by Vivian Yang
“That’s fine, Mo Mo, neither do I. What about … ”
Assuming he would ask about my father, I didn’t let him finish. “My father … is dead.”
Briefly, he held my hand again. “I’m so sorry.”
His tenderness melted me.
“I never met him ... but ...”
“You don’t have to tell me anything if you …”
I looked up from the two concentric plates before me and blurted out, “But I want to tell you. My mother … she’s half White Russian and I got my looks from her.”
“I see,” he said, nodding knowingly. “That’s why you like borscht?”
“Yes. We make it at home.”
“Do you have a Christian name, Mo Mo?”
“No, but my last name is the Chinese translation for Molotov, my maternal grandfather’s name.”
He cocked his head and asked, “So Miss Molotova, are you by any chance related to Comrade Molotov?”
“Who’s that?”
Uncle Fly chuckled. “I forgot they don’t teach you kids about the glories of the Bolshevik Revolution any more. Vyacheslav Molotov was the spokesman for the Soviet Union during and after the Second World War and believe it or not, the only man alive who has shaken hands with Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt and our very own Chairman Mao. The Molotov cocktail -- inflammable liquid in a bottle hurled at a target after being ignited -- was named after him.”
“Never heard of such a thing, either.”
“You have now. As a matter of fact, you remind me of one – a Molotov cocktail-strength Shanghai fireball.”
It took me a moment to figure out what he was saying. Never before had I encountered a person like him, humorous, temperate, and cultured -- an embodiment of sophistication itself. I gazed at Uncle Fly, mesmerized.
“Can I see you again after this meal? I mean, in the future?”
“What do you think?” he asked for a reply.
Heartily we laughed.
As I approached Uncle Fly’s house, I had a sudden appreciation of Wang Hong’s frame of mind when she came to our home for the first time. Anticipation and apprehension combined made me feel like there was a bunny hopping inside my chest. I pressed the buzzer and waited for Ah Fang but it was Uncle Fly himself who came down, his long sleeved black polo shirt tucked into beige, cuffed trousers.
“Good afternoon,” he greeted me with a smile. “Come with me to the pavilion room.”
Typically located on the top floor of a Western-style house, the pavilion room was so named because of its gabled shape. Beams of afternoon sunlight via the Venetian window flooded one-third of this room, which was refracted to the rest of the space by the wax-polished teak floor. A vintage ceiling fan was circulating the odor from a citronella mosquito-repelling coil. Tucked under the tapering roof on one side of the room was a tan leather wing chair with a tall back, corded upholstery seams, and nail heads. A rosewood desk with brass-handled drawers was a couple of feet away. On the other side of the room I saw something familiar: a single gas range turtle’s head. On it was a cylindrical aluminum pot with a spout and a clear glass top. I made a mental note of its unusual shape.
“Would you like join me for coffee?”
“Y-yes. Thank you. Do you use that kettle?”
A quick smile swept across his face. “It’s a percolator. Come, I’ll show you how it brews.”
I watched him add the grinds to the filter basket inside and pour hot water from a thermos. “I’m afraid we don’t have milk or sugar for you,” he said, remembering.
“I don’t need them. The ‘café noir’ you had at the restaurant didn’t have them.”
“You’re an observant girl, aren’t you? So you prefer black. Won’t be too bitter?”
“A-actually, I have never had coffee yet, but if it’s not bitter to you, it shouldn’t to me.”
“We’ll make sure nothing is bitter for this sweet girl, then.”
A smooth aroma accompanied by the rhythmic popping sound permeated the space. It occurred to me that this atmosphere could be a close approximation to the opium-wafting environment Uncle Fly’s ancestors had lived in.
“The smell is intoxicating.”
“That’s because the beans were ground this morning. Ah Fang got them at the Second Food Provisions Store. Their Yunnan coffee is quite drinkable.”
I nodded appreciatively. Moments later, as I poured coffee into two cups, I felt him studying me as if he were a casting director auditioning me for a specific role. I held my breath, brought the coffee to the teapoy, and sat down across from him, my back straight. As I took my first sips of coffee with a lifted pinky, he asked, “Does this all come naturally to you, your bearing and fine manners?”
“Oh ... not really,” I replied casually, thanking in my heart the Film Studio training. It was a personal quality of mine he was admiring, not just the way I looked. An urge to tell him about myself rushed forward. “It’s so kind of you to say such nice things about me. Actually I’ve had some un … eh … unusual experiences and not all of them are pleasant ones.”
He put down his cup and leaned a bit closer. “Would you like to tell me about them?”
I placed my cup next to his, making sure that only its handle and not its rim touched his. Swallowing a deep sigh, I gave Uncle Fly the condensed version of my life: Hong Kong-born, Shanghai-bred quarter-blood with disparaging nicknames; fatherless, mother careless; swim team éliminée; film school dropout (hence my posture he admired). But I left out Coach Long, Ouyang, and Wang Hong. “I feel that people judge me based on the way I look and not who I am, but I can’t change my appearance, can I?” I concluded, surprised by my straightforwardness.
Uncle Fly listened intently. “Do you remember anything from Hong Kong?” he asked afterwards.
“Only vaguely. My mother had banned me from mentioning Hong Kong until after the downfall of the Gang of Four. I remember the Shanghainese ah bu who took care of me. She was the kindest person I’d ever met.”
“I spent some time in Hong Kong when I was young, too.”
“Really? Do tell me about it. In fact, tell me about your life, please. I’ve told you mine.”
“You’re the most intriguing young woman who has showed an interest in me for a long time. Hope I don’t bore you.”
When he was born in a British Concession hospital, Uncle Fly’s merchant’s family was already at a late stage of its “Chekhovian decline”. His father, the family’s “young master” was based in Hong Kong for business and decided to send for the wife and son as soon as the baby was weaned from the wet nurse. But Ah Fang did not follow them to Hong Kong because she knew no Cantonese.
They were put on board the HMS Princess Elizabeth accompanied by a butler who was Cantonese. The family took up residence at The Peninsula Hotel and he went to a preschool in Kowloon Tong where Scottish woolen knickers and English leather shoes were part of the uniform. He recalled swimming and water gun battles with the butler at the Repulse Bay and Tsing Yi Tam Shan beaches and riding on the funicular railway to the Victoria Peak. The day after Christmas, 1941, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese who promptly turned The Pen into their headquarters, renaming it The Toa Hotel.
Repatriating to Shanghai, he began kindergarten at St. Francis-Xavier for Boys and later graduated secondary school from there as well, enrolling at St. John’s University, the “Harvard of Shanghai” at sixteen. In 1952, his senior year, St. John’s was permanently shut down by the new Communist regime since the school, founded in 1879 by the Anglican Bishop of Shanghai, by definition “represented an enemy of the Chinese people.”
“Not until then did I regret having skipped classes in pursuit of the more leisurely things in life.”
“Such as?”
“Such as spending too much time listening to the wireless on 600KHz AM, the U.S. Armed Forces Radio, swirling on dance floors to the music of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, or sauntering over to Café Renaissance on rue Père Robert to read
a Western book while nursing an espresso. Uniformed McTyeire School girls would often see me there and one of them, Helen, playfully dubbed me ‘The Renaissance Shanghainese’ and the name stuck.”
“That’s a great nickname.”
“Well, not during the Cultural Revolution when I was yelled at by the head of the Neighbourhood Revolutionary Committee, ‘What Renaissance Shanghainese? The knowledge you have is nothing but feudal, bourgeois, and revisionist!’ I was classified as an ‘unemployed social youth’ then so the Committee was my political authority.”
“You were lucky they didn’t classify you as a dandy flâneur.”
“I suppose I was a well-read idle man-about-town, someone they couldn’t condone. They assigned me to sweep the streets to ‘reform through labor’ and that’s when …”
“… I first saw you looking so awkward wielding a broom! But seriously, what happened after the incident? Did that classmate of mine report on you?”
Uncle Fly smiled faintly. “He did, but it wasn’t that bad. The Committee decided to punish me by sending me off to a camp in the outskirts for ‘re-educating bourgeois intellectuals’. There, I became an apprentice to paddy field peasants. Believe it or not, I even acted as dance instructor for the production team’s LOYALTY-Character Dance.”
“That experience of being sent down to the countryside did you little good, it seems or you wouldn’t have been so hesitant to retrieve Daisy from her fight with that rooster.”
He gave me an embarrassed look but quipped, “Then my prayer that I would see you again wouldn’t have been answered so soon. And honestly, I found it impossible to push my way through the crowd – it would be so impolite. Anyway, the camp experience was something out of the Arabian Nights for me, choreographing and leading female peasants wearing red arm bands and holding ‘Loyalty to Chairman Mao’ placards, scurrying around on a makeshift stage on the rice field.”
“That’s so sadly funny, I have to say. Reminds me of the type of dance I had to learn while preparing to shoot Xinjiang Is a Wonderful Place.”
Uncle Fly rose and walked towards a recess of the room. A creaking sound echoed as his leather soles touched the loosening teak floor. He opened the door to a walk-in closet and switched on the light. I saw a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf next to a space where half a dozen qipao dresses hung. Underneath were ladies pumps: pointy toes, high heels, black, white, cream, and patent. He took out what appeared to be a small suitcase and a stack of square cardboards and placed them on the desk. He then removed a red ribbon from a rolled up sheet of paper and smoothed it. “Look.”
It was a September 1973 concert program of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, the first American ensemble ever to visit the People’s Republic of China, with the great, septuagenarian Eugene Ormandy conducting.
“Aomandi!” I cried out as I saw the Chinese characters for Ormandy. “You went to see Maestro Aomandi?”
“Sh-uuu ….” Index finger on his lips. “Keep your voice down.”
I apologized with a grimace. “Sorry I was so excited.”
“Now there’s a sweet little imp I can’t bear to scold.”
“Were you at his concert?”
“Yes, I was very lucky to get a ticket. I knew you might appreciate this. Not many in your age group will recognize his name or know of the Orchestra.”
“Unless one’s mother happened to have seen the Maestro in person giving rehearsals of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony - Fate! But of course that was three years before the Gang of Four was smashed, so direct communication with him was strictly prohibited.”
“Yes,” he agreed, wearing a thousand-yard stare, lost in memories. “I was moved to tears at the concert and later joined like-minded people who followed his motorcade up Huaihai Road, like a pilgrimage -- and I’m saying this as a Christian who could only worship in my heart. I had never done anything like this before -- it was an awesome experience.”
“I’m sure it was. Thankfully you can now say you are a Christian, at least in private. My Nga Bu came from a devout Christian family in the former concessions.”
“Did she? Shanghai certainly had her share of Christians in the concessions. In fact the friend who gave me the ticket works at the Conservatoire and he is a fellow Christian. He was at the rehearsals, too.”
“Da-Da-Da-DUH! Deh-Deh-Deh-DI! ” I sang the short-short-short-long opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth. “‘Thus Fate knocks at the door!’”
“I used to have the Fifth, but it’s all gone. Come.” He opened the hard-shelled box to reveal a gramophone, and the stack of cardboards was vinyl album LPs -- 78s and 45s. He placed one record on the turntable. The yellowed sleeve featured a puppy looking into a large conical horn next to a Caucasian man. Running his finger across the words RCA Victor Company, SHANGHAI, he explained, “Here’s a Nelson Eddy from the 1930’s RCA released exclusively for the Chinese market.”
“Cute dog.”
“That’s Nipper, RCA’s trademark fox terrier. I grew up listening to many of the records from His Master’s Voice label … unfortunately, the Red Guards later smashed most of them.”
Music, the kind I had never heard before, rose as he put the needle on the record, disseminating in this sun-drenched space. “I don’t suppose they taught you any ballroom steps along with the Uighur ingénue’s Xinjiang dance?”
“No, that would’ve been condemned as being too decadent, but I’m sure I can follow if you lead.”
He drew me close and began to glide, our steps getting longer as we twirled. “You’re a natural,” he complimented, “You float.”
Optical illusions generated by dust particles in the air made me feel like being in a mirage; a simultaneous sensation of familiarity and strangeness filled my heart as I was cradled and swirled in his arms, in sync with the turntable as it reached this 1930 Gershwin song:
Embrace me,
My sweet embraceable you.
Embrace me,
You irreplaceable you.
Just one look at you,
My heart grew tipsy in me.
You and you alone bring out the gypsy in me.
I love all -- the many charms about you.
Above all -- I want my arms about you.
……
My sweet embraceable you!
As the intermittently scratchy music died down, dusk had befallen outside. Uncle Fly pushed open two facing windows, letting in an aura of serenity.
“Enough of a taste of the West for today, young lady.”
Daisy whined outside and rushed up to Uncle Fly as soon as he opened the door. She sniffed my ankles with her cold nose before being picked up by her master. “Let’s go down together,” he said to me. “It’s time for her walk.”
11 A Revolutionary Étude
It was a heady time for all. With the Communist Bamboo Curtain removed, the West rediscovered the Great Walled China. “Yellow fever” had hit. Still more Chinese caught the “going abroad fever”. Not a few tried by hook or by crook to leave.
Wang Hong told me that a young man with long blond hair had arrived in the Keyboard Department. The following events happened at this juncture in my life but I would not become aware of the details until sometime later.
“Teacher Mo Na-di, the Conservatory leadership assigns you the important task of working with an American musician,” said Secretary-General Zhao who, after years as personal assistant to former Studio head Ouyang, now sat at his old boss’s mahogany desk. Zhao had cooperated exemplarily with investigators looking into Ouyang’s alleged affiliation with the condemned Madame Mao.
“I’m honored, Secretary-General Zhao. Please rest assured that I’ll try my best to fulfill this glorious task,” Mother replied, the gaze from her large eyes penetrating Zhao’s glass lenses soiled from sweat and dust. Substituting a missing nose pad on his clear plastic frame was an adhesive tape rolled into a cushion, its color now charcoal gray. Zhao’s eyes distorted by lenses as thick as the bottom of Tsingtao beer bottles beamed at her.
“Very good. You know I could’ve chosen other suitable teachers but I trust that you’ll do a good job.”
“Thank you for your personal trust, Secretary-General. You know I’ll fulfill this assignment beyond your expectation.”
“Let me show you his profile here.” With his nicotine-stained index finger underlining the top of a form, Zhao tapped the following emphatically: Name: Mick Popov. Name formerly used or Alias (if applicable): Михаил Попов (Mikhail Popov). “Take note. This man was born in the Soviet Union but is now an American, so his background is both U.S. imperialist and Soviet revisionist. In your role as his piano accompanist, you have to be extra vigilant in your daily observation of his behavior -- this, in addition to learning from his professional musical skills to benefit our students and eventually our revolutionary arts-loving masses.”
“Yes, I understand. And I’ll report anything suspicious to you,” promised Mother while her eyes were fixated on the photo on the form. Aquiline nose, bedroom eyes, pale face, thin lips, and shoulder-length mane. This was the young Russian-American soon to be her co-teacher in the violin honors class at the Affiliated Middle School.
Born in 1952 in the Soviet republic of Ukraine, Mikhail Popov had a golden childhood. Around the collar of his white shirt he wore a red kerchief which symbolized a corner of the Hammer & Sickle flag dyed crimson with revolutionary martyrs’ blood. He and his fellow Communist Young Pioneers would stand ramrod straight while delivering this daily salute: “For the struggle of the cause of the Communist Party, we are prepared at all times!”
For his class assignment “What I Want to be When I Grow Up” young Mikhail drew astronaut Yuri Gagarin and wrote “My hero” underneath. Nobody would dare to tell him about Rudolf Nureyev, the great ballet dancer who had defected to the West shortly after Major Gagarin’s Volstok 1 reached outer space. Later in life, Mick would reflect on the irony of his childhood hero worship and his own decision to defect.
Brought up in Kiev in an upscale apartment by Stalin-era standards, Mikhail and his sister Olga spent summers out in the country, practicing the violin and cello respectively in a dacha allocated to their father. Comrade Professor Popov had been a university music historian in the Republic’s capital until a call of duty brought him to Moscow in the late 1950s. The siblings would forever remember their welcome present: attending a concert by the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, winner of the Stalin Prize. Greatly inspired, they vowed to become “revolutionary music prodigies” and resumed their training with some of the USSR’s best tutors.
