The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai

by Bangqing Han

  CHAPTER 59 :: Second Sister employs an old ruse to filch important documents, and Jade Wenjun begs for a poem to boost her fame

  One afternoon, Second Sister went to Green Phoenix’s, ready to make a scene. Green Phoenix’s reaction was to tell a manservant to summon two carriages and then to go with Prosperity Luo for a ride to Luna Park, leaving Second Sister to her own devices. By the time they had their tea in Luna Park, Green Phoenix was still laughing scornfully. “I’ve got the ransom papers, let’s see what tricks she can come up with.”

  “You should have told your servant girl to keep her company,” Prosperity said.

  Green Phoenix jerked her neck to look away. “Just let her be. Why should anyone keep her company?”

  “This won’t do!” he said.

  “Why? Are you afraid she’ll steal my furniture?”

  “She wouldn’t want any furniture, but she knows the ransom papers are in the trunk. Wouldn’t she steal them?”

  Reminded of this danger, Green Phoenix stared straight in front of her and let out a cry, “Aiyo! I’m in for it!”

  Mama Zhao, who was standing by her side, was also momentarily stunned. She said, “Oh dear me! Let’s go home at once.”

  Prosperity told Green Phoenix to go first, but she said, “Naturally you’re coming with us. If the papers have been stolen, at least we’ll be able to consult you about what to do.”

  And so the three of them rushed home in their original carriages. As soon as she entered the house, Green Phoenix asked, “Is Mother upstairs?”

  “She just went home a minute ago,” the menservants replied.

  Green Phoenix rushed up the stairs and into her room. She saw that the furnishings and ornaments were all there. Then she went behind the bed and opened the trunk. It gave her such a start that she stamped her feet, shouting, “Now I’m done for!”

  Prosperity ran up after her and saw the hinges of the trunk lying on the floor. When he lifted the lid, he saw just one document box inside. In desperation, Green Phoenix stamped her feet, weeping and cursing, vowing she’d fight Second Sister to the death. Prosperity and Mama Zhao tried to persuade her to sit down and talk it over.

  “What’s there to talk about? She wants my life. If I die, what good will it do her?” Green Phoenix said.

  “You should put my document box somewhere safe; then we’ll talk about it.” Prosperity said.

  When Green Phoenix took the document box from the trunk, she suddenly cried out in astonishment, “Why, this is my document box!” Then the truth dawned on her. “She took the wrong box! She’s got Mr. Luo’s document box!” So saying, she burst into hearty laughter.

  Prosperity panicked when he heard this. “Where is my document box then?”

  She held up the box in her hands to show him, saying in great merriment, “She took the wrong box! She took yours. Mine is still here.”

  His face turned an ashen gray. He slapped his thigh and exclaimed, “Now that’s really bad.”

  “Your document box will be all right. It’s of no use to her. Would she dare to sell it? She wouldn’t know where to go even if she did.”

  He sat there in a daze thinking about this. Green Phoenix called Mama Zhao over and gave her these instructions: “Go and tell Mother that she’s got Mr. Luo’s document box. Ask her why she has taken it. Tell her Mr. Luo needs it and is waiting for it. She’s to bring it back.”

  Mama Zhao went to carry out her orders. Prosperity remained uneasy and nervous, but Green Phoenix was sure that Second Sister had absolutely no reason to hold on to the box.

  A little later, Mama Zhao returned. Before she spoke, she clapped her hands merrily and had a good laugh. Then she reported, “It’s really funny! They didn’t even realize they’d taken the wrong box; they were still rejoicing over it. When I said it was Mr. Luo’s box, they were stunned, couldn’t get a word out. I just laughed and laughed! They told me to bring the box back with me, but I said ‘None of my business!’ and walked out of there.”

  Prosperity stamped his foot in frustration, “Goodness! Why didn’t you bring it back?”

  “Since they took it, let them bring it back themselves,” Mama Zhao replied.

  “It’s all right. They’ll come and return it later,” Green Phoenix said.

  Like an ant on a hot stove, Prosperity could find no rest whether he sat or stood. He was consumed by anxiety. Seeing how worried he was, Green Phoenix wanted to send Mama Zhao to speed up the matter, but Prosperity stopped her. Instead he summoned Promotion and told him to demand the document box from Second Sister. He further instructed him, “Don’t mention anything else, just say I need the document box for some business and you’re to bring it back quickly.”

  Having got his instructions, Promotion went straight to Second Sister’s in Generosity Alley. When Second Sister saw him, she was all smiles as she invited him into the little room at the back. Promotion delivered his master’s message and demanded that the document box be handed over instantly.

  “The document box is here, but I have something to say to Mr. Luo. Don’t be in such a hurry; do sit down,” Second Sister said.

  Promotion had no choice but to sit down. Second Sister called out for somebody to make a cup of tea and then said to him very calmly, “You came at just the right moment. I’ve got lots of things to say, and I hope you’ll convey them to Mr. Luo. When Green Phoenix was here working for me, we did booming business, so much so we were run off our feet. But our expenses were great, so there never was much money left. After Green Phoenix bought back her freedom, things went downhill. There’s no business at all, but the expenses remain the same. The thousand dollars she paid for her ransom was gone before I knew it, and I didn’t know what to do. I asked Green Phoenix for a loan of a few hundred dollars, but she flatly refused. I went to see her several times, and each time she said she didn’t have it. Now when Green Phoenix was a child, I was the one who combed her hair and bound her feet, who groomed her all the way, treating her like my own daughter. And she turns out to be so ungrateful! This was the first time I asked for a loan, and she didn’t have any scruples about turning me down. The anger nearly killed me! Now I’m done with talking to her. I had intended to take her ransom papers so I could get her back to work for me, and if she wanted to buy her freedom again, I wouldn’t have settled for less than ten thousand. As it happened, I took the wrong box; instead of the ransom papers, I now have Mr. Luo’s box! Mr. Luo has always been a good friend to us, always giving us business and sometimes lending me ten or twenty dollars. I’m not ungrateful like Green Phoenix; I’m always mindful of Mr. Luo’s kindness. So as soon as I learned it was Mr. Luo’s box, I wanted to send it over at once. But then I thought, Green Phoenix and Mr. Luo are as if one, and Mr. Luo’s box is no different from hers. I’m disgusted with Green Phoenix, so I’m borrowing the box from Mr. Luo as security and asking Green Phoenix to ransom it for ten thousand dollars. When she delivers the money, I’ll return the box to Mr. Luo. You just go back and tell Mr. Luo he has nothing to worry about.”

  On hearing this little speech, Promotion stuck out his tongue in awe, not daring to make any comment. He returned to Prosperity Alley and reported everything in detail. Before Promotion was through, Green Phoenix jumped up and shouted, “How dare she talk like that! The woman was farting through her mouth!”

  Prosperity also trembled with anger. He lay paralyzed on the divan, unable to say a word.

  After looking dazed for a moment, Green Phoenix abruptly stood up and headed for the stairs, saying, “I’ll go.”

  Prosperity grabbed her. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll ask her if it’s my life that she wants.”

  He stepped up to block her way, “Hold on a minute. If you go, there’ll be nothing but angry words. I’d better go myself. Let’s see if she has the audacity to say the same thing to me. Even if we give in to her, it’ll only be a loan of a few hundred dollars.”

  Green Phoenix gritted her teeth. “You’re inf
uriating! How can you even think about paying her off?”

  He called for Promotion to get his sedan chair ready and went on his way. Little Treasure welcomed him and invited him into the room formerly occupied by Green Phoenix. Gold Phoenix and Pearl Phoenix greeted him as “Brother-in-law” and said, “You haven’t been here for a long time.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “She’s coming,” Little Treasure replied.

  Indeed Second Sister was at that moment entering the room. Smiling sweetly, she walked up to Prosperity and knelt down to kowtow to him, apologizing all the way, “Don’t be angry, Mr. Luo, I’m kowtowing to you for all that I’ve done. Your document box will just be kept here for a couple of days; it’s as safe as keeping it at Green Phoenix’s. You have always been a good friend to me, Mr. Luo, would I dare damage the valuable things in the box and bring you trouble? You might as well keep out of it, Mr. Luo, for Green Phoenix will have to ransom it, never fear. When she gets desperate and comes to see me, then we will talk. Would someone like Green Phoenix cough up ten thousand dollars unless she’s desperate?”

  All this nonsense infuriated Prosperity. Yet he controlled himself and asked, “Enough of this silly talk. How much d’you want to borrow from her? Let’s hear it and see.”

  “This is no silly talk, Mr. Luo,” she said, smiling. “At first, I only wanted a loan of a few hundred dollars, but now it’s different. Green Phoenix is ungrateful, so in the future if I’m short of money again, she won’t be lending me any, and I won’t want the embarrassment of going to her again. Now that your document box happens to be here, it’s a heaven-sent opportunity for me to get a tidy sum out of her once and for all. Ten thousand is not too much! The collateral papers Mr. Tang brought the other day, don’t they come to ten thousand, too?”

  “So you’re trying to extort money from me. It’s got nothing to do with Green Phoenix,” he said.

  She defended herself immediately. “That’s not true, Mr. Luo! How would Green Phoenix have ten thousand dollars? Naturally she’d have to borrow it from you. Your party bills at the house come to a thousand per season. If you take it out of the bills, it’ll be cleared within three years. Right, Mr. Luo?”

  Unable to respond to that, Prosperity snorted and walked away. She saw him out, apologizing repeatedly, “I owe you many apologies, Mr. Luo. It’s all because we have no business and our money has run out. After all, when you’re facing starvation, would you be afraid of any unpleasantness? If Green Phoenix remains stubborn, I might just set the lot of it on fire. If that happens, how is she going to face you, Mr. Luo?”

  He pretended not to hear her and departed in his sedan chair. When Green Phoenix came up to ask how it went, he just groaned and sighed and shook his head. Only when she pressed him did he give her a brief account. Green Phoenix went through the roof. She seized a pair of scissors and was determined to kill herself in front of Second Sister. At a loss what to do, Prosperity did not stop her. But as she rushed downstairs, she ran into Mama Zhao, who wrested the scissors from her and, half by persuasion and half by force, managed to carry her upstairs.

  Still struggling, Green Phoenix said, “I’m going to die anyway. Why are you all ganging up to help them? Why don’t you let me go?”

  Mama Zhao pressed her down firmly into a chair and spoke to her gently, “Eldest Maestro, it’s no use even if you kill yourself. If you died, they’d be faced with punishment by death, in which case they might indeed burn the document box in revenge, and Mr. Luo’s loss would be in the tens of thousands.”

  Upon hearing this, Prosperity also chimed in to stop Green Phoenix, who was so angry that she skipped supper and went straight to bed. Prosperity’s fury kept him awake all night. Rising early in the morning, he went to consult Whistler Tang at the Zhu residence in Middle Peace Alley.

  “Green Phoenix bought back her freedom for just a thousand dollars,” Whistler said, “and now they’re asking for a loan of ten thousand; it’s a clear case of extortion. But you can’t really bring in the police because, first, you have committed the offense of consorting with prostitutes and, second, you may not find the stolen objects on their premises as evidence. Besides, you have to be wary of the possibility that they’d burn the evidence in order to deny everything. Your document box contains official as well as private papers. To obtain duplicates for all of them involves not just tremendous expense but may also cause thorny problems.”

  On reflection, Prosperity realized he had no way out, so he asked Whistler to act as middleman in the negotiation, which Whistler promised to do. Prosperity then went to the bureau to attend to his work. It was not until dusk, when official business was over, that he returned to Green Phoenix’s by sedan chair. As he entered the house, he saw Jade Wenjun seated at leisure in the parlor. She greeted him cordially, so he stopped and nodded in acknowledgment with a smile.

  “Did you see the papers today, Mr. Luo?” she asked.

  Greatly alarmed, Prosperity turned pale and asked urgently, “What’s in the papers?”

  “It says a guest’s friend—now what’s his name? It’s a real tongue twister …” She tried hard to remember the name.

  “Never mind the name. What about him?”

  “Oh, nothing. He wrote two poems dedicated to me. They’re said to be in the newspapers.”

  “I don’t understand poetry,” he said with a chuckle and went upstairs without looking back.

  Rather put out of countenance, Jade Wenjun turned around to say to a manservant, “Just now I was telling you Shanghai is full of uncultured men. Well, it looks like Mr. Luo’s not too cultured, either. He’s a client of this house, and he doesn’t even understand poetry; what a fine state of affairs!”

  “Here comes your cultured man,” the manservant responded. Looking up to find that it was Thatch Fang, Jade Wenjun complained to him, “All this sarcasm! Isn’t it maddening?”

  Thatch Fang walked into the study on the right and then replied, “That’s a minor point. But why talk to these people at all? Doesn’t the smell of vulgarity sicken you?”

  She repented, saying, “Of course! Thank you for reminding me.”

  Thatch Fang sat down and took out a newspaper. “Here’re the poems the Romantic Lyricist dedicated to you. Have you seen them yet?”

  “No, not yet. Do show me.”

  Thatch Fang spread out the newspaper and pointed the poems out to her.

  “What’s he saying? Please tell me,” she said.

  Thatch Fang put on his glasses, recited the poems, and then explained them. She was overjoyed.

  “You should address two poems to him in reply,” he said. “I’ll correct them for you. For a title, you can use ‘In Answer to the Romantic Lyricist, Using His Original Rhyme.’ Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “That’d be in the form of the eight-line regulated verse. I don’t know how to do the parallelism for the four lines in the middle. Why don’t you write them for me?”

  “Now that’d take a lot of work. Tomorrow is the meeting day of our Poetry Club On-the-Sea, how would I find the time for it?”

  “Please, just write something, anything.”

  He looked sternly at her. “Mind what you say! Poetry is a serious and important matter. How can one write just anything?”

  She apologized hastily for her mistake, after which he continued, “But since I’m writing for you, I do have to go a bit easy. If it shows too much craftsmanship, it won’t look like a poem by you, and no one would believe you wrote it, right?”

  She thoroughly agreed. And so he closed his eyes and wagged his head, humming under his breath. After a while, he abruptly lifted a finger, poked at the marble tabletop several times, and drew some lines on it. He then said with a frown, “The rhyme he used is very difficult. It can’t be done offhand. I’ll go home and write a couple of fine lines for you.”

  “Do stay for supper,” she said.

  “Another day,” he replied. She bade him to keep the matter secret, as they said far
ewell.

  Thatch Fang strolled out of Prosperity Alley, mumbling to himself all the way, still engrossed in constructing a poem. Suddenly, a maid rushed out of a side alley and grabbed him by the arm, saying, “Where’re you going, Mr. Fang?”

  Taken by surprise, Thatch Fang did not know how to react. He gazed at the woman, squinting, and dimly recognized her as Laurel Zhao’s maid, the one she called Grandma. So he also greeted her as Grandma just to be polite.

  “Why don’t you come to our place? Let’s go,” said Grandma.

  “I don’t have time now. I’ll come tomorrow.”

  “Nonsense! Our young lady misses you terribly. We invited you several times, but you never came.” Brooking no protests, she dragged him into Laurel Zhao’s in Generosity Alley. Laurel welcomed him into her room and asked, “Have we offended you in any way, Mr. Fang? You never even came once.”

  Thatch Fang smiled and sat down. Grandma attempted to make conversation, “Except for a party call to Sky in a Wine Pot last season, you haven’t seen us at all. It’s been over two months now; aren’t you embarrassed?”

  “He’s bewitched by Jade Wenjun,” Laurel chimed in. “How would he think of coming here?”

  Thatch Fang shouted at once to stop her, “Don’t talk nonsense. Jade Wenjun is my girl pupil. It’s all very proper and polite, so don’t you try to smear her. It’s absurd!”

  “Humph!” was Laurel’s only response.

  Grandma spoke to him in a low voice as she prepared a water pipe for him. “There’s no deceiving you, Mr. Fang, as to our miss’s business. Last season, with you looking after us, we managed to get by, but now even you don’t come anymore. We haven’t even had a party for several days now. While Grace Yang downstairs has mah-jongg and drinking parties, a real lively crowd, we’re all quiet and deserted up here. Isn’t it humiliating?”

  Thatch Fang cut in, “Mah-jongg parties and drinking parties are so vulgar. Remember I got Laurel’s name into the newspapers a while ago? Everyone in all the eighteen provinces of China has seen it, and they all know there is a Laurel Zhao in Shanghai. D’you think mah-jongg parties and drinking parties can compare with that?”