“What do you think?” Betty asked from under her skirt.

“Very impressive,” Klim said, peering in from the door.

Ada gasped, while Betty calmly planted her legs back down on the ground, stood up, and straightened her hair.

“Hello, lover boy. We’ve been waiting for you.” She gave Ada, crimson with embarrassment, a congratulatory pat on the shoulder. “Just look at your handsome boyfriend with his fancy new suit and tie! Well, love birds, I have to go now, but you, Ada, have a good think about what I was saying to you earlier. Your boyfriend could disappear any moment, leaving you high and dry and without a friend in the world.”

“I’ve told her a hundred times that you’re not my boyfriend,” Ada said hotly after Betty had left.

Klim sat down beside her on the bed. “What’s wrong with your leg?”

Ada told him all about the shooting at the Havana.

“I’m really sorry,” he said, lowering his eyes. The expression on his face suggested that he held himself personally responsible for what had happened. “I have some good news, though. I was promoted at work, and now I’m going to get thirty dollars a week. After that, I hope I’ll be getting even more.”

Ada couldn’t even imagine having so much money. “Does this mean we’re both out of the woods now?” Her lower lip started shaking. “Betty tried to persuade me to become a prostitute, and for a moment I almost thought I would agree.”

Klim frowned. “You must promise me that you’ll never do that.”

“And you must promise you’ll never leave me on my own for so long again. You do love me, don’t you?”

“Well, how would it be possible not to?”

As if he was afraid that Ada would throw herself on his neck, Klim got up and walked to the window.

“You know,” he said pensively, “sometimes I think that if we weren’t so foolish, we might be happy together. But we’d need the moon to fall into our laps. You’re dreaming about America, and I would need— Well, it’s not important. Forget it.”

“You’re the only fool around here,” Ada snapped. “Are you going to remain faithful to that worthless wife of yours for the rest of your days? She cares about you about as much as she cares for last year’s fashions.”

“Thank you for your kind words,” retorted Klim and he stalked out of the room.

Ada hurled a pillow after him.

5 RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES Klim Rogov’s Notebook

Thanks to my reports from Lincheng, the sales of our newspaper have doubled, and Mr. Green has officially taken me on as a journalist. As a member of this exclusive little club, I now have my own desk, mailbox, and press card. The smug expression on my photo reminds me of the soldier who’s just enlisted for the army on a recruitment drive poster: “He’s Happy & Satisfied. Are You?”

So, this is our news:

Edna has returned from Canton, and her story about the local nationalist governor named Sun Yat-sen caused a great stir. He has far-reaching plans to unite China which was divided up among all sorts of warlords and kick the white ghosts, as the Chinese call the expatriates from Europe and America, out of the country.

Sun Yat-sen’s political party, the Kuomintang, was denied recognition by the Great Powers, and he has found a new ally in Soviet Russia. Moscow has not only promised him funds to keep up the good fight against imperialism, but also political and military advisers.

Here, in Shanghai, some people find the news from the South a source of amusement, and some are genuinely scared. As for me, all this is a far cry from what really preoccupies me.

I still feel the touch of Nina’s soft hands on my skin.

My wife weighed my heart up in her palm and tossed it carelessly into the trash can, and I now have an uncontrollable urge to find her and demand an explanation: What was it then between us that night on the train? I still don’t understand a thing.

Ada has persuaded me to rent a two-room apartment on the floor below our old one, and now we have our own kitchen, but still no electricity, though. Ada’s wound has healed up, but I have dissuaded her from going back to the Havana and promised that I would provide her with a small allowance.

My good intentions will end up being my downfall. The first thing Ada did with her money was to buy provocatively lacy knickers, and now she spends much of her time learning to do handstands, with the obvious intention of trying to seduce me. I spend much of my time these days hiding from her in my room, but she is constantly banging on my door, demanding that I hold her legs. “You wouldn’t want me to fall and break my neck, would you?”

Despite her age she is only too aware that I’m no saint. I constantly have to remind myself that Ada is little more than a silly infatuated child, and I definitely don’t want to have another sin on my conscience.

Today we made a deal: she swore that she would stop pestering me, if I found her a job. I forced her to agree that the moment she breaks our agreement, I will immediately take away her allowance and move to another apartment. Ada gave in but on condition that our agreement will only be valid until she comes of age. She is convinced that in a year I will forget about Nina and be looking to marry again—a successful, caring, albeit mildly grumpy potential husband.

I feel as if I’m standing at the cinema box office; I really want to see the Fair Lady, but the only tickets available are for The Extra Girl.

6

Klim bounded into the apartment with the news that he had found a job for Ada. Mrs. Edna Bernard needed a competent and well-organized person who could keep her library in order.

“Be sure to mind your p’s and q’s,” Klim told Ada, “and whatever you do, don’t mention a word about the Havana. Edna is a member of the Moral Welfare League, and she would never dream of employing someone who used to work as a taxi-girl.”

Ada had heard the other girls mention the League: it was largely made up of rich ladies on a crusade to rid China of prostitution. They would regularly publish damning articles in their church bulletins, organize propaganda meetings, and even picket the Municipal Council. But no matter how hard these upstanding and well-meaning ladies fought against vice, they achieved little or nothing. Unknown to them, most of Shanghai’s legislators were regular patrons of the city’s brothels.

Klim explained to Ada how to get to the Bernards, and after a delightful ride on a tramcar, she reached a quiet leafy street, where she saw nobody except a Chinese gardener trimming hedges.

Ada looked in wonder at the follies with their towers, weather vanes, and gates decorated with cast-iron curlicues. She felt as if she had entered into some fairytale kingdom, and that sooner or later someone would chase her away. Mere mortals evidently didn’t belong here.

When a young servant let Ada into the house, she almost panicked. There were statues in every corner, the walls were decorated with paintings, and huge fans the size of windmill sails spun from the ceiling.

Goodness me, Ada thought, what do these people do to earn the money to buy all this?

The servant ushered Ada into a cramped studio, bowed, and disappeared. The mistress’s appearance shocked Ada to the core. Mrs. Bernard’s hair was twisted into a bun and fixed with a couple of pencils instead of hairpins. Her hands were smeared with ink, and a black telephone wire was coiled around her bare foot. She was sitting at a desk and talking on the phone.

Mrs. Bernard made a sign for Ada to wait. “We have established a rescue fund for the hostages from the Blue Express,” she yelled into the receiver. “The bandits have requested two million dollars in ransom, but we have found a middleman who has negotiated a smaller amount.”

Finally, Mrs. Bernard hung up and turned to Ada. “Miss Marshall? Klim Rogov gave you glowing references. What can you tell me about yourself?”

Ada had never been good at talking about herself. What did people expect her to say: “I’m a pretty, kind, and bright… modest sort of girl”?

Thankfully, Mrs. Bernard asked the questions, and with a little expert coaxing Ada told her all about her childhood and her odyssey from Izhevsk to Shanghai.

“I’m so sorry to hear you’ve been through so much, and at such a young age,” Edna said. “But if you work hard, you’ll be fine here.”

She took Ada to a large sunny room filled with boxes of books. Books were littered all over the floor and piled precariously on the chairs. Some of them had been carefully stacked on the shelves, while others had been hurriedly stuffed into bookcases.

“Your task is to make a detailed catalog of all these books and arrange them so that they’ll be easy to find,” Mrs. Bernard said. “I can pay you twelve dollars a week. Is that alright with you?”

Ada nodded, stunned. She tried to find the right words of gratitude, but the telephone rang again from the studio, and Mrs. Bernard rushed off to answer it.

“You can start right now,” Ada heard her calling from the corridor.

Twelve dollars a week—a princely sum. And Ada was going to earn it for the pleasure of sorting out books in a stunning library.

With trembling hands, she picked up the first book, then the second, and the third… To be honest, she was surprised and disappointed at the Bernards’ taste. The library was filled with a hodgepodge of different topics that ranged from Agriculture in Central China to The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. How could this couple possibly be interested in such dull topics?

Ada spent the whole morning repairing torn book covers and replacing missing pages. By twelve o’clock, a neat-looking Chinese lad knocked at the library door.

“Hi! My name is Sam, I’m boy number five,” he introduced himself. “Our cook, Yun, told me to invite you down to the kitchen for lunch.”

On their way, Sam told her that there were five Chinese boys, three maids, two grooms, a gardener, a laundress, a dishwasher, a chauffeur, a kitchen boy, a housekeeper, and a messenger boy all serving in the house.

“And all this for a family of two people?” Ada asked.

“It’s good to have a lot of servants,” Sam said proudly. “It shows that you are rich and can afford to invite lots of guests over. Did they hire you part- or full-time?”

Ada shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’d like to stay here.”

“Then find yourself extra work, and when you’re done with the books, try to persuade Missy to keep you on. But don’t go taking on other people’s work. If they start hating you, they’ll drive you out within a week. Not long ago, Yun fell out with one of the maids. He ended up putting special herbs into her food, which made her gassy. It became impossible to be in the same room as her, and Missy had to discharge her.”

“I really have no intention of stealing anyone else’s job—” Ada began, but Sam reassured her that she had nothing to be afraid of.

“Just be nice to everybody and you’ll be fine.”

He took Ada to the small kitchen, not the one that was used for cooking the masters’ food, but the one with a whitewashed Chinese stove and a brood of blackened pots huddling in the corner.

A warped and grease-stained image of the kitchen god, the patron of the hearth and household, stood in a wall niche. Yun, an old man with a copper-colored face and a gray beard tucked into the collar of his jacket, was busy at the chopping board. He took an onion out of a basket and had it cleaned and sliced into translucent rings in a trice. The staccato of his chopping knife resembled the sound of a sewing machine.

Most of the servants had already had their lunch and had returned to their duties, leaving the kitchen boy to clean their plates. As Sam and Ada entered the kitchen, Yun ladled them bowls of soup with yellow noodles.

“May I have a spoon?” Ada asked timidly, looking down at the chopsticks that had been placed next to her bowl.

“No, you can’t,” Yun cut her short. “Learn to use chopsticks, like everybody else.”

Frightened out of her wits, Ada sat next to Sam, trying to pick up her noodles with her chopsticks.

“Praise Yun’s cooking,” Sam whispered.

“Mmm, this is lovely!” Ada said. The noodles were delicious, but it was fiendishly difficult to pin them down with the chopsticks.

She tried lifting her bowl to her mouth, like Sam, but this was even worse, and she ended up spilling half the soup down her dress.