“Fanya Borodina is the spouse of Chiang Kai-shek’s main political advisor?” Aulman specified.
“Precisely.”
Klim and Tony exchanged glances.
“Why did they think Nina was her relation?” Klim asked in whisper.
Tony stepped on his foot—Klim’s question wouldn’t help.
“And where’s the ship’s crew?” Aulman asked the prison warden.
“They were sent to Suzhou in irons. Those people are small fry; no one will hold ceremonies for them. But the wife of an advisor is another matter.”
“Thank you very much,” Tony said politely and gave the man a wad of banknotes.
When they were outside, he explained, “Nina purposely called herself Borodina’s relative, otherwise she would have been treated terribly. I think Zhang Zuolin has plans for Fanya. He will most likely use this trump card to manipulate her husband.” Tony hailed a rickshaw boy. “We have nothing more to do here. Let’s get back to Shanghai.”
Klim was silent all the way to the train station. It turned out that the railroad company was hit by another strike. The next steamer would be the day after tomorrow. The only European hotel in the area, Bridge House, was occupied by cavalrymen.
“How are you?” Aulman asked, glancing compassionately into Klim’s eyes.
“Good.”
They went back to the prison and Aulman asked the warden to spare them a cell with a heater and preferably no bedbugs.
“It’s safer here than in the hotel,” Tony said as he spread a blanket on a plank-bed. “Did you notice how they eyed us on the street?”
Klim hadn’t.
They had a dinner of smoked sausages and other supplies from the basket. Tony lay down and was gone in a second, his nose whistling, but Klim couldn’t sleep a wink.
It felt strange when what was most dear to you, didn’t appear to have any value for anyone else. And it felt even stranger when suddenly you realize what is most dear to you. Not with your head or reasoning, but with some animal instinct. That’s how people react to an unexpected lack of oxygen.
Before Nina left him, or rather when Klim emotionally left her, there was an unspoken safety net: I can always come back. Now he was more desperate than if he had been wounded in the stomach. They had torn a piece of his flesh out, and there was no way to sew it back in place. Learn, my dear, to live with an amputated core.
In the morning, they were woken by guns. Aulman ran into the corridor, only dressed in his underpants. The warden rushed towards him.
“Don’t leave the prison!” the man yelled, eyes full of horror. “It’s the Revolutionary Army! They’ve captured the city!”
CHAPTER 74
THE GREAT WALL
1.
Each new customer to Martha’s establishment would be taken aside by the Madam and told the wonderful news, “Every night a lady in a mask appears: she never shows her face to anyone, but you know she’s a real beauty. Her figure—to die for! All her dresses—latest chic from Europe, in her ears—diamonds! And, my God, can she dance!”
“Who is she?” the client would ask.
“A lady of quality! You can always tell a high society dame by her manners. Just imagine: she chooses her man for the night herself.”
“You don’t say!”
“It’s true! And the one she chooses is in heaven. She dances with him, orders champagne, and then they go upstairs…”
“Wow!”
“The rich have their own whims and fancies. She never tells her name and we all call her Messalina after the Roman empress who liked to play a prostitute.”
The clients were sure Martha was telling tall stories, but had to drop by anyway, just in case. Not a single one could resist the tale of the lady in the mask. And she would never disappoint, appearing at midnight— pale with blood-red lips, her dress slit up to the middle of her thigh. On her chest shimmered a necklace with a mystic amulet. An Ethiopian boy with a curved saber always accompanied her.
The orchestra would hush, all eyes glued to Messalina. And she—as if not noticing anyone—would walk among the tables, every customer’s heart pounding. Will it be me?
Finally she would stop, stretch out her hand, saying to some confused and lucky beggar, “Good evening.”
Martha jealously guarded Messalina’s secret: taxi-girls and all her staff were strictly forbidden to get acquainted with her. The clients were also told that anyone who tried to take off Messalina’s mask would have his head chopped off. When the unknown beauty took a client into a room, her bodyguard stood sentry at the doors with a saber drawn.
Before dawn, Messalina would disappear and Martha would lock crumpled banknotes in her safe, thinking, A girl in a mask—it’s ingenious. If Messalina got married or, God help us, slit her wrists, Martha could always find a substitute.
2.
“Felix is alive!” Ada announced, bursting into Betty’s apartment. She lowered herself heavily into a chair and covered her face with her palms. “What if they tell him…about me?”
Betty was the only soul, except Martha, who knew her secret. A policeman called Umberto promised to take Betty to Italy, so she had resigned from her occupation and eagerly taught Ada the secrets of the trade.
“My dragon doesn’t care about my past,” Betty said, smiling. She had already bought new tulip-shaped coffee cups for their future house and tiny woolen socks for their future baby.
Betty placed a mirror on a table and started to massage her chin and forehead. “What’s up with my useless spouse?”
Ada sighed. “I received a note…no idea who dropped it off. Felix is on the armored train, the Great Wall, and soon will return here to protect Shanghai.”
“So, he’s with the Russian mercenaries of the Dogmeat General? They’ll kill him. Umberto says the Chinese generals send the Russians to the hottest spots. And after that I become a widow and can at last get married for real. Umberto and I want to leave Shanghai at the end of March. And you should also think where to get away to. They’ll start slaughtering everyone soon.”
“I’ll wait for Felix,” Ada uttered.
“I teach you and teach you, but you still remain as stupid,” Betty laughed.
3.
Squeezing her head through the school gates, a third-grader shouted, “There! On the Broadway, the Coldstream Guards are marching with an orchestra!”
Brittany swung her backpack onto her back and ran after her classmates. A teacher tried to stop them. “Get back! Don’t you dare leave the school grounds!”
Dream on! Her pupils rushed ahead, pushing passers-by aside.
“Do they wear red jackets and bear-fur hats?” Brittany asked as they ran.
No one answered. For several weeks, Shanghai was shaking with fear: what if the help they needed didn’t come in time? What if Chiang Kai-shek’s troops took over the city? A lot of people fled: Brittany had lost her nanny, and Miss Ada had also run away. Mommy said they were afraid of the war.
“Will we go, too?” Brittany asked her, humbly. She couldn’t sleep at night, terrified shelling would make the house catch fire and they wouldn’t have enough time to run out.
Mommy would get angry. “Don’t be silly. There can be no war—no one will gain from it. They’ll come to terms peacefully and then divide between each other all the senior positions and stocks.” But even in her mother’s sprightly voice Brittany could sense hesitation.
Yet, help did arrive in time and now the streets were crowded with soldiers. Brittany stopped drawing princesses—the walls of her room were now covered with portraits of brown-faced Indians, stern-looking Japanese and American Mariners named Devil Dogs for some reason.
Brittany even learned how to distinguish army ranks. In the first grade, all the girls did this as a diversion. What a disaster mixing up a corporal for a sergeant was!
During breaks, pupils exchanged news:
“The Indian detachment is housed in the stables at the racecourse…”
“But
the premises are unheated there and all the soldiers have running noses…”
“The Americans have returned to their ships again…”
Every detachment had its fans and enemies.
“Ours have a seventy-nine instrument orchestra!”
“What are they gonna fight the Chinese with? Pipes? Your orchestra boys don’t even patrol the city!”
Before class, during the common prayer, everyone would pray to prevent the invasion. Teachers would whisper in the corridors, “The States are betraying us! They think the rebels here are similar to those nice and shy Chinese college students they meet at American campuses. Only a catastrophe can bring them to their senses.”
“The catastrophe has already happened. Do you think the Americans are that stupid? I’ve heard that unofficially our generals are allowed to do whatever they want, not waiting for orders from headquarters—if the Battle of Shanghai happens.”
Battle of Shanghai—these words sounded magnificent and eerie.
Dads of almost all the schoolgirls served in the Volunteer Corps. Mothers dreamed up ways of demonstrating their devotion and care to the city’s protectors.
“Our valiant warriors shouldn’t be bored,” announced Lady Barton, wife of the British Consul General. “Let’s make them love Shanghai and its citizens, only then they’ll fight for us with the proper enthusiasm.”
Sir Elly Kadoorie turned his Marble Hall into an entertainment center for officers. The British Women Association set up buffets, playrooms and a library. In the Holy Trinity Cathedral, they read lectures on British history. All officers were invited to attend balls arranged in a French Sport Club, Majestic or Astor House ballrooms. In the American Club, they set up a round-the-clock restaurant where the best dishes were sold for a song.
Brittany’s Mommy took part in all these activities, and of course many men fell madly in love with her. Brittany was proud of her. One guy, coming usually on his motorcycle, liked Mommy particularly strongly. He never entered the house, but waited for her around the corner.
Brittany told her friend Henrietta about him. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad. After all, we have Daddy.”
“It’s just an admirer,” Henrietta laughed. “All beautiful ladies have admirers.”
“Who are they?”
“Well, they’re men who admire you and give you different presents so you pay attention to them. When we grow up, we’ll have them, too.”
That night Brittany drew an admirer for herself—he was on a motorcycle and carried a short gun. And a week later, she added two more—they were standing on the other side of the road, watching her windows.
Mommy’s street admirers were dressed badly, but they were devoted: wherever she went they always followed.
Brittany pushed through the crowd. In front of her marched British guardsmen, hammering their feet. They looked different from how she’d imagined; instead of red jackets and furry hats they wore khaki coats and dusty caps. Fixed bayonets glistened in the sun; an embroidered flag with a crown, sphinx and Union Jack trembled on a pole. Young, cleanly shaved faces, strong arms, wide shoulders—these were the men to save Shanghai.
Brittany put her hand on her chest and started to sing:
When Britain first, at heaven’s command…
Schoolgirls standing nearby and also adults joined her song:
Rule Britannia!
Britannia rule the waves.
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.
4.
When Shanghai announced a state of siege, Sokoloff moved his operations to the French Concession.
“Communists work like this,” Lissie explained to Collor. “They instigate the plebs to revolt with a dream of expelling all foreigners, but when the shit hits the fan they run for the protection of our soldiers.”
These days Sokoloff saw Lissie almost every day. He chain-smoked and nervously demanded detailed reports—by these signs, she guessed the communists were cooking something up.
For conspiracy purposes, Sokoloff started to work as a waiter in a restaurant. At the agreed time, Lissie would wait for him at a dead-end road near the back door. She pleaded with him to change the location, but he insisted a nook with the rubbish bins where rats found refuge was the best place for their secret meetings. “No one can see us here; all the windows are out the other side.”
The night was bright and clear. Lissie looked around and hastily walked down the narrow passage dividing the yards and a brick fence. Sokoloff was waiting for her in the dead-end.
“Why have you been so long?”
Lissie stood next to him. “Listen carefully: two battalions of English infantry arrived today on the transport vessel Megantic. Four hundred more Mariners were sent from Japan to keep order in the textile factories—”
Lissie noticed Sokoloff was looking over her shoulder. His eyes opened wide, face petrified.
Frightened, she spun around; there were four men in work robes and a tall woman standing near the wall. The woman said something in an unknown language. Lissie moved back and stumbled into Sokoloff. A revolver glistened in the woman’s hands. Lissie gasped. She wanted to run to an exit, but one of the men struck her so hard that she fell to the filthy pavement. The woman again murmured something and Lissie heard the word communist.
“What do you want? Money?” Lissie hastily put her hand into her pocket. “Here, take it! Two hundred dollars…”
Crumpled banknotes flew in all directions.
“Help!” Lissie screamed.
Sokoloff dashed to the wall, pulled himself up with his hands and rolled over the other side. A gun discharged—once, twice.
Something hot struck Lissie’s chest, and as she lost consciousness she heard the woman say in English, “That’s for your treason, from Maria Zaborova.”
CHAPTER 75
THE KUOMINTANG’S VICTORY
1.
Morning had broken. Martha switched off her table lamp and started to add up Ada’s royalties. “Twenty, thirty, forty…”
Her plump hands deftly went through the banknotes, stacking them portrait side up.
“Have you seen that legless son of a bitch, Lemoine?” Martha muttered. “He’s in the city again. What the devil brings him to my place? He scares the girls.”
“Really?” Ada asked, indifferently. She was on tenterhooks: the whole night cannons fired from the North Railway Station. Who was it? The Revolutionary Army? Or local rebels again? Nobody knew anything.
“Lemoine said it’s an armored train, the Great Wall, fighting the factory workers,” Martha explained, listening to distant cannons booming. The Great Wall was trapped—rails dismantled in the front and behind it. The Dogmeat General and his troops had run away long ago, but these ones were stuck.”
“Did you say the Great Wall?” Ada interrupted. She scooped the money into her bag. “I need to go.”
“Where to? Wait!” Martha shouted.
Ada leapt outside. Refugees, soldiers and policemen were all around her. A huge cloud of smoke covered half the sky.
Ada saw an empty rickshaw. “Do you speak English?” she asked the rickshaw boy. “I need to go to the North Railway Station.”
The coolie snorted, “No way.”
“What do you mean? You don’t want money?”
“I’m not going to that station. They’re shooting there.”
“Ada!”
She turned. Mitya rode up to her on his bicycle and jumped off.
“Hell’s broken out in Zhabei—I’ve just returned from there. No busses, no electricity. I came to see you.”
Ada grabbed his hand. “Mitya, sell me your bike! How much do you want?”
She opened her bag showing him all her money.
“I’ll give you a ride,” he said. “Climb up on the frame.”
“I need to go to the North Railway Station. There’s an armored train called the Great Wall—Felix is there!”
Mitya looked straight into her eyes. “You’ll die if you
go by yourself. The factory workers will shoot you on sight. I’ll ride you through the storehouses.”
2.
The Russian colonel, Kotlyarov, was commander of the Great Wall. He called all his officers into a meeting. Train wheels clunked rhythmically and gray light shone through the viewing slots. The air smelled burnt.
“The Chinese City is ravaged, houses on fire, people slaughtered everywhere,” reported the scout. “The factory workers took over the police stations and are now armed. They cordoned off the whole North Railway Station area. The Revolutionary Army will arrive any minute now.”
The commander bent over a Shanghai-Nanking railway map. Above the Chinese characters in indelible pencil were scribbled Russian translations of all the place names.
“They won’t dare attack now,” Kotlyarov said, pensively. “They’ll wait until we run out of ammunition. So, gentlemen, any ideas?”
“We’ll have to stay and use up what we have,” said Felix Rodionov, a young officer with dark circles under his eyes. He’d recently been made commander of the covering team, to replace dead Captain Arfeyev.
The workers tried to shoot the armored train from houses along the railway, but Kotlyarov ordered to return fire with shells. Heavy naval guns of the Great Wall brought houses to the ground, leaving the ruins to burn for the rest of the night.
“We need to hold out till dawn,” Kotlyarov said. “After dusk, we’ll start moving towards the foreign concessions.” He wiped his sleeve over his forehead. “Borisov, you to form a group of volunteers that will cover our retreat. Go without Rodionov, we’ll need him for other tasks.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pirogov, tell your people to be ready. Distribute rations for two days and be ready to carry out instructions. Rodionov, your task is to be the first one out of the train and make contact with the Allied headquarters. Ask them to let our guys inside the foreign concessions.”
White Shanghai Page 55
