Shanghai (47 page)

Maxi didn't doubt that, but he chose to say, “Your English is very good.”

“You are generous. It is only good because your Mandarin is execrable.”

“
Execrable
's a serious word for a new English-speaker.”

“
Execrable
sounds like what it is—sluicy, loose shit.”

Maxi nodded. “Never thought of it that way. Don't actually think I've ever heard the word
execrable
used in a proper sentence.”

“Do you miss your wife?”

The question surprised Maxi. He'd managed not to think about her. “I was unable to keep her safe.”

“Yes. That's true, but it's not what I asked. Do you miss your wife?”

Maxi thought about that for a moment, then said, “Have you been married?”

The History Teller nodded as a sadness crossed her lovely features. “A long time ago, and only briefly. Typhoid took him from me.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

The History Teller shrugged her slender shoulders. “So, do you miss your wife?”

“We were very different. She never learned any English or me very much Hakka. We communicated …”

“With touch?” the History Teller suggested.

Maxi nodded. “Yes. She was a good woman. Honest and hard-working, and she loved the children.” He paused for a second, then added, “She was assigned to me by the second King of Heaven. The King of the West.”

“Ah, Jesus' other younger brother.”

Maxi nodded.

“And why do you think you were assigned this wife, while most Taipingers were kept strictly away from the opposite sex?”

He looked at the History Teller. At her strong features. The elegant way she held herself. Her full lips.

“Answer my question, please.”

Something deep inside Maxi opened and a long sigh escaped his lips. He knew the answer to her question, had known it from the beginning, but had never admitted it, even to himself. But here, with this beautiful, mature woman sitting before him, he said simply, “To report what I was doing to the authorities.”

The History Teller nodded. “So you don't really miss her in your heart?” Maxi didn't answer. He didn't have to. Suddenly tears came to his eyes. “Don't,” she said, “your makeup will run, and you don't know how to put it back on yourself.”

“How long do you think I can get away with this charade?” Maxi demanded.

“That, my friend, depends on how well you learn your part. Play your part well and no one will guess that the man beneath the hideous makeup of the Lost Peasant is in fact the second most wanted man in the Middle Kingdom.”

* * *

THE ASSASSIN had been expecting an order since the night, two days back, when he had seen a man in the front row of the audience stand on his entrance and signal with his fingers the same way his father had taught him all those years ago. Loa Wei Fen had waited for an order—longed for it. And there it was, on the underside of his writing stone, etched by an unknown hand but with his uncle's chop affixed to it to lend it credence: “The Lost Peasant is the red-haired
Fan Kuei
—he and his daughter are to die—but it must be a very public death so the rebellion will never reform and terrorize the people of China again.”

The cobra on his back uncoiled slowly as he took his swalto blade into his right hand and slid it slowly across the writing. Thin, even sheets of soapstone came away, and with them the message, until all that was left was his uncle's chop, and the yearning to fulfill his destiny.

At the end of the week the troupe approached Chinkiang. Sitting on the north-east bank of the Grand Canal and the Yangtze, the strategically placed city had been handed over back and forth between the Manchus and the Taipingers. It was now a highly fortified city, fully in Manchu control.

When the troupe approached the west gate they were ordered to stop and lie face down on the side of the road. The company—and Maxi, who, like about half the company, was in full makeup and costume—did as they were ordered. The springtime sun became slowly hotter and hotter as the day progressed, and still they were left face down by the roadside. Maxi was afraid that his makeup had sweated away and hesitated when, after a Manchu officer's shouted order, the troupe slowly got to their feet.

Maxi carefully moved behind the tallest of the actors and bowed his head.

“So, History Teller, we meet again!” The voice belonged to the Commander of the Manchus to whom the troupe had been traded for two sows at Nanking. “And I see your pretty head has avoided finding its way to the end of a Manchu pike. My congratulations. Welcome to my new posting as Commander of the Empress's Manchu forces here, in Chinkiang. Well, enough of that. What are you going to do for your …. ah, I know,” he said with an odd tilt of his head. “I command a performance—a full performance of your masterpiece.”

“It is a very long play.”

“The people of Chinkiang need something to take their minds off their misery. What better than the misery of the characters in your play? Right?”

“When would you like this performance?”

“Tomorrow, starting at midday and going for as long as it takes.” The Commander of the Manchu forces turned to leave, then stopped and turned back to the History Teller.

“Yes, Commander?”

“Just this, History Teller—welcome to Chinkiang, City of Suicides.”

—

“When will you learn how to put on your own makeup?”

“Maxi, my name's Maxi.”

“I know your name,” the History Teller said. “I've known your name since you first arrived to watch a rehearsal in my mother's establishment.”

“Brothel. Your mother's brothel.”

The History Teller bobbed her head in acknowledgment, then took the small metal trowel and scooped out the white paste and began to apply the base to the
Fan Kuei
's face. As she continued to work the makeup deep into his skin, she looked down and saw Maxi staring up at her.”

“Why do you stare?” she asked.

“You're very beautiful.”

He said it so simply that it took her by surprise. To cover her embarrassment she said, “Your Mandarin is awful.”

“You ought to hear my Hakka, if you think my Mandarin is awful. How's your English today?”

“Eloquent, erudite, and acute,” she responded in highly accented English. A smile creased her face.

“Sounds like English, but I've never heard those words before. What do they mean?”

“You are staring again. It's impolite.”

“I don't care, unless it bothers you.”

“It doesn't.”

The simplicity of her response caught him off guard.

“I've been staring at you since the first time I walked into your rehearsal, what was it, nine or ten years ago?”

“Nine years and two months. On the second day of the month of the Rat.” She tilted his head back so she could apply the dark eye makeup. “Look over my shoulder.”

“Can't.”

“What?”

“Can't stop looking at you.” Then he slid a hand up her thigh, and she pivoted her hip to allow his hand access to her as she squeezed her legs on either side of his knee and allowed herself to be moved as the world is moved—by the restless winds of a lonely heart.

“What's your name?”

“I'm the History Teller.”

“I know that, but what's your name? Or perhaps you don't know your name.”

“Oh,
I
know my name—it's you, Maxi, who doesn't know my name.”

—

The audience was crammed into every available space as the play, under the blazing sun, began. The excellence of the company's performance brought the audience to its feet over and over again. The play continued as dinner was served to the Manchu nobles. Others had brought their own repasts, but the crowd was quiet. A true rarity for a Chinese audience.

—

The History Teller sometimes did her best writing in the presence of her own work. And it was so that day, as
Journey to the West
began its meandering but inescapable voyage toward heartbreak. She allowed the sights and sounds of the play to move past her, and forced the enthusiastic crowd response into the background. And there she stood, apart from both the play and the audience, facing her new project, a
story that she'd been tinkering with for months—that of an arhu player whose music is so rapturous that those who listen fall in love. The musician is surrounded by love—but he himself is utterly and totally alone. He is called to the homes of the great and powerful, to the deathbeds of the lowly, to the arranged weddings of merchants. And everywhere he plays, love flowers.

The History Teller didn't have to be told how close this was to her own life.

—

At the beginning of the fourth hour the Monkey King made his first entrance, and every person in the audience knew that something serious about the evening had changed. Even the actors, who were used to the odd energy of the private boy-man who played the Monkey King, were startled by the height of his tumbling and the energy that seemed to flow from him.

By the sixth hour the Serving Man was approaching a high mountain stream with his Princess of the West in tow, and he was met by the Lost Peasant, his wife, and little girl.

Maxi was having trouble in his costume. The costume mistress had changed one of the straps, and it restricted the mobility of his left arm—his sword arm. The plump actress playing his wife followed him onstage carrying Maxi's daughter in her arms. She stopped and threw her sleeves high in the air to signal her distress. Maxi executed the moves he'd learned, and the crowd howled with laughter. Maxi was always surprised by that. He thought he was doing exactly what the History Teller had taught him, but the audience
immediately pegged him as the comic relief. Fine, just so long as they didn't peg him as the red-haired
Fan Kuei!

—

The History Teller had outlined the basic scenes of her new play about the arhu player, and several had already been committed to paper. But she knew her own process, and she knew that she was stuck. She also knew that the way forward was to find the very centre of the idea, the cry of the heart that propelled everything else—and that cry would become the title.

She knew the final song of the musician as he tossed aside his ancient arhu and left the realm of men and women. She knew the lyric of the chorus was:

The raindrops fall

One, then another

On the hard ground

Until finally wisdom,

The true gift of the gods,

Blooms.

 

She also knew that although this lyric was close to the very centre of the idea of the evening, it was flawed—fell somehow short of what she wanted to say. She repeated the lyric in her mind as she allowed her attention to return to the performance.

—

Maxi opened his arms, as he had been taught to do, to indicate that the Lost Peasant's wife and child should follow him. Suddenly the crowd stood as one and
pointed toward upstage left. Maxi turned to see what had taken the audience from him, and there he saw the boy-man who played the Monkey King in full makeup, hanging from an overhead beam by one hand as his other hand reached inside his tunic.

—

The swalto blade turned in the Assassin's hand and found its purchase. The boy felt his head swivel on his neck and heard the
click click click
of his vertebrae, one at a time, twisting past their previous locked positions. Then the sharp tang of the acid from the snakeskin on the swalto's handle filled his mouth. His tongue traced the length of the smooth snakeskin handle as his testicles retracted into his body—ready.

—

“Papa!”

Maxi spun around and saw that his little girl was crying, reaching for him, and calling his name loudly. He took one step toward her, then heard the sharp whine of wood yanked clear of its nails. He looked up.

—

“
Always attack from above. Always from above,
” the voice of his father, who for all those mornings had taught him the skills of an assassin, whispered in his ear. He felt his father's hand on his shoulder. “
Do your duty for China
,” the voice said, as it had at the end of every morning's training session. But this time the boy heard not only the words, but also the
loneliness in the voice and a desire to reach out and touch.

“I will, Father. I will do my duty,” he said aloud.

—

The History Teller rose from her seat at the back of the audience and shouted, “No!” and pushed her way through the thick crowd that separated her from the stage.

—

Maxi saw it happening right in front of him but somehow in unnatural slowness, in the way that shadows emerge from deep caves. The boy-man Monkey King had a knife in his teeth as he dropped from the beam. In mid-air he turned his body in a full somersault and fell face first toward him—the knife a shard of death pointed at his heart.

—

Joy surged through the boy. He felt his own elegance. He was a thing of inestimable beauty. A god falling to himself. Something worth the love of the History Teller!

—

Maxi felt a weight in his arms, and time snapped back to the frenetic present. His daughter was in his hands. How had she gotten there? The girl wasn't looking at him, but at the knife plunging toward her.

—

The History Teller climbed over three people who wouldn't let her through and flung herself toward the front of the stage.

—

Maxi lifted his left arm to defend the girl from the blow, but his arm snagged on the newly fitted costume. He tugged, and the new tie snapped free just in time for him to slide his daughter to safety before he fell to his knees on the hard stage floor.

—

The red-haired Fan Kuei's sudden fall caused the Assassin's perfectly aimed dagger to miss its target and slice cleanly through Maxi's shoulder and upper arm. Then it cut straight down the outside of the man's leg and lodged several inches deep in the stage planking.