These Violent Delights

The next morning, Juliette and Roma meet at the statue. They go to Zhang Gutai’s personal address, which Kathleen learned from a spy. The Communist Leader lives in a run-down apartment building. At his house, they are greeted by Qi Ren, Zhang Gutai’s personal assistant. Juliette pretends that they are students from the university, switching into a different dialect to confuse the man and conceal her identity. Roma distracts Qi Ren while Juliette rifles though Zhang Gutai’s desk. She finds a message that the Larkspur sent Zhang Gutai.

After the two leave, Roma realizes that the alias Juliette gave to Qi Ren, “Zhu Liye,” is Juliette’s name translated into Chinese. He also asks Juliette for her real Chinese name since she has never told him. She explains that her Chinese name is “Cai Junli,” but the children at her school in New York mocked her name. She renamed herself “Juliette” since it sounded like a Westernized version of her name. Now everyone, even her Chinese relatives and the people of Shanghai, refers to her by her American name.

The couple argue about what steps to take next. Roma thinks Juliette is misguided to keep investigating the Communists. He thinks they should try to find the Larkspur. Juliette eventually agrees with him.

On Juliette’s orders, Kathleen attends a Communist Party meeting, disguising herself as a student. At the meeting, she sees Marshall, who is spying for the White Flowers. Kathleen pretends to work for the student newspaper and interviews the Party members. She asks them if Zhang Gutai has anything to do with the madness, and they tell her off the record that the Communist leader “has a monster doing his bidding” (247). They believe that seeing the monster causes people to go mad, and that Zhang Gutai can control it.

The local police force run by the French, the garde municipale, arrive and halt the meeting. Kathleen uses her knowledge of French to avoid arrest. She realizes that Marshall has eavesdropped on her conversation about the monster.

Juliette meets Roma outside Great World, an arcade. He tells her that she is being followed. The man following her points a gun at them. Roma tells her to pretend to hug him and then shoots the man. Realizing there are more men following them, they flee into the arcade. Juliette shoots another man, but two others still chase after them. Roma and Juliette hide behind clothing racks in a dressing room for the opera, but the men find them, leading to a shootout. They kill one of the remaining men and injure the other. Roma and Juliette interrogate the injured man, who tells them there is a bounty on their head. Juliette shoots him, causing Roma to remark that the death was not necessary. Juliette feels guilty about killing him and admits she made a mistake. Roma is still angered by the needless violence, but he puts his anger aside so they can search for the Larkspur.

Juliette and Roma visit the address on the flyers around the city urging people to get vaccinated. At the vaccine clinic, Juliette cuts the line and demands to be let inside. The guard refuses to let her in, so she hits him with the butt of her gun and pushes her way inside. She tells Roma to secure the door behind them with a bolt to keep the Larkspur’s men at bay. Inside the clinic, a woman is giving an injection to a patient. She denies being the Larkspur and claims that she does not know his identity. Roma pockets a vial of the vaccine, and the two of them flee out of a window.

Meanwhile, Benedikt and Marshall patrol the streets, looking for someone with the madness. They find a Nationalist soldier who displays symptoms of the madness, but before she can kill herself, they knock her out so they can take her back to Lourens’s lab.