Shanghai Read online

  PENGUIN CANADA

  SHANGHAI

  DAVID ROTENBERG is the author of five mystery novels set in Shanghai with a TV series currently in development. He has directed plays on Broadway and around the world, and is the artistic director of the internationally famous Professional Actors Lab. David lives in Toronto with his wife, Susan Santiago. They have two children, Joey and Beth. Further information can be found at www.davidrotenberg.com.

  ALSO BY DAVID ROTENBERG

  The Shanghai Murders

  The Lake Ching Murders

  The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

  The Hamlet Murders

  The Golden Mountain Murders

  Shanghai

  DAVID ROTENBERG

  The Ivory Compact

  PENGUIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),

  a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2008

  Published in this edition, 2009

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)

  Copyright © David Rotenberg, 2008

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved

  above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced

  into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means

  (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without

  the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above

  publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

  incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales

  is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data

  available upon request to the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-0-14-305228-9

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the

  condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,

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  We have just enough religion to make us hate,

  but not enough to make us love, one another.

  —JONATHAN SWIFT, 1667–1745

  Contents

  Book One—From the Holy Mountain

  Part One

  Chapter One The Ivory Compact

  Chapter Two Approaching the Yangtze

  Chapter Three The Vrassoons

  Chapter Four Maxi

  Chapter Five The Master Carver

  Chapter Six Near the Bend in the River

  Chapter Seven White Birds on Water

  Chapter Eight Shanghai

  Chapter Nine A Vrassoon at Bedlam

  Chapter Ten Hunger

  Chapter Eleven At the Grand Canal

  Chapter Twelve From the Journals of Richard Hordoon

  Chapter Thirteen Treaty Moves

  Chapter Fourteen Nanking

  Chapter Fifteen The White Birds Land

  Chapter Sixteen A Calcutta Death, a Life at the Works

  Part Two

  Chapter Seventeen The Body Guard, His Brother, and His Nephew

  Chapter Eighteen The Selling of Shanghai

  Chapter Nineteen Trouble in the Opium Trade

  Chapter Twenty A First Foray

  Chapter Twenty-One A Second Foray

  Chapter Twenty-Two Arrival of the Patriarch

  Chapter Twenty-Three Extraterritoriality

  Chapter Twenty-Four And Change Comes

  Chapter Twenty-Five The French

  Chapter Twenty-Six Opium Dreams and Nightmares

  Chapter Twenty-Seven The Rise of the Prophet

  Chapter Twenty-Eight Meetings

  Chapter Twenty-Nine The Settlement and the Taipingers

  Chapter Thirty Neutrality and Prosperity

  Chapter Thirty-One Death and Birth in the Bamboo

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-Two The History Teller

  Chapter Thirty-Three Into the Countryside

  Chapter Thirty-Four Journey to the West

  Chapter Thirty-Five Deal with a Devil; Deal with an Angel

  Chapter Thirty-Six Shanghai Prospers

  Chapter Thirty-Seven Final Journey

  Chapter Thirty-Eight A Prophecy

  * * *

  Book Two—A Man with a Book

  Chapter One Silas Hordoon

  Chapter Two Arise the Assassin

  Chapter Three Shanghai, City at the Bend in the River

  Chapter Four Gangster Tu

  Chapter Five The Chosen Three

  Chapter Six Tu’s Attack

  Chapter Seven And in Far-Off America

  Chapter Eight Stowaway

  Chapter Nine The Second Portal

  Chapter Ten A Game of Raft

  Chapter Eleven The Revolutionary

  Chapter Twelve The Go Player’s Secret

  Chapter Thirteen Three Graves, Three Memories

  Chapter Fourteen Silas’s Inheritance

  Chapter Fifteen The Progress of Charles Soon

  Chapter Sixteen Jiang’s Choice

  Chapter Seventeen The Dowager Empress and the Hundred Days of Reform

  Chapter Eighteen Mai Bao, Jiang’s Middle Daughter

  Chapter Nineteen Newspapers and Whores—A Marriage Made in Heaven

  Chapter Twenty Silas and Charles

  Chapter Twenty-One Leaf Contests

  Chapter Twenty-Two Richard’s Journal Jiang:

  Chapter Twenty-Three A Whore’s Cemetery

  Chapter Twenty-Four Silas Finds a New Wife

  Chapter Twenty-Five A Meeting of Minds

  Chapter Twenty-Six Yin Bao Meets a Feminist

  Chapter Twenty-Seven Yin Bao Gets a Husband

  Chapter Twenty-Eight A Carver’s Son

  Chapter Twenty-Nine The Assassin and His Wife

  Chapter Thirty Tu and the Tusk

  Chapter Thirty-One A Deal for the Tusk

  Chapter Thirty-Two A War Council

  Chap
ter Thirty-Three Loa Wei Fen’s Warning

  Chapter Thirty-Four Attack on the Warrens

  Chapter Thirty-Five Victors and Vanquished Mai Bao and Her: Revolutionary

  Chapter Thirty-Six Victors and Vanquished: Charles Soong and His Writer

  Chapter Thirty-Seven Time Passes

  Chapter Thirty-Eight Silas and Automobiles

  Chapter Thirty-Nine The Tusk Degrades

  Chapter Forty Typhoon

  Chapter Forty-One Change—Death of a Dowager

  Chapter Forty-Two Change—Death of a Courtesan

  Chapter Forty-Three A Gift from Silas

  Chapter Forty-Four A Diversion

  Chapter Forty-Five A Long, Curved Object

  Chapter Forty-Six The Racing Cars Arrive

  Chapter Forty-Seven The Blessed Virgin

  Chapter Forty-Eight A Laughing Buddha

  Chapter Forty-Nine Rolling a Racing Car

  Chapter Fifty Race Day

  Chapter Fifty-One Getting the Tusk

  Chapter Fifty-Two The Race

  Chapter Fifty-Three Silas Onboard

  Chapter Fifty-Four Richards Journal: The Bible

  Chapter Fifty-Five An Ancestral Home for a Sacred Relic

  Chapter Fifty-Six Return of the Pilgrim

  Chapter Fifty-Seven Interlude—And Time Passes

  * * *

  Book Three—The End of the Garden

  Chapter One The Final Dream of Silas Hordoon

  Chapter Two The Funeral of a White Chinaman

  Chapter Three Japanese Plans

  Chapter Four On and Beneath the Marco Polo Bridge

  Chapter Five Beijing

  Chapter Six Jiang Passes the Mantle

  Chapter Seven The Confucian

  Chapter Eight Missives

  Chapter Nine The Ecstasy of Charles Soong’s Daughters

  Chapter Ten Attack on Shanghai

  Chapter Eleven The Naked Man

  Chapter Twelve The History Teller

  Chapter Thirteen The Chosen Three Decide

  Chapter Fourteen Getting to Nanking

  Chapter Fifteen The Fall of Nanking and the Rise of the Dragon

  Chapter Sixteen Shanghai Under Occupation

  Chapter Seventeen World War

  Chapter Eighteen A Flash of Light

  Chapter Nineteen The History Teller Rewrites

  Chapter Twenty Surrender and After

  Chapter Twenty-One Confucian Power

  Chapter Twenty-Two Mao

  Chapter Twenty-Three Journey to What Was Ours

  Chapter Twenty-Four A Journey to the Future

  Epilogue The Age of Dry Water

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  book one * part one

  From the Holy Mountain

  Wherein two prophecies are put forward;

  one proceeds, the other is fulfilled, and

  a city at the Bend in the River grows.

  chapter one

  The Ivory Compact

  January 207 BC

  As the late-afternoon winter sun slid behind the towering dark clouds, a shadow swelled across the beautiful but usually desolate foothills of the Green Mountain, the Hua Shan. In the murky light, thousands upon thousands of rebel troops readied themselves to spring a trap that would end the life of the most powerful man the world had ever known, or very possibly would ever know—Q’in She Huang, China’s First Emperor.

  A village fisherman raced to the far side of a partially frozen upland lake where his prized eels were supposed to be hibernating in their underwater pen. As he approached, the water was roiling and rich with blood. Females had slithered up onto an ice floe and were giving birth while the thicker, more powerful males thrashed the open water as they gorged themselves on their young. The fisherman watched in shocked silence, then turned his eyes upward, toward the darkening sky. Just down the winding mountain path a hunchbacked farmwife smacked the ice from a blanket she had hung to dry on the bamboo stand the night before and was amazed to find that the coverlet, although frozen stiff, was hot to the touch. Farther back in the foothills, a toothless peasant pinched the night-soil collector’s product between his thumb and forefinger and brought it to his nose. To his amazement, the product was as fresh as the man had claimed it to be. He dropped the human fecal matter to the ground and stared at the night-soil collector. Then he looked to the black clouds, sniffed the air, turned, and ran.

  Peasants always recognize the distinctive ozone reek that precedes change.

  But as they retreated to their huts and drew their children close to them, none knew the nature of the change that was beginning, not in the foothills with the rebel troops but on the upper plateau of the Hua Shan, the Holy Mountain. Change conceived and brought into being by the renowned Q’in She Huang himself.

  * * *

  “YOU THINK ME MAD,” China’s First Emperor said in a hoarse whisper. “You—all three of you—think I am beyond my wits. That I was tempted here in the depths of winter to this lonely mountaintop to …” His voice trailed off. For a moment, Q’in She Huang allowed himself to look toward the vine-covered mouth of the cave behind him. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly in a fine line of white mist.

  His breath dusted the faces of the three people he trusted most on this earth, his Chosen: his personal Body Guard; his head Confucian; and Jiang, his favourite concubine. What are you thinking now, in your secret hearts? he wondered, then put the thought aside. He knew there was no way to know another’s hidden self. There was no way to find the mind’s construction in a person’s face.

  He raised his arms, setting the abalone shells sewn into his silk coverlet tinkling. Then he spoke loudly. “Do you believe that I, who had the Great Wall built, I, who receive personal tribute from the barbarian lands far to the west, from the cruel kingdoms of the south and the arrogant men of the island called Nippon, that I, who united the Middle Kingdom for the first time, am now beyond my wits?”

  The Confucian noted the subtle shift in the First Emperor’s language. No longer was he using the immoderate style of the ancient writers. Now his words were succinct and to the point. More importantly, his thoughts weren’t the erratic, unpredictable rantings of a man insanely searching for the secret to eternal life. These were the lucid, considered thoughts of the man who had designed the longest man-made waterway in the world, joining the Yangtze River with Beijing, who had standardized the character writing distinctive to the Black-Haired people and created the Mandarin system of examinations that had led to the world’s first organized civil service. This was the First Emperor he had known as a young man, not the one who had burned Confucians along with their books—a madness that he had witnessed and written about in his private journal.

  “Do you believe that I am now infirm of mind—mad? That I brought you here to this barren place in search of some mountebank’s charade, some alchemist’s folly—a stone that would grant me eternal life? Do you believe that is why we now stand here and shiver in the cold while below the rebel troops surround this mountain? Do you believe that of me?”

  Yes, thought the Body Guard, that is precisely what I believe. It all began with your madness—your madness within madness. Then its seductive strands slithered beneath the latched door of your chamber and out into the world.

  For in Q’in She Huang’s madness, his imperial madness, he had somehow eternally bound them all to him. But none of them then understood that. All they knew was his lunacy, his screams for light in the darkness, for them to “Find it. Find it for me now!” And now these new orders. Two porters to be hobbled and then their flesh slashed so that “their blood will bring to light that which will be.”

  The sun, almost at the western horizon, broke through the dense cloud cover and instantly banished the gloom. Suddenly the massive clouds were in furious motion, racing away to the north.

  Q’in She Huang looked up and marvelled at their speed. Shortly, the sky was perfectly clear—and still, so still. As if some d
eity had swept it clean with one great breath, he thought. Then a cold wind, all the way from the Gobi Desert, swept up the mountainside and blew the long plaits of his lacquered hair against his cheek, creasing the wind’s sudden howl with a sharp thwap, thwap, thwap.

  Jiang, the concubine, wrapped her woven shawl tightly around her, but still the cold entered her, hurt her, like an angry lover. She looked to her last angry lover, Q’in She Huang, and remembered his exacting instructions about the way to reveal a sacred relic. She shivered involuntarily at the memory. More madness!

  The First Emperor turned to face the coming cold. “Even nature is in harmony with my intent,” he said softly, and was tempted to smile—but didn’t.

  —

  At the western base of the mountain, the rebel general’s Mongolian pony stirred beneath him as the desert wind engulfed them. From the desert. Madness wind, he thought.

  A tear formed, then fell from his left eye. The malformation of the socket, like that of his father and his father before him, prevented the eyelid from fully covering the pupil. The gusting wind found the point of access to his eye and the irritation always brought tears. It infuriated him.

  He turned to his adjutant. “Are our men in place?”

  “Yes, General.”

  “Their orders?”

  “As you commanded, to kill on sight anyone who comes down from the Holy Mountain.”

  The rebel general was about to retort that there were no holy mountains but was distracted by the commotion of the horses behind him. The unfamiliar desert wind was frightening the animals. “Hold your ranks,” he ordered. “Every man is to control his horse on pain of death!” Then he bellowed, “Q’in She Huang either freezes to death on the mountain or is slain as he comes down. His infamy dies with him and his followers this night.”

  A cheer rose from his men.

  As it did, the sibilant voice of the court’s Head Eunuch, Chesu Hoi, whispered in his ear, “There are caves, great General.” Even with the swirling desert wind, the general smelled the jasmine-scented breath of the half-man. He didn’t like the Eunuch to be so close to him, but he managed a smile. The First Emperor’s Head Eunuch had powerful allies at court.