It’s top secret, he had said.
Now two people relied on me. I decided to raid Sassoon House since the private villas and houses had been thoroughly emptied. I had not gone to the hotel after the attack on the Settlement, but I’d heard since then the hotel had started billeting Japanese soldiers.
Walking down the broad Bubbling Well Road, I reminded myself to speak English when encountering any Japanese patrolling soldiers so I could pass as one of the European maids from a neutral country with my outfit. But I only encountered one soldier on the entire street, who showed no interest in me. Many checkpoints were unguarded; the racecourse was empty as well. All of a sudden, the Japanese Imperial Army seemed to have left Shanghai.
I wondered if they had lost the war. But there were no victorious Nationalists.
When I came to the hotel’s main entrance with the canopy, I stopped short. The sleek modern building was cloaked in black soot; vines of filth climbed the smooth white bricks. The canopy that had been adorned by golden lambency from the Lalique chandelier had collapsed to the ground. All three main entrances were shut; darkness loomed inside. The cobbled street was littered with trash, broken bottles, wreckage from automobiles, and dunes of metal and shrapnel.
The beautiful, elegant, luxurious Sassoon House, a pearl on the waterfront where I had slept in a suite, listened to my favorite jazz, talked to Sassoon, and met Ernest, was no more.
I went to the contractor door near the entrance for carriages, hoping to be lucky. A man in a double-breasted black coat with a holster and a pistol stood at the small door. The hotel guard, someone the Japanese hired to watch the hotel. A local, I could tell.
“Where are the Japanese soldiers?” I asked him in Shanghai dialect to let him know I was a local so he would be friendly.
He glanced at my maid’s outfit and replied in the same dialect, telling me the entire Japanese regiment that had been stationed in the hotel for almost two years had been sent to central China as reinforcements to fight the Nationalists and the Communists.
I smiled and walked away.
But I watched the guard for a few days, figuring out his routine, trying to find a chance to sneak inside the hotel. One day when he left his post to drive away some beggars, I slipped inside the building.
It was dim inside. In the once-glorious hallway formerly paved with golden light, the sleek marble floor was a dark field; the rich-colored wallpapers were peeled off, the expensive Lalique chandelier stolen, and the sconces, vases, and paintings were also missing. There was nothing valuable left for me to take. I walked into a room nearby and searched in the cabinets and the bathroom. In a drawer I dug out two smoke-drenched sheets, a hotel robe, and a mosquito tent; in the moldy bathroom I was rewarded with a half-used lavender soap bar. I packed them all in the pillowcase I brought. I would sell all but keep the soap for myself.
On the way out, I went to the Jazz Bar and flicked the light switch on—it still had electricity. The bar was empty as well: the piano, stools, mirrors, tables, chairs, bottles of liquor, and picture frames were all gone, and torn newspapers and magazines in Japanese were scattered on the floor. A sour smell of vomit and mildew hung in the air.
I found two packets of cigarettes and a gramophone buried in a pile of trash. With the cigarettes in my pillowcase, I lifted the gramophone and ran my fingers over its cold surface, its smooth edge. I could hear the tempting beats of jazz flowing from inside, the divine tune of “The Last Rose of Shanghai,” and I remembered, too, the evening when Ernest came to our table while I sat with Sassoon and drank his Cobra’s Kiss.
What’s your favorite song? Ernest had asked. It was that moment that my life had changed, only I hadn’t known it. What if he’d never come to my table? What if he’d never played the piano?
We were what the tangle of the past made us, which trapped us, forcing us to be ensnared in a future we could never be set free from.
I’m sorry, he had said.
Hot tears ran down my cheeks. He had lost his sister, and I lost my daughter. It was time to forgive him, but what good would it do me? He could never give me back my daughter.
81
ERNEST
He awoke on his bed, her image vivid in his mind. She smiled, her eyes two crescent moons. Take my hand, she said, her slender fingers stretching, fine filigrees of spinning gold. Are you happy? Will you forgive me? he wanted to ask, drinking in her smile, her blooming heat; instead, all he said was I’ve missed you, oh, how I’ve missed you. She lowered her head to kiss him, but the moment he felt her lips, her face diminished and dissolved in the dim fog.