Эльвира Барякина - White Ghosts

“It’s so beautiful!” Ada whispered, looking around.

Klim was surprised, too. He didn’t remember the city being like this the last time he was here. Everything had changed—national flags, automobiles, fashion, and signs. Martha had told him the tea company that he used to work at no longer existed; it had been replaced by a riding accessories store. The little red-tiled house where Klim used to rent a room was also long gone.

He would have to start all over again.

Dressed in her new clothes, Ada felt like Cinderella going to the ball. She was terrified and exhilarated at the same time, keeping up a constant stream of nervous chatter.

A fifteen-year-old shouldn’t be working as a taxi-girl, Klim thought grimly. But there was no chance of her finding another job, and without money, Ada would be doomed to starve for a couple of days and then start walking the streets.

Reluctantly, Klim told Ada the rules of the Havana. “While the taxi-girls sit at the designated tables, their customers buy fifty-cent tickets at the box office and then choose a girl to dance with. If the client is very unpleasant, she is entitled to refuse him, but if she’s too picky, she’ll end up earning nothing. After a dance, you should ask your client to buy you some wine and snacks. You’ll get a commission from the proceeds.”

“What if I’m offered an alcoholic drink?” Ada asked.

“Try to make sure that he buys you a different bottle for yourself. The waiter will bring you weak apple cider, but will charge the client as if it were champagne. If the client insists on pouring you a drink from his bottle, be sure to only take small sips. Just try not to get drunk, otherwise you’ll never be able to dance through the night. If it all gets too much, and you can’t handle it any more, take your shoes off. It’s a sign you’re tired.”

“How do you know all this?” Ada asked, surprised.

“I used to have a friend who worked as a taxi-girl.”

“Where is she now?”

“Went up in the world: got married.”

Klim’s first love, a Chinese girl named Jie Jie, had come to Shanghai from Canton, a big city not far from Hong Kong. There, in the south, they didn’t bind girls’ feet, and Jie Jie had been free to dance. She had been so good that Martha had made an exception and offered her a job, even though the Havana was meant to be a strictly “whites only” establishment.

Klim had fallen in love at first sight. He would spend all his money on dances with Jie Jie and then walk her to her house in the morning. He would even get into fistfights with the sailors, if they ever dared to insult his “chinky” girlfriend.

When his employer, a chronic racist, had found out Klim wanted to marry an Asian, he had banded together with his friends to send the “black sheep” out of China. The Shanghai ex-pats perversely believed it was their duty to protect the purity of the supreme race, and they were prepared to do everything to prevent the very idea of interracial marriage.

Klim had been kidnapped and taken to the port, but the Russian steamer had already left, so they had thrown him on a ship to Buenos Aires instead. That was how Klim had found himself in Argentina. He had worked like a dog just to save enough money for a return ticket—first in a printing shop, then at a newspaper. He would write Jie Jie passionate letters every day, promising his sweetheart that he would soon return and take her to Russia. But one day he received a telegram from Martha saying that Jie Jie had left Shanghai with some rich merchant, becoming another adornment in his considerable harem. She had never learned that Klim had become one of the best journalists in Argentina and had even been well received by the president.

Klim had thought he would never forget her, but life had proved him wrong. He had met Nina, and it had started all over again—the glow in his eyes and the delightful mess in his head. But he had lost that woman as well, to the horror of the civil war and to typhus that had shaken her mental state.

At the Havana, Klim escorted a trembling Ada to the dressing room and then went down to the restaurant hall. It was already packed with tourists and sailors from the Great Powers. Two huge bouncers at the door made sure that no Asians or blacks, except servants, would be allowed onto the premises.

An orchestra was playing a foxtrot. Waiters in white jackets scurried around the tables. They were working for tips to buy their own dinners and bent over backwards to please their customers.

The Havana had changed too, Klim noticed. Now beer advertising illuminated with electric lights hung above the tables, where before there had been gas lamps. The brick walls were freshly plastered and painted with murals, and the stage had been remodeled. Only the smoky wine cabinets remained the same with their rows of assorted bottles, cloudy mirrors, and a gilded little god of luck sitting on the top shelf.

The taxi-girls emerged from the back rooms and ceremoniously sashayed to the tables. Ada was the last one to come out. The other girls had blackened her eyebrows, painted her lips with bright red lipstick, and dolled up her hair with a rose. Immediately, two British sailors rushed up to Ada with their tickets. Slightly taken aback, she squinted, searching for Klim. The manager efficiently sidled up to her and sorted out which of the two men should dance with her first.

The music started, and Ada disappeared into the merry crowd.

“Tell your girlfriend she’s welcome to our club,” Martha said, taking a seat next to Klim. “I’ve already got a lot of clients asking after her.”

“She’s just a kid—” Klim began, but Martha interrupted him.

“So what? I wasn’t even thirteen when I became a taxi-girl. Are you going to sit here guarding her all night?”

Klim nodded.

“Don’t worry, nothing will happen to her,” said Martha, laughing. “I’ve already told everyone that your little chick doesn’t work upstairs… for the time being.”

7

Dawn was breaking just over the horizon. Smoke was rising from the chimneys, and the roosters were crowing. The first hawkers, carrying churns and baskets on their yokes, hurried through the streets.

Ada held onto Klim’s arm, limping slowly. Her feet were blistered and bleeding from the new shoes that Martha had given her.

“Thank you for waiting for me,” she stammered in a drunken voice. “There was a time when I used to think, ‘What do I have to live for? What future do I have?’ But I’m not so scared when I’m with you. We’ll figure things out somehow, right?”

Back in their room at the House of Hope, Ada collapsed on to Klim’s bed and immediately fell asleep.

He remembered how he had danced with her yesterday, imagining that he was holding another woman in his arms. Thank God for the tango! When you dance, you can be anyone you want to be, and with anyone you want to imagine. When the music stops, reality returns, but it’s all worth it just for those few minutes of escape.

Klim covered Ada with her blanket and went over to the window, which offered a peculiar view of grand palaces on the left and a shanty town on the right. A dilapidated tower dominated the crossroads between the two. Covered in inscrutable hieroglyphs, it reminded him of the ancient stone signpost in the Russian folk tale that directs the hero on his journey towards happiness or doom.

It would be good, Klim thought, if someone could tell this traveling knight which road will lead him safely to his Swan Princess.

But what would be the point? Even if he were to meet Nina now, what could he possibly say to her? I love you? Apparently, this was not enough for her. Before the knight could dream about his Princess he needed to heal his wounds, polish his armor, and procure a decent steed.

1 RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES ^{Klim Rogov’s Notebook}

Shanghai’s pawnshops are making a killing out of us Russians—the refugees have no choice but to pawn what few valuables they have. Wedding rings, fur coats, icons, and even their baptismal crosses are all exchanged for a song.

The Church of the Holy Epiphany, the only Russian place of worship in Shanghai, has become a temporary refugee camp, where people live in makeshift tents and huts made out of plywood. The stench, noise, and dirt hangs like a pall over the enclosure around the church. Father Seraphim ladles soup from a large cauldron; a queue to his mobile kitchen stretches across the churchyard and disappears up the street. The refugees use a chemist’s scale to weigh tiny bars of laundry soap, one minuscule piece per person. There are queues for everything: queues to use the bucket to fetch water and queues to dry laundry on the washing line.

A local neatly-dressed business owner, keen to cut back on his labor costs, appears at the gates. “I need ten men at the slaughter-house to help load discarded guts. Anyone interested?”

The crowd rushes to their benefactor. “Me! Me! I am!”

The refugees have to go to Chinese public bathhouses where the second floor is for the rich, the first floor for the poor. The hot water from the second floor pours downstairs through a wide stone-lined gutter, and the poor wash themselves with it, picking up all sort of skin diseases in the process.

Everybody is desperately trying to make ends meet. Women who set themselves up as fortune-tellers were the first to start earning. Their services are in huge demand among their fellow countrymen. Divination and clairvoyance are prohibited on the territory of the International Settlement, but the colonial authorities can’t do anything about the Russians because they are stateless and come under Chinese jurisdiction, and according to Chinese law and custom, fortune-telling is an honorable occupation.

Starting from scratch is the most difficult thing for the exile. No one cares that you used to be a successful journalist, or a general, or a well-known politician. Life hurls you back down to the first rung of the ladder, back with the inexperienced and the young, who, incidentally, are much more adept at picking up the local language and customs. But you are no longer eighteen; at your age, you should have at least a few accomplishments to boast of. If you really have nothing to justify your years in this world, your value depreciates, as does your esteem, not only in other people’s eyes but in your own.

All of us Russians, including myself, hate Shanghai with an impotent rage. Deep down inside, each of us believed that we had some God-given right to a certain status in China, at least as a sign of respect for our race and the fact that our country had once been one of the Great Powers. But in reality, we are now the lowest of the low in China’s social hierarchy. Like all fallen gods, the Russian refugees are not even granted mortal status and certainly no forgiveness. Our place is to dwell out of sight in hell.

In search of a miracle, I visited all the English-speaking editorial offices in the city, but the doormen didn’t even let me in. The Russian accent is a curse. Before I can even get a sentence out, the door is slammed in my face: “No Bolsheviks in here!” How am I meant to convince them that I’m not a Bolshevik? It requires time and effort to find out who is White and who is Red, and it’s really much simpler to sling every single one of these Russian tramps out on their ear, just in case.

I was lucky enough to find a temporary job and spent several days working for a furniture workshop. This involved sawing hard teak wood using an enormous eight-foot, two-man saw until your muscles are screaming for respite. As soon as one man begins to lag, the owner kicks him out and replaces him with a fresh Slav(e). Nobody bothers with sawmills here when the manual labor is so cheap.

However, I’m slowly learning to survive in Shanghai, too. If I’m lucky enough to earn a silver coin, I have learned not to spend it immediately but exchange it for a larger number of copper coins. That way, after scampering around the city for hours, I can usually find a money changer that offers good rates and end up making about ten cents for my pains. For me, this is the difference between dinner and hunger. Ten cents can buy you a princely feast of noodles or sugar-roasted nuts. But you always have to keep your eyes open: those scumbag street hawkers sometimes add sand to the food to make it heavier.

If it’s been a particularly bad day, I can get by on a couple of pickles for seven coppers or go to the French Catholic nuns who give out carrot soup if you can put up with their interminable sermons.