Voice of China, Field was required to read Shopping News and the Law Journal. It was tedious work. Detective Sergeant Prokopieff, his neighbor here and in the housing complex, did most of the big newspapers and journals and all the ones that might conceivably be of any interest, leaving Field with the dross.
On top of the file was a letter that he’d written earlier to his sister and he decided to check through it before dropping it into the mail room on his way down to the registry and the fingerprint lab. He gazed into the middle distance for a moment, then shook his head and took out his fountain pen, ready to make corrections.
Dear Edith, he’d written, I’m so sorry it has taken me all this time to put pen to paper. I have penned a note to Mother, but don’t know whether she will have passed it on or if you’ll have had time to get up to see her.
In case you haven’t, I’ll give you as much of the story as I can manage. Apologies if I’m repeating myself.
I arrived here three months ago and went straight into basic instruction, which involves everything from weapons training (necessary) to the rudiments of the Chinese language (hard, but essential, as our pay is based, to a degree, on our proficiency) to the topography of the city and even the mysteries of street numbering.
I ought to tell you a bit about the journey out, but it was uneventful. I shared my cabin with an Indian and all his luggage(!) and I can’t say it was the most comfortable voyage, but it was good to see Colombo, Penang, and Hong Kong.
I’m now working in the Special Branch, the “intelligence” department. I’m surprised to be here, but I’ll come to that in a minute.
I want to tell you something of this city, but it is hard to know where to begin or what to say. It is like nowhere else I’ve ever been, a cross between the solid majesty of modern Europe or America and the worst kind of barbarism of the Middle Ages.
Field looked up, confronted again with an image of the doorman’s head rolling in the dirt. The doorman, Lena, his father . . .
It is true to say that, though the city assaults your senses at every turn, it is what I’d expected. It is exciting in a way that is hard to do justice to in a letter. It pulses with life and a sense of the possible. I feel I should be more shocked than I am by the poverty and violence, but so far it only adds to a sense of the exotic.
I think of it as like Venice in its heyday, the source of all the art you so love, a mercantile metropolis— the city of the future in the land of the next century, as people here like to say.
My salary is, as yet, very poor, allowing me to survive, but no more. I will get on, though, and make some money here. I will send some to Mother as soon as I can, since I know you . . . well, I know how it is (please don’t show this letter to her).
I will return to take you and Arthur to Venice.
The same foolish fantasy of our childhood, you may think, but I can tell you, Edith, that, out here, I feel you can dare to dream and anything seems within reach. The city has an energy that is hard to describe—don’t they say the same of New York, that it is built on quartz? Nobody has done us any favors in life, but I intend to make my own luck.
I do my duty and I take pleasure in bringing justice to a land where it would be all too easy for there to be none, but more than that, I feel I belong. Maybe it is because no one really does belong here.
Am I making any sense?
I was trying to explain the city. The big groups here are the Americans and British and they’ve built the great houses and offices of the Bund—the waterfront—which makes the city feel like Paris or New York. Together, in the last century, they were awarded this concession of land, which is now called the International Settlement (I’d like you to tell me to stop if you know some of this, but since there are thousands of miles between us, I’ll err on the side of caution) and which is effectively a piece of America and Britain run by the big business interests here and their chiefs. Geoffrey is the secretary to the Municipal Council, an important job that has prompted a lot of “chat” amongst uncharitable police colleagues (the police are low down the social order here, on the whole). I dropped Geoffrey a line when I arrived, but he said he’s been very busy, so we’re only getting to meet tonight.
Field wondered again why this meeting with his uncle had not come sooner, but he blamed his father, not Geoffrey.
Alongside the International Settlement is the French Concession, which is run by the French, so I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. A lot of the White Russians who fled the Bolsheviks live there and have shops and small businesses. There are thousands of them here now, most in a desperate situation—all former army officers and their families, or professionals, or aristocrats. A lot of people like the idea they can take advantage of these people. I mean the women, especially. Well, you know what I mean. There seems nothing you can’t buy here and there is so much for sale.
Field looked up, pulling his collar away from his neck and trying not to think of Natasha Medvedev, with her white gown and tumbling hair and the morning sun caressing her legs.
Foreigners living in the Settlement or French Concession have the right to live by the laws of their own
