But here in Shanghai, he did miss Western food. Chen Ma cooked only two things, Chinese food and Southern food. The first had wearied him, and the second he had never liked to begin with. With Anya, he had visited restaurants often, of every nationality and type, usually late at night, when he got off work. They had been faithful about eating at restaurants, because it was the only time when she ate.
It had not been easy to end things. Thomas took her to dinner after the show, as he always did, and by the time they were in a rickshaw, being pulled by a straining coolie back to his studio on Peking Road, it was 3:30 A.M. She rode pressed against him as she always did, unsuspecting; he had planned to say nothing until they were alone together, in bed.
He might as well have poured ice water on her. She was out from the sheets in a second, pulling down her scarves and dumping her fake jewels into a bag.
“Anya,” he said, trying to pull her back.
“Stop it.”
“Don’t do that.”
“If that is all I am,” she swore, “even one wink I will not sleep here!” It took him more than an hour just to convince her she did not have to move right then, before dawn. He made it clear he would rent another place and pay for eight months, but this, of course, she quickly refused.
After that came apologies and accusations, tears, humiliations, and declarations of good intentions, until at last she accepted his offer of eight months’ rent. An agreement reached, they fell into an exhausted sleep. The next day he helped her make arrangements, gave her the money, and she was gone. What surprised him was that he did not miss her, beyond the pleasures of sleeping with her, and the trips to restaurants.
He finished his food, and handed off his empty plate to a Chinese servant with an easy, absent smile.
Strolling the lawn as a digestif, he found himself talking with a trio of foreigners, British, German, and American. When he walked up, the American, a businessman from Pennsylvania, was holding forth about China and Japan. “You see how sloppy everything is here? How much everything has to be greased?” the man said. “It’ll be cleaned up spit-spot if the Japanese win. Now they know what they’re doing. Ed Rollins, Cleveland. Pleasure.” He extended his hand jovially to the white fellow standing on Thomas’s left, who turned out to be British, then to the other fellow, the German, and finally, almost as an afterthought, to Thomas himself.
Once acknowledged, Thomas responded to what he had said. “Do you really think it’s all right for Japan to invade China just because they seem more organized?”
“Works better for us,” Rollins quipped.
“I’ve heard Germany’s pretty organized,” Thomas shot back, keeping it serious. “Think they should take over the U.S.?”
“Now, wait a minute-”
“We would do very well,” the German cut in, a grin stretching his blustery Hanoverian whiskers. “But all of you are missing the point. The danger to the world is not Japan. It is the Jews. And you here in Shanghai, you are letting them in! No other country in the world is so stupid to do that.”
“My good man,” said the Brit, pouring on the plumminess, “Shanghai is an open port. Everyone is welcome here. And so it will remain.”
“Jews are good for work and labor,” said the German. “No more.”
Thomas stared, amazed he was hearing this.
“They breed,” the German added.
Thomas closed his eyes, and back to him came one of those powerful, long-ago memories, dreadfully important but glossed over by scarring until now. He was nine but runty for his age, on account of his father having fallen in France and them running chronically short of food, so he probably appeared too young to be out on the stoop by himself, although he was not. What he was doing that day was sulking; his mother wanted him to play the first ten Bach inventions in sequence, and he wanted to be out with his friends. As he hunched on the steps, two white ladies walked by, which already made him cringe back in fear, because they had steel-colored eyes and wore dead foxes around their necks. They looked at him as if he were a strange animal, revolting but interesting, and one said to the other, “They breed,” utterly careless of whether he could hear her or not. He remembered his sharp intake of breath, and his almost instantaneous decision not to tell his mother, who already suffered with so much.
Now, though, he spoke to the German. “Such claims have no place in Christian company, sir.”
“But I am right,” said the German.
“See here,” the Brit interrupted forcefully, “I must insist you stop. I agree with my friend here, Mr. Greene”-the man nodded his distinguished white head at Thomas, and in a rushing instant, Thomas realized he was the host of this party, it was he who had slipped the invitation card into Thomas’s hand a week before-“your comments are insupportable. This is my house, and my party. I insist you cease such talk.”
“And I insist that you know nothing of Jews,” said the German.
“There you are wrong,” said the Briton, as he pointed across the crowd to a man with a cane. “That is my friend of twenty years, Sir Victor Sassoon. He is a welcome guest here, as he is everywhere in Shanghai.” Now the silver-haired gentleman turned to Thomas. “Just like my friend here, Mr. Greene.”
“Actually,” Thomas replied, “I am not welcome everywhere in the International Settlement. I can’t walk in the front door of a hotel or restaurant.”
The Brit looked sad. “Ah, that is your American policy, not ours.”
“The Jews are your problem too,” the German said. “They are filth, not like us.” With a generous gesture he included Thomas in the circle. “We are gentlemen.”
“You are wrong about me,” said Thomas firmly. “They are filth?” He steadied his gaze right in the German’s eyes. “Then I am exactly like them.”
That night Kung’s ship docked at the Bund, bringing him back from Europe, and Lin Ming went downtown to meet him. He wanted to hear about his trip over brandy and a few cigars.
The shock was Kung’s deflated appearance, unexpected because sea journeys by their nature were restful. “Duke Kung, what’s happened? Are you ill?”
“My pride and my hope are wounded,” the older man said, “not my body, this time. Shall we go have a drink?”
“Precisely why I came,” said Lin, and they scrambled into a rickshaw and swayed comfortably down Avenue Édouard VII, on their way to a coffee shop Kung favored on a small street off Boulevard de Montigny. There they took a private back room, and ordered an expensive bottle of Armagnac, and also a steaming pot of Iron Goddess of Mercy with two tiny teacups.
Kung clipped a cigar and lit it. “Unfortunately, though it was the Soviets who asked me to set out in the first place, their plan had been abandoned by the time I reached Moscow. Nevertheless, I continued on to Berlin-you know I hoped I could get the Nazis to help us.”
“And?” said Lin.
“They will not.”
“I see,” said Lin heavily. “That is very bad.”
“It is,” said Kung, exhaling a tufting cloud of smoke. “But that is not the only reason for my fear. It’s because of what is happening to the Jews! They are seizing their property, their fortunes. My friends lost their banks. They are passing laws against them.”
“Are they all right, your friends?”
“Schwartz and Shengold? I still could not locate them. Their houses were locked up; I pray to God and Jesus they are safe. Young Lin, we must do something. This is a grave international crime. China has to take a stand against it.”