Shanghai (105 page)

Not only were the Japanese in no hurry to enact the Nazi “Final Solution,” they set up a system run by an officer, Kanoh Ghoya, who awarded Jews passes, allowing them to leave the ghetto during the daylight hours. Blue passes were good for a month and pink for a week—and they were given out totally on the whim of the diminutive Ghoya-san. On one occasion, after making hundreds of Jews wait for an entire day in the freezing cold, he drew himself up to his full four-foot, eleven-inch height and announced to the frozen Jews seeking passes that they were “lucky as hell” that he was “the King of the Jews.” No one laughed.
No one dared. These people had seen short Nazis be as cruel as tall ones.

With their passes, most Jews sought out work that was hard to come by. Many scoured the garbage for scraps of food. Many others begged. Some prostituted themselves. And in one notable case, a young girl was given over to a wealthy family in exchange for medication that was desperately needed for the girl's mother.

Living conditions throughout the vast city were deteriorating quickly. Corpses were piling up on the streets, garbage was no longer picked up, and beggars were everywhere. Only the resourceful Zhong clan kept up their business—night-soil collecting.

And yet there was still luxury in the city at the Bend in the River. The nightclubs were now filled with Japanese and German and Italian soldiers—and every conceivable luxury good could still be bought on the black market.

* * *

THE CONFUCIAN PACED SLOWLY back and forth across his balcony. He had been searching his Analects for days for an indication of an appropriate time to move. Today seemed as propitious as any. He took two pigeons from their cages and released them, one to the south to Canton and the Republican Confucian there, and one to the north-west to the Communist Confucian.

He watched the birds as they dwindled to white dots, then disappeared. Then he looked down at the murky waters of the Huangpo River that led to the Yangtze, which in turn led to the sea. It had defined direction, he
reminded itself, unlike the arrow that he had just launched into the sky. Then he turned from the river and allowed a smile to his thin lips. It was a beginning—a beginning to the rightful return of Confucian power.

* * *

F
ROM THE
H
ISTORY
T
ELLER'S
N
OTEBOOK
:

 

I walk slowly along the Bund Promenade. The great trading ships are dwarfed by the ships of the Japanese Imperial Navy. But in my mind, both sets of ships are dwarfed by the story that is slowly uncoiling in my mind and working its way first to paper then to stage. I stop exactly where the naked
Fan Kuei
was tethered to a post. There are conflicting stories—of course there are, this is Shanghai!—as to what fate befell the naked man. Some say that he took off so much skin that he slipped his handcuffs and swam to freedom in the Pudong, across the Huangpo River; others believe that the Chinese Communists freed him; others that the Japanese killed him in the night and dumped his naked body into the river.

I doubt that any of these is correct. There has always been something at work in Shanghai that is beneath the surface, unseen but undeniably here—like an underground river, not seen but constantly felt. Exactly what that something is, I cannot guess—but it's old—very old. It is not the cold I sense approaching, because this is vibrant and alive. At times as I write I tap into the subterranean current and find myself pulled along, sometimes pulled under, by its vast, ancient strength.

I reach into my pocket and remove the remains of the necklace I gave Chiao Ming on her fifteenth birthday. It has been in my pocket since it arrived with the simple three-word note:
“What Was Ours.”
She loved that
necklace. Why, except in death, would she part with it? I hold the baubles up to the brilliant sun. The light parses then parses again as it traverses the glass. “Into its essence and its shadow,” I say in a loud voice.

Your essence remains with me, Chiao Ming, although I know you have followed your shadow into the darkness. I look down at your necklace. The light no longer penetrates the glass. My tears prevent that.

I unsnap the latch and lower the necklace, bead by bead, into the hole into which the pole was buried, to which the naked man was tethered.

Somehow I know that the two of you must be together, intermingling—joining—to make something new, never seen before beneath the heavens.

A
coup de théâtre.

A miracle birth.

* * *

THE ORDER HE RECEIVED from the Shanghai Confucian was so dangerous that it almost made the young Communist Confucian sick. But he obeyed, and every night when the second Soong daughter, Mao's mistress, came to him, he whispered suggestions in her ear—even as they brought on the clouds and rain in what was, except for his words, complete and utter silence.

Their first meeting had been the very night he saw her naked in the moonlight. The howling of the wind and the blowing sand had covered her movements and swallowed the creaking of his hut door as she pulled it open. “Who's there?” he'd whispered as he felt beneath his bedroll for his weapon. When he'd cocked it she spoke from the darkness for one of the few times in their
encounters: “If you shoot Mao's mistress, his wife will no doubt kiss you, but the Chairman of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China will rip your heart from your chest. Now put that gun away and lie back.” The wind had swirled into the hut and made it hard for the young Confucian to be sure what else she had said that night, but he thought her final words had been, “… and enjoy it.”

And, despite the risk, he had enjoyed it.

During the days their paths often crossed as he went about his official record keeping for the Party, but he did his best never to look in her direction. Although he found it hard and often caught himself staring at her.

“Read me back that last question,” demanded Deng Xiao Ping.

Suddenly Mao snatched the pen from the Confucian's hand. “Wake up! Wake up or I'll have you woken up.”

The Librarian's large face, not yet familiar to the people of China, let alone the entire world, was inches from his. He'd never noticed the slightly reptilian blotchiness of the Chairman's little-girl-smooth, clearly very sensitive skin.
Like a toad's belly,
he wanted to say, but managed to look down at his notes and read, “But we were routed, despicably defeated. What else would you call our retreat all the way to here, the middle of nowhere?”

He spoke slowly, entirely without inflection, and was greatly relieved when Mao turned away from him and addressed the men and women around the table. There was an odd grin on his face as he said, “A victory. I would call it a great victory for the human spirit.”

It was then that the young Confucian sensed her smiling. He'd never seen her smile before. Or was she laughing at him? It suddenly occurred to him that,
through her, he was connected—albeit in an odd way, as any lover is related to a cuckolded husband—to the strongest man in China. He tore his eyes away from the Soong girl and looked to Mao.

“All our defeat needs is a name,” Mao said. “A romantic name.”

The faces around the table remained impassive. No one was willing to commit until it became clear where all this was going.

“A way for the people to be proud of it.”

“So they won't remember the huge losses we suffered?” asked Deng Xiao Ping.

The air in the room snapped with electricity as the two men, who had been comrades in arms for almost twenty years, stared at each other. No one dared look at either man. Then Deng Xiao Ping smiled, lifted his hands, and said, “Why not? What name do you suggest?”

Now that it was clear which way the wind was blowing, suggestions were offered by many around the table.

That grin crept across Mao's broad features again. “The Long March,” he said. “From now on, we will refer to our retreat by one name and one name only—the Long March.” He took out the small red book he always carried with him and made a note. Then he added, “Even the longest voyage begins with a single step.”

The young Confucian could have told him that this was a bastardization of a well-known Taoist saying, but even if he could have corrected Mao, he would not have done so—sleeping with his mistress was dangerous enough.

Mao quickly eyed the men and women around the table, always on the alert for telltale signs of opposition. There were none. They all remembered the fate of
General Zhong, the last man to seriously challenge Mao's power. He and Mao had argued publicly over the wisdom of continuing north—on the Long March. Zhong had eventually taken his army west toward Russia, only to be massacred by Moslem tribesmen well before he and his troops got anywhere near the Russian border. There were persistent rumours that Mao had sent word to the tribesmen on General Zhong's route that allowed them to ambush and kill almost half of the General's men. Most of the rest of his soldiers starved to death in the western wastelands. General Zhong himself, in an unexpected appearance at a colloquium held at the University of Toronto in 1971, confirmed Mao's treachery. Until then, it was believed that he had died with his men. But he had in fact been running a dry-cleaning store, without fanfare, for years in a small place called Don Mills, Ontario—a place that had one very good Chinese restaurant.

Like Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, the Taiping leader, before him, Mao continued to distribute land to peasants wherever he went. The “new landowners” formed the wide base of the pyramid upon which his power rested—that and his knack for public relations.

Mao made another annotation in the small red book, then asked, “Are there any other items of business?”

“What of Nanking?” the oldest of the soldiers around the table asked.

“The Japanese control it, and we are not yet powerful enough to dislodge them,” Mao said dismissively.

“And the horrors there?” the old soldier bravely persisted, although it was clear Mao did not wish to pursue the topic.

“They will eventually stop of their own accord. Even horror needs creativity to feed its fire.”

That stunned the people around the table. What did creativity and horror have to do with each other?

The old soldier stood. “I have fought at your side since 1921.”

Mao nodded but did not speak.

“I have obeyed orders, never questioned the wisdom of my political betters.”

Mao nodded again.

“We should join Chiang Kai Shek's Republican forces and free Nanking—then Shanghai.”

Everyone felt the tension in the room rise again.

Mao controlled his rage and walked around the table to face the older man. “Would that we had a thousand more like you, old friend,” he said.

The room visibly relaxed, but both his wife and mistress heard the edge of anger—no, fury—in Mao's voice. “Plans are already in the works for just such a meeting.”

The young Confucian put down his pen in confusion. Then he noticed his lover, Mao's mistress, Charles Soong's middle daughter, smile and nod in his direction. So she had taken his whispered advice after they'd brought on the clouds and rain and passed it on to Mao! It took his breath away, and he had to fight the impulse to vomit. He had followed instructions from Shanghai—and now, to his amazement, he had influenced history. The meeting between Mao and Chiang Kai Shek that the Shanghai Confucian had urged him to push through his sexual contact with Soong's middle daughter was going to happen—because of him!

* * *

“NONSENSE,” Madame Chiang Kai Shek said to her Generalissimo, as she scowled at the stoneware on her elegantly appointed dinner table in their Canton mansion.

“Then why?” Chiang Kai Shek demanded.

“Because, sweetness, it makes sense, and if you think about it, dear, you'll know that I am correct about this, as I have been about so many other things.” She tapped a long fingernail to a wine glass—no
tink
—an expression of deep hurt crossed her face.

Chiang Kai Shek was tempted to ask his wife what was the matter, but knew better than to enter such open-ended conversations with Soong's eldest daughter. Instead, he stayed on what he thought was the topic by demanding, “What do you know of such things?” But even before the words were out of his mouth he knew that he could not win this conversation with his forceful, horse-faced wife.

“I know everything of such things, as you well know, dear. Let my sisters and me work this all out. And … while I do,” she looked up brightly, “shoot whoever bought this tableware. It's atrocious.”

Just for a moment Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek wondered if his wife was kidding—but then he dismissed the idea. His wife never joked when it came to expensive things.

* * *

MADAME SUN YAT-SEN, She Who Loves China, bowed slightly as the Confucian entered her home. He had been there often. Unlike her deceased husband, the good doctor, this man was almost a contemporary of
hers. And they had become strangely close. He shared confidences with her, and she had begun to reciprocate.

Finally she asked, “But you are married, are you not?”

The Confucian canted his head slightly as if to say, “A technicality,” although he carefully said nothing.

She served tea. He listened to her concerns about the fate of China and finally said, “But perhaps China's fate is in your hands. Your sisters are both aligned with powerful men. One married the Republican leader. The other …” He allowed his voice to trail off in a conspiratorial manner.

Madame Sun Yat-sen blushed.

“I have been in touch with both of your sisters. They are close to agreeing to meet with you.”

She was startled by both of these revelations. How had the Confucian gotten close to both of her sisters, and why had her sisters agreed to meet with her? But before she could give voice to either question, the Confucian took her hand and asked, “How is your mother?”