A minute later, she and Ah Pan passed out through the compound gate into Rue Wagner, and instantly were pushed and eddied by a crowd unlike anything either had ever seen. A mass of Chinese made an endless white-shirted column trudging through the sweltering streets, carrying what they could, everyone pushing into the French Concession, another country, neutral, where they hoped to be safe from Japanese bombs or street-by-street attacks. Blocking the tide of refugees were islands of those who had walked as far as they could and then stopped, huddled on the ground to rest or sleep, children and clothing and cook pots shielded from the plodding line by their bodies.
Song and Ah Pan linked hands and pushed through to Édouard VII, where Song’s hopes that the trolley might be running soon evaporated, for nothing moved there except the slow streams of people. “We will walk,” Song said, wondering how she was going to separate from the maid to see Thomas. They pushed against the human flow, out of the French Concession.
“Come, little one,” Song said, when the girl’s pace slowed. “Not much further.”
But the bondmaid stopped. “I have to go,” Ah Pan said.
“Go where?”
“Home.”
“Your village? In Hebei? No,” said Song. This was impossible, no matter how much Song might have wished for privacy. “Too dangerous! There are no trolleys. What makes you think there are trains? You don’t even have money.”
“I have money,” said Ah Pan, and touched her pocket to make a pathetic jingle of coins.
“Ah Pan, listen to me.” Song took both the maid’s hands. “You are better off here. In Teacher’s house you will be safe, safer than almost anywhere.”
“It’s my family,” said Ah Pan.
Song felt the stab of it. It could hardly be worse for Ah Pan’s family; her native place had been overrun. “Listen,” said Song. “When this is over, I’ll ask leave for you to go see them. I’ll take you. We’ll go together. Right now-” she gestured toward the explosions, wondering if the maid would even be able to get out of the city alive. Thunder broke and mumbled across the sky; on top of everything else, Shanghai’s low-lying streets would soon be knee-deep in water as well. “Come,” she said to the girl, “let’s walk.”
When they reached the herbalist, she turned to Ah Pan. Risky though it was to leave the girl on the sidewalk for a minute, to take her inside was impossible. No one from her life could meet the herbalist. “I need you to wait out here for a moment while I get the herbs. You cannot travel now. I swear to you, as soon as it is safe, we will go.” That was all she could say. She believed in freedom, and that meant the girl was not hers to command, in the end.
Ah Pan stood stubborn, and they faced each other like two trees rooted in the earth. Finally the girl said, “Xia yi beizi,” next life. “Ni jin qu ba.” Go inside.
“Please don’t go.” She didn’t want to let Ah Pan leave; it was dangerous. She wished she could command her. Suddenly everything that had drawn her, the rights of the worker, the equity, the higher way of thinking-all of it was xin luan ru ma, as tangled as a heap of rope. Her voice was a whisper. “Wait here. Please.” And she turned away even as it sliced her to do it, and walked inside.
Uncle Hua stood at the kitchen door with his pant legs rolled up, slapping at mosquitoes on his calf as he peered up at the blackening sky. A siren screamed in the distance, making his heart startle and his flesh jump, turning his thoughts again to Master, who had not slept at home the night before, and still had not returned. Hua had told him over and over that his studio was dangerous, sitting as it did directly across from the Idzumo, but Master never wanted to listen. Wooden head, wooden brain. Moreover, it was wrong for him to leave Hua alone with the young brothers now, with the enemy approaching. He was the only servant left. Little Kong, Chen Ma, and Uncle Zhu had all departed the day before, back to their home villages, leaving a lot of trouble for Hua.
Then there was his gambling business, which had abruptly withered. Things had never before gotten so bad that people stopped gambling, and though he was sure they were overreacting, they stopped playing nonetheless, and he could not bring them back. Twice cursed was the fact that just now he was out three thousand, most of which was Master’s money. This was a sum he could normally make back in two or three weeks of busy operations, but now he had no operations at all. Curse the brown dwarf invaders. Curse their mothers. May their guts shrivel and protrude out through their mouths and be gnawed off by rats.
He heard a noise behind him and saw Ernest in the doorway. “Little Master always look see,” he said, pretending annoyance at the teenager, whom he liked.
“Hua Shu,” said Ernest, having added “Uncle” to his modest repertoire of Chinese words. “Where’s Thomas? He still didn’t come back.”
“Master stay studio side.”
“Not now,” said Ernest. “Listen to the bombs.”
“Master working.”
“Not now. Thomas knows it’s just the three of us here. He would have come home if everything was all right.”
Hua shrugged.
“I have to go check. Give me the address, catchee chop-chop.”
Hua folded his arms. “No can do! Trouble very bad. Many peoples dead.”
“That’s why I need to go.”
“No! Two Little Masters stay here.”
“Yes. I am going to look for him.”
“No. You stay! I go.” Hua rolled down his pants, then huffed and muttered as he poked through the cupboard, finally pulling out an ancient black umbrella which he unfurled with dignity, leaning halfway out the door to open it and stepping out carefully beneath its canopy. Charles had come clattering in behind Ernest, and the two of them watched as Uncle Hua stomped away in the wind, twisting his umbrella this way and that to shield himself. Soon his gown was soaked and clinging to his midsection, and the wind, which the radio said was at seventy-eight kilometers per hour, tore his umbrella right out of his hands. He plodded on in his bubble of dignity, turned the corner, and vanished.
Song made her way north on Jiangsu Road, turned right at the Land Bank, and crossed Yuanmingyuan Road. That was when she saw it, the Bund, the Peking Road Jetty, and the Idzumo, the great flag-snapping killer whale, moored right there in the river and surrounded by passenger liners, junks, freighters, and bobbling sampans, all tied down and riding hard at anchor. The first raindrops started to fall on her as she hurried down the block, past the majestic offices of Jardine Matheson and Canadian Pacific, to the small side door Lin had described to her, opening directly onto the sidewalk twenty or thirty meters in from the Bund. Next to the door was a louvered wood shutter, and behind it the window was open. She could hear the piano.
Inside the room, Thomas had been playing since he awakened, still full of feeling from what he had seen the night before. It had been hot, and the waiters had propped open the lobby doors for air, so that through set after set, Thomas and his fellow Kings had watched the steady stream of people carrying bundles and children and elders on their backs, pouring into Frenchtown, where they thought they would be safe. The band performed to them all night, doors open, and every number they played carried the rootless blues of their homeland.
When he awakened in the studio, he could smell the coming rain, and hear the river churning, boats butting and knocking, warning sounds he knew well from the coves near his grandfather’s farm on the Eastern Shore. It was enthralling, a drama, and it drew him naturally to the piano.
He laid his hands on the keys in D-flat major and played the arpeggiated left-hand waterfall of Liszt’s concert étude Un Sospiro. In his right hand, he added a simple melody, not Liszt’s melody, his own, but bent and stretched, with the worried notes added. It grew, drawing energy from the weather. He kept up Liszt’s left-hand pattern, and with his right hand, he followed the wind, calling, responding. Then the rain started, first a scattered counter-rhythm of drops, but soon a jackhammering roar. He played to it, swelling the sound, until he heard something.