White Gardenia

by Belinda Alexandra

  The marines had Dmitri in a headlock. His mouth twisted in agony. An Italian sailor and another marine came to his assistance, but they were no match for the burly men. Sergei picked up a chair and smashed it across the back of one of the marines, knocking him unconscious. Encouraged by his success the Italian wrestled the other marine to the floor. But the last marine, the biggest of the three, retained his grip on Dmitri, pushing his head against the floor and trying to break his neck. I screamed and looked around the room for help. I spotted Amelia in the restaurant, she had a knife in her hand and was trying to make it down the steps through the crowd. Dmitri was choking, spittle dribbling from his mouth. Sergei thumped the marine with his bear-like fists, but it had no effect. Dmitri’s hand was twisted behind him. His fingers grabbed for my shoe and squeezed the toes. I couldn’t take any more, I threw myself against the marine and bit his ear with all my might. Blood and salt burst into my mouth. The marine yelped and let go of Dmitri. He pushed me off him and I spat out the bloody pink flesh. The marine’s face turned ashen when he saw that I had half his ear in my lap. He clasped his hand to his head and fled.

  ‘Benissimo!’ the Italian sailor said to me. ‘Now go wash your mouth out.’

  When I returned from the bathroom I could hear the sirens and whistles of the military police outside. The police stormed into the building, clubbing indiscriminately and adding to the casualty count. I ran outside to see ambulances carting off the wounded. It looked like wartime all over again.

  I searched through the mayhem for Dmitri and Sergei and found them on the steps with Amelia, seeing off the injured as if they were seeing off VIP guests on any normal night. Dmitri’s eye was black and his lips so swollen that he barely looked human. Still, he managed to smile boyishly when he saw me.

  ‘It’s the end of us,’ I wailed. ‘They’ll close us down now, won’t they?’

  Dmitri’s brow lifted in surprise. Sergei laughed. ‘Dmitri,’ he said, ‘I do believe that after only two nights Anya cares.’ Even Amelia, the sleeve of her dress torn and her hair dishevelled, smiled at me.

  ‘It’s like that, isn’t it, Anya?’ said Dmitri. ‘It’s like the music. The place gets into your blood. You’re really one of us now. A Shanghailander.’

  The limousine pulled up and Amelia climbed in, gesturing for me to follow her. ‘The boys made the mess and the boys can clean up,’ she said.

  The marine’s sticky blood was still on the front of my dress. It clung to my skin. I looked at it and began to sob.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Amelia, grabbing my arm and pulling me into the car. ‘This is Shanghai not Harbin. Tomorrow it will be business as usual and tonight will be forgotten. We will still be the hottest nightclub in town.’

  FIVE

  Roses

  The next morning while I was braiding my hair for school, Mei Lin tapped on the door and told me that Sergei was on the telephone. I clumped down the stairs, stifling a yawn. My skin was dry and my throat hurt. The stink of stale cigarette smoke lingered in my hair. I wasn’t looking forward to Sister Mary’s boring geography lesson before lunch. I pictured myself falling asleep somewhere between the Canary Islands and Greece and being made to write out a hundred times on the blackboard the reason for my fatigue. I imagined the surprise on Sister Mary’s face when I picked up the piece of chalk and began writing on the board: I was at the Moscow-Shanghai last night and didn’t get enough sleep.

  I enjoyed my French and art lessons, but now I had danced the bolero and seen the Moscow-Shanghai, I was too grown up for school. My sanctuary of textbooks and paints didn’t match the excitement and glamour of the world that had opened up to me.

  I put my hairbrush on the stand in the hall and picked up the telephone receiver.

  ‘Anya!’ Sergei’s voice bellowed down the line. ‘Now you are an employee of the club I need you down here at eleven o’clock!’

  ‘But what about school?’

  ‘Do you think you’ve had enough of school? Or do you still want to go?’

  My hand flew to my mouth. I bumped the table and sent the hairbrush clattering to the floor. ‘I’ve had enough!’ I cried. ‘I was only thinking that just this minute! I can always continue to read and learn on my own.’

  Sergei laughed and whispered to someone else in the room with him. The other person, a man, laughed too. ‘Well, get ready and come to the club then,’ he said. ‘And wear your prettiest dress. You must always look fashionable from now on.’

  I slammed down the receiver and hurried up the stairs, ripping off my school uniform as I went. The tiredness I had been feeling only a few moments before vanished.

  ‘Mei Lin! Mei Lin!’ I called out. ‘Help me get dressed!’

  The girl stepped out on the landing, her eyes wide.

  ‘Come on.’ I grabbed her little arm and dragged her into my room. ‘From now on you are the maid to an employee of the Moscow-Shanghai!’

  The Moscow-Shanghai was buzzing with activity. A team of Chinese workmen were scrubbing the stairs with brooms and buckets of soapy water. One of the windows had been broken in the previous night’s riot and a repairman was fixing the glass. In the dance hall maids were mopping down the floor and wiping the tables. Chefs’ assistants rushed in and out through the kitchen swing doors, collecting the boxes of celery, onions and beetroots passed to them by a delivery man through the side entrance. I pushed back my hair from my face and smoothed my dress. My outfit had been chosen with Luba one day after school. We had seen it in a catalogue from America. It was a pink shift dress with a layer of tulle over the top. There were rosettes around the neckline and hem. It was low cut, but the material was gathered at the bust, so it didn’t appear too immodest. I hoped Sergei would approve of it and not embarrass me by sending me home to change. I asked one of the kitchen hands where I could find Sergei and he pointed to a corridor and a door marked ‘Office’.

  But it was Dmitri’s voice that answered my knock. ‘Come in,’ he called.

  He was standing near a stone fireplace, smoking a cigarette. His face was bruised and swollen and his arm was in a sling. But at least I could tell it was Dmitri this morning and, despite his wounds, I thought him as handsome as ever. He eyed my dress and I could tell by his smile that he was pleased with what he saw too.

  ‘How are you this morning?’ He pushed open the louvred shutters and let more light into the room. On the window sill was a model of the Venus de Milo. It and the blue and white porcelain vase on the mantelpiece were the only decorative pieces in the office. Everything else was starkly modern. A teak desk and red leather chairs dominated the room, which was fastidiously neat, not a paper or open book in sight.

  The window looked out onto an alleyway which, unlike most Shanghai backstreets, was clean. A beauty salon, café and sweet shop stood side by side there. The shops’ green awnings were open and blooms of red geraniums burst from the window boxes.

  ‘Sergei told me to come,’ I said.

  Dmitri stubbed out his cigarette on the grate. ‘He’s gone somewhere with Alexei. They won’t be back today.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Sergei said—’

  ‘Anya, it was me who wanted to speak to you.’

  I wasn’t sure whether to be delighted or afraid. I sat down in the chair by the window. Dmitri seated himself opposite me. The expression on his face was so grave I was worried that something serious had taken place, that there was a problem with the club because of what had happened the previous night.

  He pointed out the window. ‘If you look out there over to the west you will see some dilapidated rooftops. That’s where you lost your mother’s necklace.’

  His comment baffled me. Why was he bringing up such an unhappy memory? Had he somehow found the rest of the necklace?

  ‘That’s where I come from,’ he said. ‘That is where I was born.’

  I was surprised to see his hand tremble. He fumbled with a cigarette, dropping it into his lap. I had an urge to take his shaking hand and kiss i
t, to comfort him somehow. But I had no idea what was wrong. I picked up his cigarette and held the lighter steady for him. A strange expression crept into his eyes, as if he were remembering something painful. I couldn’t stand the sight of his hurt. It jabbed like a knife straight into my own heart.

  ‘Dmitri, you don’t have to tell me this,’ I said. ‘You know I don’t care where you came from.’

  ‘Anya, there is something important I have to tell you. You’ll need to know it in order to make a decision.’

  His words were ominous. I swallowed. A vein in my neck started to throb.

  ‘My parents came from St Petersburg. When they left their home it was in the dead of night. They took nothing with them because there was no time. My father’s tea was left steaming on the table, my mother’s embroidery lay on her seat by the fire. They had received word of the revolt too late and escaped Russia with only their lives. When they reached Shanghai my father found work as a labourer and then, after I was born, as a chauffeur. But he never recovered from the loss of the life he had known. He had bad nerves, on account of the war. He drank and smoked away most of the meagre money he earned. It was my mother who put aside her pride to scrub the floors of rich Chinese women to keep a roof over our heads. Then he overdosed on opium one day and left her with debts her cleaning work couldn’t pay. My mother was forced into…another means to earn money to keep food on our table.’

  ‘Sergei told me about your mother,’ I said, desperate to spare him the pain. ‘My mother also had to make a decision that seemed morally wrong in order to keep me safe. A mother will do anything to save her child.’

  ‘Anya, I know Sergei told you about my mother. And I know you have such a kind heart that you can understand. But listen to me, please. Because these are the forces that shaped me.’

  I sat back in my chair, chastised. ‘I promise not to interrupt any more.’

  He nodded. ‘For as long as I can remember I wanted to be rich. I didn’t want to live in a wretched, grotty shack that stank of the sewers and was so damp that the coldness of it stayed in my bones, even in summer. The boys around me were all begging or thieving or working in factories that would keep them poor forever. But I swore I would never become the coward my father had been. I would not give in, regardless of what I had to sacrifice. I would find a way to make money, and I would make life good for myself and my mother.

  ‘At first I tried honest jobs. Although I had never been to school I was smart and my mother had taught me to read. But all I could make was money enough for a little more food, and I wanted more than that. It’s fine to be fussy about what you do if you are rich. But street rats? Scum like me? We have to be more cunning. So you know what I did? I hung outside the bars and clubs where rich people went. And when they came out I would ask them for work. I don’t mean rich people like Sergei or Alexei…I mean…opium lords. They don’t care who you are or where you’ve come from or how old you are. In fact, the less suspect you are, the better.’

  He stopped, searching my face for signs of the effect his words were having on me. I didn’t like what I was hearing, but I was determined to keep silent until he had finished.

  ‘The opium lords were amused that such a young boy knew who they were and wanted to work for them,’ he continued, standing up and gripping the back of his chair with his good hand. ‘I used to run messages for them from one end of town to the other. Once I delivered a severed hand. It was a warning. I never spent a cent I earned on myself. I hid it in my mattress. I was saving up for a better place, nicer things for my mother. But before that could ever happen she was murdered…’

  He let go of the chair and moved to the fireplace, clenching his fingers. He composed himself, then began again. ‘After my mother’s death I became even more determined to be rich. If we had been rich, my mother wouldn’t have been murdered. That was what I figured anyway. I still think that. I would rather be dead than poor again, because if you are poor you are as good as dead anyway.

  ‘I’m not proud of everything I have done. But I don’t regret anything either. I’m glad I’m alive. By the time I was fifteen I had a broad back and strong chest. And I was good-looking too. The opium lords would joke that I was their handsome bodyguard. It was prestigious to have a White Russian in their entourage. They would buy me silk suits and take me with them into the best clubs in town.

  ‘Then one night I delivered a package to the French Concession. When I was taking something direct from one of the lords, you could be sure that it was heading for a classy joint. Not the dens the middlemen serve: dim, stinking and filled with desperate customers like my father. Not the hovels the rickshaw boys go to so they can stick their arms through a hole in a wall and get a hit from a needle. The one that night turned out to be the best in the Concession. It looked more like a five-star hotel than a brothel: black lacquer furniture, silk screens, French and Chinese porcelain, an Italian fountain in the lobby. It was teeming with Eurasian and white girls.

  ‘I took my deal to the madame of the house. She laughed when she read the note from the lord, gave me a kiss on the cheek and a pair of gold cufflinks for my trouble. On my way out I passed a room with the door partly open. I could hear the whispers of women coming from inside. Out of curiosity, I peered through the crack and saw a man lying on the bed. Two girls were going through his pockets, which even in the ritzy joints is the standard practice whenever someone passes out. They searched his clothes and found something around his neck. It looked to me like a ring on a chain. They tried to undo the clasp but couldn’t get their little hands around the back of his thick neck. One of them started biting the chain, as if she was going to break it with her teeth. I could have just shut the door and left. But the man looked vulnerable. Maybe he reminded me of my father. Without really thinking, I burst in on the girls and told them they had better leave the man alone as he was a good friend of the Red Dragon. They backed off, scared. I thought that was funny so I yelled at them to call the house doormen to help me get the man into a rickshaw. It took four of us to do it. “The Moscow-Shanghai,” one of the doormen whispered to me when we were ready to leave. “He’s the owner of the Moscow-Shanghai.”’

  I blushed. I didn’t want Dmitri to continue with the story. This was not the Sergei I knew.

  Dmitri glanced at me and laughed. ‘I guess I don’t have to tell you who that man was, Anya. I was surprised. The Moscow-Shanghai was the top nightclub in the city. Even someone like the Red Dragon wouldn’t have been good enough to go there. Anyway, in the rickshaw Sergei started to wake up. The first thing he did was to grab for the chain around his neck. “It’s safe,” I told him. “But they cleaned out your pockets.”

  ‘By the time we got to the club, it was closed. A couple of waiters were smoking out the back and I called them to help me get Sergei inside. We lifted him onto a couch in the office. He was in pretty bad shape. “How old are you, kid?” he asked me. When I told him, he laughed. “I’ve heard of you,” he said.

  ‘The next day I found Sergei standing on my doorstep. He was out of place in the slums with his finely cut coat and the gold watch on his wrist. He was lucky he was left alone. I think it was his size and that fierce expression of his which protected him. Any other man would have been a sitting duck. “Those lords you are working for are just making fun of you,” he said. “You’re their amusement and they’ll throw you away like an old whore when the novelty wears off. I want you to come and work for me. I’ll train you to manage my club.”

  ‘So Sergei paid the lords off and took me back to his home, the house you are living in now. My God! Do you think I’d ever seen a place like that in my life? When I stepped into the hallway I thought my eyes would burn with the beauty of it. You didn’t think that, did you, Anya, when you first saw it? It’s because you’re accustomed to luxurious things. But I was like an adventurer in a foreign territory. Sergei thought it was amusing, me gawking at the paintings, fingering every vase, staring at the plates on the table like I’d never
eaten off a dish before. I had never seen anything so elegant. The opium lords had mansions, but they were full of gaudy statues, red walls and gongs. Symbols of power. Not of wealth. Sergei’s house had something else. An essence. I knew then that if I had a house like that I would have real wealth. Not the kind someone can take away from you. Not the kind that makes you feel as though you are living with a knife at your back. A house like that would transform me from scum to a gentleman. I wanted to be more than just rich then. What Sergei had, I wanted too.

  ‘Sergei introduced me to Amelia. But I only had to talk to her for a minute to know she wasn’t responsible for the way the house looked. She was like me, a stranger to luxury. Although she’s a sly one too. Even if she wasn’t born to it, she can smell it out like a weasel. But she only knows how to make herself appealing so she can get some of it for herself. She doesn’t know how to create it.’

  He laughed then, to himself. And I realised for the first time that he had affection for Amelia. The way he spoke so casually about her revealed it. My spine prickled. But I knew I had to accept it. They had known each other for a long time before I had come along. And Dmitri had told me before that they were two of a kind.

  ‘But she’s nervous,’ he said, turning to look at me. ‘Have you noticed that, Anya? Jumpy. When you’ve fought for it, you have to protect it. You can never quite relax. People who are born into wealth don’t know that. Even when they have lost everything, they still act as if money is nothing.