She shook four diamonds into her hand like fractured light. She deserved them, she pleased the old lady. The maids said Taitai responded to her as to no one else, not even her husband. When Song was not present, she lay in bed, an empty seedpod, rattling on life’s last puffs of wind. Song fixed the pouch back in its place and resettled the picture on the wall.
She turned to see Taitai watching her, puzzled. “Was the picture crooked?”
Song searched the old face, her heart pounding. Already she has forgotten. “A little,” she lied.
Taitai gave the fan painting a blank look. “Pretty.” The lucidity had been like a flash of light in a forest.
The maid came back in, and observed that First Wife was tired. They settled her more comfortably on the pillow.
When the Supreme One slept, Song tilted open the wooden shutter slats and cranked out the windows for a few minutes to release the heavy smell of the opium and bring in the scent of the city. She straightened the chairs and dusted the bureau, which held all that was left of Taitai’s life: the wedding picture, a bronze pocket-plaque inscribed with sutras for some long-ago journey, a pair of jade earrings, and several books which had not been opened in many years. The old lady had lost interest in these things, in the room, in everything but the drug.
After the first couple of years, Song stopped asking herself what had made Taitai this way, whether it was the marriage to Du or something that came before; she saw only a sweet old lady worn thin as a ghost. She smoothed the paper-dry brow and turned the light down, sitting quietly for a while before she latched the window, darkened the shutters, and eased out.
In April of that year, the Kings lost their first member to the war when their violinist, Solomon Kirk, told them he was going home. This revelation came midway through an uncomfortable rehearsal, in which the brass players started talking disrespectfully about Mr. Hsu, who had not yet arrived.
Thomas got right up from his piano bench. “What was that?” He knew it was Errol Mutter who had spoken. “You want to tell everyone?”
“I said, your boy’s not here yet. Maybe you can’t work without your boy.”
“Mr. Mutter. Mr. Hsu is the reason I can give you written music.” Thomas had slipped into his angry voice, crisp and a little controlling. He did not like to deploy it, it was not part of his jazz man persona, but Mr. Hsu worked tirelessly for his eight dollars a month. That was exactly the wage he had asked for, too; Thomas never once tried to bargain with him. He wondered how Mr. Hsu could survive on that amount, but Lin Ming had told him that the copyist lived in a tingzijian, a pavilion room or scholar’s room, which was a small, closed-off loft above another room. “Of his skills none of you can possibly have the slightest doubt,” Thomas said.
“But can you play without him?” Errol pressed.
“It’s not him. It’s written music I cannot play without. I told you that at our first rehearsal.”
“He did tell you that.” The voice came ringing down over the empty seats from Lin Ming, who had climbed the stairs quietly and taken a seat in Du’s box without anyone noticing. “Mr. Hsu is here, standing in the lobby, you know. He just arrived. He heard what you said.”
Appearing in the archway, Mr. Hsu let loose a stream of light, consonant-tapping Shanghainese.
Lin translated to the group. “He wants to know what is the meaning, calling him ‘boy’?”
The men shifted in their seats. In Shanghai, male servants, hotel attendants, rickshaw pullers, and the like were called “boys” regardless of age, but Mr. Hsu was an educated musician, and they all knew it. Thomas waited for Errol to answer.
“It’s an insult,” Errol mumbled at last, and Mr. Hsu immediately turned toward the lobby door to leave.
“Wait!” Thomas said. “Please.” He saw Mr. Hsu hesitate.
Lin Ming jumped in, cajoling Hsu with wave after wave of appeasement, until finally the man unrolled his paper, uncapped his pen, and sat down to work.
“You must be more polite to Mr. Hsu, or he will not stay,” Lin said from the balcony.
“We will do better,” Thomas said humbly, pretending to take the blame, because here, everything was vertical authority, and as bandleader, he stood for the behavior of his men. It was Lin’s obligation to upbraid him, and Thomas’s to absorb the blame.
The rehearsal had barely teetered back on track when Solomon got up and made his announcement, saying he was sorry to leave, but the Japanese were everywhere, and to him it did not look good. He had saved his fare-that was what they had all agreed to when they came over on the one-way ticket. He wished them well. They were braver than he. He played his heart out for the rest of the rehearsal, even though he would be gone by Saturday night.
The first night they played without Solomon was the night a pretty, dark-haired white woman came into the ballroom, wearing a simple but close-fitting satin gown. She sat alone, unusual for one so attractive, and Thomas noticed she refused several offers to dance, instead sitting regally at her table, posture perfect, eyes bright. He felt a pull to her growing stronger through the evening, until finally, after the last set, he took a deep breath and introduced himself.
She smiled and extended a slim, white hand. “Anya Petrova, of Saint Petersburg. Your playing is very beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Saint Petersburg. Those who used the old name were White Russians, he remembered, as he took in her shiny dark bobbed hair and disconcertingly pale gray eyes. “Not as beautiful as you.” Normally, he was too worldly to say such a thing, but in her case, it was the truth.
“Pfft.” Unimpressed, she flicked at the air with two manicured fingers. “Do you know, when I was a girl, I was the plain one in the family? My parents, the servants, even the coachmen, all they talked about was how beautiful was my sister Elena. Never me.”
Servants. Coachmen. “Then they were wrong.”
“Flatterer.” She flashed a smile. “You are sweet. I must go now. Good night.”
“Please come again.” He watched her walk away across the ballroom, deliberately bewitching, moving her hips for him, making sure he would remember. It was a good bet she would be back.
She was, in less than a week, and he asked her to dinner after the show. Back in the dressing room, Alonzo said, “Who is that girl? I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
“Her name is Anya.”
“I know, I saw her on stage somewhere. She sings. Say-Mr. Lin was looking for you. Said he had something to talk to you about. He catch up with you?”
“No.” Thomas bounced on the balls of his feet, encased these days in top-grade Italian leather; he was eager to get back to Anya. “You choose,” he told her when he did, and she selected an all-night Chinese restaurant called Golden Tripod Kitchen, which surprised him. His expectations were further upended when, on their arrival, she greeted the staff in peremptory Shanghainese, to which they responded in the same tongue. Fascination bloomed. “How many languages do you speak?”
“Six,” she said.
Back home, Thomas had never met anyone who spoke another language, other than high school teachers at Mergenthaler. It was not like music, which was everyone’s second language back on Creel Street. Many people could play a simple song. The I-IV-V song form was easy, abbreviated; a child did not have to go on in music in order to know it. A song could be bent any which way and filtered through any kind of lens, but it was still a song, and still the spirit of America, as Thomas was increasingly coming to see. Strange he had to leave America to grasp it. So he had only this one language, music, the song, whereas she had mastered all these others. And she was beautiful. “Tell me,” he said, his admiration pulling him forward on his elbows, across the table, closer to her. “Your languages.”