“No customs?” said Thomas, for they had simply walked ashore, without even showing their identification.
“A free port,” Lin said proudly. “All are welcome.”
On the sidewalk, the air rang with a dozen languages. They were surrounded by men in Chinese gowns and padded jackets, and wand-like women in high-necked dresses and sumptuous fur wraps. Other men passed wearing tunics from India and robes from Arabia, some with faces darker than his own. Suddenly he was not different anymore, everybody was different. No one looked twice at him, for the first time in his life. And no one cared that he stood right there on the sidewalk, neither deferring nor giving way nor lifting his hand to tip his hat, which was in itself a marvel. Even a few pale foreign women in their tick-tock heels and woolen coats walked right past him, unconcerned. He could feel a grin growing on his face.
“Over here,” Lin Ming called, and Thomas saw him holding open the door to a black car. Rarely had Thomas ridden in a private car, but he slid in now, the smooth, fragrant leather and the murmur of the engine enveloping him. Shanghai was a fairy world, he decided as they drove along the river with its endless docks and braying vessels of all shapes and sizes.
The city was mighty, yet Thomas could see hints of the war Lin had described, too: clots of soldiers in brown uniforms standing along the wharves, puttees tight to their knees and rifles hooked casually on their shoulders.
“Japanese,” Lin confirmed.
“I thought you said they had only taken over the northeast.”
“Yes. Shanghai still belongs to China. But there was trouble four years ago, in ’thirty-two-fighting-and the foreign powers forced a cease-fire by promising that only Japan could have troops in Shanghai. China could not.”
“No Chinese troops here? But it is a Chinese city.”
“Correct.” Lin dripped dark irony.
“How could foreign powers force China to accept a thing like that?”
Lin almost wanted to laugh. “You are forgetting what I told you on the voyage. Shanghai is the city of foreign Concessions. Little colonies, each owned by another country. The city seems very free to you foreigners, but we Chinese must serve someone else. Do not forget that. You are a jueshi jia, a jazz man, you of all people should understand that we are not free. Up ahead, you see that row of docks? The Quai de France? That is the Frenchtown. This part now, we pass through? This is the International Settlement, belongs to Britain and America.”
“Like foreign colonies,” said Thomas.
“Concessions,” Lin corrected him, and said something musical in light, tapping tones to the driver, who made a right turn. “And here is the Avenue Édouard VII, the border of Frenchtown.”
Thomas saw that the street signs on the right were in Chinese, while suddenly on the left, he read Rue Petit, Rue Tourane, Rue Saigon. The buildings here had red stone façades with tall French doors and wrought-iron balconies, and between the cross-streets, small lanes led away. Peering into these, he saw women carrying vegetables for the evening meal, young girls in groups with their arms linked, grannies shepherding little children. It was as foreign as it could be, yet faintly familiar.
The false sense of welcome evaporated when Lin cut into his thoughts. “There is one thing you must know about the International Settlement, the district we just left behind-there are race laws.”
“What did you say?”
“It is shared by England and America, but they have the American race laws. Like your South.”
“Like the South?” Thomas felt his head squeezed. Here? On the other side of the world?
“Now, now,” said Lin, “do not react so. You are seeing a serpent’s image in a wine cup. It is only in that one district, and they will love you everyplace else, especially here, in Frenchtown, where they are crazy for musicians like you. Everyone will think you are exotic.”
Thomas sank back into the seat. Only one district? There was no way he was going to avoid the International Settlement, for it included the center of the city, the downtown, the docks, the Bund. He mulled this new worry as they rolled through Frenchtown.
“Look,” said Lin, “here we are.” They had stopped before a wrought-iron gate leading to a small front courtyard and a large house. Its European-style stone façade and tall windows were topped by upturned Chinese eaves; four or five bedrooms at least, Thomas thought, nothing like the small apartment in which he had been brought up. We are gentlefolk, his mother had always said, but that had been more a philosophy than a reality. The longing stabbed through him to have his own room; that would be a fine thing, after all the cramped and crowded places he had rested his head since his mother had passed. “How many of the fellows live here?”
Lin was already up the front steps. “Just you,” he said over his shoulder.
Impossible, he thought, stepping up just as the door opened to a middle-aged Chinese man in a white tunic. Two other men and an older woman formed a hasty line behind him.
“Who are these people?” said Thomas. Through the door he glimpsed rosewood wainscoting and an expensive-looking porcelain bowl on the hall table.
“Your servants,” said Lin Ming. “This is Uncle Hua, your steward.”
“Servants?” The first word Thomas attempted to speak in his new household was so thick with disbelief it stuck in his mouth.
Uncle Hua joined his fists before his chest, and lowered his eyes deferentially. “Yes, Master,” he said.
Jesus, was it only yesterday? was his amazed thought as he and Alonzo dismounted from the rickshaw in front of the Royal. The older man unlocked the lobby door, and dropped the brass key in Thomas’s hand. “This was Augustus’s key.”
It felt heavy and cold to Thomas. The bandleader he was replacing had died of a heart attack, in a brothel, and as he slipped the key into his pocket, he understood with a lurch that the house, the servants, the piano in the parlor, even the bed with its silk quilts must have belonged to Augustus too. Now their footsteps were shushing across the empty marble floors of the lobby, through the arch. Across the ballroom, on the stage, ten other men waited in a pearly circle of light, their legs crossed, loose-trousered, instruments on their laps.
Thomas got up beside the piano, one hand on the lid to cover his tremble. He knew he was a liar, and soon they would know too. “First, before anything else, my sympathy to every one of you for the loss of Augustus Jones. It was a shock, and I’m sorry. But now we have ten days before the theater reopens on New Year’s Eve. I know fourteen of your songs. That’s not enough, and I aim to learn the rest just as fast as I can. Hope you’ll bear with me.”
A resentful mumble circled the room.
A squat, short-legged man with a French horn cradled in his lap said, “How come you don’t know the songs? Where’d you play before?”
Sweat trickled as Thomas tried to deliver the answer he had worked out earlier. “Various places. Pittsburgh, Richmond, Wilmington.” In fact, with the exception of Wilmington, Thomas had never even visited those places. He was hoping none of the band members had either. “Let’s start with your signature tune-‘Exactly Like You.’” The 1930 song, perennially popular on the radio, was sweet and simple, easy to play. He had practiced it. But as soon as he started it, instead of falling in with him, the others stayed in for only a phrase or two, and dropped off. He stopped. “What?”
“You gotta be kidding,” said the other horn player, whose jowls seemed to hang straight from the point of his chin to his collar.
“All right, sir,” said Thomas. “You are?”