White Shanghai

by Elvira Baryakina

  “We didn’t welcome him,” he said. “The fruit works in a bank, and I wouldn’t advise him to marry a refugee. He’ll probably end up getting fired.”

  “Oh really?” Mrs. Wayer squinted her eyes.

  “Well, marrying a Russian, even a very pretty one, is like marrying a Chinese. But, who knows? If she forgets her language and stops seeing her old friends—”

  “Ada, please, come here!” shouted Lissie.

  Ada stood up with her head hung low.

  “Tell Mr. Wayer he’s an idiot. C’mon, don’t be shy! Let him know that he has no right to insult you and your nation.”

  Robert looked lost. “Lissie, I…I didn’t—”

  “Apologize! Now!” she roared. “Or, I swear, I won’t ever sit at the table with you again.”

  Wayer apologized and fled to his office.

  “Stop sobbing, Ada!” Lissie ordered, still fuming. “It’s disgusting what these monkeys do in their clubs.”

  Ada hid her face in her palms. “I know…to be white and poor is an unthinkable combination. But what can I do?”

  “My friend, Henrietta, has a Russian nanny,” Brittany dared to intervene. “Her hair has two colors: very orange at the ends and very gray near the head. Horrible, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t!” Lissie cut her off. “Your mother used to be poor. And it’s not a woman’s fault that she can earn her living only by being a nanny or teaching. Those, like your daddy, don’t consider us equal. You are either of the wrong sex, wrong nationality, wrong look. … So, Miss, remember, once and for all: in this house, I won’t have any chauvinistic ideas.”

  “Chau…what?”

  Brittany took a soap wrap and put it in her nostril. “Look, Miss Ada, I have blue boogies!”

  “Give it here! Enough bathing, get out.”

  The floor was covered in puddles: as usual Brittany splashed water everywhere.

  “Look! I have horns!” Her wet locks stuck out in all directions. “I’m a drrragon!”

  Brittany finally left the bath and rode Ada to the bedroom. “I’m not going to sleep until you tell me about…what was that Russian witch called? Baba... eh…”

  “Baba-Yaga.”

  “That’s right.”

  Brittany told everyone that Ada was not only her governess, but also a storyteller.

  Ada the Storyteller—that’s the job title I’ve got, Ada thought ironically.

  “I don’t like the stories Hobu tells me,” Brittany would say. “All her tales are about how hard it is for poor people and how they get their heads chopped off. But Russian Baba-Yaga is a good one. Tell me more. Let her be very, very kind and give children real apples—not scald them with boiling water.”

  2.

  The Wayers’ chauffer dropped Ada and Brittany near the Public Garden’s gates.

  “I don’t want to go there,” whispered Brittany. “Not for anything!”

  Ada groaned: every walk they went on started like this. “But why?”

  “It’s boring in the park!”

  “And where is it not boring?”

  Brittany cast a glance at Ada. “Can you keep a secret? If you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll show you a great place. Hobu and I disobey Mommy because Hobu’s feet are bound, and she doesn’t like strolling in the park.”

  Brittany told Ada to hail a rickshaw. When he pulled up, Brittany spoke to him in Shanghainese. The rickshaw boy looked impressed: How can this white child know the local dialect? But he didn’t ponder for long, picked up the tills of his cart, and scurried towards the French Bund.

  They arrived in the Old City District with its bendy streets and single-story dwellings. There were street sellers sitting on every porch. Looking around apprehensively, Ada followed Brittany; the locals watching them like they’d seen spirits from a different world. A scrawny dog ran after them, yapping.

  “I know everything in the Old City,” boasted Brittany. “Hobu’s relatives live here, and she took me to her sister’s almost every day. Her husband is so stupid: he smokes opium and lies in bed all day. To make a living, she fixes clothes for the coolies, because they don’t know how to do it themselves.”

  “And what did you do?” asked Ada, still struggling to believe what she was hearing.

  “Playing, of course! Hobu’s sister has seven boys and three girls. Hobu would change my clothes, so that I won’t get dirt on my dress, and we would run through the streets. But, please don’t tell Mom, or she’ll scald me with boiling water.”

  There was a school behind a tall fence. A crowd of loud boys played inside, and just outside, there were the sweet sellers, sword swallowers and snake charmers waiting.

  “It’s a good place for them to make some coppers. Kids who study have money,” explained Brittany. “Wow! Look! That man is kissing a cobra!”

  “Brittany, please, can we go back?” begged Ada.

  “Wait, I’ll just show you this boy,” Brittany beamed. “Xiao Seng! Xiao Seng!”

  A young, shaven-headed monk sat under the monastery wall. He turned his face, and Ada lost the power of speech: the boy was white— with a snub-nose, light eyelashes and blue eyes. He was about fifteen or sixteen years old. In front of him was a low table with writing utensils.

  Brittany talked to him in Shanghainese.

  “Miss Ada, do you know who Xiao Seng is? He is a calligraphist and a fortune teller,” Brittany announced and then said something to the boy.

  He looked at Ada softly and drew a Chinese character on a little piece of paper.

  Brittany gave it to Ada. “Here, it’s for you, for happiness. Xiao Seng said that you’re beautiful—like me.”

  Ada pressed her palm to her lips in disbelief. “Oh my God,” she whispered in Russian.

  “Are you from Russia?” asked the boy.

  3.

  For the remainder of the night, Ada was not herself: she cut her finger cooking, almost dropped an iron full of embers on Father Seraphim’s foot, and, to top it all off, splashed water from a bucket down the stairs.

  Klim fetched a cloth for her. “What’s going on?”

  Ada told him about the young monk from the Old City who was Russian. The boy had almost forgotten his native tongue and considered himself Chinese.

  “He believes in idols,” exclaimed Ada, swinging the wet cloth. “And tells fortunes. I saw it with my own eyes: people come to him, and he reads their palms.”

  Klim thoughtfully scratched his unshaven cheek. “How did he happen to be there?”

  “I have no idea. I asked him, but he doesn’t know anything about the Great War or the revolution.”

  “Take me to him.”

  “Are you not scared? Maybe he’ll foretell that plagues are coming?”

  Klim shook his head. “He must foretell me an article for the fourth page. Otherwise we won’t be able to pay the rent.”

  CHAPTER 21

  THE LITTLE MONK

  1.

  What was his name back then? Mitya. But everything that had happened before the Great Battle had been almost erased from his memory. Though, sometimes at night, images would come as if they were from his previous incarnation.

  There was a house: three windows at the front, with carved blue frames. Mother liked the patterns: every kitchen towel would have a rooster cross-stitched; an oven was also decorated with colorful designs. When Mitya was small, he liked to play with his Mother’s painted flowers on the oven. If you looked straight, it was a plant, but if you turned your head a bit and squinted your eyes, then you could almost see someone’s face.

  In the backyard, there was a goat, a gray one. A dog, chicken, a pile of firewood stacked at the fence—it had a special smell. Hard to describe, but a very good one. Mitya would hide behind the wood stack and wait, squatting, as Mother looked for him. She would come out on a porch and cry out, “Mitya, sweetheart, dinner time!”

  And he would sit with his ears pricked up, playing with dirt and a chip of wood, listening for more calls.

&
nbsp; “Mitya, darling, where are you?” Sitting still.

  “Mitya, little rascal, I’m fetching a whip now!”

  This was the time to get out or Mother could get really angry. She would scold him, then throw him over her shoulder and say in a manly voice, “A ram for sale! A ram for sale, anyone?”

  He would roar with laughter, slide from her shoulder and cling to her dress. She would kiss his nose, saying, “No more games.”

  It was always exciting when Father and big brother Andrey returned from the taiga. They would hang their rifles on the wall, unwrap their footcloths, laugh and talk about the animals they had seen. On a bench, they would sometimes put plucked birds or a hare, or on rare occasions—a little boar. Touching its rough fur fascinated Mitya.

  Then came the Great Battle. Father ordered them to flee the village that night—otherwise bad things would happen. With his eyes closed, Mitya could remember the scene: the sleigh runners creaking loudly, gunfire and screams.

  What happened next, Mitya recalled from the words of his Master, Song. The Master said he found an unusual boy in the taiga—with yellow hair and blue eyes. The boy couldn’t speak, only moo, and was as skinny as a badger in spring.

  Song brought the boy to his monastery where Mitya lived with the novices. They gave him a different name, Xiao Seng.

  There were six people in the monastery: Song—the senior priest superior, Liang—the second in power, three novices and the youngest— Xiao Seng.

  Liang would wake up very early before dawn; he would strike the wooden fish and sing prayers. The routine was set: a morning prayer, then obedience and again a prayer. These prayers were completely different from Mother’s. Master Song did everything in a different way: they would eat with sticks and meditate on the Three Treasures: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Mitya even had to learn to breathe again and many other things: to speak, to write, to understand scholarly texts, to palm read and tell fortunes using sticks in a bamboo cup.

  Sometimes, Master Song would speak of his life. He studied sciences in Shanghai, but became disillusioned and decided to be a monk and establish a monastery in the far north taiga. All Song’s followers were his relatives.

  One day, a man appeared at the cloister—very sick with a burning fever. Master Song treated him with his potions and the man recovered. But the disease spread to the monks and all of them died.

  “Go to Shanghai,” the Master said to Xiao Seng before his death. “Look for a teacher. There are a lot of worthy wise people.”

  Xiao Seng stayed in the monastery for a while by himself. It was difficult to leave that place—so dear to him. He had grown up within these walls and learned wisdom there. One night Master Song came to Xiao Seng in his dream and repeated his order, “Go to Shanghai.”

  Xiao Seng put on his sandals, took a walking stick and left.

  2.

  Klim and Lissie Wayer were drinking iced tea at Edna’s house, chatting about Edna’s trip to Qingdao, a town that used to be a wealthy German colony.

  A ventilator gently moved the bamboo shutters of a high window, but hardly helped with the heat from the scorching street.

  “It was a real low blow to expel the Germans from China,” Edna said, her eyes and teeth glistening in the dim light. “I understand when it’s about war, when the enemy should be deprived of all its concessions, but Germans were deported from here after the peace treaty was signed. It was an obvious ploy to grab their businesses. During the Spanish Flu pandemic, German doctors were not allowed to treat the sick and our patriotic doctors refused to see German nationals.”

  Mrs. Wayer didn’t believe her. “Who told you that?”

  “Daniel did. The British and the Americans turned a blind eye to it and let thousands of people die right in front of them. Daniel says we nursed the rebellious government of Sun Yat-sen ourselves. This man traveled the world trying to convince people that China is a huge sales market, with a quarter of the Earth’s population. Let us recover, don’t play us off against each other, and let us live in peace for at least ten years. Only the Germans believed him and gave him money to create a new government in Canton. But Germany lost the Great War and what do we have now? The Japanese grab Qingdao and step by step they’ll lay their hands on all of northern China. Sun Yat-sen is now with the Bolsheviks who were the only ones offering help.”

  “That’s not true,” snorted Mrs. Wayer. “Where did you get this rubbish from?”

  “Daniel told me.”

  Even though Edna and Lissie tried to keep the appearance of being on friendly terms, it was obvious that the sisters didn’t see eye to eye. Edna told Klim it was because of their childhood rivalry. She always wanted to be the first in everything and took pleasure in winning over Lissie without taking into consideration that beating someone two years younger wasn’t really fair.

  Their mother encouraged Edna: she preferred older children as she could do more with them. And on it went, all praises fell on Edna, and Lissie only received reproaches and instructions: “Look up to your sister!”

  As the two girls grew up, Edna became willing to befriend Lissie, but the damage was already done and she was largely distrusted. Sometimes it seemed to her that Lissie was hopeless: careless, vain and superstitious. She surrounded herself with people that made Edna aghast. It was almost impossible to lure her into decent company. “I’m not going to sit with your nerdy heads. I’ll die from boredom,” Lissie would say.

  “She’s not stupid. Not stupid at all,” Edna would exclaim. “She’s just like a hedgehog, sticking out her bristles at the first sight of something unfamiliar.”

  Edna often tried to interest her sister in something. That was the reason she started this conversation about politics.

  It annoyed Klim to see Edna dragging her sister to happiness. The result was always the same: when Mrs. Wayer rejected her sister’s offerings, Edna was left puzzled and frustrated. “Lissie just doesn’t care for anything!”

  To Klim, Lissie was a strange mixture of physical beauty and snappy rudeness. Her honesty was disarming and in total contrast to Edna, who would always smooth edges and avoid conflict.

  “In truth, Edna is very weak,” Lissie said to Klim after he witnessed one of their tiffs. “She gets on her high horse when she knows first prize is hers, but one failure would kill her.”

  “Why do you think so?” Klim asked, surprised.

  “Did you notice she always wears her bracelets? You know why? When she was thirteen she failed an exam and slashed her wrists. The doctors almost lost her.”

  After this conversation, Klim looked at Edna with different eyes. It was true: she did exaggerate the importance of success and therein lay her only flaw. But what did that matter? She was respected and loved by everyone; the editor-in-chief of the North China Daily News, Mr. Green, was besotted with her.

  Though, there was one person who, Klim believed, felt something else towards Edna—her husband. Klim couldn’t explain why he had such strong negative feelings towards Mr. Bernard. Probably, it had something to do with Nina’s unhealthy interest in the man. Klim didn’t know if anything had happened between them, but whenever he thought of the culprit’s aristocratic mug, he was sure something unsavory was going on in his life.

  Shouts and brittle strikes of wood on wood came from outside. Edna lifted the shutters. On the lawn, Mr. Bernard, dressed in a wide-sleeved jacket and short pants, was attacking a gray-bearded Chinese with a long stick. The old man deftly fought back: several times Daniel was hit on the head with a bamboo stick. Finally he was knocked out with a direct hit to the solar plexus.

  Edna winced, watching her husband on the ground sucking air into his chest. “He’s crazy. Why does he allow himself to be beaten like that?” The elder said something instructive. Mr. Bernard nodded, picking himself up, and put on a brave face.

  Klim was about to joke to Edna that she should sell tickets to see the show, but decided not to.

  “You’ve written about a white fortune-teller in yo
ur last article,” mentioned Lissie. “I’d like to meet him. And not just me—all the ladies from the Columbia Club.”

  “Xiao Seng doesn’t speak English,” Klim answered. “Only Shanghainese and Russian.”

  “Can you translate for us?”

  “Sure,” Klim shrugged.

  3.

  Klim and Mitya, also known as Xiao Seng, walked through the splendor of the Columbia Club. Gardeners in wide-brimmed hats were trimming trees. At the entrance to the foyer, there were brochures explaining to guests about the Club: its swimming pool, tennis courts, restaurant, reading hall and so on—everything that could be of interest to the modern lady.

  Women everywhere: some dressed in short tennis skirts, others— in plushy bathrobes or in provocative swimming suits exposing their bare backs and sun-tanned legs. Klim was struggling not to roar with laughter at Mitya, who was totally awestruck by these sights.

  The deck was wrapped in ivy. Tall wine glasses, silver dishes and plates decorated with the Club’s monograms lay on tables. Lissie, surrounded by other ladies, reclined on a sofa. All the women had wet hair from their recent swim in the pool. A waiter poured each of them iced water with lemon.

  “Russian girls are breaking British families apart,” one of the ladies grumbled. “If those women had their own country, the English would undoubtedly have declared war on it. Last week at the British Club, they were gathering signatures to expel all Russians from China. The reason—low moral virtues.”

  “Then British husbands should be expelled too,” Lissie smiled. “Their virtues are far from soaring either.”

  The ladies laughed. Lissie stood up to meet Klim and Mitya. “Here’s our surprise.”

  Mitya was seated at the table and asked again to repeat his life story with Klim translating. The ladies kept pushing money over to the poor youngster. When it was time for dinner, Mitya took a bamboo flask and a rice flatbread from his sack. The ladies melted again and told the waiter to bring all the best dishes.

  The fortune-teller and translator worked the room diligently, keeping the ladies’ hands busy. Mitya was examining each of their palms: “Serious illness, probably a wound. Money loss.”