Эльвира Барякина - White Ghosts

Money is tight, and I’m very grateful to Nazar for letting me stay in his room. I asked how I might be able to thank him, and he replied that helping a fellow revolutionary in the struggle against global capitalism was more than enough reward.

I wrote an essay about the unrest in Canton and took it to the People’s Tribune. They were very pleased with it and even gave me a reward: the third volume of the collected works of Vladimir Lenin.

“I’m so glad that you can write in English,” said the editor, a sweet American girl who is besotted with socialism. “Would you like to make a weekly report about the rallies and demonstrations in the city?”

If they had been able to pay me, I would have been happy to write more articles, but I don’t think I need another tome by Lenin. The one I already have is more than sufficient, and it’s a bit softer than the porcelain brick that had been serving as my pillow.

5

No one in our dormitory asks the other about their past or present occupation because each has a secret mission or assignment from the Communist party, the Intelligence Agency, the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, the Comintern, or the political police—the OGRU. They call themselves the “South China group,” and they live a hard, isolated, and ascetic life—much like the warrior monks of centuries past. The only difference is that the Soviet government pays them a salary and lets them have families.

Westerners believe that the Bolsheviks are materialists. But nothing could be further from the truth. Their lives are subject to strict rituals filled with hymns, sermons, and festivals. They resolve any issue with quotations from their holy books—the “Old Testament” by Karl Marx and the “New Testament” by Vladimir Lenin.

My neighbors are essentially good guys, and I could get along with them fine under normal circumstances. But my goodwill evaporates as soon as they transform into “revolutionary fighters,” brutal crusaders who don’t have an ounce of pity for infidel unbelievers.

Just as medieval fanatics were always looking for the snares of the Devil, the Bolsheviks are constantly on the lookout for the “web of conspiracies that are being hatched against the Soviet Union.” In their minds, Satan is a fat gentleman dressed in a top hat and sporting a monocle—the malicious face of Imperialism. Satan has many servants in many guises, including us, the White immigrants, who “have treacherously switched to the camp of the enemies of progressive mankind.” Their credo dictates that these evil forces dream of enslaving everybody, and if it were not for Lenin the savior, the world would long ago have sunk into darkness.

I found a rather curious map of the world hanging on the wall on the ground floor of our dormitory. The artist has painted the USSR red and depicted Moscow as a star which radiates bright rays of light to the rest of the world. All the other countries are colored black. It reminded me of those medieval maps made by crusaders, with Jerusalem at the sacred center of the world, surrounded by the kingdoms of Christendom, with the lands of the infidels banished to the outer darkness and oblivion.

While Westerners come to China to exploit it and make themselves rich, my neighbors the Bolsheviks genuinely want to sacrifice themselves for the working people of the future. They come here, to the other side of the world, to expose themselves to danger, hellish heat, mosquitoes, and deadly diseases, utterly convinced that all this suffering is worth it and that they are doing the right thing.

None of these modern “crusaders” speaks Cantonese, so how can they possibly know what the local people want? Who told them that the millions of the Chinese would like to be “saved” from the “Imperialist Satan” through violence and civil war?

Personally, I don’t believe there will be any “triumph of the proletarian idea” in Canton—for the simple reason that there is no proletariat here. It is a city inhabited by artisans, fishermen, and traders. Here Marx’s portraits are adorned with flowers as if he were a reincarnation of the Buddha, and much of the city looks as though it belongs in the sixteenth century rather than the twentieth.

It seems that the Bolsheviks don’t realize that they are playing the role of the distant rich uncle at someone else’s wedding. He might be sitting in the place of honor next to the bride and bridegroom, everybody might be listening politely and nodding in agreement at his words of wisdom, but the real reason he has been invited is to provide the lavish gifts. He will be quickly forgotten once the party is over and the bride and bridegroom are left to enjoy his generosity.

6

After a while a quiet young man, who claimed to be an administrative assistant, approached me and asked cautious questions about who I was and where I had come from. I just glared at him and told him not to intrude on my mission.

Fortunately for me, as far as the South China group is concerned, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. There is a simple reason for this: telegraph communications with the Soviet Union are unreliable and very expensive, and many departments are only allocated funds to send ten to fifteen typewritten pages per year. It takes three to four weeks for a courier to reach Moscow, so if someone has made a request about me, it’s going to be a long time before they get an answer.

But in the meantime, I need to prepare myself for all eventualities. I have to move out before someone finds my diary or figures out that the Daily News is not quite as “proletarian” as they first thought it was.

A later entry

I have come up with a brilliant idea: I’ll mail my diary to Ada. Not to the House of Hope address, where Wyer’s spies might intercept it, but to the Bernard’s. I’ll disguise the envelope to make it look like some publisher’s catalogue.

I’ll ask Ada to pass on my diary to Nina. This will be the best way to contact her and explain what has happened to me.

1

Nazar asked Klim if he would be able to write an article about the pilots living at the airfield on Dashatou Island. Sun Yat-sen’s recruiters had hired them from all over Europe, and now Canton boasted the most multinational air force in the world.

“These pilots are real heroes,” Nazar persuaded Klim. “They fly their machines without any reliable weather forecasts and navigate using the mountain tops and the railways. In fact, they don’t even have any maps. Would you dare go up into the sky without a map?”

Nazar’s biggest hero was Comrade Krieger, who was in charge of technical maintenance at the airfield.

Krieger was a German by birth but had grown up in Prague and received his engineering training in America. According to Nazar, Krieger had arrived in China during the Great War to organize the shipment of all sorts of goods to Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Later on, when Sun Yat-sen had started building his army, Krieger had joined his air force to help the Kuomintang and the communists to free the Chinese people from the warlords and foreign invaders.

“He’s an amazing man,” Nazar kept saying. “He not only built our airfield from scratch but has also learned to fly better than any ace. He is besotted with aviation. He thinks it is the future of warfare.”

“Sounds impressive,” Klim said. “Well, let’s go and interview these flyboys.”

2

It was raining when they got to Dashatou Island, and they had to run across the flooded airfield to reach the “canteen,” which was little more than a long table and a couple of benches under a thatched canopy.

There were a dozen tanned pilots sitting at the table in overalls stained with motor oil.

“Always a pleasure to have the press here!” they shouted, and after exchanging handshakes with their guests, they gave Nazar and Klim the seats of honor that had been improvised out of a couple of aviation fuel barrels.

It was pouring now, and it was so dark under the canopy that it might as well have been evening already. The orderlies, soaked to the skin, brought in pots of rice and fried canned meat with vegetables. Banana leaves were used instead of plates and enamel army cups instead of wine glasses.

Konstantin the Bulgarian filled the cups with baijiu, a kind of Chinese rice vodka.

“To the victory of socialism!” he toasted.

They all drank and talked, interrupting each other—in Russian, English, and German.

Klim took notes in his notebook. The pilots were all from different countries, but their stories were surprisingly similar. They had been sent to the front straight from school and had quickly learned how to survive, how to laugh in the face of danger, and to value camaraderie above all else. They were fond of women but loathed the responsibility and curbs to their freedom that children and a settled life entailed. The humdrum conformity of civilian life bored them.

“What kind of a man are you if you’re afraid of a fight?” the curly-haired Pierre from Belgium shouted. He had returned from the war covered in decorations but could never stick at a permanent job. He was forever getting into trouble with his bosses for arguing with his customers.

“What exactly are you fighting for here, in China?” Klim asked the pilots.

“For justice,” said Richard the Austrian, and he began recounting a recent operation they had undertaken against some rebels who had mutinied against Sun Yat-sen: “I banked and strafed their truck. The fuel tank exploded, and the soldiers jumped out of the truck with their pants on fire.”

The pilots roared with laughter. Here, in Canton, they were gods of war riding the clouds and wreaking havoc against the enemy.

“I can’t wait for our Northern Expedition to start in earnest,” Konstantin said. “But first Sun Yat-sen must destroy these ‘paper tigers’ from the Chamber of Commerce.”

“I’m not sure that he can,” Klim said cautiously. “The merchants’ army has already taken Xiguan and won’t allow the government troops and tax collectors to enter.”

“Nonsense!” Nazar said, his cheeks flushed with vodka. “We’ll shell them into submission. Chiang Kai-shek has already received the mountain guns he needs. The only thing that is stopping him is that the shells we received from Shanghai are the wrong size for the guns. Our men have to manually shorten each sleeve. But soon we’ll show the rebels what for.”

“Is Chiang Kai-shek going to shell his own city?” Klim asked.

“Not the whole city, only those traitors in Xiguan.”

A bedraggled and muddy basset hound came to join them under the canopy.

“This is Mucha!” Nazar yelled, laughing and trying to fend off the dog as it strove to lick his face. “Leave me alone, you smelly mongrel!”

A man wrapped in a military cape appeared out of the rain, and Klim stared at him dumbfounded, unable to believe his eyes. It was Daniel Bernard.

“Comrade Krieger, take your beast away!” Nazar said with a laugh, but Daniel didn’t laugh with him.

“What is this man doing here?” he asked, pointing at Klim. “He is a spy. I’ve met him before in Shanghai.”

3

They searched Klim and brought him to a dingy guardhouse. The walls were covered with damp political posters, the roof leaked in several places, and there were tins on the floor to collect dripping water. Two soldiers with Mausers stood behind Klim.

“Was it Edna who ordered you to spy on me?” asked Daniel.

Klim watched him rummaging through his belongings on the desk. “I had no idea that you were in Canton.”

It was obvious that Daniel wouldn’t want anyone in Shanghai to learn about his secret double life, and the only way to keep that secret would be to bury his old acquaintance in the nearest ravine.

Klim had great difficulty portraying a semblance of calm. “I was asked to write an article for the People’s Tribune, and so I—”

His words trailed off as he heard Nazar giving a yelp from behind the wall. “I met him at the Whampoa Academy and thought he was Soviet. A-ah! Don’t hurt me!”

Klim went cold. Thank God, he had sent his diary to Shanghai. If Daniel had found and translated it, Klim would have been summarily executed as an enemy of the revolution.

The rain turned into a full-blown storm, and the raindrops drummed into the tins. Mucha tried to enter the guardhouse, but Daniel shouted at him sharply, “Get out of here!”