On the stairs, once Lin Ming was out of view, Song Yuhua matched her steps to the men climbing ahead of her, Teacher and his bodyguards. She always walked in last place in public, unshielded by his men. Not like the actress she remembered from a few years ago, whose dressing room door was always attended by a couple of Du’s dog’s legs. Each of his two most recent wives had her own security guard assigned to her apartments in the mansion, too.
Not Song. She lived up on the low-ceilinged top floor. Hot in summer, cold in winter. She had a bedroom, a small sitting room, and a tiny chamber just big enough to hold a cot for her maid, Ah Pan. Du had no intention of wasting either space or staff on her. All this because her father gambled away the family estate to the Green Gang, and Du Yuesheng, arriving to take possession, offered to take her into service instead.
As translator and arm-piece, she had tasks and obligations, but at least she was not one of his women. He had taken her twice that way, shortly after she entered his service at eighteen, and after, never touched her again. This was a blessing to her, and also a constant reminder of a failure she barely understood. Sometimes she watched the wives, and wondered what they knew about the house thing that she did not. Fourth Wife talked with her on occasion, and more than once Song had helped her look after the children, but though Fourth Wife was the youngest of the wives and closest to Song in age, they never spoke of private things.
Still, she was worlds away from the submissive girl she had been when she arrived in Shanghai. She had her own loyalties now. And this was where being out with Du had its advantages, for he was master of Shanghai, the fulcrum for all agreements legal or illegal, so she was positioned to overhear things. As she ascended the stairs at the Royal, last in line as always, she scanned the bubbles of conversation that floated out between the tied-back curtains of each box. Understanding English was her great advantage; foreigners babbled like fools in front of her.
Ahead of her Du paused at a box, and stepped inside to trade greetings. Flowery and Fiery assumed their positions. As she entered, she recognized the rotund form of H. H. Kung, and next to him a dissipated older Englishman she had seen in the papers-Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, sent by England to help China control its economy. Bloodsucking ghost capitalist. She looked with disdain at his few remaining white hairs combed over his bald head, at his face pouched and ruddy from drink.
Leith-Ross, meanwhile, was making little effort to conceal his distaste at the sight of Du’s trademark large ears, bald head, and long gown. “Shocking that they let him in here! And in a box! It’s a disgrace.”
“Of course he is a blackmailer or murderer or worse,” Duke Kung replied in his smooth English, “but my dear sir, one hundred thousand men in Shanghai obey his orders.” That was an exaggeration, Song knew-the number was closer to ten thousand-but Kung was rolling, and his eyes gleamed behind his round tortoiseshell glasses. “The only reason the Nationalists can even hold Shanghai is because of Du and his men. Why, what choice do we have? He could create a disturbance at any moment!” Switching to Shanghainese, he turned to address Du. Called “Duke” because of his direct descent from Confucius, he lowered his eyes respectfully. “Teacher. I am always and ever will be your servant.”
“Where? Where?” said Du, chiding him affectionately for his flattery, as was proper.
Kung switched back to English. “May I introduce Sir Frederick Leith-Ross?”
They both turned to the Englishman, who had now trained his rheumy eyes on Song. “Good God, his tart is young enough to be his daughter!”
Turtle egg. Stinking son of a slave girl. She stretched out a hand and spoke in English. “Forgive me, but I do not believe we have been introduced. I am Song Yuhua. You are…?”
He choked on his spittle. “Sir Frederick Leith-Ross.”
“Enchanted.” She turned to Kung, who kept the play going by raising the back of her hand to his mouth for a pretend European-style kiss. “Duke Kung,” she continued in English, “it is always a pleasure to see you.” And then she smiled sweetly and stepped back as Teacher made his magisterial Chinese farewells and swept out, surrounded by his men.
What she’d said had been flawlessly polite, yet the man’s choleric face showed that her arrow had found its mark, and Duke Kung was fighting down his laughter. Good; the foreigner was a toad, a parasite.
She settled into her chair in their box, and scanned the crowd as she always did, to settle the fear that she might see someone from her native place, where no one knew she had been sold to Du in payment for her father’s debts. That night she saw no one from Anhui, but she did notice quite a few Shanghai luminaries, bankers and shipping magnates and real estate barons-even Ah Fu, the Russian Jewish composer. Everyone on the dance floor below had their eyes on this new ghost pianist, who did not, despite the Chinese-language advertisements that had been trumpeting the club’s reopening for the past week, look like a man who had come straight from the cotton fields.
His playing had an upright feel that sounded familiar to her, carrying her back to when she was a child, and her Western tutor gave her piano lessons. Yet it was a dance orchestra too. She decided this was a fresh hybrid from America, and she liked it.
Sometime after two in the morning Lin Ming appeared in the box, his sleeves rolled up, exhausted, dazed. “Mou qu bao li,” he said, treasure and exuberant profit.
Du made a curt nod of acknowledgment, which was a lot for him, and Lin discreetly patted the sheen off his brow as he heard the first tinkly piano notes of the band’s signature song, “Exactly Like You.” They played it as an instrumental, with Charles and Ernest trading off voices, a two-saxophone duet of the melody Benny Goodman had made famous on the clarinet.
I know why I’ve waited, know why I’ve been blue,
Prayed each night for someone
Exactly like you.
The song’s end brought a cascade of applause and cheers, during which Lin Ming touched Song’s elbow in good-bye and slipped out. Then the house quieted, and even the air hung still, suspended, as everyone held their breath for the encore.
The piano player lifted his hands. A spotlight circled him, as all else went black.
A rising cry from the clarinet sailed out of the darkness behind him and resolved itself into the famous first notes of Rhapsody in Blue. Song recognized it from the radio, though she had never expected to hear it in a ballroom.
The clarinet walked atop the melody and the piano’s first chords rained down. For a while she listened, her eyes half-closed, and when she opened them and looked down, she beheld something she had not seen before, ever: a dance floor full of people in expensive evening clothes, perfectly still, all quiet as shafts of light, listening, all under the spell. She too sat motionless, suspended. To think of the hardship he had come from… and now he raised a tapered, aristocratic-looking hand to bring in the horns.
She noticed that the musicians were staring at him too, surprised, almost awestruck. A few stumbled slightly, before finding their way into the rhythm, which the pianist, in this piece at least, had in his keeping. A few seconds later, they were in his time, following him. She could feel the shift.
Too soon it was over, and applause exploded through the ballroom for the last time that night. Song turned to Du and said, feigning modesty, “Not bad. Wouldn’t you agree?”
He gave her a cold look. She should have expected it; jazz, like all Western music, was only noise to him. He wanted everything Chinese, and nothing foreign; everything old, nothing new. He was a gangster, a criminal, but in his mind he belonged to some lost aristocracy. He and his fellows hoped to silence composers, declare jazz dangerous, ban new plays, and remove dissenting editors from their posts. She hated him.