“No, his everyday one. And for his part, he didn’t much care for Rosalie’s proud nature. Or her temper.”
“Was that part of the problem between your father and Kai-rong?”
His glance rested on the Shanghai photo. “Part of it, yes. But surely, Ms. Chin, we’re getting far afield from the reason you’ve come?”
Reluctantly, I said, “I suppose so. Your brother and your cousin-the storm was the Cultural Revolution?”
“They hadn’t been here six months when the first clouds burst. They’ve made new lives, but like so many, their hearts remained in China. In a China that ceased to exist. That’s the meaning of their search for the Shanghai Moon.” His smile grew sharper. “Beware, Ms. Chin.”
“Of what? The search is dangerous?”
“Not in the way you mean. Men have lost their lives in it, it’s true. But it’s a living death. No one’s seen the Shanghai Moon for sixty years, but everyone’s gotten word, gotten wind, everyone knows someone who’s heard from someone who saw something glitter in a dusty shop. They throw away their money and their time and in the end have nothing.”
“All those people over all these years, finding nothing?”
“Oh, not so many. Most men, even jewelry men, have more sense than to chase a ghost. But through the years, enough. A jeweler in Antwerp who spent his savings rushing here, there, and everywhere, ending with pockets as empty as his hands. A Singaporean of enormous wealth, already the owner of three of the world’s great jewels. Ah, your face betrays your fascination! The Shanghai Moon, casting its web.
“But now you must tell me: Why are you asking about the Shanghai Moon? And since those two old men didn’t send you, why have you come to me?”
“Mr. Zhang, you say the search for the Shanghai Moon isn’t dangerous in the way I meant. I’m not sure that’s true. You also say there are always rumors about it-have you heard any lately?”
“No, I haven’t. Why?”
“A client hired me to trace some jewelry recently found and then stolen in Shanghai. Rosalie Gilder’s jewelry. The Shanghai Moon may have been there.”
The racket of traffic crowded into the space his silence made. A flock of pigeons swooped by. I wondered if C.D. Zhang had chosen this corner for its chaos and cacophony.
Quietly, he spoke. “Have you seen the Shanghai Moon?”
“No.”
“No.” He nodded. “This is how it always goes. ‘It’s possible.’ ‘It could be.’ ‘I think, I heard, I was told.’ But in the end…”
“Mr. Zhang? What would the Shanghai Moon be worth?”
He fingered his teacup. “There are no accurate records. It would have to be appraised.”
“Sixty years,” I mused. “I wonder if there’s anyone still around who ever saw it.”
“As a boy in Shanghai”-C.D. Zhang looked up-“I saw it myself.”
I stared. “You did? Oh, of course! You were family!”
“Despite the mutual aversion between Chen Kai-rong and my father, yes, we were. But I adored my stepmother, Mei-lin. And more than that I adored being family. I was a lonely boy, a dreamy child in a strict and practical household. I barely remembered my own mother, who died before my third year. My amah and tutors were capable but cold. The social reverberations of Rosalie Gilder and Chen Kairong’s marriage were known to me, a boy of ten, but I didn’t understand or care. I was excited that it gave me more family to be part of.”
“Were you at the wedding?”
“I was. Rosalie Gilder wore the Shanghai Moon at her throat.” His eyes found the nighttime photo. “Though by then it was already legendary. You read about it, you say. So you know its story.”
“I know it was made from an antique jade of the Chen family, and stones from a necklace that had been Rosalie’s mother’s.”
“Its legend started before it was made. Please understand what an extraordinary event this engagement was in Shanghai. Of course Europeans had always taken Chinese wives. The exotic bride-a mark of wealth and power! And Chinese men with fortunes kept European mistresses. British girls, Germans, White Russians. And Americans! Very popular, American girls. And yes, some Jewish refugees took Japanese officers or rich Chinese as lovers. They were poor and times were hard. They did what desperate girls have always done, and though few approved, no one was surprised. But marriage? A Chinese from a noble family and a refugee? It’s hard to say which community was more appalled.”
“Mr. Zhang, the book I read said the engagement was secret.”
“In Shanghai everything was secret, and every secret was known! Over the charcoal stoves in their alleys, the Jewish women whispered that Rosalie Gilder couldn’t be blamed for taking an easy path to good meals and clean clothes-which meant they blamed her deeply. Among my father’s friends, the wives muttered and the men shook their heads. The Chen lineage, that had served every emperor of the last thousand years, diluted with European blood? The prophecies ran wild: the fury of the Chen ancestors, how their retribution would strike!”
“But the marriage went ahead.”
“It did. And nothing worse happened in Shanghai than what was happening every day. Rosalie Gilder, with her brother, moved to the Chen villa. Where, briefly, they lived a life more comfortable than most of their fellow refugees.”
“Why briefly?”
“The marriage took place in April of 1942. In early 1943, to please the Germans, the Japanese ordered the Jewish refugees to relocate to Hongkew, where they could be controlled and watched. Many already lived there, but many lived and worked elsewhere. Then, with one stroke, businesses were closed and families uprooted. Twenty thousand Jews, many with no way now to make a living, confined together with a million of the poorest Chinese in a single foul square mile.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“Horror, Ms. Chin, is relative. The Germans wanted the refugees exterminated. The Japanese, for their own reasons, didn’t care for that plan. The ghetto was a compromise.”
I supposed, given the choice, he was right. “And Rosalie and her brother had to go?”
“As Chen Kai-rong’s wife, Rosalie Gilder might have been excused. But as it happened, Chen Kai-rong fled Shanghai shortly before the edict was to take effect. That angered the Japanese.”
“Fled? What do you mean? He abandoned her?” This couldn’t be right.
“Ah, Ms. Chin! It was wartime. His loyalty was questioned, he offended a Japanese corporal on the Garden Bridge, a Japanese officer wanted his limousine-I don’t know. But he was gone. So Rosalie and her brother went to live in Hongkew. Taking with them,” he added, “my brother, Li, who was not yet two.”
“Your brother? Why?”
“Because my stepmother, Mei-lin, had disappeared, never to be seen again.”
“What do you mean, she disappeared?”
He gazed at me evenly. “It was wartime.”
Just like that, I thought. Your mother disappears forever, and the answer is It was wartime.
“Why didn’t your brother stay with your father and you?”
“By the time Rosalie went to Hongkew we also were long gone. To Chongqing, where my father, changing allegiances, joined Chiang Kai-shek’s army. As, within a few years, I did myself.”
“You don’t seem old enough to have fought with Chiang Kai-shek.” I’d seen the remains of the Nationalist army marching defiantly through Chinatown every October, and though C. D. Zhang was not young, those men definitely had years on him.
“I joined up at fifteen, not the youngest in my brigade. To my surprise, military life suited me. Soldiers are family, dependent on each other. People helped me and expected me to help them. I could be useful, you see! And appreciated for it! An unfamiliar situation in my life until then.
“However, my talents, such as they were, were more logistical than martial. I was valued in my unit because I could provide. We always ate. Sadly, in actual battle, I was a poor soldier. A disappointment to my father in that as in so much else. But Ms. Chin! Again we stray. My military career, not even a footnote to an addendum to history, is not why you’re here. I fear we’re caught up in the romance of the past. Always more alluring than the mundane present.”