When he was gone she showed Taitai the empty purse. It had never been empty before, and there was still the medicine to buy.
A white, clawlike hand came out to brush at Song’s wrist. “There.” The old lady pointed to the wall.
What? The painting in its frame? The striped wallpaper? Song leaned closer.
“Behind the painting.”
Song was amazed; the old lady had never before said anything so coherent. In the frame was a cheap copy of a minor fan painting by the Ming artist Chen Hongshou, the sort of piece favored by middle-class Chinese aspiring to display good art.
“Behind,” Taitai repeated, and Song pulled the edge of the frame away from the wall. Behind it she saw only the yellow rose wallpaper.
But the Supreme Wife continued to gesture with her curled fingers, and Song peered at the back of the frame itself, where she saw a small velvet pouch webbed to the frame with an ancient, dust-covered crisscross of thread.
“This?” She tipped the frame up so the old lady could see the pouch, glad the maid was out washing the sheets and no one was in the room at this moment but Taitai and herself.
“It’s mine,” Taitai whispered. “From my mother. No one knows, not even him.”
Song separated the fraying threads and removed the pouch. “Here.” She held it out to Taitai.
The translucent little fingers could only flutter weakly. “You open it.”
It was closed with no more than a drawstring. Song leaned over the dark blue quilt cover, opened the bag, and gently turned it over. A small river of white diamonds poured out, capped by the sharp sound of her own breath.
“Take one,” the lady said. “Trade it for the medicine. Will it be enough? No. Take two or three.” She might sound more lucid than Song had ever heard her, yet she still seemed to think it would take two or three diamonds to buy a week’s herbs.
Song was certain Taitai had forgotten about these diamonds long ago, for the story around Rue Wagner was that when she was younger, and first starting to use the Big Smoke, she and Du had many arguments about money. He limited her cash to try to slow her addiction. As sure as it was that she had forgotten the gems, it was just as sure that Du did not know they existed, for if he did, they would be gone.
Song stared at the stones, a pool of glinting light against the dark silk. It gave her a new jolt of power to think that Du was in this room at least once a week, visiting Taitai, sitting here on this bed, and he knew nothing of the diamonds.
When Du came, she knew he told his wife news of the family, as if she could still listen. To him, she was ill, for was it not true that millions used opium with no problems? As her husband, he took care of her, sitting by her for an hour a week, for which he was as faithful as the changing moon. Song could find no fault in how he ministered to his wife; it was something she had to admire about him.
The wave of sadness drowned her again, disappointment that she had been sold to an old man, one who perceived her not as a woman but as a tool. She was grateful for that, she did not want him anywhere near her, yet at the same time, it hurt that her womanhood had never been allowed to develop. Du would release her one day, but she would be past thirty then, and would have nothing.
Except for the Party.
She looked at the jewels, and remembered what she had said: I will pray to the gods to send a solution to your dilemma. Was this the moment to which her vows had led her? She rolled the diamonds in her hand, unable to take her eyes from them, thinking back once more to her reasons and her commitment.
Du’s affair with the actress had continued for much of 1932, and she’d sat through many evenings at the Vienna Garden listening to Huang Weimin, a well-known editor and playwright who, she realized as they spoke around the cigarette-clouded table, was also a secret leader of the Communist underground. She remembered the whiff of danger, but above all the fun of interacting with a like mind as they spoke of literature, and matched each other with lines of poetry. She had been there for almost an hour when she realized the beautiful, bold, and pregnant Miss Zhang was not present. “What happened to that Miss Zhang?” she asked. “Did she give in and stop the baby?”
“No,” said Huang, “she held her ground. In fact she was here, earlier this evening. I saw her.”
So Song watched, curious, thinking the girl might return at any moment to join the others being paid dance by dance, ticket by ticket. The left-wing debate continued and the pregnant girl did not appear; instead, sometime later, Song saw Teacher, coming down the hall behind Flowery Flag.
“Zou ba,” he said abruptly when he reached her, let’s go. She jumped up and followed him, noticing that his other bodyguard, Fiery Old Crow, was not with him.
At the car, she saw Fiery was already inside, waiting in the front passenger seat. He leaped out to hold the door for the boss, who climbed in the back, next to Song, and they headed out Bubbling Well Road. The driver, as always, was Flowery Flag, who had earned his nickname by once having worked as chauffeur for the American Embassy.
But he did not take any of the expected streets back into the French Concession that night. Instead he turned north into the side streets, until he reached the banks of Suzhou Creek. He turned at the top of the bank, and followed the waterway out to the suburbs, where wooded stretches and farming plots alternated with huddles of darkened houses. No one spoke in the car, and she kept her face set, while fear clawed at her inside.
Flowery left the road and followed a short gravel driveway to the riverbank, where they ground to a stop beneath the bare trees. “Get out,” Du ordered.
Around back, he unlatched the trunk and then stepped aside. “Go ahead. Raise it.”
She did, and looked down into the agonized, pleading eyes of Miss Zhang, the pregnant dance hostess, who shook, rags tied around her mouth, her ankles, her hands behind her back-
“Please,” Song said, her voice cracking. “Don’t do it.”
“Step back,” he ordered, each word a separate blow. “I want you to watch.”
Fiery and Flowery bent over the trunk and attached cement blocks to her feet with lengths of chain while she squirmed and squealed through the rag. Song stood with tears running, hating herself for her powerlessness, while they hauled the girl out, still struggling, and then counted to three in a good-natured, almost boyish way over her muffled shrieks, swinging her back and forth in order to land her out in deep water, where she hit with a massive, heaving splash. The water boiled, and frothed with bubbles for a minute, before it settled and returned to its dark placidity.
Flowery and Fiery had already turned back to the car. She followed, trembling, agonized, certain she would never get the girl’s eyes out of her mind.
“We call that ‘growing water lilies,’” Du said.
In the car, riding back that night, staring straight ahead through the windshield, she had decided that this was the last time she would feel so impotent against evil. She would join. She would work the rest of her life against people like Du, and against Japan, as long as its army fought on Chinese soil. She remembered how a deep and unexpected sense of calm, of resolution, settled over her. It was the beginning of her new life.
Now, as she sat in Du Taitai’s room, she made a silent vow to Miss Zhang, the poor dance hostess who had opened her heart to the son of a powerful family, conceived his child, and met her death while Song looked on. She had been a helpless girl then, no better than a slave, not the canny woman she was now. She would take these diamonds, and she would keep them for Miss Zhang. For herself, too.