White Shanghai

by Elvira Baryakina

  “Did you say Daniel Bernard?” Edna gasped.

  “Yes. He’s a German who used to live in Shanghai. He even had a business, but now he’s joined the revolution. A golden soul!”

  Something rattled in the sky, and the sun was covered for a second with a big shadow. A small airplane landed and a basset hound appeared from somewhere, barking, going low on his fat front paws.

  Edna looked at the airplane, her heart pounded.

  “Let’s go.” John pulled her hand.

  Edna ignored him. The man in a helmet, goggles and a canvas jacket appeared from the cabin. Daniel—her Daniel!—jumped to the ground. People ran to him, he turned, and Edna knew he’d recognized her.

  4.

  The aviators welcomed her into their family.

  “Come, have a cup of tea with us,” offered curly-haired Pierre, a young man from Belgium. “Otherwise, we won’t let you go.”

  Edna and Daniel pretended they’d never seen each other before.

  A cup of tea turned out to be a full-blown lunch served under palm trees. Little servants brought one bowl after another filled with rice, fried canned meat and vegetables.

  Out of respect to the lady, everyone spoke English.

  “We eat modest fair, but it’s healthy,” said a Bulgarian named Konstantin. “Though, I would really love some ice-cream. Soon we’ll become totally barbarous here, with our canned rations.”

  Pierre interrupted him, “Miss Edna, you’re a journalist, right? What’s going on at the mainland?”

  As Edna talked, she tried to avoid Daniel’s eyes. He’d lost weight, his skin was sunburned and hair cut short. His overalls had oily spots, and there was a smart patch on his sleeve. But despite all this, somehow the perfect gentleman who Edna couldn’t resist was still there.

  During the meal, he never said a word. Edna wanted to rebuke him, stir him up, but all she could do was continue chatting with the aviators.

  None of them hid the fact that soon an attack would begin.

  “We have neither maps nor target objectives prepared. The only reference point for us is a railway and then you fly as you want,” said Sergey, a young man with thick black eyebrows.

  “Aren’t you scared?” Edna asked.

  Sergey slapped the shoulder of one of his fellow aviators. “It’s okay, we have Talberg! He can draw like Leonardo da Vinci. Right in the air, he sketches maps. We’ll be flying according to those.”

  These were crazy people: all veterans, former front-line officers and all of them young. Daniel and the mechanic Lemoine, the legless one, were the oldest.

  “What did I not see at home?” Pierre chuckled. “Who needs me there? And in China, everything is booming with life. You fly in the air, look down and understand that, from the islands in this river, beams of new life are spreading into the world.”

  They did what they thought was necessary and weren’t afraid of anything. They didn’t sit and wait for somebody else to appear and make their dreams come true. And to hell with the risk and danger!

  Meteoric information wasn’t available and never would be. The weather was changing every thirty minutes—it didn’t matter. The aviators would simply toughen up. Instead of airdromes they had rice fields. In place of trucks, bringing supplies, they had coolies, dragging ammunition, fuel and spare parts on their shoulders.

  Through the looking glass, Edna thought again. The Middle Ages mixed with the twentieth century.

  Maybe that’s what it was? They’d gathered here to play medieval knights and Robin Hoods? Where else could they find available kings ready to load the winners with money, and plebs who could be saved from an evil sheriff?

  At this particular moment, they were all wooing a lady in eager rivalry—it was also part of their play.

  But no woman could be happy with any of them, Edna thought sadly. In this script, the role of a woman comes down to screaming “Save me!” and granting a showy kiss at the end.

  After lunch, she cornered Daniel. “Comrade Bernard, can I interview you?”

  His face changed. “Sure. Let’s go to the hangar.”

  It was stuffy and hot in there. A beam of light from an open door fell on wing of a new airplane.

  Daniel motioned to an upside-down box. “Sit down.”

  But she remained standing. “Daniel, I need a divorce.”

  “Sure.”

  He was calm and quiet—for that alone Edna was ready to kill him. Mucha came into the hangar. The hound glanced at her with his permanent frown and sat like a sentry at his master’s feet.

  “Daniel, they tell me you supply weapons to the Revolutionary Army,” Edna uttered in a trembling voice. “Are you not afraid it will destroy everything dear to us?”

  “You overestimate the Chinese,” he replied. “Their soldiers are street paupers hired for ten dollars a month from the villages. Most of the officers are the children of the landlords. The communists want to nationalize the land; otherwise Russia won’t give any money for the war. But if Chiang Kai-shek mentions nationalizing real estate, the Chinese officers will cut his head off. They have no ideology, only slogans with no proper plan of action. The reason for this war is that the Chinese don’t want to live the way they did before—”

  “Then why are you here with them?” Edna interrupted.

  “Because I also don’t want to live the way I did before.”

  Edna fell silent.

  “Don’t return to Shanghai,” she said. “I’ll do everything in my power so they shoot you as a traitor.”

  “I didn’t swear allegiance to any of the Great Powers,” Daniel smiled.

  “But you swore to me! And in war, there’s no talk with traitors, only bullets.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said and walked out the door with his dog following behind.

  5.

  Paul Marie Lemoine was also in the hangar behind a pile of crates. He may have been out of sight, but he heard every word.

  At the workshop that evening, Lemoine told Daniel that if his wife carried out her threat, they could have big problems. It was highly likely Daniel would need to go back to Shanghai and then he would be arrested.

  “Why the hell did she come here?” Daniel swore, exasperated, but didn’t say anything else.

  Lemoine had his servant watch Edna and the boy reported back that missy had bought a ticket for a steamer heading to Hong Kong. She was going to leave tomorrow. John Prutt, who had brought her, was surprised by her haste. After all, she had wanted to interview Chiang Kai-shek.

  The whole evening Lemoine sat on the porch of his house, scratching his head and thinking. Then he called One-Eyed.

  “Make sure she can’t bother us.”

  CHAPTER 64

  THE DOUBLE AGENT

  1.

  Lissie sat fanning herself in the third row of the Columbia Club’s auditorium. She was listening to a lecture on the current state of the country.

  “…the Revolutionary Army overran Hunan province and is now near the Yangtze River,” a young war reporter told the audience and deftly moved a long pointer over a huge map of China.

  Lissie watched the anxious faces of the gathered ladies. Little beads of sweat shone on their foreheads. No blinds or electrical fans could save them from the scorching heat outside.

  “During the last few months more then a hundred thousand refugees have entered Shanghai,” the war reporter continued. “They’re not only fleeing from the Revolutionary Army, but more so from the retreating detachments of warlords. Plus, there’s a horrible draught in the north, so rice prices have skyrocketed by ninety percent. Overcrowding adds to the catastrophic problems. In August, two thousand natives died from cholera found in the water supply of the Zhabei District.”

  “That’s what’ll happen if we let the Chinese rule the foreign concessions,” said a middle-aged English woman in the first row.

  Lissie looked at the clock: it was noon. In one hour, she should be at Sokoloff’s. She stood and left th
e hall.

  Robert humbly answered all her questions about the Municipal Council’s affairs.

  Now Lissie felt more a squeamish pity towards him, not hatred. After all, she’d finally managed to make him the breadwinner.

  Meetings with Sokoloff were arranged through Hobu. Lissie would arrive at the entertainment center Big World, go through a back door out onto a neighboring street where she would hire a rickshaw boy. In less than an hour, she would be back to buy some trifle. All this time, her chauffeur slept on the back seat of her car, utterly sure his mistress was busy shopping.

  It turned out Lissie had fantastic retention of numbers and names. Sokoloff’s face would brighten up as he heard her reports, and when she asked for more money he would immediately agree. “We reward our agents who work well.”

  Robert diligently went to his office and visited all the Shanghai Club gatherings, trying to please his wife.

  When Lissie announced Brittany was going to school he was greatly surprised. “Is she already that big?”

  His room smelled of opium. He used to hide his pipe shamefully, but now it was a permanent fixture on his bedside table.

  I wonder how long do drug addicts live? Lissie thought.

  The rickshaw boy she hired was particularly emaciated, as if he’d just come out of prison. Everyone was overtaking him, even coolies with heavily loaded carts, but Lissie didn’t dare speed him up.

  Soon he stopped altogether, breathing heavily, wiping sweat with his ragged hat.

  “Listen, I’m in a hurry—” Lissie began and immediately noticed all the other rickshaws had stopped as well.

  The boy turned to her, showing he couldn’t go any further. Lissie dropped him a coin and jumped onto the pavement.

  The road was blocked with a crowd of people. Street boys were trying to squeeze through to have a look.

  The Chinese stepped aside noticing Lissie. What she saw in front of a butchers store were some people on their knees with their arms tied. A man with a red armband grabbed a sword from a sheath and swept his arm up. Two jets of blood flew in the air and something round rolled to Lissie’s feet.

  It was Hobu’s head.

  2.

  Brittany was struggling at school; her teacher thought she was terribly lazy and distracted. Ada made her redo her calligraphy homework hundreds of times. But Brittany’s letters merged into one another and ink blotches kept spreading on the copybook. The little girl sobbed. With arithmetic the situation was even worse.

  Maybe Brittany was born slow? Ada thought, terrified. Or I have no idea how to teach? I neglected the child and now she is the worst in the class.

  Collor told her Felix and Seraphim were in Nagasaki, and that was the last time they had been seen. Where they had disappeared to no one knew. Ada counted the days, “I haven’t seen Felix in a month…I haven’t seen him for half a year…”

  At nights she imagined how they would meet. She would come home from the Wayers, and Felix would be waiting for her by the gates. These thoughts kept her awake: first, for half a night, then half an hour, and then only ten minutes, as hope disappeared.

  Lissie cut Ada’s salary while Brittany was at school. Now Ada couldn’t save anything at all. Nina Kupina had seized the airplane, Betty took all her savings, and Felix stole her heart. Ada knew that if the miracle didn’t happen soon, she would inevitably become a thin, pale thirty-year-old spinster. All she would have would be her memories of vain sacrifices and moments of prosperity granted by Daniel Bernard.

  Ada had a look at Brittany’s copybook. “What am I telling you to write? A car stopped on Eucalypt Street. And what did you write? Where do you get Oak Street from?”

  “Oak Street is easier to spell. Let’s send the car there.”

  What an exhausting child!

  The doorbell rang erratically. Ada opened it and Lissie rushed into the corridor. She was disheveled with black make-up smeared around her eyes.

  “Where’s Hobu?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t come yesterday either.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought it was her day off.”

  Lissie looked at Ada with an absent stare.

  Suddenly they heard steps and a shadow blocked the sun shining in the doorway.

  It was Johnny Collor standing on the porch. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Wayer. We need to talk.”

  3.

  He looked like an undertaker—thin, spooky and cold. Fear drilled through the back of Lissie’s head, as if she had a rifle barrel aimed there.

  He knows everything, she thought, taking him to her office.

  “Have a seat.”

  Lissie sat on the armrest of a sofa, stretched out for cigarettes, took one out and broke it, spilling tobacco on her knees. “Shit…”

  Collor watched her calmly.

  “Mrs. Wayer,” he said after a few moments passed, “I have an order to arrest you.”

  The second cigarette fell out of Lissie’s mouth.

  “Are you all mad at the police?”

  Collor pulled a paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “I’m not looking at anything!” she screamed and tore the order into little pieces. “Get out! I don’t give a damn about you!”

  Collor brushed a scrap of paper from his shoulder. “You have been in contact with the communists for several months. Your servant lured you in with offers of big money. Yesterday, Hobu was arrested by the Chinese police, did you know that?”

  Lissie’s jaw started to shake. “You can’t— My husband works in the Municipal Council, he’ll protect me!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Suddenly, Lissie realized that Collor was not here to arrest her at all. He had arrived by himself, polite, with no police pompousness. She glanced out the window: Collor had come by motorcycle. Was he going to transport her to the prison on that thing?

  “What do you want?” Lissie uttered, surprised how business-like her voice sounded.

  “I want to make a glowing revolutionary out of you. Take the initiative, read works written by Karl Marx and show your Russian masters that you’re ready to serve for more than just money—for your communist dream.”

  Lissie silently swallowed his words.

  “You need to become real friends with Comrade Sokoloff and his colleagues,” Collor continued.

  “How much are you going to pay?”

  Collor grinned. “My dear Mrs. Wayer, you have to pay us for the opportunity to save your beautiful rear end.”

  “How dare you insult me!”

  Suddenly, Collor’s face changed. “Listen, lady, you’ll put on womanly acts for your husband, not me, is that clear? Today you’ll find Sokoloff and tell him about the nanny’s absence. And then you’ll get on with your homework.” He pulled a thick, shabby book out of his map-case. “The Russians must believe you’re sincerely interested in their ideology.”

  Lissie glanced at the cover. Capital: Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx.

  “Thank you for not making me learn Chinese characters.”

  “And don’t even think of running away,” Collor mentioned. “All port and railway workers have a description of you and they won’t let you out. So the only option for escape is to go deep inland, to the most remote Chinese villages you can find. Every week, you’re going to report to me what you’ve found. And remember, as soon as you stop being of use to us, we’ll give you to the court.”

  “Swine,” Lissie whispered.

  Collor stood up. “I’ll call you.”

  He closed the door on his way out. From the corridor, Lissie could hear Ada’s voice: she was asking him about something. Then she heard steps and a quiet knock on the door.

  “Mrs. Wayer, here’s your mail.”

  Lissie ferociously turned on Ada. “Leave me alone—everyone!”

  Ada put the envelopes on a coffee table and left.

  The first letter was from Edna: a blue five-cent stamp and round marks—it was sent from
Canton. With trembling hands, Lissie opened the crumpled envelope.

  Dear Lissie:

  I won’t return to Shanghai. I’m taking a steamer to Hong Kong and then straight on to America. I’m desperate and I don’t have enough courage to come back. I need to gather my thoughts to understand how to carry on living.

  My husband is not who he was pretending to be. I met him here in Canton. Daniel Bernard is a communist. He serves in the Revolutionary Army and deals in smuggled weapons. I’ll write to you when I’m back in the USA.

  Yours,

  Edna

  The second letter was from the manager of the Victoria Hotel in Canton. He had written that the police summoned him to the mortuary to identify a corpse. Unfortunately, there was no doubt the smothered woman was Mrs. Edna Bernard. On the day of her death, she asked a concierge to send a letter and then left the hotel. That was the last time she was seen alive.

  The manager wrote to the same address as was on the envelope left by Mrs. Bernard, hoping that, by doing this, he would inform her family of the misfortune.

  For five minutes, Lissie stared blankly at the neat lines, written in beautiful calligraphy.

  Edna was dead. Her evil husband must have killed her. Poor Edna, it was terrible luck that she’d ran across him in Canton.

  CHAPTER 65

  THE BOLSHEVIK GIRLS

  1.

  Ada dragged her feet down the street, dispirited. Collor had told her there was still no news about Felix.

  Shanghai was preparing its defenses; volunteers strode along the streets, trucks roared through the crowds, loaded with machine guns and policemen marched dozens of arrested Chinese, all tied together with one rope.

  Ada’s neighbor at the House of Hope was scaling fish in the yard.

  “You have guests,” she said.

  Ada’s heart started pounding. She ran inside. Mitya and two twin girls were sitting on the stairs. The girls had blonde hair and slanted eyes. Half-bloods, no doubt.