White Shanghai

by Elvira Baryakina

  He started a tango La Mariposa. “Do you hear that? Neat, isn’t it?”

  Ada’s heart surrendered.

  3.

  A sweating coolie dragged a box into her little room, lingered a bit, hoping for more tips.

  “Go-go!” Ada waved at him.

  She closed the hatch and started to unpack the box. It was total madness to spend almost her entire savings on a toy; it was a double madness to bring it into the House of Hope. What if someone steals it? Should she hang a bigger deadlock on the hatch?

  Dying of excitement and impatience, Ada put on a record. She took her pillow with Carlos Gardel and hugged it as if he was her beloved.

  No es que esté arrepentido

  de haberte querido tanto,

  lo que me apena es tu olvido

  y tu traición

  me sume en amargo llanto.1

  God, keep tango! Keep Argentina, its poets and musicians—it’s wonderful! Ada thought dancing. If there was tango in the world, she could survive many things.

  Daniel Bernard didn’t show up at the Wayers’ anymore. All unwanted guests moved away and Ada’s life flowed calmly, like a stream forced into tunnels, not bothering anyone on the surface.

  She refused to take Brittany to the Old City District and in general made the little girl more obedient. All it took was to say in a surprised tone, “Hey, Miss, you’re smart, don’t you remember?” and Brittany would do anything to keep her reputation safe.

  Klim would come and disappear straight away, leaving mess and the smell of insultingly expensive eau de cologne. Where was he hanging about? Why didn’t he want to leave Ada? Why, as if by accident, did he keep hugging her by her waist? Was he toying with her? Why had he wished her a happy birthday and bought her a bunch of roses? They were still standing there on the table, a little drooped, as if hanging their little heads.

  The stairs started to squeak under someone’s steps. Ada embarrassedly threw away the pillow, switched off the Victrola and covered it with a blanket.

  Klim came in, and Ada immediately knew he was drunk. Not noticing anything, he approached his bed, sat down and grasped his head. Ada opened a book in the middle, but her eyes didn’t see the lines.

  “Ada,” Klim sighed, “we’re all addicts.”

  “What?”

  “We exist from one pipe to the next, though, we call it not opium, but love. When you try to inhale it for the first time, it seems you hold everything under control: you think you can quit anytime you want.”

  Ada held her breath.

  “But if you try to quit,” Klim continued, “it’ll curl you up so bad, you won’t find it funny. And the scariest thing is you need to increase your dose, but it’s impossible. And to quit is impossible.”

  He stood up, approached the samovar and drank some water, his teeth knocking against the brim of his glass.

  “I read in the paper today, a student shot himself because of love. I wish I could do the same…but no…not enough guts.”

  Ada couldn’t believe her ears; she never thought Klim would say something like this. He’s an actor, Martha’s words appeared in her memory.

  Klim sat next to her and started stroking her hair. Ada was expecting the worst.

  “Do you want me to tell you everything?” he asked. His eyes were glistening. Suddenly, he threw his head upon her shoulder. “Heal me, Ada. I’m all lost, when drunk—she doesn’t let me go.”

  Ada looked at him perplexed. “She?

  Who’s she?” “My wife…I saw her today.”

  His skin was hot, the stubble prickled her arm.

  “Nina does consulate business: passports, documents…and I’m like a fool—” Meaningless details of somebody else’s passion followed.

  “You know what? Leave me alone!” Ada pushed him away.

  Klim sat up straight, as if he’d sobered up instantly. “Sorry.”

  He picked up his hat from the floor and climbed down the ladder. Ada slammed the hatch behind him and sunk into her bed. A corner of the orange curtain grew tight stuck in the hatch, a nail flew out of a wall and the dusty fabric fell down, covering Ada all the way up to her head.

  How humiliating it is, when someone loves so much, but doesn’t love you.

  1 Argentinean tango Butterfly: “It’s not that I feel sorry for our love, I’m dying from neglect and your betrayal makes me cry.” Lyrics by Celedonio Flores.

  CHAPTER 29

  ORGANIZED CRIME

  1.

  Lady Luck was finally smiling on Felix Rodionov. Collor had stood by his promise and introduced Felix to the heads of the police force as the Russian cadet who had single-handedly held up a whole crowd of Don Fernando’s gamblers. Felix was offered full time employment with a salary of one hundred and five dollars a month. He spent his money wisely:

  Food: 28 dollars

  Laundry: 2 dollars

  Clothes: 23 dollars

  Supplies: 15 dollars

  Other/misc.: 25 dollars

  Twelve dollars would pay for his board in the house of a Polish lady called Katarzyna. She used to have a lover, but he went to America and left the house to her; Katarzyna rented it out to make a living. She was also secretly selling stolen goods and, when Felix found out, she dragged him onto her bed and didn’t let him sleep for the rest of the night, cuddling and whispering to him in Polish.

  Collor demanded that Felix be made a detective in his division.

  “Listen to me, mate,” he would say, sipping beer from his bottle. “Sign up for the Chinese language classes; you’ll get paid a bonus for that.”

  Felix agreed. He revered Collor; he had never met such a man before—an honest and incorruptible soul, who sought neither riches nor fame. Let alone women’s attention. Collor didn’t even have a lover.

  Sitting in a beer bar, Johnny would watch cars out the window. “We’re here working like dogs, and they’re driving around in thousand-dollar fur-coats. Look, look at her! Painted her lips and thinks she’s allowed everything.”

  Felix would nod: rich whores also drove him mad.

  “Trust no one, mate,” Collor would teach him. “In the police force, they’re all bastards: they drink, gamble, use brothels and then take bribes from criminals to pay their debts. If you don’t take bribes, they’ll consider you sick in the head: a contusion after the war or something like that. Especially beware of the coloreds: those guys will always arrange something unpleasant to happen behind your back.”

  The Commissioner and his deputies definitely agreed with Collor. Hugh Wayer was openly saying crime would continue in the International Settlement until the coloreds stopped working in law enforcement. But how could the police function without them? More than two thirds of the staff were Chinese or Sikh brought from India by the British. The same situation was repeated in the French Concession, but instead of Sikhs, they had Tonkinese.

  “The narrow-eyed say that we enslaved them,” Collor would grumble. “But who tortures the arrested? We just smack them in the face a couple of times and that’s it. But go to the Chinese police department—they skin people alive there. Mark my words, they’ll keep living in dirt up to their ears and if you try to pull them out, they’ll start howling: No way, it’s our traditions! To me, the only worthwhile thing they ever created is wushu.”

  William Fairbairn, an officer from the neighboring department, invented his own fighting system combining Japanese jujutsu and Chinese martial arts to stand up to street crime. The heads looked at his successes and told everyone to sign up for his courses.

  Felix learned close-quarter fighting skills and how to shoot from the hip. Twice he managed to disarm Fairbairn himself. Collor watched that match and said, “You’ll go far, mate.”

  His praise was better than any award. Without noticing it, Felix started to copy Collor: he washed his hands and wore a gray long coat and a cap. He would even have bought a motorcycle too, but didn’t have enough cash. At most, he could afford a pair of goggles. Felix wrote them into the clo
thes row on his expenses table and crossed out his planned underpants.

  At the end of the day, he would leave the police station and whistle for a rickshaw boy, who cost him eight dollars from the Other/misc category. The rickshaw boy didn’t know a word of English, but with his nose felt where his master needed to go. Felix told him not to take on any other clients, but to sit at the gates and wait until he needed his service.

  He gave his rickshaw boy all the clothes he wore at the Corps. “The best dressed rickshaw boy in the city,” his fellow policemen joked. “Japanese boots, French pants, American trench coat and a straw hat.”

  Felix took care of his rickshaw boy, as Collor took care of him— without any undue chumminess. He didn’t even know the colored’s name—the guy always responded to a whistle. He was just asking to be praised: devoted, as a dog. But Collor’s words were never far from Felix’s memory: Don’t trust the Chinese.

  Felix was happy with his job and the danger only excited him more. Raids on opium dens were usually scheduled at two or three in the morning. Once, an ambush was arranged, they had to hide at the quay in barrels that turned out to be full of rain water and swarms of mosquitoes. After this, the whole team had runny noses and swollen faces.

  Catching addicts was like fishing for a spawning salmon: you could take as many as you could handle. Felix would leap into a room roaring, “Hands up!” And the addicts just lay there on their beds with their lifeless eyes like black dress buttons. “Sir, I’m sick. I have to smoke—a doctor prescribed it.”

  Felix knew this doctor. The bastard lived in an expensive apartment on Babbling Well Road and took patients by appointment. He prescribed only one thing—a pipe of opium. He smoked himself, and his monkey on a chain also smoked. Felix had seen it with his very eyes.

  Collor said the government was crazy to ban opium.

  “When something is this lucrative, but the law doesn’t allow cashing in on it, there is always going to be one outcome: organized crime. In the United States, the Prohibition Law had been in action since 1919 and look at the terrible gangsters that came of that—no police could tackle them. The opium trade shouldn’t be banned, mate, it should be licensed. Who cares about the drug-heads! Let them die out—it’s natural selection.”

  Felix wished he and Collor could be friends. But Johnny never allowed anyone close.

  For lunch, Felix would go with Umberto, a young Italian, who served in the road traffic department. Umberto had arrived in Shanghai hoping to start a business, but went bust and decided to enroll in the police. At first, he chased street sellers, then was transferred to the Shanghai Club entrance. On special occasions at the Club, up to three hundred cars would gather there, and Umberto’s job was to tell chauffeurs where to drop guests off and where to wait. Soon he was promoted to manage all road posts in the port.

  Umberto also moved into Katarzyna’s house and Felix started to spend time with him. They drank beer out of bottles and discussed the hated money-bags, Bolsheviks and heavily made-up whores.

  Felix seldom visited his Corps; when he did he always felt sadness and shame. In old Russia, the money for the Corps had been allotted by the government—to nurture new warriors who would be the protectors of the Motherland. But abroad, Russian cadets were equivalent to those little Chinese who stand near restaurants and sing, “No mama, no papa, no whiskey-soda.”

  Finally, the monarch of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Alexander I of Belgrade, agreed to patronize the orphan-cadets and provide them with shelter, food and necessary education. The Corps rallied; the Board of Directors started to think how they could scratch together enough money to go to Europe.

  Felix could not bear the idea of being a sponger on other people’s kindness. He was the man, the one who stood on his own feet. He may only dream of his own motorcycle, he may sleep with Katarzyna and use the service of a nameless rickshaw boy, but everything he had was hard­earned—by sitting in barrels full of mosquitoes and sparring rounds with the trainer Fairbairn. Felix Rodionov didn’t owe anyone anything.

  2.

  Felix spent the whole of the next day checking an inventory of material evidence taken from a watchmaker. His clients would come into his unremarkable shop with broken Omegas and Zeniths supposedly to be fixed; in reality the watchmaker was selling them opium. Not the crap quality stuff from the Sichuan province, but the best sort from Indian cities of Patna and Benares.

  The search was conducted by the Chinese under the authority of a British officer. According to the report, there were ten pounds of opium found at that place; another document stated that there were twelve pounds, and the witnesses all swore that, in a hiding place under the counter, the watchmaker kept no less than thirty pounds.

  By Collor’s instruction, Felix invited the Chinese policemen to his office and asked them questions. They pretended they didn’t understand his accent and exchanged little sneers, as if saying, What a runt, thinks he’s a vice fighter. The British officer refused to explain anything and just told Felix to go to hell.

  Felix’s hands were shaking with fury: it was clear that this wretched British creature was corrupt, but it was impossible to do anything about it. The officer was from a different department and a favorite of the Commissioner. Even Collor was powerless here.

  It took Felix hours to prepare his report as he typed with only one finger. Two pages took him the whole day, as he had to retype it several times. Starving and angry, he stormed outside. His rickshaw boy jumped up beside him and started to say something.

  “Bugger off!” Felix cut him short. “I’ll walk by myself.”

  It was getting dark. The air was filled with the smell of confectionery: there was a van at the corner unloading boxes of chocolates. One candy in Madame Gallant’s store cost thirty cents. They were smooth balls of white chocolate filled with cognac. On the top there were little circles of milk chocolate with drops of dark inside. Young fellows going on dates frequented Gallant’s store.

  Far away, church bells were ringing for the evening service. Felix dragged himself along the street with his hands stuffed in his pockets. He had a dim plan forming in his head about how to catch this Englishman and kick his teeth out. The dirty officer wouldn’t even have time to let out a squeak.

  The rickshaw boy was respectfully following him—maybe the master would change his mind? Felix stopped to bark at him and unload his frustration, when suddenly he saw the youngster in a green shirt: it was the same one who had wounded Trots.

  Felix and Collor had visited the sergeant in the hospital. The doctor said Trots probably wouldn’t last long.

  “Catch that…who shot at me…” he whispered, panting for breath.

  Collor squeezed his hand. “The little rat was found guilty yesterday and given to the Chinese authorities. His head was cut off.”

  And look at this, the killer is running around the city with his head attached.

  Hiding behind pedestrians, Felix rushed after the youngster. His rickshaw boy kept up behind him. He’ll spoil everything, son of a bitch! But Felix had no time to stop and chase the rickshaw boy away.

  It was already dark, when they turned into a storage area at Nantao. Felix noticed the green shirt dived into a dark hole of a door. There was not a soul around, only watch dogs barking in the distance. The air smelled of rotten seaweed drifting up from the river. Felix turned and motioned the rickshaw boy to stop and not come any closer. The guy nodded and sat down under a fence.

  Felix pulled out his revolver and moved forward. Who knows, maybe he was mistaken? What if there were just some refugees looking for shelter in a storehouse?

  The door was closed. Then he heard some voices speaking in French. Felix pressed close to the wall. Three people passed by him. One was limping.

  “Get a sentry here, you never know—” he said in a whisper.

  They didn’t notice Felix. He looked at the place where his rickshaw boy was sitting. Thank God, he went away. Something fell inside the warehouse, a ray of light shone
through the wall and Felix noticed that he was standing near a window closed with shutters. He squatted and peeped into the chink between the shutters.

  What he saw was mountains of cases. Young white men with electrical torches were walking among them; judging from their bearing they were military people. One, in a yachtsman’s cap, pulled out a crowbar and opened a case. Inside were long shapes wrapped in tarpaulins. Rifles! Felix guessed. He brushed sweat off his forehead. Who are those people? Smugglers?

  The door slammed and the youngster in a green shirt jumped outside. He looked around and started to walk away. Felix followed him.

  He caught up with the youngster on the Rue du Consulat. Even though Felix didn’t have the right to detain anyone in the French Concession, he decided to throw caution to the wind. He leapt forward, gripped the youngster’s shoulder and crashed him to the ground with a huge blow.

  His rickshaw boy appeared from behind the corner.

  “To the office!” roared Felix, loading the unconscious youngster onto the rickshaw seat.

  3.

  “The usual stuff,” said Collor, studying the suspect’s fingerprints. “Here’s the document about his execution, and here he is, spick and span and alive, like Lazarus risen from the dead.”

  The youngster sat in the corner, holding his head with his cuffed hands and howling quietly.

  “They executed somebody else instead,” Collor carried on. “No one was making sure whose head was cut off. Here’s a paper, and here’s a grave. If you want to check, dig it up yourself.”

  “So, is it some important bird?” asked Felix.

  “The price of a Chinese life is five coppers. This guy is a member of the Green Gang. The prison wardens are also members. He whispered a password to them and it’s a done deal—they don’t sell out their own people.”

  Felix had once attended a lecture on organized crime in China. A scholarly professor told them that the Green Gang had already existed for several hundred years. It began peacefully: a guild union of boatmen who lived along the banks of the Yangtze River. Their people were in every village, providing other members with food and shelter. But after the Tai Ping Rebellion spread across southern China in the 1850s, goods began to be transported by sea; plus, the river changed its flow, leaving boatmen without means. To make ends meet, they smuggled salt, encroaching on the Emperor’s sacred right to sell it exclusively. But when the British brought opium to China, this turned out to be a far more lucrative trade, so the Green Gang became the main drugs dealer in Shanghai and the territories up the Yangtze River.”