Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

  I nodded, agreeing, but was forced to admit silently that I’d been guilty of it all my life as she continued the story. ‘I was stuck next to a large woman who insisted on telling me her troubles in excruciatingly boring detail. These calamitous circumstances were no more onerous than those of most of the other refugees, but oh how she carried on about them, loudly bemoaning the tragedy of her recent life. Worse still, every few minutes, often in mid-sentence, she’d burst into pitiful wailing and lamentation, beating her ample breasts with her bejewelled fists and commencing a lachrymatory display that befitted a scene in a bad opera, until finally her satin bodice was soaked in tears. It grew so wearisome that when she left to replaster her make-up in the washroom of the next station I hastily moved into a third-class carriage. While it was less comfortable and more crowded, the somewhat better-off Chinese peasants were a much more entertaining and generous lot. I bowed my head and greeted them with the street argot Lei ho, which, roughly translated, means “You good?” When they realised I spoke Cantonese their pleasure was quite evident, and a family with several children, the woman suckling a baby, made room for me beside them.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘I recall, as evening closed in, holding the baby in my arms and singing him a lullaby in Cantonese until he finally fell asleep. But the applause from the other passengers was so raucous the infant woke with a start and commenced to wail at the top of his tiny lungs.’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan laughed once again at the memory. ‘The Chinese thought this hilarious, and immediately called for a repeat performance. I continued singing for a while and at the end of each song they’d press upon me some small trifle or gift of food.

  ‘I had been practising the new thousand-word Chinese calligraphy ever since Ah Lai and I had been in Manchuria. A Chinese scholar who lived in her village had tutored me in return for lessons in English. I had respectfully written to Mr Yu in the new calligraphy to inform him I was coming to Shanghai and the approximate time I was expected to arrive on the Red Rooster, the Chinese name for the train. His secretary scribe had written back by return mail to say Big Boss Yu would send a servant to pick me up but to be sure to get off at South Station near the Chinese City.’

  I made as if to interrupt and then thought better of it. Observing my hesitation, she asked, ‘What is it, Jack?’

  I was beginning to feel a bit dizzy and decided I’d better lay off the champagne, but felt I still had my wits about me. ‘Chinese City? I thought the whole of Shanghai was a Chinese city? After all, Shanghai is in China.’

  ‘Yes, of course it is. But the largest and wealthiest part of the city was under foreign control. In 1843, soon after its humiliating defeat by the British in the Opium Wars, the Chinese Government was forced to open the port of Shanghai to foreign trade. The British leased a few hundred acres along the muddy flat land of the Whangpoo or Yellow River, where they established the first foreign Settlement. It was not far north of the ancient walled city.’ She paused to gather her thoughts. ‘Perhaps now is the time to explain Shanghai to you, Jack. Without an explanation, you may have trouble understanding the remainder of my time in China.’

  I nodded, happy to hear about such an exotic place. ‘Sure, I’d like to hear,’ I answered.

  ‘Well then, towards the middle of the nineteenth century the walled city of Shanghai and its surrounding suburbs boasted a town of about 75 000 Chinese, which by the standards of China was a drop in the ocean. But from this unpropitious start, by the 1920s and 1930s Shanghai had become the fifth most important city on earth – the megalopolis of continental Asia with a population of about two and a half million. This increase in population over the previous ninety years had come about because of Shanghai’s growing importance as a centre of trade, commerce and industry, and also because it had become a safe haven. Every time an up-country revolt by some misbegotten war lord occurred, the people flocked into Shanghai and its foreign Settlements protected by the foreign rifles and thundering gunboats on the river.

  ‘In the 1850s and early 1860s, for instance, when Shanghai had still not become a great city, the armies of the Taiping Rebellion, led by a general who improbably called himself the “Younger Brother of Christ”, butchered an estimated twenty million people. Chinese of every class fled before its hordes, the rich bringing their silver until Shanghai had the richest reserves of silver in the world, and the poor bringing their bedding, birdcages and rice pots.

  ‘By the 1920s, foreigners in Shanghai had consolidated under two administrations – the French in the French Concession and the rest in the International Settlement. Together they occupied some eight and a half square miles, and because of their wealth and military power they were a law unto themselves. The population outside the foreign areas was under a traditional Chinese administration centred in the walled city.

  ‘This occidental city in China came under the twin influences of Queen Victoria’s Britain and America’s John D. Rockefeller. Both countries saw the opportunity to trade with the Orient from Shanghai, and between the two of them they spread the “Gospel of the Three Lights” – the cigarette, the kerosene lamp and Christianity – while at the same time exporting silk, tea and opium.’

  Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan paused. ‘You must forgive the history lesson, Jack,’ she said. ‘But without it, it is impossible to comprehend a city such as Shanghai, with the Bund its business centre and beating heart. This was where the British, American, French, Japanese, Dutch, Belgian, Italian and Spanish taipans had their great trading houses. We White Russians were there, of course, but only held minor positions – secretaries, doormen, janitors and sometime-engineers in the port authority. The Russian women, many cultured and beautiful, filled the role of the city’s nightlife. We were its entertainers. I hesitate to say so, but by “entertainer” I mean everything from a sailor’s whore to a taipan’s mistress, as well as dancers, singers, musicians and cabaret artists. As refugees without a country, the Russians in Shanghai, with one exception, were regarded as a second-class people. We fitted somewhere between the Chinese and the rest of the expatriate community – a blot on the landscape, so to speak.’

  ‘Who was the exception?’ I asked, curious.

  ‘Georgii Avksent’ievich Sapojuikoff, known simply as Sapajou, who was the cartoonist on the North China Daily News. He was also the only White Russian ever to be accepted as a member of the exclusive and incredibly stuffy Shanghai Club.’

  ‘His middle name, isn’t that the same as your father’s?’

  Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan looked at me, astonished. ‘Jack, you really do have a remarkable memory.’

  I tell you what – the compliments were flowing thick and fast. I’d had more praise in one evening than I’d received from the dreaded justice of the peace in all my years of growing up. Yet she dismissed or evaded my comment linking the White Russian cartoonist and her father.

  ‘Well, that’s probably quite enough history for one evening. This, then, was the Shanghai I entered via the South Gate of the Chinese City on the day of my sixteenth birthday.

  ‘Imagine, if you will, the confusion on the platform as I alighted from the train late in the afternoon. How Mr Yu’s manservant, sent to fetch me, would find me in this seething mass of humanity was simply beyond my comprehension. After sitting on my cardboard suitcase for two hours with rickshaw boys and peddlers importuning me and with the evening beginning to close in, I was growing desperate. Then quite suddenly, to the sound of whistles blowing, what seemed like dozens of Sikh and Chinese policemen appeared, wielding batons and scattering people willy-nilly, sending them running for their lives. In about ten minutes the station platform was clear. The only person remaining was me, sitting on my cheap suitcase sobbing and frightened. Fifty or so policemen quickly formed a large circle around me, legs apart with their hands behind their backs and chins held high so that they appeared to be looking into the distance over my head. Quite suddenly one of the policemen, a sergeant, barked a command and they all came to attention and brought their hands up in a smart sal
ute, whereupon the circle opened and Mr Yu, known as Big Boss Yu, appeared.

  ‘“Little Countess, ten thousand regrets – my useless servant has caused you to lose face. You must come with me at once,” he said in English.

  ‘I followed him across the deserted railway platform to a big Buick motor car, where the smartly uniformed chauffeur opened the door for me. On the way in I managed to dry my tears. “Why did you ask me to leave the Red Rooster at the Chinese City, loh yeh?” I asked when I stopped sniffing.

  ‘“How you are seen will be how you are perceived,” he replied. “I will see that you are properly introduced.”

  ‘I confess I was too distraught to make any sense of this. “Why do you care about me, loh yeh? Am I to be your concubine?” I asked in a small voice.

  ‘He seemed to think this very funny. I was to learn later that he belonged to the old-school Chinese with traditional ways and values and was said to keep ten concubines. He must have thought a skinny sixteen-year-old with blue eyes and blonde hair quite redundant to his needs. “You would make a very bad concubine,” he answered me, still amused at the thought, but then added, touching his heart, “You have fire and you are good joss. I have another way for you, Little Countess.” It was rare for someone of his standing to take an interest in a white woman, and in particular a White Russian, and his sponsorship was, to say the least, unusual – if not improbable. I was to learn some years later that on the evening he had met me at the General’s Retreat he had gone on to a gambling den where he had won a considerable fortune. The Chinese are a very superstitious people and in his mind I had become his talisman.

  ‘We drove deep into the Chinese City and finally came to a halt beside a street so narrow that the big motor car couldn’t enter. “The driver will take you to your house,” Big Boss Yu said. “I will send for you in a week. In the meantime, you must practise all your songs.” He must have seen the expression on my face. “You have nothing to fear here – the hand that protects you has long fingers.”

  ‘The house was a small, traditional Chinese structure and, to my surprise, came with my own gung yun, or “working person” – a plain-faced, middle-aged woman with a large burn scar to the side of her face, which had the effect of pulling one eye slightly out of line, who was named Ah May, which means “pretty”. The Chinese can be very cruel with their humour. I say this only because an amah is from a poor and usually large family where, because she is a female child, she is considered a “waste of rice” and not worthy of a name, and is simply referred to by the order of her birth – that is, by a number. She would have received the name Ah May after she’d sustained the burn as some sort of perverted Chinese joke. She must have been waiting at the door because when the chauffeur, Ah Chow, called out, it was opened immediately and, eyes downcast, she silently took my suitcase from the chauffeur and led me into the tiny house. The first thing that met my eyes was, of all improbable things, a Steinway baby grand!’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan brought her hands to her breast and chuckled at the memory. ‘Can you imagine my delight and, of course, with it, bemusement! If I was to be hidden away in the Chinese City it had obviously something to do with singing and piano playing.

  ‘The week passed quickly and I discovered I was free to go anywhere, though until I knew how to find my way home in what was basically a large, unplanned city slum with narrow streets and dark alleys that resembled a teeming rabbit warren, I was accompanied by Ah May. She proved a shy but pleasant companion and was an excellent housekeeper and cook. When I first offered her money to go shopping for food she explained that everything was taken care of, including her salary, and when I pressed a few dollars into her hand I later found it restored to me under my pillow. Wherever I went the people seemed to know who I was. Gwai mui were usually treated with indifference on the street, but here, in the Chinese City, strangers would often greet me, calling out a friendly “Lei ho!” I wasn’t silly enough to believe this had anything to do with my attitude, which was always friendly – I knew it was another sign of the pervasive influence of the powerful Big Boss Yu.

  ‘I became accustomed to giving an impromptu concert almost every time I sat at the Steinway to practise. The narrow street outside would soon become choked with people listening to the strange Western music so different from their own, but when I sang a Cantonese song there would be loud applause. Though quite how they managed to hear the words, I cannot say.

  ‘At the week’s end I received a message that I was to be fetched at noon the following day and that I was to bring my music books. Ah Chow arrived precisely on the appointed hour and I was driven to the Bund, quite the biggest and handsomest place I had ever seen. We drove on towards the end of the grand boulevard and stopped at a very large and imposing building that turned out to be the Palace Hotel. The place was simply swarming with flunkeys, brass buttons gleaming on their dark-green uniforms.

  ‘“You must see this person,” Ah Chow instructed, and handed me a carefully folded note sealed with black wax that carried Mr Yu’s chop. On the outside, written in English, was “Commander Freddy Duncan”. “I will return in one hour,” Ah Chow said, then added, “I will wait for you if you are not here at that time.”

  ‘The car door was opened for me by a tall, imposing-looking man in a long green coat, all braid and gleaming buttons. I immediately took him for a Russian. Some Russian faces are unmistakable. This gave me the courage to say in my native tongue, “I have come to see Commander Duncan. Will you show me what to do, please?”

  ‘This name must have meant something, because he became completely obsequious. “Certainly, miss,” he said, bowing so low I thought he was going to hit his forehead on the white marble paving. “Whom shall I announce?”

  ‘Feeling completely intimidated by my surroundings I heard myself saying, “Countess Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan.” It was the first time I had ever spoken it aloud – in fact, even thought seriously about it. Being a Russian countess was not anything to write home about in Harbin, much less in Shanghai.

  ‘“Come with me please, countess,” the doorman said respectfully. I followed him across what seemed like an ocean of deep, plush maroon carpet to a desk where several of the hotel’s guests were being attended to by clerks. The doorman ignored them and walked straight up to the counter and in stentorian voice announced, “Countess Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan for Commander Duncan!” I cringed visibly. Practically the entire foyer would have heard him. Flushed with embarrassment, I didn’t know quite where to hide my face, although there was no doubt that the announcement had the required effect. Every one of the clerks behind the desk dropped their pen or whatever they were doing, some halting mid-sentence the conversation they were having with one or another of the hotel guests. They all looked over to a slightly older man who stepped forward and was obviously the senior clerk present. “Certainly, I will call him on the telephone. Do you have an appointment, countess?”

  ‘“I don’t know,” I stammered. “I have a note.” I had lost my previous poise. Gripping my music sheets under my arm, I politely held out the note with both hands in the required Chinese fashion. I must have seemed like a schoolgirl who had committed some infringement of the rules, instructed to report to the headmistress with a note from her teacher.

  ‘The clerk looked at me impassively, refusing to accept the proffered note. “I see,” he said, then turned to a clerk beside him and said in Cantonese, “She is a fraud. Pretend to make the call and then when you’ve done so, return to tell me the commander is not available.”

  ‘The clerk nodded and went to a nearby telephone. “He will make the call,” the senior clerk said with just a hint of rudeness, not addressing me by my title or even as “miss”.

  ‘He had almost turned away. “It is a note from Big Boss Yu,” I said in Cantonese.’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan paused and leaned back. ‘Well, you should have seen the look on his face! He turned and snatched the phone from the surprised clerk, who was mumbling something into it, dialled a number furiously a
nd announced me. Evidently the voice on the other end must have told him to send me in, because he placed the receiver down and bowed deeply. “A thousand apologies, countess. I shall take you personally to the commander, who is waiting for you in a private lounge,” he said in English.’

  I couldn’t resist interrupting. ‘What a turnaround, Countess!’ I cried, a little too gleefully.

  ‘I was tempted to say something that would make him squirm, but even at that tender age I sensed that senior hotel staff must preserve their dignity at all times and could make things difficult for me at some possible future occasion. Instead I smiled, and said, “Thank you for being so helpful.”

  ‘It came to pass that Commander Duncan was a bachelor who lived in the hotel, which he part-owned with Sir Victor Sassoon, who lived in England and Hong Kong but visited Shanghai quite often on business. Commander Duncan was the very picture of an English squire. He was every bit as respectable as Sir Victor was rumoured to be reprobate, and at heart was a private banker and very conservative. Sir Victor Sassoon was Commander Duncan’s counterpart – a flamboyant and successful entrepreneur famous for his parties. In fact, Sir Victor wasn’t thought quite respectable by the standards of the crusty diehards of the British colony, who referred to him privately as “that Baghdad Jew”, a reference to his Near East ancestry. They deplored his extravagance and looked askance at his exuberance, while having taken great pleasure in blackballing him from the Shanghai Club. I’m only giving you this background, Jack, because later I was to become very much involved with Sir Victor.