“I appreciate your seeing me, Mr. Zhang.” He’d greeted me in English, so I guessed it was the language of choice.
“How could I resist? The Maltese Falcon! Farewell, My Lovely! When I was young, schoolboys in Shanghai were weighed down with dull books for our English lessons, but among ourselves we put those lessons to better use. Oh, the intrigue! The romance!” His black eyes sparkled. “Of course, in those days detectives were tough-talking, two-fisted men.”
“Some still are.” I sat; the chair creaked but fit me pretty well. The door opened, and the secretary brought in a tea tray. While he poured from a sleek white pot into sleek white cups-the Western kind with saucers and handles-I looked around.
The rosewood chairs and the scholar’s desk were the only things in the room older than I was. Everything else-lamps, desk chair, credenza-was relentlessly minimalist-modern. Bookshelves lined two walls, interrupted by certificates of membership in importers’ and appraisers’ associations. The roar of traffic charged through steel-framed windows along with the midday sun. On my right hung the only other evidence of the past: a colossal black-and-white photo of prewar Shanghai. A full moon gleamed over the neon of the Cathay Hotel and laid a broken path along the sampan-clogged river. Its round glow was dittoed down the Bund in the headlights of boxy cars. A black ocean liner rode the horizon. I found myself listening for the lap of waves, wondering whether the passengers found the harbor’s complicated scents exciting or disturbing.
“That was a long time ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Startled back to Canal Street, I said, “I’ve never been to Shanghai. It seems so fascinating.”
“Oh, it was!” C. D. Zhang held out my tea, smoky and strong. “Wild. Intoxicating. As a boy I was in love with the streets of Shanghai. Endlessly I pestered my amah to take me outside our villa walls. I didn’t understand half of what I saw or heard, but what chaos! What cacophony! She’d buy me an ice or a bit of fried eel. Women in silks would smile from rickshaws. I can still see it: Coolies with carrying poles darting between limousines. Dazzling bar girls, Sihks with turbans, English bankers sweating in tweeds. Ships and cargo! Temples and gongs! Shops, soldiers, crowds. Banners and neon in the hot damp air.”
“That’s very poetic, Mr. Zhang. I feel like I’m there.”
“No, you’re too kind. It’s just the truth. If it sounds like poetry, credit the Shanghai of my youth, not myself.” His smile turned wry. “Now the Cathay is the Peace Hotel. Our villa houses the Bureau of Water Resources. I hear they park in the side garden, where my father’s banquet tent stood.”
“Do you go back?”
“Why would I? Everything I remember, and everything I had, is gone. But you’re being polite, Ms. Chin. You’re a private eye, on a case! You haven’t come to discuss Shanghai.”
“No. Well, in a way maybe I did. I want to ask you about the Shanghai Moon.” Go ahead, Lydia, jump right in.
C. D. Zhang was silent for a long moment. “The Shanghai Moon.” Then his face cleared. “Ah, I see! I think you’ve been talking to those two old men.”
“Your half brother and your cousin? Yes.”
“Li and Lao-li,” he smiled. “One madder than the other. They’ve spun you their tales, and now you’re caught up in the romance of the Shanghai Moon.”
“I did talk to them, about-something else. But they never mentioned the Shanghai Moon until I found it in a book and asked. In fact, they never mentioned you.”
“And why would they?”
“Because you’re Mr. Zhang’s half brother?”
His smile remained, but it softened. “My brother and I have never been close. The difference in our ages, plus other factors-not least, the war our childhoods shared-conspired to keep us at arm’s length. I’d hoped, when Brother Li and Cousin Lao-li came to this country, things might change, but I suppose it’s not easy to set one’s feet on a new path.”
“Still, we were talking about the past. I’d have thought they’d have said something. With you being right down the street here.”
“Ms. Chin, if your business with Li and Lao-li concerned the Shanghai Moon, I promise you nothing else was in their thoughts. They’d have no reason to mention me. It would surprise me to hear they told you anything at all.”
“Why is that?”
“My cousin has been searching for the Shanghai Moon obsessively and all his life. It’s not in his nature to share news of it.”
“Well, it was his mother’s. I understand it’s very valuable.”
“Yes, both those things are true. But neither riches nor family pride are what draw him. Cousin Lao-li seeks the Shanghai Moon as a way to recover his past. As though it were a portal he could walk through. He chose jewelry as his life’s work solely to dwell in the world of the Shanghai Moon.”
“Mr. Zhang, you’re in the jewelry business yourself.”
“Yes! One of many interesting ironies in our lives, I suppose. But my reasons are quite different. I see you wear a jade bi, Ms. Chin.”
“My parents gave it to me.”
“To safeguard you through life! Do you know why?”
“Jade is supposed to have protective qualities.”
“Supposed so, by we Chinese. To the Tibetans, it’s turquoise; for the Romans, it was opals. And diamonds are forever!” He waved his hand toward the shelves. “In a flood, my beautiful books are soaked to pulp. In fire, this desk, seven hundred years the support of scholars, is ash. You and I will one day be dust, though mine will form sooner and yours will be prettier. But your jade? The diamonds in this ring? They will not change! Burn them, drown them, bury them for a million years: immutable! Smash them to bits-each bit will still be pure: a tiny speck of diamond or jade. Everything changes, Ms. Chin. Water becomes sweet tea and then grows bitter as it steeps. There is no immortality for us. The nearest we can come is to be in the presence of gems.”
“Mr. Zhang, I have to repeat myself: You’re quite a poet.”
“And I repeat myself: It’s just the truth.”
“But isn’t that why Mr. Chen wants the Shanghai Moon? To touch that immortality?”
“My cousin’s search is for the Fountain of Youth: a very different obsession. My brother indulges him. Fools, the pair of them.”
Immortality and the Fountain of Youth: I wasn’t sure I saw such a great difference. “Fools,” I said, “but family. Mr. Chen’s assistant told me you sponsored them to come here.”
“As you say: family. That was forty years ago. I’d heard nothing from them in twenty years, since my father and I had left China. I didn’t even know if they still lived. Suddenly, from Shanghai, a letter! It brought greetings from my cousin, whom I had never met, and my brother, and wishes for my good health. It told of a storm fast approaching, to engulf all China in chaos and destruction. If possible”-the wry smile again-“my brother and cousin would prefer to ride out the storm in America. They asked for my help. Such was their good fortune that my father had recently died.”
“Why was that good fortune?”
“Sad to say, my father’s capacity for ill feeling increased as he aged.”
“But Zhang Li is his son.”
“And Mei-lin’s. And he and Loa-li were both raised by Kai-rong. My father and Kai-rong had not exactly brotherly feelings toward one another.”
“But not to help his own son because he didn’t like his brother-in-law?” That would take a very hard man. Suddenly, I had another thought. “General Zhang! Rosalie Gilder met him at a bookstore. It’s in her letters. He’s not-”
“My father? Yes. Shanghai society was a small and insular world. The book Rosalie found him was for Mei-lin. It was the beginning of their courtship.” He smiled. “I’ve read that letter. Rosalie took a fast dislike to him.”
“Oh, but I’m sure she wasn’t seeing his best side.”