttle into position to eavesdrop.

“Very beautiful playing,” Morioka said, somewhat formally, and Thomas answered, “Yassir, thank you, sir,” vamping up the plantation accent for the benefit of Zhou and Wing Bean. Morioka said no more, bowed to him, and left. Zhou and Wing Bean seemed satisfied.

Thomas was shaky, though, and he went directly to Anya’s rooming house and rang her bell. He rang over and over, and she never came down. The window light was on in her room, which usually meant she was out. Where? He checked his new gold watch. It was almost three A.M.

Yet much of Shanghai was still awake. In fact, though only two hours had elapsed since his conversation with Morioka, Du Yuesheng would by now have already parsed every word they said.

The next afternoon, Du summoned Lin Ming to Rue Wagner, and they met in one of the quietly carpeted second-floor studies, with wooden shutters tightly closed against the early summer heat. As usual, Du showed no discomfort, not even a shimmer of perspiration, and his voice was as cool as stone. “Twice in one week he has approached the American,” he told Lin. “We are moving ahead.”

“Moving ahead how?” Lin’s voice strained its fragile film of normalcy. “If I may-”

But Du interrupted him. “Your man will be watched all the time for the right opportunity.”

“Perhaps you don’t need Thomas Greene. Isn’t it excessive? Isn’t it using Mount Tai to crush an egg?” He knew his father was ever vulnerable to a classical idiom.

“You are here because I am showing you the respect of warning you,” Du said sharply. “Do not presume to question.”

Lin said nothing.

“We have to kill the blood-sucking ghost. It will throw them into confusion and put us on top, like overturning the river and pouring out the sea. Naturally we will try to keep your American safe. In the end, though, that is irrelevant.”

The words sliced through Lin. “And who is going to be watching him?”

“I’m bringing in an outside man for this job,” said Du. “His name is Zhao Funian.”

Lin Ming nodded, silent, thinking there was nothing left for him now except bao tou shu cuan, to cover his head and slink away like a rat.

That week, Avshalomov’s boy came to the door of the house with a note inviting Thomas to a rehearsal of the composer’s tone poem Hutungs of Peking. Thomas had the boy tipped and fed, as was proper, and a few days later sent back his own most junior servant with a reply that he would be honored. He greatly enjoyed his nights out with Anya, trawling the underside of Shanghai, but this was an outing of another sort; Avshalomov was a composer of stature.

They had seen each other six months earlier, when Avshalomov’s piano concerto had premiered at the Lyceum, the concert hall where Shanghai gathered on Sunday afternoons to hear music before going out to dinner. The concerto was performed by Gregory Singer, Avshalomov’s customary pianist, as the second half of a program that began with Beethoven’s Fifth. Greene attended the concert and afterward sent Little Kong over with a warm note of congratulations. Now Avshalomov had responded with this invitation.

Thomas had seen that there was music all over Shanghai, from pit orchestras for the film and recording studios to the Shanghai Symphony. The city teemed with classically trained players. Some musicians were Chinese, some were older Russian Jews who had come years before, and now younger, immensely talented European Jews were arriving too, players who had fled persecution and found their way to the city’s orchestras.

Avshalomov was different; he had been in China most of his life. “I am trying to capture everything you hear in the lanes of Peking,” he explained. “The chants of the vendors, the buzz of the barber’s fork, the temple bells, everything.”

“I loved your piano concerto, by the way.”

“Ah, thank you, I received your kind note. Did you notice the boy on the celesta? My son, Jack!”

Just then a loud buzzing tone filled the stage. “That is the huan tou, the barber’s tuning fork,” Avshalomov said. “That was how the barber announced his arrival in the neighborhood, and everyone who needed a trim or a shave would come outside. You could hear it from quite far away. Ah, we will begin now.” And with a small Old World bow, he excused himself.

Thomas watched him in front of the orchestra, pressing the trombones and tuba for bigger sound, directing the temple blocks and bells and Chinese drums, asking the violins to come in softly and crest in waves like insects on a summer night. He led the musicians through, explaining, correcting, singing. “Here,” he called out. “This is the operatic tune. I want that feel. Violins, play with one finger on the E string; accentuate your trills. Again.”

At the end of the run-through Thomas complimented him, and they talked for a bit. “It is clear what your training is,” Avshalomov said. “When you play, ça se voit. But this group you are in now-these Kansas City Kings-I feel this is the future. I hear jazz arrangements everywhere-do you not as well? Brass, more than anything else-in movies, on the radio, even in advertisements. I hear it but I do not always find beauty in it. In your playing, there is always beauty.”

“Thank you,” said Thomas. “But if I may ask, do you think it’s safe for us to continue playing here if the Japanese invade?”

Avshalomov looked sadly at him, only in his forties but older from the weight of all he had seen, his expression grave beneath the light hair that floated in an untamed aureole around his head. “No,” he said. “But if they take over, you will not want to play here anyway. I know. I am from the north.”

That night, Song returned to the Royal.

At once his anxiety ignited, for Anya was here, languid and lovely at her usual table. Song came in with her eyes downcast, walking a few paces behind Du and his bodyguards, as she always did. Thomas willed his eyes away from her and kept them on the keys, barely breathing. He looked up at her two or three times while they were playing, but fleetingly, and in a way no one could possibly have noticed.

But Anya saw. That night, on their way back to her place from the theater, she brought it up. “Who is she?”

“I don’t know who you mean.”

“The woman up in the box.”

“The box belongs to the gang boss,” he said.

“I know. I’m asking about her.”

“She comes in with him. That is all I know.”

Anya still studied him, speculating as the rickshaw bumped and swayed along, but he went quiet, and so did she. Then when they reached her place, they flew at each other, joining on the bed in a frenzy.

Later, when they had quieted, she turned to him to speak. He thought she might return to the subject of Song Yuhua, but instead she surprised him by saying he could no longer come to her room at night; a “no visitors” rule had been imposed by her landlord. “He meant you,” she apologized. “You have come so often. There is nothing I can do-”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, wondering where they would meet now.

“Perhaps where you live?” she said.

“I don’t think that would do. I’ve taken in two young brothers from the band. They’re just teenagers.”

She gave him a look, because anyone could see they were far from innocent. “Well, then. Perhaps you should rent a room for us. We can meet there. Something small would not be more than seven or eight dollars a month. You can afford it.”

True, he could, and why not? So starting that week, he secured a small ground-floor studio on the Huangpu, at the end of Peking Road, across from the docks, with cooling wood shutters to filter the river air. They went there together after hours, and slept in the predawn coolness, and when the sounds of the day started to rise outside, he got up and went home. It was his last period of routine quietude before the world fell apart.

Song debated long and hard about giving one of the diamonds to the Party. If Du caught her, of course, she was dead, but if Du were to discover her secret affiliations in any one of a hundred ways, she was equally dead, so one more risk hardly mattered. What frightened her was something different, that the gift was so ostentatious for a leftist. A diamond. It would have been safer to convert it to cash first, except that then she would be exposed to even greater danger, for gossip from a gem dealer could easily get back to Du.

Still, to hand over the diamond would cement her commitment. This was wealth she found by chance, and it belonged not to her but to China.

One diamond, anyway. The other three would stay well hidden.

The midday rain had cleared, and she saw shopkeepers on both sides of the street reopening their lattices to the wet sidewalks, while sellers of books and magazines and curios moved their racks back out to the street. Men in light, sun-shielding fedoras and cotton gowns stopped to peruse string-bound volumes and old prints. The letter writers came back, small-town scholars who had failed the examinations and now waited for customers behind flimsy folding tables.

She felt for these men, since she too had received an education she could not use, except when she translated for Du. Before his gambling losses, her father had been set on making her a modern woman. He had engaged the best tutors for her older brother, and always insisted she sit in on his lessons. When her brother died of consumption, all the father’s ambition transferred to little Yuhua, Jade Flower, an old-fashioned and ornamental name she had never liked. Nevertheless she wore the name he gave her, and studied hard to please him. Though only eight or nine, she could feel the family’s future resting on her, and excelled, especially at English. Her younger sisters were but babies then, and she spent all her time with tutors.

But then, after her mother died, her father started going out at night, and reeling back, white-faced, in the mornings. Artworks were sold off: a pair of Yongzheng mille-fleurs bowls, a Qianlong white jade censer, a blue and white dragon dish from the reign of Chenghua, her late mother’s green jade bracelets. Then other mornings he would come home with money in his pockets, and meaningless gifts. She saw what was happening, but she was only a girl with no more power than a grain of millet afloat in a vast sea. All she could do was watch. At last there came a day when he drew an unlucky hand, and forfeited the ancestral compound and all the land surrounding it.

That was when he begged her, crumbling inelegantly to his knees.

“Ba, don’t,” she said, shocked. “Get up.” She disliked this memory. She preferred to think of the shady gardens, the round gates through which respectful servants passed with trays or basins or folded linens, leaving behind the slip-slop of their cotton shoes against the flagstones. That was the memory she allowed.

She had no desire to go back to her family. They had sold her and never made contact again-out of shame, no doubt, for the Songs were a locally illustrious family and their daughters had to marry respectably. Indeed, that was the story they put about, when she disappeared, that she had gone away to be married, and people believed it.

She was born and bred to be used, as surely as any peasant or worker. Communism had saved her, to her way of thinking, opposing as it did the feudal ways that had landed her in this servitude to begin with. Her beliefs elevated her; they connected her to the city.

She had heard it said that every block in Shanghai held a thousand souls, when you added up mothers, fathers, children, shop workers, and servants, and when she was out, moving through the lanes like this, she could feel the rhythm of their breathing like a single organism, hear the hum of their thoughts. This was ren min to her, the people, this pulsing urban honeycomb, and they were her real cause.

As she entered the apothecary shop, she brushed her fingers past the hidden pocket inside her dress to confirm for the hundredth time that the pouch was still there.

“Young mistress.”

“Special prescription today,” she said, and handed the old herbalist a blank sheet of paper, a prearranged signal that meant she needed a meeting. “Also the usual one.”

“Mistress is tired,” said the herbalist. “Take your ease in the parlor and I will send for tea. I regret that at this moment there is none here, I will have to send out, but it will only be a moment. Please.” He gave one more careful look around the shop to make sure no one was watching, and pulled the lever to release the hidden door in the wall.

“Thank you.” She entered and sat down with the impatient distraction of the young matron abroad in the city, until the wall of drawers shut again and she could relax from her role and dab the nervousness from her forehead. It was dim but for the small lamp, and cool, no brazier needed now to provide its halo of warmth. She knew it would take time for someone to fetch her current guide, the primary contact through which she reported any information she gleaned as a result of the evenings she spent by Du’s side. For a long time it had been Mr. Guo, aboveground identity and occupation unknown.

Presently the inner door opened and he came in, out of breath. He works nearby, she realized. He ran here in the heat from his place of work. “Mrs. Ma,” he said, with complete neutrality despite the urgency of his gasping. “How are you? Have you eaten?”

“Yes, thank you. You?”

“Yes.” He mopped his face as he sat.

“Do you remember our conversation when we last met?”

He was lost. “No.”

“You told me of your cousins in the north, their need. I said I would pray for a solution.”

“Ah,” he said. “The need.” As they both knew, the situation in the north was even worse now. Japan’s armies had been massed near Peking for weeks.

“The gods listened to me,” she said, extending the tiny package she had removed from within her dress.

He took it, confused.

“Careful,” she said, when he fumbled with the wrapper. The edge in her voice made him open the last square of silk attentively, after which his eyes all but fell from his head. A silence cloaked the little pool of lamplight between them.

“Your spittle is three feet long,” she said gently, when he could not stop staring.

He looked up. “Sorry.” The jewel vanished inside the silk, which he knotted over and over inside his handkerchief. “They will be most pleased in the north.”

“It was luck,” she said, hiding her elation. The north was the nerve center of the Party, their base. “Only one thing-enough must be set aside from this for the herbalist to provide for my mistress’s medicines, permanently. No matter what happens. That should only be a small part.”

“Agreed,” he said, giddy at the stone’s obvious value.

A tap sounded on the wall, and the hidden door released, with a wooden sigh. She rose. “My prescription is ready. So nice to see you. Please give my regards to your family.”

On her way out, the herb master handed her a packet of the usual tonics and restoratives. She nodded toward the inner room, now sealed off again, and said, “Talk to him about payment.” She walked out with a firm stride, pleased with what she had done. The mo shou, the “evil hand” of the aggressor, was bearing down on Shanghai, but she had done her part, today, to push it back.

Thomas awakened a half hour before dawn, curled up to Anya and her warm smell. Soon he would get up and go home, where, a little after midday, he would have breakfast with Charles and Ernest. Right now, though, he liked it here by the river, the fresh air and splashing waves and the hollow bass bumping of the hulls. Dawn would bring the soft slap of river water, then slowly the city would awaken to its human music, the thousands of conversations bubbling up as people rose from their beds throughout the streets and alleys and even on the water, on the bobbing brown sampans. The first minutes of every day were always a genial simmer of voices, before the din of commerce, traffic, and engines took over.

He lay listening against lace pillows, hands behind his head. He could see her scarves spilled over the mirror, her clothing in the small closet, her shoes. In a wash of clarity, he understood that she was living here.

Suddenly, things clicked together: the way she had him take her out to dinner every night, the half-starved manner in which she ate. The way she never wanted to meet anymore in the neighborhood where her room used to be, because she no longer had it, and no money either.

When she woke he said, “You let go of your room.”

“I cannot pay all that. Why go between two rooms? I have nothing.” Her voice became sweet, appealing. “Can you not give me some cash every month? Not much. Just so I have something in my pocket. I haven’t a sou, not a centavo, not a Chinese dollar. Look what you spent on dinner last night, just for one night… can you not help me?”

“Of course,” he said, gathering her close. He felt ungentlemanly for not having noticed things sooner, and resolved to give her money regularly, starting with the clump of bills he left on the dresser that morning.

Yet as the days slid by, he started to wonder about it. Being a gentleman was important, but he did not love Anya, and had never thought of making it permanent. She brought him great pleasure and incalculable comfort, and obviously he should support her in return, but for how long?

“For as long as it pleases you to share her bed,” Lin said to him at lunch a week later, as he paged through the menu at De Xing Guan, a second-floor restaurant overlooking the river. They sat next to metal-crank windows, which were open to the summer humidity and the bobbing thatch-fabric of sampans, lorchas, and junks. Large vessels passing in the channel traded groans from their horns-the bottom note to Shanghai’s chord, a sound special to downtown Shanghai that Thomas had come to love.

Lin ordered the dish the restaurant was famous for, a rich, milky-white seafood chowder brimming with fish, shrimp, scallops, tofu, thin-sliced sea cucumber, and tangy mustard greens, touched by white pepper. To accompany this they had cold plates of pungent steeped cucumbers, gluten puffs with winter mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and ma lan tou, a minced salad of a local freshwater weed and savory dry tofu. Sensing his friend’s inner disturbance, Lin ordered rice spirits for both of them, bai jiu, powerfully alcoholic, served warm in a small crock. “You look like you have a fishbone stuck in your throat. Out with it,” he said, pouring.

“First of all, my men. We are down to a skeleton.”

“I already told you, we can’t replace any of them.”

“But the ballroom is full every night! The money’s got to be as good as ever.”

“Money is unrelated. Would you have me bring new musicians over here now, in conditions like this?”

“Now we are getting to it. Should the rest of us leave?”

“How can I know? Each has his own decision. But you and I,” Lin said, “and the others you have left, we are here. All of us know the risks. A new man, in America? No.”

Thomas was silenced by this.

“Was there something else?” said Lin. “Anya?”

“How did you know?”

Lin smiled. “It shows. You foreigners are so sensitive when it comes to the house thing.”

“Well… first she told me we could not be together any longer in her room, and that I would have to rent a room for us to meet. I did that.”

Lin nodded; the strategy was well known to him, and he saw little wrong with it. “Why should two rooms be paid for?”

“That’s what she said. Except that now I am responsible for her rent. And she wants me to give her money, too, every week.”

“And how else do you expect her to get money?”

Thomas stared.

“You want her to go with another man?” Lin asked, serving his friend more soup. “Let me ask you: What work did Anya do when you met her?”

“I don’t know. She had that room-she sang a little in clubs, she performed.”

“That is not enough.”

“So you’re saying she got money from men?”

“As all women do, even wives. In my view, this is unimportant. What matters is, what kind of woman is she?”

“A good woman.”

“I agree, and lovely too,” said Lin. “By the way, what man did she see before you?”

He bristled faintly. “I wouldn’t have any idea.”

“But I would,” Lin said. “It was an Italian, an embassy man.”

“How do you know that?”

Lin raised his palms. “I have eyes. I live in Shanghai. You should not be so hard on her, you know-how else do you expect her to live?”

“I am starting to see your point,” said Thomas, thinking that now it made sense-her wildly divergent social circles, the instant recognition she commanded from people, club patrons, doormen, waiters. She was just trying to get by.

The bai jiu had made Lin Ming professorial. “Actually, Little Greene, this type of woman is as precious as jade. She is not like a wife. Anya is there when you want her, not there when you do not. Who would not desire her, in Shanghai, especially in times like these?”

“What about your woman?” said Thomas. “You told me about her once-but not much.”

Lin thought of trying to describe Pearl, but decided Thomas could never understand a Chinese woman. “Well water and river water do not mix,” he said.

Thomas left their lunch and walked up Dong Men to Ming Guo Road, which circled the Chinese City and led him to the beginning of Avenue Joffre. The long avenue lined with shops and impressive buildings would eventually take him back to his part of Frenchtown. As he walked, every beautiful woman he passed made him think of Anya, and wonder what he ought to do. He had spent quite a few nights in the greatest intimacy with her, doing everything men and women could do, yet they were not really close. He was to blame, clearly, for he had kept her in a small, circumscribed part of his life. He had always gone home to sleep in his own bed. But that was because he did not love her.

So he would not go on like this.

The awareness was like a weight floating off of him, as he understood that their time together would end. He would make sure she was secure, and he would leave her happy.

He would miss her forthright hungers and her bliss in their joinings. He would miss the way she took him into Shanghai’s back rooms and secret salons, even though through her, he still had not met a Communist. Maybe they did not exist.

He approached the corner of New Yuyang Street, and Anya’s words came back to him: Communists? The Foreign Languages School on New Yuyang. He turned down the narrow road, lined with Shanghai’s usual three- and four-story brick apartment buildings, dotted with groups of somnolent old men and gossipy grandmas, the only people out on this hot June afternoon, except for the rickshaw coolies who had no place to go, and were stopped here and there along the cobbled sidewalk, napping beneath their awnings.

Ahead, he saw a sizable building with a white sign out front, English words that made his midsection flutter in excitement: Foreign Languages School. He withdrew to the shade beneath some plane trees across the street and willed himself to blend in, straining to disappear against the green backdrop as he studied the doors.

The strange thing was that almost no one passed through the doors, at least no one he could see clearly; they all seemed to hunch over and get away as quickly as possible. He picked out a middle-aged, scholarly-looking Chinese gentleman, two threadbare office clerk types, and a young woman who looked like a student, and held a scarf over her face.

And then another woman stepped out, and he sank backwards. Her form and her elegantly controlled walk were familiar to him; even though her face was half-shielded by the hand she held up, he knew it was her, Song Yuhua.

He pressed against the ivy-thick wall behind him as she checked up and down the street, her shoulders pulled forward around her.

She’s one of them. In a blazing instant, he understood the oddities, like the manic light in her eyes when she ripped Morioka’s card from his hands, so at odds with who she was in the company of Du. She had another life, he saw it-in the trenches where the Communists fought Japan, and the Nationalists fought the Communists. And she does it right under Du’s nose. He pressed back into the waxy leaves, breathless at her bravery, as he watched her hurry away down the street.