Shanghai (50 page)

“Be honest, you wanted to ride for the family all along, didn't you?”

“I always did, Father,” Milo said as a smile bloomed on his handsome face.

“Well, now it's not a matter of wanting.” Richard straightened Patterson's leather saddle on the mare's back and said, “Cinch her tight, son, then mount up. We'll walk her slowly to the track.”

Milo reached under the animal's belly, grabbed the cinch strap, and pulled it tightly through the catch. Then he swung up into the saddle. From his perch on
the fine animal he looked down at his father, who was looking up at him with a peculiar smile on his face.

“What?”

Richard wanted to say,
What a wonderful son you are,
but he didn't. He just chuckled and said, “Son, ride like the wind.”

“I'll make you proud, Father.”

Richard smiled and said softly, “You already have, son, you already have.” He thought for the briefest moment of his promise to Milo's mother and vowed that he would, at long last, write something about Milo—just for her.

—

“Ride, Milo! Ride, son!”

Silas strained to see his brother as Rachel pulled even with the Vrassoon stallion just before the large hedge.

—

Milo pulled back, then loosed the reins on Rachel and she flew—flew over the large hedge and landed at the exact same time as the massive Vrassoon stallion.

Milo heard the crowds screaming as he leaned into the final turn in the track's back stretch, Rachel neck and neck with the larger Vrassoon stallion. Then stride for stride, just waiting to break out of the turn and into the home stretch. Milo knew that Rachel could outrun the heavier animal on the straightaway, all he needed to do was stay even on the curve. Just a few more yards!

He leaned hard in the saddle—and felt something—shift. Had Rachel missed a stride? He leaned forward to
settle her when he felt the saddle move. Then he heard it—something snapping—something metal hit him—and he fell.

As his limber body hurtled toward the track he smelled it again. That dry, musky reek. Then he saw them only inches from his face—hooves—the massive hooves of the Vrassoon stallion.

* * *

THERE WAS NO FUNERAL. No rites. Just a simple pine box and an unmarked grave over which stood a beaten man and a guilty son.

Silas never told his father what he had done to the cinch strap of the saddle that had loosed his brother to his death. Never admitted his guilt. But he knew that he had fulfilled the prophecy that Richard and Maxi had heard from the mouth of the ancient Indian man in the alley in the town near Ghazipur:
Brother will kill brother
. Knew it, and didn't know how he was going to live with it.

—

Richard actively retreated from the world. Even his writing, which always brought him peace, was a torment. He never was able to complete the journal entry about Milo. He refused to see anyone but Lily, then one night he awoke with a start. There was someone in his room. He lit the oil lamp by his bed and was shocked to see Eliazar Vrassoon in the flickering light of the lamp.

Richard had no idea how the old man had gotten into his bedroom, but there he was—the Vrassoon
Patriarch—at one time the most powerful man in all of Shanghai, now a bent thing leaning on a walking stick. But evidently the man was not so powerless because he had gotten into his bedroom, unannounced and definitely uninvited.

The old man coughed. Something red flecked his lips. Then he smiled.

“What are you doing …?”

“In your bedroom? Well you might ask, but I've been in your bedroom before. In one way of thinking, I've been in your bedroom every night of your life.”

Richard swung his legs over the side of the bed and grabbed a silk bathrobe which he wound around himself.

“The other time I was in your room you wore only dirty underclothes—but perhaps you don't remember.”

“Remember what, you—”

“Careful. No need to insult the dying. Whatever reward awaits is already prepared in a manner unforeseen on this earth.”

“More gobbledygook!”

“Really?” Eliazar Vrassoon said under his breath.

“So you're dying?” Richard remarked brightly.

“So it would seem. Then again, we are all dying, my boy.”

“I am not a boy. I am not your boy!”

“You've been my boy since the first night we met. In another bedroom a long time ago—in Baghdad.”

Suddenly Richard knew what kept beckoning him in his opium dreams. The door that always awaited his coming. Not the door, but what was behind the door. Not what, but who.

“You took my sister?”

The Vrassoon Patriarch seemed to sway for a moment, then, through a coughing fit, asked, “Took
your sister? You think I took your sister, Miriam? You believe I stole her?”

“What else could you call it?” Richard screamed at him.

“You are shouting, boy. Why are you shouting, boy?”

“I killed your son,” Richard announced triumphantly.

Eliazar Vrassoon nodded slowly. “With the picture?”

“Yes.”

Vrassoon continued to nod. “By that token you could say I killed your father. But neither claim would be true. My son threw himself from a bridge. You may think you caused it with your photographic invention, but my son was so filled with remorse for his sins that his jumping was just the final act in his tragic life. Just as your father's death was no more than the final act in his comic existence.” Eliazar Vrassoon shuffled his feet, then turned to Richard and in a loud voice said, “Come with me, boy. Your father has agreed.”

Richard felt himself falling. As if the world were suddenly upside down. “What?”

“You heard me, boy. Your father has agreed, and you are the price. Grab your trousers and come with me. Now, boy!”

Richard breathed deeply. The smell of spicy chickpeas was in the room. The cry of the muezzin calling the faithful to morning prayers entered from the window. But how? This was Shanghai, not … the sound of a peacock shrilly screaming a warning … and he was back. Back in Baghdad in his room as a four-year-old boy, and this big man was in his room saying, “Your father has agreed, boy.”

Richard staggered two steps closer and smelled the odour deep in the man's gabardine coat. He looked up
into the man's eyes and the Patriarch was young. Powerful. Full of fury. “Your father has agreed. Now come, boy.”

Richard heard his knees hit the floor but felt no pain. He looked up at the old man leaning on the cane. “You were in my room in Baghdad.”

“Yes.”

“You had come for my sister, Miriam.”

“No.”

Richard felt his insides fall again and suddenly he was tumbling, plummeting down an ancient well, backwards, on a moonless night—falling.

“No, boy. I came for you. As your father had agreed. You were to be my apprentice, in return for which I was to make sure your family survived and got safely out of Baghdad. I came for you, boy. For you.”

Richard nodded slowly and looked up at the old man. “But I was afraid and I pointed toward my sister's bed.”

“You were afraid, perhaps. But you didn't point toward your sister's bed.”

“I did—toward her bed.”

“No.”

“I did!” Richard was screaming again.

“No. What Jewish family would put two sons in the same room with a daughter?”

The truth of that pierced Richard's heart. Something was falling away. His skin? His bones? His heart?

“You took my hand, walked me to her door, and opened it for me. Then you traded, boy. You traded your sister, Miriam, to me so that I wouldn't take you. You even offered me your brother, Maxi, as part of the deal. You traded like any stinking kike of a Jew boy. You
made a deal. You sold her to me. Four years old and already swinging deals. What a Jew you are!”

“Go to hell,” Richard managed to say weakly.

“That's not really your decision to make, now, is it? Besides, you don't believe in a heaven or a hell. Be that as it may, boy, wherever I go, I'm sure you'll shortly follow. Oh, by the way, you seem to have pissed your trousers, boy.” Then he laughed and made a motion with his hand as though tipping his top hat. “Good night, Richard Hordoon. I'm sure we'll meet again in another bedroom another time—of that I have no doubt.”

After that night Richard seldom chanced sleeping. And with an ever-increasing frequency he turned to opium for relief from his waking dreams of opening a door and pointing at his baby sister and begging, “Take her. Take her, not me.”

And opium, Richard Hordoon's true love, opened her arms to him and he succumbed to her—completely.

Wherein the interlocking lives of three great Shanghainese families—the Hordoons, the Soongs, and the Tus—are revealed. The book also relates the strange history of the removal of the Narwhal Tusk from Shanghai.

December 31, 1889

Silas was shocked when he realized where his nightly wandering had brought him. As the growing city prepared to celebrate the new year—the new decade—he had walked aimlessly, allowing Shanghai itself to dictate the direction of his steps. Since he'd murdered his brother Milo, he'd walked every night, regardless of the weather, and through his evening ramblings he had found the concealed entrances and exits to every alley; every tiny store and stall on the innumerable side streets; all the secret entrances to the Warrens; the main routes into and, more importantly, out of the still wild Pudong; and, of course, every inch of the Foreign Settlement and the
French Concession—every part of his home at the Bend in the River.

Home
, he thought.
That which has finally opened my heart
.

Silas felt the subtle motion of change within. The city—his city—had worked its ancient alchemy on him, turning cold stone to soft gold. Just as opium had opened doors in his father's soul, so had Shanghai opened cracks in Silas's defences and sent down roots to break the adamantine granite surrounding his heart. One day he passed by a street doctor and for the first time he knew exactly where the next acupuncture needle would be inserted; another day he spotted the finest river stone in the stone seller's collection, despite the fact that the crone had cleverly hidden it beneath two entirely nondescript rocks; another day he allowed his hand to touch the hip of a courtesan and for the first time felt the pulse beneath the skin. Shanghai had awakened Silas Hordoon. At first he had thought it was just the death of his father—as though the removal of such an enormous shadow had simply allowed the sun to reach the son. But whatever the reason, Silas Hordoon's heart was opening, and the most eligible of bachelors in the city at the Bend in the River smelled, beneath the heady aroma of the late-night incinerators, the reek of ozone, and was ready for change.

Two lovers had found the most elusive of all commodities for the poor in Shanghai—privacy. In the mouth of a darkened alley their bodies enmeshed as one lithe thing. Silas was about to smile when he saw where the city had led him … to this place. This place that he had not seen for ten years. But even as he pushed open the low door he knew who he would find. Who would always be there between the floating layers of opium
smoke, the harsh smell of the braziers, and the musk of sex. His father, dead these ten years, had died in this place but would always be here—always—waiting, waiting for his one remaining son to visit.

—

“So you found me, Silas,” Richard had croaked out from his straw mat on the floor. Behind him in the corner, hidden in the gloom, was Lily—Lily was always there too, always at his father's side. The disfigured peasant woman had been an even more constant presence at his father's side since Milo's death.

“Lily,” Silas said, and took off his hat.

Lily ducked her head into her sloping shoulders as acknowledgment, then knelt to help Richard readjust himself on his pillows. She picked up the ancient ivory pipe from his chest, placed it carefully on the floor beside the mat, and then retreated a few steps into the darkness.

“So you found me, lad,” Richard said.

“I did, sir,” Silas said, anxious not to look at his father's rotted teeth or the spittle crusting at the creased corners of his mouth.

“Lily,” Richard said, leaning over and picking up his pipe.

Lily crept forward with a molten ball of opium on a tray. She skewered the opium with a long needle and placed it into the bowl of the pipe. Richard breathed deeply, then let out a long line of acrid smoke and a sigh.

Silas coughed as he drew some of smoke into his lungs.

“Sorry, son,” Richard said.

“Don't be. It's your one true love, sir.”
Why can you not resist hurting this man?
Silas demanded of himself. But he had no answer.

“Aye, that and your brother,” Richard said, knowing full well the barb would sink deep into Silas's heart.

Silas had never admitted to his father that he had cut the cinch strap on the horse that had thrown Milo to his death, all those years ago. But he knew that Richard knew. He also knew that his father knew all his other secrets.

“Do you know your Bible, son?”

That surprised Silas. “No, not much, sir.”

“I do. I committed much of it to memory in Farsi, a long time ago now.”

“And you remember it?”

“More than I care to admit. Some of it comes back to haunt …” Richard's voice trailed off, then he said loudly, “… haunt me. Haunts me still.”

Silas had heard his father go off on tangents before, rants that seemed to have no direction but somehow erupted from the man's conscience. Over and over Silas had heard him howl, “Don't do the Devil's work, mustn't do the Devil's work.” Silas had assumed these were just the ravings of an opium addict—oh, yes, his father had been a substantial opium addict for years—but of late the ravings had taken on a bizarre consistency. Themes kept emerging from the babble over and over again, like a harbour buoy swallowed by the waves that always bobs back to the surface.