Lin ordered the dish the restaurant was famous for, a rich, milky-white seafood chowder brimming with fish, shrimp, scallops, tofu, thin-sliced sea cucumber, and tangy mustard greens, touched by white pepper. To accompany this they had cold plates of pungent steeped cucumbers, gluten puffs with winter mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and ma lan tou, a minced salad of a local freshwater weed and savory dry tofu. Sensing his friend’s inner disturbance, Lin ordered rice spirits for both of them, bai jiu, powerfully alcoholic, served warm in a small crock. “You look like you have a fishbone stuck in your throat. Out with it,” he said, pouring.
“First of all, my men. We are down to a skeleton.”
“I already told you, we can’t replace any of them.”
“But the ballroom is full every night! The money’s got to be as good as ever.”
“Money is unrelated. Would you have me bring new musicians over here now, in conditions like this?”
“Now we are getting to it. Should the rest of us leave?”
“How can I know? Each has his own decision. But you and I,” Lin said, “and the others you have left, we are here. All of us know the risks. A new man, in America? No.”
Thomas was silenced by this.
“Was there something else?” said Lin. “Anya?”
“How did you know?”
Lin smiled. “It shows. You foreigners are so sensitive when it comes to the house thing.”
“Well… first she told me we could not be together any longer in her room, and that I would have to rent a room for us to meet. I did that.”
Lin nodded; the strategy was well known to him, and he saw little wrong with it. “Why should two rooms be paid for?”
“That’s what she said. Except that now I am responsible for her rent. And she wants me to give her money, too, every week.”
“And how else do you expect her to get money?”
Thomas stared.
“You want her to go with another man?” Lin asked, serving his friend more soup. “Let me ask you: What work did Anya do when you met her?”
“I don’t know. She had that room-she sang a little in clubs, she performed.”
“That is not enough.”
“So you’re saying she got money from men?”
“As all women do, even wives. In my view, this is unimportant. What matters is, what kind of woman is she?”
“A good woman.”
“I agree, and lovely too,” said Lin. “By the way, what man did she see before you?”
He bristled faintly. “I wouldn’t have any idea.”
“But I would,” Lin said. “It was an Italian, an embassy man.”
“How do you know that?”
Lin raised his palms. “I have eyes. I live in Shanghai. You should not be so hard on her, you know-how else do you expect her to live?”
“I am starting to see your point,” said Thomas, thinking that now it made sense-her wildly divergent social circles, the instant recognition she commanded from people, club patrons, doormen, waiters. She was just trying to get by.
The bai jiu had made Lin Ming professorial. “Actually, Little Greene, this type of woman is as precious as jade. She is not like a wife. Anya is there when you want her, not there when you do not. Who would not desire her, in Shanghai, especially in times like these?”
“What about your woman?” said Thomas. “You told me about her once-but not much.”
Lin thought of trying to describe Pearl, but decided Thomas could never understand a Chinese woman. “Well water and river water do not mix,” he said.
Thomas left their lunch and walked up Dong Men to Ming Guo Road, which circled the Chinese City and led him to the beginning of Avenue Joffre. The long avenue lined with shops and impressive buildings would eventually take him back to his part of Frenchtown. As he walked, every beautiful woman he passed made him think of Anya, and wonder what he ought to do. He had spent quite a few nights in the greatest intimacy with her, doing everything men and women could do, yet they were not really close. He was to blame, clearly, for he had kept her in a small, circumscribed part of his life. He had always gone home to sleep in his own bed. But that was because he did not love her.
So he would not go on like this.
The awareness was like a weight floating off of him, as he understood that their time together would end. He would make sure she was secure, and he would leave her happy.
He would miss her forthright hungers and her bliss in their joinings. He would miss the way she took him into Shanghai’s back rooms and secret salons, even though through her, he still had not met a Communist. Maybe they did not exist.
He approached the corner of New Yuyang Street, and Anya’s words came back to him: Communists? The Foreign Languages School on New Yuyang. He turned down the narrow road, lined with Shanghai’s usual three- and four-story brick apartment buildings, dotted with groups of somnolent old men and gossipy grandmas, the only people out on this hot June afternoon, except for the rickshaw coolies who had no place to go, and were stopped here and there along the cobbled sidewalk, napping beneath their awnings.
Ahead, he saw a sizable building with a white sign out front, English words that made his midsection flutter in excitement: Foreign Languages School. He withdrew to the shade beneath some plane trees across the street and willed himself to blend in, straining to disappear against the green backdrop as he studied the doors.
The strange thing was that almost no one passed through the doors, at least no one he could see clearly; they all seemed to hunch over and get away as quickly as possible. He picked out a middle-aged, scholarly-looking Chinese gentleman, two threadbare office clerk types, and a young woman who looked like a student, and held a scarf over her face.
And then another woman stepped out, and he sank backwards. Her form and her elegantly controlled walk were familiar to him; even though her face was half-shielded by the hand she held up, he knew it was her, Song Yuhua.
He pressed against the ivy-thick wall behind him as she checked up and down the street, her shoulders pulled forward around her.
She’s one of them. In a blazing instant, he understood the oddities, like the manic light in her eyes when she ripped Morioka’s card from his hands, so at odds with who she was in the company of Du. She had another life, he saw it-in the trenches where the Communists fought Japan, and the Nationalists fought the Communists. And she does it right under Du’s nose. He pressed back into the waxy leaves, breathless at her bravery, as he watched her hurry away down the street.
5
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, STILL reeling from his discovery, Thomas attended a lawn party at a Tudor-style estate in the western suburbs of the International Settlement, a wealthy area favored by Shanghailanders, as the white foreigners who had settled in Shanghai generations before liked to call themselves. Their guests were a Caucasian mix of business people, teachers, missionaries, and the interlopers of every stripe who were everywhere, seeking to explain East to West and vice versa. There were also a few dozen Chinese in gowns or business suits, and one or two oddities like himself. Everyone appeared prosperous, from the women in silk stockings and heels to the men in handmade suits with spectacles and timepieces of solid gold. Too successful-looking to be Communists, in his opinion, but then of course he remembered Song, encased in brocade with huge jewels clipped to her ears; she had fooled him.
He loaded his plate at the buffet, choosing from plump pink prawns and roast beef and rack of lamb, cucumber salads, and strawberries with clotted cream. He loved the food at these parties, which was why he often took advantage of the invitations pressed into his hand at the informal receiving line with which he ended every show. He also enjoyed being a guest in rich people’s homes, just as he liked getting the same wage a white player earned.