Эльвира Барякина - White Ghosts

“Oh, Miss Nina, glad to see you. Here, children, the ladies at the Anti-Strike Committee baked us volunteers some cookies today.”

“How are things at the office?” Tamara asked.

Tony waved his hand. “We found a stock of counterfeit records, but the Chinese guards were on strike, and goods to the value of twenty thousand were left unguarded. I usually negotiate with the owners; they pay my clients and we return them the goods. But if the warehouse gets plundered, we all suffer losses.”

“Do you want me to send my boys your way?” Nina asked. “They could keep an eye on your warehouse. By the way, there are a huge number of healthy unemployed men in the Russian community. They would be more than capable of solving our water and electricity supply problems if only someone could be persuaded to let them cover for the striking Chinese.”

“Can you get your workers organized quickly?” Tony asked incredulously.

“If you post an ad at the Russian church, you’ll have a whole crowd at your gate in an hour.”

Tony leapt from the table. “Tamara, we need to go to the Municipal Council and talk to Mr. Sterling. Boys, take care of your mother. Miss Nina and I will be back soon.”

4 SKETCHES ^{Klim Rogov’s diary}

Nina has acted as a mediator between the Municipal Council and the Russian community, and they have restored the water supply and got the post office working again. Our greatest success is that we managed to set free the Cossacks from the Mongugai steamer. The Anti-Strike Committee has distributed them out to the factories.

The strikebreakers have made our lives much easier. Shanghai hadn’t exactly been the cleanest city in the world before the strike, but when the coolies stopped cleaning the cesspools, the heavy smell of rot spread like a pall over the entire city. Now, thank God, we can at least open our windows.

The Chairman of the Municipal Council, Mr. Sterling, has promised Nina a reward for her services to the International Settlement—he is going to help us get U.S. citizenship. We pray for everything to work out; with our backs covered by the American government, we will be able to defend ourselves against Wyer. However, thankfully, nothing has been seen or heard of the captain recently.

Our future looks bright, but of course there are always some clouds on the horizon.

Predictably, Nina’s employees are ashamed to be working for a woman. She once told me that some of them have taken to giving her a nasty nickname and laughing at her behind her back.

She doesn’t know how to react to it all. Should she ignore her detractors or should she fire the lot of them? Nina is in a constant state of self-doubt and often tries too hard to prove herself—much to the amusement of her critics and to her own chagrin.

She wants to share her fears and experiences with somebody, but her friends are not much help in this respect. Tamara thinks that a lady shouldn’t be involved in business, and Binbin resents Nina not spending so much time with her at the publishing house.

The calendar business is like a weight around Nina’s neck. “I’ve tried so hard, and everything I do there seems to fall on rocky ground,” she complains. But she still expends a huge amount of energy trying to revive the business. If she were to let it fail completely, how would her employees feed their families?

She has taken so much upon herself, and the only solution she can see is to share her burden with me. But from the very beginning, Nina and I have had an agreement that we would never force each other to do things we are not interested in. Journalism by definition is not a particularly profitable profession, and Nina knows that this is a sore point for me. I have a hard time explaining to myself and others why my wife earns more than I do. Nina tries to avoid the subject, but I can see that deep down inside she believes that her business is more important. She’s annoyed with the fact that I spend my time writing articles rather than going to the office with her.

Once Nina blurted out, “Daniel always used to help me.” But as soon as she said it, she was mortified and asked me to forgive her. I replied that I’m smart enough not to take offense at a random slip of the tongue. But in reality, I am not.

As far as I know, Daniel left Shanghai after the strike, but I’m still overwhelmed by a gloomy melancholy every time I hear his name. For me, he has come to symbolize all the troubles and misfortunes that surround us: betrayal, sickness, and death.

1

Strangely, Edna was relieved when Daniel mysteriously disappeared again. At least she wouldn’t have to wonder where he was and with whom. She had enough problems as it was: her father had been suspended on paid leave and his whole future was at risk.

When he was summoned to a meeting of the Municipal Council to answer about the events of May 30, Edna went there to provide her father with moral support.

The room was full of high-ranking officials, captains of industry, police officers, and foreign journalists. Naturally, no Chinese had been invited.

“My enemies deliberately organized the Nanking Road massacre,” Wyer barked from the podium. “They bribed the protesters by giving them five dollars each. They are willing to do anything to undermine me and the defense of our settlement. But we’ll never allow these street thugs to dictate terms to us.”

Edna thought her father would be laughed out of the meeting. Did he really think they would believe his story that the students had surrendered their lives for a mere five dollars? But to her surprise, the captain’s speech was greeted with a storm of applause.

“Don’t expect the Chinese to be reasonable,” said Johnny Collor. “They were afraid that the ban on child labor would deprive them of an important source of income, but now they have nothing whatsoever other than the free rice distributed by charities. Is anyone even thinking about what is going to happen after the strike? If workers ruin their employers, where are they going to find another job after the strike is over?”

Mr. Sterling, the Chairman of the Municipal Council, took the podium.

“We conducted an investigation,” he said, “and found out that all this was possible only because Chinese merchants are secretly financing the strikers. They think it will ruin their foreign competitors and increase the demand for local products. But their own factories rely on the electricity produced by our power station that they have conveniently ‘forgotten’ to shut down. Well, we’re going to stop supplying our electricity to any factories whose owners support the strike. If they hate the West so much, let’s see how they manage without our technical know-how.”

Then Mr. Sterling thanked Captain Wyer for his excellent service and promised the audience that the white man will never leave China.

His speech was met with even more enthusiastic applause. Officials and businessmen patted each other on the back, laughing loudly and threatening to have the strike leaders strung up from lampposts as a lesson to others. Finding a compromise wasn’t even on the agenda.

2

Wyer was confident that after his speech the Municipal Council would recall him to his position. But a week later Mr. Sterling, who had been such an ardent admirer of captain’s merits and achievements, quietly announced to the press the arrival of a new Police Commissioner for the International Settlement. Captain Wyer, Sterling said, would be taking an early pension and returning to the mother country.

Enraged, the captain stormed into Edna’s study.

“The scoundrel has organized a farewell dinner without even consulting me,” he yelled. “That Nina Kupina is behind all this. She’s made herself indispensable to him, and now that Russian vixen has turned him against anyone who has the true interests of the empire at heart.”

Edna reluctantly lifted her head from her book. “You know perfectly well that Miss Kupina has nothing to do with it.”

Wyer’s face contorted with rage. “So, you’re taking her side too now, are you?” He took a stack of photographs out of his map case and tossed them on her desk. “I showed them to Sterling, but he wasn’t even remotely bothered. Perhaps you should be?”

Edna glanced at the photographs of Daniel and his mistress and threw the whole lot into the wastebasket.

“I’m past caring,” she said.

3

Ada was secretly hoping that the Bernards’ servants would join the strikers, giving her an opportunity to be promoted to maid or even housekeeper. But Yun called all the servants into his kitchen and in no uncertain terms told them that anyone upsetting Missy would become his personal enemy.

“One of my students works as a cook at the governor’s, and the other at the house of the leader of the Green Gang,” said the old man menacingly. “So I’ll find a way to deal with you.”

Ada had no choice but to wait for Mr. Bernard’s return and dream about one day setting up her own restaurant or store with the seed capital he had promised to give her.

One day Sam rushed into the library and gave Ada a stack of photographs.

“Look what I’ve found! I was taking the trash out from Missy’s study and found these pictures in the wastebasket.”

At first, Ada thought these were old photographs that had been taken two years previously when Mr. Bernard was courting Nina Kupina. But then she noticed one of Daniel in a new hat he had recently bought.

“I wonder where these pictures came from?” Sam asked. “And what should I do with them now?”

“I’ll keep them,” Ada replied in a barely audible voice.

From that day on, she wasn’t able to sleep a wink. If Mr. Bernard was in love with Nina, why on earth was he messing around with her, and why had he registered his airplane in her name?

The only explanation she could come up with was that the Avro had been stolen, and Daniel had decided to dupe her so that she would carry the can if anything were to happen. It was the perfect solution: Ada couldn’t sell or use the airplane—she didn’t even remember where they had left it.

If this was the case, she was in a pretty serious fix. She was so anxious that she began to lose weight, and Yun even started giving her an extra ladleful of soup at lunch.

“Are you pregnant?” he asked. “Or have you just get worms in your guts?”

“My great aunt is very good at curing all sorts of diseases,” Sam said. “She even had a butcher as a client and removed all his warts.”

“Leave me alone,” Ada moaned and escaped into the library.

At night, she would look at the pictures Sam had given her and nearly weep with envy.

Why did the men she liked never fall in love with her? One of the photographs showed Daniel Bernard kissing Nina’s hand, looking at her as if she were a queen. What was so special about her? She was ancient, almost thirty for goodness sake!

Chen the landlord told Ada that he had recently seen Klim on the street. “Mr. Rogov is now living next to the racecourse with his wife and daughter. He seems to be doing all right, and said to say hello to you.”

Does Klim know that Nina has cheated on him again? Ada wondered. Apparently not.

It was then that she came up with a new plan: what if Klim were to fall out with his wife and return to the House of Hope? They would become friends again, and he would be able to help her find a way to protect herself from Daniel Bernard.

4

Ada stood on the porch of Nina’s house and was about to press the doorbell when she noticed that the front door was already slightly ajar. Her knees were shaking from fear, but she mastered herself and made her way into the hallway.

A slanting beam of sunlight from a semicircular window illuminated the disorder. Parasols, scarves, and gloves lay in a pile on the console table, and rows of children’s leather sandals lay under the shoe rack. Ada was impressed and even envious of their quality next to her poor, rough canvas shoes.

She could distinctly make out angry voices coming from behind the sliding doors to the living room.

“Miss Nina hasn’t paid us on time for months,” a young woman with a Chinese accent was complaining, “but we said nothing because we wanted to help her to get back on her feet. We thought that she wasn’t going to be like the other whites, but then she sent her Russian strikebreakers to the factories, and they’ve ruined everything we’ve achieved since the beginning of the protests.”