White Shanghai

by Elvira Baryakina

  Klim translated, poker-faced, “Sound health, unexpected good news and an important letter.”

  The lady would sigh, “Ahhh, I thought so. …Thank you!”

  The women would bring their friends. Everyone was listening, smiling happily. Having finished with each client, Mitya took a long drink from his flask.

  “How strange,” he said to Klim. “Almost all of them have a sad future.

  Something will happen in Shanghai. White women are so different from the Chinese ones: they’re not afraid of fate.”

  Just before Mitya and Klim were ready to leave, Lissie asked, “Can you read my palm, too? But let’s go somewhere else. I don’t want the others to hear.”

  They snuck into the pool-room, where Lissie received her fortune: a death through violence from Mitya, and a passionate love from Klim.

  Lissie winced, “Who with, I wonder?”

  She had a husband, but he didn’t count.

  “Can you tell me about my business?” she inquired Mitya. “I would like to open a magazine for women, but I want everything there to be as good as in America, with fashion pictures and articles.”

  Klim nudged Mitya, “C’mon, tell her something good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Make an enlightened face and say, O-o-oh!”

  “O-o-oh...”

  Klim turned to Lissie, “Mrs. Wayer you’ll be very successful if you hire talented people.”

  Lissie hesitated. “Like you? Edna speaks highly of you.”

  “Well, more or less.”

  Lissie held out her hand. “I’ll think about it. And you’ll think about it, too.”

  At the exit, Klim and Mitya passed a Chinese janitor looking confused. A strange metal cylinder on wheels with a rubber tube like an elephant trunk lay at his feet.

  “What’s that?” Mitya asked.

  “A vacuum cleaner—to clean carpets,” the janitor answered. “It broke down again; my manager will kill me.”

  Mitya touched the brass side of the vacuum cleaner with his finger. “It’s going to be fine. I have a feeling.”

  4.

  Klim climbed the ladder and opened the hatch to his tiny room. “Welcome.”

  Mitya popped his head inside, scrutinizing Ada’s books, Seraphim’s rucksack and Martha’s dress hanging on a nail.

  “It’s a good place, but a hot one.”

  “I’ll open the window,” said Klim.

  He told the owner’s boy to get some food from the nearest tavern and started a samovar for tea.

  “Long in Shanghai?” he asked Mitya.

  “Two moons.”

  “And where do you live?”

  “There’s a good tree outside, it’s not hot in its shadow.”

  Klim took out the money the ladies gave him and counted half to Mitya. “If you listen to me, you’ll have money. You work with your face, I—with my brain, okay?”

  “What do you mean, work with a brain?”

  “I’ll teach you later.”

  The ladder squeaked under heavy steps, then the hatch flung open, breaking the bolt.

  “Ouch, for Christ’s sake, forgive me, people,” groaned Father Seraphim.

  He tried to fix the bolt, but couldn’t, and put it on the floor.

  “Let me introduce you to a representative of an adjoining faith,” said Klim, motioning towards Mitya.

  “What? A pagan?”

  “A Buddhist monk or a novice. … I haven’t got it clear myself yet. He’s from our people, from Russia. Arrived in Shanghai to look for a teacher . Maybe it’s you?”

  Father Seraphim took off his scull-cap and combed his hair with his fingers. “What kind of a teacher am I? Today, I went to the garage thinking they will give me a job to fix engines. The owner told me, ‘I’ll take you for a probation period. Here’s your first task’, spat on the floor and told me to wipe it.”

  “And where is he now? In a hospital?” Klim asked sympathetically.

  “Oh my arrogance…” moaned Father Seraphim grasping his head. “I rearranged his face.”

  Klim pushed him over a bowl with cooled noodles. “Here, have some.”

  Father Seraphim brushed it aside. “That’s the only thing I can do: eat other people’s food!”

  “Wrath is detrimental for your liver and that’s why your qi is compromised,” said Mitya.

  “What?”

  It again took Klim all his strength to not laugh. “Father, dear, don’t ask him about qi, you don’t need to know.”

  “No, let him tell me!”

  “It’s a holy spirit in your liver,” explained Mitya.

  Father turned to Klim, “Where did you find him?”

  “This boy is a special one,” Klim replied, barely suppressing his smile. “He tells fortunes and performs wonders of calligraphy.”

  “Of the evil one—” started Father fearsomely, but changed, “Why is he dawdling around? Let him show us wonders!”

  “Go to the Columbia Club on Great Western Road,” said Mitya, “and fix a vacuum cleaner for them.”

  “There you go—a wonder for you!” Klim said happily. “He’s right! By the way, they need a trouble-shooter maintenance man. I’ll write you a note in English, so you can explain who you are.”

  Seraphim rushed out. The hatch slammed, muffling his shout: “Thank you, I’ll remember your good deed!”

  CHAPTER 22

  A MAGAZINE FOR FLAPPER GIRLS

  1.

  Lissie came to Shanghai to hunt for a husband: the newspapers wrote that there were plenty of loaded bachelors in the foreign concessions and not enough decent young ladies to go around.

  Within a short time, she’d been introduced to Robert Wayer, the director of an insurance company. Robert fell head over heels with her and they were married. Two months into the marriage, Lissie made the unfortunate discovery that Robert didn’t have a penny at all. Everything belonged to his father, a real old bastard and the Deputy Police Commissioner. Lissie’s husband didn’t even manage the insurance company—all the work was done by a clever Chinese they’d hired.

  Six long years of marriage was complete drudgery to Lissie: she felt trapped with no escape. Robert lacked elegance; he had no idea about fashion, music or the arts. He danced so…oh, it would be better if he didn’t dance at all. But Lissie continued to smile—Edna, her mother and all her San Francisco friends had to believe she was utterly happy.

  If only they knew how eagerly she read the news about aristocratic divorces! She knew everything about family law in Great Britain and in the state of California. She greedily devoured novels about mysterious murders.

  But without her husband, Lissie would be left without means.

  Robert loved her—damn his love! In the beginning, he pestered her with his desires and this caused Lissie to become pregnant. Pregnancy, however, was a mixed blessing: now she had no more harassment from Robert for several months. Her labor had been so painful she dreaded even the thought of a second child.

  “Use condoms,” she demanded and handed a carton over to Robert. It had a label Happy Widows. Sold to prevent disease.

  He was dumbfounded. “Where did you get this crap? Did Francine mail it to you?”

  Lissie roared with laughter. “Francine is not stupid. It’s prohibited in the States to mail things or information connected with preventing pregnancy. They send you to jail for this. But, our legislators prefer not to know that every year millions of women are going for backstreet abortions just because of the lack of information on contraception.”

  Robert refused to listen. Hobu told Lissie he’d phoned a doctor to see whether his wife’s interest in this provocative topic was something unhealthy. After that Lissie told him to set up a separate bedroom for her. “When I was pregnant you were feeding your lust with prostitutes,” she said. “Carry on then.”

  If only he took the insult! If only Lissie could wage a fully-fledged war and hate the enemy—then she could consider herself a victim. But no, Robert
said he understood her feelings and he completely deserved her mistrust. From then on, he didn’t touch her—only devoured her with his eyes from a distance.

  Lissie knew that she was the one who rocked their family boat. But everyday hypocrisy and pretence drove her mad. Let it go to hell! The only thing that held her back was their daughter. Fat and ugly, she was born of an unloved husband and resembled him in every way.

  The biggest problem for Brittany was the fights between her parents. She reacted by getting sick, throwing tantrums and doing anything and everything to scare them into being together. It’s not her fault, Lissie thought, drawing a sketch of a little girl in her album. Even this girl resembled Lissie more than her own daughter.

  Because of Brittany, fights at the Wayers’ turned into partisan warfare. Robert’s father took every effort to bring up his son as a total bore and a conservative. Disregard of tradition sounded as wild to him as disregard to Great Britain or disregard to private property. Lissie made fun of all three. She put on lipstick in public, ridiculed the British accent and spent horrendous amounts of money. Robert didn’t have any idea that Lissie was in fact as stingy as a Chinese usurer. Her bridge losses and charity contributions were a mere pretext to change Shanghai dollars into American ones and lock them in her secret safe deposit box. Even some of the Wayers’ family jewels were taken out and replaced with fakes. Lissie knew that sooner or later her day would come and she would disappear from Shanghai without a trace.

  When there was a fair sum in her deposit box, she became worried: the money was sitting there without making any profit. Lissie didn’t know much about the stock-exchange and she didn’t risk going to brokers as they might disclose her secret. She tried placing bets on horse races, yachts or greyhound racing, but none of it worked out.

  The answer came, when Edna started working at the newspaper. Lissie suddenly became obsessed with the idea of owning a magazine. She had been writing since childhood, but was very embarrassed to show her stories to anyone. When she was fourteen, Edna discovered her diary and read it, correcting with a red pen all the orthographic mistakes.

  “Sweet, but a bit weak,” she said, returning the notebook to her sister.

  Lissie didn’t answer, feeling as if she had just been whipped.

  But now she had to get over her fears and begin the process. She would have enough money to start her magazine. But what if she goes out of business? Failure would mean every man and his dog would know that Mrs. Wayer had gone bankrupt. And what a pleasure that would be to her father-in-law!

  “My sweetheart, you’d have been better sticking to cross-stitching— far more useful,” he would say.

  Old Mr. Wayer detested Lissie as she was the only one who dared to tell him to go to hell.

  The prophesy from the white fortune-telling boy had given Lissie hope.

  “I’ll have my own magazine,” she kept saying, running around her bedroom with a notepad in her hand. On the first page, there was a plan of what was to be done.

  The first line read, “Get Klim Rogov.”

  2.

  Father Seraphim was offered the job at the Columbia Club as an electrician and maintenance man. At the beginning, he was very worried that he hadn’t received the bishop’s blessing to earn money. Every day, Father Seraphim thought about visiting him, but he kept finding a reason to postpone going. His wife, Matushka Natalia, was happy for the first time since their arrival in Shanghai. On his first payday, the Father bought her a cut of printed cotton for an apron.

  To be closer to his work, Father Seraphim rented a room on the outskirts. But he became bored on his own and kept visiting Klim. He would drink loads of tea and, for the tenth time, tell the story of when two deer ran out of the forest onto the club grounds and started to butt each other—what mayhem it was! The girls squealed and half of them jumped into the pool. Father Seraphim just managed to separate the bucks with a broom.

  Klim laughed at the story, and Mitya did not move, quietly sitting in the corner, meditating. Ada, as usual, hid behind the curtain: she couldn’t forgive Klim for bringing another lodger to their tiny abode.

  Sometimes she would yell at Mitya, “Pay for the room!” He would take his sack and shake out a few coins.

  “Almost three dollars,” Ada said, surprised. “Did you get that for calligraphy or fortune-telling?”

  “It’s alms,” replied Mitya. “Laypeople give me alms, so that I can completely devote myself to study and serving as a paragon of moral virtues.”

  “It’s his profession—to be a shining example,” smirked Ada. “Klim, he’s either sick or crazy. I’m not having this in my room!”

  But Klim replied that they all needed Mitya more than he needed them and that everyone should look up to him. “I haven’t seen a happier man in my life.”

  Klim was thoroughly pleased with the situation: he liked nothing better than the atmosphere of a theater cafeteria, where everyone would eat, drink and share impressions. To pacify Ada, he offered to buy more coal and clean the floors, but she responded by refusing to talk to him.

  “Too bad,” Klim said. “I, by the way, just became an eligible bachelor. I left the North China Daily News in scandalous fashion and became the new editor-in-chief of Flappers magazine.”

  The decision was not simple.

  Lissie Wayer told Edna about her grand plan to make a magazine and asked if she could employ Klim Rogov. Edna was of two minds. On one hand, she didn’t want to part with her protégé. She was sure that Mr. Green would make it extremely difficult for Klim if he decided to go. Her boss couldn’t stand turncoats.

  “Are you positive that people will want to read your magazine?” she asked her sister.

  “Yes, I am!” Lissie fumed. “Modern magazines arrive in Shanghai six weeks late and new ideas take at least a few years to take hold here. America and Europe are on the threshold of a new era: young women aren’t happy to be ornaments for males anymore.”

  On the other hand, it was a chance for Edna to finally make peace with her sister and help Lissie to find herself.

  They made all the calculations together, wrote out a schedule of publications and talked to distributors. Then Edna called Klim and explained the plan.

  “But I must warn you, you are taking a huge risk if you accept our offer,” she said. “You’ll have to educate your readership, which is quite a tricky task. Very few women in Shanghai are able to understand the ideas and philosophy of flappers. Moreover, if Lissie goes bankrupt, it’ll be very difficult for you to find a job. Mr. Green will accuse you of ingratitude and will blacken your reputation for a long time.”

  Klim glanced at Lissie. She sat in the corner grasping her elbows and avoided looking at him, afraid he would say no.

  “So, I’ll be editing a magazine for suffragettes?” said Klim.

  “It has nothing to do with suffragettes!” Lissie seethed, but Edna stopped her.

  “You’ll be editing a magazine for independent women who respect themselves.”

  Klim smiled ironically, Hmm, a magazine for Nina Kupina.

  “But if you succeed,” Edna continued, “you’ll have jumped right up the ladder. To get that kind of position with an existing publication would be extremely difficult for a foreign journalist.”

  They discussed financial terms, which were very handsome.

  “I agree,” Klim nodded.

  Edna squeezed his hand, “I’m glad.”

  Before they parted, Lissie gave Klim a photo of some actress.

  “It’s Olive Thomas. Three years ago, she played the role of a mischievous girl in the film called Flapper. After this movie they started to call all independent and freedom-loving girls this name.”

  3.

  The hatch opened and Martha’s hat emerged. “Klim, I need to talk to you.”

  They went outside and sat on the porch of their Philippine neighbor— the only one who was not afraid of thieves and had left a ragged mat on the stairs.

  “I’m going to open a
new enterprise,” said Martha. “Not here, but in the Chinese City, over North Sichuan Road. I have to be very fast while the heat is still on. There will be an abundance of clients now as the wives and children are visiting the sea resorts and all their husbands are left in the city. Where do they go in the evenings? To the brothels of course! So I need you to come with me to Don Fernando. I want to ask him for start-up capital, but going there by myself…you know…”

  “Is he still alive?” Klim asked.

  He knew Fernando from the old days. Klim had met him at a gambling table once and became Fernando’s favorite: the Don predicted he’d have a brilliant career as a card shark.

  Don Fernando arrived in Shanghai riding an elephant, with an orchestra playing in accompaniment, surrounded by dancing beauties in red silks and the announcements of a crier. Children ran out of the yards, wild with excitement.

  “He’s coming! He’s coming!” was heard across the streets.

  The famous circus, Alexandria, had arrived in Shanghai. The troupe had been touring the Chinese coast for several months already, but couldn’t save enough money to carry on their journey to Australia. The owner was a weak man: all the money was spent on his innumerous lovers.

  And who was the one to call out to the public in twelve languages? Who was the maestro singing in the intermissions? Who was the main book-keeper and tamer of drunken handy-men? Who made the best rock candies to sell before performances?

  Don Fernando.

  Unbelievably, the owner didn’t want to pay this brilliant man his wage. Fernando showed great restraint in not beating up the stubborn jackass. But even a saint’s patience has its limits. He did what was due: spat in the owner’s face and left. Most of the strongmen, athletes, illusionists and snake charmers left with him. But not the elephant—unfortunately, the poor thing died in melancholy at not going to Australia.

  It was hard at the beginning, as the homeless cirque performers wandered around marketplaces, impressing Chinese women with their skills. But soon Don Fernando found that, through clever tricks, one could take the wallets out of the pockets of passers-by and, with some help from the strongmen, many shopkeepers were ready to pay their protection fees.