by Nicole Mones
“Jazz,” said Pok.
“You don’t say,” Kung said in English, sending a twinkle toward Lin Ming, not yet seeing how the news was strangling him with terror. “And for you, Teacher,” Kung went on, back in Chinese, “What a bolt of luck! You don’t have to do a thing. He’ll come to you.”
Lin stood in the center, feeling everything around him crashing. He did not ask for much, just to bring music from over the sea, to shepherd his musicians, to be with his favorite girl, Zhuli. He did not expect to be free; he understood that his father, and the Green Gang, controlled his life, and might even end up choosing the time and manner of his death. He also accepted the fact that he personally was powerless to stop Japan. But his musicians, his flock that he’d brought from America and nurtured here in Shanghai’s endless night—they should be left alone.
Pok backed out, with Du’s thanks. Du always treated his secretaries well.
“Lucky. As for you, do not worry so much,” Kung said to Lin. “There is no reason why they should sacrifice the plum tree for the peach tree.”
Kung’s kindly joke in turning the phrase around—in the old saying, the plum tree did get sacrificed—failed to allay Lin’s fear. Meanwhile, Du Yuesheng nodded approvingly, for ancient military strategy was the kind of traditional tidbit he loved.
Lin stood motionless. “Please,” he heard himself say, small and squeaky.
“What?” Du looked over sharply.
“There are so many jazz men in Shanghai, others could serve as bait—”
But his father held up a silencing hand. “It is not up to us. It is he who will decide. No one can resist Shanghai for long, including Morioka. He will be like a bird hovering over a field of flowers. Sooner or later he will light, and then we will have him.” He looked hard at Lin. “Wherever he comes to rest.”
Lin ducked his head, burning with hatred—for his father, for Japan, and for himself most of all—because he knew that no matter what order he received, even if—when—it put one of his own in danger, he would have to obey it.
Thursday was Christmas Eve, 1936, and after rehearsal, Thomas decided for the first time not to go home and practice, but to go out. He was not homesick, far from it; he remained glad to be far from America. Things here put his homeland to shame. Every day he woke up expecting to feel some nostalgia, yet it never came. He missed his mother, but that was different, for nothing was going to bring her back.
On Christmas Eve, he could not take the big house with its hovering servants. He had no privacy there, and no real company either. So he buttoned his overcoat and walked from the theater to Avenue Joffre, lit up with shops and restaurants. “Little Russia” was what the other musicians called this stretch, and beneath the signs in Cyrillic letters, the shop and restaurant windows were bright with holiday lights and crèches. The joy of it was touching; from the door of one restaurant, as it opened and closed around a laughing couple swathed in fur, he could hear clinking glass and the strains of a piano. Everywhere there were parties tonight.
Back on Creel Street, there would be lights in all the windows, and carolers up and down the sidewalks, and warm turkey smells in the hallways. A sharp sting went through him at the thought, and he pretended it was the cold, and clutched his coat collar a little closer.
He would go to hear another orchestra. Over in the International Settlement, which he had not yet visited on account of its race laws, white jazz groups from America were playing at clubs like the Vienna Garden and the Majestic Café. Those clubs, according to his band members, employed dance hostesses, mostly White Russians, which put them a rung below French Concession clubs like the Royal, the Saint Anna’s Ballroom, the Palais Café, and the Ambassador. Tonight he would pick a place in Frenchtown, with a black orchestra.
With the help of a city map he had bought, he saw it was a reasonably short walk to the Canidrome, where Teddy Weatherford was about to end his long engagement and move his orchestra to Calcutta for the winter season.
When he arrived, the gate to the complex was wide open, and most of what had probably been intended as lawn was filled with rows of boxy parked cars. He was able to stroll right in through the front door, which still exhilarated him. The Chinese hostess welcomed him with a smile, and, when he mentioned Teddy Weatherford, directed him toward one of the ballrooms.
By now, Thomas knew what to do. As soon as he entered the ballroom and spoke to the headwaiter, he had a tab, just as he did in every reputable establishment: Shanghai’s chit system. You signed for whatever you wanted—purchases, food, drink, women, anything that money bought. At the end of the month, messengers would come around with the totals, and he would dispatch Little Kong, the most junior of his servants, with payments. In this way, still awaiting his first paycheck, he was ushered to a table like any man of means, and a cold bottle of Clover Beer and a chilled glass were set in front of him.
The men in his own band had praised Teddy Weatherford, and he understood why as soon as the man strode out to cheers from the crowd. Weatherford answered them with calls for a Merry Christmas, then hopped on the bench and launched the set with a body-shaking burst of brio. Out walked his sidemen in a color-coordinated line, and Thomas recognized Darnell Howard on violin; he had seen him once with James P. Johnson’s Plantation Days Orchestra. They raised their instruments in perfect sync, while Weatherford drove his own piano storm system, thundering, crashing, clouds breaking, sun shining.
Thomas watched, mesmerized. He would never play with that kind of power. They were electrifying, and as soon as they took a break, he hastened over with congratulations.
Weatherford turned, whiskey in hand, face split in his trademark smile. “’Bout time you came up and said hello! Boys! This here’s the new bandleader over to the Royal.”
“Hello,” he said, “Thomas Greene.” He shook hands with each of the men who crowded around. “You were all terrific. I’d give anything to know how you do it. And you,” he said to Darnell Howard, trying to fluff up the appearance of connection, “I saw you on tour with James P. Johnson. Fine playing. Pleasure to see you on stage here. But I’m curious.” He turned back to the bandleader. “How did you know who I was?”
“Come on!” Weatherford laughed. “You think there are so many of us here? I knew you for fair soon as I saw you. Not Harlem, though—not from the look of you, or the way you talk. Am I right?”
“You are,” said Thomas, wondering what else about him showed. “I’m from Maryland, the Eastern Shore.” He was afraid to say Baltimore, in case Weatherford knew any musicians in the scene there. “A little place in the countryside near Easton.” At least that was true, for his grandfather’s farm was such a place, and a sort of home to him.
“Maryland! What’d I say?” Teddy exulted. “All-American, though.” Beneath his suit, congenially unbuttoned, Weatherford’s shirt showed spots of piano-sweat. “Let’s sit down,” he said, and they moved to an empty table. “Mr. Lin taking care of you?”
“Sure.” Everyone seemed to know Lin Ming.
“And you have somewhere to go tonight, for Christmas Eve? ’Cause you can go on out with us after midnight, if you want to stay around.”
“You’re very kind.” Thomas did not want to admit that he had nothing to do, that the only people he knew here were the fellows in the Kansas City Kings, none of whom had invited him over tonight. “I’m sorry—other plans. So tell me, where else do you play?”
“The whole circuit,” said Weatherford. “Here in the summer months, to the winter holidays. Then to the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, and the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. Midwinter’s the big season there. In between we go up the Malay jungle.”
“You mean to Singapore?”
“We sail to Singapore. But then we get in cars and drive up the jungle.”
“To where?”
“Big rubber plantations. British planters. Man, they give balls you wouldn’t believe! White folks coming from hundreds of miles around, gowns, tuxedos, diamonds, glamorous as you p
lease, ballrooms with marble floors and great big chandeliers bigger and finer than what they got here—out in the jungle! They love the way I pound it!”
“So do the people here,” Thomas said, rounding up the ballroom in a glance. “What about the International Settlement, with the race laws?”
Weatherford shook his head. “Mr. Lin tells everybody to be careful, and I’ve heard of a few fights, but sure, you can go there. You might want to steer clear of the big hotels or restaurants, they won’t let you in the front door, but private parties are no problem a-tall. The Brits have villas out there with lawns and gardens out of a fairy tale.”
“What about Japan?” Thomas nodded toward a small group of uniformed soldiers, lounging on the edge of the dance floor.
The bandleader gave them a long look. “They like jazz, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve seen what they do when they take over. They seize Shanghai, we’re taking it right off our circuit, man. Just like that.”
“What have you seen? What do they do?”
“They take a city, they take over the nightlife and ruin it. They have this new drug they are pushing, heroin they call it, it comes from opium and they inject it with needles—that’s why they want nightclubs. Don’t do it. They take over, you get out of here. What?” He looked up at a signal from Darnell Howard, and drained his glass. “Sorry, man. I got to go beat out some blues.”
“Thank you,” said Thomas.
“To your sound,” Weatherford said with a salute, and Thomas smiled as he tried to quell his anxiety. He had no sound, and he probably wouldn’t be finding it in the next six days, either. The Kings had a sound, a big one; their songs rode on riffing, bluesy backgrounds, punctuated by spontaneous solos from the reeds and brass. Arrangements were already tighter now, under him, but as yet he had no idea what his piano could bring to it.
After the third stunning set he left, and stood shivering on the street, hand up for a rickshaw, thinking that he had work to do. This time he did not even blink at paying a man to haul him through the cold like a beast of burden; all the best people did it. He already knew better than to tip, too. If you tipped, they lost respect for you. As for being alone on Christmas Eve, jazz men were wandering men, men of the blues, and it was correct for him to be on the road. It fit.
On his front steps, he had barely touched the key to the lock when Uncle Hua swung the door back from inside. “Master have guest,” he said.
“Thank you.” Thomas stepped into the parlor, where the sight of Lin Ming, on the settee, sparked a grin. “Pleasure to see you!”
“You too,” said Lin. “Did you hear the news about Chiang Kai-shek?”
“No.” Thomas had heard people at the Canidrome talking about the kidnapping, but had not tuned in to it.
“They released him, because he promised to fight side by side with the Communists! And because H. H. Kung and T. V. Soong paid a huge amount of money. It is the big news.”
“That’s good, right? Maybe you can beat Japan now.” Thomas was thinking of the ruination Weatherford had predicted if they took Shanghai.
“Yes! Drive those bandits out!” Lin was reaching around inside his padded jacket. “Ah! Here.” He found the bottle he had been digging for, and uncorked it. “Tomorrow is Christmas, and that is another reason I came—I have nowhere else to go. Sit, Little Greene. Drink this with me.”
On opening night Lin Ming arrived early. The great curved ceiling was hung with cascades of light, and the clamshell behind the stage shone in radiating bars of ivory and gold. White-coated kitchen staff adjusted camellias in bud vases and straightened starched linens, and Lin saw that every one of them had his face scrubbed and hair slicked back. All his workers were refugees who had streamed in from the Japanese-ravaged areas up north, starving, desperate; every day there were more. War was written all over the faces of the jostling, sharp-boned workers who came begging for employment. He could have hired and fired every day if he wanted. “Kuai ma!” he cried with a handclap, spur the horse!
Zhou, his floor manager, had overseen so many cabarets that he rarely indulged in even a flicker of excitement anymore, but the size of the well-dressed crowd waiting outside made him catch Lin’s eye and mouth the words Zhen ta ma jue, damned incredible. When the hour came, they opened the doors to men in suits, tuxes, and long Chinese gowns, to qipao- clad Chinese women, and white ladies in full-length evening dresses. The wealthiest Chinese entered with pods of Russian bodyguards, rogue kidnappings and ransoms being a constant threat to anyone of importance. At exclusive venues like the Royal, thugs with guns on display were the norm.
The patrons were a mix of Chinese, foreigners, and Japanese, twenty thousand of whom lived in Shanghai. Among their ranks were not only jazz lovers but also the best jazz players in Shanghai, next to the Americans—not that Lin would ever hire Japanese jazz musicians. They had their own clubs up in Zhabei, now a heavily Japanese area. But he welcomed them as patrons the way he welcomed all people, for this was one of the unwritten rules of Ye Shanghai: politics and affiliations were left at the door. All were welcome, all were equal.
A parallel and less attractive truth was that no one wanted to face the facts of war, especially after dark, the time for enjoyment. To make this easier, people referred to every incursion, every skirmish-and-annexation as an incident: the Mukden Incident, the Great Wall Incident, even what people called the January Twenty-eighth Incident here in Shanghai, which was what led to the Japanese being the only ones allowed to bear arms in a Chinese city. But as long as each thing was an “incident,” people could go on working and playing and spending their money the way they were going to do tonight. “Hello,” Lin said to each guest who passed him. “Welcome to the new Royal.”
He recognized the head of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, and behind him the Tai-pan of the big trading house Jardine’s, with his longtime French mistress, whom he squired about openly these days now that his wife had passed over. The man had grieved long and decently, and now even the flintiest matrons tolerated the ripe, heavy-lidded Héloïse on his arm. Lin never ceased to find amusement in the habits of white people.
His smile lit even brighter when he saw the composer Aaron Avshalomov. Born in Siberia, the Russian had spent most of his life in China and wrote concert pieces blending Western and Chinese music; he was admired as a composer, and his presence here raised the tone. He was dressed as he often was in a black silk Chinese gown, which paired oddly with his large, forward-set blue eyes and his angled, leonine face. “Hello, Ah Fu! So nice to see you,” said Lin.
They closed the doors when every seat was taken and the dance floor was crowded with people talking, standing, waiting for the lights to dim. When they did, a single spot bathed the center of the stage, and Lin stepped up with raised arms. “New Year’s Eve!” he shouted, and a roaring cheer enveloped him. “Your waiters are ready to bring the finest food and the best liquors, as we bring in nineteen thirty-seven! The dance floor is yours!”
The crowd screamed again. Behind him, the first musicians strode out in their blue suits. He prayed that Thomas was going to be ready, and spread his arms wide. “Please welcome back the Kansas City Kings!”
The room exploded, and the words were lost as Thomas stepped out behind him into the light, somehow tall and imposing even though he was a man of slight and ordinary build.
He slid into place at the keyboard, under the spotlight, raised his right hand, and ran off a complex, instantly impressive Lisztian phrase that sent a gasp through the hall. As abruptly as the line had started, it stopped, a warm-up. The same hand lifted again, and tapping time with his feet, he counted down the opening bar of “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” which needed only a few notes to send the crowd prancing onto the floor in delight.
Good. Lin heard how the arrangement drew attention away from Thomas’s piano, which, after the showy intro, became all but invisible, keeping time, no more. He was young, green, just out of his thatched cottage, but he was already doing something fresh by quot
ing the classics. Lin hoped it would reassure those who still thought of jazz as a savage and dangerous current in the yang bang he, the river of foreign culture. No one listening to this could see jazz as something wild that came from the jungle. Yet despite Thomas’s style, the Kings were hot, especially the toe-tapping, knob-kneed young brothers, Charles and Ernest Higgins, who broke the song’s theme over and over on their saxophones in tight harmony, while the brass called out melody lines and the guitar slapped a rhythm underneath.
And the money was flowing: two songs in, the ballroom was over capacity and they were turning people away. Every time Lin passed the business office, he heard the safe opening and closing. Du was going to be pleased.
The boss arrived shortly after midnight, when ’thirty-seven took off with an ear-rattling fusillade of popping champagne corks, and a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.” The band had just started back in with dance music when Du appeared. He had Fiery Old Crow and Flowery Flag on either side, and Song bringing up the rear in a tea-length qipao like some calendar girl from the ’twenties. “Little Sister,” Lin said, and she gave him the warm smile they always shared as she vanished up the lobby stairs behind her master.
On the stairs, once Lin Ming was out of view, Song Yuhua matched her steps to the men climbing ahead of her, Teacher and his bodyguards. She always walked in last place in public, unshielded by his men. Not like the actress she remembered from a few years ago, whose dressing room door was always attended by a couple of Du’s dog’s legs. Each of his two most recent wives had her own security guard assigned to her apartments in the mansion, too.
Not Song. She lived up on the low-ceilinged top floor. Hot in summer, cold in winter. She had a bedroom, a small sitting room, and a tiny chamber just big enough to hold a cot for her maid, Ah Pan. Du had no intention of wasting either space or staff on her. All this because her father gambled away the family estate to the Green Gang, and Du Yuesheng, arriving to take possession, offered to take her into service instead.