The Shanghai Moon (28 page)

Poor Rosalie, I thought, escaping the nightmare of Europe only to have to live through, and die in, times like that.

“But if you’ve come to ask if my stepmother ever said anything about Major Ulrich,” C. D. Zhang said, “I’m afraid she didn’t.”

“I admit I was hoping. Mr. Zhang, think back. Couldn’t there be anything, maybe something that didn’t make sense at the time?”

He smiled. “I suppose there may be. Not much made sense to me at that time. However, nothing my stepmother said stands out. But Ms. Chin, your documents. Is it possible they hold something? Something you haven’t recognized? Would you like me to look at them?”

“I don’t think there’s anything there. Mei-lin’s diary, for example, stops the day you left Shanghai. She gave it to Rosalie. Along with your brother.”

I watched his face as this sank in. “Her most precious things.”

“Yes.”

“All these years,” he said slowly, “I thought it was a quirk of fate that my brother was at Rosalie’s home when we fled and was left behind.”

“No. I think Mei-lin was afraid of what might happen.”

“What my father might do, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. And your other documents? They stop then, too?”

“No, some are from years later. But none seem to be able to tell us much about Major Ulrich.”

We sat in silence for a time, or as much silence as we
could find between the traffic noise and the cooing pigeons. “Well, it does no good to brood, does it?” C. D. Zhang finally said. “Ms. Chin, I’m sorry your new discoveries seem to lead to a dead end.”

“Maybe not quite. There’s another incident I’m curious about. Do you know a man named Yaakov Corens?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“A jeweler who died many years ago. He had a shop in Shanghai when you were there. He made the Shanghai Moon.”

“He made it?” If this wasn’t news to C. D. Zhang, he’d missed his vocation as an actor. “Ms. Chin! That’s remarkable! This is also in your documents?”

“Yes. We were able to track Corens to New York and speak to his granddaughter. But this is the odd part. In 1967, someone reported to have been a, quote, Chinese gentleman visited Corens’s shop. They had tea together, and the gentleman asked Corens never to discuss the Shanghai Moon with anyone.” I watched him closely as I said this. His expression was one of intense interest, but if anything I was saying was familiar, I couldn’t see any sign.

“Why? And who?”

“I was hoping you’d know.”

“I certainly don’t! But this is astonishing! Who could he have been?”

“Your brother? Or your cousin?”

“But why? I was under the impression they had no idea who the maker was.”

“I don’t know. It’s very strange. But if it wasn’t you—”

“I assure you it wasn’t.”

“Then it must have been one of them. I think”—I looked at Bill—“we should go ask them.”

The first call I made when we hit Canal Street was to Mr. Chen.

“I’m sorry, he’s still not here,” Irene Ng said.

“Is that true, or he just told you to say that?”

“Oh, no.” She sounded hurt. “It’s really true.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just getting really frustrated here, not being able to find either him or his cousin.”

“Why don’t you try Mr. Zhang again? I just spoke to him. He’s back at his office.”

By “try,” Irene Ng probably meant “call.” I didn’t call. Bill and I were on Mulberry Street before you could say, “He’s back at his office.”

On the ground floor of Number 43 was a funeral-goods store, its window full of paper clothes, furniture, and money to burn for the dead. The second-floor buzzer read
FAST RIVER IMPORTS
. I buzzed it, and Fay’s tinny voice asked who I was. When I told her, there was a short silence. Then she came back and said Mr. Zhang wasn’t in.

“Oh, yes, he is,” I said, mouth close to speaker. “And if we can’t talk to Mr. Zhang, we’re going over to Mr. Chen’s shop and not leaving until we talk to
him
.”

More silence. Finally, a buzz. I yanked the door open and took the stairs two at a time, Bill right behind me.

A thin young woman sat behind a desk in a wonder of file folders, paper stacks, and sunshine. We didn’t have to ask again for the boss: Zhang Li was waiting in his inner-office doorway. He smiled and bowed. “Ms. Chin. I apologize if I seemed reluctant to speak with you.”

“Seemed? Mr. Zhang, you’ve definitely been avoiding me.” I bowed back, annoyed with myself to feel my irritation fading fast. I introduced Bill, who shook his hand. It occurred to me I might want to teach Bill to bow.

“Yes.” Mr. Zhang spoke contritely. “I suppose I have been. Please, come with me. Fay, please bring tea.”

The clutter in Mr. Zhang’s office was as impressive as in the outer room and went way beyond paper. Delicate porcelains peeked out of shipping crates. Soldiers from the terra-cotta army stood to attention on the floor and windowsill, reproduced in eight sizes from half-real-life to thimble. Jade bracelets, bronze coins on red ribbons, cricket cages, and embroidered shoes spangled every surface, as though a wave of Chinese culture had crashed over this room and beached them all.

“Samples of my wares.” Mr. Zhang sounded both rueful and proud, like an indulgent uncle apologizing for rambunctious nephews. “Please, sit.”

Stools and a low table occupied a clearing, as in Mr. Chen’s office. These were glazed ceramic, the kind you’d find in a garden. Before we’d settled, Fay entered and set down a lacquer tea tray.

“You and your cousin are both lovers of tea,” I said as Mr. Zhang poured.

“I think you are also, Ms. Chin?”

“Yes, I am.” I took the lidded, saucerless cup.

“And you, Mr. Smith?”

“I’m learning.”

Pushing an old Chinese man might be the wrong way to get anywhere, but over the millennia people who’ve wanted to know things from old Chinese men have concocted other tactics. I said, “This tea smells lovely. Delicate and tropical. Did you and Mr. Chen develop your taste for fine teas in Shanghai?”

Zhang Li smiled. He knew what I was doing. “Hardly. Our boyhood years were war years, our adolescence the early days of the People’s Republic. Most often, tea then was a cloudy, bitter drink, something to keep you warm when you had no heat, or make you forget you had no food.”

All right. Going that far was a signal he was ready to talk. So I did the polite thing. I backed off, sipped, and said, “Your tea is refreshing and sweet.”

“I’m glad you find it so. Dragonwell, a favorite of mine. Mr. Smith? Do you enjoy it?”

“It’s subtle. I’m probably missing the nuances. But yes, it’s very good.”

We all sipped again. Zhang Li carefully replaced the lid on his cup and said, “Now, Ms. Chin. You have questions about the Shanghai Moon.”

“Yes, we do. But first: You and your cousin have both been avoiding me. Is it because Wong Pan’s found you and you’re negotiating for the jewelry?”

“Ms. Chin! Of course not! You’ve said the man’s a killer. We’d have let you know at once if he’d contacted us.”

“Maybe
you
would have. But your cousin?”

“I promise you.”

“Good. Because he’s here. In Chinatown. With a gun. Even if he doesn’t know who Mr. Chen is, if he’s going from jeweler to jeweler he’ll find him. So make sure you don’t lose my number.”

He nodded, looking worried. Good; let him take this seriously. “Now, Mr. Zhang, I do have questions. One is why you stopped me from asking questions yesterday. And why you never mentioned your brother. And why, years ago, you asked Yaakov Corens to keep silent about the Shanghai Moon.”

That last was a shot in the dark. I wouldn’t have been surprised to get wide-eyed innocence, either real or feigned. If Zhang Li denied it, what could I do? But he didn’t. He gave me a long, quiet look and a soft smile.

“Ms. Chin, I must remember you if I’m ever in need of investigation services. Yaakov Corens. That gentleman passed away twenty-five years ago. A lovely man, truly a gentleman.”

“So we understand. An excellent jeweler, too.”

“Indeed. Fine work, precise and delicate.”

“He made the Shanghai Moon.”

“Yes, he did.”

“And you went to him in 1967 and asked him not to speak about it. And your brother never knew you’d found him. Did you tell your cousin? And why did you ask Mr. Corens to keep quiet?”

Mr. Zhang sighed. “To answer this, and the other things you’ve asked, I must tell you a story both long and sad. Shall I?”

In my head rang out:
This is a question?
Before I could say anything, Bill spoke. “If it’s going to be long,” he asked Zhang Li, “do you mind if I smoke?”

Zhang Li rummaged on his desk, lifting a geomancer’s compass to find an ashtray, which he handed to Bill. “Most of my customers smoke. It’s a habit Chinese people seem unwilling to abandon.”

“Lydia doesn’t like it, though.” Bill got up. He perched on the windowsill beside a terra-cotta soldier, who took the intrusion stoically.

Zhang Li turned back to me. “Do you share an office? This must make your partnership difficult at times.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.

Zhang Li nodded, his smile fading as he stared at nothing. After a moment he began.

“It is natural for the passage of time to soften difficult memories and ease pain. For me, this has happened. For my cousin, it has not. When the Shanghai Moon vanished, I was nine years old, he a boy of six. The Shanghai Moon was only part of Lao-li’s loss that day. He also lost his mother. Rosalie Gilder died in the . . . incident . . . when the gem disappeared. The pain those memories cause my cousin gave rise, many years ago, to an agreement between us that we should never, ever speak of it. To each other, or to anyone.”

“Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”

“Yes. The current circumstances may justify my breaking
that vow, but not causing my cousin the pain that would surely be his if I spoke of it in his presence.”

“Current circumstances” including, obviously, my threat to go over and camp in Mr. Chen’s shop.

Cradling his tea, Zhang Li looked over his shoulder to Bill, then back to me. “The days at the end of the civil war were dark and hard. We—Aunt Rosalie, Uncle Paul, Lao-li, and myself—were living with Grandfather Chen in the villa in Thibet Road, to which we had returned after the Japanese surrender. In former times, the avenue had been elegant and serene, the villa well staffed and luxurious. Shanghai had never been a placid place, but in the International Settlement a certain order was kept. In my earliest memories I see wide, bright rooms, soft carpets, and scroll paintings of scholars’ huts among pines. But by 1945, when we returned, all but one of the servants had fled. The automobiles and carpets had been sold to buy rice and cooking fuel. Where manicured lawns had swept up to the house, scrawny chickens scratched the dust between sweet potato vines. The acacia tree still bloomed, but flowers had given way to carrots and onions. The paintings and family treasures that remained were buried under the gardens in places only my grandfather knew. This situation continued through the next four years, until war’s end. Things then became more normal—you might say, more civilized—but the elegance never returned.”

Zhang Li, I could see, was circling, reluctant to close in on a subject that was still painful no matter what he said about time and memories. “You came back after the
Japanese surrender,” I said, helping him circle. “You’d been living in Hongkew, in the Jewish ghetto, is that right?”

“Yes.” He looked at me curiously. “How did you know that?”

“We’ve spoken to your brother. Mr. Zhang, why didn’t you tell me about him yesterday?”

“You came to ask whether my cousin had been offered Aunt Rosalie’s jewelry. What reason would we have to mention my brother?”

Asked directly like that, I couldn’t think of one, but it still felt weird. Maybe Mr. Zhang saw that in my face, because he said, “My brother brought us to America. For that we will always be grateful. But since our arrival—and it is now many years—we haven’t been close in the way of families. At first I tried to involve myself in his activities, and him in ours. But neither I nor my cousin has ever felt comfortable in his presence. I tried to ignore my feelings and extend the hand of friendship as family ought, but we never forged the bond I know my brother was hoping for.”

“He told me that. He still regrets it.”

“For that, I’m sorry.”

In the pause that followed, Bill rubbed out his cigarette but didn’t leave the windowsill. With a small sigh, Zhang Li resumed his story. “In early 1943, the Japanese ordered the Jewish refugees to relocate to Hongkew. Uncle Kairong had been arrested, then released, and had left Shanghai. Grandfather Chen tried to intercede on Rosalie’s behalf—she was pregnant, you see—but the Japanese wouldn’t hear him. I, of course, did not have to go to the ghetto, and Grandfather Chen would have preferred that
I stay with him; but I had been entrusted to Aunt Rosalie by my mother, and she refused to leave me. I doubt”—he smiled—“that a Chinese daughter-in-law would have defied Grandfather Chen as Aunt Rosalie did. But she sat with him and argued, matching him point for point, in the way of her tradition. And one morning she and Uncle Paul packed boxes, hired rickshaws, and trundled me off to Hongkew.”

“Why did your grandfather let it happen?”

“Things had gotten steadily worse for Shanghai’s Chinese. The alliance with Germany had hardened Japanese hearts, never warm toward Chinese to begin with. But the Japanese respected the Jews. They created the ghetto but refused what to the Germans was the logical next step: extermination. They kept strict control over the ghetto with identity cards and curfews, but they managed Hongkew with a lighter hand than they did the International Settlement. Wealthy Chinese like my grandfather were in danger of being arrested, their property confiscated. My grandfather had already lost his factories and warehouses, as the Japanese took what would aid their war effort, or what their commanders fancied. Aunt Rosalie made the argument that I was safer in the ghetto than with him.”

“Was that true?”

“How am I to know? I did survive the war, so perhaps she was right. So did my grandfather, but not without being jailed twice. He paid large bribes to secure his release. What would have become of me if I’d been there, either to be taken away with him or left with the one remaining houseboy, I don’t know.