Take These Priceless Family Pearls, Foul American Reporter, And Stuff Them Down Your Nose One by One

A thrilling yarn from the days they paid me to write.

The inscription, from the real M. Butterfly, reads: “Mme. Joyce, I think of you and hope we will be friends forever.” Then he sued to stop publication of my book.

I came across an old pearl bracelet the other day. It was given to me thirty-five years ago by Shi Pei Pu, the most notorious seductress of the 20^th century. Or should I call him a seducer? There was some well-planned confusion about this. Shi Pei Pu was a man; a Chinese opera singer who, on the cusp of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, convinced a naïve young clerk in the French Embassy in Beijing named Bernard Boursicot that he was a woman and entrapped him into becoming a spy. He also gave Bernard a son.

Did one of my erudite readers just yell, “M. Butterfly”?

Right you are, it was the case that inspired the Broadway play, “M. Butterfly” and later, a film starring Jeremy Irons. I also spent three years writing a book about it, titled “Liaison”.   

But I am, once again, getting ahead of myself and I shouldn’t, because this was the most fascinating story of my life.  I spent months with Bernard Boursicot, who was funny and frank and far more open than Shi Pei Pu — well, an underground bank vault was more open than Pei Pu; I interviewed over 100 people; I read the reports of the French secret police.

And of course, through it all, I struggled with the sobering question about the Chinese opera singer that haunted me and everyone else who saw the play:  But how did he hide the salami?

Is everybody aboard The Way Back Machine? Have you fastened your seat belts? Vroom! Woosh!  Here we are at the Time-Life Building in 1988.  There’s the room at People Magazine where they print money. There’s Joyce, a staff writer. My God, she’s a brunette! She’s walking into the office of the editor. What’s that she saying? The audio, not to mention the accuracy, is muddled when you time travel thirty-five years, but the gist goes something like this.  

“Hey, Chief, I just saw a play about a Chinese guy who entraps a French diplomat into becoming a spy by pretending he’s a woman and I want to go to Paris, though I speak neither French nor Chinese, and get that story.”

“Sure, Joyce, just go to the money room and grab yourself a big sack. And make sure to find out how the Chinese guy hid the salami.”

Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that.

Shi Pei Pu, through his lawyer, is demanding to be paid for his story, which respectable publications do not do and their down-and-dirty brethren firmly deny doing. (It’s like certain sex acts, you have to pretend, when the subject comes up, to be shocked.)  Pei Pu may claim not to speak English, but he knows his way around American lawyers – he and Bernard Boursicot have already managed to find the toughest showbiz lawyer in New York and get a percentage of the Broadway show. Pei Pu also wants People Magazine to arrange for him to perform on American television, which should be doable as they are about to launch a show.

Bernard Boursicot, who is no longer romantically involved with Shi Pei Pu, also presents a problem: He is traveling in Morocco, where exactly, no one knows.

But I do have that big bag of money, so off I go with a photographer to Paris, checking into the Lancaster Hotel, where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor shacked up.   

Shi, from the moment I meet him, is maddening. He arrives for our first meeting late, with a retinue of protective friends. He’s dressed in a conservative blue blazer and trousers, but he somehow gives the impression of a fragile, exiled princess – within moments we’re tiptoeing around him, as if he’s some delicate objet which might break. He refuses for nearly a week to discuss the spy case or the love story though, as is the case with scorned lovers, he’s eager for news about the Frenchman, ideally bad.

“How is Bernard?” Pei Pu asks. “Still drinking?”

Pei Pu’s preferred subject is his youth in the opera, where, he claims, he was a great star, though neither I, nor the crack researchers at People, have seen any evidence of this. Pei Pu, when he met Bernard, was teaching Chinese at the French embassy. And Chinese Opera is not what the readers of People Magazine are clamoring to hear about.

The People crew at the Lancaster Hotel, meanwhile, has swollen to include a TV producer, their reporter, a cinematographer, a sound guy, and a translator. The magazine’s editors are not adverse to throwing around money. When they need photos from London or Paris fast, they dispatch a clerk from the bureau to New York on the Concorde. Then they use the Concorde to send them back. But this level of spending is making them anxious. I am getting calls from the editor, which involve but one question:

Did he tell you yet how he hid the salami?

Nearly a week in, Pei Pu finally starts talking about the love affair with Bernard. He tells me how they had to keep it secret because contact between Chinese and Westerners during the Cultural Revolution was a crime that could end in being sent to a labor camp or death. He breaks down and weeps as he tells me that he and Bernard were so in love that they would sit on benches on either side of Chang’an Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in Beijing, and stare at one another for hours.  He denies that he ever told Bernard he was a woman or spied for the Chinese government. The mysterious child, Shi Du Du, who I meet and who resembles Bernard, was, Pei Pu says, simply adopted.

But the whereabout of the salami?

I cannot get Pei Pu anywhere near the subject of sex. Repeatedly circling back to it is annoying him, although Shi is always polite in what I decide is a particularly Chinese/French way: The tone of voice says, “Will this woman never go away and die?”, while the mouth says, “More tea?”

Finding a space Pei Pu deems appropriate for his American television debut is a nightmare though happily, not mine. Pei Pu considers the first venue, a hotel ballroom, too small and ends up in the town hall in Versailles. He demands more money for his musicians.

But finally, the big moment comes, before an audience of Pei Pu’s guests. I cannot tell you whether Pei Pu performed as a male or female character. I cannot tell you whether he was any good. I have no ear for Chinese opera; to me, it’s a particularly vindictive cat, scratching at a window.

After the performance, however, Pei Pu is giddy with the attention and applause. He has also, I am surprised to find out, only just learned how much money his lawyer has managed to extract from People Magazine, a figure I would be delighted to share with you if I knew. Pei Pu is overwhelmed. He comes to my hotel room to thank me, presenting me with a long string of pearls which, he says, belonged to his grandmother.

You remember that I told you that respectable news organizations do not pay for stories?  

Respectable reporters do not accept expensive gifts. The cap at the outfits I had worked for was $25. A string of antique pearls is obviously out of the question. There is a great deal of flowery back and forth between me and Pei Pu through the translator, which, with subtext, go something like this.

Me: “No, no, no, no, I could not possibly. Especially because you have not yet told me how you hid the salami, you devious little snake.”

Shi Pei Pu: “Yes, yes, yes, you must. After all, it was you, cher Madame, who got me on American television. I don’t suppose you happen to know Barbara Walters?”

Finally, the translator, in a private aside, says: “You must accept. If you do not, it will be a great insult.”

I take the pearls, figuring that one day when Shi Du Du gets married, I will return them as a gift for his wife. When it comes to flowery scenarios, I take a back seat to no one.

I put the pearls away and write my book, with which neither Pei Pu nor Du Du cooperate. Pei Pu later sues and stops publication in France. I later write his obituary for The New York Times.

Then, one day, when I am taking some jewelry to a shop to be repaired, I remember the pearls and take them along to be assessed.

“Tell me these are worth less than $25,” I say.

The jeweler glances at the pearls.

“They’re not only fakes, they’re very bad fakes,” he says.

I have the pearls made into a bracelet. It’s not a very good bracelet, it tends to fray, and I exile it to the back of a drawer.  But this week, putting together an outfit for Halloween, I find it and I laugh.  It’s a masquerade party. The Pei Pu Pearls will be perfect.

The Pei Pu Pearls. And if you bums would just pay for a subscription, I could afford to have them properly strung.