Then when I arrived one day the bandages were gone from her face. Her cheeks were so sunken that it made her eyes look ominously big, like lanterns on a ghostly night. But she was still the Shadow who was both my friend and my sometimes rival.
“How are you feeling, Shadow?”
Without the bandages, I could better understand what she was saying to me.
Instead of answering my question, she asked, “Why are you so kind to me, Camilla? Why don’t you just let me rot my way to hell?”
Wah! How unkind when I had come nearly every day to feed and care for her! Could I admit that the reason I was nice was because I now realized we shared similar fates? So I hoped we could now be allies instead of adversaries? That I wanted something out of this too? But I couldn’t really say these things.
Then she spoke again, with effort. “Thanks, anyway, for everything.” She lowered her head and thought for a while. “Camilla, I screwed up our last show—you’re not angry at me?”
“But I also sliced off part of your finger. So we’re even. We can have a fresh start. Shadow, instead of trying to outwit or destroy each other, women like us should help each other out.”
“How’s that?”
“Because no one else cares. We’re alone, rootless souls struggling to survive on the margins of this Red Dust. We were both famous in Shanghai, but think about it, one day when we die, people will have forgotten us the next.”
She remained silent.
I went on. “Because we don’t have a family or husband for support. Shadow, we’re all by ourselves.”
She sighed. “Maybe you’re right, my friend.”
“I’m very sorry about your fall. But why did your partner suggest taking down the safety net? Did she try to harm you on purpose?”
She shook her head. “No, it was my idea.”
I was surprised to hear that. “But why?!”
“Because the circus has been doing so badly that I wanted to attract a bigger audience. If this circus closes, I have no place to go. I really don’t want to end up on the street….”
She began to cry. I took out my handkerchief and handed it to her.
“Shadow, from now on you don’t have to worry about money anymore….”
She nodded, a bitter smile spreading on her face.
After a moment’s silence, we asked each other simultaneously, “Why are you in Hong Kong?”
“You go first, Shadow.”
“All right. Since I screwed up your show, I feared you’d take revenge on me. Not to mention you’re Master Lung’s woman, so you could even ask him to kill me. Who knows? But when you disappeared right after the shooting at Lung’s villa, I suspected you had something to do with the gang war. Remember, Master Ling used to tease us that we’re ‘sisters,’ so I feared that the gang would think I also had something to do with what happened. I thought the smart thing to do was get out of Shanghai.”
Shadow took a big gulp of the milk I had bought her, then asked, “All right, Camilla, then why did you come to Hong Kong?”
“It’s a long story. If you have the energy to listen.”
“Just tell me.”
“I stole Master Lung’s money during the shooting and made my escape here.”
She fixed on my eyes with her lackluster ones, a puzzled expression on her still slightly swollen face. “Why have you told me this? You’re not afraid I’ll tell the others?”
I knew she thought I had told her because I planned to kill her anyway.
I looked back into her sunken eyes. “Shadow, if we don’t help each other, no one will. So we’re in the same boat. Think about it. Even if I eliminate you, what good will it do me now in Hong Kong?”
She nodded weakly.
I smiled. “Anyway, Shadow, you don’t have to worry. Since I’ve been paying for your hospital bills, now you’re my accomplice. So you can’t expose me because they’ll assume you were in on it too.”
Some silence passed and she cast me a curious look. “Guess you’re right, Camilla; we have no choice but to be friends and allies.”
I nodded.
“Why are you helping me?”
“I am just collecting some good karma for myself. You know, just in case.”
“In case of what?” she asked, then chuckled nervously. “Look at me, Camilla, you really think I can help you—or anybody—now?”
“I don’t know yet. Shadow, I believe it is our karma to do more together than just rub shoulders and walk past each other.”
She nodded, looking unbearably sad. Despite the injuries and pain, she kept her beauty, though now with more than a touch of melancholy.
I was perhaps more surprised than she to discover that I felt real compassion for my shadowy, magician rival, now to be friend.
When Shadow was finally released from the hospital, she went back to live with the other performers at a dilapidated dorm apartment provided by the circus in Kowloon’s Walled City, a very old and poor area. Apparently, the rumor that the circus was closing was not true, at least not yet. Since Shadow could not perform, she was assigned to do clerical work. However, if the circus did close, or just became tired of having her around, she would probably have to become a cleaning maid. I knew she felt too humiliated to ask me for more money. And she may have thought that my telling her I was rich was merely boasting.
Though Shadow had sometimes upstaged me, it was painful for me to observe her present debilitated state that was likely the end of her performing career.
But despite my concern for her, I was once again becoming preoccupied with my own worries and the need to seek out Jinjin and his father. This was why I had left her in the dorm rather than inviting her to stay with me. Though I felt guilty about this, I needed to come and go without explaining what I was doing.
I thought I would start by looking for news about Lung and the gangs in the Shanghai newspapers, and, I hoped, some about Jinying. But how to find Shanghai newspapers in Hong Kong? After some thinking, I realized there must be a Shanghainese association or the like in the British Colony. A quick perusal of the phone book revealed one in Causeway Bay, a busy district close to Wanchai where I lived.
Once I had made sure that Shadow was settled as comfortably as possible in the dorm, I took a rickshaw to the Shanghai Association, which turned out to be on the third floor of a dilapidated building. I climbed the stairs and entered the smoke-filled sitting room. Inside were elderly people chatting, listening to the radio, playing go, and reading newspapers. I saw that one elderly man was reading just what I had hoped to find—the Leisure News—which published Rainbow Chang’s column. I sat to wait patiently for the man to finish so I could read it.
Just then a younger man came to me and asked, “Miss, can I help you?”
“No, but thanks. I just passed by and came up to take a look.”
“But there’s nothing here for a young person like you.”
“I’m looking for a place for my uncle from Shanghai to hang out. “
“All right, then take your time to look around,” he said, and returned to sit behind a desk.
Finally, when the man finished the newspaper and put it back to the rack, I took it and sat down to read. I found nothing about the events that interested me, not surprising since they had occurred several months ago. But I saw that in back there were shelves piled with old newspapers, so I grabbed a stack and started to work my way through them, page by page. Finally, I found what I was looking for:
Since the big shoot-out at the villa of Master Lung, head of the Flying Dragons gang, he and his Harvard lawyer son, Lung Jinying, have not been seen, nor has Lung’s petite aime, Camilla, shown her pretty face in public. But it seems that Jinying could not suppress his love for opera because two days ago he was spotted at the performance of Madame Butterfly at the Shanghai Theater. Though almost hidden in the corner of the back row, he was detected by the Red Demons, who grabbed him as he was sneaking out the back. At least that’s what one of my Pink Skeleton girls heard from an intimate acquaintance.