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The place was as Yamagata described it to Majima: a hole in the wall, closer to a bar than anything else. There was a stage for a modest band and a singer, but no space for the singer to dance. The dance floor could squeeze some couples on it – slow dances only, no salsas or tangos here.
But the place was clean. The plants filling the corners of the room were proper decorative things adding classiness and modernity, not just convenient ashtrays. Majima’s shoes didn’t stick to grime or spilled drinks on floor. No one had looked at him twice once he got himself seated at the bar and lit up his smokes.
Yamagata had told him to keep his eye out for—
(“Ha,” Majima muttered, “yer real funny, Yamagata-han,”)
—to watch out for two things: the singer; and God Hand.
Majima brought the floor manager from the Grand with him, whose sole purpose was to whisk away God Hand—a giant bear of a guy, who was owner or bouncer or manager or something—with a business proposal. When God Hand was out of the way (and he had to be out of the way if Majima wanted a chance at this, Yamagata swore), Majima could focus on the singer.
Unmissable, was Yamagata’s word for it. Majima would rather judge that for himself.
They were one drink into the early evening when the band finished set up. Majima called for their second when the singer showed, guided to the stage by the saxophonist. That was unmissable: a blind girl on the staff. The business part of his mind added: she’d be cheaper hire, if she was only on stage singing instead of dancing.
When Majima took over managing the wardrobe at the Cabaret Grand—the same way he took on everything dropped into his lap at Sagawa’s say-so—he got all the singers re-outfitted in bright silk brocade to catch the best of the stage lights. Whoever outfitted this blind singer hadn’t dolled her up: she was easy to overlook, a willowy girl grasping the microphone stand unsteadily like a cane. Nothing like the girls at the Grand who sauntered onto the stage, ready to kick up a party. Her qipao was black poplin, sparingly embroidered with flowers that were already fading, and just a touch too large to cling against or flatter her frame. Her hair was left uncurled, in that short, straight cut, popular with the Europeans, but a decade out of date. Just as well, then – the girl was there to sing, not to be noticed.
“That’s her?” the floor manager muttered to his drink.
Majima took a sip. “That’s her.”
The pianist started up. The singer did too – a trill like a dove, opening with something slow and sweet on unbloomed flowers and sad times.
Majima stopped drinking. Put his glass down and swivelled the bar stool around so his eye and his attention went to the girl on the stage. In her singing, she’d let her eyes slide shut like she was dreaming. She had her arms wrapped around herself, like she was trying to ward away her loneliness. She sang like her heart was close to breaking: after parting tonight, when will you come back again? 1
Holy shit. He had himself a winner.
---
For a while, Majima had been managing. Business was booming: he had nabbed an American jazz musician, Gary Buster Holmes, who didn’t mind teaching the house band how to kick things up a notch (nothing as good as Buck Clayton and his Harlem Gentlemen yet, but Majima had hopes); he had a new batch of girls trained up for the Cabaret Grand’s stage and dance floor; he had finally convinced the foreigners coming in that the girls on the floor were just there to dance and not moonlighting as escorts. 2
He was sure of himself. Kept an eye on the budget, skimped on smokes, got the last of the tens of thousands of yuan he needed to hand over to Sagawa cased up all neat and tidy. His ticket out of Shanghai and back to Japan. Back to where his brother needed him. Back home.
Sagawa gave him a low whistle when he looked at the briefcase. Grinned like a shark and told him his debt had been upped, five times to what it used to be.
Majima nearly punched him right in his smug face. Nearly set himself three years back to the ship that shanghaied him from Japan and into the torturous hellhole the boss dropped into. And Sagawa had stared him down, knowing that Majima wouldn’t go through it unless he wanted to be a dog under someone else’s heel. When Sagawa left, he had the cash and the Grand’s top sing-song girl sent out to another of his dance halls just to fuck around with Majima’s life that much more.
“Guy’s a dick,” Yamagata offered. The manager from the Odyssey poured Majima another beer in commiseration. Back home, Majima wouldn’t be drinking with the competition, no more than he would be rubbing shoulders with a rival family. But this was Shanghai, not home – however well the Grand and the Odyssey were pulling in crowds, they couldn’t hold a candle to the likes of the Paramount or the Peach Blossom Palace. Expats had to stick together where they could; the only one of his countrymen that Majima didn’t want to see was Sagawa.
“An’ now I gotta find someone to replace Noriko-chan.”
Yamagata eyed him suspiciously. “If you come after any of my top girls, heads are gonna roll.”
“Wasn’t even dreamin’ of that,” Majima lied. He had thought of sweet talking Nozomi out of the Odyssey, then thought against it. The Japanese were calling Majima the lord of the night with some awe and respect; the Chinese were not; and he rather stay in Yamagata’s good graces than land into his bad ones.
“Good.” Yamagata downed his beer. “So, what to do then, Majima-han?”
What else? Majima had a sky-high tower of yuan to cough up. He had new singers to scout. He had to find someone to fill in Noriko-chan’s top billing. He had nightmares to sleep through while he dreamed of getting home.
“The Grand needs new talent,” Majima said. “An’ I got an easier time lookin’ than you.”
Yamagata grunted. He had opinions about how Majima ran the Grand. Everyone did. Majima only cared what the account book’s opinion was, which was that Majima had done the impossible to turn the Grand into a cash cow. Two years ago, Sagawa had dropped him into a ghost town of a dance hall. Common knowledge then and now was that the locals drank at places run by locals, with their own singers, their own musicians – and the foreigners did the same. Japanese dance halls, Japanese jazz musicians, Japanese singers and Japanese clientele – but even with Shanghai as a port city, there were only so many Japanese travellers. The Filipinos and the Koreans and the Russians did the same. Only the Americans went everywhere without restraint—and even that was tempered by the white-skinned ones being uppity about the places where the dark-skinned ones staffed the floor and the house band.
Majima looked at the Black Cat Cabaret and decided: that’s what the Grand had to be – staffed widely and big enough to pull any crowd, not just a Japanese one. He brushed up on his English at the same time as his Chinese, and if it wasn’t great—Majima’s English was a source of amusement to Buster Holmes, who said it was as good as Holmes’ Japanese—it got guests through the door.
“If the lord of the night can poach someone else’s talent and not get in trouble, that’s a miracle like nothin’ else.”
“You got any ideas where to start, Yamagata-han?”
Majima had meant it as a joke but a look crossed Yamagata’s face that said he ought to listen.
---
To Majima’s eye: she was a pretty girl. She had sad songs that tugged the heartstrings under her belt, and a good range, able to hit enough high notes. If he stayed through her set, he could figure out her stamina to sing through the night. The Grand needed songs with a beat – anything this slow or sad would be the death of the party – which meant there was little chance of hiring her, not if he wanted to turn a profit on that investment.
And yet—now that she’d gotten started, he couldn’t stop listening.
The bartender nodded at him. “Xiao Qiao’s really something else, isn’t she?”
The singer wound down her song about awaiting a gentleman’s return, then eased into another. That one was familiar – the folk song about jasmine blossoms. The Grand’s house band covered it day after day, only with a tempo to get the crowd dancing.
Where the singer had been sad before, she was revenant now: let me pluck you down, jasmine flower, and send to my love. 3
“She here all the time?”
“Nearly.” The bartender nodded at the door. A man, not present earlier, filled the doorway. “She’s one of the boss’ favourites.”
Yamagata hadn’t joked about the guy being a bear – God Hand was easily twice the width of Majima. He squeezed his massive frame into a tux, but for Majima, like knew like: if God Hand hadn’t been a bouncer at some point, he had fought for his life in a back alley somewhere, and that life never left him, given how he cast his eye over the crowd. Like he was looking out for a shitkicker in a place this sedate.
(There was one. It was Majima. Being leashed by Sagawa hadn’t quieted the urge that told him: let’s get up there. Give him the fight he’s looking for.)
Majima nodded to his floor manager. The floor manager got up to head God Hand off.
With that problem settled, his attention returned to the singer. When the jasmine flower song was done, she moved onto one about separated lovers. The dream-like look never left her face as she looked unseeing into the crowd: my darling, we have the same heart. 4
He wondered what the guests were thinking. If they were imagining that her words were directed at them, that they were the needle to her thread, to be strung together.
Yeah. He contemplated it as he drank. She was too sad for the Grand. But the sadness could be good, in the way it had been wrung through every note and word in her songs. Good enough to be real. And who’s to say she couldn’t work the same magic if Majima could get the same atmosphere in the Grand?
The lord of the night had his talents, polishing the rough from country girls and girls hopping off steamships, flocking to Shanghai in hopes of making it big. He made them shine in the limelight of the Grand’s music halls. If he was going to fill Sagawa’s coffers in a city of sin, he had to make do with anyone and anything in order to make it happen.
By the time there was a break in her set, Majima had it planned out. Another singer stepped onto stage to replace the blind one, then kicked off with a great beat – but to Majima, it was already background noise to him.
One of the musicians walked the blind girl to the bar and got her seated. Majima took the chance to gesture at the bartender with a bill. “Send something her way.”
“Friend,” the bartender chortled. “Whatever you’re trying, it won’t work.”
(That was the same thing Majima heard, day in, day out, while he turned the Grand’s empty halls into one of the best cabarets in the city.)
Out of the corner of his last eye, he watched the bartender approach the girl, then watched her pull back, laughing and shaking her head. The bartender guided a club soda with lemon into her hand. Majima’s bill went back to him.
Well. If you don’t succeed the first time…
He grabbed his drink and scooted however many seats over to her. The bartender must have warned her he was coming: her face was already turned quizzically in his direction when he plunked down beside her. Up close, he could see how little effort the management had put to her wardrobe. It was the little odds and ends of a second-hand wardrobe that no one was meant to look too closely at: the embroidery on her qipao picking off, the beadwork on her slippers starting to fray. But up close too, it was a wonder how she could ever be overlooked. The effort of singing left her flushed with a warmth rouge couldn’t imitate. Her eyes were doe-like and dark, equal parts curious and wary.
“Ya sing great,” he started. Baby steps. Butter her up first, talk about the Grand later.
“Thank you.” Her words were polite, her voice guarded. “And for the drink too, but we aren’t allowed to drink on the job.”
What the hell. For the girls in the dance halls, their jobs revolved around drinking, dancing, and getting the patrons to drink with her between dances.
He fished out his smokes—the ones reserved for business—and after setting one between his teeth, rattled the box at her. Good cigarettes. A proper gentleman to light one for her. Most women were charmed.
Her brow furrowed. The look on her face could only be, politely, described as bewildered. “I… sir, surely you understand. Smoking makes singing afterwards a struggle.”
Majima floundered. There was a way to salvage this – he’d made it into an art after two years of bowing and scraping – but even this needed a moment for composure.
The bartender chipped in, “You’re meant to be resting up, Xiao Qiao. Boss won’t be happy you’re wasting your breath like this.”
He gave Majima a look that said: wasting your breath on him.
“I’m alright to talk.” She gave Majima that same bland smile he plastered on his own face inside the Grand. “Is this your first time here? I’m surprised Lee hasn’t caught you already. He’s so strict with us socialising during work.”
Well, wasn’t that a good thing his floor manager was off handling it?
“First time here.” He wracked his brains for something to say. “Friend of mine recommended it. I’m usually at larger places, but the vibe of yer place is pretty cosy.”
“Larger places like…?”
Bring up the Grand now or later? It was one thing to leave a bad impression of the Grand, but it felt worse to leave no impression at all. “The Odyssey. The Grand. Might be ya haven’t heard of it. The scene’s different from yours.”
“Different how?”
If there was something unkind in her heart, at least she wouldn’t show it while on a shift. Or she was obliged to hide it well.
Majima chanced it. He kept his voice light. “You know. Foreign. Mostly Japanese.”
Her expression slipped into something more real – a flicker of surprise, then buried in the next moment. “So not too different from us.” She nodded towards the singer who replaced her on the stage. “Akko can manage Japanese if she’s asked. So can I.”
Then her smile warmed, close to real now. “In fact,” she continued, her words sliding seamlessly into Japanese, “would it be better if I did?”
Majima’s shoulders sagged in relief. The bartender might stop badgering them now, unless everyone in this joint secretly managed all the languages flying around an international port like Shanghai.
He clinked his glass against hers. “Cheers, lady. Real kind of ya not to say my words sound like shit.”
“Ah, it’s not.” There was a hard set in her voice that seemed defensive on his behalf. “It… must be hard, being away from home.” Her nails tapped idly against her glass. “How does Shanghai treat you then?”
“Well ‘nuff when it wants something outta me.” Like his dignity and self-respect and every coin it could milk out of him. He thought of Sagawa and the debt, and downed another mouthful of his drink. “And when it ain’t workin’ me to the bone like a dog.”
“You could share. I don’t mind hearing stories from around the city.”
Even blind, there was a distant look in her eye. Her mind was elsewhere, on the city that ate up the senses and the self in the midst of its many sins. He couldn’t drag his eye away from the red bow of her mouth or the upward sweep it made when she smiled.
“So, what brought you here to leave your worries behind?”
If she was asking him to talk, why not? If this wasn’t the night he’d succeed on getting her to take up work at the Grand, it wouldn’t be a waste of time either to warm her up to the idea.
Majima talked about work in the night trade like he was another waiter manning the floors of ballrooms and restaurants and casino floors, cartin’ around fancy trays night after night, you name it. To some degree, it was true – the manager did everything in the Grand when it went understaffed. The pay was good even if the work was exhausting. He talked about fights he’d seen broken up in the Grand as though he wasn’t the guy doing the breaking up, or the guy getting frustration and champagne dumped on him. He talked about how it worked, sometimes, to say just enough to not look like the furniture, and to quit talking before anyone figured that he wasn’t from around here.
Xiao Qiao listened. Evening work was nothing new to her – and if she’d been a dance hall girl instead of a singer, Majima would have chalked her attention to another exhausted girl working hard at being interested. But he must have seemed interesting, telling her the things that she couldn’t see happening under all those bright dazzling city lights. She laughed with a voice like a bell when he recalled for her the time a drunk rabblerouser of a customer was hoodwinked into buying drinks for the crowd without ever needing to throw him out, and omitted that he was the one doing the hoodwinking.
“I couldn’t ever imagine that happening here – and without the band even stopping their set! Someone once told me Lee picked up a man and carried him outside until he settled down.” She sipped her soda water. “The Cabaret Grand seems like an unbelievable place to work.”
“Ya don’t think you could take your act over there?”
“And leave here?” She busied herself with the glass in her hand, turning it around and around. The look on her face was pensive. “I don’t imagine there are many places which are kind to a blind person. I would have never made it where I am without Lee’s kindness. Leaving might break his heart.”
“You’re doing pretty good, ain’tcha? Chinese and Japanese – lotsa places want singers who can cover those.”
“English too,” she added. “Or it’s getting there. There’s so many travellers to practice talking to sometimes.”
Smart girl, to have taught herself like that. “No kiddin’.” His best girls on staff had a knack for expanding their vocabulary to nab the wealthier guests. “What ‘bout the other stuff that’s getting big, like Russian or Korean—”
“No.”
Her fingers tightened on her glass. She swallowed.
“I mean… it’s nothing I want to learn yet.”
It might have been rude foreign guests at the bar that put her off. He let it go – better not to pursue that line of conversation.
The bartender cut in. “You’re nearly back on stage, kiddo.”
Of course. She was still on a shift and catching a break, not meant to be talking with him.
“I’m good to go,” Xiao Qiao announced. To Majima, she offered, “I’ll sing one for you then, shall I?”
There was some whispering to the band before her next set started. Majima nursed his drink, did not miss at least one musician glancing suspiciously at him, and wondered if he ought to have brought another floor manager to hold off the cavalry.
When Xiao Qiao opened her next set, it was with that song she started off with, only in Japanese now. It was good the first time. It was better the second time, now that he knew the words. And better, warming even, to know that she added that song into her set for him.
He knew well enough that the singer being blind meant she wasn’t tilting her mike in his direction, and she wasn’t smiling at him when she sang. But it made for a nice daydream. Even he could have a moment of wishful thinking before this damn city stole it away.
---
Majima had a plan on sweet talking her to the Grand by the time her second set tied up. It was a plan that was left unused, for the singer was already looking for him—his terrible choice of words aside—once she was led to the bar for her next break.
“I asked Akko for a favour.”
Her smile was brighter than sunlight. She leaned in close, like this admission was a secret to be shared. Majima smiled in return, because, hey, why not play along? – even if she couldn’t see it. A part of him wanted to roll along with her infectious good humour.
The bartender thudded down a glass of water pointedly. It went ignored.
“What sorta favour?”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” and her smile wavered then, “I mean—if you don’t mind—I asked Akko if she could fit some slow songs in her set.”
Slow songs were great. Why slow songs?
“Did you…” Her chin dipped down. “Did you want to dance?”
It wasn’t usual for the girl to ask. Dance girls earned their living charging for a dance on the cabaret floor, but it was usually the line of customers trying to get her attention and time which did the asking.
The last time Majima was on the floor was when he was there to escort a drunk guest to the door, and then to get champagne dumped on him ungraciously. Why pass this chance up? He wasn’t working—not really; even if he still wanted her at the Grand, that feeling had little to do with turning out cash to meet Sagawa’s new target—and she was right there, a pretty girl with a nice singing voice, emboldened to do something she probably hadn’t done for a while now.
“Somethin’ slow?”
“I can manage the one step. I’ll try not to step on your feet.” 5
Majima could dance, in the way that the manager of the Grand spinning his top girl across the floor to draw the attention of the crowd necessitated him to. He could manage the one step, the tango, the Lindy Hop, and the foxtrot, all with the cool detachment that drew an awed, so that’s the lord of the night, from a guest.
He led her to the dance floor cautiously – because it was small and there was only so much space they could take up, because he was aware of the interested eyes on them, because he had to watch out for things in her path with the quick learning of someone who had never guided the blind before. Xiao Qiao graciously took his offered hand and let herself be led. On the dance floor, she did much the same by necessity.
Akko must have known what was up. There was a mercifully long break between songs as he figured out where his hands—their hands—should go, when he opted for closed position. The one step could be intimately close or pleasantly relaxed, with a whole arm’s width of distance between a pair of dancers, but with a blind person following his lead, Majima could only think of the same position as a waltz.
“Oh,” Xiao Qiao said, her eyes impossibly wide. She tipped her face up towards his, just somewhere south of his chin. “You’re lucky Lee isn’t seeing this. He’d have a fit, no doubt.”
No doubt. There would be a few things the manager—bartender—something—would say, to see his singer on the floor with a customer, when she was meant to only be singing. He’d have words too, for how Majima had one hand at her back and the other clasping Xiao Qiao’s, while her other hand sat on his shoulder.
On stage, Akko started, with a background of string instruments, on the arrival of spring in a green window. 6 Majima recognised the song, being a typical favourite at the Grand, and knew well enough that she had slowed the piece down on Xiao Qiao’s request. Just as well – figuring out how to do the one step, easy of a dance it was, was made harder by going slow to accommodate his partner’s careful pace. Everyone else on the floor gave them a wide berth; Majima could only be grateful that they did, when all his attention went to making sure he and Xiao Qiao wouldn’t trip over their own feet.
Autumn comes with the fragrance of lotuses, Akko sang.
“Hold on,” he said. He tried turning her in a bold sweeping circle, like a proper waltz, and he managed only because everyone else had backed away from them. Xiao Qiao gasped in happy amazement and clung tightly on.
He was so focused on keeping pace and leading, that when the song came to an end on the verse about longing in wintertime, he stopped but Xiao Qiao didn’t. She stumbled—only a step—and Majima caught her as her face collided into his shoulder. She winced gracelessly as she drew back, an apology already on her face.
He cut in before she could. “Sorry. Clumsy of me,” he said. “Real idiotic, I know—”
Xiao Qiao blinked up at him. “Did I… get makeup on your jacket?”
He checked. “Nah.”
“Then let’s not spend our time apologising,” she offered. Her smile was beatifically calm. “Akko’s likely to start again.”
Dancing was a much more agreeable option. Majima did just that – and with the next two dances, they were getting better at it. Majima at leading, Xiao Qiao at mirroring his pace and conservative footwork for a one step. They were doing circles more than anything—and nothing as graceful as the wide circular loop of a waltz after that first daring turn—but no one had collided into them or vice versa, and because she was smiling in unmasked delight, Majima found himself doing the same too.
In a lull between songs, Xiao Qiao exhaled, her breath coming fast, then sagged against him like he was a convenient wall to lean against.
Majima froze. The air was saturated with her perfume, made headier by her raised body heat from the dancing.
“This is nice,” she said.
He opened his mouth to agree and found his words jammed in his throat. The lord of the night had all manner of women draped around him on and off the floor of the Cabaret Grand. A blind girl from an otherwise forgettable nightclub didn’t warrant this response.
“I haven’t danced for so long,” she continued, as though she hadn’t taken the initiative and asked him first. “Lee’s quite against it—he rather I stay on stage, but it seems foolish to waste the opportunity.”
Her words brought back something in the back of Majima’s mind—that he was lucky Lee wasn’t here to see this, because of the fit he would have.
“How’d you know?” he started, peering down at her. Another thought came to mind: she hadn’t danced in a long time, which meant she must have had before—somehow, even if blind. “That yer manager ain’t here.”
Xiao Qiao smiled up at him. It was the relaxed, easy smile of someone breathless with the exhaustion of dancing – and something else he had overlooked. He remembered the doe-like look in her eyes, and the caution that must never have left, only been sublimated into some other form.
“The bartender mentioned. He thought it was something I should be aware of, with the manager of one of the largest competitors showing up in our establishment.”
Akko started up another song. Reflexively, he straightened up, easing back into the one step, and Xiao Qiao followed.
“Is there something you’ve come here for?”
The Cabaret Grand was competing against the likes of the Paramount, not this nameless nightclub they were standing inside. Still, he had been caught off-guard, for the third time now. First, the drink. Then the cigarettes. Now this, with the truth. He owed her the truth in return, since his plans were straight and truly shot to hell.
“So—I came headhunting for new talent and I thought about recruitin’ ya,” he said shortly. Even irritated by this turn of events, he couldn’t bring himself to say something unkind to her. She had reason enough to be wary of him. “I could still make an arrangement with yer guy Lee if you want – part-time here, part-time there.”
Xiao Qiao was quietly pensive, which made for an interesting sight when he couldn’t be sure if she was focused on dancing or thinking furiously about the offer that dropped into her lap.
“I meant what I said before—I couldn’t leave without breaking Lee’s heart, and I can’t be sure how kind your Cabaret Grand is to someone like me.”
“Oi. I’m kind,” he pointed out.
Xiao Qiao gave him a wry smile. He thought that was unwarranted: he had been nice, he was still being nice, and he had only lied to her a little about the work he did across Shanghai.
She sighed and dropped her head to his shoulder, far closer than any dance hall girl ought to be with her client when they were on the dance floor. “You’re better than most men that come through these doors—even if you are breaking up fights in your cabaret and tricking customers into paying for other people’s bills.”
Majima tried to ignore the stares coming their way. Even if she was blind, letting a woman lean on a man she had met only that night was publicly indecent. “It’s just business, lady,” he muttered. “Ya gotta do what you gotta do in a place like this.”
With how she was leaning against him, it was easy for Xiao Qiao to lift her head and reach his ear. He felt it as a hot exhalation on his skin, with her words curling like cigarette smoke around him: “If it’s just business, then I’ll work at your Cabaret Grand with one condition.”
Majima steadied his hand at her back, pulling her nearer so he wouldn’t miss that condition. “That right?”
“I want you to find a man, here in Shanghai,” Xiao Qiao said. Her voice wavered for the first time since she blindsided him. Her steps were unsteady; Majima righted her there too. “A man with a bat tattoo.”
