by Janie Chang
A car tooted its horn behind me and I jumped.
“Miss Zhu,” a man’s voice called. “Can I give you a ride home?”
An automobile pulled over to the curb, and Liu Sanmu pushed the passenger-side door open. A different car. Not the Pierce-Arrow.
“Climb in. I’m on my way to Dragon Springs Road to see Dajuin about the property,” he said. “I should’ve come by sooner, but it seemed better to stay away until we knew what the police had found. Are you all right? You saw the newspapers?”
“Yes, I did. Thank you, Mr. Liu,” I said, pulling the door shut. “Thank you for taking care of everything.”
Such polite words. As though concealing murder was a trivial topic.
“We may as well talk here.” He turned off the ignition. “I owe you a more complete explanation of why we can’t involve the police.”
I stared straight ahead. I wished he would stop. I didn’t want to talk about Wan Baoyuan.
“When you told me you saw Wan Baoyuan three years ago,” he said, “it was the date that caught my attention. That, and how he first claimed he hadn’t been to Shanghai in a decade.”
“Yes, I saw him on the day of Master Shen’s funeral,” I said, looking out the window. What would I do now? Could Miss Morris really help me find another position?
“That was also the day of Mah Juhou’s murder,” he said. “You may not remember but there were rumors that the warlord General Zhang Zuolin was behind the assassination. Wan Baoyuan used to be on the general’s staff. I’d been interested in him since knowing that.”
“So you suspected Wan Baoyuan might know something about Mah Juhou’s death,” I said.
“I only suspected. I still only suspected when you told me he’d been in Shanghai the day of Mah’s murder,” he said. “But when Wan tried to kill you, I knew he had been involved. He might even have been the assassin.”
“Well, he’s dead now, so it’s all over, isn’t it?”
“Jialing, you must understand,” he said patiently. “The warlord’s people are very dangerous. They don’t want any loose ends leading back to the general. That’s why Mr. Shih was killed. He knew Wan Baoyuan was in Shanghai the day of the murder. He was a loose end. You’re still a loose end. You can’t say anything to anyone.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Do you think I want Anjuin to know I killed a man?”
“There’s more to worry about than your friends,” he said. “Let’s hope Wan was cleaning up loose ends on his own and didn’t tell anyone about you. Let’s hope his accomplices never heard of you.”
“So it might not be all over.” Despair washed over me.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said, sitting back. “You did a brave thing. You saved my life. General Zhang is an enemy of the Nationalist Party, no matter what he says in public. Our family is behind the Nationalists. Before Mah Juhou was killed, he and my uncle were making plans to bring Dr. Sun Yat-sen back into power.”
He turned the key and started the car again. “What I don’t understand is why Wan Baoyuan went to Dragon Springs Road three years ago. Why he would want the property. How that fits into the conspiracy.”
“It wasn’t to do with any conspiracy, it was family,” I said, staring ahead listlessly. “He came to Dragon Springs Road to see his childhood home. He used to live here. His real family name was Fong. Wan is the name of the uncle who adopted him.”
“Incredible,” Liu Sanmu said, shaking his head. “He gave in to sentimentality.” He glanced at me. “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need before you start your new job?”
I thought of the little bedroom in the Ellis house, the curtains printed with fat yellow roses, the view from the window. There was nothing Mrs. Ellis could do for me, nothing Miss Morris could do to salvage the situation. A door had slammed shut on my future. My education didn’t matter because I was zazhong, illegitimate, and the daughter of a prostitute. I was eighteen and my life was over.
We turned into Dragon Springs Road, and the car pulled over by the front gate of the Central Residence. I was tired, so tired. Leaning my head against the car window, I closed my eyes.
“The job is gone,” I said. “I have nothing.”
Fox, help me.
THE COURTYARD OF the Western Residence spread out below me. I sat on a small wicker chair across a table from Fox and my mother. We were on the second-story veranda of the main house, a structure so rickety in the real world we never dared put a single foot on its unsteady floorboards. The plum trees below were in full bloom. It had just rained and the gray flagstones were flecked with damp white petals. My mother looked no different than usual in her beggar’s rags. Fox wore a high-necked vest over a long green silk gown.
Are you sure? Fox asked.
“I have nothing to lose, Fox,” I said. “I have no more ideas, and I’ve run out of time. He’s a kind man. I like him well enough.”
Fox cleared her throat. If you don’t live here on Dragon Springs Road, it will be harder to manage.
“Fox, you’ve said this is your particular talent,” I said. “You’re the one who suggested this in the first place. Now you’re saying you can’t help me do it?”
She sat up very straight and lifted her chin. I can, but my powers are limited by distance.
“Come away from Dragon Springs Road then. You can both come live with me, wherever I go.”
I’m not leaving the Door. And your mother needs to stay here with me. She sounded agitated.
“Fox, it’s all right,” my mother said. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t need your help.”
I’m just a second-rate Fox spirit. Fox addressed my mother with great dignity. My powers are mediocre. I had very little talent to begin with, and I had to cultivate it for hundreds of years to achieve what I have today. But it’s still not enough to look after both of you. I’m sorry.
What had it taken for Fox to admit that her powers, which I had always assumed she wielded according to her whims, were only just adequate?
“It’s all right, Fox,” my mother repeated. “It’s enough for what Jialing needs. Perhaps you could visit Jialing every week to sustain your influence. Would that work?”
“Please, Fox,” I begged. “I’ve run out of choices.”
HEAT FLARED OUT from the center of my being, and the cold glass of the car window warmed against my cheek. Confidence and exhilaration surged through my veins, sensations far stronger than what Fox had let me feel that one time, years ago.
I raised my head to look at Liu Sanmu, and he was staring at me, eyes wide. He looked bewildered, then his expression softened and he was gazing at me in wonder. I knew how he saw me, eyes shining, red lips parted, skin glowing so petal smooth he could barely keep his hands from reaching out to stroke my face.
I knew his desire. I understood it. I understood everything about it. It was intoxicating.
And it wasn’t real.
“You don’t have nothing, Jialing,” he said, his voice husky with longing. “Come with me.”
He turned the car around, and we drove back into Shanghai.
It wasn’t what I wanted. But what else was I to do?
CHAPTER 19
For the first two weeks I lived in the suite of a quiet hotel at the edge of the International Settlement. The drapes in the sitting room pulled back to reveal French doors opening onto a small private garden. It wasn’t much more than a bit of lawn edged with flower beds, but it was private, enclosed by tall hedges, with a wrought-iron gate that allowed us to come and go without walking through the lobby. There was a dining room at the hotel, but we took meals in our room.
“I’ve rented a house for you,” Sanmu said. “It’s small but nicely furnished. It’ll be ready next week. If you don’t like it, you can move somewhere else after a year.”
“It will be perfect,” I said, sitting up against the pillows. “Everything you’ve chosen for me has been just perfect.”
The dressing table held his la
test gift, a set of silver-backed brushes and mirror. Three new dresses hung in the wardrobe, enough to see me through until the dressmaker returned with the clothes I had ordered. Everything was paid for on Sanmu’s account.
My first visit to a dressmaker had been an awkward experience. Although I was on Sanmu’s arm, I didn’t feel as though I had any right to be in the shop, its glass cases of beaded trims and lace. The shopgirls who helped me try on dresses were so discreetly stylish it made me realize the new clothes Anjuin and I had sewn were old-fashioned, more suited to women twice our age. The owner ushered me into a private room where she brought in dress after dress. One fit well enough that I wore it out of the shop, a long tunic with fashionable wide sleeves and a skirt that fell to my ankles. We exchanged my plain cloth shoes for a pair of leather pumps.
“You’ve bought me too many clothes already.” I climbed out of bed and opened the wardrobe. He came to stand behind me.
“I want you to look scandalously beautiful when I introduce you to my friends,” he said. “Just show my card at any store and have them send the bill to my accountant there. I want you in a new dress every time we go out. But when we’re alone, you can be a schoolgirl for me.”
He slipped his hands around my waist and then over my breasts. His breathing quickened and I turned around for him to kiss me. Although he had been dressing to leave for work at Xinwen Bao, he now pulled me back into bed. This intimacy had been the part I had dreaded the most about becoming his mistress, to have Sanmu possess my body, to submit and yield to his pleasure.
Yet in many ways it had proven one of the easier charades in my new role.
Everything I knew about the act of love had been gleaned from classmates and the other servants. Some girls at the orphanage were rescued from brothels and had seen much. Away from the Yangs’ hearing, the servants didn’t hold back from making lewd jokes. Once in Shanghai, I had looked down an alley to see a man press himself with hurried and brutal urgency against a woman. The woman looked back at me with blank, opium-dilated eyes. She was a “pheasant,” the lowest form of prostitute.
There was nothing brutal or hurried about Liu Sanmu’s lovemaking. On our first night he had removed my simple cotton clothing with as much care as if it had been fine silk. He had spared me the embarrassment of nakedness by turning out all the lights, leaving the drapes open just enough to allow in a sliver of twilight. His movements had been gentle, his hands lingering over my breasts and thighs. His body moved slowly against mine until desire overcame him.
Afterward he had kissed me over and over, saying my name with every breath. And to my relief, I had felt nothing. I had felt no pleasure nor had I been moved to surrender. I knew his passion wasn’t real. I knew I was only doing this to survive.
WHEN I LEFT the hotel to visit Anjuin, I wore my old clothes. I wanted to look the same. I climbed the stairs to the fifth-floor apartment where Dajuin’s family now lived. It was an old building, with a shared toilet compartment on each floor. The inevitable odors of cooking oil and garlic drifted up the stairwell, along with the cries of children.
I paused before knocking, but there was no way around this visit. Liu Sanmu had told Dajuin about us the day they closed the property purchase.
“Dajuin was relieved,” Sanmu said, “pleased even, that I would be taking care of you.”
It didn’t matter to me what Dajuin thought. It was Anjuin. That wasn’t how I’d wanted her to learn about the situation. I wished there had been time to write to her first, a chance to explain what had happened at the Ellises’. That I had no choice.
She opened the door, pushing a strand of hair off her damp forehead. Looking behind her, I saw only two rooms. It was a tiny place. Yun Na shouted from the inside room.
“It’s Jialing,” Anjuin called back in reply. Was it sorrow or anger in her gaze?
“Jialing! Welcome, welcome! How is Mr. Liu?” A pregnant Yun Na bustled her way to the door. Her fawning tones confirmed they all knew I was now Sanmu’s mistress.
“He is well,” I said cautiously. “I was hoping Anjuin could come for a walk with me. Just a short one, I know you must be very busy getting settled in to your new home.”
“Of course, of course,” she said, beaming. “Take as long as you like. Old friends must have their time together.”
Anjuin and I were silent all the way down the stairs.
“We can walk to Quinsan Park,” she said. “It’s just a public square with some greenery, but it’s close by.”
The silence between us was as wide and muddy as the Huangpu River and I couldn’t think of a way to get across. It seemed best to be direct.
“Mrs. Ellis didn’t hire me after all,” I said as we approached the park. It seemed best to start with that. “Then Liu Sanmu asked me to be his mistress, and it seemed like my only option.”
More silence. I couldn’t read her, couldn’t tell what she was feeling.
“I know you care about him, Anjuin. But you said yourself you wouldn’t be able to stand sharing him with other wives.”
“Your decisions are your own,” she said, her voice as cool as polished stone. “But why couldn’t you have talked to me first? We could’ve found another way.”
“We’ve had years to find other ways, Anjuin,” I said, grasping her hand. “I’m illegitimate and zazhong. My education counts for nothing. What could you have done? What could Dajuin have done? Look at where you’re living now. Do you think there would’ve been room for me?”
“You showed no consideration for my feelings,” she said, pulling her hand away.
The gesture was like a knife wound. It ripped open the distress of the past weeks, everything I had tried to keep at bay. Wan Baoyuan’s death. My mother. The room with yellow roses on the wall.
“Your feelings?” I said. “Your feelings won’t keep a roof over my head or food in my belly. Would you rather I took my clothes off for strangers in a brothel? Die of overwork in some factory?”
Her stricken face told me she knew the truth of my words and was already regretting hers. In that moment I should’ve apologized. I should’ve told her she meant more to me than a hundred Liu Sanmus, that she was the sister of my heart. But I didn’t. Anger and disappointment wouldn’t allow me to acknowledge my love, to reach out and mend the hurt on both sides.
“You’re jealous, Anjuin,” I said. “Jealous because Liu Sanmu chose me over you.”
It was a childish, hurtful retort. And of course, completely untrue. Her expression crumpled, then hardened. Without a word, she walked away.
AT THE WESTERN Residence, I heard female voices as I walked through the bamboo garden. Fox was with my mother, the two of them seated on the veranda of the main house, a small platter of cakes between them. Today Fox was human, in a Western-style suit of brown wool, a cascade of creamy silk ruffles down her front.
I’ve dressed in your honor, Fox said. Like a foreigner. But here you are looking like a schoolgirl.
“I’ve been to see Anjuin,” I said. “We argued. She’s upset that I’m now Liu Sanmu’s mistress. Why, when she knew she never had a chance with Liu Sanmu?”
“Give her time to get used to the idea,” my mother said. “Feelings are rarely rational.” Then she coughed, a harsh rasping that made me wince.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here. You can probably stay here safely through the fall and winter, but after that, you must leave Dragon Springs Road. They’ll be tearing down these houses in the New Year.”
Sanmu told me that the Liu family’s fortune-teller had picked a lucky day in the third week of the New Year to begin construction. The Yang houses would go the way of the old Shen estate and other properties on Dragon Springs Road, the old courtyard homes replaced with modern, Western-style villas.
The rocks placed so carefully as garden features in our neighbors’ homes are gone, Fox sighed, standing up. The bamboo and azaleas that softened the corners of courtyards are gone. Those new v
illas are as sharp edged as the bricks used to build them.
There would be no more slow-paced evenings strolling up and down Dragon Springs Road, the twilight exchange of greetings and gossip, casual invitations to dine. The farmland behind us would turn into more streets and more buildings. There would be no more ponds and rice fields where children hunted for tadpoles, no more open skies where swallows swooped on insects.
I’ve kept humans from intruding on the Western Residence for hundreds of years, Fox said. I can do it for a bit longer.
But I could tell she was worried.
“I can’t make Fox leave,” I said to my mother, “but why can’t you come live with me? Once these houses are torn down, where will you go?”
“My presence at your home would raise too many questions.” My mother touched her ruined cheek. “Let’s leave things the way they are for now.”
“Sanmu is completely infatuated,” I said. “He’ll do whatever I ask.”
You must never believe that, Fox said sternly. He’s still the same person. His infatuation for you hasn’t changed his character. If he were the jealous type, he would still be jealous. If he were miserly, he still wouldn’t buy you expensive gifts.
“You must try and save some money,” my mother said. “It could be another lifetime before the Door opens for Fox, or it could be tomorrow. If she goes through, what will you do without her help? Would Liu Sanmu still love you?”
THE HOUSE SANMU rented for me was in the French Concession, a Western-style villa on a street called Yuyang Lane. It was guarded by whitewashed walls, a set of heavy metal gates, and an unsmiling gatekeeper called Old Tan. The long gravel path to the house curved beneath magnolia trees and edged past flower beds bordered with low boxwood hedges. In Shanghai’s warm climate, ivy flourished and clambered over the garden’s brick walls, taking root in every crack.
Sanmu said it was just a small house, but to me it was enormous, more than enough for one person. At the back was a greenhouse filled with ferns and orchids. On the second floor I had a sitting room and bedroom with an adjoining bathroom. My bedroom windows faced the back garden, and the sitting room windows opened to look down on the front garden. There was also a spare room that Sanmu said could be my library.