White Shanghai

by Elvira Baryakina

  He wanted to sell the family house and immediately return to Argentina—a mere dream! He took a fancy to a certain young widow instead.

  The provincial cream of society had tolerated Nina for as long as Count Odintsov was alive, but after his death, they literally kicked her out: “Madame, go and be with your own kind!” It was a blow from which she barely recovered.

  The profits from the Count’s lands kept shrinking; all the workers were at war. The thought of being left without means again made Nina sick. She forced herself into a relationship with a head of the Ration Committee. He helped her arrange shipments of tarpaulins for the army.

  Klim teased blushing Nina that she wanted to be a countess, not a lover of some profiteer and embezzler.

  “If you despise me so much, why do you keep coming to me?” she protested.

  Klim answered honestly, “I could look endlessly at water flowing, flames burning and others working. You are the perfect combination of all these.”

  When the revolution broke out, the head of the Ration Committee vanished along with all the public funds. But Klim remained to see Nina’s fate.

  Nina finally got what she wished for: she was recognized as a noble. The house on Grebeshok Hill was confiscated and all her possessions were claimed as the people’s property.

  Klim smuggled Nina out of the city. Drunken passengers in their train car spoke of the end of Russia. Nina and Klim were also intoxicated; she read Blok’s poetry, and he serenaded her with silly ditties from Buenos Aires, translating them into Russian to make her laugh.

  Remember when we trekked across Siberia to the Far East, all the way to Vladivostok? Outside—revolution and cannonade roaring, but inside was our spirit lamp and dry bread. We were happy just because we were together and alive, weren’t we? Remember how we slept with a single overcoat for the two of us, afraid to move unless we wake one another?

  Klim knew Nina loved him with all her heart, but then it all went horribly wrong.

  When was the last time she allowed him to kiss her? It was in Harbin, a Russian city on Chinese territory. They went out onto a platform, thrilled to finally be rid of the Bolsheviks. But then the military came and drove everybody back into the train: a plague was terrorizing the city; quarantine was in full effect.

  Nina was close to crying tears of rage. She had already devised a plan to start a business and get on her own feet again in Harbin. Klim held her close and lied about their bright future. She played her part and pretended to believe him.

  They had to go to Vladivostok. Their life there was like sitting on a barrel of gunpowder. The Japanese occupiers owned the city, but Red partisans ruled the outskirts.

  Klim felt that his wife distanced herself from him. She wanted a kind of man who, if baring his teeth, showed fangs, and not a smile. A man with a calculator in his head and hard cash in the soles of his shoes. This was the kind of man she respected now.

  Klim, however, was a journalist and wasn’t considering a career change. To him a job was much like food: if you were hungry, better to tough it out rather than stuff your belly full of refuse, getting food poisoning.

  “There was a Gypsy who trained his horse not to eat,” Nina said to Klim, hardly suppressing her fury. “He almost succeeded, except the horse croaked. I’m sorry, but I can’t live this way anymore.”

  It was just too hard on Nina: the war bereaved her of all her relatives, home and social status. She saw people shot in front of her eyes. She was once beaten by Red Army soldiers almost to her death.

  After years of wandering and misery, she became embittered so much that she couldn’t trust anymore, neither Klim nor anyone else. And Klim was unable to save her from self-destruction.

  In Gensan, he roamed the Korean street markets, checking out hair combs and earrings. He was imagining buying Nina this or that, guessing with a kind of sixth sense what would look best on her. An enjoyable but empty way to pass the time.

  Should I have done what she wanted? Signed up for counter-intelligence or whatever else she had in mind? Sorry, darling, but certain things are not for you to decide.

  Nina’s boots tore, so Klim spent his last dollar on a pair of ballet slippers, the only footwear available. She accepted the gift and thanked him. He helped her tie the ribbons around her thin ankles.

  Nina wore the ballet slippers for a whole month and was still wearing them when they boarded the ship. On the journey across the Sea of Japan, the fleet got caught in a violent storm. The bulkheads shook, people and things hurtled together.

  Klim struggled across the heaving decks to report to the captain that the lifeboat had been washed away. That was when he saw Nina standing by a porthole, frantically gripping the rail. She looked desperate, like an abandoned child.

  “Darling, how are you?”

  He tried to hug her, but she wouldn’t let him, staring daggers as if he were her worst enemy.

  What was it that made her hate him? Maybe it was Klim’s lack of plans for the future: he was always betting on chance.

  “Immigration? So what! I’ve been overseas, and see—not a scratch!” But Nina thought that Klim was placing the burden on her: she had to think of how to earn money and what to do next.

  Now Klim lay on banners beneath the table—a vanquished king. He was thirty-three years old and looked ahead to another forty or so years of musings, laughter and hope, all of it without Nina.

  Oh well, let her remain in Shanghai. Klim would move on to the Philippines or Argentina, or someplace else. It will be alright. Life will go on.

  3.

  A dilapidated sampan, a small Asian boat, rose and fell with the waves. Klim bent over the side of the ship.

  “Let’s trade,” he shouted to a decrepit Chinese fisherman. “I need to get to the city.”

  Klim could hardly remember the local dialect, Shanghainese. Without practice, the language began slipping out of his grasp.

  “What?” the old man cried back.

  “I need to go to Shanghai! I’ll trade you this Russian samovar. It makes tea!”

  Klim showed him a brass boiler with a tap he’d inherited from a deceased merchant.

  “Huh?”

  “Silly! Here, catch the rope ladder!”

  The Russian refugees had finally struck an agreement with the authorities and could come ashore, but their ships had to leave Chinese territorial waters.

  The hell with the Philippines, Klim decided. I’m better off here; maybe I’ll run into people I know.

  He tied the samovar to his backpack and began to descend the rope ladder.

  “Wait!” Above him appeared the face of a teenage girl with dark hair and tear-stained eyes. “Take me with you.”

  Klim jumped into the boat.

  “Can we take her with us?” he asked the fisherman.

  “Does she have a samovar, too?”

  Klim looked up. “How will you pay your way?”

  “I have American money.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  “Actually, I’ll keep the samovar,” Klim said to the old man. “We’ll pay with real money.”

  The girl wore a coat far too small for her age. Over her shoulder hung a folded red blanket. In one hand she held a ladies’ knapsack, in the other—a bundle of books.

  “What’s your name?” Klim asked.

  “Ada.”

  “And what are those books about?”

  The girl averted her eyes. “About pirates.”

  The boatman showed them a spot under a reed overhang. Ada threw a doubtful glance at the soiled mat on the floor of the sampan. She reached into her knapsack, pulled out a large handkerchief and, only after laying it out, did she take a seat.

  Klim finally remembered who the girl was. Her mother had died of pneumonia not too long ago.

  “Do you have any relatives?”

  “No. Well, yes…I have an aunt in America. Mother said I need to find her.”

  Another lost soul, thought Klim
.

  CHAPTER 2

  AN ORPHAN GIRL

  1.

  Ada used to have many names. In special moments, Mother called her Adelaida Raisa Marshall. Her home nickname was Raya, which sounded very similar to rai, paradise in Russian. Her father tenderly called her Pumpkin, a nickname he had at his childhood Texas ranch. Her grandma named her little bunny, the governess—my dear, and the cook and janitor—Little Miss.

  During the five years of war, Ada lost all her names and all her family. Her father arrived from America, contracted to an Izhevsk factory, got married and learned Russian. They murdered him on November 9, 1917, when the Soviets seized power in the city. He was a member of the bourgeoisie—the only reason Mother was given. Terrified with the revolution, the governess went back to England; the cook and janitor disappeared shortly after.

  A train carried Ada to the east. Hungry and scared, she and her grandma snuggled close to each other. But Mother didn’t fear anything: “Don’t be afraid, silly. I tell you, we’ll get through this!”

  Mother could be trusted: she knew everything and could do anything. She had told Ada about hundred-year-old cedars, about malachite and about the generations of revolutionaries who were sent to Siberia for their struggle with the tsars. She dragged into the train compartment a door with a plaque reading Station Master and carved wood shavings out of it with her little manicure scissors. She would make a fire in a bucket, and everyone would get warm. Ada still had those bent scissors in her knapsack.

  Grandma disappeared in Gensan: she went to the market and never came back. The people in the refugee camp whispered: “What can you expect of the old crone! She’s forgotten her way back.” Mother and Ada spent weeks searching for her.

  Mother was strong. She did not give up, even when the doctor said, “The lady won’t last long.” Mother was in agony and could not pronounce her daughter’s name: “Ade...Ade…Ade...”

  Then for a minute, she got better. “Don’t be afraid...I won’t die...”

  This was the first time Mother hadn’t kept her word. Women wrapped her in a sack. Father Seraphim arrived. “Who is the girl?” he asked.

  “Her name is Ada,” a distant voice said.

  The priest sighed, “Sorry about your mother, Ada.”

  Ada sounded very similar to ad, hell in Russian.

  Mother was thrown overboard. A damn scoundrel seaman said that they could not keep a dead body on the ship. The whole night, Ada sat on a life-jacket box staring blankly at the wall. She scratched paint with her nails, watching happy people run past. What a blessing—they had permission to go ashore.

  “Come with us, poor child,” called Father Seraphim.

  She didn’t respond.

  The next day Ada woke from the pain in her numb legs. She limped to the deck and suddenly realized she had to leave. Right now. Otherwise, she’d do something to herself.

  2.

  All these half-conscious days Ada thought: what to do? Where to go? Who with? She was angry for not going with Father Seraphim. Now she clung to Klim,

  a stranger. But he seemed to be kind enough to people in need.

  What should I call him? she wondered. Uncle, Mister or something else? I have to make sure he likes me, or he’ll chase me away.

  Klim wore a black jacket with frayed sleeves, and his cap resembled those worn by foreign reporters in Vladivostok. He was a strange type: dark-haired, disheveled, with wind-burned lips. A blue, moth-eaten scarf hung around his neck.

  I need a pretext to talk to him, she fretted. Oh Lord, please make him take me with him.

  As the sampan neared Shanghai, there were more and more boats around them. Ada took out her mother’s pince-nez, for books had made her eyesight poor. She leaned out of the sampan and discreetly put the spectacles on, hoping Klim would not notice the torn ribbon or the crack in the glass.

  A huge barge surged past, scattering smaller boats, which immediately closed ranks again in its wake. A toothless Chinese rower shoved a bloodstained fish into Ada’s face. Horrified, she pulled back, her pince-nez falling to the mat on the floor.

  Klim smiled at her discomfort. “What do you expect? It’s a port.”

  Mismatched houses lined low shores; billboards rose above the tiled roofs, with text in English: Smoke Great Wall Cigarettes! Tiger Balm Works Where It Hurts! Ada watched in awe all the smokestacks, factory buildings and warships.

  “Here is the Bund, the world famous waterfront,” Klim told her.

  Ada put on her pince-nez again. To hell with the cracked glass! Huge buildings emerged from the fog, competing in splendor. Ada had never seen anything like it before.

  The sampan docked. Ada’s heart thumped: would Klim take her with him or not?

  “Give me a dollar,” he said.

  She readily passed him the money. Klim waved the note in front of the old man’s nose, and they started haggling. The Chinese shook his head, but Klim did not relent until the old man grudgingly handed him the change.

  “Let’s go,” Klim said to Ada as he pocketed her coins.

  She ran after him. Thank God! He didn’t chase me away!

  “How much did he charge us?” she asked.

  “Twenty cents.”

  “So little?”

  “Everything here is cheap. But it’s hard to make money.”

  Ada barely managed to keep up with Klim’s quick strides as they passed tall European-style houses with shops on the first floor and apartments above. On the walls were flags with Chinese squiggles. Cars traveled on the left side of the road—not as in Russia. Rickshaw boys zigzagged between them, pulling carts like horses.

  What mayhem! Ada thought, bewildered.

  People were shouting, eating or dragging loads on wheelbarrows and shoulder-yokes. Men wore skirts and short jackets; only a few dressed sensibly in coats and hats. Beggars everywhere, each one uglier than the next, half-naked, blind or armless. The Chinese women walked with a strange gait. Ada looked through her pince-nez: God, have mercy on us! Almost all of the women had hooves instead of feet.

  “What’s wrong with them?” she asked Klim.

  “Here, all girls have their feet bound. Their toes are tied to their heels to prevent the feet from growing.”

  “Why?”

  “So, they can’t run away from their husbands.”

  Trams, horses, noise, stench, stampede.

  “Where are we going?” Ada moaned.

  “To a brothel.” She gasped. “What for?”

  “We need to find out what’s going on.”

  Should I run away? Ada looked around. A white woman was begging on the curb. She was from the same ship as Ada and Klim.

  3.

  Klim hammered on a flaky door for a few minutes. They waited outside a plain two-story, red brick house with a small yard. Eventually, someone peeked out of a high window, before quickly disappearing behind the curtain.

  “Martha, open the door,” shouted Klim in English.

  A rusted bicycle without wheels lay in the pile of litter; somebody’s drawers drooped on a line. Ada was about to enter a brothel.

  A blue eye appeared in a peephole, and a voice muttered, “Who is it?”

  “Martha, don’t you recognize me?”

  “Oh my God!”

  The door flew open and a petite, lusty woman with paper curlers in her hair threw her arms around Klim’s neck. What a dressing gown she wore! Never in her life had Ada seen such a dressing gown, with a dragon on the back and a fur-trimmed hem and sleeves. Even Martha’s slippers were incredible: high-heeled and covered in glass beads.

  Klim and Martha kissed each other. He held her hands. “What a beauty! Let me look at you.” The exclamations and embraces followed all over again.

  Martha was no beauty: a chubby forty-year-old face, a pear-shaped nose and bun-like lips.

  “Come on in! It’s cold out here,” she said.

  Ada followed Klim. Goodness gracious! she thought. The stairs were covered with carpets, and paintings
in golden frames hung on wallpapered walls. A chandelier with crystal pendants glistened brightly.

  The room upstairs was even more lavishly decorated. Martha motioned toward velvet armchairs. “Sit down, please. What has brought you here, Mr. Rogov? Where are you coming from—prison?”

  “From war.”

  “Decorated, I bet?”

  “Of course. The Order of the Legion of Refugees and the broken Purple Heart.”

  Klim asked Martha about some people they knew.

  Ada sat hugging her knapsack and books. So, this is what they’re like— brothels. I bet this green grand piano itself costs at least a thousand dollars.

  Oranges and cookies were on the table.

  Would Martha offer us some?

  “The world’s going to hell!” the mistress exclaimed. “I used to get a good price for a white girl, but now anyone can just go to the Russian Consulate and choose a sweetheart. They’re swarming over in great masses.”

  Klim chuckled. “Did the Russians ruin your business?”

  “I have half the clients I used to. Every wretched shop assistant behaves as if he’s a Rockefeller. All he needs to do is to drag a frightened little chick to a café, order a muffin, and the poor thing will be happy with her Prince Charming.”

  “I need a job,” said Klim. “I don’t have two pennies to rub together.”

  Martha shook her head. “It’s difficult with jobs now. The Chinese are ready to do anything for ten cents a day. And now we have your Russians. Only a nice-looking girl can get a job in certain establishments.”

  She glanced at Ada. “Who is she?”

  “Have no idea. Her name’s Ada. She has nowhere to go.”

  Martha watched Ada closely. “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “What’re you going to live on?”

  “I can teach English and French.”