White Gardenia

by Belinda Alexandra

  Alexei and Luba were already seated at a table at the far end of the restaurant, a half-finished carafe of wine at Alexei’s elbow. They were talking to two British shipping captains and their wives. The men stood up for us, while their tight-mouthed wives glanced from Amelia to myself with thinly disguised distaste. One of the women stared so hard at the splits in my dress that my skin began to tingle with embarrassment.

  Waiters in tuxedos brought us food on silver platters, laying out a feast of oysters, piroshki filled with sweet pumpkin, blini with caviar, creamy asparagus soup and black bread. It was more food than we could possibly eat, but they kept the courses coming: fish in vodka sauce, chicken Kiev, compotes, and a dessert of cherries and chocolate cake.

  One of the captains, Wilson, asked me how I liked Shanghai. I hadn’t seen much of it, except Sergei’s house, my school, the stores on the few routes I was allowed to walk on my own and a park in the French Concession, but I told him that I loved it. He nodded his approval and leaned closer to me to whisper: ‘Most Russians in this city do not live like you, young lady. Look at those poor girls down there. Probably daughters of princes and nobles. Now they have to dance and entertain drunkards to earn a living.’

  The other captain, whose name was Bingham, said he had heard that my mother had been taken to a labour camp. ‘That Stalin madman won’t be there forever,’ he said, heaping my plate with vegetables and knocking over the pepper shaker in the process. ‘There will be another revolution before the year’s out, you’ll see.’

  ‘Who are these fools?’ Sergei muttered to Dmitri.

  ‘Investors,’ Dmitri replied. ‘So keep smiling.’

  ‘No,’ said Sergei. ‘You will have to train Anya to do that now she is old enough. She’s so much more charming than any of us.’

  When the after-dinner port was served, I slipped away to the powder room and recognised the voices of the captains’ wives speaking to each other across the stalls. One woman was saying to the other, ‘That American woman should be ashamed of herself, not running around like the Queen of Sheba. She ruined a good man’s happiness and now she’s taken up with that Russian.’

  ‘I know,’ said the other woman. ‘And who’s that girl she’s got with her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered the first. ‘But you can bet before long she’ll get a bad streak in her too.’

  I pressed myself against the sink, dying to hear more, hoping my heels would not click on the tiled floor. Who was the good man whose life Amelia had ruined?

  ‘Bill can spend his money how he likes,’ said the first woman, ‘but what good can come of associating with such riffraff? You know what those Russians are like.’

  I let out a giggle and both women stopped talking. Their toilets flushed in unison and I dashed for the door.

  At midnight the orchestra stopped and a Cuban band took over the stage. The rhythm of the stringed instruments was gentle at first, but as soon as the brass and percussion joined in the music changed tempo and I could feel the excitement rush through the crowd. Couples ran to the floor to dance the mambo and rumba, while those without partners joined in a conga line. I was entranced by the music, so savage and yet sophisticated. I found myself unconsciously tapping my foot and clicking my fingers along with the beat.

  Luba let out a throaty laugh. She nudged Dmitri and pointed to me. ‘Come on, Dmitri, take Anya out to dance and show us what Sergei has been teaching you.’

  Dmitri smiled at me and offered his hand. I followed him to the dance floor, although I was terrified. To dance in the ballroom of Sergei’s home was one thing, but on the dance floor at the Moscow-Shanghai was quite another. The mad rush of people rolling their hips and swinging their legs was like a wild frenzy. They danced as if their hearts would stop beating if they didn’t. But Dmitri put one hand on my hip and clenched my fingers in his, and I felt safe. We moved together in short, syncopated steps, twisting our hips and rolling our shoulders. We were playful at first, and bumped knees and feet and into other people, laughing each time. But after a while we moved gracefully together and I found I had forgotten my self-consciousness.

  ‘What is this music?’ I asked Dmitri.

  ‘They call it mango and merengue. Do you like it?’

  ‘Yes, I like it very much,’ I told him. ‘Please don’t let them stop.’

  Dmitri threw his head back and laughed. ‘I will tell them to play it every night for you, Anya! And tomorrow I will take you to Yuyuan.’

  Dmitri and I danced every dance, sweat drenching our clothes and my hair falling loose over my shoulders. We only returned to the table when the last set was over. The captains and their wives had left but Sergei and the Michailovs stood up to applaud us. ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ Sergei shouted.

  Amelia gave a weak smile and shoved napkins at us to wipe the perspiration from our faces and necks.

  ‘Enough of making a fool of yourself, Anya.’

  I ignored her nasty comment. ‘Why don’t you dance with Sergei?’ I asked her. ‘He’s very good.’

  My question was innocent, asked out of the high spirits dancing with Dmitri had given me. But Amelia arched like a cat. Her eyes glowered but she said nothing. The atmosphere between us, which had always been strained, became even tighter. I was aware of having made some terrible mistake, but I was not going to apologise for an imagined slight. We sat rigid in the car all the way home, opponents locked stubbornly in battle. Sergei made small talk about the traffic, I deliberately spoke only Russian, and Amelia stared directly ahead of her. But I knew even then that if it came to a strike, I could not win against her.

  The following day I told Sergei that Dmitri had asked to meet with me. ‘I’m glad you two have taken to each other,’ he said, leaning close to me. ‘It is the best that I could have wished for. Dmitri is like a son to me and you are like a daughter.’

  Sergei had a business appointment, so immediately set about finding a substitute chaperone. Amelia refused outright, protesting that she had no intention of spending the day in the company of ‘gooey-eyed teenagers’. Luba said she would have been delighted but was committed to a ladies’ luncheon, and Alexei had come down with the flu. So it was the Old Maid who was sent out with me in the rickshaw. She sat in the seat, cold in her primness, and would neither answer my questions nor look at me whenever I tried to make conversation.

  Dmitri and I met in the Yuyuan Gardens, in the old part of the city, at a traditional tea-house overlooking a lake and out to the mountains. He was waiting under the shade of a willow tree, wearing a cream linen suit that brought out the green in his eyes. The tea-house’s ochre walls and upturned roof reminded me of a tea-chest we had in the house in Harbin. The day was hot and Dmitri suggested we sit on the top floor to catch the breeze. He invited the maid to sit at our table, but she took her place at the table next to us, staring stoically out to the pretty vista of winding walkways and pavilions, although I suspected she was listening with keen ears to everything we said.

  A waitress brought us jasmine tea in ceramic cups. ‘It’s the oldest park in the city,’ Dmitri told me. ‘And much nicer than the ones in the French Concession. You know they used to have signs that read: “No Dogs or Chinese’’.’

  ‘It’s awful to be poor,’ I told him. ‘I thought I had seen enough of it when the Japanese invaded Harbin. But I have never seen anything like the poverty in Shanghai.’

  ‘There are many Russians poorer than Chinese here,’ Dmitri said, taking a metal case from his pocket and pulling out a cigarette. ‘My father had to work as a chauffeur for a rich Chinese family when he came to Shanghai. I think it gave them pleasure to see a white man in desperate circumstances.’

  A lazy breeze drifted across the table, lifting the napkins and cooling the tea. The Old Maid had fallen asleep, her eyes closed and her head resting on the windowpane. Dmitri and I grinned at each other.

  ‘I saw those Russian girls last night,’ I confided in him. ‘The ones who are paid to dance with customers.’

/>   Dmitri studied me for a moment, his face serious and his eyes narrowed. ‘You’re kidding me, Anya? Those girls make good money and are not required to compromise themselves to do it. Maybe a few promises here, a flirtatious comment there, show a little flesh and charm the customers into drinking and spending a bit more than they otherwise would. But nothing more than that. There are women in much worse circumstances.’

  He turned away then and the silence was awkward between us. I pinched my arm, feeling stupid and condescending when all I had wanted was for Dmitri to admire me.

  ‘Do you think about your mother much?’ he asked me.

  ‘All the time,’ I told him. ‘She’s on my mind all the time.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, signalling to the waitress to bring us more tea.

  ‘Do you think it’s true,’ I asked him, ‘that there will be another revolution in Russia?’

  ‘I wouldn’t wait for it, Anya.’

  Dmitri’s flippant tone stabbed me and I cringed. When he saw my reaction his face softened. He glanced over his shoulder to check the maid was still asleep before taking my fingers in his warm hand. ‘My father and his friends waited every day for years for the aristocracy to be restored in Russia, wasting their lives away hoping for something that never happened,’ he said. ‘With all my heart I pray that your mother will be released, Anya. All I’m saying is that you mustn’t wait around for it. You have to help yourself now.’

  ‘Amelia would say something like that,’ I told him.

  He laughed. ‘Oh? Well, I can understand that. We are sort of similar. We’ve both had to fight our way in this world, starting with nothing. At least she knows what she wants and how to get it.’

  ‘She frightens me.’

  Dmitri cocked his head, surprised. ‘She does? Well, you shouldn’t let her. She’s all spit and no bite. She’s a jealous person, and envious people are always insecure.’

  Dmitri accompanied us back to the house where the maids were polishing the furniture and cleaning the carpets. Amelia was nowhere in sight. Sergei had just arrived home himself and waited for us by the front door.

  ‘I hope you had a nice time at Yuyuan together,’ he said.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I replied, stepping up to kiss him. His face was clammy and his eyes glazed over, a sign he was going to take his fix.

  ‘Stay with us a while,’ Dmitri said to him.

  ‘No, I must get on with things,’ said Sergei. He stepped back from us and reached for the doorknob but his fingers were trembling and he couldn’t grasp it.

  ‘I’ll help you with it…’ Dmitri said, leaning across. Sergei looked at him with tormented eyes, but as soon as the door opened he hurried away, almost knocking a maid over in his rush. I looked into Dmitri’s face and saw the anguish on it.

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ I said.

  Dmitri covered his eyes with his hand. ‘We’re going to lose him, Anya. Just like I lost my father.’

  My second night at the Moscow-Shanghai was a disappointment, and my excitement fell flat as soon as I entered the club. Instead of the ritzy clientele of the previous night, the club was full of razorshaved marines and sailors. On stage an all-white swing band was blasting out dance numbers, and the bright nylon dresses of the Russian girls turned the dance floor into a cheap carnival. There were too many men and not enough women. Those men without partners waited in groups at the bar or in the restaurant which had become a de facto drinking area. The men’s voices were loud with testosterone and rowdy. When they laughed or shouted their orders to the harried bartenders, the sound of their revelry was often louder than the music.

  ‘We don’t like them in the club,’ Sergei confided in me, ‘and usually our prices keep them out. But since the war, discriminating against them is considered bad form. So on Thursday nights it’s half-price drinks and dances.’

  The maître d’hôtel guided us to a table at the far corner of the room. Amelia excused herself to go to the powder room and I glanced about for Dmitri, wondering why he hadn’t joined us. I spotted him at the edge of the dance floor, near the steps that led to the bar. His arms were folded across his chest and he was hunching his shoulders backwards and forwards nervously.

  ‘Poor kid,’ Sergei said to me. ‘He guards this place with his life. I’m fond of it, but if it went up in flames I wouldn’t care so much.’

  ‘Dmitri is concerned about you,’ I told him.

  Sergei winced and picked up a napkin, dabbing his lips and chin. ‘He lost his own father when he was a boy. His mother had to take in men just to get enough to eat.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, remembering Dmitri’s reaction to my ignorance about the Russian dancers. I burned with shame. ‘When was this?’

  ‘At the start of the war. Dmitri’s used to surviving on his own.’

  ‘He told me that he lost his mother when he was young. But I have never asked him how she died and he has never told me.’

  Sergei stared at me, as if he was weighing up how much he should say to me. ‘She took the wrong man in one day. A sailor,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘He killed her.’

  ‘Oh!’ I cried, digging my fingers into Sergei’s arm. ‘Our poor Dmitri!’

  Sergei shrugged. ‘He found her, Anya. Imagine what that did to the kid. The navy tried the monster and hung him. But what good is that to a boy who has lost his mother?’

  I stared at the whirling dancers, too sad to cry and too overwhelmed to think of any response.

  Sergei nudged me with his elbow. ‘Go tell Dmitri not to worry,’ he said. ‘Other clubs have had trouble, but never this one. It’s a favourite with their officers. They wouldn’t dare.’

  I was grateful to Sergei for giving me an excuse to approach Dmitri. The dance floor was an orgy of heat and writhing limbs. I could barely see my way through the flailing arms and flushed faces. The dancers were growing wilder like the music, the beat of the percussion instruments rising to a climax. A Russian girl was dancing so vigorously that one of her large breasts began to protrude over the low-cut neckline of her dress. At first only her crimson nipple slipped above the fabric, but the harder she danced, the more of her flesh became exposed. After one energetic leap her whole breast tumbled out into full view. She made no attempt to fix herself and no one else seemed to notice.

  Someone tapped my back. ‘Hey, looker! Here’s my ticket.’ I could feel the shadow of the man behind me and smell the alcohol sweating out of his skin. There was lust in his slurred voice. ‘You, sweetheart. I’m talking to you.’ From somewhere in the crowd a female voice shouted: ‘Leave her alone. She’s the boss’s kid.’

  Dmitri’s eyes widened when he saw me heading towards him. He lunged into the crowd and pulled me to the side of the dance floor.

  ‘I told them not to bring you here tonight,’ he said, lifting me up onto the step behind him. ‘Sometimes I wonder if either of them has any sense left.’

  ‘Sergei said to tell you he doesn’t think there will be trouble,’ I told him.

  ‘It’s a hot and drunken night. And I’m not taking any chances.’ Dmitri gestured to one of the waiters and whispered in his ear. The waiter hurried away and returned a few moments later with a glass of champagne.

  ‘Here,’ said Dmitri. ‘You can have some of this and then I’m sending you home.’

  I took the glass from him and drank a single sip. ‘Hmmm, nice champagne,’ I teased. ‘French, I believe?’

  He grinned. ‘Anya, I want you to be here, to work with me. But not on these nights. It doesn’t become you. You’re too good for this crowd.’

  A marine bumped into me, almost knocking me down the steps. He straightened himself and grabbed drunkenly for my waist. His arms were a web of badly cut tattoos. I shuffled back from him, frightened by the aggression in his bloodshot eyes. His hand swiped at me, landing like a rope around my wrist. He yanked me onto the dance floor. My shoulder cracked and I dropped the champagne glass. It smashed on the floor and was crushed under somebody’s foot.


  ‘You’re a little skinny,’ the marine said, clutching at my hips. ‘But I like slim women.’

  Dmitri was between us in a second. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, ‘but you’re mistaken. She’s not a dancer.’

  ‘If she’s got two legs and a hole, she is,’ the marine grinned, wiping the slaver from his lips with his fingertips.

  I didn’t see Dmitri hit the marine, so quickly did it happen. I only saw the man fall backwards, blood spurting from his mouth, surprise in his eyes. His head smacked the floor and he lay there for a moment, dazed. Then he tried to lift himself onto his elbow, but before he could get up Dmitri dropped his knee into the man’s neck and starting pounding into his face with his fist. Everything became slow motion then. The dancers moved away into a wide circle. The band stopped playing. Dmitri’s hands were covered in blood and saliva. The marine’s face was turning into pulp before my eyes.

  Sergei burst through the crowd and tried to pull Dmitri away. ‘Have you gone mad?’ he shouted. But his words were lost. Dmitri was kicking the marine in the ribs. Bones cracked under the force. The man rolled over in pain and Dmitri stomped on his groin.

  Three marines, thick-necked and square-fisted, came to their shipmate’s rescue. One of them lifted the bleeding man by his shirtsleeves and dragged him off the floor. The other two grabbed Dmitri and knocked him to the ground. Panic hit the crowd then. Everyone was convinced they were about to witness a murder. The British, French and Italian sailors started shouting abuse at the marines. The marines shouted back. Some of them tried calling their fellows to order, telling them not to disgrace their country, while others fuelled the violence. Fist fights broke out like spot fires. Patrons started gathering their belongings and rushing for the exits, clawing against each other to get out. The Russian dancers fled to the safety of the powder room while the chefs and waiters ran about moving precious vases and statues. The word must have got out on the street because, although some guests were fleeing, the room was also filling up with reinforcements. American soldiers were hitting marines, the marines were striking the French, and the French were fighting the British sailors.