He himself had only his piano, and fourteen handmade suits. He had chalk stripe, gabardine, seersucker, linen, basket weave, wool tropical, and winter-weight flannel, from three-piece suits to casual single-button sport coats with complementary trousers, suits for every occasion. They hung in a row along one wall, as useless as he was. You are special, his mother had told him when he was small. Opportunities come to those special enough to deserve them. Not anymore.
Most of the clubs had closed. Only one American orchestra was still playing, and that was Earl Whaley and his Red Hot Syncopators; they had left Saint Anna’s and moved to Ladow’s Casanova, a cavernous ballroom at 545 Avenue Édouard VII. The place was owned by the Eurasian son of Louis Ladow, an American ex-con and octoroon who, before his death, had run the Carleton Hotel and Astor House ballrooms.
There would be no spot for Thomas, since Whaley had signed on piano F. C. Stoffer, but he thought Alonzo and the two brothers might get positions. Unfortunately Charles, like Earl, played alto, but Charles was good on clarinet, too. Thomas invited the bandleader to lunch.
“The son may be half-Chinese, but he’s still an American,” Earl Whaley said as they cut into their veal chops at the Park Hotel Grill. “So as long as America stays neutral, the Japs’ll let him keep operating. That’s the beauty, right there. Because everybody else has been shut down.”
Thomas nodded, at the same time mentally quivering as he counted up the bill, five dollars at least, but where else were his band members going to get work? The invaders had taken everything. “I hear Japan is setting up a vice district here in Frenchtown.”
Earl lined English peas up along his knife, precise, effortless, a sax man. “I heard about that too. It’s going to be rock bottom. Every kind of low-down operation. You stick your arm in a slot with a few dollars in it, they inject you with morphine.”
“Music clubs?”
Earl snorted. “If you call ’em that. Nobody’s going to play there, ’cept Filipinos.” Filipino bands worked the lowest rung of Shanghai’s club-world, always with passable renditions of the season’s hit songs.
“And everyplace else is closed down?”
“’Cept Ladow’s,” said Earl comfortably. “We’re changing our name, what with the new lineup-Earl Whaley and His Coloured Boys. What do you think?”
“Good,” said Thomas, his mind churning. There was no place else. A year ago he would have dismissed Ladow’s as a second-tier establishment, since they employed dance hostesses. But that world was gone, Earl’s was going to be the only black orchestra still playing, and Ladow’s the one jazz place that had not gone Japanese, thanks to its American owner. It was his only shot.
His mouth felt dry as paper. He reached for his tea.
“How about some pie?” said Earl.
“They have lemon meringue,” said Thomas, wanting to scream. Two pieces of pie was a dollar. He signaled the waiter anyway, and two wedges were slid in front of them.
Now. They were two dark men in a white-tablecloth restaurant that was deserted save for them, waiters standing idle, in a city of dreams that had crashed into ruins. “Earl,” he said. “I need a favor.”
Part II
黑暗世界
After the Japanese took over, the Green Gang split apart. Some worked for the resistance, but most crossed the line to serve the enemy. They were dog’s legs, the sort of men who had to serve some master, so when the great jazz ballrooms were no more, they turned to enforcing the casinos, dance halls, opium dens, and pleasure houses of the new Japanese vice zone, the Badlands. Our era had been permissive, but the Badlands was vile. Any service could be bought, any form of sex, any wager, any drug, even murder, some said, if the price was paid. It was a cruel parody of what had been.
Yet when it came to what I wanted for my country, which was to stand up to Japan, Shanghai had not let me down. She had fought to the end, laying down a quarter-million lives to the enemy’s seventy thousand, putting the lie to their boast that they could conquer Shanghai in three days. Nevertheless, our time was finished, and an exodus of souls had begun, a migration away from what now was a prison everyone called Hei’an Shijie, the Dark World. Some went abroad, to Hong Kong, or to the interior-west into the White areas if they followed Chiang or north into the Red if they followed Mao.
I was reborn first through the movement, and then again, through him. After our time together I knew, no matter where the two of us were, that while he lived, I would never be alone. I knew I would return to him. But just as much, I knew I needed to go north.
7
IN THE WINTER of 1938, north China was split between areas controlled by Japan, the Whites, the Reds, and independent warlords loyal to one Chinese side or the other. The Communist hub was Yan’an, a backward settlement in upper Shaanxi Province. It was carved into dusty loess hills along a sluggish, silt-brown river, but to Song it was a city of gold.
Even as a Party member, she could not just travel to Yan’an and present herself. First she had to go to Xi’an, which was in the White area, Chiang’s area, yet functioned as a neutral portal for anyone who wished to pass into Communist territory as a partisan. Song was coming on her own, without written introductions; she knew she would be expected to remain in the hostel of the Eighth Route Army Liaison Office for a few weeks while they considered her. Operations were tighter in the north, it being a military center, while the Party in Shanghai was really a propaganda organization. Maybe she should have written to Chen Xing for his help after all.
The taxi came within sight of the rambling complex of buildings, and she told the driver not to stop, since ahead she could see a Buddhist pagoda, rising above the low-slung courtyard buildings. “There,” she said. One hand strayed to the tiny sewn-in pouch she had carried all the way from Shanghai; it would not do to take twenty-seven diamonds into the Eighth Route Army Office.
She had told no one, and she felt especially bad about keeping the secret from Thomas, but it was only for now. She would pull out the little pouch someday and show him. Right now, though, it had to be put someplace safe.
She walked a while with her travel-bundle, scanning the featureless stone walls. There was no hiding place, not even a small park where she could knock loose enough earth to make a hole under a rock.
She walked back to the pagoda to pray at the temple, and think. After dropping some coins into the earthen pot, which earned an approving gaze from the bald saffron-robed monk at the altar, she lit a clutch of incense sticks and bowed and then sank low, arms outstretched, hoping for an answer. After a minute she stood, and added her incense sticks to the others burning in the dish of sand.
“Sister,” said the monk, “you look tired. I must leave for a dot of time, but remain here if you like. See? There is a small meditation chamber. You may rest there.” And with the serene purpose of his kind, he left.
The temple was unheated, but it was positioned to give shelter from the winds, so she passed gratefully through the door, and found herself in a smaller room, a sort of side chapel, with a tiny window giving onto a grassy back court. Looking out, she saw the court was crowded with a miniature forest of steles, all erected and inscribed over the centuries in honor of the Buddha; she counted twelve of them along with a gnarled tree, limbs naked now in the February cold. The walls were high, no one could see into the courtyard. Was this the open door, the key, the escape hatch? She did not want to cross the threshold of the Eighth Route Army Office unless she had a way to get back to Thomas. She slipped out and began a search of the walls for a loose tile or stone.