Shanghai (92 page)

Silas nodded.

“Is that a yes, Mr. Hordoon?” the young Vrassoon asked, joy and shock vying for pride of place on his swarthy features.

“It is. Between the two of us and our co-religionist thieves in Burma we should have enough money to help many.”

“And we will help them.”

“Yes. We won't let happen to them what happened to the Russians,” he said.

Waves of displaced Russian aristocrats had arrived in Shanghai after the Communist takeover in 1917. At first they'd strutted around Shanghai's crowded streets as if they were rulers of a great country. They'd stayed at the finest hotels and eaten at the finest restaurants—until their money ran out. The Chinese were never fooled by these foul-smelling White people. They clearly did little with their time, knew less, and after selling off their furs and jewellery—almost always at ludicrously low prices, since they believed that buying and selling was beneath their lofty station in life—they reverted to the only form of gainful employment for which they seemed to have any real aptitude: whoring. Elegant, long-legged beauties of the pampered courts of Moscow and St. Petersburg quickly found that their ability to play the pianoforte,
speak French, and indulge men in clever repartee had no monetary value in the city at the Bend in the River.

The paleness of their thighs, the narrow length of their backs, and the conquest they presented to both White merchants and Chinese men of every social stratum did, however, have a value that finally put some money in their pockets.

It's a rare moment in history when a shop boy can sluice a member of a royal family, or a merchant can push a duchess to her knees with impunity and a smile on his face.

While their women whored for them, the aristocratic Russian men did the only thing that aristocratic Russian men have done well for centuries—philosophized and drank and plotted dark revenges that even they knew would never come to pass. And when their women fell prey to the inevitable diseases inherent in their new profession, the men promptly called them sluts and left them to rot on filthy mattresses in rooms so cold in winter that water froze in the basins and so hot and humid in summer that mushrooms grew on the floorboards—and from the bodies of the dead who were thought to be just sleeping off a night of excess.

“We'll pool our resources,” Silas said, “and try to figure out how many we can house and feed.”

“But how will they get here?”

“By your ships and my ships and overland. Put out the word, Mr. Vrassoon, that Jews are welcome in Shanghai and they will find their way here.”

Vrassoon put out his hand to Silas.

Silas did not take it. “But, Mr. Vrassoon, these newcomers will respect the Chinese of this city if they are to live here. Do you hear me? They will respect the owners
of this place. They will! And they will not insult my wife. Now raise your head and stare into the eyes of beauty. Do it!”

And Vrassoon looked at the pictures in his hands, then up into the deep wells of Mai Bao's eyes. Mai Bao allowed the centre of her being to sift down from her eyes to the fullness of her lips—and then smiled.

“Welcome, Mr. Vrassoon.” Then she added, sadly, “I've heard so much about you.”

—

The wren pecked at her cheek and drew a pinprick of blood.

Mai Bao touched her cheek and the wren took flight. She watched it disappear in the distance and said, “I'll miss you, Silas.”

And just as suddenly as the noise of the Bird and Fish Market had stopped—it returned.

Mai Bao listened for a moment to the raucous cries of the birds, then let down her long hair. She shook it free as she put back on her white mourner's robe and then, to the surprise of the huge crowd, re-entered the mourners' procession after thanking her stand-in. A Taoist cymbal crashed right behind her. For the first time it occurred to her that Silas might not understand why she had him buried in her tradition, not his. She hoped he would. She also wondered if those watching noticed—or cared.

As she fell in beside her eldest adopted son she noted the cold eyes of the surprisingly young General Akira, who headed the formal delegation from Japan.

The Japanese had taken Manchuria several years before and installed a puppet emperor. That had been this young General Akira's doing.

—

The young man nodded at Jiang, then, under his breath, said to the even younger counterpart at his side, General Yukiko, “It is time.”

General Yukiko smiled at Jiang as well. “These Chinese are in disarray. The nationalists in Nanking are more worried about the Communists in the north than they are about us. Warlords control almost half the country. The Chinese are weak and foolish—it is definitely time to strike with all our forces. It is time that the superior culture of Nippon showed the way to this old, dying harlot. It should take us less than three months to occupy the whole country.”

General Akira did not respond. Old images of Japanese disunity arose in his mind. All the wasted time in the 1920s as Japanese prestige declined precipitously while they waffled dangerously between new Western ways and the restoration of the Meiji Emperor.

“Thanks to young officers like us, the Emperor is back on his throne and in control of the destiny of the Floating Island. And the Emperor wants war as much as either of us,” General Akira said.

“More,” General Yukiko said.

“China is ours for the taking—all we need is an excuse to extend outward from Manchukuo into the rest of the Middle Kingdom.”

“Yes,” General Yukiko said, “and excuses for war are always easy to come by. Like that soldier over there,” he said with a smile, pointing at one of the Japanese
corporals who had accompanied the two generals to Shanghai for the funeral—an old aristocrat's son, a lazy, over-privileged slug of a soldier. “If he should, say, disappear—not a hard thing for either you or me to arrange—we could claim that the Chinese took him. We demand an apology, but after our taking of Manchukuo, they will no doubt refuse to offer us one. Then we attack in an effort to get back our soldier. We have every right to keep our military personnel safe. In fact, it is our duty to do so.”

General Akira smiled. “What if one of our soldiers were to disappear from, say, the Marco Polo Bridge?” His smile creased more deeply into his face.

“The bridge leading into Beijing?”

“The same.”

“That would then leave us no choice but to cross the bridge with the silly name and subdue their ancient capital in an effort to rescue our soldier …”

“… and prevent similar reoccurrences in the future.”

The two young Japanese generals contained their smiles. It was a funeral procession, after all, to which they had been invited. But they were unable to control the expressions of shock on their faces when the final marchers in the procession came into their line of view. The two young officers openly gawked at the fifty or so black-hatted, long-black-coated men walking slowly, bobbling awkwardly, muttering some guttural sounds that they assumed could not possibly be a real language.

—

Charles Soong's family pavilion was closer to the end point of the procession—what Charles thought of as the
finish line. It was, in fact, just past the start/finish line of the Great Shanghai Road Race. So, as the Japanese watched the Jewish scholars doven at the very end of the procession, the cart with Silas's remains was just passing the family of Charles Soong.

Yin Bao stood proudly in her raised viewing stand, two of her three grown daughters on her left and her three sons to her right. Charles languished in his wheelchair, his head now in constant motion from the cruel end game that Parkinson's plays upon its victims. But he was content. His three daughters were the three most famous women in all of China. His eldest son had smoothly taken over the running of his business empire and was the Finance Minister in the Republican government in Nanking.

Charles's financial backing had, years ago, helped to push aside the creaking machinery of the Manchu empire, and that pleased him—although he was furious when, shortly after that success, Dr. Sun Yat-sen gave away his power to Yuan Shikai, a former Manchu general. The man had eventually declared himself China's new Emperor, but died shortly thereafter. He was the one and only Emperor in his own dynasty—the shortest in Chinese history. The memory of that pleased Charles, and he grunted a laugh.

There had been other betrayals that still rankled. His youngest daughter had married the old, foolish Dr. Sun Yat-sen—and that he just could not forgive. But that was long ago, he reminded himself. The old fool had departed this world more than ten years ago, leaving his wife to carry on his utopian vision of China. Then there was his eldest daughter, who had married the Generalissimo, Chiang Kai Shek—again, against his
wishes. But this was a wild girl—a girl who just might live forever, he thought. A girl who could give as good as she got. Charles Soong did not envy Chiang Kai Shek's lot in life with such a wife. Those two had made their choices and would now have to live with the consequences. But his middle daughter concerned him most. Since the May Fourth movement in 1919 she had spent much of her time with radical students, and he believed that she knew much about the movements of the Chinese Communist Party—even, perhaps, the thoughts of the upstart librarian, Mao Tze-tung, who now controlled a Marxist state in northern Kiangsi province. He had not seen this middle daughter in over ten years. Her absence left a hole in his heart.

Yin Bao leaned down and touched his shoulder. He willed his shaky left hand to cover his wife's, but his arm refused to obey him. She pointed toward the cortège. In a long line behind the horse-drawn cart carrying the coffin marched the twenty street children that Silas and Mai Bao had taken into the Garden. They were children no more. Most had children of their own. One man loped with the poise of a fine athlete, but it was two of the young women who had drawn Yin Bao's eye. Two elegant young women—clearly twins. They were tall for Han Chinese women and moved with an unmistakable elegance—an elegance that infuriated Yin Bao, who instantly recognized their grace as that of her older sister, Mai Bao.

“So the virgin managed it,” she whispered.

“Managed what, dear?” Charles asked.

“Nothing, dear. Sleep. Nothing of importance is happening here.”

—

One of Mai Bao's daughters felt someone staring at her. She looked up to a high viewing platform and found Yin Bao's eyes boring holes in her. She tapped her sister's arm. With a shock, Mai Bao's daughters recognized that their aunt, Yin Bao, had spotted them. The girls communicated silently with each other and slowed their steps until they were on either side of their mother—then they linked arms with her, and the city knew their secret.

Shortly thereafter, the Buddhist monks finished their parting prayers, and the body of Silas Hordoon was committed to the fire.

* * *

AS THE SUN BEGAN TO SET that day, Mai Bao climbed the last of the hills leading to the far reach of the Huangpo River where it joined with the mighty Yangtze. She stared at the four graves, belonging to Silas's
amah
, his first wife, his adored brother Milo—and of course the mound that was his child.

She knelt and allowed the wind to blow her hair. She pulled it back and tucked it down the back of her gown. Then she began to clear the weeds from the graves. They were especially thick and hardy on Milo's grave. She reached for a tall weed with a purple flower and pulled hard. The thistle, rare for this part of China, cut deeply into her hand and she let out a quick gasp that the wind plucked off her lips, lifted high in the air, and then flung toward the Yangtze and the great sea waiting to the east.

The amount of blood coming from her hand surprised her, but Mai Bao didn't try to staunch it. Rather, she stood and moved her hand across Milo's
grave, allowing her blood to fall on the mound. Then she moved to the
amah
's, then Miranda's, and finally to the unborn child's. She salted each with the crimson from her hand. It was only when she went to pick up the urn with Silas's ashes that the bleeding finally stopped.

She walked close to the edge of the cliff, and the breeze suddenly whooshed up from below, billowing her white mourner's garments away from her still-slender frame. She put down the urn and, in response to an impulse older even than the Jiang family, she slowly removed her mourning clothes, one garment at a time—with absolutely no erotic intent, just a desire to be naked when she received her husband's remains.

Alone and naked, the great river far beneath her, she removed the top from the urn, raised it over her head, and inverted it.

She hadn't imagined what it might feel like, but she was surprised by the shower of dry ash, and the warmth she felt deep within.

—

That night Mai Bao sat alone in her husband's study, sensing him in every corner of the room. Then her eyes were drawn to an open drawer in his great desk. There she saw his father's large stack of handwritten journals, topped by a pile of old letters.

Carefully she slid the letters from their resting place, and that night Mai Bao—Jiang of the Ivory Compact—used the English that her husband had taught her and read first the letters of the famous English opium eater, Mr. Thomas De Quincy, and then the entirety of the dream journals of Silas's father, the great opium trader,
Richard Hordoon—and, in death, she knew her husband better than she had in life.

As the dawn swept up the river, Mai Bao opened the shutters of her husband's study and stared at the riot of red flowers marking the spot of Milo's death.

She sighed. The Tusk was safe, and she had the deed for the Baghdad property in a fine hiding place. MacMillan and her two eldest adopted sons could run the family banking business, and her own brothel business had never been better. But she was anxious. She caught an image of herself in the full-length mirror in Silas's water closet and examined herself. Time had thus far been gracious to her, but she knew that time was ultimately cruel and disrespectful. With the Tusk gone from Shanghai, the Chosen Three would not need to meet as often as before, but even so Mai Bao knew she would have to choose between her two daughters, and that choice would have to be made sooner than later. Now that Silas was gone she felt no compunction about introducing her daughters to the Colombe family and Jiang's—a business that one of them would have to run if she was to assume the obligations of the Ivory Compact.