The Last Rose of Shanghai(89)

“It won’t take long,” I said. Then I spotted a familiar face behind a window near a fur shop. “Stop, stop the car.”

“What is it?” Cheng leaned over to see better.

It was Emily Hahn. A picture of her, actually, printed on a poster with books behind a window. Had she returned? Had she published another book? I opened the door and leaped out.

Something began yanking the hem of my dress: the officer’s dog, arching his back, baring his teeth. Losing my balance, I cried out.

Cheng took my arm. “Told you not to get out of the car. Let’s go back.”

“Miss Shao.” That voice.

I whipped around.

Had I known it was him walking with his dog, I would have stayed inside the car; had I known I would run into him again, I would not have asked to come at all. The nightmares that still kept me up at night flashed before me. Miriam in Ernest’s arms. Ernest’s tears. Lanyu lying in a pool of blood. People screaming. Glass shattering.

I stepped back and took Cheng’s hand. We should run. Yamazaki could kill me.

The hateful man looked at me and then my husband contemptuously. “Last time I saw you, you were with a white man, and now this Chinese? What are you? A whore? You Chinese ought to be grateful. We protect you from violence and crime, we educate your low class, and we promote modernity and prosperity in Shanghai. It’s beyond my comprehension why your people sabotage the efforts that are for your own good. Come now, kneel and apologize before you leave.”

Cheng came in front of me. “Fuck off.”

I grabbed Cheng’s arm, holding him back, and desperately I searched in my mind, trying to say something. I could apologize, plead, or simply grab Cheng and run. But one look at Yamazaki and my heart turned into ice. There were no more feigned courtesies, no more pretenses.

A shot. Deafening. Tearing the cloth of the placid sky. The automobiles, the rickshaws, and the streets all seemed to halt. All sounds vanished, all but Yamazaki’s hysterical laugh and his dog’s maddening barks.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak—all I saw was Cheng, my husband, his fierce eyes, his handsome face.

“You’re right. We need to go; we really have to go,” I said.

The corner of his lips swept up, as if he agreed to take me home, as if he would promise to protect me with his life, as if he would admonish me again, but he fell back stiffly, pulling me down on to the street. I held him, stroking his handsome face, rocking him. “What did you say? What did you say?”

A trickle of blood sprouted in his mouth and flowed down his chin, wetting his purple silk tie. I screamed. I wished with all my heart that he would talk to me, grasp my hand, and stay with me, but for the first time in his life, he let me go.



Twenty-four days after my wedding, I became a widow.

My grief was dull, like a cut by a pair of rusted scissors. In the central reception hall where Cheng’s mother set up the vigil, I wore a white hat, a white cotton shirt, white pants, white cloth shoes, and a hemp cloak. I sat among the wreaths of crinkled white paper, long strips of white banners, and fluffy white paper flowers; I listened to the drone of the bell and the monotone wooden fish; I tossed into the fire pages of gilt papers shaped like gold nuggets.

Life was a humorless joke. In my childhood, I had sometimes hated Cheng’s selfishness, his possessiveness, and his domineering way. In adulthood, I had found nothing in common with him but had found love from Ernest. Yet Ernest had deserted me, and Cheng had forgiven me, taken me back, and given me a life.

For the first time I realized how blind I was. I had known Cheng since infancy, yet I had treated him as no more than a cousin. I had spent less than a month with him as his wife, and I had seen what his love truly was: raw, direct, and veracious. I was grateful for that; I had grown to love him for that. Yet what little time we’d had.

Cheng’s mother blamed me. Tears and snot pouring out, she slapped me and spat on me. She wailed and wailed, her grief sharp and pointed like a knife.

Ying, who had disappeared for months, came on the sixth day of the vigil and stood by the coffin; his eyelids were swollen, his face wet, and his lips pinched in a rigid sign of anger. His grief was heavy, dangerous like an ax.

I wanted to lean on his shoulder and weep, yet I wanted to pound on him and tear him into pieces too. For all those months while I wallowed in miserable pregnancy at home, he had paid little attention—he didn’t even know about the baby I gave away. He was gone doing his seedy business, a stranger I barely knew, a rogue aiding people like Yamazaki.

I sat and tossed a sheet of gilt paper into the cauldron, evading people’s gazes. When they circled in the hallway, I followed them. I was mute, head lowered, and those chants, oh, those monotonous, alien, grave chants, they sounded like a sentence from heaven.



After forty-nine days of mourning, when Cheng’s soul left, Cheng’s mother sent a servant to my room, asking if I was pregnant.

I wasn’t.

She let her words be relayed, heavy and clunky, like a loaded freight train, that given the circumstances, it would be best if I could move out.

Cheng’s mother gave me nothing; she kept all that was Cheng’s. Our marriage had been swift, and I was not entitled to his inheritance and properties. I couldn’t afford to start another legal battle anyway. For the second time in a few months, I packed. I stuffed into my two leather suitcases all my clothes and the jewelry and gifts Cheng had given me. I had no money.