Then he heard a word from Wing Bean, soft, barely audible, “Amithaba.”
Why does he invoke the Buddha? he wondered. Only then, above the avenue, did he see the stepwise line of bombs falling from the plane like pellets, gusting with the rain, drifting sideways, directly toward them. It was the last thing he saw.
Thomas and Song were halfway down the next block when the blast that was to kill a thousand people at the corner of Édouard VII and Tibet Road shattered the air around them, muffling their ears into silence for long pressurized seconds until their drums popped, and a wall of screams rose up from one block over. Plumes of smoke and dust billowed over the rooftops.
“Look,” she said. The plane, clearly marked with the Nationalist flag, was wheeling away into the clouds.
“It’s Chinese.”
“How can that be?” She looked like she might cry.
“A mistake,” he said, arms around her. “Listen. You sure you’re all right? Yes? Then we have to get you home, now.”
“But if the bombs fell right in that crowd-” Cries for help and mercy were carried to them on the wind.
“Song.” He took her face in his hands and turned it toward him, because she could not tear her gaze from the corner, where people stumbling away from the blast were already filling the street. “You’ve got to go inside the compound. Everyone will be focused on this. You can get in.”
She slipped her arms around his neck.
“Not here,” he cautioned, but before either could move, they heard the click of a shutter. He turned in shock and horror to see Wing Bean, from the Royal.
“Big-Ear Du will very like that one,” he said, winding the film on to the next shot.
“Wing Bean,” Thomas said, strong. “What are you doing?”
“Taking picture.” Wing Bean, still clicking, was clearly hurt, bleeding from a wound to his head, as he stood in the middle of the road, snapping photos.
“Give me that,” said Thomas.
“No. So many picture, touch and kiss. How much you give me?”
Thomas saw that the side of Wing Bean’s head was caved in, his skull broken. How was he standing up?
“What you give me?” Wing Bean repeated, and started to cough. A second later, bloody foam bubbled from his mouth and into his cupped hand, which distracted him for a second as he stared at it in surprise. One hard lunge, a fast grab, and Thomas had the camera. In an instant he had ripped out the film, unspooling it in the light.
“Doesn’t matter!” Wing Bean cried, and tumbled to his knees, gasping, gurgling. Behind him, the crowd stumbling away from the bomb site surged closer. “I saw you! Zhao saw you too, but he is dead-I saw! I am going to tell Du everything.”
Thomas took Song’s arm and pulled her back a step, out of the way of the human wall barreling up Boulevard de Montigny behind Wing Bean. The waiter did not see them; he was still shrieking at Thomas, his words bubbling in blood.
Neither answered, because at that moment another huge bomb exploded from the northeast, and a smoke-and-debris cloud tufted up from the area around the Bund-where Thomas’s studio lay. Wing Bean turned too, and saw the crowd running straight into him, knocking him over. In a short time he was flattened, barely visible but for the rumple of clothes and the blood running out under people’s feet. They must have been able to feel the squish and bump beneath their shoes, they must have known, but it was madness, death all around, and no one stopped even to look. Her hand crept into his.
They stood a long minute, and neither needed to speak. “Go home,” he said finally, into her ear, and she turned away.
The next day he and Ernest and Charles gathered around the radio to hear the news: three thousand dead from the bombs that fell in the International Settlement. This was followed by an official announcement made for foreign residents.
“Here we go.” Thomas turned it up, and they huddled close.
The consulates of Great Britain and the United States hereby advise all citizens to book immediate passage out. Shanghai is in a state of war and these governments cannot guarantee the safety of their citizens who choose to remain behind.
“Book passage?” Thomas said. “How?” The brothers had only a few hundred saved between them, and all the cash he had was with Uncle Hua, more than two thousand Chinese dollars, another reason they needed to find the old man, because that would be enough to get all three of them out, and Alonzo too, if he was finally ready to go.
But Uncle Hua had not come back. Thomas guessed he had gone home to his family, but he knew it could be worse. Thousands were dead. And what had happened with Wing Bean had shown him that it took only one bolt out of the blue to snatch one’s life, or warp one’s fortunes. It was like the unexpected ninth in Duke Ellington’s “Blue Ramble,” the ninth in the bottom of the stacked chord that changed the song, changed everything. The turn. Wing Bean was dead, and they were safe.
That night, at the Royal, he brought up Hua’s absence with Lin Ming, who puckered in concern, and said, “Tomorrow morning we go see his family in the Chinese City.”
On the way there, Lin scolded him for feigning acceptance of Morioka’s invitation in the first place.
“I had no intention of going,” Thomas protested. “You warned me. But his boy was standing there. My servants used to handle these things for me, and I did not know what to say.” Weak though this was, he was keeping the truth to himself.
“That’s stupid,” Lin snapped. “Wooden head! I was so worried, I had to send my sister. And then everything happened and she barely made it back!”
“But she’s all right?” said Thomas, barely able to breathe now that she had been mentioned.
“Song? Yes. She’s fine,” Lin said, his brows lifting quizzically at Thomas’s interest. Good, he did not know.
They disembarked on Zizhong Road, where Hua’s family lived in a third-floor room so crowded Thomas wondered how Uncle Hua could run a gambling operation in it. Lin and Hua’s wife talked in light, percussive Shanghainese-bird talk, Thomas always thought when he heard it-while the children, two boys and a girl, watched in silence. Thomas relaxed a little, looking around, for Hua’s wife sounded normal, which to him meant that she knew her husband’s whereabouts.
Ah, there was the gaming table, behind a curtain. The small space also contained beds, a shelf of books, a single charcoal burner for cooking and heating, and a yellow-painted night stool in one corner half-hidden behind another curtain, merely a bucket with a simple lid and a seat on top.
The place was small, but the family benefited in all ways from the city outside. Lin Ming broke off from his chat with Hua’s wife for a moment to show Thomas the basket and rope the family lowered to the street to exchange coins with vendors when they heard the cries of their favorite snacks: Steamed rice cakes made of rugosa rose and white sugar! Shrimp-dumpling and noodle soup! And-From the east side of the Huangpu River-beans of five-fold flavor! The basket went down with a few coins, and came up with food.
And then there was the gambling business, the gaming table. Thomas certainly hoped his savings were safe.
At that moment Hua’s wife suddenly released a long, high-pitched wail of grief, shaking her hands in the air as if they burned. It was ice-cold clear that until that moment, she had thought her husband safe at the house off Rue Lafayette.
There were so many dead that most of them had been piled quickly into common graves while the tapering rain washed the gutters clean of blood. Thomas and Lin exchanged a look of pure pain as they realized where Hua must have ended up and, each man holding an arm, they helped Hua’s suddenly weak wife to a chair. For a long time that day they sat with her, while she alternated between keening sobs and tearful conversation, none of which Thomas understood as it poured out of her. He felt awful; Hua had gone out looking for him.