White Shanghai

by Elvira Baryakina

  The Jesuit replied that everything is in God’s hands. As usual, he would pin the blame on negligent workers and slack administration.

  Nina found several companies interested in advertising on her calendars—little drawings of lavender soap, combs and tooth powder adorned each corner of a poster. If she didn’t have the calendars in time, she would have to return the money for advertising. This would mean only one thing: bankruptcy and an inventory of her possessions.

  If not for Binbin who looked after the studio, Nina would never have coped. Every evening, they would take Kitty—as her adopted Chinese daughter was called now—and sit in Nina’s garden discussing business till dark.

  “We need a new printing place,” Nina would sigh. But no one wanted to work without an advance payment and she didn’t have the money.

  As always, during difficult times, an instinct would wake inside her: to find a lover, a man, who would solve all her problems. Then she could hide behind his back and not worry about anything.

  But where to find this man? Every week, Nina sent her chauffeur to the House of Hope. However, Klim wasn’t to be seen there anymore. Fearing terrible news, she had her chauffeur check in all the city’s hospitals, morgues and police offices—with no success.

  Either Klim had run away or he was knocked out somewhere. In any case, there was no point in waiting for him: he didn’t have millions and no one would give him a loan.

  Nina needed to go to the office, but Kitty was screaming. Nanny Valentina tried to pacify her with a dummy, “It’s okay, it’s okay… Mommy will be back shortly.”

  Kitty threw the dummy on the floor.

  Nina stood at the open front door, looking lost. Yet again, she thought she lived in a crazy, perverted world where a Chinese foundling had a white nanny and the best dresses and toys. Kitty was claiming Nina’s life with ardor: she considered Nina her mother and didn’t bear any objections.

  Burden on my shoulders, why on earth did I agree to adopt you? Nina thought in frustration. But if I hadn’t, where would Kitty be now? In an orphanage?

  Nina saw those monastery orphanages where they count kids by heads and chased them in rows to a canteen. They’d probably teach Kitty to make embroidery or something else. Most likely, she would have already died from the endless illnesses poor children had. Then, if Kitty survived, all she had to look forward to was a stuffy workshop for a hundred people, a husband, also a foundling, with some cabinet-making skills, and a baby once a year. Two thirds of them would never make it to the age of seven.

  “Valentina, give her to me,” said Nina, unable to listen to Kitty’s scream.

  Relieved, the nanny passed her the child.

  Goodness me! Kitty was heavy. As she hugged Nina, she felt her beads and instantly calmed down dragging them into her mouth.

  Every time Nina held Kitty in her hands, she cursed Klim. Surely, he didn’t understood what he had done by adopting a foundling. One day, Kitty would find out that she had been abandoned outside a temple. All her life she will be like a zebra in a herd of horses: she wouldn’t become a Chinese and the whites wouldn’t accept her. They would harass her in school, calling narrow-eyed and she would carry this stigma till the end of her days.

  Binbin told Nina once that a white gentleman refused to go with her in the elevator. “You, coloreds, should use the stairs!” he said. He was a pig and an idiot, but still thought he was better than Binbin.

  Kitty will have the same story.

  Tamara believed that none of it was important. “Kitty is the best solace you could ever have after the death of your daughter,” she said. “You know it yourself, but are too embarrassed to confess it. For some silly reason you think that if you love Kitty openly, it’ll somehow tarnish the memory of your daughter. Trust me, you don’t have to be grieving for the rest of your life.”

  Tamara was sure she knew Nina through and through. It’s easy to intellectualize and give advice when you don’t have to worry about a thing: you have a wonderful husband and healthy, clever children of your own. Yes, Kitty ceased to be a replacement, a substitute number two, but when she screamed her head off, Nina couldn’t resist thinking, Why did I agree to take her?

  She tried to wean Kitty, but the baby would wage a war of attrition— if it was necessary she could wail for hours.

  Nina wasn’t getting enough sleep. She was grumpy and once even tried to find a wet nurse, but Kitty wouldn’t accept anyone else. In some way, this passionate need for a mother charmed Nina and at the same time drained all her energy.

  “The little Miss will grow bigger and it’ll be easier for you,” Valentina kept promising. But her reassurances did not help.

  Nina kissed Kitty’s head. “That’s enough, I need to go. Valentina, undo my beads, please, and let the baby play with them. Just watch she doesn’t tear them apart.”

  The clasp was too tight.

  “I can’t do it,” Valentina said.

  “Good morning,” Nina heard from the driveway. She turned around and froze. Daniel Bernard was standing at the porch looking at her and Kitty holding the beads in her little fist.

  “Let me try to undo it,” he offered and, without waiting for Nina’s reply, came close to her. His fingers touched the skin on her neck. “Are you going somewhere?” he asked.

  Nina hastily gave the child to the nanny. “No, I’m…” She didn’t know what to say, once again smitten by his unobtrusive elegance and self-confidence.

  “I’m here for a minute,” said Daniel. “Let’s go, I’ll walk you to the car.”

  Nina followed him. What was he doing here? What does he want? She was trembling from painful memories as if from a sudden cold draft. Shame on her for her own silliness—how could she anchor her hopes on him? Daniel Bernard wasn’t capable of real deeds, he ran from Nina because he feared he wouldn’t be able to resist her and would have to deal with family dramas and explanations.

  They came to the car and a chauffeur opened the door, but Nina didn’t go in.

  “How are you?” Daniel asked.

  She looked at him defiantly. “I’m well. I have a Chinese baby now; your brother-in-law killed my daughter; Jiří died, and I just escaped prison.”

  “Yes, I know,” Daniel said. He suddenly took her hand and kissed it.

  Nina jerked, not understanding.

  “You took offence?” Daniel asked softly. “I’m sorry, I promised to help you with the collection, but—”

  “I have coped perfectly well without your help,” Nina interrupted.

  “I’m glad. I had an emergency with my business.”

  Daniel pulled out of his pocket a tin with a label Tea Management, a State Trust. “This is a souvenir from Russia,” he said. “Have a look under the lid.”

  Inside were black tea and a roll of gray paper with some poems printed on it.

  Tsar and bourgeois

  watch from the sky,

  what our comrades

  in grocery buy?

  In sorrow and awe

  they can see:

  comrades drink

  best sorts of tea.

  — Vladimir Mayakovsky

  Nina frowned. For Daniel, it was just an amusing souvenir. But for her, it was a message from another world. For a while, she examined the happy worker on the overleaf. It was unbelievable. Those proletarian scums with nothing sacred were happily living in Russia, building socialism and having cups of tea.

  “How is it there?” she finally asked.

  “It’s a unique country,” said Daniel. “Beyond understanding. Papers and minds full of such things one can only be amazed of. I’d recommend you go to the USSR if you have a chance—highly entertaining.”

  Nina turned away. “For me, Russia is like a lost man. We used to have love, but it’s all over now.”

  She sat in the car and the chauffeur closed the door. There were no good-byes.

  4.

  Daniel was interested in Edna from the moment he first saw her. He could discuss anyth
ing with her: she was searching, fighting, glowing and burning—living that bright life filled with people and events that Daniel missed so much on his fourth bleak year of existence in Shanghai.

  When Daniel married her, the smell of desolate bachelorhood finally left his living room.

  Fu Qiang, his teacher, said, “A talented woman is a misery to the house.” Daniel only shrugged. But, when he returned to Shanghai after his rescue from the bandit’s captivity, he realized how right the old man was.

  Edna loved her husband, but it was a strange, ungraspable love for him. His theoretical presence was enough for her. She would spend all her time in the editorial office, rushing after some people, having breakfasts and lunches with others, and in the evenings she would close herself in her home office and rattle away on her typing machine.

  If they did talk, Edna would bring everything to her topics with her pencil ready. “Ah, I’m married so successfully,” she would exclaim when Daniel shared with her some useful information.

  He constantly felt he was being used. He forced himself to believe his feelings were silly and it’s great that he could help Edna with her work. But she was so obviously in love with journalism and not with him that Daniel was ready to throw in the towel.

  His shoulder still ached where one of the Chinese bandits had hit him with the butt of his rifle. Edna blurted out, “Go see a doctor,” and immediately started to talk about legislation that was on the agenda at a tax payers meeting. She considered that this was what Daniel wanted to hear after returning home from captivity.

  She didn’t rush to meet Daniel when he came home. He would peek into her office and see her sitting in the company of newspaper cuttings and telegrams. A fat writing pad rested on her lap; she was the perfect picture of a bookworm with a pencil in her teeth and glasses on her forehead.

  She’d look up and say, “Hello! I’ll finish this article in a couple of minutes and come down to see you.”

  Daniel would end up having dinner alone—Edna forgot her promises as easily as she gave them. For cooking, cleaning and serving they had servants. Edna considered it unnecessary to even brew a tea for her husband when boy number three could perform this task.

  Every day Daniel would meet several dozen people and in the evening, would go to sleep with a bitter feeling of being trampled, as if a whole market crowd had stomped all over him, leaving dirty footprints. He began to stay at work later and later. Edna didn’t mind—he had the right to be a busy man.

  Why didn’t he recognize her character straight away, before the wedding? The answer was simple: it was before she’d learned to say “News is my job.” At that time, her job was a quest to win Daniel. She completed that project and started on another one.

  How funny: usually these kinds of complaints are common among women in their third or fourth year of family life. But Daniel was the one who allowed Edna to play first fiddle in their relationship. Daniel realized that no one else noticed this nuance, but his male ego was hurt and he considered his departure to Europe a life-saving escape.

  His second return to Shanghai was a torture. When he was in Prague, the difference between his parents family was too striking compared with the strange life he’d built with Edna. Mother was loving and caring; she could understand her children without words. She gave Daniel a novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, entitled The White Company. There was a bookmarked page with an underlined phrase in old French:

  Fais ce que dois—adviegne que peut, C’est commande au chevalier.

  “Do what you must and come what may. That is the command to a chevalier.” But it wasn’t easy to know what exactly he must do.

  Daniel knew Nina Kupina had also decided to claim him. She reminded him of a cunning fox kitsune from Japanese legends. A kitsune could turn into a woman to toy with men, mislead them and make them fall in love. Woe betide those who didn’t see a fox tail under a silk kimono. And even if a kitsune would fall in love with a mere mortal, sooner or later she would show her real essence.

  Daniel liked noticing obvious signs of the fox spirit in Nina. Sharp little chin, high cheekbones, careless opinion of human laws and way too much charm and intelligence to be allotted to a woman.

  Just for a joke, Daniel once told her about his guesses: “I’m totally convinced that at night you turn into a fox. You call my basset hound a monster and kitsunes don’t bear dogs.”

  “I like good-looking dogs,” Nina laughed. “But Mucha is some funny mistake.”

  Daniel pointed out the pearl she wore on a thin chain, “And what is this? Every kitsune has hoshi no tama, a special star ball, which gives her powers for sorcery.”

  When kitsunes were injured or exhausted they move into people to restore their energy, but the host would become mad. It was exactly what Nina was doing to Daniel. She had lost everything and everyone in Russia and now was in need of a temporary benefactor.

  She was determined to win him over. Daniel couldn’t understand why he kept refusing the temptation. When these kind of women call for you, they were not to be refused by mere mortals. But being a victim with no free will didn’t appeal to Daniel. And that was the essence of their game: he liked the fact that the kitsune had chosen him as the object for her charm, and even more—that he didn’t give in.

  But it was tremendously difficult to withstand her. Nina knew how to excite men with a suddenly slipped word, by a curve of her eyebrows or a movement of her dress with its long silky fringe embracing her calves with every step.

  One by one, she used all her foxy tricks on Daniel. Her collection of erotic art hidden in a dark wardrobe was a mighty weapon. He was examining the drawings and with his whole body felt the kitsune’s tension—Will this not work as well?

  It was impossible to refuse Nina’s company: this part of her charm no will power could sustain. At some stage, Daniel realized that she would get what she wanted. He constantly thought about her; the inner heat was so intense that he felt he was really going mad.

  He wouldn’t be able to cope by himself and then the gods sent him Chantal.

  Daniel’s shoulder still troubled him, and Robert Wayer recommended him a masseuse. She was very young, dark-skinned with light slanted eyes and thick blonde curls. God knew which races were mixed in her.

  Daniel lay on a day-bed and showed Chantal his aching shoulder. She worked silently, as if she was shy, then suddenly slipped her little warm hand under his pants. The massage ended quite surprisingly.

  Daniel started to go to Chantal after every date with Nina. They never talked. He would lie with his eyes closed, then after a wild and short bliss, he would go to pay the owner of the enterprise, a stumpy woman stinking of cheap perfume who desperately wanted to look younger than her age.

  One day, he arrived and she told him abruptly that Chantal had left. It was a usual thing: she got married to a seaman.

  “They all either fall very low or get married. Would you like a new girl, dear sir?”

  The dear sir didn’t want anything. He went outside, fell onto his car seat and froze looking at the steering wheel with an unseeing stare.

  Ridiculous. He felt hurt, like a schoolboy.

  Urgent business calls to Europe was what Daniel prayed for. He had to catch his breath, understand himself and even for a short time forget about the women who tried to overwhelm him.

  If he could, he wouldn’t have returned to Shanghai altogether. He thought that a ten-month pause would help him to sort everything out, but it was far from it.

  Edna realized that their family life had problems and her frightened flirting made Daniel furious. But he didn’t have a clue how to stop this unwanted mutual torture. A divorce, a scandal or simply a division of their possessions? Lawyers would start prying into his business and then who knows what they would find?

  Daniel decided not to think about Nina, but acquaintances told him about the collapse of the Czechoslovakian Consulate and the car crash. He was shocked: Nina had a child? Who from? Sure enough, he couldn’t resi
st another pang of jealousy: he needed to hear her explanations.

  The kitsune enticed him like starry little balls entice passers-by in the night forest. He knew he shouldn’t turn off the marked route. There, among the black thickets, live fairy people with bushy tails. It’s dangerous to befriend enchanted foxes, but what can a human do after being charmed by a kitsune?

  Daniel never expected Nina to refuse to talk to him. It wasn’t possible that a passion between a fox and mere mortal could end by a mutual loss of interest. He went to Nina again, without invitation. This time he found a young Chinese woman sitting in her living room, holding Nina’s adopted daughter.

  Again the kitsune was confused. She sat, blushing, on the sofa, her arms folded on her chest, and tried to avoid Daniel’s gaze. When the Chinese lady finally left and the nanny took the child, he had lowered himself next to Nina. “Tell me everything.”

  She did, and compassion, worry and acute desire engulfed him. Several times Daniel just managed to keep himself from hugging her and kissing her lips. She is doing all this on purpose, a thought flashed in his head and Daniel involuntarily laughed. He was here on purpose, too; he was arranging it himself, as more than anything he wanted the continuation of his sweet torture.

  Nina didn’t spare his feelings: she told him everything about her spouse, but Daniel didn’t worry about these kinds of rivals. Nina talked about the husband like someone mentions a drunkard who promises to quit and drinks under the table that same evening.

  Having heard that Nina was on the verge of bankruptcy because of the dishonest Jesuits, Daniel called the French Consul General and asked him to sort the matter out. The next day the calendars went to print.

  “A huge shame you sold the collection,” Daniel said. “The Jesuits gave you a price twenty times lower than the real one. I would have bought it myself.”

  Nina went out and soon returned with a small ivory disk in her hands.

  “This is the only thing I kept. I liked this woman sleeping on the chrysanthemum. If you want it, I’ll give it to you.”