The Shanghai Murders

DAY FIVE

At 8:15 A.M. the next morning the consulate car arrived at her hotel. A young man hopped out and opened the door for her. As he climbed in he said, “Mrs. Fallon, I’d like to offer my deepest condolences.”

She was already tired of hearing that. She nodded.

“The consul general also regrets that he’ll be unable to meet with you today.”

Anger rose up in her throat but she choked it down. “All I want to do is arrange for my husband’s remains to be returned to the United States.”

“That’s already been looked after.”

“Excuse me?”

“As soon as the Shanghai coroner’s office is finished with its work, Mr. Fallon’s remains will be put on the first flight back to New Orleans.”

“Is his body at the coroner’s office?”

“Yes, as I said-”

“Then let’s go there first.”

Evidently flustered by this suggestion, but unable to find a reason why they shouldn’t go there first, he barked directions to the driver in Chinese. Then he picked up a cellular phone and, with an “Excuse me,” dialled a number. He spoke in fluent Chinese. Amanda watched him closely.

Something was wrong with all this.

“Who are you calling?”

“I’m leaving a message with the consul’s secretary.”

It was only later that it struck her as strange that he was speaking Chinese.

At the coroner’s office they were met with resistance. All the talk was in Chinese, but it seemed that the coroner was not in the office and that no one had the authorization to allow anyone into the morgue.

“Tell them I’m the dead man’s wife,” she said to the man from the consulate.

He translated and immediately the Chinese words took on a solemn tone. Amanda was sure that if she had listened closely she would have heard the Chinese word for condolences several times. Finally the American turned to her and explained that without the coroner present, no one was willing to take the responsibility for letting her in. Then he made some crack about Reds not being able to pick their noses, begging your pardon, ma’am, without a written authorization.

So more quickly than she expected she was back in the car with the man from the consulate. As they pulled away from the morgue Amanda caught a glimpse of a tall building two blocks over that she could have sworn was the Hilton. But that couldn’t be, because her hotel was beside the Hilton and the car ride to the morgue had taken almost forty-five minutes.

Out of the side of her eyes she looked at the American.

He didn’t seem in any hurry. In fact he looked as if he was trying very hard to kill as much time as he could.

As they drove she asked, “Where to now?”

“I can take you to a funeral parlor. You can pick a casket or arrange for cremation. We’ve arranged transport for your husband’s remains but the actual funeral details we’ve left to you.”

“I’m not concerned about that now. How did my husband die?”

“I’m sorry to say he was murdered.”

“I’m aware of that. I’ve been told that several times. How? How was he murdered?” Like the need to see your mate’s new lover and ask for details, she was desperate for specifics.

“I really don’t know, Mrs. Fallon,” said the consular officer, as if he’d been asked something not discussed in polite society.

“Bring me to my hotel, then.”

In a remarkably short time, she found herself disembarking from the consulate car. Once outside she asked, “Can I see the consul general tomorrow?”

“We’ll do our best. He’s booked tight for a week, but call the consulate first thing in the morning and ask for me and I’ll see if he can squeeze you in.”

“Can you arrange for me to see the body tomorrow?”

“Of course, if the coroner is there.”

Amanda looked at him and thought that he was joking with her. But upon a closer look it became clear that there was no joke here. Just a bland face that said nothing and implied that you could not get it to say anything that it didn’t want to say. As he turned to the driver, about to give him new instructions, Amanda pulled open the door of the car.

“Mrs. Fallon?”

“The Shanghai police are looking after the investigation. Right?”

“Actually Special Investigations, Shanghai District, is.”

“And who could I contact there?”

“The head of Special Investigations is a detective named Zhong Fong, but he is a very busy man, Mrs. Fallon.”

“I’m sure, all those business meetings he must be attending.” With that she less than gently shut the door and turned toward the hotel.

Getting the number for Special Investigations proved more difficult than she thought. Shanghai, unlike Moscow, does have phone books but they are of course in Chinese. They are also notoriously inaccurate. But, with the concierge’s help she finally got a number.

She returned to her room intent upon a bit of privacy while she made the call. It took her several tries before she got up the courage to complete the seven-digit number. Like calling a boy when you’re a teenager, she thought to herself. Finally she completed the call and was met with a Chinese “Wee” on the other end.

She said, “Zhong Fong please,” and waited.

On the other side she heard some talk in Chinese and finally another voice came on the phone with another “Wee.” It sounded French this time. Once again Amanda said, “Zhong Fong please.” She heard a general discussion on the other side. The discussion stopped abruptly. Amanda called into the phone, “Hello,” but there was no answer. Then the phone went dead.

For a moment she felt the unfairness of it all. She wondered what the fuck she was doing there. She wondered what to do next. She wondered if the Chinese breakfast she had eaten that morning was upsetting her stomach.

Later that day she got the concierge to make the call for her. He was told that Inspector Fong was not in at the moment. “Leave a message for him, will you. Tell him that Richard Fallon’s widow is in Shanghai and would like to speak to him.” The concierge did so and Amanda retreated to her room on the fourteenth floor. The maids had come in and done up her bed. She turned on the TV and got the CNN world service, which proceeded to tell her that if she lived in Hong Kong she could see Larry King Live at 11:00, in Kuala Lumpur ol’ Lar came on at 1:00 and in Pusan at 12:00. Amanda wondered briefly where Pusan was and then turned off the television.

She leafed through the hotel directory and found a health club listed on the fourth floor. She called down and learned that she could use the gym, pool, and weight room without an additional fee and also that there were swimsuits there if she wanted to use them.

The health club turned out to have some surprising features. A bowling alley for one. Young middle-classlooking Chinese couples were bowling just as if they were in Toledo, Ohio.

At the pool it looked as if it were “Bring Your Secretary Day.” Along with a number of young male executive-looking types who kept hopping out of the pool and using their cellulars were numerous secretaries, all in one piece swimsuits and incongruously floating inside red rubber rings. They were busily frog kicking-perhaps to keep down the cellulite on their thighs? That’s the only reason Amanda could come up with for their peculiar behavior. Periodically one or the other of the women would let out a scream as her pretty face slipped too near the water. Immediately her handsome boss would “rescue” her with more body contact than was strictly necessary considering that the pool was never deeper than five feet.

Amanda handed in her room key and was given a large white bathrobe, a purple towel and a locker key on a Velcro wristband. In the locker room, festooned with signs in English and Chinese proclaiming the hotel’s innocence should any of the patrons’ possessions disappear from the lockers, she removed her clothes and locked them away in her designated locker. Then, with the robe on, she headed for the sauna.

It was clean. It was hot. It took the tension out of her body. With her head leaning back against the sauna’s red-wood slatting, she reviewed her progress over the last few days. It occurred to her that having come all the way to Shanghai she might consider leaving her hotel and its westernness even if just for a short while. Then she thought of danger and how unfair it was. If she were a man. . . but then she remembered that Richard had been a man and the one thing that no one was denying was that he was very dead.

She reached into the wooden water bucket and sprinkled a few drops on the coals. They gave off a gratifying hiss and splutter. She rolled her robe into a ball, placed it at one end of the bench and stretched out. The heat of the wood felt good against the back of her legs. The scent of the redwood filled her nostrils. And the heat took her back. Back to a place where heat made the loving so special. “Be cool in the heat, baby,” he’d said. “Gotta be cool in the heat or we’ll slap and slosh and no one but the laundress will be pleased with the outcome.” That was only seven months after she’d married Richard. Seven months of frustration and feeling fat. Seven months of not writing or even really thinking. Just being Mrs. Richard Fallon. Then she’d met this real southerner who hated air conditioning but loved to “do the dance, Cher. Find the rhythm and do the dance.” And he was good in the heat. Bodies only touching where they had to. Standing. Leaning over. Mirrors to see. Hands to touch and grace. Joined but not on top or on bottom. A delicate balance in the heat. A blessed relief from the mistake of marrying Richard Fallon.

She’d been told that men changed once they got married but she really only believed that happened to other women. Women who couldn’t keep their men’s attention. And keeping men’s attention had never been a problem for Amanda. The problem was that the Richard she had married became a new Richard after they got married. He became obsessed with money. His interest in the wildlife issues of his work seemed simply to stop. The few friends from work whom she had really liked stopped coming around. When she would call them she clearly got the impression that they were happy enough talking to her but that they no longer cared to socialize with her husband. Richard seemed encased in an invisible shell. As if a deep solitude had descended upon him. Then the calls began to come in the middle of the night and then the business trips. And a secrecy that was not there before came between them, as easy to feel as a Canadian front blowing into New Orleans to relieve the humidity of summer. Their small house in the Garden District filled up with things she’d bought, but none were hers. She no longer really lived in the house in the Garden District with the man named Richard Fallon. For he was not the outgoing warm man that she had married. He was a silent man, a man alone.

The chatter of a Chinese woman entering the sauna, buck naked, with a cellular phone stuck to her ear, broke the spell of the heat and the smell of the redwood. Amanda sat up and headed toward the shower.

After her cold shower she dressed, got her key, and went back to her room. The message light was on. She called down to the desk and was told that an Inspector Fong had returned her call. They gave her a number to call and assured her that it would be answered by someone who spoke English.

She thanked them and dialled the number.

The phone was picked up on the first ring. “Forensicks, Lily talking.”

“I was given this number to call to get through to Inspector Fong.”

“Dui, right, you called here, good yes. Name please.”

“Mrs. Richard Fallon.”

For a moment Amanda thought she heard the words Dim Sum something or other said to someone standing near by, then Lily spoke into the phone. “Inspector Zhong not here now.”

“When there?” Amanda almost shouted into the phone, annoyed that she’d been reduced to speaking pidgin English.

“Inspector Zhong want to talk to you but not here.”

“Where Inspector Zhong?” Pidgin again!

“In theatre. Shanghai Theatre Academy on Hua Shan, 630.” Then the phone clicked off.

Fong looked at Lily. He wasn’t pleased.

“Lady sound desperate for seeing you, Zhong Fong.”

Then, in wonderful saucy Shanghanese, she added, “This lady in front of you is more than desperate, this lady waits in sweet anticipation for seeing you.”

Fong’s face didn’t break a smile.

Finally in English Lily said, “So I shitted up, don’t fuck on me.”

Fong was unable to top that so he shook his head and headed home. His only solace was the fact that few people, Chinese or otherwise, were clever enough to find the academy, let alone the theatre in the academy compound. And Richard Fallon’s widow didn’t sound all that bright.

Geoffrey Hyland was winning at a game that he had played since he was first paid to direct a play at the tender age of eighteen. He was guiding human material into art, using a play as a template but not a score. He didn’t direct the way a conductor conducts a symphony. He worked more like the lead player in a jazz ensemble. He set the theme, and made sure that everyone else knew the key signature and the tempo and then off they went: improvising freely from each other to create something that lived and breathed, had rough edges-was of life itself. All he demanded was good listening and real talking from his actors. He insisted that they play the “what game.” If someone, anyone on stage at any time, spoke a line to them that didn’t make sense, that they couldn’t believe or in any way seemed “actorly” they were to say “What?” At which point the partner had to redeliver the line, sometimes many times, until some real signal was passed. At first, the actors were reluctant to use this technique; to them it implied condemnation of a fellow actor’s work. But once Hao Yong, the brilliant young actress playing Viola, used it against Feste and then used it again and again to get the old charlatan to finally give her something real to playoff of. . . well, they were off to the races. And race was the right metaphor. An emotional race with which everyone onstage and Geoffrey in the auditorium had to keep up. It was early but already exciting.

Geoffrey’s Mandarin had improved greatly from the time eleven years ago when he first worked in Shanghai on The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, but he still worked with an interpreter at his side. Even in that first play, by the end of the second week he seldom needed his interpreter’s help. Geoffrey, like many stage directors, quickly memorized the script as the actors worked and hence knew where in the text the actors were at each moment. Although he could not exactly pinpoint which Mandarin word was which English word, he could always identify the emotional shifts required in the text and was able to see whether a shift was played by the actor or not. It was for this reason that the language was not a real barrier. If the States of Being were right, and that was something Geoffrey could see, and the actions played were right, then the image (that part of acting contained in the word) would basically look after itself. At least that was true in texts like Rita Joe where the language was not really of the essence. It was obviously less true of Shakespeare texts.

Geoffrey held up his hand for a moment and called out “Hao” (good). He turned to his interpreter and asked Hao Yong to join them. She was now in her late twenties but she still carried herself like the teenager she had been when she played Rita Joe for Geoffrey those eleven years ago. Since then, she had been in a show a year for Geoffrey, sometimes more. She was talent that walked and talked. Not pretty, but so alive that when she smiled you smiled with her. In the eleven years she had learned a little English, enough to hold her own at lunch with Geoffrey from time to time. Enough to have been his lover briefly some seven years ago. Before Fu Tsong.

“Help me with the language here.” He pointed to the Viola/Olivia scene and the three of them went through it line by line. “When you read this translation, Hao Yong, does it feel like Viola is falling under the power of Olivia?”

For a moment Hao Yong looked at Geoffrey and then with an apologetic shrug of her slim shoulders turned to the translator. There followed a rapid and animated conversation in Shanghanese which left Geoffrey completely at a loss. He loved the way the Chinese actors talked about things like this. For years he thought that every Chinese conversation was a yelling match, but now he didn’t think so. Now he knew they were yelling matches.

He watched Hao Yong’s face with a growing pleasure. As a student she had been truly brilliant. As a professional actor she was one of the few who was able to overcome her training. She had shucked off the old Stanislavski stranglehold and was in freefall. An artist of true power. But after all these years how little he knew of her. He had never been to her home. He knew that she was married now but he’d never met her husband. He didn’t even know if she was an only child; it was likely that she was as she’d been born in the onechild era. But she carried herself and used the knowledge of one who came from a more extended family.

One of the strange ramifications of the single-child policy in China had been the loss of one of the basic communication tools for an actor. Actors use simple family relationships (father/son, older brother/younger sister, husband/wife, lovers, etc.) to convey to an audience the nature of more complex relationships. When an actor goes to work on, say, the relationship between a teacher and a student, the actor playing the teacher chooses father/son while the actor playing the student chooses younger brother to older brother. The ability to find conflicts even on the basic level of relationship greatly enriches performance. From the audience’s perspective they ’get’ teacher/student because they identify with it as either father/son or older brother/younger brother. But with the single-child policy, the basic knowledge of brothers and sisters has been diluted if not lost. It has removed a potent weapon from the actor’s arsenal. Some claim the other loss is that single children never learn how to play properly. Being the only child that the parents will ever have, the child is put under enormous pressure to succeed. Nightly, parents do the child’s homework with them. Weekends are often spent preparing for the child’s examinations. Getting into university has become an obsession in China. During the final callbacks for entrance to the Shanghai Theatre Academy, the 120 finalists, who had been chosen from over 2,800 applicants from across China, arrived on campus with parents and grandparents in tow. They were dressed and preened and poked like show dogs. It occurred to Geoffrey that the loss of sibling feeling and the loss of the ability to play could have serious effects on a society as a whole. But his mind did not travel comfortably in the world of sociopolitics.

Hao Yong turned to him and touched his hand to bring him back to the present. What an enormous advance in contact that was. They had worked on three shows together before he felt it acceptable to touch her in any way. Her cool hand tapped the base of his palm and in accented, but pretty English, she said, “You think Viola love Olivia?” Her eyes twinkled. After all this time, she certainly knew that was precisely what he thought. “Yes, me too.”

“Good,” he said, “but does the language support that?”

“No,” she said, “but the silences do.”

She smiled at him and for a moment he wondered how he ever let her get away. Then he said, “Hao” and was about to let rehearsal start up again when Hao Yong smiled at Geoffrey and said, “Viola is narcoticized to Olivia.”

Geoffrey was lost and turned to the translator. A brief moment later, his translator, now embarrassed, said, “She says that Viola is addicted to Olivia.”

Seeking clarification that he did not really need, Geoffrey asked, “Addicted but not drugged?”

After a moment of conversation in Mandarin, Hao Yong squatted on the stage, her dress tucked between her knees, so that her face was at the height of Geoffrey’s as he stood on the auditorium floor. “No, Geoffrey,” she said, her eyes dancing again, “not drugged-addicted.” Then a smile erupted across her face. She turned back to Olivia and, spreading her arms, sang out, “Build me a willow cabin at your gates. . .”

From the back of the house Fong watched the interaction between the delicately boned Hao Yong and the awkward white man. He was not surprised. He had been around Fu Tsong long enough to understand the casual nature of contact in the theatre. He had also heard the rumours about these two. Fu Tsong’s response to the rumours had been interesting. It had angered her.

Fong held Fu Tsong’s massive complete works of Shakespeare in his lap. It had Mandarin translation on the left-hand pages. He was following the text as they rehearsed. He agreed with Hao Yong. Viola was not infatuated, she was addicted. This whole play was about love as a driving need which, once experienced, puts everything else into a false light. Addiction.

Fong took out his note pad and jotted down the word.

Fong’s English did not go to the extent of words like serendipity or synchronicity, but as a policeman and as an easterner he found these ideas above questioning. Two murdered men, ivory, and addiction-but how did these pieces fit together?

Loa Wei Fen was surprised when he found out the address of the sender of the e-mail. No, surprised is the wrong word. He was shocked. For the first time in many years, something akin to fear tickled down his spine. He slowed his pulse and slid his breath into a deeper section of his lungs. The tickle went away. He had learned this basic trick many years before. As a child in the monastery he would wake the other children when he screamed in his sleep. The monks tried everything to stop him but failed until the Old One took him to his bed. There in the fastness of sleep, when the dreams took him, the Old One awoke him and taught him where fear lives. Taught him the breath that relieves the fear, taught him how to release his chi.

There was never any sexual contact between the two men. In fact Loa Wei Fen was technically a virgin. His life energies were directed from the groin, not to it. The entertainments of the flesh had frequently been offered to him, but they held no allure, no fascination. His focus lay elsewhere.

As his martial training continued he slowly learned how to release the energy of his chi into his fighting. On the day that it first exploded through his arms, he threw his partner so hard that the other boy’s ribs cracked and a shoulder blade snapped as he hit the floor.

Loa Wei Fen had no idea what had happened, where this strength had come from. But his teacher knew. The Old One was brought in and from that day on, Loa Wei Fen did not see the other boys in the monastery. He ate alone. He meditated alone. It was only in lessons that he met others-teachers. Martial arts teachers. Fighters of every technique. Then one day in his eleventh year, his fifth at the monastery, his third since he was put into isolation, a young Mongolian woman appeared in the fighting room. She appeared alone and spoke none of the common tongue. For days and weeks she spoke at him as he sat in perfect stillness until finally her words began to fall into patterns. Phrases moved into his consciousness and eventually he understood her.

Her broad dark face was a mountain terrain. There was life deep in her eyes. A glimmer of knowledge. At the end of their first month of daily sunrise-to-sunset meetings, she reached into her robe and pulled out a Mongolian swolta-a six-inch double-sided blade with a pin-sharp point made out of tempered steel hard as diamond. A carved serpent coiled around the handle. She was about to order him to close his eyes and turn away from her, but her thought had already conveyed itself to him. Yes, he was gifted.

Then, with the swolta, she marked him.

The blade did its work deftly in her hands. An eye on each deltoid and the line of life that joins them arching down toward the centre of his back. The cuts had to be deep enough to mark and the blade was nothing if not capable of such cuts. Then she rolled the knife handle in the blood from Loa Wei Fen’s back. Without her needing to ask him, both of his hands reached out, waiting. Yes, of course, the chosen will work with both hands.

He put his hands behind his back, palms facing each other and stretched far back virtually closing the cuts. She slid the knife between his palms.

Loa Wei Fen remembered the first touch of the knife. Slick with blood, the serpent had rolled in his hands. Rolled from one hand to the other, finding an ideal perch in each, then rolling back to the centre.

The Mongolian watched with pleasure as the knife, seemingly on its own, moved in the boy’s hands, still stretched taut behind his back. After a moment the boy took a slow deep breath and, rolling his arms full circle in their shoulder sockets, brought the knife up over his head. Then he put the bloody hilt of the blade in his mouth and rising, he flared his marked deltoids.

The cuts opened like red rivers on his flesh.

She was pleased. The cobra’s hooded mask was clearly carved on his back.

As he stood on the Promenade facing the Bund he allowed the nerves in the skin of his back to trace the line of the cobra. Full circle clockwise on the left eye, then down the line of life and up to the other eye, which he traced counterclockwise. Loa Wei Fen felt the snake’s hood open as he looked at the building directly across from him. It housed the District of Shanghai Central Police Administration. It was also the building from which the e-mail had been sent.

Amanda found the streets confusing. The best map that the Shanghai International Equatorial Hotel could come up with was one that showed, in great detail, where all seven of the Esprit shops were located but hardly bothered to name most of the streets. She managed to get reasonably good directions from the concierge and then was forced to ask him, “Is it safe, for me to walk to the Shanghai Theatre Academy?” Being assured that it was not only quite safe but also quite nearby she headed out with a vague idea at least in what direction she ought to head.

Once on the street she came nose to nose with a large street map at one of the bus stops. Labelled OFFICIAL STREET MAP OF SHANGHAI 1989, it was infinitely better than the one that she held. Esprit didn’t sponsor the old one. Progress she guessed. Even at ten o’clock in the evening the streets were crowded with cars and bicycles. She stood at the corner of Yan’an and Hua Shan and waited for the light to change. As she waited the world passed her by and everyone from children to old women crossed the street. So she ventured forward. It was a mistake. There is an art to crossing Shanghai streets. An art that she had not yet mastered.

Eventually managing to get to the other side, she walked along Hua Shan knowing that the academy was on Hua Shan. She reasoned that by following the street only three or four blocks as the concierge said she was bound to come across the school. She passed by the Hilton and the Bank of China building and crossed another street, which seemed to lead her to a more residential area.

There were many people sitting on chairs on the narrow sidewalks taking the night air. Fruit stands were still open and small pineapples, which had been skinned and carved to remove the eyes, were on prominent display, their bright yellowy orange pulp a tropical temptation. Several times the sidewalks were clogged with bicycles, forcing Amanda out onto the street. And everywhere people looked at her. She was tall in a short world. Blond in a dark one. White in a brown one.

A leather mini-skirted young Chinese woman, with dark brooding eyes, openly evaluated Amanda as she passed.

Continuing, she crossed Julu Lu and sensed that something was wrong. She looked at the street sign on Hua Shan. It was in Chinese characters, thanks a heap. She crossed the street and looking back noticed that the street sign she had looked at was in English from this side. So, she recrossed the street and looked at the sign. It said Chong Shu. What? She hadn’t gotten off Hua Shan or had she? She doubled back the way she had come. The leather-skirted girl was still in her doorway and her laughter was not the least bit good-humoured as she saw Amanda coming back.

At each corner Amanda checked the street sign. She discovered that the signs were set up for drivers, not walkers. So at each street sign she grabbed the post and swung out into the road to read which street she was on. She finally came to the corner of Chong Shu and Hua Shan and realized that Hua Shan, on which she had started, simply made a right turn without notifying anyone. By staying straight on you were dumped onto Chong Shu. Okay, fair enough, she thought. Lesson learned.

She crossed the street toward King’s Bakery, knowing that the school should be on that side. As she did, movement in a glass window beside the bakery caught her eye. Her breath stuck in her throat. Several large snakes were in the window, many rising up to get a good look at her.

She hurried on. She passed the Jing An Hotel, which had a high wall with glass embedded in the top. Then she passed a lengthy area of what looked like stunted scarred elm trees, after which on her right she saw the small polished plaque for the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Thank God it was in English, she thought.

Across the street was the Marco Polo Night Club. Some fancy cars were parked there. And lots of neon suggested untold pleasures within. She turned away from the Marco Polo and back to the school. She was face to face with a problem. A gate. A locked gate. No door and a locked gate. Inside she saw a diminutive old woman pouring hot water from a thermos into a large glass jar with what looked like seaweed in the bottom.

Amanda called out to her. The woman ignored her. Amanda called again. The old lady hollered something back at her, no doubt something nasty, and walked away. When she was gone, an old man hobbled out of the gatehouse and stared at Amanda. His grizzled face wore a smile. Amanda had to stop her immediate revulsion at being stared at and her knee-jerk antipathy to his Mao jacket. Finally he began to point to the other side of the compound. Point and make circular motions of walking with his fingers. After a lot more pointing and much more smiling, she finally got the idea that she was to go around to the other side of the compound. The side that was on Yan’an-a straight, uncomplicated walk up the street from the Shanghai International Equatorial Hotel! She sighed. Second lesson. Addresses are not addresses are not addresses in Shanghai.

The trip around was uneventful. By the time she had to repass the snake place, its iron shutters had been pulled down. The walk up Yan’an was a little more interesting than the one up Hua Shan. Some stores were still open, as were little kiosks where you could buy anything from beer to tampons. At one point there was a small red car up on a two-story-high iron beam. It sat there at the junction of two streets. Amanda wondered briefly if they were advertising these peculiar little cars or the strength of the beam that held it. Behind the thing was a partially demolished three-story house that at one time must have been quite elegant.

Passing by the raised car she finally found the Yan’an entrance to the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Not fancy like the Hua Shan entrance but open, which was far more important. She walked into the compound and was immediately faced with the fact that she had no idea where exactly she was going. Fortunately for her, the gatekeeper on this side had gotten Fong’s message, and as he was to tell his wife later, “It was not hard to pick out the albino.” He signalled for her to follow him. She did with only a little trepidation.

They walked past a building whose six stories were completely surrounded by lashed bamboo scaffolding. Amanda had never seen anything like it before. They passed several elegant old Chinese-style buildings with swinging windows on their upper floors and finally she was guided into a low building whose foyer smelled of the washroom which was no doubt nearby. She looked back at the gatekeeper. He signalled for her to go through the next door. She did and was immediately greeted by the scent of thick dust mixed with years of dampness.

The dim overhead lights cast more shadow than illumination but there was a brighter light on stage. And up there was a white male-thank Christ. And he was speaking English to one of the Chinese women. In the theatre several people were sitting around, talking and smoking. Lots of smoking. Onstage the white man was evidently trying to make some point through the Chinese lady whom Amanda took to be an interpreter.

The person on the phone had indicated that Inspector Zhong would be in the theatre, but little else. She assumed that a policeman would be easy to pick out. But there wasn’t anyone there who stood out to her in any way except the white man on the stage.

With an exasperated sigh she sat down in an aisle seat. The dust literally rose around her. The broken seat back bit into her. The seat was too low, the arm rest too high. What the fuck was she doing here?

Just as she was about to leave, a smallish Chinese man, square across the shoulders with the casual walk of one used to physical activity, approached her.

If this guy tries to pick me up, I’ll deck him, she thought.

But Zhong Fong had no interest in picking up Amanda Pitman. He found her large features anything but appealing and the colour of her skin was like the white sauce that Fong refused to eat when he was a child. The length of her legs, below the hem of her skirt, surprised him. He would prefer to meet this lady sitting down. So he sat in the seat behind her and before she could get up in protest he said in his best English, reminding himself of the r sound, “Mrs. Richard Fallon?”

With a sigh of relief, Amanda said, “Inspector Zhang Fang.”

They always did that. He thought it proper to start things on the right foot so he corrected her. “Zhong not Zhang, and Fong not Fang.”

“Well, while we’re at it, Ms. Amanda Pitman, not Mrs. Richard Fallon,” snapped back Amanda, none too pleased with the opening gestures of this game.

He saw the flash in her eyes and the rise. It surprised him. What really surprised him was that he liked it. He smiled. “Welcome to Shanghai, Ms. Amanda Pitman.”

To which she replied, “Thank you very much, Inspector Zhong Fong.”

Turning her eyes to the stage she said, “Is this part of the investigation into my husband’s murder?”

“In a way.”

“What way?”

Fong was decidedly displeased with the tone of that. She was surprised at her own approach but it was on the table so she let it sit.

“This is China, Ms. Pitman. Perhaps more to the point this is Shanghai. This is not New Orleans. You are not a citizen here. I am seeing you as a personal favour, not in the line of duty, is that clear?”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

“How much did they tell you about your husband’s death?”

“Not much. Time and place. They also intimated that an open casket funeral would not be appropriate.”

Fong needed clarification on that. His English did not extend to esoteric areas like funeral rites. When he finally got the idea he was shocked. Clearly they had told this woman only the barest details of her husband’s demise.

“You are Richard Fallon’s wife, yes?”

“I was, yes.”

“I could use some more information about your husband. It could prove useful in apprehending his killer.”

“Would now be convenient?”

“Not for me, no. I would like to see you in my office.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Well, no. Tomorrow I’m going to relive the last six hours of the life of a man who was killed by the same man who killed your husband.”

“Can I come with you?”

For a moment Fong missed the idiom and then he got it. His immediate impulse was to say no but he didn’t. He paused. His world was changing. Everything was in flux. Why not police procedure too? He nodded then looked toward the stage. Geoffrey was talking about addiction again.

Geoffrey was always aware of everything that went on in his rehearsal, be it on the stage or back in the auditorium. So Amanda Pitman’s entrance did not escape his attention. How large she looked in the context of Asian women. How very different from Hao Yong, let alone Fu Tsong. Yet there was something appealing about this big blond American. He was sure that she was an American. As a Canadian who had spent almost fifteen years of his life living in the United States he had no trouble picking an American out of a crowd. Unlike many fellow Canadians, he rather liked Americans. But the total victory of America at the end of the Cold War put America everywhere. Shanghai was loaded down with American images. Everything from the huge Marlboro Man billboard on the Nanjing Road side of People’s Park (Mao must be rolling in his grave) to the endless T-shirts with logos for American sports teams that so many Chinese young people wore. Dammit, Sprite was China’s national drink!

It was really only the language barrier that kept the Americans at bay. Unlike Europe where English is either sharply on the ascendance or already king, in China there were very few English speakers and English and Mandarin were so different that no amount of goodwill could cross the linguistic barrier.

Geoffrey remembered being approached on the Promenade across from the Bund several years back, before he spoke much Mandarin, by a man who began with “I English. You friend, ho-kay?” Geoffrey had been in Shanghai long enough to know that these seemingly innocent approaches were always the beginning of an attempt to sell services, but he didn’t mind.

Geoffrey continued walking but the man kept up with him.

“You tourist?”

“Well, no. In fact, I’m working here at the Shanghai People’s Theatre.”

That clearly was beyond this man’s English, so Geoffrey changed the subject. “What do you do?”

The man smiled and lifted his shoulders. Geoffrey recognized the man’s dilemma, being a formidable smiler and shoulder lifter himself in like circumstances. So he rephrased. “Work? What? You?”

A smile crossed the man’s face. Why didn’t the stupid white man ask that the first time? “Engineer, I.”

“Good,” responded Geoffrey, more than a little surprised that he had gotten through.

“Engineer, I. You?”

“Theatre director, writer, me.” He knew the word for writer although it had taken him several days of practice to get it down, “Zuojia, wo.” A look of utter confusion blossomed on the Chinese man’s face. Geoffrey knew that he had the right word but he could very well have had both the wrong pronunciation and the wrong intonation. Evidently the man believed Geoffrey had said something very peculiar and was going to ignore it. Geoffrey hoped he hadn’t implied something rude.

“American?” he asked.

“Mao (no), Canadian.”

A smile lit the Asian’s face. “Ottawa capital.”

The smile seemed to say that all this man’s hard work had been worth something. “Shide (yes).”

“Married?”

“Shide. You (ni) married?”

“Yes, girl.”

“You have a girl?”

“Shide, just one. Girl one. Government say no more. Ni?” “Two, a boy and a girl.”

Conversations with the Chinese always eventually came around to children. He was always saddened when he admitted that he had two children to their one. It was a moment of embarrassment of riches that he couldn’t defend. Even saying that he had a son while the man he was talking to didn’t, created a moment of real tension. Usually the Chinese person smiled politely, but whatever possibility of communication, of actual contact, however slight, was then at an end. A gulf always yawned at that point. A gulf of culture and reality.

There followed more smiling and shoulder lifting. Eventually the man pulled out a set of stamps and an old coin he had for sale. Geoffrey declined as graciously as he could.

Geoffrey noted that language was clearly not a barrier between Fong and the white woman. Fong’s English was good. Fu Tsong had made sure.

Having just arrived in Shanghai, he had no desire to spend his time in the company of white people, so upon breaking rehearsal, Geoffrey hustled out the side door. Besides, he still had his questions about Fong and the death of Fu Tsong. Questions that he was anxious to ask the investigating officer who had, seemingly out of nowhere, contacted him earlier in the day.

The officer’s name was Wang Jun.

That night, in the safety of his Portman hotel suite, Loa Wei Fen allowed the memory of the kill to come back to him. The African’s heart had wrapped itself around the knife. Its life had surged up the blade and almost thrown Loa Wei Fen back on his haunches. This was a kill that was different from all the others. This was a man with great power. A man whom he was lucky to have surprised so thoroughly. He remembered the tearing sound as the blade cut through gristle and snagged on tendon. He remembered the battle to cut the heart. But most he remembered the pounding of his own heart as for the first time he saw that he was taking a life that was worthy.

He remembered that the black man’s heart tasted of bile and Loa Wei Fen knew it moved him farther from the edge of the roof. Away from the leap that would finally put his life on the path-the tao.

Ngalto Chomi’s half heart received a reception comparable to that of Richard Fallon’s. The hotel differed, the men in the room differed, but their reaction, as mentioned, was the same.

Fong had offered to drive or walk Ms. Pitman back to her hotel but she declined. She just asked him to walk her to the Yan’an gate and point her in the right direction. For a moment Fong thought to follow Geoffrey but then decided that his duty was to help Ms. Pitman.

As they emerged from the dim theatre into the clear night sky a whisper of wind picked Amanda’s perfume off her shoulders and tickled it beneath Fong’s nose. He was startled by its effect. Up his nose and directly into the rhinencephalon part of the brain and bingo-memory clarion clear.

She was holding out her hand and saying something before he realized that he hadn’t been listening.

“Well,” she said, withdrawing her hand, “I’ll see you at what time?”

Feeling more than a wee bit foolish he covered by saying, “No need to start until eleven. I’ll send a car for you.”

“I can find my way, just tell me where I’m going.”

“Fine. I’ll meet you at the entrance to the bird and fish market off Cheng Dou Road.”

She tried to say Cheng Dou several times and couldn’t get it quite right so he spelled it for her. Like so many Europeans, she learned better from the letter than the sound. So unlike Fu Tsong, he thought, who learned English whole, mostly from movies. Movies she watched on the VCR that Geoffrey Hyland had given them. Movies she watched snuggled in close to him, her perfume whispering memories that he stored in the rhinencephalon part of his brain.

All he could think as he watched them from behind the costume shop was that they made a strange couple. The handsome blond woman and the delicate Chinese man. Almost a reversed yin and yang, thought Geoffrey. Almost.

April 21

Dearest Sis,

Yeah, that’s right, it’s your big sister writing you. It must be years since I’ve written a letter, but if you recall, sweet thing, I used to write to you all the time. Shit, I used to write all the time and not just to you. Well, I feel like writing again and you’re the target so read it and enjoy it or give the stamp to that nephew of mine or let little Beth chew it into tiny bite-sized pieces and spit them at her brother. Do with it what you will.

The Victorians left us a heritage of beautiful personal letters. What are we leaving? In fifty years some moronic university type will get a Ph.D. based on Eccentric Phone Messages of the Late 20th Century-“Sorry we’re not home leave a message.” “This is the house of pain, the house of pain, the house of pain, leave a fucking message.” “If you don’t leave a message at the tone, we’ll bomb your house and dance in the ashes.” Stuff like that.

This letter has something to do with flying over the pole. That’s the route JAL takes to Tokyo. And it’s not that “looked at clouds from both sides now” crap-I always wanted that honey to lighten up-it’s the sense of majesty down there. The endless miles of ribbed ice on the Mackenzie River, the daunting mountains leading into Alaska, range upon range upon range, and then the sea-a dream of chilling no-moreness. But peace too. Solemn and simple, a rest from the burdens. I thought of Mom. Her quiet sadness as she padded round and round the house in those final years. A woman pulled inside with her own quiet. The thing that lived inside her eating her living flesh to keep itself alive. And coffee on the table late at night with her in that tattered bathrobe she claimed belonged to Dad but both you and I know didn’t. And the smell of bourbon in her coffee. And the smell of the drugs on her breath. And the retreat in her eyes. She’d never flown over the pole. She’d never gone anywhere.

But I’m here in Shanghai, in an American-style hotel with a bunch of other white folks and some rich Asians. I remember seeing Karasawa’s film Ran, did I see that with you? It’s his version of one of the Shakespeare plays, Lear I think. At any rate, I was in New York-having some girlish fun-and it was a cold rainy Wednesday afternoon so I checked into this movie theatre on 61st to see Ran. I remember now I wasn’t with you. Yes, I surely do remember that I wasn’t with you. No, I’m not going to tell you who I was with. At any rate the movie starts and being a Karasawa film it’s set in medieval Japan in the period of warring states. Well the thing is almost four hours long but for the first hour and a half each of the actors didn’t change kimonos, or if they did they kept to the same colour of kimono, so us westerners naturally were following the characters by the colour of their clothes. But then about an hour and a half in, they leave the country and enter the city, and all of the characters change clothes (and colour). Well, there is a moment of consternation in the audience and then some guy calls out in a loud New York voice: “Ah, come on, give us a break.” The place broke up. Everyone began to guess who was who. “No, that’s the guy who used to be in the red with the feather on the front.” “No it’s not, it’s the one who was in blue with the flags on his back.” It was a hoot.

Well, I thought that then. I don’t now.

I met with Inspector Zhong today, a small elegant man with tapered fingers. He’s going to fill me in more tomorrow on Richard’s death. I know that you thought things were not good between Richard and me. Well, you thought right, they weren’t. There was always something missing.

Walking back to the hotel today I passed by a small antique shop on Chong Shu. In the darkened window I could make out the shapes of elegantly curving teapots. All shapes and sizes. In the back there was a velvet case with ten small teapots in declining size from a grapefruit down to a Ping-Pong ball. Each was a perfect thing and complete in and of itself. But together they were a complete “other” thing. Different from the sum of their parts. They were a completed dream, a realized idea, a whole. When I got married I received some very beautiful gifts. Often a lot of thought and care went into picking them. But I kept hoping as I opened the gifts for something. . . something. Richard got angry with me. “What the hell are you looking for? What do you want?” I couldn’t explain then. But after looking at that set of ten teapots I now know. I wanted something complete. A whole idea. It’s what I think I wanted from Richard but could never have.

I’ll buy the teapots tomorrow for Beth. I’ll give them to her on her wedding day.

From Shanghai, with thoughts of you and yours,

Your sister,

Amanda