Little Paradise

by Gabrielle Wang

  And it worked. Hundreds of citizens, fearing arrest, gave up their entire life savings.

  One day Mirabel went to visit Chrissy and Edward and was surprised to find the front hall filled with suitcases and boxes.

  ‘Hello, Mirabel dear, come in. Sorry about the mess,’ Chrissy said, as she wrapped a Chinese vase.

  ‘But are you leaving?’ Mirabel looked into the living room. There was an empty space where the piano used to sit and the white couches were covered with sheets.

  Edward came out carrying a large box marked FRAGILE. ‘How are you, Mirabel?’ he said jovially. ‘I’ll just load this box into the car. You can’t trust the natives to do it properly.’

  ‘Oh, Eddie,’ Chrissy said. ‘You are beginning to sound like that bore Stuart Dobson.’

  Edward winked at Mirabel and went out the front door.

  Mirabel turned to Chrissy. ‘I didn’t know you were leaving too. When was this all decided?’

  ‘The office closed last week and we are being evacuated to Hong Kong,’ Chrissy said. ‘Then we will go on to England. It was all a bit of a shock at first because we weren’t given much warning. Still, it will be nice to be home for Christmas to show Edwina to my parents.’ Chrissy smiled at the baby girl squirming in her high chair in the living room. ‘What are your plans for leaving, Mirabel?’

  ‘We’ll be staying here for a while,’ she replied. ‘Things will settle down.’

  Chrissy stopped in the midst of her lifting and looked at her with concern. ‘I really think you should make plans to go,’ she said. ‘Things are not looking good.’

  Mirabel shrugged, but felt slightly irritated. People kept telling her that she should leave. Couldn’t they just mind their own business?

  ‘The truth is, JJ can’t get a visa to Australia because he is a Chinese citizen, so we are stuck here for the time being. But that’s all right. We’re happy.’ She forced a smile.

  ‘That’s crazy – you are husband and wife.’

  Mirabel spread her hands. ‘It’s called the White Australia Policy. The Australian government will only accept European immigrants, or at least they make it almost impossible for anyone else to get in. But we are in no rush. Maybe if we ever decide to live in Australia the policy will have changed by then.’

  Edward came back in through the front door. ‘JJ should try to find a way to get you all out of here – at least to Hong Kong,’ he said.

  Mirabel was affronted. ‘JJ’s got everything under control. He knows what’s going on. China is his home.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Edward muttered, picking up another large box.

  ‘I’ll miss you both, though,’ Mirabel said. ‘Do you think there will be a chance of you coming back when this all dies down?’

  Chrissy looked at Edward. ‘I don’t think …’ Then she smiled. ‘Maybe, one day. We’ve certainly enjoyed every moment here, haven’t we, darling?’

  ‘I’ll be the first to put my hand up if there’s another opening in Shanghai,’ Edward said.

  ‘Or we will come and visit you in England,’ said Mirabel, putting on a brave face.

  That night, as Mirabel lay in the crook of JJ’s arm with Bao Bao lying in a small bed beside them, she told JJ about Edward and Chrissy, and her latest plans for their own future.

  ‘When we have enough money and things are a bit more settled here, I’m going to open my dress shop,’ she said. ‘It will be called Mirabel’s House of Fashion. And it will have an elegant sign painted in gold above the door.’ Mirabel smiled in the dark. ‘And you can set up a business exporting Chinese handicrafts to Australia. What do you think?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘JJ? Are you asleep?’

  ‘We should also think of going,’ he said.

  She pulled away from him. ‘What do you mean? I thought everything was perfect for us here.’

  ‘Nobody knows what’s going to happen. The Communist army is getting closer.’ JJ put his arms around her. ‘We need to think of getting out before …’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before we can’t.’

  ‘JJ, you’re scaring me.’ Mirabel slipped out of bed and crossed to the window. ‘I don’t want to go,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been so happy.’

  She heard JJ sigh. ‘We have no choice. The situation is becoming more and more desperate. Do you think your father can get papers for me to go to Australia?’

  ‘I don’t know … I will write to him tomorrow.’ Mirabel hugged herself tighter.

  ‘Come back to bed. It’s cold,’ JJ said gently.

  She turned and crawled in beside him. JJ’s calm breathing soon filled the air but Mirabel lay awake, staring into the dark.

  Conspiracy

  KABOOM!

  The sound of the explosion bounced off the walls of the houses.

  Mirabel grabbed a saucepan, scooped some rice, and called out to JJ, who was on the balcony, playing with Bao Bao. ‘Just going down to get some popped rice for Bao Bao’s breakfast.’ She ran down the stairs to where a group of children had already gathered.

  Every day the melodious cries of the street vendors would pass below their balcony – the fortune teller, the seller of sewing thread, the feather-duster man, the barber, the toy seller, the noodle man, the knife sharpener – each one using a different chant to announce his presence. But lately, fewer and fewer had come around.

  The rice-bubble man recognised Mirabel and smiled. ‘How is your fine son today?’ he asked as he did every time he saw her.

  ‘He’s very well, thank you,’ Mirabel replied in Shanghainese, no longer embarrassed to speak the local dialect. ‘And how are your four girls?’ she asked politely in return.

  The rice-bubble man shrugged and sighed, saying, ‘What can I do? Girls are nothing but trouble.’ He shook his head. ‘You pay for everything when they are young, then, when they are old enough, you have to give them away to another man’s family.’

  It was the same old conversation she always had with him. She used to argue that girls were just as good as boys, but realised soon enough that his thinking was rooted in thousands of years of cultural tradition.

  Mounted on the man’s hand-drawn cart was an iron barrel heated by a charcoal fire. With tongs and a rag, he lifted off a small lid, poured Mirabel’s rice into the barrel, covered it again and began slowly turning the handle. Everyone gathered around, jamming fingers in ears, screwing up their little faces and grinning at each other.

  KABOOM!

  The children squealed with delight.

  Mirabel’s rice had been magically transformed into rice bubbles. She remembered how she craved Rice Bubbles when she was pregnant with Bao Bao.

  ‘Look what I’ve got for you,’ Mirabel said as she came through the door with the saucepan.

  JJ and Bao Bao were on the floor, building a tower out of coloured blocks. She showed Bao Bao the pot of popped rice.

  His little eyes brightened. ‘Wise bubboo, Baba!’ he said to JJ, pointing into the saucepan.

  ‘Shi ah! Pao fan. That’s right.’ JJ tousled Bao Bao’s mop of black hair. ‘Let’s go sit at the table.’

  Bao Bao jumped up, accidentally toppling over the blocks. A red block scooted across the floorboards and hit the front door just as it opened.

  ‘Shu Shu, Uncle,’ cried Bao Bao.

  Jin Yu stepped into the apartment. ‘Hello everyone,’ he said, cheerily.

  ‘Pao fan, Shu Shu.’ Bao Bao pointed to the bowl of popped rice Mirabel was pouring milk over.

  ‘It’s good to see you again so soon,’ smiled Mirabel.

  Jin Yu lifted Bao Bao up onto a chair piled high with cushions. ‘I came back early …’ he stopped and looked around warily.

  ‘Ah San and Ah Ning have every Sunday off,’ JJ said. ‘What’s up, brother?’

  ‘There’s a meeting tonight and I think you should go with me.’

  ‘What kind of meeting?’ JJ sat down at the table.

  Jin Yu looked tentat
ive. ‘I told my leaders about you – how you helped rebuild the villages, how you worked so hard to restore the irrigation systems. I said that you were exactly the type of man New China will need. So now they want to meet you.’

  JJ shook his head. ‘We’ve been through all this before. For one thing, you know I worked for the Kuomintang –’

  ‘But so did many people who now work with us!’ Jin Yu broke in excitedly. ‘We welcome them with open arms! If you come tonight, you will meet several new people who were in the Kuomintang army but now have joined our side. They said they would be bringing one whole unit of their old army friends to work with us. We might even be able to take over Shanghai from the inside, even before our main army arrives!’ His eyes shone.

  JJ sighed. ‘Look, Jin Yu. I would rather keep my head down, be a good citizen, and earn enough money so that Mirabel, Bao Bao and I can live comfortably.’

  ‘But this government … it’s so corrupt.’ Jin Yu gestured around him. ‘You’ve seen what they’ve done, how they operate, murdering innocent people. How can you just sit around and do nothing?’

  Mirabel poured Jin Yu and JJ a cup of green tea. She hated hearing them arguing this way.

  Jin Yu turned to Mirabel. ‘You saw how they executed those people on the river, sister-in-law.’

  Mirabel nodded.

  ‘There is no order. They do exactly as they like. You saw how poor the people are in the countryside. When times are bad for a farmer, they have to borrow money just to be able to plant a crop, but if that crop fails and they cannot pay, their land is taken by the rich lenders. Landlords work these people like slaves, and they have no hope at all of freeing themselves.’ Jin Yu continued, his voice rising and his eyes flashing. ‘The Communist Party wants to change all that. The People’s Liberation Army is taking the land from the rich landlords and giving it back to the people! We share our food with them, we set up schools to teach them to read. And the people are joining us! Soon we will sweep away all of this, all of the old China and its decadent feudalism. Everyone will share equally, working together, and no one will have more than anyone else. It will be paradise and there will be no more corruption! We will win in the end, we are winning already. The peasants, the workers, the intellectuals, are all coming over to our side. It’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘It sounds wonderful, Jin Yu, but …’ Mirabel turned to look at JJ. ‘We can’t risk what we have. There’s little Bao Bao to think of, not just ourselves.’

  Jin Yu sighed.

  JJ placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘You worry me so. There are spies everywhere. If they find out … Every day I read reports about more and more arrests and executions. If I could talk you out of it I would …’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,’ Jin Yu smiled, but he looked disappointed. He stood up and placed a piece of paper on the table. ‘Here is the address for tonight’s meeting in case you change your mind. It’s in Blood Alley. I better be going.’ He rubbed Bao Bao on the head. ‘Goodbye, my little man,’ he said.

  ‘Jin Yu,’ Mirabel called out as he opened the front door.

  He turned.

  ‘Be careful.’

  He gave a cheeky grin and, with a wave, was gone.

  The Condemned

  The following Wednesday was warm. Cicadas sang in unison in the plane trees, reminding Mirabel of home. She used to collect the shells then take them to Dr Lim, the Chinese herbalist in Gertrude Street. He said they were good for skin problems, and they certainly helped Mama with her psoriasis.

  Mirabel sipped her tea as she looked out through the balcony doors. She was home full time since Murchison, Glass & Co had closed its Shanghai branch, but outside was beckoning her. She turned to JJ. ‘I need to do a bit of food shopping. Will you watch Bao Bao for a while?’

  JJ lifted his head from the newspaper. ‘Sure, take your time.’ He looked at Bao Bao drawing on the floor and smiled. ‘He has his mama’s talent.’

  The little boy looked up at the sound of his name. ‘Boat, boat, Baba,’ he said.

  Mirabel bent down and kissed him, then closed the door to the flat and tiptoed past Mr and Mrs Tan’s room on the first landing. She didn’t want the creepy frog-faced neighbour to hear her. Mirabel knew that his wife was at work and his children at school. And he always seemed to keep a special ear out for Mirabel.

  Just when she thought she was safe, the door swung open. ‘Ah, Lei An! I thought I heard someone out here.’ Mr Tan grinned, his wide mouth taking up three-quarters of his face, his eyes bulging. ‘How are you? I haven’t seen you for a long time.’ He leered at her.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, Mr Tan,’ Mirabel replied coldly, not wanting to encourage further conversation.

  ‘Would you like to step in for a cup of tea? I have some nice glutinous rice cakes – ’

  ‘Sorry. Have to rush.’ She quickly ran the rest of the way down the stairs.

  ‘Maybe next time then,’ he called after her.

  The creep, she thought. How dare he when he knew perfectly well that JJ was probably home. There was talk he got their previous maid pregnant. How could that have happened when his whole family – wife, two children and servant – all lived in the one room? It made her shiver in disgust.

  She walked down the driveway and out through the gates, making sure not to look back in case Frogface was watching from his second-floor window.

  The houses in the International Settlement seemed to be getting shabbier, Mirabel thought as she strolled under the shade of the trees. There was one house where a huge tree had fallen onto the roof. Luckily, no squatters had been living in it at the time. Everyone knew it was haunted.

  Mirabel held her breath as she hurried by.

  She strolled down Nanking Road, looking at the shops. She was no longer surprised to find many of them boarded up, and the rest had far fewer new things to buy. It’s just a passing phase, she told herself. Once the civil war is over, they’ll all come back.

  At the end of Nanking Road she came to the Bund with its parkland and expanse of river. She stopped at the corner, outside the entrance to the luxurious Cathay Hotel. Until recently, a friend from work had occupied one of the rooms and would occasionally invite Mirabel up for a bath – a proper bath in a large tub with hot and cold water straight out of the tap. Mirabel never imagined that the simple act of bathing could become the highlight of her month. But now that friend too had left Shanghai.

  She waited for a platoon of soldiers to march by, and was about to cross the road when a vehicle spewing clouds of smoke from its exhaust came slowly around the corner. People had stopped to stare. It was an open-backed truck, with uniformed policemen at each corner. Squeezed in between them were men with dishevelled hair, hands bound. Each prisoner had a white board sticking up from his back with a list of his crimes written in black characters. She had heard of these trucks. It was a death parade. The men were condemned, and were circled around the city so that the people could see what happened to those who did not obey the government. Jin Yu told her they were never given a fair trial, but simply taken to Zhabei Park behind the railway station, where they were publicly executed. A chill went through her. In less than an hour all of these men would be dead.

  A man behind her said, ‘I heard they captured a large Communist cell.’

  Immediately, Mirabel thought of Jin Yu, but pushed the thought away. Jin Yu was young, smart and resourceful. He was a survivor. Besides, they had just seen him on Sunday and he was fine, his usual self – confident, full of hope for the New China, as he called it, and sure that the civil war would soon be over.

  Still, the sight of the prisoners shocked her deeply.

  She sat on a bench in the Public Garden looking out over the Whangpoo River. This park used to be so beautiful, she thought. Now, at the corner closest to the street, there were sandbags piled in a circle, with a machine gun propped amongst them, pointing towards the intersection. Nationalist soldiers lolled about, smoking. Against the fence at the far s
ide of the park, she could see a makeshift lean-to set up with a scrap of tarpaulin, a ragged family huddled beneath. Refugees. They were all she seemed to see nowadays.

  She was about to walk away when a white cat darted across the road, running from something, dodging between rickshaws and carts. It disappeared under a truckload of soldiers. Mirabel craned her neck and saw, miraculously, the white cat slip out from between the wheels and speed, lithe body stretched, towards the river. She lost sight of it behind the refugees’ lean-to. A chill gripped her.

  Paradise Lost

  Mirabel opened the front door. ‘JJ, I’m home!’ She put her shopping on the table. ‘There was hardly anything left at the market,’ she said, unpacking fruit and vegetables. ‘I was really lucky to get the last ounce of pork.’ She stopped. There was an eerie silence in the house. ‘JJ, where are you?’

  A low moan came from the bedroom. She dropped the groceries and rushed to the door. JJ was sitting in the corner of the room, curled up knees to chest, his back against the wardrobe, hands covering his head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ She felt her heart lurch. ‘Has something happened to Bao Bao?’

  Silence.

  ‘Has something happened to Bao Bao?’ She was frantic now. She dropped to her knees and shook him. ‘What’s wrong? Where is he? Talk to me!’

  JJ turned his head to look at her. She recoiled. His face was so pale, with strange staring eyes.

  ‘Bao Bao is fine,’ he said, his voice a whisper. ‘Ah San … took him out.’

  Mirabel relaxed, and realised she’d been holding her breath. ‘JJ … then what’s the matter?’

  He breathed in deeply, his face twisting in pain. ‘It’s Jin Yu. That meeting the other night, the one in Blood Alley …’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘They were all arrested.’ JJ turned his face away.

  Mirabel felt faint. The whispers she’d heard on the street, the Communist cell arrested, the men in the truck on their way to …