The Map of Lost Memories

From its inception as a foreign enclave, Shanghai emerged a free city. New arrivals required neither visa nor passport to enter. To the dispossessed, the ambitious and the criminal, it offered a fresh start. Lady Jellico, who was brought up in the city, recalled, “One never asked why someone had come to Shanghai. It was assumed everybody had something to hide.”

HARRIET SERGEANT
,
Shanghai

At the far end of the apartment, a row of shutters opened onto a balcony overlooking the swayback roofs of Shanghai. Beyond the low buildings and down a crooked street, the Whangpoo River shushed against the wharves. A heavy, velvet humidity pressed down on this dark belt of water, a perpetual tension that caused a wilted draft, lifting fumes of jasmine and sewage, coal and rotting river weed, into the thick night air.

Inside, the small living room was crowded with a dozen overheated journalists and revolutionaries, as well as the usual assortment of eccentrics that congregated at parties in Shanghai in 1925: a Persian opera singer, a White Russian baroness, and a gunrunner of indeterminate nationality. There was a priest bright-eyed on cocaine he had ordered
from the room service menu at the Astor House, and Irene Blum recognized the Italian fascist she had seen the night before, parading through the Del Monte with a tiger on a leather leash. Shanghailanders never needed an excuse to gather, but tonight they had one: the return of Roger and Simone Merlin from France, where the couple had gone to raise funds for China’s Communist party.

The Merlins were late, and a restlessness that matched Irene’s stirred among the guests. She overheard the Italian fascist complain, “Bloody hot,” prompting the Persian opera singer to declare, “Desperate weather. Did you hear about the Argentine ballerina caught stealing spices in the Chinese market? She wears only Coco Chanel. Every time the peddler turned his back, she dropped another pinch of saffron into her pocket. She swears she doesn’t know why she did it. Insists the heat must have addled her brain.”

Irene understood. It was unsettling, the way the heat subverted. She had been in Shanghai only one week, but already, each day around the noon hour, when the sun was high and the city lay exposed, she found herself envisioning the most uncharacteristic acts. Stabbing a rickshaw driver with her penknife, or shoving one of the demure chambermaids down the back stairs of her hotel. Of course she did not act upon these impulses, but their eruption harassed her and caused a heat-stricken feeling of agitation that had reached a new level of intensity tonight. She had not expected to have to wait a week to meet Simone Merlin, and she was wound tight with anticipation. She could not stop watching the door. Unable to concentrate on conversation, she slipped out to the balcony, where she leaned against the railing, plucking the fabric of her dress away from her skin, seeking relief from the muggy room.

She was soon joined by Anne Howard. Anne had arranged the party so Irene could meet Simone, and yet she now said, “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“Why are you so against this?” Irene asked.

“Darling, I’m looking out for you, that’s all. This is bigger than anything you’ve been involved with before. It’s not a jaunt to Phoenix to find out if you can detect a forged—”

“I did detect it. And I saved Mr. Simms a great deal of money on that
statue, not to mention the humiliation of being duped by a greasy con man from Arizona.”

“I know you did. You’re good at what you do. I’m not denying that. But if the wrong person gets wind of this. If anyone finds out what you’re searching for. And the jungles! Irene, you don’t seem to realize what a different league you’re in with this expedition.”

“I’m in the same league I’ve been in for years.” Irene scowled at the woman she thought she knew so well.

Nearly sixty, her gray hair cut into a fashionable bob, Anne was the self-appointed head of Shanghai’s outpost of the Brooke Museum in Seattle. She and Irene had worked together from opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean for ten years, ever since the Great War broke out and Irene was given a job at the museum by its curator, Professor Howard, Anne’s former husband. Anne had helped Irene track down missing relics, providing information that could be gathered only in China.

A friend of Irene’s mother, Anne had divorced and moved to Shanghai when Irene was five. Each Christmas, she sent Irene a gift: cloisonné rings, silk slippers, a lacquer jewel box that could nestle in the palm of a child’s hand. She was the only woman, after Irene’s mother died, who gave Irene the sorts of things she really wanted. Throughout her youth, Irene read every letter Anne had sent her mother, descriptions of foot binding, imperial traditions, and the older woman’s affair with a Chinese revolutionary who had two wives. She lost herself in this exotic world the way other girls her age escaped into Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott. As teachers fretfully noted her lack of interest in domestic skills or other female pursuits, the life Anne was living in Shanghai gave Irene hope. It proved that a woman could do anything she liked as long as she did not care what others thought. Every day, with her maps and books and her dreams of lost treasures, Irene practiced not caring.

It was difficult, though, not to care about Anne’s opinion. Anne had always encouraged Irene’s dreams, and now she did not want Irene to have this one that mattered most. It made no sense.

Irene took a sip of whiskey. Already she felt a little drunk, and this was unusual, since she was from Swedish stock and could generally hold her alcohol. But there was something about the delayed buildup to this
moment, combined with the sweltering climate and its intoxicating effect on the body, that made her cautious with her single malt tonight. She said, “I know the risks.”

“You’re even more headstrong than I used to be.” Anne went back inside.

Irene remained on the balcony, standing apart as she often did at parties, her intense observation hidden behind the Scandinavian coolness of her pale blue eyes. She was twenty-nine, half Anne’s age, and taller than most women, but not so tall as to intimidate men. For this she was grateful, since men, when threatened, even if only by the threat of height, were difficult to manipulate. And manipulation was essential in the world of art trafficking.