Song of the Exile

by Kiana Davenport

  He exploded into the teahouse, upsetting trays, nearly sobbing as he ran from table to table. An old waiter approached, speaking broken English. Keo embraced him.

  “Two women here.” He pounded a table. “Five minutes ago.”

  The waiter nodded yes.

  “One spoke English? Very pretty?”

  “Ah. Pretty!” The man touched his cheek. “Other not so good. Bad leg.” He aped a limp.

  “Where did they go? Which way?” Keo thrust bills into his hand. “Oh, help me. Please.”

  The man shrugged, turned slowly in a circle, pointing to three tiny doors exiting onto a wraparound porch leading customers back to the entrance of the Bridge of Nine Windings. Hundreds of people flowed back and forth. Insane, Keo circled the porch several times, then pushed through crowds, calling out her name.

  He traversed the bridge for hours, haunting nearby streets and alleys. At dark, a monk with an iron hook through his chest trailed a chain ten feet long. Behind him a brother monk beat a drum and clashed a cymbal. They stood over the dark man slumped in the street looking hopeless and lost. They chanted over him until Keo gave them money to go away.

  He placed notices in English-language papers. He waited outside fences of silk and cotton mills, searching haggard faces of women whose fingers were white from fungus growths. Some held bloody kerchiefs to their mouths, signing tuberculosis. Their children limped beside them carrying the pungent stench of dead cocoons, their hands clawed, arms horribly scarred, boiled as penance for not working faster.

  He began to pray. Dear God, let her be in a brothel, let her not be in this hell.

  He followed every lead, went to cabarets, taxi dance halls, bordellos. He went to scissors factories, which paid more than silk mills because the work was more dangerous. Lead poisoning from metal dust of machines turned faces and gumlines blue. Chromium ate weeping holes into arms and legs. Workers went blind. Still they chanced it—the wages enabled them to buy steerage passage out of Shanghai. There was coolie work in the poppy fields of Burma, or the rubber plantations of Sumatra where, when they died, their coffins stayed buried and did not float to sea.

  Near the Bund a dog-meat shop was bombed, the owner said to be Communist. Cages were airborne, animals howled. People ran through the streets snatching up succulent rice-fed puppies and poodles, even greyhounds stolen from the dog track. Keo saw tiny old women with bound feet—blue-faced workers from scissors factories—leap onto the backs of terrified greyhounds, trying to bring them down. He stood very still, remembering his friend Oogh on the ship to New Orleans. He had seen Keo in a vision. “. . . in a city where blue-faced, pig-footed women ride on the backs of greyhounds . . .” He remembered the rest of Oogh’s prophecy. “. . . One day you will blow and it will be the sound of diamonds. But you will pay. There will be grief. . . .”

  November now. Japanese armies surrounded Shanghai. Though the International Settlement was still under foreign jurisdiction, soldiers continued erecting barbed-wire fences and checkpoints. Amongst burnt-out blocks and flattened buildings, skyscrapers glittered like mirages, and on the Yangtze River trade and commerce died as Westerners evacuated.

  One night Keo sat in for a horn man at the rooftop café of a large hotel. The band wore tuxedos and, in between sets, gambled at the roulette wheel. Guests relaxed with pink gins and brandies watching the “night show”—shells from the Japanese Army arcing across the sky to land on Chinese troops. A bomber droned in from the river, lazily veering toward the hotel. People pointed casually, noting that the Chinese fighter seemed off course.

  A waiter screamed. “Fly-fly egg! Look now!”

  Keo took his trumpet from his lips, looked up in time to see the bomb falling like a pod. Diners, jazzmen, couples on the dance floor froze, that’s all he would remember. Then something wet, a human arm, hit him in the face. Flying concrete, black smoke, the shuddering building sheared in half lengthwise. Dragging themselves down eight flights of stairs, wounded dancers and waiters saw people staring horrified from the untouched half of the building. Offices, apartments, shops intact, only the wall missing. A barber stared down at his lathered customer, a hunk of metal piercing his head. Beside the dead customer, a girl in shock continued his manicure.

  On the street, Keo coughed up someone else’s blood. Unnameable things stuck to his jacket, sliding into its creases. He sat down on a curb, watching fire engines, ambulances, the wailing mobs. Sanitation men were already clearing the streets, sweeping bodies into alleys. Rickshaw coolies quietly combed limbs for jewelry, shoes, shredded clothes.

  He heard thumping hooves, saw horses gallop from burning stables toward the outskirts of the city. Running beside them, coolies tried to carve out meat from their flanks. In the suburbs, bandits and gangsters would have shootouts over the horseflesh.

  Keo reached into his pocket, feeling something sharp. He pulled out rib fragments, an organ nestled in a web of fat. He stared, imagined it still pulsing.

  “. . . You will wear a tuxedo and play roulette, and fondle a stranger’s broken heart. . . .” Where had he heard that? Who said it? Flinging the wet human organ away, he screamed, rocking like a madman.

  HE WOKE IN THE MIDDLE OF A LECTURE. AN ELDERLY CHINESE woman, arms ringed with jade, was scolding a tiny white elephant. Insulted, the little creature lay down and sobbed.

  “Petulant! He will not do his trick. . . .” Her voice was the voice of a Chinese bird speaking English brush-stroked with a hint of French.

  Keo was lying on a divan at the end of what looked like a ballroom. Out on the floor, two sing-song girls in cheongsams split to the thigh were dancing a fox-trot. Tommy Dorsey’s “Night and Day.” They moved together like lovers, lascivious and sly.

  The old woman soothed her sobbing albino pet, then turned to Keo.

  “My son gone to fetch you nightingale broth. You suffering from shock. Nuns brought you from the street.”

  Her voice dropped, sounding conspiratorial. “They live next door, tend syphilitic infants. And too, they smuggle virgins out of Shanghai in coffins. Clever! No?”

  He saw he had been bathed, swaddled like a child. He imagined himself borne to safety by wimpled angels. When he woke again, Oogh held a steaming bowl before his face.

  “So, mon ami, you are finally arrived.”

  “Oogh! What are you doing here?”

  “Shanghai is my home. Where else would a kanaka-pk dwarf fit in, if not in Sodom?” He nodded toward the ancient woman. “Ma mère. She owns this ballroom, and many brothels. I put to sea when she exhausts me, for she is mercantile as a pharaoh.”

  He spooned broth into Keo’s mouth. It tasted like gardenias, feathers, and sewage, yet made him strangely languorous.

  “Yes. The nightingale’s sadness is left in its juices. They will generate old memories, make you forget the terrible present. Buildings split like loaves of bread, bodies like burst figs. Tell me, have you found your sweetheart?”

  Keo gasped, then remembered Oogh was gifted, a seer. He grabbed his arm. “I saw her! Was it Sunny? Is she still in Shanghai?”

  He closed his eyes. “Perhaps.”

  “Oogh. Please, help me find her.”

  Oogh concentrated very hard. When he opened his eyes, they were sad. “Life will find her.”

  Keo lay back, defeated. “I’ve seen so much since we first met. I still don’t know anything. Every day, I think: Turn left? Turn right? How do I know what is wise?”

  Oogh laughed softly. “Haven’t you learned? Wisdom isn’t necessary. You can be a cretin and still get by.”

  “But you are wise. You see the future.”

  “The wounds of tomorrow dripping at my side . . . It doesn’t make me happy.”

  Keo studied him, as if for the first time. “What would make you happy, my friend?”

  “To be eye-level with the world. To make folks physically look up.” Oogh pumped out his little chest. “I would like to be a judge. Oh, yes! Induce anxiety with a gavel.”

  He
turned to Keo, serious again. “As for you—don’t expect to return alive from what you’ve given your soul to. Happiness will only come from your trumpet.”

  Keo sat up, slowly. “What about Sunny?”

  Oogh’s words were sly and wounding. “Your horn was eating her alive. But women are soldiers, they survive. She will be in your life. She will gather round you. In her time.”

  He gestured to little Chinese boys laboring in a circle, embroidering silk underwear. “Another industry of ma mère. What a savage. Her greed is my penance. Sleep now. When you wake, the boys will guide you home.”

  Keo’s lids drooped with the weight of nightingales. “Oogh . . . don’t go. . . .”

  Oogh smiled. “It is you who come and go. You are the searcher.”

  He turned to a phonograph, placed the needle on a record. “ ‘Toccata and Fugue.’ Bach is excellent for embroidering. Sewing-boys say it makes their silk tremble, longing for cocoons. Now, I shall talk you into dreams. Let’s see . . . shall I tell you of the Rickshaw Man?”

  His voice took on a tenderness:

  . . . Why do they call him “coolie”? Such a mean name when, in fact, the Rickshaw Man is legend, a fragile wonder. He came to China from Japan introduced by, yes, the English. He is the only contact most whites have with Shanghai poverty. Did you know, each day and night there are eighty thousand Rickshaw Men dashing through these streets? He knows each street by heart. And why? The street is his home, his cradle, his mattress, his grave. . . .

  Riots, many-flag festivals, weddings, killings—these are the Rickshaw Man’s daily theatre. Life limitless in its horror. And, food! It is his happiness. Some days he counts his grains of rice, tiptoeing on the cusp of starvation. He was originally a farmer, did you know? Driven off his land by warlords. He comes to the city in thousands, like ants. Wifeless, childless, as such things are luxuries. He sleeps in mud, straw, back to back, in sheds for livestock owned by rickshaw owners.

  Have you seen him drinking from the creek running through the city? On Yao Shui Lane there are four thousand Rickshaw Men, no candles, no light, no water but the filthy creek. Which is also his latrine. Each day he dies many times, in floods, fires, disease. He is thought to laugh in winter, because he is often found frozen with a grin. What strange names we give to pain. . . .

  The Rickshaw Man loves spring and summer. Heat! Humidity! Midst garbage, filth and flies, he finds a woman. He sees his baby crawl. That is his happiness. Sunshine. A little rice. His family round him, huddling on the street. ‘Auw! Now and then he eats himself to death. His shrunken stomach not prepared for full-to-neck meals—bean curd, noodles, congee rice.

  Do you know? It costs the Rickshaw Man one American dollar to pull his rickshaw for one day. Oh, no, he does not own his own. He shares his rickshaw with another man in shifts of twelve work-to-death hours. Have you seen how he runs and runs? To stop is to be robbed and beaten. Most days, after paying the owner for his daily rickshaw, he has not enough coppers left to eat. He drinks a bamboo dipper of dirty water, eats soil and dreams it is a bowl of rice. Sometimes he cheats, he steals. He stalks rich white drunk folks falling out of nightclubs. He strikes them down for coppers. He steals their clothes, leaves them naked in the street. Sometimes he pauses, smelling their pomaded hair, their lime cologne, he runs his nose across their skin. Sometimes he takes their fingers, or their ears. Can you understand? Do you know the depths of hunger?

  The Rickshaw Man is like a moth, a shadow. In sunlight he is less and less. His flesh so thin, his ribs are burnt by sunlight. His lungs so frail, he can only run two days out of three. Do you wonder how he sleeps so many hours, in gutters, sidewalks, standing up? Do you understand dying on your feet? I knew a Rickshaw Man, one with great imagination. He sold his daughter for a pot of tea. His heart burst with the joy of drinking. Imagine. They say he smiled in death. Not a frozen smile, for it was summer. He smiled for he was happy. He had never tasted jasmine tea. The wonder! The Rickshaw Man, father of ma mère . . .

  Oogh’s cheeks were wet. He sighed, patted Keo’s sleeping head.

  “So, mon ami, that is my pk, Chinese, side. One day I will tell you how the daughter of the Rickshaw Man fled the Jasmine Tea Man and sailed to Honolulu, a picture bride. And how, instead, she married a Hawai‘ian, who taught her love. And desperation. Sleep now . . . when you wake, the sewing-boys will clean your ears, trim your nails, guide you back to Hotel Jo-Jo.”

  HULI PAU

  To Search Everywhere

  ANOTHER ACCIDENTAL BOMBING. BODIES HUNG FROM BUILDINGS like rags. He searched the wreckage for her face. He searched the docks, departing crowds, hoping she and Lili had found passage to Hong Kong, Manila, anywhere.

  Sometimes he let himself be swept up in the city’s life. Embassies held what seemed a weekly competition, Brits showing newsreels of Allied victories in Europe, Axis clubs showing Hitler’s devastation. Audiences cheered, then rushed into the streets, beating up their enemies. Keo dragged a belligerent German to an alley and punched him in the face. He thought of Etienne Brême, and hit him in the face again.

  Sometimes, exhausted from his search, he sat with an old Chinese scholar near Hotel Jo-Jo while the man aired his Buddhist texts in sunlight. Rippling humid pages, he popped silver fish into his mouth, so his teeth were furred and gray. A frail, elegant man in long coarse robes and pointed slippers, his movements were leisurely and learned. One day he turned to Keo, speaking nearperfect English.

  “You wait. Chinese are four hundred million strong. Our strength, the strength of ants. We do not win battles. But we absorb our conquerors every time.”

  Keo thought how not just Japanese but all the nations of the world had converged on Shanghai, growing rich on its silk, opium, tea, turning its children into slaves. Now the Yangtze River was closed, trade with China was in its death throes. He pondered the fate of Shanghai’s four million people when the rest of the world had abandoned it.

  “Yes. Japan will overrun us,” the scholar said. “But we will turn them into Chinese. Give us five hundred years. You wait.”

  He suspected the old man was right. Westerners thought in days and months, Chinese in generations.

  Now, with war imminent, clubs and cabarets thrived, just as they had in Paris. Nazis, Italian fascists, officials of the Vichy government arrived, aligning themselves with their Axis partner, Japan. Among them, as always, were jazz fanatics. Once again, Keo blew his horn with the energy of pure hate. He stayed because someone he loved was here, and he played because this was his life and, if he didn’t play, his life had no purpose. It seemed every musician in Shanghai had his own reasons for staying.

  “Where else can I go?” the Japanese sax man asked. “They’ve closed all dance halls in Japan. I would be killed anywhere else in Asia, after what our armies have done.”

  One day the drummer left for Manila, replaced by a Polish Jew from Warsaw. The Polish bass man was replaced by an Austrian, reportedly an Axis spy. When his throat was slashed behind Ciro’s, he was replaced by a black South African run out of Peking as a Communist. The turnover kept audiences intrigued.

  Suddenly musical instruments became bo gum. Precious gold. Saxophones and trumpets disappeared as Japanese confiscated them, shipping them back to Japan as scrap metal for bombs. A horn was spared only if its owner was excellent. Jobless musicians buried their instruments between tombstones with special markers. Now Keo was never without his trumpet. He slept with it, walked it down the street like a pet.

  Some nights before he played, he walked back to the teahouse in the heart of the lake, over the Bridge of Nine Windings. He went week after week, looking for the face in the window, though the old waiter said she had never returned. He haunted streets and shops. He prayed.

  One day a speeding Mercedes with swastika banners rounded a corner and hit a child. The chauffeur jumped out, lashing the unconscious boy with a crop, then drove the car up to the entrance of Ciro’s. The man who stepped out looked eerily familiar. During the secon
d set, Keo recognized his cologne. The German officer who, one night in Paris, had wiped Keo’s face with a linen handkerchief. Now he lowered his horn and walked off the stage. The others joined him in the alley.

  “Gestapo,” the drummer said. “As long as he applauds, we’re safe.”

  Keo stared at him. “You, a Jew, would play for that bastard?”

  The man laughed. “Half the audience are Nazis. You play for them every night.”

  The bassist nodded. “Other half are sympathizers, a few British spies thrown in. If they didn’t dig jazz, we’d be playing in the Pootung stockade for lepers and syphilitics.”

  Keo dragged viciously on a cigarette. “I had friends murdered in Paris. Almost lost my balls to an SS swagger stick.”

  The bandleader touched his arm. “Forget Nazi, Axis, Allies. Our aim is just to stay alive. Please. They are waiting.”

  Audiences began to look alike and sound alike—Germans, Americans, Brits, even Japanese officers. They all had a formal code of manners, a distinctly intense way of leaning forward, listening. Their gaze like thrown knives. Yet they were offering a truce: jazz was their condition. He began to move in a world of repetition, everything known, predictable. On certain nights he knew what the audience would wear, how they would smell, what songs they would request. After a while he left them behind, left the city behind, blowing his trumpet for himself. Imagining one night Sunny would hear it, it would lead her to him.

  So involved in his playing again, sometimes Keo lost all sense of place. Walking home before dawn—no light save those from swaying rickshaw lanterns—he felt beneath him the pavements of Montmartre. Other nights he imagined the Seine flowing past like rollicking eels. He saw sleek couples at bals musettes lost in the hesitating, dragging rhythms of the tango. He smelled the salt of rotting fishnets in Brême’s studio, heard the haunting tremor of Dew’s saxophone.