White Shanghai

by Elvira Baryakina

  Don Fernando was obviously in the loop with all these happenings.

  “The split between Chiang Kai-shek and the communists has been widening for a while now,” he said. “Mikhail Borodin with the left wing of the Kuomintang have entrenched themselves in Hankou and organized their government there. They think Chiang is too bourgeois and he should resign. So the General is ripe for the picking and probably would be happy to accept an offer from the foreigners. His only problem is he can’t separate from the commies as they finance his army. Still, if he finds some other source of income, then…well, you understand.”

  “Du wants to mediate talks between Chiang Kai-shek and the Municipal Council?” Nina asked.

  Don Fernando smiled. “In his younger years, Chiang was a member of the Green Gang, so we have some connections there. But, Missy, we need to act fast. It’s not easy for Big-Eared Du to ally with Westerners. Not all his Gang brothers support him and a lot of them are worried that Chiang Kai-shek will chum up with foreign devils and close down the opium trade. This is of our highest concern. But if we unite powers and you’ll organize the political side of the matter and we—the military side, then it’ll work out just perfectly. Surely, money for such a decent arrangement will be found with no hassles.”

  “So what do you want from me?” Nina asked.

  “Establish contacts. Organize a meeting between Big-Eared Du and Fessenden. If the meeting is a success, of course, we won’t forget you. Your clients will be sleeping in peace and quiet, like kiddies in cots, and no one will touch them.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Nina said.

  Don Fernando picked up his hat. “Good. Your husband’s right to call you clever. Have a good day.”

  2.

  How did Don Fernando know that Nina was in with Fessenden? Was it Klim who told him? Of course it was. They sit there in their station till late at night, playing cards, gossiping and dreaming that radio will one day turn into a serious business.

  Nina called the Municipal Council, but Sterling was busy.

  “He’s talking to Mr. Wayer at the moment,” a secretary kindly informed her.

  Fessenden still kept that drug-head in his office, because he was duty bound to Hugh. Robert Wayer hadn’t done anything for a long time now. Nina saw him a couple of days ago: he’d been emaciated like a Chinese POW, pale, only his golden teeth shining.

  “Connect me with Fessenden as soon as he is free,” Nina told the secretary.

  She took a ledger, opened it and put it back on the table. For several months now her everyday business had become a burden for her; she even didn’t want to answer phone calls. But if I stop my drudgery and send everything to hell, what would I fill my days with then?

  Even the advancing Revolutionary Army didn’t scare her anymore— blast it! Nina herself couldn’t understand what was going on within her. Where did this apathy, indifference to her own destiny come from? One day Klim asked if she wanted to leave Shanghai and wait out the war in Northern provinces. She called him a coward in reply. “Go by yourself if you want.”

  But he’d also stayed, said he couldn’t leave his radio at such times.

  To sort out Felix Rodionov, Nina paid Tony from her own money. She decided not to sell the airplane and promised herself she’d hire a tutor and learn to fly. But since Ada signed the transfer papers, Nina hadn’t been to the airfield once. It was too upsetting to think about Daniel and his present to his beloved woman.

  Nina stood by the door of Klim’s room, waiting for a moment, listening if any of the servants were coming. Quietly, she slid inside. It was cold in there: the window was open wide. On the table, there were wind-ruffled papers pressed under a plate with withered sandwiches. As usual, Klim was creating a mess wherever he went.

  Nina opened the wardrobe door and squeezed her thievish hand into a pocket of his jacket. There were still no new letters.

  Klim was wasting his talents on all kinds of other people, telling his anecdotes to radio listeners, not to her. His admirers laughed, she didn’t. There were so many of them that Don Fernando put security men at the entrance to the radio station, making sure the girls who dreamed of meeting Klim Rogov didn’t interfere with his work.

  Nina and Klim weren’t angry at each other anymore and didn’t demand anything from each other. They lived in one building like neighbors in a boarding house, playing with Kitty in turn, but never going out together as a three. Sometimes, they had a family dinner. Klim would be reading a newspaper at the table; Nina would look at him point-blank, tense and unhappy.

  He’d changed a lot, even though he was still boyishly rangy and somewhat angular. His fringe had grown too long and parted above his forehead in two strands. He looked his thirty-seven; the first wrinkles ran from his nostrils down to the corners of his lips.

  In the mornings, Nina would intrude on his bathroom routine, as if she was looking for something. Klim would be shaving: one cheek in soapy foam, the other—smooth and clean. He had a concentrated look in the mirror pretending he did not notice Nina’s glances.

  She watched his shoulders peppered with birthmarks and the closely cropped hair at the back of his head. Above his ear, a wisp of foam remained.

  Nina noticed all the little details: when Klim bent over a basin, a thin fold would appear on his flat tummy; when he lifted his razor, a cleft above his collar-bone would deepen and blue veins appear on his forearm. His chest muscles were covered with dark fur; a coarse white scar, a war trophy, ran across his left pectoral. His baptismal cross hung from a glittering neck chain.

  Klim finally asked, “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Nina would become shy and retreat. Complete despair and hopelessness: no tricks would help you here, not the fanciest outfits or your locks running loose and wild.

  Klim looked at Nina with an absent look.

  Should I have a lover? she pondered, horrified with the thought. A passionate twenty-year-old boy with an athletic body? Or rather an Asian fellow—so, on purpose, I can fall as low as possible?

  The other day, Nina met a tall, fashionably dressed looker with narrow eyes. They both checked each other out and glanced back as they moved passed.

  Doesn’t Klim understand that he forces me to think about other men? That I can’t live like this all the time?

  But on the other hand, nothing would work out with someone else. Nina was happy with Klim because they had love, even though it was broken and mad. If she hooks some Joe, the story would end with her simply being…there was a suitable dirty word for that situation—from the brothel-goers’ vocabulary.

  The only way out was to go to the pharmacy and ask for some calming pills that make your heart grow old and force you to forget about everything once and for all.

  Nina kept remembering little warming details from their past: how she and Klim were riding on the roof of a train car, kissing each other in the wind; how together they composed the silliest poems for a newspaper and how afterwards they baked the potatoes they had earned from their poetry.

  It seemed to Nina that in the starving years of the civil war she was a hundred times happier than now. She couldn’t have new love—where would she get it from?

  Klim knew that Nina was jealous and hurt, but he still didn’t want to change anything.

  He had me like a pock fever. The pockmarks stayed, but otherwise he recovered just fine.

  This fact, the just fine bit, was the most unbearable.

  Nina went to Fessenden and told him about Don Fernando’s offer.

  “It’s really good that Big-Eared Du was the first to contact us,” Sterling said, pensively. “Tell him that we’re ready to talk.”

  In the corner of his office, Nina noticed a bird’s cage covered with a colorful shawl.

  “What’s that?” she asked Fessenden.

  “It’s my parrot. My vet said the poor thing suffers from loneliness and that’s why he plucks his own feathers out. I brought him here for company.”

  Nina p
ulled a corner of the shawl up. Inside was an eerie bird. It had a little chicken body and the head of a parrot. Its purple skin was showing through its sparse reddish down.

  “Mister Fessenden is my friend!” the parrot yelled. “I’m clever, fast and angry! I’ll kick everyone’s ass!”

  It roared with laughter and climbed up the cage, clawing with its knobby paws.

  That night in Nina’s dreams, she was turned into a caged and plucked parrot. This nightmare was much scarier than her old, almost forgotten, dream where a headless rooster chased her.

  3.

  Fighter planes for the Revolutionary Army were sourced from all over the world. When the headquarters were in Canton, steamers delivered dissembled airplanes to Hong Kong then took them up the Pearl River. Now, with the headquarters at Hankou, the goods had to be dispatched through the enemy’s nest in Shanghai and then sent further afield by an affable Soviet steamer up the Yangtze River. Thank goodness, bribes still solved any questions with customs and the harbor security office.

  Lemoine insisted Daniel should not go to Shanghai for the British airplane Sopwith Snipe. It was too dangerous: before her death Edna could have sent a telegram or written a letter to her relatives. In any case, if Daniel appeared in the foreign concessions, he would immediately be thrown in jail, according to war-time rules.

  But Bernard didn’t listen to anyone, so Paul Marie told him, “One-Eyed and I are coming with you.”

  Daniel joked, “But then, who’s going to look after my Mucha?”

  “The ladies from the clerical office will take care of your dog. I’ll look after you, as you’re my friend. And I don’t want to hear any objections.”

  They boarded the friendly Soviet steamer and arrived in Shanghai. The enemies were making a great fuss around the foreign concessions and had built a wall of barricades and razor wire. Soldiers were suspiciously examining Chinese refugees queuing to enter the International Settlement. That was nice: the Chinks, who fiercely hated foreign devils, were now rushing under the devil’s wing, away from their own narrow- eyed folks.

  Daniel never got his airplane: a storm sank the vessel and all its contents.

  He refused to return empty-handed, so he asked people he knew if there was a way to find parts for an air-engine BMW IV.

  Daniel, Lemoine and One-Eyed hired a taxi and went to the airfield. There, bathing its shining wings in the sun, stood their old buddy the Avro-504. And next to it was beautiful Nina Kupina wrapped in chic furs. With her hand in a red glove, she touched the fuselage, stroking it as if wiping off an invisible spider web.

  When she saw them, Daniel, Lemoine and One-Eyed, she just about fell off her feet with astonishment. By Jupiter, if the airplane wing was not behind her back, who knows what would have happened to this lovely lady.

  Daniel came closer to her and touched her hand just above her wrist. Lemoine again was awed how some people deal with women. She was anxious and asked Daniel to forgive her. Out of respect to the delicacy of the matter, Paul Marie gave them some privacy and went to examine the Avro, which he himself had assembled out of a pile of knocked down rubbish.

  Despite the task, he hadn’t missed any important bits.

  The lady said to Daniel, “I’ll give you this airplane. It was a mistake— what you did and what I did. It belongs to you, so you can take it any time you want. If you need, I can give you an escort so it has no problems on its way.”

  Lemoine scratched his head, clicking his tongue. Eh, Daniel, where did you master the art of seduction? Sign up Paul Marie to this class, please. He’ll pay in advance.

  4.

  Such wonderful times came to Shanghai that Makar constantly pinched himself. The foreigners had finally come to their senses. It was clear that the reinforcements wouldn’t get to Shanghai on time, so the Municipal Council had run to the Russian generals, pleading with them to talk.

  They were very polite, showing them respect and honor.

  “Prepare a platoon to protect our property from the Chinese rascals. Or it’s impossible to sleep at night.”

  The generals jumped into action, but put one condition to the foreigners: if we protect your highnesses, then deign to provide food to our warriors, a salary of three dollars per day per person, weapons and treatment of all the sicknesses that may occur.

  All ours signed up to the Russian Regiment of the Volunteer Corps. Two squadrons appeared as if from nowhere. As an award, the foreigners allowed everyone, even Glebov’s Cossacks, to live in Shanghai as long as they wanted. And as an exception, they granted permission for Russians to have their national tricolor as a flag.

  Nina Kupina, the mistress, called all her employees together and said, “A cargo has to be escorted up the Yangtze River.”

  No one agreed. And even though Nina Kupina flashed her sparkling eyes and stamped her little foot, she didn’t get anywhere. Makar, of course, felt sorry for her—she was a lady after all—but he also signed up to the Corps. Damn that tram depot!

  Of course it was shameful that war had come again; plus, his younger daughters were for the communists. It’s one matter to set up meetings and type revolutionary newspapers—no one would smack your bottom for that, but an attack on a peaceful city is a completely different matter. As a citizen, whether you like it or not, you have to protect your home.

  Marching the streets after lunch—what could be better? It was ages since they’d all paraded together with real rifles.

  Horse carts loaded with Western volunteers moved passed. Behind them, rickshaw boys scurried along, pulling the volunteers’ servants, rifles and ammunition. See that? That’s how some go to war!

  It’s okay, buddies, don’t be scared, Makar thought. We won’t let Chiang Kai-shek offend you. The Russian squadron is here!

  “Sing!” Colonel Lazarev ordered.

  Hey tell, old man, had we a cause

  When Moscow, razed by fire, once was…

  The Chinese stuck their heads out of the windows, gawping. I bet they had never heard Russian songs, Makar thought, smiling.

  “Column left march!”

  Ragged boots, disheveled heads—but you better watch these guys!

  Maria, my sweet daughter, must have had second sight predicting that we were not over the hill yet.

  “We’ll show them what for!” she said. With the noble officers she established some kind of commission to fight communist spies. They arranged everything by the book: they watch secretly who visits the Soviet Consulate, and start a file on the traitors. But they don’t hand them to the police, because the Bolsheviks even have their people in there.

  “We’ll manage them by ourselves,” Maria said.

  “Left march, left march!”

  They turned to the temporary training grounds at the race course.

  “Squo-o-o-dron…” Colonel Lazarev shouted.

  “Whoa!” somebody called cheekily from the middle of the column.

  They stopped on “hey-ho”. The Colonel ran around, looking for the culprit and laughing himself.

  Makar Zaborov stood to attention, his chest forward, eyes shining cheerfully—all properly, as it should be.

  CHAPTER 70

  A CHRISTMAS STORY

  1.

  The Nanking Road stores shone with Christmas glitter. The shop owners wanted to sell as much as they could before the war reached Shanghai. Every shop window beamed happily with Christmas trees, colorful lights and boxes wrapped in silver paper. Two weeks before the holiday, the department store Sincere announced a huge sale. At the entrance—a children’s bazaar, on the second floor—stalls with pies, Californian mandarins and French wine. Ladies in red dresses handed flyers to passers-by: An intricately embroidered tablecloth to every buyer! Though, the small print stated the tablecloths were only given to those who spent over ten dollars in the store.

  Just the thought of an assault on the city terrified Ada. She timidly asked Lissie whether they should evacuate to the North. But the mistress seemed to savor all the fron
tline reports, laughing at those who fled the city, saying she looked forward to watching history happen in front of her eyes.

  “Don’t panic, Ada. You’ll die anyway: if not now, then in fifty years time. Go shopping, choose presents. Enjoy life!”

  So, Ada and Brittany hauled themselves to the department store. First, they bought a painting with snowy mountains and a little wooden shed in the background. Then Brittany went to look for presents for her friends: a doll in a hat for Mary, a dragonfly brooch for Rebecca and nothing for Henrietta, because she didn’t deserve anything. For herself, Brittany found a huge steam locomotive with an engine driver and three train cars.

  Loaded with presents, Ada and Brittany went to the second floor to buy a bottle of chartreuse Lissie had ordered. Shelves with liquors stretched from floor to ceiling—like a ravine with narrow passageways.

  Ada took one bottle in her hands, then another. What if it’s a fake?

  “I’m tired…I want to go home…” whined Brittany.

  Ada hushed her, “Don’t fidget! Sit here, on this bench, and wait till I find a present for Mommy.”

  It was difficult to manage Brittany. The little girl missed Hobu, believing her nanny had left for her relatives, fearing the coming war. It meant tantrums and scandals every day.

  Ada went to the very end of the walls of stacked wines and took two bottles: one with green liquor, another with yellow. Which is better? And suddenly, in the corner of her eye, she noticed a man on the other side of the shelves watching her through an opening between the bottles.

  Oh God, Daniel Bernard!

  Close-cropped head, thin face, gray hair appearing on his temples.

  “You’re back?” Ada stammered in astonishment.

  He smiled sadly. “As it turned out, I can’t live without you.”

  She blushed.

  “Will you come with me?” Daniel asked.

  “Where to?”