“From experience?”

“I doubt it. I think they were repeating what they’d heard in the Shanghai equivalent of the locker room.”

“Women talk like that in locker rooms?”

“You cannot really think men have a monopoly on baseless boasting?”

“Don’t disillusion me. I liked my image of women linking arms in sisterhood, unencumbered by the foolish need to impress one another.”

“Oh, get real! You think we wear four-inch heels to impress you? Anyway, the general did not impress Mei-lin.”

“He couldn’t-?”

“Oh, he sure could. Fast and rough. He was drunk, he hurt her, it was over before she figured out exactly what they were supposed to be doing. He rolled off and fell asleep, snoring. Like the rumble of a delivery van, she says.”

“She sounds almost amused.”

“She sounds like that for the next six months. Desperately amused. Trying to convince herself life’s wonderful and marrying the general was a great idea. She goes on about how marvelous it is to be mistress of an elegant villa. Practically catalogues its treasures. And all the places she goes. Shanghai’s best department stores. The racetrack, the one they let Chinese into. Theaters, restaurants, nightclubs. She makes the rounds in her chauffeured car. She hangs out with other Chinese officers’ wives, with Japanese and German women, and wealthy British women who compliment her English.”

“Sounds great.”

“No, it sounds like something that gets old fast. The women treat her like an amusing child. They play cards and mah-jongg and don’t seem interested in much. Most of their conversation is gossip, except for their complaints about their husbands, and even when they’re complaining they’re bored. Half of them are having affairs with the husbands of the other half. The general lets her spend all the money she wants, but either he doesn’t notice what she buys or he doesn’t like it. She has a big house with servants, but she feels like a ghost there. No one listens to her about where to move the furniture or what to have for dinner. The servants beg her not to worry about matters of such insignificance, and the general orders her to stop interfering with the servants.

“Her buddies, the Feng sisters, are so jealous that she can’t bring herself to admit to them life is anything less than fabulous. After a while, when she starts to acknowledge she’s not ecstatic, the only one she’ll talk to about it is Rosalie.”

“Rosalie still comes to tutor her?”

“That’s one of the many things the general doesn’t seem to care whether she does, so yes. And she goes with Rosalie and Paul to concerts by refugee musicians and to the Yiddish theater and the Jewish coffeehouses. She has a favorite table at the Café Falbaum. You can’t see the street from it, and all you hear around you is German and Yiddish. Even the signs and the menu are in Yiddish. Everyone is European, and it smells of cinnamon, exotic to her. She pretends she’s far away from China and she loves it. A couple of times she spends the general’s money to buy coffee and pastry for everyone there.”

“The general doesn’t mind?”

“He doesn’t care where she goes. What he likes is showing her off. He wants her to dress well and impress his friends. At first she’s flattered, but then she starts complaining the general thinks everything about her reflects on him-her English, her calligraphy, her legs. He takes credit when she does something well and gets mad when she screws up. He lets her get in a few sentences when they go out, like a talking dog, while he beams. Then he tells her to shut up. She wonders whether being ignored the way her father did might not have been better.”

“The grass is greener.”

“Well, maybe. Though the general does seem to be getting more and more short-tempered. He wants her to do everything right, but she can’t figure out what everything is or how to know if she’s doing it right. The only bright spot is the general’s son. He makes her laugh.”

“She’s not that much older than he is, is she?”

“By now he’s ten. She’s just turned seventeen. She helps him with his schoolwork, especially his calligraphy, showing him the different styles. The boy’s tutor compliments her. She writes how she can’t wait to have children of her own. But they won’t have tutors, she says. She’ll send them to school, so they can be out in the world. Then she gets pregnant.”

“When are we up to?”

“Spring 1940.”

“What does the general think?”

“He’s pleased and very proud-of himself. And he tells her now she’ll stay home until the baby’s born.”

“Oh, no.”

“ ‘Oh, no’ is right. Her whole reason for marrying him flies out the window. To be stuck at home was bad enough, but to be stuck at his home! But he absolutely won’t have her seen in public in her condition. They fight about it more than once. Finally he doesn’t want to fight anymore, so he smacks her.”

“Shit.”

“It’s the first time, but not the last. She gets more and more desperate. She’s alternately belligerent and weepy. He doesn’t think either is charming. In fact, he doesn’t think she’s charming at all, with her big belly and swollen feet. He leaves her locked up at the villa and starts tomcatting around with some White Russian torch singer from the Cathay’s nightclub.”

“From the Cathay? That’s particularly low.”

“When the baby’s born he gives Mei-lin an emerald bracelet. Within two weeks he’s demanding sex again. She writes how beautiful the bracelet is, all sparkling and glamorous, but she can’t bear to wear it unless he orders her to. She’d give it, and everything else, to have her old life back. The only thing she wouldn’t give is the baby. They name him Li. It’s a word with a lot of meanings, but the character she writes it with means ‘power.’ She’s allowed to go out again, and mostly she goes to her father’s house. Rosalie comes over and they play with the baby in the garden. Sometimes Paul comes, sometimes she brings the general’s son along-he adores his little brother, too-and sometimes Kai-rong’s there. Kai-rong never says ‘I told you so,’ but one day he goes to the general’s villa and, I gather, threatens bad things if he ever sees another mark on his sister.”

“How does the general react?”

“Like any coward. From then on when he’s mad he storms around and curses Kai-rong, but he doesn’t hit Mei-lin again. She can’t stop being scared, though. That’s pretty much it for a long time, I mean years. The entries get shorter and fewer, more time between them. There are a couple of high points, especially Rosalie and Kai-rong’s wedding in ’forty-two, but Mei-lin just gets lonelier and sadder and the whole thing is pretty depressing.”

“Is that why you stopped?”

“No, I stopped because you were early.”

“By ten minutes. You’d have had the rest done in the next ten minutes?”

“Of course I would have. First of all, I’m a genius. Second, I only had half a dozen left, and most of them are short.”

“Well, genius, you have just about those ten minutes now, if my navigation’s right.”

“Then shush.”

I scanned the last diary pages. The first four were more of the same: Mei-lin unhappy, trapped, and frightened. Then came the next to last. I could see the sharp change even before I read the words: Elegant calligraphy suddenly melted into shaky trails of characters. “This is February 23, 1943. She writes Kai-rong’s been arrested as a Communist spy. Even her father can’t get him out. They’ve taken him to Number 76, and she knows what that means. She’s begged the general to do something, but he won’t.”

“Won’t, or can’t?”

“Won’t. He has the juice, but he says traitors like Kairong are scum and deserve to rot. She can’t believe it-a collaborator like him calling Kai-rong a traitor. Then she says she’s hated the general for a long time, but never more than now.

“That entry ends there. The next one-the last-is from the next morning. Totally different. Even her handwriting changes, back to that beautiful calligraphy again. She writes she’s got a plan. Here: