by Emily Hahn
Jean was a liar too, but she was a different sort, much less common. She just loved lying for its own sake. She probably lied to me the day she came to tell me her sad story, but perhaps not. You never knew with Jean when the mood would take her to spin tales. The tale she recounted that afternoon over the coffee cups was a simple and pathetic little one, and I think it was true.
For many reasons which are easily understood, Jean was afraid of most women. The prostitutes she knew didn’t frighten her, but they weren’t good friends. They were too much out for themselves. Also Deedee didn’t like her knowing them; he was afraid they would try to keep her from going straight and he was probably right, because, said Jean, there weren’t enough girls in the business now, the war kept new ones from coming to China, and a lot of madames were eager to persuade her to work for them. Deedee wanted Jean to keep away from that crowd. She didn’t, as he pointed out, need the money any more; he was looking after her. It was time that Jean made other friends, from a different social circle. Deedee wanted her to be a good girl, and happy.
I think he had philanthropic hopes of doing the right thing by Jean, but by proxy. He couldn’t marry her himself. His family had made that very clear, and he could see for himself that it wouldn’t work out, not in a small place like Shanghai, his own home town. But he did love her quite unselfishly, and he wondered sometimes, and asked me in his inarticulate way, if it wouldn’t be possible to educate his little Jean and fix her up until someone else married her. What did I think?
I thought that anything was possible in Shanghai, especially a marriage like that. It had happened before, often. From Jean’s rambling stories it seemed that the biggest obstacle to the plan was herself. She was hopelessly sentimental, always falling in love with men who couldn’t or wouldn’t marry her, and when there were no men around for Jean to ruin herself for she fell in love with women. She had just made a mess of her affairs for the hundredth time by doing both. First she had indulged herself in an unhappiness over the newspaperman with whom I had seen her dancing.
“He asked me to help him get ready to go away,” she recounted. “There I was with my heart breaking because I never would see him again. And because he said I ought to, I started to study at business college, and I was having an awful time with that terrible shorthand, and he kept telling me how much better a life it would be than I had before, working as somebody’s secretary and finally marrying a clerk if I was very good. … And there he was, spending hundreds of dollars on rotten old curios to take home with him, all the while he was talking. So I went home and took poison. I often do. Veronal.”
The newspaperman was flattered that such a beautiful girl had tried to kill herself for love of him. (Did I say that Jean was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen?) He was so pleased, in fact, that after she had recovered a little he was very devoted, putting off his departure and bringing friends up to look at her, picturesque in the hospital. He paid the hospital bills, too: Deedee thought he should. He was so devoted that she stopped loving him. Jean was a consistent masochist.
Recovered in mind and body, she ventured out again and fell in love with a woman. This woman was not a prostitute but neither was she a member of the protected upper classes so desired by Deedee as a background for his protégée. We will call her Selma. Selma was one of those Russians you hear about in Shanghai: her morals were complicated by the fact that her desires were many and unconcentrated. She loved love. She was also ambitious socially. She had never ruined her social chances, such as they were — a Russian used to find it hard sledding in Shanghai at the best — but if you had wanted to you could have found out all sorts of things about her which wouldn’t sound well in a drawing room. Jean, fascinated by Selma, yet found satisfaction in this fact. She was jealous. Selma was invited out on parties which didn’t include Jean; she rubbed them in whenever she had a chance. Selma boasted of her successes (and lied about them) until it seemed to Jean that there was no justice in this world. Yes, she had been a bad girl and so it was only to be expected that people wouldn’t invite her to parties. She accepted that. But Selma had been a bad girl too, in a flaunting and really extraordinary fashion; why, then, was she invited to parties? Jean brooded.
They really have minds like flibbertigibbets, these girls.
One afternoon the peak of misery was reached for Jean. She had given up the business school thankfully, but now she was left without much to do except wait for Deedee, never a very stimulating companion, or for Selma to come and play with her. Selma had promised to spend Saturday afternoon with her. Selma dropped in at the last minute wearing silver foxes (Jean had no silver foxes) and beaming with pride.
“I’ve just dropped in for a moment, my dear,” she said. “I must fly. I’ve been invited to Sir Victor Sassoon’s box at the races and I must rush — simply rush. Be a good girl and wait here for me, and I’ll come and tell you all about it afterward. I did suggest to Sir Victor that he invite you, but — I don’t want to hurt your feelings, dear, but the fact is, he didn’t think it would be fair to his other guests. I mean, to introduce the ladies to a girl who — well, who used to be a prostitute. You understand, of course; I’m just terribly sorry. See you later.”
She fluttered out, and I’ve often wondered where she was really going. Jean sat and thought about it and thought about it, and then she took veronal again. “He called me a prostitute,” she explained to the puzzled doctor who brought the stomach pump. I dare say he was not only puzzled but exasperated. Doctors in Shanghai have to use stomach pumps a lot.
Jean told me all about it, and you can guess what happened. She moved into the back bedroom.
But I liked having her there. Except when she had bitchy streaks and tried hard to fight with anyone in sight — it was usually Deedee — she was a charming companion, and we soon set to work on a book, the story of her life. This entailed long conversations about everyone in town who had ever visited her at Louise’s, the high-priced house where she had spent two years of her professional life. Jean would come into my room in the morning after I came home from school; sitting on the bed in her dressing gown, she would tell me a story that she had thought of the night before. Sometimes it was true and sometimes it obviously wasn’t, but it was always fun to listen to. I found out the most surprising things about a lot of acquaintances.
I think she enjoyed herself too. She wasn’t lonely any more, and yet she was living in a milieu of which Deedee approved and which did not preclude the possibility of being married someday. People who came to my house to dinner found an exquisitely pretty girl there, a girl who sat in the corner with her hands folded and looked frightened. When she was drawn out and talked, she used that childish accent that had puzzled me so much when we first met, but after a while everyone was used to Jean and she was used to everyone. There were awkward moments, of course. I could always tell when they were coming. Jean hung over the banister of an evening, watching the guests arrive; sometimes she rushed into my bedroom to whisper hoarsely, “That man downstairs — I know him!” I would say, “Well, never mind. Come on down,” and down we went, and I would duly note the start of surprise, the amazed expression on my guest’s face as I introduced him. I liked it. So did Jean, sitting demurely in her corner.
She lasted almost a year. She was there the afternoon Charles called on me with his letter of introduction from T’ien Hsia in Hong Kong. He often told about that visit, later on. He had noticed my book reviews in the magazine, which occasionally published historical treatises of his.
“I like this woman’s mind,” he announced one day to Wen. “Who is she? Where does she live?”
“Oh, that’s a very sad case,” said Wen. “She’s very nice, of course, but — well, as a matter of fact, she’s madly in love with my friend Zau Sinmay and he doesn’t care for her at all. Really pathetic, don’t you know.”
Charles said that he would still like to meet me when he went to Shanghai, as he intended doing shortly, and Wen didn’t like t
hat. He was jealous of his real Englishman, now that he had come home after so many years in the Orient among Orientals. “She’s terribly American,” he objected tentatively.
It was Chuan Tsen-kuo who told Charles where to find me and gave him a card. Charles dropped in about tea time one day and handed the card over to Chin Lien, and was told to wait in the downstairs living room. I was upstairs with Jean and Sinmay.
“Blast,” I said as Chin Lien gave the card to me. “Some silly British captain from Hong Kong. They’ve gone mad about limeys at the T’ien Hsia office. Let him wait.”
Mr. Mills had heard the doorbell ring, and be now scrambled to the steps and pattered down to have a look. In the living room, Charles waited like a perfect gentleman.
“I heard someone on the steps, after a long time,” he told me a few years afterward, “and I turned around — I’d been looking at your books — and held out my hand, saying, ‘Oh, Miss Hahn?’ And an enormous ape came down, wearing a red cap. It wasn’t just what I was expecting. He swung around the curtains and stared at me until I was quite nervous, and then you came down looking rather blowzy — I’m sorry, Mickey, but you did; your dress was awful — and after that some blonde woman followed you up. Extraordinarily pretty she was. She sat in the corner and stared at me all the time I was speaking. It was nervous work.”
I noticed that the captain looked rather frightened, but I was accustomed to that reaction to Mr. Mills. I didn’t pay much attention. We had a drink. He told me that he liked my book reviews, which pleased me, and he said that he too was a writer. “In a way,” he explained. “I write big historical books, very dull.”
After a bit somebody else came to the front door, with another letter of introduction. It was a Russian-Czechoslovakian woman from India, who was interested in Indian dancing. She wanted to give a recital, she said, a dance recital, but she couldn’t find Indians for an orchestra. Did I know how to help her out?
“There must be plenty of musicians among the Indian police,” said Captain Boxer. “Why not phone the police commissioner and ask him to help you out?”
“That’s a wonderful idea. I’ll do it now,” said the lady gratefully. “May I use the phone?”
Charles, who was joking, looked startled. As it happened his suggestion was a fortunate and fruitful one, and six months later Shanghai saw the dance recital. Just then, however, his expression showed that he considered the whole establishment crazy. When I had introduced him to Sinmay he stayed just long enough to be polite, and then, as the door opened to admit yet another caller, he fled.
“I had been given to understand,” he told me when we were going over the history of the thing, “that you and Zau were actors in one of the great love stories of the world, so naturally I didn’t wish to intrude. I was rather sorry about it at that, blowzy as you were.”
“I remember,” I confessed, “that just for a fleeting second that afternoon I too felt a certain regret. ‘What a pity,’ I thought, ‘that I am involved in one of the world’s great love stories.’ … But it was very fleeting.”
So Charles went back to Hong Kong and married an English girl.
Chapter 12
I found out why Jean spoke such good Japanese. It is a crazy story and fortunately happens to be one of her true ones. She was born in Australia, and somehow or other when she was fifteen she was seen and coveted by the Japanese Prince Tokugawa. There are many Tokugawa descendants of the Shoguns who kept Japan under the family thumb back in the days when nobody was paying any attention to the Emperor. This one liked to travel in Europe.
Tokugawa was forty when he met Jean. I am not sure how it happened, because she is becomingly vague on the subject, but I think her mother or her guardian must have been delighted when he offered to take the girl off her hands. His daughter was Jean’s age, and Jean’s nominal job was that of companion to the little Princess. It was staggeringly romantic altogether. Jean, she assured me, was eager and happy to join the prince’s household. She liked him. This is no sob story of betrayed maidenhood. I have always had the impression that Jean regretted the loss of Tokugawa.
Her life was merry and luxurious for a long time. The Prince had the sinecure of Minister without Portfolio and with his daughter and her companion he traveled around the world a couple of times. Jean learned how to behave at diplomatic receptions, and how to dress, and how to keep her mouth shut. At home there were scenes sometimes. Tokugawa was jealous and so was Jean. He was accustomed to jealous domestic scenes; almost any Japanese gentleman is. He liked them. Jean says that he once threatened to kill her with a knife; she woke up to find him standing over her with the weapon, then he flung it into the corner and wept loudly.
“I cannot do it,” he wailed, “I cannot. You are too lovely.”
Her eyes shone when she told me about it.
It all came to an end, though, when the household returned to Japan. The Prince’s wife didn’t like Jean at all, and Tokugawa didn’t insist upon keeping her in the house. First she was farmed out to live in a geishaya, where she learned to dance geisha dances and to paint pretty pictures, and her Prince called on her there. But her noticeable blonde beauty attracted the unfavorable attention of the gendarmes, and she was sent out of the country without even saying good-by to the Prince. The gendarmes are like that — fiercely virtuous in fits and starts. They permitted her to take quite a lot of Tokugawa’s money with her, however, and Jean gave most of it away to an Italian with whom she fell in love in Shanghai during the following month. Her sentimental and financial adventures in the ensuing years are too many to recount here, but they whiled away many a morning for both of us, in retrospect.
I hold no brief for Jean’s politics, which are confused. The conquest by Japan of the territory around Shanghai excited and pleased her, and brought back vivid memories of happy old days, quarreling with her Prince. She was bright enough to realize that her own country and Japan would come to blows sooner or later, but she didn’t worry unduly about that. Lingering on the roadside instead of hurrying to cross the bridge, she met Bob Horiguchi, the half-Japanese newspaperman who worked for Domei, and found him attractive.
This affaire de cœur started while Jean was living with me. (Bob’s wife was away.) I didn’t like it and I told her so. Her morals, while not exactly her own affair, were not mine. It wasn’t that. I just didn’t want Mr. Yoshinori Horiguchi in my house. Jean understood my point of view; we had no hard words over it, but she didn’t want to give up Horiguchi. She thought of another plan. My house, she explained to Deedee, was too far away from town for her, now that she had once again decided to study at business college. Jean started learning shorthand on an average of four times a year, whenever some earnest young man had a good long talk with her and persuaded her to reform. Why it was necessary for Jean to be a secretary instead of some other kind of virtuous breadwinner in the busy treadmill of life I never understood. It must have had something to do with a movie she saw in one of her impressionable stages. Anyway, she was at it again, and Deedee let her move into a boardinghouse nearer town, where Horiguchi was free to take her out and to visit her at home.
There was another place where Jean might have met Japanese, now that so many were about, but I don’t think she did. This was Louise’s. Louise was one of the Shanghai characters that you don’t hear so much about. The good old days for houses of prostitution were over by the time I reached Shanghai, and though the Kiangse Road district still had its famous addresses, the glory had departed from the business. A hundred years ago, when the British first settled a city on the Whangpoo mud flats, the foundation was laid for a brisk trade between San Francisco and the China Coast. I am not now talking about the kind of white-slave traffic that brings to mind South America and hypodermic needles: the “business girls” who came to Shanghai usually started secondhand from the Barbary Coast and came quite willingly, under their own steam. They were hard-boiled. Their names still live in Shanghai annals, and at least one or two of the girls themselves
have married well and had settled down to happy old ages in the Orient until they were dislodged, like everyone else, by the war.
Some of the more righteous of our American statesmen out there, however, put a damper on the traffic a long time ago, and the old houses flourished no more, or used a different sort of bait for their clients. The personnel of the unsavory business before I left Shanghai consisted of Russian girls who were refugees from the Revolution or who were born in Harbin or Shanghai or Tientsin of parents who had escaped.
Jean, before leaving my house, took me to meet Louise. Louise was a large fat woman, a Canadian who had formerly been a trained nurse. Her place was reputed to be more expensive than the others, and it had a large clientele among the Chinese bankers who preferred white girls to their own kind. I can’t understand such a preference, but the Chinese, like other people, follow the fashion in these matters, and for a while Louise’s was the fad. Jean had been a great favorite of the bankers. They pitied her and made a pool to get her out of Louise’s and into a little apartment where she could go straight. They paid the tuition, too, at business college. But that was a long time ago. Since then Jean had not stayed with Louise.
Telling me about it, she grew a little nostalgic for the old days, and decided to take me to see the place for myself. I was quite willing, but my first plan, to go there simply as a friend of Jean’s and to be introduced and spend a few minutes in chatting politely, was not met with favor. Jean always preferred telling a lie if it was a good one. She telephoned Louise and told her that she was bringing a friend to meet her who was down on her luck, an American girl married to a Chinese student who had forsaken her in Shanghai. My name for the purposes of the call was Mrs. Wong.
It was an idiotic idea, and if I hadn’t fallen into the habit of indulging Jean like the child she was I wouldn’t have done it. Jean had a lot of fun dressing me up. She made me wear slinky black, with a large hat and plenty of eye shadow. And so we set out for Louise’s. I parked the car at some distance from her house, “where everyone always does,” explained Jean, pointing it out.
