Shanghai

26

AFTER DUTY DENTON OFTEN DRANK TEA now at the Central Hotel, where Ephraim frequently joined him. Denton would drink the Russian tea with a slice of lemon in it that Ephraim had introduced him to, while Ephraim, if it was after five o'clock, would order nothing but vodka. For a time Ephraim was his only friend, for he had grown more solitary since his expedition with Mason and Jones on the houseboat. They had ended the journey coolly, Denton declining to shoot and reading instead in his cabin, while the other two drank and gossiped with Henschel after the day's slaughter of birds and sometimes rabbits. Back in Shanghai, he avoided both of them, as well as Johnson with his assiduous attempts to become his mentor. And he began to skip the Christian Youth Fellowship meetings, pleading special Customs duties as his excuse. He continued to sing in the choir, though, and attended every service punctually. The blending of the voices under the dark beams of the cathedral still filled him with a melancholy satisfaction in which he released the emotion of his loneliness and yearning for ... for something else, something more, he didn't know what. Since Emily's jilting of him he seemed to have been living in suspension, waiting, restless, discarding the ways of life he'd been brought up in and worn unthinkingly like his clothes, but putting nothing in their place.

He took to roaming the city at night, the long crowded streets of the international settlement, the seedier boulevards of the French settlement, the narrow canals and alleys of the Chinese city. Often he passed the entrance to the house on rue Molière where he'd seen the lady in grey with the little girl, and it seemed to him that somehow that was an emblem of what he was searching for. But equally often he would go on, towards the house on the other side with its green shutters and mysteriously enticing ever-open door. He would glance in and then saunter past, as though uninterested in what the doorway promised; yet his heart always beat faster. The fat man with the level voice was gone, but another, older, man sat in the same chair now, forever reading a Chinese news-paper, from which he would slowly raise his eyes at every passer-by. The lady with the little girl, elegant, serene, remote - he never saw again.

His feet seemed to carry him to places of temptation solely in order to allow him to turn away at the last moment. He was torn between half-acknowledged lust and half-abandoned chastity. Once, in the sailors' district by the docks, two young, effeminate-looking Chinese youths accosted him, smiling in a strange, uncontrolled manner, as if they were drunk - except that Denton had never seen a drunken Chinese.

'You wantee fuckee-fuckee?' one of them asked.

'What?'

'Fuckee-fuckee?' One took his arm familiarly while the other groped for his groin.

He shook them off violently, shocked. They shrugged and sauntered away indifferently, giggling to each other their gait unsteady. It was not until later, when he'd overcome his quivering repulsion, that he realised that they were intoxicated not by alcohol, but by opium.

Yet still he sought out the same places, and always alone, to see and yet avoid them, to titillate his desires and frustrate them. Faces peered provocatively at him from doorways, rickshaw boys called out invitations from their shafts - 'Very clea', Portuguesee, Filipino, what you want?' - girls brushed against him longingly in the street, laying their hands on his arm with a caressing, feather-light touch. He was frightened of them, yet he couldn't keep away. In his room, he would listen more keenly, tantalised, for the chuckles and murmurs through the wall at weekends or whenever Mason was off-duty. On his visits to restaurants with Wei, he watched the sing-song girls with long furtive glances, especially the one Wei had sing for them the first time. Noticing his half-concealed interest, Wei often suggested that restaurant and often engaged the same girl to sing. Denton knew her name now: Su-mei.

The weather grew colder. He wore his overcoat in his room at night when he sat down to study his Chinese.

One evening in February Ephraim joined him at his usual corner table at the Central Hotel, behind the glossy green leaves of a palm tree. He was rubbing his hands together and smiling gleefully. 'Today I have made twenty thousand dollars, my friend.' He sat down and gripped Denton's arm with his familiar pressure. 'Twenty thousand in one day!'

'Oh? How?'

'How does anyone make a profit? By buying cheap and selling dear!' He gazed at Denton goggle-eyed, shaking his head amusedly at his naivet‚. 'By buying cheap and selling dear! The only law of business, my friend.'

The waiter brought him his vodka unbidden, and Denton listened with a twinge of envy while Ephraim recounted with self-congratulatory chuckles and extravagant gestures how he'd held onto a consignment of opium because he was sure the price was going to rise - and of course he'd been vindicated. As he drank, he became more voluble, more expansive, his mobile, slightly sallow, face glowing with warmth and pride. 'You see, we Jews must have a national home - that is why we work to make money. To found our national home where we can be safe from the Cossacks. Have you seen our magazine in Shanghai? Israel's Messenger? You will like it, an educated man like you. I will bring you a copy to read. It has many interesting pieces, not just for Jews, but everyone. Politics, art, literature.... It is the organ of the Zionist movement in Shanghai,' he added, as if that were its ultimate distinction.

'In English?' Denton asked cautiously.

'Of course. There is a translation of that article on circumcision in the next issue.'

As he drank his way into the fourth or fifth vodka, always vainly pressing Denton to join him, he switched without a pause from the Zionist movement to the future of Shanghai. 'Mark my words,' he gripped Denton's arm again, 'Shanghai will be another city-state like Venice or Florence in the Renaissance.... You know?'

Denton nodded vaguely, unwilling to betray his large uncertainties about Italian Renaissance city-states.

'We are growing like them, and for the same reasons,' Ephraim rushed exuberantly on. 'From nothing we are already the third largest port in the world, the largest city in China - '

'Isn't Peking - ?'

'Peking? Pah! Finished! Shanghai, I tell you, will be a merchant state as powerful in world trade as Venice was in Italy. It is the door to China. And we shall hold the key to the door.' He filled his glass again from the bottle (the waiters knew that he never wanted a glass of vodka, but a whole bottle). 'Look at our government. Who rules Shanghai? China? Of course not. Britain? You British founded it, but it is not a British colony.'

'The foreign consuls?' Denton suggested mildly.

'Pah! What can they do? The power has passed to the Municipal Council - a merchant oligarchy. There you are - Venice without its Doge! We even have the canals!'

'Without its what?' Denton asked unsurely.

'Without its Doge. Duce, a leader, a chief. Ah, one day I shall sit on that municipal council, you mark my words. And we will control China from there, the whole of China.' He drank with a flourish and smacked his lips, leaning back with closed eyes to savour his dream.

Denton was still uncertain. Who did Ephraim mean by 'we'? 'Do you mean the Jews will have a national home in China?' he asked hesitantly.

But Ephraim hadn't heard him. His mood had suddenly changed, his brown eyes frowning now. He shook his head sadly, recalling perhaps the vicissitudes of life in Odessa. 'Ach, what are you doing, Jacob, always talking and talking?' he upbraided himself in a melancholy voice. 'It will all pass, it will all pass. Venice fell, Florence fell, even Jerusalem fell.... So why won't Shanghai fall too?' He sighed heavily, resignedly, pushing out his glistening underlip. 'So what are you doing, always talking and talking about your national homes and your Shanghai like Venice? Ach, ach, ach....'

Denton watched in embarrassed silence while Ephraim lamented, rocking slowly back and forth on his seat. But then, as suddenly as it had come, the mood passed. He leant forward, finished his glass and screwed the cap on the bottle, calling for the bill with a peremptory snap of his fingers. He paid as always in cash. 'Never pay with chits,' he advised Denton early on. 'Never pay with chits. They always cheat you.' He stood up, took the half-finished bottle under his arm and walked with Denton towards the door. 'Tonight, I shall celebrate with a girl,' he said decidedly. He stopped to peer into Denton's face. 'What about you?'

Denton shook his head uncomfortably, looking away from the lighted porch, on which palms and rubber plants stood like doormen, to the darkness of the river beyond the Bund. 'I must be getting back to the mess,' he said.

Ephraim gazed at him reproachfully. 'Ach, you're not still thinking of that girl in England, are you?'

'No.'

'She's gone.' He ignored Denton's denial. 'Why don't you forget her? Come,' taking Denton's arm encouragingly, persuasively, in his grip, 'I know just the girl for you.'

But Denton, as always, pulled himself away. He watched Ephraim climb into his sedan chair and wrap himself round with a rug. Ephraim waved, nursing the vodka bottle on his knees. The chair swayed as the bearers moved off. To the house with the green shutters? Denton wondered. An oil lantern glowed on one corner of the chair. Denton watched it bobbing away, imagined it arriving at the house, saw Ephraim getting out, being greeted by sensuous girls with long hair and high, rouged cheeks....

He heard his name called in Chinese. The sound came from the rickshaws clustering across the road from the hotel. He looked across at them, frowning. His name was called again, quietly and urgently. He walked down the steps and into the shadows where the rickshaw coolies were squatting between their shafts, smoking or dozing, wrapped in rags and old sacks. Again he heard his name called, and this time he made out the podgy figure of Kwai, the coxswain of the Customs launch he'd first been on with Mason.

'Mister Denton,' he hissed from the edge of the rickshaws. 'Come quickly.' He was smiling excitedly, the bringer of good news. But then he always smiled, as though he thought the whole of existence was a genial comedy. Every officer except Mason called him Lolly Kwai. Mason, refusing to be so familiar with any Chinese subordinate, called him curtly by his name alone, if he troubled to use even that.

Lolly Kwai nodded into the shadows thrown by some plane trees. 'This fellow says there will be some smuggling tonight.'

Denton peered into the trees, but couldn't see a thing. 'Where?'

'On the Alexander the First.'

'But I checked their cargo this evening. They're sailing tonight.'

Lolly shook his head, smiling broadly. 'Come and talk to the man. He wants money.' He led him past the trees to another rickshaw standing by itself. A young Chinese with a wisp of beard straggling from a large mole on his chin was leaning back in the shade of the raised awning. He scarcely glanced at Denton, the whites of his eyes flickering once in the dark and then remaining still. He looked only at Lolly Kwai, his face half-turned away from Denton as though he didn't want to be seen. The three of them whispered in Chinese, Lolly Kwai smilingly translating into pidgin when Denton couldn't follow. There were a hundred bales of cotton outside a godown on the wharf where the Alexander the First was berthed. Just before she sailed, having already got Customs clearance, they would swiftly load the bales and so avoid paying tax on them.

'What about the wharf police?'

The young Chinese shrugged meaningfully.

'I have the launch ready,' Lolly Kwai turned to Denton. 'We can catch them from the river. They will have lookouts on the shore.'

Denton felt his stomach crumple. He was unsure and diffident. He tried to remember how Johnson had handled the salt smuggling all those months ago.

'We must hurry,' Lolly Kwai urged. 'They sail in one hour.'

'How much should I pay him?' Denton whispered uncertainly in English.

The informer's eyes flickered again, as if he'd understood. But he said nothing.

Lolly Kwai held up five stiff, plump fingers. 'Fifty dollar.'

'I haven't got that much on me,' Denton said worriedly. 'I'll have to draw some more out.'

The Chinese spoke rapidly to Lolly Kwai, so quickly and quietly that Denton couldn't understand a word, Lolly Kwai turned back to Denton. 'Twenty-five now, twenty-five afterwards?' he suggested.

Denton handed the money over. The man's eyes watched tensely as Denton counted it out, then he slipped it into his quilted jacket without checking it. As he did so, Denton recalled the handless stumps of Johnson's informer in the mortuary. The man slid out of the rickshaw and merged with the night, his black cloth slippers making no sound on the paved street - the first street to be paved in Shanghai.

Lolly laid a restraining hand on Denton's arm until the informer had had time to get well away, then led him to the launch. As they steamed the half-mile down to the lower section wharves, Lolly, his face glistening in the light in the well of the launch, explained how they could catch the smugglers red-handed. Denton nodded gladly, grateful that he was taking over. He felt he was hollow, acting like a puppet; but he couldn't have acted by himself. Lolly gave orders to the two men in the bow, who were flapping their arms across their chests against the cutting chill of the breeze off the water.

When they neared the vessel, Lolly stopped the engines and had all the lights put out. It was a moonless night, and they drifted almost invisibly down toward the Alexander the First. Lolly grinned and pointed. A file of coolies were trotting up a gangplank at the stern, carrying the bales on their shoulders and dropping them on the main deck. They were working silently, their usual grunting chant hushed. As the launch drifted towards the white, rusty hull of the ship, Denton could hear the bales thumping dully onto the metal deck above him.

It wasn't until they had gently bumped against the ship's side that they were seen. There was a soft yell, and the coolies dropped their bales and fled. Denton followed Lolly Kwai up some iron rungs onto the quay. How cold and smooth the rungs were, he thought detachedly, surprised that he should notice such a thing at such a time. The gangplank lay on the ground where it had been hastily thrown when the last coolie had run off. Lolly led the way up the main gangway amidships.

Denton, following, saw the ship's agent awaiting them, the same smooth, pale Mr Ching, in whose presence he'd signed the customs clearance a few hours before. 'Good evening Mista' Den-tong.' His rimless glasses, always set a little down his nose to give him a quizzical, scholarly expression, glinted as he smiled. He spoke a little breathlessly, rubbing his hands together inside the full sleeves of his long, quilted gown. 'Is something wrong? It is very cold, I think.'

'You've been loading without authority?' Denton said unsteadily. Against his will a polite note of questioning had slipped into his voice.

'Without authority?' Ching's eyebrows rose in hurt amazement. 'Surely no, Mista' Den-tong.'

'What were those bales you were just loading, then?' Denton still felt unable to be brisk and authoritative against Ching's elastic, courteous friendliness. He glanced after Lolly and the two men who had gone aft to find the bales. Without Lolly's presence, he felt smaller, unprotected.

'Are not those the bales we have already pay tax?' Ching's eyebrows rose again in pained incredulity.

'May I see the manifest, please?' Still he was asking, not demanding.

Ching led him politely to the first class dining-saloon and ordered some coffee for him while the manifest was sent for.

As Ching laid the papers before him, Denton noticed he was drawing a long white envelope out of his full sleeves. Ching held the envelope half-covered, half-revealed as he spoke. 'I am sure if there is any mistakings they can be quickly arrange',' he said, smiling, his eyes on Denton's.

Lolly Kwai appeared in the doorway, and the envelope disappeared into the wide folds of Ching's gown. He waited courteously while Lolly Kwai murmured into Denton's ear. 'Twenty-nine bales cotton. Under tarpaulin. More below.'

Denton nodded, scrutinising the manifest. 'There doesn't seem to be any cotton down here at all.'

'No cotton?' Ching shook his head in disbelief. 'No cotton, Mista' Den-tong?'

'See for yourself.' He pushed the manifest across. At last his voice was strengthening. Was it Lolly Kwai's presence that stiffened it?

Ching bent and studied the sheets for some time turning them backwards and forwards and shaking his head in a show of perplexity. At last he straightened up smiling still. 'A misunderstanding, Mista' Den-tong. They must have thought the cotton is already cleared. I tell them to unload at once. Some more coffee? Brandy?'

'I'm afraid I'll have to report this, Mr Ching,' Denton said. 'The ship can't sail until the matter's been investigated. It appears those bales are contraband.'

'If they are unload', Mista' Den-tong?' Ching's voice was wheedling now. 'You will let the ship sail? It is high cost of pay dues in port.' Again Denton glimpsed the white envelope as Ching turned away from Lolly Kwai. It was just like the envelope Mason had taken from him that time when they'd inspected the ship together.

'I'm sorry. I have to withhold clearance from the ship now.' Denton heard himself uttering the official phrases at though he were reciting from the pamphlets Mr Brown had given him in his first week. 'And we shall have to leave a guard on board too.' His voice still sounded too polite and apologetic, but there was a stubborn core to it now. He stood up with a faint, throbbing feeling of elation. He felt he'd carried it off after all. He could tell from the momentary, hesitant glimmer in Ching's eyes like an actor's who'd forgotten his lines. And from his smile too - it had lost its pliability and become fixed. Even his supple voice had run dry.

As he went down the gangway, Lolly Kwai turned to him with his cheerful smile. 'Mr Ching big friend Mr Mason,' he said, in a pidgin that seemed to mock itself. 'Mr Mason not likee this bobberee.' His breath steamed on the air as he laughed.

27

ON THE FIRS' DAY of Chinese New Year, all the family must have dinner together.' Wei paused while some firecrackers banged and flashed nearby. 'After thir' day visit relative'.' He was nursing a small potted tangerine tree on his lap, the little orange fruits quivering on their stems as the rickshaw jolted over the ruts and holes in the road. His spare, bony shoulders pressed against Denton's when the coolie suddenly swung the shafts round to avoid a sedan chair borne out of the little alley by four trotting bearers. 'Everyone must have new clothe' to wear and relative' give money to children. Good fortune token, it is called.'

Some grinning boys threw a firecracker at the rickshaw wheels and the coolie swore angrily at them as the explosion sent flame and smoke round his legs. Wei nearly dropped the tangerine tree which was wrapped in red paper.

'And after the third day,' Denton smiled, eager to display his know-ledge, 'students must visit their teachers and pay their respects.'

'You are very goo' pupil,' Wei nodded approvingly. 'You have learn' a very lot.'

'And the money packets are red for good luck, and the money inside them must be new money,' Denton went on. 'And that tangerine tree is for your family, for prosperity in the coming year.'

Wei began speaking in Chinese now, smiling encouragement. 'If you go on like this, you will become my best pupil.'

It was Denton's turn to act as host, so he paid the coolie when they reached the restaurant. Firecrackers were exploding again nearby and he covered his ears, recalling his first morning in Shanghai, when he woke up to the banging of firecrackers and thought it was gunfire.

Wei smiled, cuddling his tangerine tree with both hands in front of him, so that his face was half-obscured by the lattice of its branches. 'This is nothing. They are only practising.' He spoke in Chinese still. 'When the holiday really starts, it will sound like a battle.'

As they went up the stairs to the restaurant, where Denton's appearance was no longer a novelty, Denton thought of Su-mei, the sing-song girl. He visualised the curve of her cheek, the black fringe of hair across her forehead, the slightly roguish glances she'd given him the week before. Something quickened in him, a faint rippling thrill. He quite enjoyed her singing now, although she didn't seem to have a large repertoire and he knew all her songs. And it was only her clear, sharp voice really, he told himself, that he was eager for, not the way she held her head and smiled, or half-smiled, at him.

The waiter led them to the partitioned room where they always ate. Denton turned to Wei. 'I've never met your family,' he began indirectly, in his best Chinese, feeling for a way of finding out whether, as Wei's student, he should visit him after the third day of the holiday or not.

'Oh, they will not interest you,' Wei answered hastily, giving the tangerine tree to the waiter to put on the floor, 'They are only women and children.'

Was that merely a polite disclaimer or definite discouragement? Denton toyed with his chopsticks, probing for a more certain answer. 'Do all your students visit you on the third day?' he asked more directly.

'Not foreigners, it is only for Chinese students,' Wei said decidedly. 'I don't think foreign devils should do it.' He had used 'foreign devils,' the ordinary, derogatory Chinese epithet for foreigners, unconsciously, then, realising his error, laughed in embarrassment. 'As we are speaking Chinese, I forgot that you are a foreigner.'

Sometimes he was open and easy with Denton, sometimes reserved and polite. At restaurants, as he ate and drank, he usually became more open. This time, he drank more than his normal amount of wine, and began to talk freely, changing to English as his thoughts surpassed Denton's still limited ability in Chinese. His cheeks became slightly flushed and his voice louder as he talked above the clack of mahjong tiles and the boisterous laughter rising over the partitions all round them. He even applauded Su-mei when she came to sing for them and gave her a New Year's money packet - usually he scarcely acknowledged the sing-song girls he engaged except with a curt nod. While she sang, he told Denton about his two wives, who were always quarrelling, and about his family in their village in the northern part of Kiangsu. Once they had been big landowners, but his grandfather had mortgaged all their land except the ancestral house in his losing passion for gambling.

'What happened to him in the end?' Denton asked, his eyes on the curled strand of hair that fell cunningly down in front of Su-mei's ear.

'The creditor' take all the lan', and my gran'father kill himself. Throw himself down the well.' His eyes were misty behind his glasses, whether from emotion or wine, Denton couldn't tell. Wei's father had come to Shanghai when the British came and became a clerk in Jardine Matheson's. Now he was old, he'd stopped working and lived with his sons, smoking opium and waiting to die. He'd wanted to buy back all the land his father had lost, but he'd never made enough money. Besides, he'd always been too fond of opium. Some people should never take it, they found out too late that they couldn't do without it. Wei enjoyed it himself, but never too much. He held up the heavy pewter wine jug. 'You see, I drink, but I am not get drunk,' he said, beaming hazily at Denton. 'The same with opium - I take but no' too much. But if get drunk on wine like foreigners, you must not take opium.' He let the jug down with a thump and splash.

Su-mei sang again. Wei left to talk to some friends in another room, walking with a cautious steadiness that seemed to belie his confidence in his imperviousness to wine - yet he would never show any other sign of intoxication. Denton lolled in his chair, the wine fumes wafting through his own head too. He watched the rise and fall of the girl's breasts under her silk gown, the spot of rouge that emphasised her high, prominent cheekbone, the full scarlet of her slightly pouting lips. Demons slipped the idea into his mind of placing his hands over those breasts. He blinked the demons away. In his pocket he too had a red money packet for her, but he hadn't the nerve to give it. Now was the time, while Wei was out of the room, but though his fingers were round the little packet, he couldn't draw it out. The demons slipped the fantasy of his hands over her breasts into his mind again, and this time he didn't dismiss them so quickly. But still he couldn't get up and give her the packet with the customary words.

She stopped singing and sat with her head slightly bowed, her hands demurely folded in her lap. He sipped some more wine and cleared his throat. He kept glancing at her and then away again, his fingers closing and unclosing on the little red envelope. Then her glance met his as she looked up at him from the corner of her eye. 'You like me?' she asked quietly.

'Yes,' he answered lamely. 'You sing very well.' Her eyelids drooped again. 'Not very well,' she murmured conventionally.

Suddenly he hauled the packet out of his pocket, got up clumsily and gave it to her with both hands, mumbling the New Year greeting. Her fingers touched his as she took it. She inclined her head and smiled the response. She put the packet away without opening it, folding her hands demurely in her lap as Wei came back into the room.

Later that night, while Denton was leaning over the veranda in his overcoat, watching the anticipatory firecrackers flash and burst in the street below, there was a loud rap on the door. Ah Koo opened it as Denton turned round and, set-faced, with a flinty nod of the head, gestured Su-mei into the room.

Denton stared at her, startled, thrilled, alarmed. She stood looking at him with slightly bowed, submissive, head until the door had closed. He heard Ah Koo's long, phlegmy cough growling away along the corridor.

'What are you doing here?' he asked bewilderedly in Chinese.

She looked up with widening, surprised eyes. 'You said you like me. You didn't want me to come?'

'No - I wasn't thinking' - he couldn't recall the word for 'expecting' - 'you would come.'

Her shoulders lifted slightly. 'You want me to go?' she asked simply, as if she was about to turn and leave.

'No ... I don't know.... Sit down, please.' Had he secretly expected her to come? What else did it mean to say 'I like you' to a sing-song girl? Yet the idea hadn't even brushed the surface of his conscious mind. He felt himself trembling slightly, helpless, like a man dreaming he is teetering on the brink of some precipice.

She was sitting on the edge of the chair at his desk, perching as if ready to fly, glancing at the picture of his parents. 'Your mother and father?' she asked calmly.

'Yes.'

'How old are they? Are they very rich? How many sons and daughters?' She took the picture off the desk as he answered each question, frowning at it with a little smile at the edge of her lips. She held in gingerly, as if she thought it might play some trick on her. 'Is it safe to have these pictures made? In my village, people said the machine that does it makes you sick.'

He laughed, closing the veranda doors and taking off his coat. 'No, it is safe. Even the Empress Dowager has had a picture made of herself.' It was all right, he thought, he would merely talk with her a little, there was no danger of.... 'Where is your village?' he asked more easily.

'Beyond Ningpo,' she shrugged. It was the same with all of them - the boys, the rickshaw coolies, the cooks. Whenever you asked them where they came from, it was always 'Ningpo more far.' It was a kind of evasion, a drawing of the curtains over their own space, like the faint, shuttered rigidity that their eyes assumed when your probed too far. And yet they thought nothing of asking how much you earned or what your suit cost!

'How long have you been a sing-song girl?'

'Three years.'

'How did you become....' He faltered. 'How did you become this thing?'

'Sing-song girl?' She laughed, a fluting, mocking little laugh, 'My parents sold me.' She placed the picture carefully back on the desk.

He nodded vaguely. He'd seen the little girls standing in docile rows in the Chinese city, waiting to be sold as slaves. At first he'd been shocked and indignant; but then, as Wei had blandly explained things to him, he'd felt his moral certainties begin to crumble. It was part of their way of doing things, he began to think, a way that foreigners couldn't understand, but which they would accept as inevitable for ever - or at least until some cataclysm overturned the whole of society. And how could you expect that to happen? Everything was so fixed, so Immemorially old. Each succeeding generation seemed to have stamped the lines of tradition further in, so that now they could never be dug out. Impoverished parents sold their daughters, Wei had said, to buy food for those that were left. Sometimes they had a better life that way - they might become a concubine for one of their new family's sons, and so escape the life of drudgery they would otherwise have lived. Sometimes of course, he acknowledged with a fatalistic shrug, they might have a worse life. It depended on the family that bought them. At least it was better than starving or being killed at birth. Denton hadn't asked him whether he had girl slaves himself. It was one of the many things about Wei that he didn't know.