Shanghai (110 page)

Still, he was not dismissive. No, with the Assassin still on the loose his position was too precarious for that.

Then he remembered the red-haired
Fan Kuei
who had been stripped naked and tethered to a post on the Bund. He recalled that the man had disappeared just before the Assassin and his Guild headed toward Nanking. Could it have been the same man? And if it was, was he with the Assassin?

He summoned his aide and issued a single order. “Find the red-haired
Fan Kuei
and bring him here.” The aide nodded and turned to go, but the Confucian stopped him with a clearing of his throat. “And the boy. If there is a boy, bring them both to me.” The man nodded again, and the Confucian gave him a limp-wristed wave of his hand. “And be quick about it.”

The city's thousands and thousands of prying eyes turned and began searching for the red-haired
Fan Kuei
. But it was a small boy who found him first—found him because a honeypot in the Chinese Old City smelled like a White man's.

* * *

FONG WAS WORRIED that he wouldn't be able to continue to watch. He was very tired. He had finished
his rounds as the sun rose, then done his chores around the Zhong house before disappearing to look for the White man in the depths of the Old City. It was not hard to watch the door from which the honeypot had come. There were many street people, and he simply sat on the curb across the way and waited. But it was already late in the afternoon, and he had nodded off several times. If he didn't get some sleep he wouldn't be able to complete his route that night, and his grandmother would beat him. He was about to give up when he saw a young boy—a Chinese boy with beautiful, delicate features, maybe two or three years older than him—emerge from the house across the street. But it wasn't the boy that drew his eyes. It was the set of glass beads he wore around his neck.

Then the boy turned to him, and Fong knew he had been spotted. He leaped to his feet, but a strong hand grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and ran him across the street.

The man had a cobra tattooed on his wrist.

Fong tried to struggle, but the man was very strong, and quickly he was hauled into a sub-basement and shoved against a wall.

The door was slammed shut and a lamp lit. The man with the cobra on his wrist demanded, “What are you looking for?”

Fong didn't really know what to say so he said the first thing that came into his head. “My father.”

Loa Wei Fen absorbed that, then said, “Your father is not here, boy.”

“Your son has a necklace,” Fong blurted out.

The man with the cobra tattoo called out a name and the boy stepped into the room. “This boy was trying to steal your necklace.”

“No,” Fong protested, but before he could say more a very White man with red hair stepped into the room.

Maximilian said in English, “What's going on here?”

“Loa Wei Fen thinks he was trying to steal my necklace.”

The
Fan Kuei
stepped closer to Fong and wrinkled his nose. In very good Shanghainese he said, “You don't smell so good, son.”

Fong answered in Shanghainese, “Neither do you.”

The White man laughed at that. “So I've been told. So I've been told many times.”

Fong reached into his pocket and pulled out the two glass beads his father had given him and he said to the boy, “I have beads too.”

The Assassin had them from Fong's hand in a second. “Where did you steal these?”

“I am not a thief. My father gave them to me.”

“The father you're looking for?” asked Maximilian.

The boy nodded, then tears sprang to his eyes. “Please help me find him. He's my father, and I haven't seen him for so long.”

Quickly Maximilian drew the story of his father's leaving from Fong, then returned to the glass beads. “You say your father gave these to you?”

“Yes.”

“And where did he get them?”

“At the theatre.”

“He bought them at the theatre?”

“No. They fell.”

“Fell?”

“From the History Teller's neck. He was wearing the necklace when he played the Princess in
Journey to the West,
and it broke and the beads fell—and my father picked them up.”

“And stole them.”

“No. No. No. My father would never. He returned them to the History Teller after the play was over and the History Teller gave him two to keep, and he gave them to me just before he left to make things fair.”

“I believe him,” the boy said in English to Maximilian.

Maximilian was nodding. “As do I, son.” Then he turned to Fong and said, “Tell me how you got the beads again.”

Fong told of the Peking Opera,
Journey to the West,
that his father had seen the History Teller perform. And of the stick indicating that he was riding—and the stick coming up and cutting the necklace from the History Teller's neck.

When Fong had finished his story, Maximilian turned to the boy at his side and said in English, “Those beads that you wear came from your mother's neck. This boy's beads came from the History Teller. The beads are unique. I've never seen their like. Your mother may have something to do with the History Teller.”

The boy's hands touched the glass beads around his neck and said, “My mother and the History Teller?”

“Perhaps.”

Loa Wei Fen broke in. “We still have a problem. This boy here has seen you. There's a reward for your capture.”

“I'd never tell,” Fong shouted, “never!”

Maximilian was tempted to laugh but thought better of it. He sat beside the boy and said, “I believe you, but others might force it from you.”

Fong shook his head so violently that Maximilian was frightened the boy would hurt himself.

Fong looked at the boy and said, “Is the
Fan Kuei
your father?”

The boy shook his head and said, “He's my father now. My other father's dead.”

Suddenly Fong drew a quick breath and a huge sob came from him. “So is mine. So is mine.”

Maximilian pulled Fong close and ran his fingers through his hair. “Don't be frightened. You're among friends here.”

Fong turned his head into the White man's chest and sobbed until he couldn't cry any more.

* * *

IT WAS VERY LATE, and Jiang heard a sound at her bedroom window. Then she felt the breeze as the Assassin swung into her room. Jiang lit a lamp and said, “There are doors to this place, Loa Wei Fen.”

“And guards on the doors who would be only too happy to collect the reward for my capture.”

“True. Why are you here?”

He told her of Fong, and of the reward on the street for the capture of Maximilian and his boy.

“How old is this boy of his?”

“Eight. He was born in Nanking.”

“Huh,” she said, “twice the age of my daughter.” She watched carefully to see if there was a reaction forthcoming from the Assassin to her Japanese daughter—there wasn't one. “Hiding the Chinese boy won't be too hard.”

“He won't leave the
Fan Kuei
. He thinks of him as his father.”

“That makes it difficult.” She rose from her bed and poured herself some hot water from a thermos and took
a sip. Finally she turned back to him and said, “There is someone who is in my debt who may be able to help us hide a very White man in an Asian city.”

—

The History Teller was shocked when he turned to see Jiang in the back of his theatre during rehearsal.

He put the actors on break and walked up the gentle rake of the audience to where Jiang stood.

Without preamble, Jiang said, “You owe me a debt.”

“True,” the History Teller said.

“I want my debt repaid.”

Warily the History Teller said, “If I can, I will.”

“You can. Trust me. You can.” She turned and called gently. A shy, bespectacled, Japanese-featured girl came forward and took her hand. “You have to go back to my sister now,” she said in passable Japanese. The girl nodded. “This is the famous History Teller, Akiko. Say hello.”

“Hello,” the shy girl said in Shanghainese.

“And this is your …”

“This is my daughter, History Teller, and the repayment of your debt will arrive after moonset this evening. Prepare yourself.”

—

Jiang delivered her message to Loa Wei Fen in person.

“Tonight?” he asked.

“After moonset.”

He nodded.

“What?” she asked.

“And our young intruder?”

“After the red-haired
Fan Kuei
and his son are gone, you can disappear?”

“Easily.”

“Then there is no reason to hold the night-soil collector.”

The Assassin thought about that. There was something to this boy that touched him. But he nodded.

—

An hour before moonset, Loa Wei Fen brought Fong back up to the street. “If you come looking for us, we will not be here. So just go home, boy.”

Fong hesitated.

“What?” the Assassin asked.

“Can I have back the beads my father gave me?”

The Assassin reached in his pocket and put the beads in Fong's small hand.

“Thank you,” the boy said, then turned to go—took two steps and stopped. Then he was in Loa Wei Fen's arms, holding him close.

Loa Wei Fen patted the boy's head gently and said, “Be brave, boy. It is time for us all to be brave.”

Fong nodded, although he was already tired of being told to be brave. He looked down at the beads in his hand, and when he looked back up, Loa Wei Fen was gone.

—

As the moon set, the dust from the old seats filled the shafts of light coming from the stage, making the air sparkle. On stage the History Teller, in full Princess attire, executed a complex series of steps, then reached
up and pulled down a long peacock feather from his headdress and put it in his teeth. He arched his back, turned toward the seats, and struck a one-legged pose that took the Assassin's breath from him.

Knowing it was a man in woman's costume somehow made it that much more fascinating.

The Assassin let out a hearty “
Hoa!
” and the History Teller, still in his pose, swivelled his head in Loa Wei Fen's direction. Then he turned away, completed another series of intricate steps, somersaulted—seemingly without touching the stage floor—drew his bamboo stick with the horsehair trailing from it, and travelled across the stage with such grace that his head never bobbed—as if his feet were not actually moving.

Jiang offered her “
Hoa!
” this time, from the darkness behind Loa Wei Fen, and the History Teller stopped. The scarlet lines of his makeup had begun to run into his white underpaint, looking for all the world like blood-tears.

Then the Princess from the East magically became the middle-aged History Teller as he walked forward and sat on the edge of the stage, a towel around his neck.

“Are you ready to repay your debt?”

The History Teller nodded slowly. “An honest man repays his debts.”

Loa Wei Fen gave a low whistle. A side door opened. Maximilian and his Chinese son came through the door quickly and shut it behind them. They stood in deep shadows.

The History Teller stood and walked quickly into the wings of the theatre. The stage lights snapped out and a single light bulb on a stand in the middle of the stage came on.

The Assassin tensed, then turned. The History Teller was behind him.

“I have seen you before,” he said.

“Where?”

“Years ago, somewhere else, long, long ago, in a play.”

Loa Wei Fen was aware of his famous ancestor who had indeed performed for an earlier History Teller, but he dismissed the idea that it was this to which this History Teller referred.

The History Teller turned to Jiang and said, “I owe you much thanks.”

“For what?”

“I have learned much about playing a princess from watching you.”

Jiang, for the first time in a very long time, blushed. “You honour me.”

The History Teller touched her face with fingers so light that she wasn't sure he had really touched her, but a shock of desire shot through her. Then sadness—such deep sadness that she turned from him, not wanting him to see her face.

The History Teller stepped back and said, “Bring my guests to the stage.”

Moments later Maximilian and his son stepped onto a stage for the first time. The single light bulb behind them put them into silhouette and threw long shadows into the audience.

From the darkness of the auditorium the History Teller said, “Can you lift the boy?”

Maximilian did and held him in his arms.

Loa Wei Fen tried to figure out what the History Teller was doing.

“Now turn slowly to stage right. No, that's stage left, turn to your right. Good. Now lift him above your head.”

Maximilian did as he was instructed.

“
Hoa!
” the History Teller shouted, then bounded up to the stage.

Maximilian put his son down and looked at the slender, middle-aged man in the Princess costume and full makeup and didn't know what to say. But he managed, “Thank you for helping …”

“You were the naked man who tore the skin from his body, weren't you?”

Maximilian looked to the Assassin, then answered, “Yes.”

“And this is …?” he said, looking at the handsome, delicately featured Han Chinese boy at his side.

“My son,” Maximilian said.

The History Teller looked at the boy, who met his gaze without blinking. Then the History Teller turned to the darkness of the audience and said, “Did you bring your Japanese daughter, Jiang?”

Loa Wei Fen responded, “It was too dangerous.”

“Ah,” the History Teller said, then looked back at the red-haired
Fan Kuei
and his Chinese son and said, “It is a new world when a White man can have a Chinese son and a Chinese woman can love a Japanese rapist's child.”