Free French Concession by Xiao Bai Page A

inward thrill.
    â€œHe’s not a wicked man. He’s just my business partner,” she explained.
    â€œWhat kind of business?” As he leaped off the bed, his spinal dimple was visible and bruised all over.
    â€œIt’s not important,” she said angrily. “It’s none of your business. It wouldn’t do you any good.”
    â€œI want to know all about you! I have drinks with you, sleep with you, and travel with you. But you make me feel like a gigolo—I don’t know what you’re doing or where you’re going, and you always slip out of the room when I’m asleep.”
    He had started shouting. “I don’t even know where you live or the line of business you’re in. What’s the gun for, buying emeralds?”
    â€œI told you, that isn’t an emerald, it’s a garnet stone from the Urals.”
    He reached into her handbag for her cigarette case and tipped out its contents. The cigarette case, a pistol, and a pale blue sheet of paper fell onto the wet sheets—a blueprint for a machine gun that looked not unlike an elaborate clotheshorse. A present from Sir Morholt, who had cut it out carefully and entrusted it to her in a bar in Hong Kong.
    She snatched it up along with her gun and stuffed it back in her handbag. Glaring at him, she thought of the kick she had given him on the ship. She thought about how much she liked everything about him.
    â€œOkay, a garnet stone. That doesn’t call for a gun.” Lighting a cigarette, he handed it to her.
    â€œMaybe one day you can come with me to see him, but not now. I’ll tell you more about my business some other time. But you’ll have to behave. Don’t ask questions. Don’t talk too much.”
    She had reached her hand between her legs and was playing with his dick, kissing his nose and ears. Her mouth tasted of smoke. Now his body smelled of her body. Defeated, he collapsed onto the pillow, and the bruise on his shoulders made him gasp in pain. She stroked his bruises and the scars on his neck.
    It was past midnight, which meant it was Saturday, and they were about to spend the whole day in that room.
    â€œNow, tell me who did this to you?”

CHAPTER 8
JUNE 7, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.
7:15 P.M.
    The restaurant was called Bendigo. It lay on the corner between Route Cardinal Mercier and Rue Bourgeat, on the ground floor of the Cathay Mansions. The window seat in the northwest corner faced the French Club and Lyceum Theater across the road. It was the best Western restaurant in Shanghai, and it was owned by a Jewish couple.
    The steps behind a set of glass doors led down to the restaurant. Its semibasement had not been constructed according to any particular architectural style, or to prevent lowland dampness, or to keep servants from being distracted by goings-on outside. Rather, the contractor in charge of building the foundations had chosen the cheapest steel bars he could find, causing the entire building to begin sinking into the ground not long after it had been built.
    The owner of the restaurant was a German Jew whose portrait hung on the wall by the steps leading to the restaurant. He used to have a magnificent beard, which made him look like Karl Marx in one of the posters that used to hang on every street corner, but he had shaved it off when he opened a restaurant. He was a legendary figure, and there were many stories about him. For instance, it was said that he had made the first rent payments on the restaurant using money he made as a young man panning gold in Australia—didn’t the name Bendigo suggest as much?
    But longtime residents of the Concession could tell you a differentstory. More than twenty years ago, old Romantz had been a penniless Jewish tramp who did not have so much as a suitcase to call his own. It was said that every one of the wretched foreigners who arrived in Shanghai traveling below deck in great ships came ashore with a couple of