Three days later, Xu Bicheng invited Chen Shen for coffee at the Kaisiling Café. She wore a dark green shawl that day, looking like a lush plantain lily. Chen Shen sat across from her, studying the shawl intently. At one point, he reached out, carefully touching it. For a brief moment, Chen Shen pulled the shawl over his face and took a deep breath. He inhaled the scent of embedded dust and memories from long ago, as if that scent was a tunnel through the darkness, leading him back to the brief years at Qingpu.
Chen Shen squinted and smiled, saying, “You really look like a plantain lily.”
That idle afternoon, they mainly reminisced about their time at the Qingpu training camp. Xu Bicheng never once mentioned Tang Shan Hai, as if he were someone entirely unrelated to her. She recalled how, back in Qingpu, Chen Shen had been an instructor for the intelligence group, while she was just an ordinary student. After listening for a long time, Chen Shen remained silent, as if he wanted to forget that chapter of his life. Yet, deep down, he remembered clearly how Xu Bicheng had once radiated the energy of youth, like a thriving green onion, full of sunlight.
“Did you ever love me?” Xu Bicheng asked.
“I said you look like a plantain lily.”
“I’m asking if you ever loved me,” Xu Bicheng repeated, a hint of dissatisfaction in her tone.
Chen Shen stared at her for a long time before replying in a low voice, “Do you think this is worth discussing?”
When Chen Shen left the Kaisiling Café that day, Xu Bicheng stayed behind, spending the entire afternoon in the café. She wasn’t a woman of many words, and back at the training camp, she hadn’t been the most striking figure. She was like the Suzhou River—connected to the Huangpu River, yet not the same. Calm on the surface, turbulent underneath. In the rich aroma of coffee, she found herself lost in thoughts of a younger time. The war had led her to enlist, taken her to Chongqing, and filled her mind with memories of Chen Shen, the intelligence instructor who loved cutting hair. Now, back in Shanghai, she never knew if the next minute would bring life-threatening danger. She absentmindedly spun her coffee cup faster and faster, wondering how Chen Shen had spent that long afternoon.
Chen Shen had spent his afternoon picking up Pipi from the orphanage and taking him to the Great World amusement park. Later, he bought several of Zhou Xuan’s records from a bookstore and brought them to Li Xiaonan. At Li Xiaonan’s new rental apartment, Chen Shen cooked a few simple dishes, like a small, cautious man living in a Shanghai alley. Li Xiaonan lay on a steel-frame sofa, listening to Silver Flowers Fly, a Cantonese folk song sung by Zhou Xuan. She lay there, unmoving, like a pile of discarded clothes, listening the whole afternoon. By the time the music ended, the food was on the table, and Chen Shen sat by the table smiling at her. Lazily, Li Xiaonan slipped on her slippers and shuffled to the table, casting a sideways glance at Chen Shen. “Marrying you wouldn’t be too bad,” she said.
“You’d have to ask if I’d want to marry you,” Chen Shen replied with a smirk.
Li Xiaonan picked up her chopsticks and said, “That doesn’t matter. Being with you means having food and drink, plus you can do my hair.” After they finished dinner, Chen Shen’s afternoon came to an end. As he was leaving, Li Xiaonan leaned against the door, seeing him off. Chen Shen joked, “You leaning against the door like that reminds me of the women in Beiping’s Eight Hutongs.”
“Get lost!” Li Xiaonan retorted.
Chen Shen squinted and smiled, “Fine, I’m going.” He rolled into the night that now had nothing to do with Xu Bicheng’s imaginings back at the café. That night, Chen Shen went to Bi Zhong Liang to ask for money. While cursing Chen Shen for wasting his life in dance halls and gambling dens, Bi Zhong Liang tossed him two small gold ingots. He also brought up the old grievance of Chen Shen having confiscated the platinum pocket watch from the Communist suspect known as the Prime Minister. Bi Zhong Liang, it seemed, was still running his opium business at a shop called "Immortal Hall" in Hongkou, often sending Chen Shen and Bian Tou to pick up supplies from the “Hongji Shantang” dock at Sixteen Shop. Immortal Hall’s trade in morphine, red pills, and heroin made money almost as fast as robbery. Over time, Chen Shen had put in a lot of work for him, and by using Bi Zhong Liang’s name, he had become well-connected with all the gangs in Shanghai. Despite his mistrust of everyone, if Bi Zhong Liang had to rank his confidants, Chen Shen was still the one he trusted most. So, while grumbling, he still tossed two gold bars to Chen Shen, considering it an act of brotherhood.
“You’ll either die in a dance hall or at a gambling table. You won’t die on the front lines, and you won’t die during one of our raids on Nationalist or Communist suspects,” Bi Zhong Liang had concluded about Chen Shen many times. He added, “Liu Lanzhi keeps worrying about your personal life.”
Bi Zhong Liang added, “Your sister-in-law says that if a man doesn’t marry and settle down, he’ll never truly grow up.”
Chen Shen chuckled, "I haven’t grown up? I’m already old. So old, I can’t even feel love anymore."
Bi Zhong Liang cursed again, "You seem to find plenty of love in those dance halls."
Chen Shen replied, "That’s not love."
"What is it, then?" Bi Zhong Liang asked.
"Singing and dancing… People always die in the end. Li Bai said, ‘Seize the day and enjoy life to the fullest.’"
That night, while still cursing, Bi Zhong Liang took Chen Shen, Tang Shan Hai, and a few other heads of the Direct Action Squad to gamble the night away at the Sakura Club on Wusong Road in the Japanese concession in Hongkou. By dawn, Chen Shen handed back the two gold bars he had borrowed from Bi Zhong Liang earlier.
Bi Zhong Liang sighed, "You’re destined to be poor."
But Chen Shen smiled smugly, "Being poor doesn’t matter, as long as I’m still alive." Bi Zhong Liang tossed the gold bars back to Chen Shen, but he firmly pushed them back to Bi Zhong Liang.
Chen Shen said, "Once you lose, there’s no chance to win it back, so it’s better not to lose at all. But you lost. That doesn’t mean I’ll lose forever. Next time, I’ll win these bars back. Remember, debts must be repaid." Chen Shen’s words carried a faint smile, making Bi Zhong Liang feel slightly uncomfortable.
Later that night, after Tang Shan Hai and the others had left, only Bi Zhong Liang and Chen Shen remained, walking down Wusong Road. Both men had their hands in their coat pockets as they strode toward the dimly lit road. The cold wind brushed their faces, filling them with excitement, as if they had returned to the days of suppressing the Red Army. The Military Command’s Hurricane Squad, which once hunted Chen Shen, had been dismantled, and the entire Military Command structure in Shanghai had collapsed. Until new forces arrived in Shanghai, both Chen Shen and Bi Zhong Liang were safe. They walked in silence, striding forward along Wusong Road. Chen Shen suddenly felt something missing. He longed for the days when the Hurricane Squad was still around, when the tension of self-preservation kept his nerves sharp.
At the end of Wusong Road, the car came to pick up Bi Zhong Liang. Just before getting into the car, Bi Zhong Liang turned to Chen Shen, standing alone under the streetlamp like a crooked tree, and said, "In this world, you never know what tomorrow brings. If there’s a chance to make money, take it quickly. I’ll turn a blind eye."
Bi Zhong Liang’s car soon disappeared into the night. Chen Shen wandered aimlessly, as if he wanted to walk every street in Shanghai. Somehow, he ended up at the entrance of the MGM dance hall. Standing under the distant streetlight, his heart filled with sadness. He imagined snow falling at the entrance of the hall, with the Prime Minister, wearing her platinum watch, smiling at him. Then came the sound of a gunshot, and she collapsed into the snow, which quickly covered her, as if burying a story meant to remain in the cold shadows forever. Chen Shen rubbed his eyes and saw that, in reality, Li Xiaonan and Su Sansheng were walking out of the dance hall. He couldn’t fathom how those two had ended up together. In his mind, he heard another gunshot, as Su Sansheng and Li Xiaonan stood in the exact spot where the Prime Minister had fallen. It was almost as if Li Xiaonan, too, spun involuntarily at that spot.
Li Xiaonan spotted Chen Shen, standing silently like a crooked tree in the distance. She said something to Su Sansheng, then bounded over like a fawn, breathless, and stopped in front of Chen Shen.
"What are you doing here?" Li Xiaonan asked. "Why aren’t you dancing?"
Chen Shen smiled. "Stay away from him," he said, before turning and continuing down the streets of Shanghai. He suddenly felt a surge of strength, his steps quickening, heat rising from his body. He could easily imagine Su Sansheng and Li Xiaonan standing side by side, bewildered, watching the man who had appeared out of nowhere vanish into the night.
"Something’s wrong with him," Su Sansheng muttered dismissively. "He’s seriously ill."
0 Comments