Little Paradise

by Gabrielle Wang

  She shook JJ again. ‘Where is he? What happened?’

  ‘That group of new people he talked about, the army units Jin Yu said had defected from the Kuomintang … it was all a trap.’ JJ was breathing heavily now. He leapt to his feet, walked to the window. ‘They tortured him … then they shot him, the bastards!’ He punched the wall, smashing his fist through the plaster.

  Mirabel put her hands to her mouth in horror. ‘Jin Yu is dead? But we just saw him only …’ Her voice trailed off as her mind flashed back to the truckload of prisoners. Thank God JJ had stayed home.

  JJ closed his eyes. ‘It’s my fault. I should have stopped him.’

  ‘You’re not to blame, my love,’ she said, holding him tightly. She could feel the tension in his body. ‘He was doing what he believed in. He knew the dangers. You couldn’t have stopped him.’

  JJ turned to face her. ‘I should have gone with him. I might have been able to prevent what happened.’

  ‘You would have been arrested, too, and killed. Please don’t talk like that. I couldn’t stand to lose you, not after all we’ve been through.’ She nestled her head into his shoulder.

  Jin Yu is dead. Beautiful, brave Jin Yu. Mirabel’s tears streamed down her cheeks. He died so young for what he believed was right. Oh, how ugly China had suddenly become. Maybe Jin Yu was right. Maybe China did need to be reborn. She had seen how much the people were suffering, all those except the ones in power, and the situation seemed to be getting worse, not better. But then why, if Communism was so right for China, did JJ not believe in it?

  ‘It is no longer safe for us here,’ JJ said, his voice weary with grief. ‘The government must know that Jin Yu was my brother. We are probably being watched right now.’

  JJ’s words filled Mirabel with fear. ‘But you were a soldier, in their army, surely – ’

  ‘That’s true. But I worked in intelligence for them against the Japanese, not against the Communists. They don’t know if I am still loyal to them, or if I have joined Jin Yu. It’s a civil war now and both sides are sure to be suspicious of me.’

  Mirabel felt numb, trying to take in what he was saying. All of a sudden her world was collapsing. She shook herself, and realised that her world had been collapsing for a long time, but she had refused to see it.

  JJ’s hair fell across his face and he ran his fingers through it, brushing it back. ‘It’s important that you do just as I say. I have to return to the village to tell my mother about Jin Yu and make arrangements for her to be taken care of. Then I will see some friends about finding a way out of Shanghai.’

  ‘You are leaving? Now? But JJ …’

  JJ rested his hands on her shoulders, calming her.

  ‘I have to do this thing. Don’t worry. But I must leave immediately, before Ah San comes back with Bao Bao. We cannot trust a soul.’

  ‘You mean Ah San and – ’

  ‘In times like these, you don’t know who your friends are. The less people know what we are planning, the better. Don’t tell anyone about Jin Yu’s death either. Especially avoid that bastard Tan downstairs – he’d sell his own grandmother.’

  That won’t be hard, Mirabel thought. Sudden suspicion caught her. Maybe Frogface Tan had been watching her for other reasons …

  JJ grabbed her, forcing her to look at him. He spoke urgently. ‘Keep your eyes open, and the doors locked when you are at home. In a few days’ time, dismiss the servants. As soon as I get back we will leave. Pack only the essentials. We have to travel light. I’ll only be gone a couple of days, certainly no more than a week.’

  Mirabel nodded, her throat tight. She felt like crying again but she was determined not to. She needed to be strong.

  JJ went to the cupboard, pulled down an overnight bag and threw in some clothing and a small bundle wrapped in oilcloth that Mirabel knew to be his old service revolver.

  His movements were quick and determined. She had not seen this side of him before and it scared her. Now she knew how precarious their situation really was. When Chrissy and Edward had told Mirabel that they should leave Shanghai too, Mirabel had scoffed at them. They weren’t locals, how would they know what the real situation was like? But this was different. This was JJ saying it.

  In the doorway of their small home, Mirabel kissed him goodbye. It was long and sweet. She did not want to let him go. Her heart was pounding hard as she released his hand. She heard his footsteps receding down the stairs. Then, racing to the living room, she flung open the balcony doors and leant over the railing, watching as JJ walked quickly up the street. Soon he was lost from view under the canopy of plane trees.

  Mirabel went back inside and lay down on their bed. She rolled over onto JJ’s side and buried her head in his pillow, filling herself with his scent. She heard a key in the lock and Bao Bao’s little voice. ‘Mama! Mama!’

  Mirabel stood up, tidied her face and hair and, putting on a brave face, went out to greet him.

  The Fugitive

  Mirabel had to hide all the packing and preparation from Ah San, whom she had kept on for a few more days to help with Bao Bao. Ah Ning, the cook, had been dismissed soon after JJ left. Since then the feeling at home had become strained. Ah San seemed to be watching her carefully. Was it just the fear that she would be fired? Or was Ah San working for someone else, reporting on her?

  Mirabel sighed. She couldn’t trust anyone. She was halfway through the packing, when she discovered the oracle bone missing. Her eyes darted around the room. Where could it be? Piles of clothes littered the bed. She had been sorting, getting rid of all but the essentials. She tried to think.

  Suddenly, she saw in her mind’s eye the last place it had been: in her blue silk bag in the lower drawer of her desk at Murchison, Glass & Co. The employees had been given little time to clear their belongings. She had forgotten it in the mad scramble to leave.

  She had to get it. But did she dare?

  The city had changed over the last few days. Travel had become perilous. At night, when things were still, one could hear the artillery of the Communist peasant armies pounding the approaches to Shanghai, not many miles away. As the rebels drew nearer, panic in the city increased, and petty crooks took advantage, cheating and thieving. JJ had told her the Kuomintang government officials were just as bad, looting everything that wasn’t nailed down, and shipping it to Taiwan, the large island off the Chinese coast to which they planned to escape.

  Mirabel dressed quickly, and called Ah San to take Bao Bao. As she went softly down the stairs, she wondered if she had imagined a suspicious narrowing of Ah San’s eyes. She pushed on. She had to trust someone, and Ah San had been reliable up until now. There was no choice.

  Mirabel walked out into the lane. She tried not to look around but couldn’t help notice a man standing on the other side of the road, reading the newspaper. Every now and then he would look up. A woman came towards him and they strolled off arm in arm. Mirabel relaxed.

  She boarded a tram, deserted except for a rag merchant by the door and a young man up towards the front. She could not see the young man’s face, but his posture reminded her of Jin Yu. Sadness gripped her. How Jin Yu would have loved to see this defeat of his enemies! She remembered him exulting, just a few days before he had been killed.

  ‘Four British gunships on the Yangtze River!’ he had exclaimed. ‘We forced them to run! Our cannons on the north bank almost sank one! The rest fled downriver.’ He had looked at them with a fierce pride. ‘One hundred and fifty years they have ruled here like lords by brazen force of arms, going and coming as they pleased.’ He had slammed the table with his fist. ‘Now they can run like the dogs they are!’

  Jin Yu had been right. Over thirty British sailors had been killed. The effect on the foreign community in Shanghai had been electric. No longer could they believe that they were special and would always be protected. Mirabel’s sympathies were divided. She was proud that China could no longer be bullied. But those sailors …

  Her chest fel
t tight. The reality of Shanghai was clear to her now. The bleak streets were empty. She saw more and more shops being boarded up. Misery and starvation were everywhere.

  Bitterly she recalled those naïve days in Melbourne, when she imagined China as a place where she might fit in. Now she knew that not even the colour of her skin or the ancestry in her blood could make her feel at home here. Australia: how safe, how innocent that country was. A longing to return filled her.

  She left the trolley at the corner of Nanking Road closest to the Bund and headed in the direction of the river. She saw a warship flying an American flag moored by the pier and could just make out the white lettering on the grey side. USS Wiltsie. A gangplank was crowded with jostling people; men in overcoats and hats, women in dresses: foreign nationals evacuating. How easy it would be to just walk up that gangplank, say, ‘I’m an Australian’, and leave all this mess behind.

  She stood stock-still, shocked to her core. How could she even think of leaving JJ? She shook herself and moved off resolutely.

  The stately main entrance to Murchison, Glass & Co was shut, but the large door yielded to her push. Someone had broken in already. Her breathing quickened. Debris covered the floor, but she noticed a familiar shape poking out from under some discarded canvas mailbags behind the reception desk: the end of the Sikh guard’s old rusty shotgun. Mirabel pulled it out from under the bags and heaved it over her shoulder as she made her way upstairs.

  The shotgun grated against her collarbone and her arms ached. It had looked so light in the Sikh guard’s hands. As Mirabel climbed the dusty stairs, she remembered his smiling face as he jokingly saluted her. Just before passing the first-floor landing she looked back at the place he used to stand all day, on duty. A breeze blew a sheet of old newspaper around the pillar by the door, trapped it there for a moment, then let it fall. Everything was so quiet.

  She pushed the shotgun off her shoulder, dropping it into her hand. Was it loaded? She doubted that the old thing could even fire a shot. But it made her feel safer.

  She walked past doors to offices, some shut, some slightly ajar. Late afternoon light streamed through dirty windows and dust motes danced as she padded down the hall. Her old office was at the end. She smelled rats.

  As she pushed open the door, a sudden movement two desks away made her jump. She pointed the shotgun and called in a voice that surprised her with its firmness, ‘Zhan zhu! Stop!’

  A figure stood up slowly from behind the desk, hands raised.

  Mirabel started. It was the boy from Jin Yu’s work. Xiao Zhu, that was it. But not a boy any longer. And thin, so thin, and ragged as a beggar.

  ‘Xiao Zhu? What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

  Recognising her, he had begun to lower his hands, but at the tone of her voice he raised them again.

  ‘I’m … I’m just hiding. They’re all dead, and I … didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

  Mirabel lowered the shotgun. ‘I won’t hurt you,’ she said. ‘Just tell me why you are hiding here, of all places. And how did you escape that night when Jin Yu and the others …’

  The young man dropped into the chair behind the desk, burying his face in his hands. After a moment he looked up at her, eyes reddened. ‘It was a trap, you know, that meeting, the Kuomintang unit. They were supposed to be defecting to us … the others had sent me out for food, just before.’ He stared into space. ‘When I came back, the whole area was cordoned off. No one could get in or out. I knew what was happening, so I ran. Jin Yu had told me about this place, how you worked here, and that it had been closed up, so I thought …’ His shoulders heaved.

  He looked so pitiful, as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Mirabel started towards him, to comfort him. But just then the young man lifted his head and looked at her strangely. ‘They think it was your husband, you know, Jin Yu’s brother. They think it was he who sold them out.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Mirabel lifted the shotgun to strike. It felt suddenly light in her hands.

  The young man cowered. ‘I never believed it. I knew how they took care of each other. And Jin Yu told me how your husband helped the people in the countryside. He’s a good man. Everyone will know that eventually. But the man who made the mistake, the decision that got everyone killed, I think he needs a scapegoat, someone else to take the blame. And your husband worked for the Kuomintang before, so …’

  Mirabel suddenly felt tired, so tired that she could hardly stand anymore. She sat down in a chair across from Xiao Zhu, the shotgun between her knees. JJ had been right. Both sides suspected him, both sides were hunting him – hunting them.

  Then she remembered the oracle bone. She laid the shotgun down, went over to her desk, and opened the bottom drawer. It was empty.

  Mirabel slumped down on the chair and closed her eyes. What would happen to her now without the oracle bone?

  ‘Are you looking for this?’ Xiao Zhu dug into his pocket and pulled out her blue silk bag.

  Mirabel pointed the shotgun. ‘That’s mine,’ she said.

  He smiled sadly at her, and looked at the shotgun with raised eyebrows. ‘We both know that old thing is no good. Probably hasn’t been fired in twenty years.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘I wasn’t really frightened just now,’ he said. ‘Except when you almost hit me with the damn thing. But I thought you’d be more comfortable with me if you felt I was scared of you. That way we’d both be more relaxed. And relaxed is safer.’ He looked down, then laid the blue silk bag on the desk. ‘I haven’t had a chance to look inside. What is it?’

  Xiao Zhu’s street smarts surprised her. He reminded her of Stefan.

  ‘It’s just an old keepsake,’ she shrugged, putting the oracle bone safely into her handbag. ‘Nothing of much value to anyone but me. Do you have any money?’

  ‘Not really. After I finished the food I’d been sent out to buy, there hasn’t been much to eat.’

  She handed him what she had, and he thanked her.

  ‘If I were you, I would leave Shanghai as soon as possible. It is not safe for you here,’ he said.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll be fine as soon as our army arrives.’

  As Mirabel climbed the steps to home, she thought of his words. There was no question that they had to leave, and soon. But JJ had not come back. ‘A couple of days, a week at the most,’ he had said. But it had now been ten days, and still he had not returned.

  When she arrived outside her door, however, she heard Bao Bao laughing, and a man’s voice inside. Joy filled her and she flung the door open.

  The scene struck her with horror. Frogface was holding Bao Bao, facing away from her and standing very close to the open window that looked down on the courtyard.

  Bao Bao turned his head and cried, ‘Mama!’

  ‘Ah, Lei An, you’re back. We’ve been having a lovely time, your son and I.’ Frogface smirked.

  ‘Where is Ah San?!’ Mirabel spluttered, not daring to move. Frogface was too close to the window: one slip and Bao Bao …

  ‘I sent her away,’ Frogface said with a nasty smile. ‘I wanted to be alone with you … and your son, of course. I know your husband is gone, and I thought you might be missing a man’s company.’

  Get out of my house, you disgust me! Mirabel wanted to scream. But Bao Bao was too close to that window. She had to get him away from Frogface. She forced a smile.

  ‘Actually, Mr Tan, a woman does get lonely sometimes. Why don’t you let me put Bao Bao in his room and maybe we can get to know each other better.’

  Frogface shook his head and spoke as if to himself, ‘I thought I might have to denounce you and your husband as Communist spies, like I did with our maid. She couldn’t see how attractive I am like you can.’

  Mirabel was shocked, but kept her face calm as Tan handed Bao Bao over to her. She quickly sat him in her room, put her finger to her lips and told him to be quiet, then returned to the living room.

  A layer of sweat had
broken out on Frogface’s brow and his eyes darted greedily over Mirabel’s body.

  ‘Now, Mr Tan,’ she said, coming towards him, ‘let us get to know each other a little better.’

  As he opened his arms to embrace her, a lecherous grin on his face, Mirabel picked up the big glass ashtray that was sitting on the table and struck him a blow to the side of the head. Blood gushed from the wound.

  Frogface staggered, then fell against the couch. Mirabel raised her arm to strike again. ‘Get out of my house!’ she ordered.

  Frogface grimaced in pain. He struggled to his feet, holding his head while blood oozed through his fingers.

  ‘You’ll pay for this,’ he murmured and stumbled out.

  Mirabel ran to the door and locked it. She collapsed onto the sofa. Bao Bao came to the doorway and stared at his mother. She smiled weakly. How was she going to protect her little one now? Had she acted too rashly? She needed to hide. If only the Hartmanns or Stefan or Chrissy and Edward were still in Shanghai. But they were not and she had no one to turn to. Oh JJ, please come home, she prayed, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Bao Bao crawled up onto the sofa and settled himself beside her. She put her arms around him and kissed the top of his head. ‘You are such a good little boy,’ she said. ‘You give me strength. I am not going to let anyone get the better of us.’ She calmed her pounding heart, taking slow breaths. The fear eased. It was very much like the feeling she had before designing a dress, a deep quiet within herself. She trusted this feeling; it was her source of inspiration. Whatever happened, whatever trouble came to her, she would find a means of dealing with it. And trouble would come – she could feel it.

  She knew that all she could do now was wait. She had to give JJ every chance of getting back to them.

  The Interrogation

  Later that night she heard a vehicle pull up outside and the slamming of heavy metal doors, followed by the tromping of booted feet on the stairs. They did not stop at any of the lower apartments, but still her calm persisted. She was ready.