White Ghosts

1. THE REFUGEES

Shivering in her worn-out black coat and astrakhan hat, Nina Kupina paced the rusty low deck of the refugee steamer, cramming English verbs into her head: “Come, came, come; see, saw, seen; win, won, won.”

For several weeks now, two thousand Russian souls had been killing time in the Shanghai harbor, trapped on their ships bearing the faded banners of a state that no longer existed—the Russian Empire. But the Shanghai authorities still had no idea what to do with them. The representatives of the Chinese part of the city, the French concession, and the International Settlement had expressed sympathy for the refugees who had fled the Bolsheviks after the brutal civil war in Russia, but no one wanted these homeless and penniless foreigners on their territory or on their hands.

Just to be on the safe side, they had sent a Chinese battleship to keep the refugees in their sights. It was a sensible precaution. In the depths of their despair, the Russians might easily launch an attack on peaceful Shanghai. Their holds were brimming with arms: they had enough to start a small war.

Father Seraphim, a man built like a bear, with cannonballs for fists and a bushy beard, approached Nina.

“The parents’ committee wants to arrange a Christmas celebration for the kids,” he said. “Can you draw us a Christmas tree on the wall next to the mess hall? We have to arrange some semblance of normality for the children during the holiday.”

He gave Nina a piece of charcoal, and she went up to the crowded upper deck, lit by the weak winter sun.

The low, flat shores of the Huangpu River were powdered with snow. The roofs of the ancient watchtowers with their corners curved skywards were silhouetted like black paper cut-outs against the pink-grayish evening sky. All sorts of ships swarmed past the anchored refugee flotilla—swift moving junks with carved sterns and sails like dragons’ wings, soot-blackened coal barges, and white ocean-going liners. Shanghai was so near yet so far. Everybody had the right to go ashore, it seemed, except the Russians.

The men on board, for the most part former White Army officers and soldiers, were grinding rice delivered by Shanghai charities, using improvised homemade hand grinders. Their wives and daughters were doing their laundry. Drying shirts and pants, draped over the ship’s gun barrels, flapped in the icy wind. From the stern came the sound of keening: a woman had died of pneumonia and her friends were preparing her for burial.

Nina found an area on the wall where the paint was not peeling and began to draw. Suddenly she heard the voice of her husband, Klim Rogov, floating from the opened porthole. Nina hesitated for a moment but couldn’t resist the temptation to eavesdrop.

Klim enjoyed great authority among the refugees as he had spent some time in Shanghai when he was younger. In the evenings, he invited people to the mess hall and imparted his knowledge to them. Nina had pretended not to be interested in these meetings. When you’ve sent your husband packing, it’s awkward to rely on him for priceless information concerning your future.

“According to official documents,” Klim said, “China is an independent state, but in fact, it’s a colony of the Great Powers—Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States, and Japan. The Chinese have suffered defeat in every war they have fought against them, and the victors have made them sign unequal treaties that have made the Great Powers masters of the country. The whites barely consider the Chinese human and despise them so much that they call their Chinese male servants “boys,” even the elderly ones, and give them numbers—Boy One, Boy Two, Boy Three.”

Nina peeked furtively through the porthole.

The audience listened attentively, hanging on Klim’s every word. They were dying to escape to Shanghai from their floating prison, yet the very idea terrified them. Few of them knew any foreign languages, and most of the men had never pursued any trades other than military service. The women were in an even worse position, especially those who had only been raised to be mothers and wives. Nina was one of them.

Klim looked tired, his thick dark brows knitted, his broad shoulders oddly hunched, but he made an effort to be upbeat and untroubled about their current position.

“Sooner or later, the officials will let us into the city,” he said. “Our steamers are in such a bad condition we can’t sail any further. I doubt our fellow Christians will let us die here before their very eyes. Who would want two thousand vengeful ghosts coming to visit them at night?”

Nina stepped back from the porthole, feeling uneasy. Here, on the ship, she could at least count on a meal, but she didn’t have the faintest idea what would be awaiting her once she arrived in the city. When she had separated from Klim, she had had a plan to find herself another, more established husband. In her previous life before the revolution, she could dazzle and enchant men and had therefore relied on their help and generosity. But recently Nina had realized that at twenty-five-years-old, she was severely hampered by her less than glamorous condition. Once Klim had told her that she would make an ideal Swan Princess, with her large grayish-green eyes and pointed face framed with dark curls, but being a princess in rags and without a kingdom was not a safe bet for her.

In fact, the only valuable thing Nina had was a revolver she had removed from Klim’s possession when she had decided to break up with him. The last thing she needed was for him to put a bullet through his brains.

Nina had tried her best to draw a nice Christmas tree on the wall but it had ended up looking more like the tip of a barbed harpoon. It felt as if everything she tried her hand to these days turned into a brutal and ugly mess.

In Vladivostok, just before the refugee flotilla’s departure, she had contracted typhus and, in her delirium, had imagined herself living under a bridge, rummaging through rubbish dumps for food. She had convinced herself that this would be her destiny if she didn’t leave Klim. Who needed a Russian- and Spanish-speaking writer in Asia? Klim’s English lacked refinement, and his knowledge of Shanghainese was only good enough for haggling with market traders. Both of them knew that he wouldn’t be able to find a good job in Shanghai.

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Klim had tried to reassure her. “I started from scratch in Argentina and ended up becoming a reasonably good journalist.”

She hadn’t listened. “I can’t wait for you to get back on your feet.”

But the longer the refugees sat on their ships, the less enthusiastic Nina became about her decision. There was no way she could find anyone better than Klim. He was smart, enterprising, talented, and trustworthy—nobody could compare to him.

What if the typhus had driven me crazy? Nina thought. She had heard that the disease had a debilitating effect on people’s nerves and decision-making faculties. Half of Russia had come down with the typhus, and perhaps that was the reason why the country had been wracked with so much cruel and irrational behavior.

She peeked into the porthole again. Klim drew a rough map of Shanghai on a piece of brown paper and explained to his listeners where the markets, the railroad station, and the Russian Orthodox church were located.

I should wait until this meeting is over and go and talk to him, Nina thought.

But would he find it in his heart to take her back? In his place, she would never have forgiven a man for leaving her in the lurch. It had only recently occurred to Nina that Klim’s life in Vladivostok had in many ways been harder than her own. Not only had he been responsible for supporting the two of them, but he had also had to nurse her through her illness as well. How could she be so ungrateful?

Finally the meeting ended, the audience poured out onto the deck, but Nina missed her chance to speak to Klim. He had swiftly passed her by, and pretending to be looking in a different direction he had dropped his map of the city at her feet. Nina picked it up and studied it for a while.

Had Klim done this on purpose? He knew that there was nobody else on board who could help her find her feet in Shanghai.

When dusk fell, the Chinese fishermen lighted round paper lanterns on their sampans anchored by the pier. They lived on their boats, sleeping in cramped cabins fashioned out of boards and reeds, cooking their food in small sooty pots.

The other refugees had long gone to sleep, but Nina was still pacing the empty deck. Jiří Labuda, a former Czech prisoner of war, approached her. He was a short, scrawny, gray-eyed young man with bright red hair and countless freckles peppering his nose. His right hand had three fingers missing.

“If you like, I could light your way back to your cabin with my cigarette lighter,” he said. “It’s already dark in the corridors, and you might trip.”

Jiří was always trying to please Nina, and it kept her diverted. She had rescued him from the angry officers who had accused him of stealing bread. They had decided to hang him to make an example, but Nina had shown them bread sacks chewed through by rats, and the officers had let Jiří go.

He had told her he had been a cellist and seemed destined for a brilliant musical career, but when the Great War started, he had been drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. Wounded and captured, he had spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camp, where he learned Russian. Somehow he had ended up with the White Army flotilla, and now Jiří didn’t have a clue where he was headed and why.

“Let’s go to sleep,” Nina told him, but he didn’t move, staring intensely into the darkness behind her back.

She turned and shuddered at the sight of a large junk approaching their ship. It had a carved dragon on its bow, and its Chinese sailors were lit an eerie red by the onboard lanterns as they bustled about on deck.

“Missy, guns! Me wantchee guns,” shouted one of them, dressed in a bowler hat and a quilted Chinese jacket.

“What does he want?” Nina asked Jiří, perplexed.

He shrugged. “They seem to be speaking English, but I can’t figure it out.”

The sailor made a gesture as if he was firing with his finger and then pulled a banknote from his pocket.

“I think he wants to buy a gun,” Nina guessed. “Ask him will a revolver do? I have a revolver.”

It would be nice to sell it and get some money, she thought.

The sailor fanned his fingers out on both hands.

“He needs more than one gun,” Jiří said.

“How much then? Ten?”

“More, more!” the sailor shouted.

The captain of the refugee ship came out on the deck, accompanied by the sailors on watch. “What’s going on here?”

“This man wants to buy guns,” said Nina excitedly. “Let’s sell him something from our arsenal and get some money.”

The captain looked at her as if she was crazy. “The Great Powers have imposed an embargo here: it is prohibited to import any arms into China. If they catch us selling guns, they’ll deport us immediately.”

“How much cash have you got?” Nina asked quietly. “I don’t mean worthless paper rubles, but real money, dollars, that you can actually buy something with.”

The captain frowned. “I don’t have the right to trade these arms. They are not my property.”

“But you do have the right to sign off anything that has gone out of service.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the captain invited the Chinese on board.

“Come on up, but don’t make any noise,” he said. “Our passengers are already asleep.”

The first to appear over the side was a fat man wearing a fashionable hat and an unbuttoned leather coat.

“Good evening,” he said in French.

Nina was delighted. She knew some French and would be able to talk to the guests.

The fat man kissed her hand. “Oh, what secret treasures are hidden on this boat! Don Jose Fernando Burbano at your service, ma’am.”

Two Chinese followed him, the one who had initiated the negotiations, and another one, a huge, terrifying one-eyed man with a hideously burned face.

Nina offered them her services as an interpreter, but Don Fernando declined saying that this was no business for a woman.

“Does anyone know English here?” he asked.

Jiří raised his hand enthusiastically, like a student in a classroom, and Don Fernando patted him on the shoulder. “Come on then, Redhead, let’s see what you’ve got for us.”

The captain told Nina to go to her cabin, but she held her ground and resolutely followed the men down into the hold. She had calculated that if she sold her revolver to Don Fernando, she might get five or even ten Chinese dollars for it.

The sailors took turns spinning the handle of the dynamo torch while the captain showed Don Fernando his wares.

“We have rifles made in Russia, Mills Bomb hand grenades, handguns, gun sights, and periscopes,” Jiří interpreted, and Nina was surprised that she could understand some of the English.

The haggling went on endlessly. Finally, Don Fernando’s patience ran out. “You’re in no position to make any bargains,” he barked at the captain. “You should take what you’re given and be grateful.”

One-Eye handed him a small abacus, and the Don began snapping the beads to and fro.

“Cartridge shells, twenty boxes; Mosin-Nagant rifles, dreadful old crap. I bet half of them are out of service. Sixteen caskets, plus the grenades… Sixteen hundred dollars for the lot, and I won’t give you a copper more.”

Jiří interpreted his words: “He’s only offering six hundred dollars.”

Nina instinctively wanted to correct him: Sixteen hundred means one thousand and six hundred—

But the captain had already offered the Don his hand. “Well, to hell with you. Just take everything away quickly and get out of here.”

Nina’s heart was thumping.

“You pay the captain six hundred dollars,” she said to the Don in French, “and I’ll collect the rest of the money. But we need to be discreet about it.”

Don Fernando looked at her, and a knowing smile lit up his chubby face. “As you wish, ma’am. Come over to my junk, and we’ll settle matters there.”

Nina watched the sailors and deckhands shift the crates from one vessel to another, her whole body trembling with fear and excitement. If her fellow refugees had learned what she was about to do, she would be tried and punished in accordance with martial law. However, if she succeeded she would have the money that she and Klim needed to get settled in Shanghai. She would ask for his forgiveness, tell him she had a mental breakdown, and they would make up.

When the last crate had been transferred to the junk, Nina quickly jumped onto the gangway connecting the two ships.

The captain grabbed her by her elbow. “Where are you going?”

Nina gave him a forced smile. “I want to sell my revolver to Don Fernando. I don’t have any money left.”

The captain let her go, reluctantly. “Don’t stay there too long.”

But as soon as Nina jumped down onto the junk’s deck, a searchlight from the distant patrol ship flashed in the darkness, and a voice boomed over the river, speaking in English through a loud-hailer. “Don’t move! You are under arrest!”

A moment later, Don Fernando’s men had pulled up the gangway, and the anchor chain clattered.

“Wait!” Nina cried, but nobody paid her the slightest attention. Sailors ran to their stations on deck, the sail filled above her head, and the junk moved irrevocably away from the refugee ship.

“Miss Nina!” a frightened voice called out to her.

She turned her head and saw Jiří sitting on the deck, holding his travel bag.

“What are you doing here?” Nina asked.

“Don Fernando promised to take me to Shanghai,” Jiří whispered. “I’m sick of wasting my time on that rotten steamer.”

There was a gunshot, and the searchlight from the patrol ship shone straight at the junk’s deck.

“Damn it!” Don Fernando roared in the darkness. “Drop the anchor! That’s Captain Eggers. I’ll have to talk to him.”

Don Fernando made a courtesy visit to the patrol ship, returning only at dawn, drunk and in high spirits.

“Let’s go home,” he told the deckhands. “Captain Eggers and I had a talk. There are no hard feelings.”

Shivering with fear and cold, Nina sat next to Jiří on a coil of cables, not daring to attract the attention of the smugglers.

There’s no way I can get back to the refugee ship, she thought in panic. What if these smugglers rape and kill me? Well, it would serve me right—I’m always asking for trouble.

A Chinese pilot stood impassively on the high, painted stern, moving the heavy steering oar with considerable effort. The timbers shivered above Nina’s head, and the moist air smelled of seaweed and smoke.

“We’re lucky to be the first into Shanghai,” Jiří said quietly. “Do you realize what will happen once the city becomes inundated with all these penniless refugees? The Shanghailanders will come to hate us as intruders. We need to settle in as soon as possible before our accents turn us into pariahs.”

“What are you going to do in Shanghai?” Nina asked.

“I don’t know… Maybe we should try to find a homeless shelter.”

Don Fernando lurched unsteadily around his newly acquired weapon crates.

“Hey, ma’am, come over here,” he called to Nina, pulling a wad of banknotes out of his pocket. “Here’s a thousand dollars. Count it. It’s all there.”

Nina looked at him in amazement. She wasn’t expecting the Don to keep his word.

“I don’t know what’s come over me,” Fernando sighed. “Perhaps I have gone soft and taken a shine to you, with your pretty eyes shining like little stars. Hey, One-Eye!” he called his sidekick. “I’ll go take a nap. Wake me up when we get there.”

Nina hid the money in her pocket. She still couldn’t take in what had happened. I’ve got a thousand dollars, and I didn’t have to lift a finger to earn it.

Things weren’t looking too bad, after all. With money in her pocket, she would be able to start a business and find Klim as soon as the other refugees got ashore. She would probably be able to get his address at the Russian Consulate or the local Orthodox church.

Nina moved to the junk’s bow, a carved dragon head jutting proudly above her. She felt the fresh sea breeze on her face as the junk skipping at a good clip over the waves.

The closer it got to the city, the more wharves and warehouses she could make out along the embankment. Billboards with exotic slogans in English were on display above their tiled roofs: “Buy Great Wall cigarettes,” “Tiger Balm—the best remedy for all illnesses.” Smoke-stacks, factory shops, building cranes… The river was packed from bank to bank with boats of all shapes and sizes. One-Eye took up a position next to Nina and began shouting at the other boats through a megaphone.

Soon a large steel bridge appeared on their starboard side, surrounded by enormous buildings capped with domes and adorned with towers and columns. The streetlamps on the promenade were still alight and were reflected in the countless windows around.

Nina looked at One-Eye, puzzled. “Am I really in China?”

He grinned. “This is Band, this where the International Settlement works and lives. China is a bit further upriver.”

At last, the junk moored up to one of the piers. The disheveled Don Fernando emerged from his cabin, scratching his belly.

“You should get a passport for yourself,” he said to Nina genially. “People in your line of business need documents.”

“How much does one cost?” Nina asked.

“Three hundred Chinese dollars.”

“For a fake? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Don Fernando shrugged. “Well, as you wish. Let me kiss your pretty hand goodbye?”

Nina put her hands in her pockets. “I’d rather you told me what the best hotel in Shanghai is.”

“The Astor House. Why?”

“Just curious.”

Nina and Jiří crossed the gangway onto the promenade and froze, stunned by the sight of the shiny cars parked along the snow-covered street.

“I’ve never seen so many cars in one place,” Nina whispered.

Brown smoke curled from chimneys; large buses forged their way through swarms of rickshaws, single-seated passenger buggies pulled by Chinese men dressed in quilted jackets and pants, and canvas shoes. They would pick up the thin shafts and start to jog, easily outstripping the heavily laden single-wheeled carts.

Despite the early hour, the sidewalks were already crowded. White gentlemen in expensive coats with fur collars were buying newspapers from Chinese boys who yelled in English: “Breaking news! Soviet Russia is now called the Soviet Union.”

Chinese clerks wearing almost identical blue coats and black satin caps hurried to their offices and shops. Workers were working hard removing Christmas wreaths tied with red ribbons from street-lamp posts. Unlike Russian Orthodox Christians, who celebrate Christmas on January 7, Shanghai’s Catholics and Protestants had already celebrated their feast thirteen days earlier.

A detachment of black-bearded horsemen in blue coats and red turbans galloped by.

“Those are Sikhs,” Jiří told Nina. “I read that the British brought them over from India to police their colonies.”

They heard a little bell jingling as a street peddler pushed his cart with a steaming brazier piled high with pots, bowls, and teapots.

Jiří gave Nina a pleading look. He was evidently very hungry.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said sternly. “Today we will be breakfasting at the Astor House.”

“Are you out of your mind?” gasped Jiří, “We are illegal immigrants. The police will catch us there for sure.”

“A fancy hotel is the last place they’ll be looking for illegal immigrants.”

Nina boldly headed toward a row of parked rickshaws. “Astor House!” she called.

Several men immediately ran up to her. “Here, Missy! Come with me, please!”

Pretending that she was not in the slightest bit embarrassed, Nina climbed into the cart, and the rickshaw puller, a young man in a torn quilted jacket, covered her lap with a leather lap-robe.

Nina turned to Jiří. “Are you coming with me or not?”

He hesitated. “I can’t ride a cart pulled by a human being.”

“Just arrived in Shanghai?” the rickshaw man asked him in broken English. “People power is good! People need food. I bring money to my family.”

Jiří resignedly waved his hand, got into the cart, and they drove on along the elegant promenade.

Shanghai was lit up with the morning sun. Tram bells rang, horns blared, horseshoes clattered, and Nina’s head spun from the sheer din of it all.

Suddenly she noticed a Chinese girl walking with a very strange gait, followed by another and then another. Instead of normal feet, they all seemed to have tiny hooves wrapped in embroidered shoes.

It took Nina a while to construct her question in English, and when the rickshaw stopped at an intersection, she asked: “What’s wrong with these women? Why do they have such small feet?”

“Here, all girls have their feet bound,” the rickshaw man said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “We don’t want their feet to grow; it’s ugly.”

“How come?” Nina said with indignation. “Your women can’t even walk normally, let alone run.”

“That is how it should be. Otherwise, the wives would run away from their husbands.”

Nina frowned, remembering Klim. She was going to get a room in the best hotel in Shanghai, and he had been left behind on that stinking ship.

There is nothing I can do about it now, she thought.

The Astor House doorman was baffled by the shabby appearance of the white guests.

“We have just come back from a hunting trip,” Nina told him in French. “To Swan Lake.”

Reluctantly, the doorman ushered them into the brightly lit lobby.

“I’d almost forgotten that these sorts of places existed,” Nina murmured, gazing at the crystal chandeliers and marble floors.

Paying no attention to the porters gawking at her, she went straight up to the reception desk.

“Hello! We need two adjoining rooms. For a month.”

The receptionist blinked at her in confusion. “But that will be a hundred and fifty dollars, ma’am, and I’m not sure you’re going to be able to—”

“Do you need a deposit?” Nina pulled out a wad of cash from her pocket, which made the receptionist even more flustered.

“Oh no, ma’am, no deposit necessary. Here, in Shanghai, we pay with chits; we’ll send you an invoice later. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

“He didn’t even ask for our passports,” Jiří whispered when they entered the elevator.

“Our white skin is all the passports we need,” Nina replied. “Klim told me that they even offer loans on a white man’s word of honor. Although I’m not sure that’s going to last for much longer.”

The bellboy led Nina and Jiří past stained-glass windows and sumptuous mahogany-paneled walls to a gallery that wound its way around a large ballroom. Downstairs, under a huge glass roof, an orchestra played next to tables covered with pristine white linen.

Nina stopped to look at the dancing couples. Half of the ladies had their hair cut short, and they wore dresses with belts that were fastened at the side to accentuate their hips. Wow!

“What kind of music is this?” Nina asked Jiří.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard anything like it before.”

“And you call yourself a musician?” Nina teased. “Oh, we’re hopelessly behind the times.”

The bellboy informed them that the music was known as jazz, and that the event going on downstairs was tiffin—a kind of late second breakfast complete with cocktails and dances.

He turned the lock on one of the polished doors. “Monsieur, madame, welcome!”

It was a little chilly in the room, and it smelled of lavender soap. Nina put her hat on the neatly made bed, threw the curtains open, and laughed. “Jiří, I love this city!”

After a luxurious bath and breakfast, they decided to go shopping.

Nina was awe struck by Shanghai’s wealth and modernity. She observed the well-heeled crowd promenading down Nanking Road and gasped at the staggering dresses on display in the giant shop windows. The trees had been trimmed, all the sidewalks had trashcans, and dashing traffic policemen stood at the road crossings, waving on pedestrians with their batons.

To all intents and purposes it was a European city, with the exception of the Chinese shop signs, rickshaws, and pedestrians carrying ducks in cages or bundles of cabbage on bamboo yokes.

It now seemed strange to Nina that she had ever been so afraid of emigrating. What was there to miss about ill-starred Russia? Shanghai was a city where you could live life to the full.

While she and Jiří were roaming the Wing On department store, Nina wanted to laugh and cry with happiness. To think that only yesterday she hadn’t even had enough thread to sew a button, and now she could buy herself whatever she wanted: an American photo camera or a set of fine porcelain cups from Japan, or a fine British leather purse, or even a fountain pen with a golden nib. Everything was available if you could afford it, without even waiting in line, and the prices were ridiculously cheap.

Clerks in gray gowns heaped silk on the counter, cut a little nick into the weightless fabric, and then tore it in a perfect line the rest of the way. “Bye-bye makee me pay,” they said. “Mee send chit.”

They didn’t ask for money in the shops, either; it was enough just to show a hotel card and sign for the purchase.

“Jiří, wake me up!” Nina moaned. But Shanghai had completely benumbed his senses as well.

They returned to their hotel completely different people: well-dressed, refreshed, and with a gleam in their eyes.

Nina led Jiří to the big mirror that stretched from the floor to the ceiling.

“This is the real us,” she said, “and this is how we should always remain. We’ve been under a curse, but now it has been lifted forever.”

Jiří glanced at his crippled hand and quickly hid it behind his back. “Yes, you’re right. Most likely.”

That evening, Nina lay in bed reading the menu from the French restaurant as if it were the most delightful novel. “Capon fillet and chestnut mash. Roasted pheasant in a sauce of woodcock mince, bacon, anchovy, and truffles. Mandarin fish aspic with wild saffron rice. Oh Lord, have mercy on us!”

Her feet ached from the shopping marathon, and she hadn’t quite found her land legs after the long days spent at sea. Shopping bags and boxes were spread all over the floor—‘a woman’s basic necessities’ as Klim used to call them.

Thinking of him made her feel uneasy. He would probably be devastated when he learned how she had escaped from the steamer.

There was a quiet knock, and Jiří appeared in her doorway, looking like a choirboy with his neat new haircut and his full-length terrycloth robe.

“I’m sorry to intrude on your daydreams,” he said. “But I have a question. How do you plan to pay for all of this?” He pointed at the shopping bags.

“I’ll think of something,” Nina replied breezily. “I can put an ad in the newspaper: ‘Impeccably bred young lady available to entertain and hold court with the cream of society. One hundred dollars an hour. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

Jiří snickered. “I’ve just read a very similar ad in the newspaper. The young ladies providing this service in Shanghai are geishas from the Japanese settlement, and they’re paid a miserly two dollars an hour.”