Word of Ernest’s spectacular performance quickly spread on the streets. Many people who had rarely entered my club came to hear for themselves. Once they did, they told their friends and relatives. Within one month, a crowd formed outside the building every night, waiting to be admitted.
To maximize the profit, I mixed the rest of Sassoon’s whiskey with water and raised the price by a notch. It was hard to believe but nobody seemed to care. The drinks were in high demand, and the dancers took few breaks. Very soon Sassoon’s whiskey ran out, too, but fortunately, I found some alcohol on the black market, so I was able to fill every customer’s orders. Everyone was happy, my dancers were making money, and profits piled up.
And Ernest was tireless each evening, his face shining in the glow of eighteen thousand lights. His hand was fine, and he knew not to exert himself, he said. He was the maker of joys, his music the golden sunlight on gloomy faces. With the passing of each evening, he grew more famous, his name on customers’ lips, his music smoothing the folds on their foreheads.
Even Sassoon phoned to congratulate me after two months. “The stride piano has been quite sensational. I’m rather surprised. You possess admirable business acumen, darling.”
I was very pleased with myself. This was the phenomenon I had been dreaming of, and very soon, my club would reclaim the recognition of the most popular nightspot in Shanghai. Then its value would multiply, opening the door for more business opportunities. I could even sell shares of the nightclub and cash out.
I was right all along—Ernest and I made the perfect winning pair; we were meant to be. When he played, I couldn’t take my eyes off him, drinking in his music, his smile, his rapt face.
When I arrived home late one night, my old butler told me Sinmay wanted to see me in his study.
“What do you think you’re doing, Aiyi?” Sinmay said, sitting at a giant redwood desk strewn with scrolls and four of his study treasures: a black ink stone, a brush, sheets of thin calligraphy papers, and his personal seal. “You said you’d let the pianist go, but why did I hear that all of Shanghai is talking about him?”
“You’ve heard of it?” I walked to inspect the bust of Sappho in a glass frame, his most prized possession. He had thrown away fifty thousand silver, a small fortune, for that bust. Calling her a goddess, he had composed three poems lauding her beauty and peerless inspiration. But I thought this was his most laughable folly of all, all that money for a plain Greek poetess with blank eyes.
“I do own a few magazines.”
“I was going to let him go, older brother. But many people come to listen to his stride piano, so it would be foolish to fire him. He’s good for the business—”
“He’s bad for our family’s reputation.”
Sinmay wouldn’t listen to me. I was tempted to lie to get out of this. “Who told you?”
“None of your concern.”
Did Cheng tell him? Or his poet friends? Emily Hahn? Then it occurred to me Emily would have been the last person who would care about my family’s reputation. In fact, Emily could help me. A journalist, she held the great weight of swaying the pendulum of reputation with her words. If she wrote a feature on my club and put out a good word for me, then Sinmay would stop pressuring me. As an additional benefit, her article would help promote Ernest and his status, create buzz, and further increase my club’s value.
There was only one problem: Emily, fifteen years my senior, a well-known reporter, could be quite condescending. And frankly, until now, I had not felt inclined to befriend her, a foreigner, out of my concern for Peiyu’s reaction.
“Is Emily coming here soon?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Sinmay said grumpily, holding a black calligraphy brush made with wolf fur. “She does whatever she wants. I told her to stop drinking with Sassoon, but she drinks anyway, says she loves whiskey. What’s wrong with the sorghum wine? It has more than one thousand years of history!”
He was jealous. Emily had been Sassoon’s lover before she was Sinmay’s.
It seemed I needed to make a trip to meet up with Emily, and I must talk her into helping me.
18
ERNEST
After months of playing the piano, he could no longer ignore the pain in his hand. The wound that had healed was growing tender again; the muscles in his arm contracted, his fingers were stiff, and it was difficult to find the keys. Ernest went to the H?pital Sainte Marie for more morphine and chatted with the elderly Catholic nuns, asking them how to stay in touch with people in Europe since he would like to know when his parents would arrive. There was a German post office in the Settlement, the nun with gray hair said.