《惡魔之城》：從無名小卒到上海灘黑幫大佬

The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai

By Paul French

299 pp. Picador. $28 惡魔之城

統(tǒng)治舊上海黑社會(huì)的兩個(gè)男人

保羅·法蘭奇(Paul French)著

299頁。Picador出版社。售價(jià)28美元。

Shanghai in the 1930s. Anyone familiar with detective novels or noir cinema knows exactly what that phrase means: smoke-filled nightclubs, back-alley gambling houses and dark, seedy opium dens, all frequented by a motley assortment of Chinese mobsters, White Russian émigrés, fugitive criminals of all nations and at least one gorgeous femme fatale with a past. Designated an international treaty port after the 19th-century Opium Wars, Shanghai eventually became a kind of global melting pot of the Seven Deadly Sins — what one writer called “a tawdry city of refugees and rackets” — largely controlled by foreigners determined to fleece the town of every copper yuan or Mexican silver dollar it could yield. By the 1930s, Shanghai was the fifth-largest city in the world — and, to hear some tell it, a corrupt and drug-addled place like no other.

1930年代的上海。任何熟悉偵探小說或是黑色電影的人，都清楚這句話意味著什么：煙霧繚繞的夜總會(huì);后巷里的賭場，以及黑暗、烏煙瘴氣的煙館，這些地方的?？汪~龍混雜，有中國黑幫、白俄、各國逃犯，還至少有一個(gè)有著不可告人的經(jīng)歷、美艷動(dòng)人的致命美女。19世紀(jì)鴉片戰(zhàn)爭后，上海根據(jù)國際條約成為通商口岸，最終成為了“七宗罪”的某種國際大熔爐——有一位作者稱之為“滿是難民和花天酒地的俗麗之城”——主要為外國人所控制，他們決意要搜刮走這座城市能產(chǎn)出的每一枚銅板和鷹洋。到了1930年代，上海已經(jīng)是世界上第五大城市了，按照一些人的說法，還是一個(gè)腐敗、毒品泛濫的城市，再?zèng)]有像這里一樣的地方了。

Just how much of this notorious reputation is historical fact and how much is Hollywood (or neocolonialist) fantasy is hard to say, and “City of Devils,” Paul French’s new narrative history of the city, is not likely to clear matters up. Though the book shows signs of being exhaustively researched, much of the material, by the author’s own admission, has been freely embroidered. “‘City of Devils’ is based on real people and real events,” French writes in his preface, but because of the sub rosa nature of the episodes described, “assumptions have been made.” Translation: Details have been invented. Even reproductions of newspaper articles have been punched up “with one or two minor additions in the interest of advancing the narrative.” And since French includes no endnotes or even a list of sources, it’s impossible to know just where the facts end and the folklore begins.

很難說這個(gè)臭名昭著的名聲到底有多少是歷史史實(shí)，又有多少是好萊塢(或新殖民主義者)的幻想，而保羅·法蘭奇對(duì)這座城市的新敘述史《惡魔之城》不太可能會(huì)澄清這一點(diǎn)。盡管這本書顯示出作者做過詳盡研究，但作者本人承認(rèn)，其中很多素材都經(jīng)過了隨意加工。“《惡魔之城》基于真人真事，”法蘭奇在序言中寫道，但由于書中描述的事件的隱秘性，“其中帶有揣測。”意即書中一些細(xì)節(jié)是編造的。即使是對(duì)新聞報(bào)道的復(fù)制，也帶有“一兩處增補(bǔ)，以推進(jìn)敘述情節(jié)”。既然法蘭奇沒有給出尾注，甚至也沒有列出信源，我們無從得知事實(shí)和民間傳說的分野。

So the book is perhaps best regarded as historical fiction and, like many a good novel, it centers on the rags-to-riches ascent of a colorful protagonist — or, in this case, two colorful protagonists. Joe Farren, born Josef Pollak in the Jewish ghetto of Vienna, comes to Shanghai as a penniless exhibition dancer hoping to become “the city’s own Flo Ziegfeld”; Jack Riley, an American originally named Fahnie Albert Becker, is a former Navy seaman and wanted ex-con who shows up with a dream of making a fortune on illegal slot machines. As newcomers to this “city of reinvention,” they must start at the bottom of the gangland pecking order and work their way up, eventually partnering together on a drug-running operation that proves lucrative enough to make both of them major players in Shanghai’s criminal economy.

因此，將這本書視為歷史小說比較好，就像許多優(yōu)秀的小說一樣，它以一名多姿多彩的主角白手起家的故事為核心——或者，在這本書里，其實(shí)是兩位多姿多彩的主角。喬·法倫(Joe Farren)，曾經(jīng)的名字為約瑟夫·波拉克(Josef Pollak)，生于維也納一個(gè)猶太人聚居區(qū)，他來到上海時(shí)身無分文，是一名展覽舞者，希望成為“這座城市的弗洛·齊格飛(Flo Ziegfeld)”;另一位是杰克·萊利(Jack Riley)，他是一名美國人，原名為法赫尼·艾爾伯特·貝克(Fahnie Albert Becker)，是一名前海軍水兵，受到通緝的前科犯，他來到上海夢(mèng)想著用非法老虎機(jī)大賺一筆。作為這個(gè)“再造之城”的新來者，他們必須從黑社會(huì)的最底層開始，一步步向上爬，最終兩人在從事毒品走私的活動(dòng)上結(jié)成一伙。事實(shí)證明，走私毒品利潤足夠豐厚，讓兩人都成為了上海犯罪經(jīng)濟(jì)中的主要玩家。

Their big break, however, comes in 1937, when the Japanese invasion of Shanghai changes the geography of sin in the besieged city, isolating the international settlement and moving its main vice district to a nearby area instantly called the Badlands. Joe and Jack, filling the power vacuum left by the decampment of native Chinese crime lords, collaborate on a venue called Farren’s, “the biggest, fanciest, richest nightclub and casino Shanghai has ever seen.” And from there they reign over the city’s reconstituted underworld — until war and Jack’s criminal past catch up with them, bringing the pair down along with the bad old Shanghai they have helped to build.

然而，他們的重大轉(zhuǎn)機(jī)出現(xiàn)于1937年，當(dāng)時(shí)日本侵略上海，改變了這座遭到圍困城市的罪惡地理形態(tài)。租界被隔絕開來，將這座城市主要的犯罪地區(qū)轉(zhuǎn)移到了附近一個(gè)地區(qū)，這里立刻就被稱為“歹土”(Badlands)。喬和杰克填補(bǔ)了中國犯罪頭子逃走留下的權(quán)力真空，在一個(gè)名為“法倫家”(Farren’s)的場所開始合作，“這是上海有過的最大、最時(shí)髦、最有錢的夜總會(huì)和賭場”。從那里，他們統(tǒng)治了這個(gè)城市重新構(gòu)建起來的黑社會(huì)——直到戰(zhàn)爭和杰克的犯罪歷史讓兩人和他們一起幫助建立起來的罪惡舊上?？迮_(tái)。

French, the author of “Midnight in Peking,” recounts all of this with great energy and brio. He writes in the knowing, slang-filled idiom of Shanghai’s Shopping News, a gossipy English-language newspaper he quotes repeatedly throughout. And if the book is never quite as engrossing or entertaining as it should be, it is at least atmospheric enough to keep one turning pages. After all, it’s hard to go wrong with dope, decadence and the demimonde. This may be Shanghai as seen through a cinematic Western lens, but there are few more fascinating places — in fiction or in fact.

法拉奇也是《午夜北平》(Midnight in Peking)一書的作者，他以極大的精力和活潑的文筆重述了這一切。他以英文八卦報(bào)紙《上海購物新聞》(Shanghai’s Shopping News)心照不宣、滿是俚語的風(fēng)格進(jìn)行寫作，書中他也多次引用該報(bào)的內(nèi)容。如果這本書不像它應(yīng)該的那樣引人入勝或是有趣，它書中的氛圍至少能讓你一直讀下去。畢竟，毒品、墮落和風(fēng)月場很難讓人覺得無聊。這可能是人們通過西方電影化鏡頭看到的上海，但很少有比上海更吸引人的地方——無論是在小說還是在現(xiàn)實(shí)中。