Shanghai (95 page)

Mai Bao, whom the world now called Jiang, turned to her younger daughter and, after a deep breath, began the story of the Ivory Compact. The girl's eyes momentarily widened, then returned to their normal size as she took in the details, one at a time, with a startling equanimity—as Mai Bao had hoped she would. During times of war the members of the Chosen Three had to be pragmatic, and this one was nothing if not that.

“You may have to make choices that are painful. Chesu Hoi has warned us that there is an evil loosed upon the land. People, perhaps many people, will be hurt. But you must not lose sight of the goal: the raising of Shanghai as a great city. Seventy Pagodas to lead the Black-Haired people back to power. If we fail—if the Ivory Compact fails—China will be picked apart by carrion birds. Remember that. Always think carefully. Consider the facts, but weigh them against the possible result. A good gambler bets against the potential winnings, not against his opponents. And every morning, look east toward the Holy Mountain and remember your obligation to the Compact.” Mai Bao lay back on her pillows, a sheen of sweat across her brow.

“What, Mother?” the girl asked.

Jiang shook her head, then spat out, “Be careful of the Confucian.”

“Why, Mother?”

Again Jiang shook her head, but this time she didn't speak. The girl sat on the bed, then put her head on her mother's chest and breathed deeply. Finally she asked, “What can I do for you, Mother?”

Mai Bao pointed toward a small vial on her dresser. The black liquid in the vial bespoke the death it would cause. “That,” she said.

Her daughter brought the potion to her mother, who put it by her side, then said to her daughter, “Time for you to go. Time for me to be alone. Even a whore …
especially
a whore … deserves a little privacy at the end.”

He had been the Confucian representative in the Ivory Compact for almost twenty years. And every day of those twenty years he had added to the Confucian Book of Knowledge that he would pass down to his son, who would in turn pass it down to his son, until Confucians rose to power and their wisdom was published for all to see.

He enjoyed the secrecy of it all, and the sense of being at the end of a very long line. That he was never alone, never. They—the Confucians in the Compact before him—were always there, their writings a constant comfort. Their presence never forgotten, nor his duty to return China to a place of Confucian power.

From his position as head of the Shanghai civil service he was able to observe two powers on the move—the
corporeal and the spiritual—and he had no doubt which was more profoundly powerful.

From his study he looked at the great river as it turned toward the sea. Was it time? Was now the time?

The Confucian allowed his elegant fingers to slide down the smooth surface of the ancient writing stone—the one upon which his ancestor had first seen the reflection of the White Birds on Water, now almost a hundred years ago. He knew that with the stone and his pen he would set in motion change—but like the archer who does not know exactly where an arrow shot into the air may land, he did not know exactly where the change would lead. What he did know was that a missive answering his message should arrive before too long, and it would all begin—a return to Confucian power.

Still legion in the Middle Kingdom, Confucians guarded a tradition older than Q'in She Huang, the First Emperor, himself, a tradition that had survived Q'in She Huang's purges of scholars and the burning of their books, survived attacks by later dynasties. The tradition had gone underground and thrived. Old traditions did not disappear—they never disappeared—they only waited for the coming of the light.

The Confucian smiled and allowed the ink to flow slowly down the surface of the writing stone and pool in the well at the base. He watched eddies form and then melt into the calm surface.
Like us,
he thought.
Now the warlords, the Kuomintang, the Communists, and the Japanese are trying to silence us—a lot of enemies.
Confucians simply retreated, regrouped, and did what Confucians and most Chinese did so well—they waited patiently. And while they waited, they reinforced their lines of communications. He cooed softly, and the
carrier pigeons in the cages that lined the balcony of his study overlooking the far reach of the Huangpo River cooed back.

He thought of Chesu Hoi's warning—then dismissed it. There was no doubt evil loosed upon the land. But he was the one to stop that evil. Confucians rectified evil. Only Confucian principles of order could set the Middle Kingdom back on the road to power.

He took the rice paper from his desk and dried the ink with a simple wave of his hand. Then he folded the paper in upon itself, over and over again, until it fit neatly into the tin capsule that he affixed to the carrier pigeon's leg. Finally, with a pat and a coo he released the bird to the first leg of its mammoth journey—and hoped the Confucian with Mao Tze-tung was still on this earth.

He repeated the process with a slightly altered message and sent the next bird on his way upriver to the Kuomintang capital, Nanking.

Then he sat back and allowed the late-fall sun to touch his skin, warm his face, and bring dreams of power—and he pondered one simple question: How could he convince the Communist Mao Tze-tung that he needed a Confucian like himself at his side as he rid the Middle Kingdom of the
Fan Kuei
?

His wife came in with tea.
At least, after all these years, she has learned to be silent,
he thought. Then another idea entered his head.
A man of power, such as I am about to be, ought to have a younger wife—a younger and prettier wife. Much prettier.

Madame Chiang Kai Shek's personal secretary was careful to keep his eyes away from the windowsill as the great lady—first daughter of Charles Soong—completed her instructions. He nodded and took notes, as any efficient personal secretary would. Then he smiled—and she smiled back at him, turned, and left the elegantly appointed room.

The personal secretary made himself sit very still and recited the first twenty verses of a Tang Dynasty love poem silently, to pass the time. Upon completion of his recitation he glanced once more at the door. It remained shut. He rose and opened the window, then scooped up the pigeon that waited patiently there. Quickly he unsnapped the small metal canister attached to the bird's left leg and removed the note. He read it twice, then
returned to his desk. On the back of the same piece of paper he wrote: “Message received, awaiting further instructions.” Then he refolded the paper and inserted it back into the tin tube. Two minutes later the pigeon was winging its way back to Shanghai and its owner, the Confucian of the Ivory Compact.

* * *

LATER THAT SAME DAY, an exhausted carrier pigeon alighted on the railing of a farmhouse far to the northwest of Shanghai. The bird had flown for over ten hours without stop and was now close to death. The scholar who lived at the farm retrieved the canister and read the message. Five minutes later he had affixed the canister with its message to one of his own pigeons and launched it farther northward.

It would take six pigeons sent by six Confucians to finally get the Shanghai Confucian's message to the far north-west of China, where Mao's forces were amassing.

The final pigeon flew right by the open window of a party meeting in which Charles Soong's second daughter was speaking while a very young Confucian kept accurate minutes. The bird finally ended its voyage on the lip of the coop kept by this young Confucian outside his mud hut.

When the meeting ended, the Confucian saw the pigeon walking slowly around the outside of his coop. He slid a practised hand between the pigeon's legs and unhooked the canister, which he slipped carefully into an inner fold of his quilted coat. There would be time later to read the message—time was easier to find than privacy—and he instinctively knew this note required privacy.

That night he walked back through the hills into the empty countryside. He sat beneath the stars and struck a match. By the flickering light he read his orders to get close to Charles Soong's second daughter, gain her confidence, and await further orders. Then there was an imprecation, threatening what would happen should he fail in his mission, and an urging of all haste in this matter. The young Confucian tried to calm the pounding of his heart. It was rumoured that Charles Soong's second daughter was Mao Tze-tung's mistress!

He swallowed the missive and turned his head toward the stars. Winter was already in the air. The desperate cold of winter was held in abeyance for only a few months of summer in this part of north-west China. Those months were ending, and a new cold was approaching. He recited a few verses from Lao Tzu to calm himself, but they did little good. Charles Soong's second daughter was perhaps the most unapproachable of all the people to have survived the retreat to the north-west. And even if she were not Mao's mistress, the crazy sexual restrictions of the Communists virtually forbade any contact between the sexes—except, naturally, in the upper echelons of the party. Her sexual relationship with Mao made it even more dangerous to approach her. Even more dangerous than to approach any powerful woman in the Chinese Communist Party would usually be.

The young Confucian put his head in his hands and tried to clear his mind. He felt like weeping. How could he accomplish this task? When he went to stand he looked to the hills of the south, and there, silhouetted against the huge moon, was Charles Soong's daughter—her hands raised, as if in some atavistic prayer—her naked body splashed by moonlight.

Charles Soong's second daughter—She Who Loves Power—allowed the chill Gobi Desert air to encircle her naked body. Slowly she spun, eyes shut, moonlight turning her skin a leonine gold, and thought of her time in America. Of her four years of isolation at Wesleyan College; her three months on a stinking freighter in the San Francisco harbour when she was denied access to the Golden Mountain because she was Chinese; her struggles with American idiomatic English; the thrill she'd felt when she heard of the fall of the Manchus and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party; and the glory of returning home after all those years of silent smiling amongst the
Fan Kuei
. She thought of her lover—and his jealous and dangerous wife. Then she thought of the fight she'd had with her aging father.

“But I did all this for you and your sisters,” he had protested.

“Not for your sons, Father?” she'd snapped back, shocked by her own rudeness. She saw the flare of real anger in her father's already rheumy eyes.

“Is this the disrespect they taught you in America?”

“You sent me there, Father. I never asked to go!” she shrieked. Again she was shocked by her willingness to be vulgar in front of her father. But she was also pleased. As she had been urged to do at the meeting the previous night, she was resisting authority. She was starting her fight against the powers that were keeping China in chains: filial piety, ancestor worship, religion, and the authority of elders. The “Four Authorities”—political, theocratic, clan, and husband—had to be banished forever from the Middle Kingdom.

“Is this the loyalty that I deserve from a daughter?” he demanded.

“There is a difference between loyalty and obedience,” she spat back. “Slaves obey orders, Father. You have to earn the loyalty of free women and men.”

Charles Soong nodded slowly. Already the Parkinson's was elaborating every movement of his head, and it embarrassed him. This girl, of all his children, he feared. His eldest daughter, She Who Loves Money, he understood. Even as a child she'd had a taste for expensive things. His third daughter, She Who Loves China, was his heart's delight. But his second daughter, this daughter who stood before him, a scowl on her face, her hands in tight fists pressed hard into her hips, her legs spread wide like a man—this daughter he had never been able to reach. No amount of attention or praise or encouragement or bestowing of gifts had earned her approval, let alone her trust. But then why should she trust him? It was she
who, as a young teenager, had barged into his study to find the partially clothed courtesan on his desk.

“What is this whore doing in Mama's house?” she had demanded.

Naturally enough, he'd had no answer. For an instant he'd thought of telling the girl of her mother's courtesan pedigree, but then he'd thought better of it. It was bad enough to incur his daughter's anger, no need to invite his wife's considerable wrath.

And now this girl was marching back and forth in front of his desk, barking out a political manifesto of some sort. Exhorting him to raise up the proletariat. To join the great movement of the people. “To do your part, Father, in unshackling China.”

He wondered if she understood that it had been his money that had financed the fall of the Manchu Dynasty. Did she grant him no credit for his years of sacrifice, and the danger he'd faced?

“Father, turn your newspapers over to the workers who produce them.”

He almost laughed when he thought of what would have happened to his newspaper empire if he had turned it over to the drunken student whom he'd first hired to write for him. Then he shivered as he thought of his last meeting with that poor man.

“Devote the power you have amassed to the good of the people, Father. And do it now, before we force you to do it.”

Ah,
he thought,
there it is
.
“Before we force you to do it
.”
And that word: power. It's the only word that fits cleanly in this one's mouth.
He smiled. He'd known what it was to be powerless. To clean vomit from the floor of a Boston bar. His children had never known such powerlessness. Nor, for that matter, the exultation he had
felt when the Irishmen dressed in orange had come singing into the bar, and the glory of the fight that had followed.