The Shanghai Moon Read online

  Behind the jewels and silly animals, Irene Ng’s smiling face appeared. She came around and opened the door. “Did you want something? Mr. Chen’s not here, but I’d be happy to help you.”

  “I wanted Mr. Chen, so I guess I’m out of luck. Is there somewhere I can reach him?”

  “He didn’t say. I’ll tell him you were looking for him.”

  “What about his cousin? Zhang Li?”

  “Oh, I have no idea. He comes here a lot, but his business is on Mott Street. Do you want me to call him for you?”

  That sounded like a good idea. Zhang Li might be in to Irene Ng even if he wasn’t in to me.

  But no. Smiling apologetically, she put the phone down. “Fay doesn’t know where he is or when he’ll be back.”

  Well, at least Fay’s story was consistent. “Thanks.” I peered into a case of rings. “I’ll bet you enjoy your work. Around these beautiful things all day.”

  “Oh, yes! I’m just learning, but I love it. Mr. Chen knows everything about stones and settings. And he’s nice, very patient even when I’m being hopeless. Mr. Zhang says Mr. Chen’s mother was just like that.”

  “They seem very close, Mr. Zhang and Mr. Chen.”

  “Yes. Like brothers.”

  I had to smile. “I have four brothers. Do you suppose when we’re all old we’ll get along that well?”

  “I’m not sure age helps.” She cocked a dubious head. “From what I hear, Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang were always much closer than Mr. Zhang and his actual brother.”

  “Mr. Zhang had a brother?”

  “Has. A half brother, about ten years older. The same father, different mothers.” To my surprised silence she said, “C. D. Zhang. You don’t know about him?”

  “I certainly don’t. Tell me.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing special to tell. He imports jewelry. His business is a few blocks down Canal Street.”

  “He’s here?”

  “He’s been here much longer than Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang. He actually sponsored them to come. He was so happy when they asked him to help, he told me once. But I don’t think it’s worked out the way he wanted.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think he thought they’d all be, you know, family. Hang out together. Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang, they do that, kids and grandkids, that kind of thing. At Thanksgiving and Chinese New Year they include C. D. Zhang, but otherwise, they just aren’t that close with him.”

  I left Irene Ng dusting jade bracelets and hurtled down Canal. Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang might not be close with C. D. Zhang, but close to was a different matter. My phone call barely got to C. D. Zhang before I did. On the second floor of a wide-windowed building not far from my office, a secretary with a frizzy Chinatown perm ushered me through the boss’s door. “Lydia Chin,” she announced in English.

  “The private detective!” A tall, spry old man jumped from behind a flat monitor remarkably at home on an antique scholar’s desk. “So intriguing! Please, come in.”

  Bony and quick, with broad shoulders and a lined and leathery face, C. D. Zhang was clearly older than both his half brother, Zhang Li, and his cousin, Chen Lao-li. He gestured me to a thin-armed rosewood chair of the kind I’d seen in museums and always wondered whether they were comfortable.

  “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 chos
e 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.”

  “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 serve
d 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?”