Willie pulls his door shut and leans out the open window. ‘Y. L. Wang will be most disappointed in your lack of cooperation.’
The ronin blinks stupidly at Willie for a few seconds, then turns tail and runs to join his comrades. With a low chuckle, Willie shifts the car into drive, and we roll away from the now abandoned checkpoint.
When we cross from the International Settlement into Zhabei, the difference is immediate and stark. Gone are the gay colours. Gone are the wide boulevards. Gone are the grand stone buildings. Here are narrow streets, ramshackle buildings, and so many people. I count only a few foreign faces. Zhabei is Chinese territory, home to the hundreds of thousands who will end up crossing the veil into my Shanghai. People here are draped in dark drab clothing, soiled and frayed. Small children run barefoot through the teeming crowds. A woman balances a long pole over her shoulders, woven baskets full of luobo radishes hang off each end, their green fronds bouncing with her every step. A man with empty baskets strapped to his back runs out across the street, nearly colliding with us. He spits at the car, cursing, before disappearing into the crowds. Willie drives slowly, pushing through the rickshaws and bicycles and people, and finally pulls into the drive of a burned-out warehouse.
‘I’m afraid I cannot accompany you to the market. I need to report the ronin behaviour to my superiors. It won’t take long. I will return here and wait for you,’ Willie says.
‘They’re getting bolder,’ Mr Lee says.
Willie sighs. ‘Yes. Unfortunately, the Municipal Council turns a blind eye, and our people are the ones who end up suffering.’
‘Why don’t you stop them?’ I ask, thinking of Madame Meng’s candied haw sticks and those first ferries full of innocents.
Willie turns, and his gaze is uncannily like Big Wang’s – dark and unfathomable. ‘Our duty is to maintain the balance of yin and yang, Lady Jing. It is not for us to determine fate.’
‘But—’
‘All actions have consequences, sooner or later. Interfering in the yang world will only delay the inevitable and make things worse. What the Japanese forces are doing up north, the karmic debt they are incurring... well’ – Willie sighs heavily – ‘it will not end well for them.’ Something flashes in Willie’s eyes, the flick of a shark’s tail, before disappearing into murky depths.
We follow Mr Lee through the narrow streets of Zhabei. Either side of us are two-storied wooden buildings with shuttered windows, open doors leading to darkened stairwells. There are people leaning against the doorways, squatting in front of the buildings, some sleeping slumped on the ground.
People stare openly at Gigi and me. No one here is dressed anything like Gigi. Her clothes are more suited to the Han dynasty than 1930s Shanghai. My grey Western suit is the right colour, but the wrong style. Only the older amahs wear trousers – theirs wide legged and almost always paired with a muted coloured tangzhuang; unlike Willie’s, the mandarin collared jackets these ladies wear are grey, blue, brown, and tired.
The smell of blood and yang is making me woozy so I take atoo seeroll from my bag.
‘What’s that?’ Gigi asks.
‘Nothing,’ I say, closing my hand and holding my purse behind me.
‘I saw you take something from your purse. What is it?’
I ignore her, but she reaches around me, tries to pull up my arm. I’m a lot stronger than she is, so she doesn’t make much headway.
‘It smells nice. I want one.’ She puts her hand out. When I ignore her, she adds, ‘I shared my caramel vodka with you.’
‘You had two bottles!’
‘And you don’t have a whole stockpile in there?Tian, you’re greedy.’
I twitch my shoulders; Ah Lang and Mr Lee walk either side of us, arms out to keep us from being crowded. But the smell is intense. ‘The candy helps with the dizziness.’
‘The yang qi?’ she says.
I nod. ‘And the blood.’
‘You didn’t have your glass last night.’
My fangs push out at the thought. I groan, press my fingers to my aching gums. ‘Don’t remind me.’
‘There are corpses everywhere – why don’t you just have a drink now. We’ll stand guard.’
I blink at her. ‘What?’
She gestures to the woman leaning against the building to our left, and then at a man lying not three feet away from us, and then at a child, barefoot, curled up against a wooden post. Now that I’m paying attention, beneath the unwashed bodies and the yang and blood is a scent I hadn’t noticed before. In my Shanghai, corpses always come with the stench of the river. Here, there’s a dry kind of smell. Like desiccated leaves, or the sandy winds that sometimes blow in from the Gobi Desert.
I stare at the unmoving people. They’re not sleeping. They’re dead.
I catch Mr Lee’s gaze. The resignation in his eyes tells me these scenes are not new to him. That seed of knowledge contains more horror than the poor souls abandoned where they lay.
