French Concession by Xiao Bai Read Free Book Online Page B

and gentlemen, on your mark, get set, go!”
    The horses rushed out the gate. One of them crashed into the fence and knocked the post askew so that it ripped out of the ground, tearing up clods of mud. Hundreds of hooves thundered down the hill. The grass glinted in the breeze, and someone called out: “Tally-ho!”
    Previously, when he was explaining the rules of the game, Brenen had told her that the expression was borrowed from the cry the Indians used for their hunting hounds. In the paper hunt, riders who found the strips of paper hidden in the hedges or under pebbles cried tally - ho to alert the official observers.
    They raced down the hill into a cabbage patch. Margot tugged at the reins, steering her horse into the cabbages. Suddenly, a Chinese man appeared from the bushes, stamping his feet and shouting at her. Startled, her horse took a step back and began pawing at theground, flinging up mud. Brenen caught up with her and flung a silver coin on the ground. The shouting stopped.
    They had lost the group, and there were no scraps of paper in sight. They were standing on a small plateau hemmed in by a stream. Margot got the map out, and Brenen pointed to a Z-shaped stream called Zigzag Jump.
    They steered their horses east along the stream, past a wooden bridge, and stopped in front of a mound of yellow earth next to a copse. On top of the mound lay an obelisk built of rubble, the club’s war memorial plaque.
    It was almost noon, the sun was shining on the bottle green stream, and insects darted among the poisonous leaves of the oleander. Margot felt that she could not allow Brenen to touch her. She melted a little whenever he came close. It was she who had fallen in love with him. She felt like a bee with its wings caught in nectar.

CHAPTER 5
JUNE 5, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.
9:50 A.M.
    Hsueh thought of Therese. He pictured her hair, which was curly like a shock of cornflower petals. Curiously, the darker the room was and the more pain he was in, the more clearly he could picture Therese. But that was only to be expected, since he had taken dozens of photographs of her.
    He did not know what they wanted with him or why they had brought him here. From where he lived on Route J. Frelupt, the car had only made two turns, which meant they must be at the police headquarters on Route Stanislas Chevalier. They drove through the iron gates and into a passageway on the north side of the building, between the red brick wall and a high fence lined with glass shards, where they dragged him out of the car. It was cold and there was no sunlight.
    They pushed him into the building. The walls of the corridor were dark green with black paneling, and the floors were painted black. He was brought into what looked like an interrogation room and forced onto a chair fitted with high boards. As soon as he sat down, the boards were rotated so that they were positioned right under his arms.
    The Chinese sergeant sat behind the desk, asking questions and filling out the printed form he had in front of him. When he had finished with each page, he handed it to the secretary who sat beside him, a Chinese man who knew French and who was busy translating and typing up the document.
    The questions slowly began to focus on his trip with Therese. The sergeant stopped filling out forms and began to write down Hsueh’s answers on a piece of grid paper.
    Where did you go in Hong Kong? What about Hanoi? Haiphong? Can you only remember the hotels? Did you go to the pier? To bars? Restaurants? Did you meet anyone?
    But he had little to say. No, he was not lying. I’ll give you ten minutes to think about it, said the sergeant, and walked off, probably because he needed to piss. He came back, his clothes smelling of Lysol. Hsueh still had nothing to say.
    â€œAh yes, she did go to see a man in another room in Hanoi,” Hsueh said. Of course the thought had been in the back of his mind all this time. A Chinese man. I don’t know