White Ghosts

12. TWO BABY GIRLS

Nina shuffled around the house in a delirious trance. Her body wouldn’t obey her, and she had had to turn her life on its head in order to adapt to her house arrest and ensure that she and Katya had the basic provisions they needed.

Terrified, her servants had scattered to the four winds; her financial assets had been seized, and the police could barge into her bedroom at any time. The telephone had been confiscated, and Nina felt completely cut off from the world. She didn’t even know what she had been accused of and what was going to happen to her.

How could Jiří have used my car and house to trade arms behind my back? she wondered. He had the courage and decisiveness of a mouse, and ever since Nina had known him, the most daring thing he had ever done was to tease and irritate her.

It must have been Don Fernando who had put him up to it, Nina decided. Oh, I’ll take him down a peg or two when I get out!

Klim came to visit her again, and Nina could sense immediately that he didn’t even want to look at Katya. He didn’t hold the baby, didn’t ask how she was doing, and every time Nina started talking about their little girl he tried to change the subject. Katya was not a blessing for him but a problem and his attitude hurt Nina deeply.

“Why are you bothering to help me?” she asked him. “If you think I’m lying to you about Katya, what do you hope to gain from having anything to do with us?”

“Nothing,” Klim snapped. “Well… to some extent, it was my fault you’re under arrest in the first place. We’re separated now, of course, but you’re still not a stranger to me. And you’ve just had a baby… So, now you understand and that’s that.”

But Nina couldn’t understand a thing.

Tony Aulman was the next visitor.

“I have two pieces of news,” he said, “one good and one bad. Which one do you want to hear first?”

“The good one,” Nina said hopefully.

Tony brought in a smiling Chinese woman with a wrinkled face.

“She’s a nanny,” he said. “She’ll help you out with the baby.”

Nina didn’t even want to hear about entrusting her Katya to a stranger, but Tony was adamant. “If you’re exhausted and not getting enough sleep, you’ll end up spouting all sorts of nonsense to the investigators and find yourself in prison.”

Nina forced herself to hand over her little girl to the nanny.

“You can still feel the cold air on this woman’s clothes,” Nina moaned after the nanny had left the room with the baby. “What do you think is so funny?” she snapped at Tony. “Katya will catch a cold in no time.”

Tony didn’t try to argue or persuade her otherwise.

“I remember when Tamara gave birth, she got anxious over every little thing too,” he said, smiling.

“What’s the bad news then?” Nina asked.

Tony frowned. “Last night, Jiří died in his cell.”

“What?”

“I was told he died of a brain hemorrhage.”

Tony took Nina’s shaking hand and looked into her eyes. “You’ll probably think that what I’m about to say is the height of cynicism. But I think this is your only way out. You need to lay all the blame on Jiří’s shoulders. You must say that he never told you about his shady liquor and arms dealings and that you had no idea that his Czechoslovak Consulate was a fake. Don Fernando is out of the city now and the chauffeur didn’t have a clue what was going on, so the police have nothing to work on.”

“I see,” said Nina in a trembling voice.

Tony patted her on the shoulder. “Tamara and I will take care of Jiří’s funeral.”

“Thank you,” Nina sobbed. “It’s my fault: I forced him to become a consul.”

“Jiří knew what he was letting himself into, so you can’t take all the blame on yourself. Tamara asked you to call her as soon as you’re allowed to use the telephone. She sends you her best regards.”

I didn’t write the article about the Czechoslovak Consul’s arrest, and Wyer called me demanding an explanation. Without further ado, I told him that Katya was my daughter and I wasn’t prepared to assign paternity to the late Mr. Labuda.

I thought this turn of events would please Captain Wyer, but I’ve evidently misjudged him. He yelled at me so loudly that I had to hold the receiver a good foot away from my ear. He brought up my unfortunate nationality, my corrupted country, and my own vices.

“How much did she pay you to come up with this balderdash?” he asked.

The captain was so infuriated that I had ignored his orders that he failed to realize that my “balderdash” would now make his and Edna’s life much easier. I didn’t argue with him though and eventually hung up.

Soon after, Edna called me and proposed going for a walk along the Bund.

“My father has just informed me that you have recognized Nina Kupina’s child as your own,” she said, perplexed. “I’m grateful to you for this noble gesture, but you shouldn’t have taken my husband’s sin upon yourself. I’m afraid this won’t stop all the gossipers. They’ll just say that you’re paying me back for my help. Do you at least know who this Nina is?”

I had no choice but to admit to her that the woman that had caused her so much pain was my wife.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Edna gasped, and her face darkened. “Now I see what’s going on. When you found out how rich my husband is, you deliberately put your hussy of a wife onto him. You cooked up this scheme to blackmail Daniel and make him pay you off to clear his reputation.”

There was no point trying to appeal to her logic; Edna wasn’t able to see things reasonably. She needed to find a scapegoat for her misfortunes, and, of course, she was too blind to see through her lecherous husband.

“My father warned me that you Russians are unscrupulous swindlers,” she shouted. “But you won’t get a penny from us. Daniel was right to leave the city.”

On her return to the editorial office, Edna packed up her things and told Mr. Green she was quitting forthwith.

“Happy now?” she spat at me on her way out. “I did everything I could to provide you with employment and security, and now you’ve driven me out of the job I love. I could make a scandal and show everyone your true colors, but I’m so disgusted I can’t even bring myself to be in the same room with you.”

What was I supposed to say? That Edna was deceiving herself to cover up for her husband? That she was looking for an excuse to leave her job and crawl into a hole in order to avoid seeing or hearing anyone? Or should I have disavowed Nina and told Edna that we are estranged and that my wife and I have nothing to do with each other?

Unfair accusations make me angry, and I didn’t feel like running after my accuser to justify my actions. I wrote a letter to Edna, but she didn’t answer, and I’m not sure if she even read my explanation or just threw it away.

Perhaps, in other circumstances, I might have found a way to make peace with her, but I can’t deal with this right now. I can do little to help Nina with her court case and my sense of powerlessness in the face of the blunt and clumsy legal machine is overwhelming me.

I wanted to talk to Felix about the investigation but I couldn’t find him. Neither Johnny nor the other boys at the police station know where he is. They seem to think that he’s gone on vacation. But how could he have left without saying anything to anyone?

Nina is incredibly lucky to have Tony Aulman on her side. He is a brilliant lawyer and has found an ingenious loophole in the law. It turns out that the International Settlement police don’t have the right to initiate a case against Nina at all due to the fact that she has not committed any crime on its territory.

Tony believes that if he put some pressure on the judge who signed the arrest warrant, Nina will eventually be released. The irony of all this is that I, who have always condemned bribery and backroom deals, am now ready to worship the ground that Aulman and his connections walk on.

After a lot of trouble, I finally gained permission for Katya to be baptized, and brought Father Seraphim to Nina’s house. In Shanghai, there are dozens of Russian priests without parishes, and they make some extra income by administering the sacraments as and when they are required.

Most of the time Father Seraphim has to work as a whipping boy at the Big World entertainment center. The audience at boxing matches gets great pleasure seeing their plucky Chinese fighters vanquishing such a huge “white ghost.”

During the ceremony he was terribly ashamed of his beaten-up face, but I told him that neither Nina nor I condemned him for it. After all, he needs to make a living as much as the rest of us. However, Nina was not very happy about Katya being baptized by a gladiator priest with a black eye.

I had hoped that our shared concerns would bring Nina and me closer, but everything I do seems to upset her, and even if she doesn’t say it to my face, I can sense it.

When I come to see her, I try to be as circumspect, businesslike, and serious as I can, feeling like a sapper trying to defuse an unexploded bomb. No matter how carefully I tread, an explosion could occur at any moment for the most trivial reasons.

When Nina learned that I was sharing an apartment with Ada, she hit the roof.

“You’ve done well for yourself,” she said in a tone that implied that I was an incurable philanderer.

As with Edna, it was useless to appeal to reason, and the only answer I got to all my protestations of innocence was: “You must take me for a complete idiot.” But at the same time, Nina wants me to believe that her relations with Jiří and Daniel Bernard were also completely innocent.

I can’t imagine what Nina and I are going to do when she is finally released from her house arrest. Will she just turn to me and say, “Thank you for your help. But that’ll be all now”? Or will she decide to try to make a go of it?

If she decides the latter, what we are going to do about Ada? She’s too young to get by on her own, and if she were to live with us, I know that she would be unbearably jealous. Teenagers are a handful at the best of times.

Ada doesn’t yet know that I have achieved a reconciliation of sorts with my wife. I’ve told her that I have a lot of work on and that is why I have been coming home late. I can’t face telling her the truth. If I were to mention Nina and Katya, Ada would only try to persuade me that I’m going to be stuck in a loveless relationship with the mother of another man’s child.

Babies often resemble one of their parents, and I wish I could find at least some of my features in Katya’s little face. But unlike Nina and me, she is blonde, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t dispel the image of Daniel Bernard’s golden mane from my mind.

I’m constantly trying to convince myself that bloodline and paternity issues are of no importance to me. Whoever her father is, it’s thanks to Katya that I now have a means of winning my wife back, and hopefully, one day getting my life back on track.

Mr. Green was visibly upset. “What’s the matter with you, Mr. Rogov?”

Klim had promised to write an article about a gang of thieves that had been operating in the locker rooms at the Chinese baths, but he had come into the office empty-handed.

“This isn’t like you,” the editor-in-chief said. “Maybe you’re not well? Or has something cropped up in your private life?”

Klim was looking over Mr. Green’s shoulder out of the window. It was raining. The snow had melted, and the city had become gray and brown.

“Go home,” Mr. Green said, “and don’t show your face in here again until you’ve sorted out whatever it is that is bothering you.”

Klim silently put on his coat, went outside, and got a tram.

Mr. Green had a point: Klim hadn’t been able to concentrate on his work at all that day. Thanks to Tony Aulman’s efforts, all the allegations against Nina had been dropped, and today the judge was due to revoke her house arrest.

Klim couldn’t believe that finally the changes he had waited for so long were about to happen in his life. Yesterday he had bought a pram with a pink silk lining for Katya. Nina had been excited. “Now she’ll be able to go for lots of walks.”

“Don’t think that I don’t appreciate what you’re doing,” she had said to Klim on his way out. “I just have too much going on. Come back tomorrow. I should get back home from the court by eleven.”

Klim jumped off the tram steps at the intersection of Nanking Road and Tibet Road. At the crossing he saw a large crowd gathered. Little boys had climbed street lamps and were calling to each other, “Oh! Wow! Look at that!”

The first thing Klim noticed was a set of long black skid marks on the road, then a broken pram with a pink silk lining lying on its side on a nearby waterlogged lawn.

A police officer in a raincoat cut through the crowd, shouting, “Are there any witnesses? Did anyone see what happened?”

“They were hit by a black car,” a voice in the crowd answered.

“It didn’t even stop. The nanny and the baby were killed instantly.”

Klim came closer. The wind threw a fine drizzle onto his face. Reflections of the buildings in the puddles swam before his eyes, and then out of the corner of his eye, he saw two figures on the pavement. One big one and one small one. Klim already knew who they were, but could not bring himself to look at them.

I feel like everything inside me is hardening and stiffening like brittle salt crystals.

There’s nothing between Nina and me except our irreparable misfortune. Why do we need to see each other? What do we possibly have to discuss? The depth of each other’s grief?

Nina is either completely hysterical or searching for someone to blame. When I came into the house she looked at me as if I was Katya’s murderer. After all, if I hadn’t bought that damned pram, Nina wouldn’t have sent the nanny out for a walk.

“You don’t even want my daughter to exist,” she told me and then threw herself on the sofa sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I just can’t carry on living like this. My life has no aim or meaning anymore.”

And I, of course, mean less to her now than ever before.

There was a surprisingly large crowd at Katya’s funeral—many just curious to see the infamous and disgraced Ms. Kupina.

Nina was too wrapped up in herself to notice anyone, let alone take offense. In the church and then at the cemetery, she stood apart from everyone else, a fragile figure with a thick black veil pulled over her velvet hat.

“Leave me alone,” she repeated lifelessly whenever anybody came up to her to offer their condolences.

After the funeral, Klim took her to the House of Hope, so she wouldn’t have to deal with all this “sympathy.”

She entered the apartment and slumped down on a stool in the kitchen.

Ada stared at her with wide eyes. “What’s that on your breast?” she asked, noticing two wet spots spreading on Nina’s black dress.

Nina looked at her blankly. “It’s the milk that should be feeding my daughter.”

Hearing this, Klim felt crushed inside.

Evening fell, the room became dark, and Ada wanted to light the lamp, but it had run out of oil.

Klim rose. “I’ll go and get some.” He had to do something; he couldn’t just sit next to Nina, slowly sinking with her into utter despair.

He grabbed his umbrella and went out into the street. Low chanting voices could be heard from the Buddhist temple on the corner, competing with the noisy street stalls parked at its gate.

“Fresh almond and lotus seed squash for sale!” the street sellers yelled. “Hot shrimp soup! Noodles! Rice noodles!”

It seemed to Klim that he could hear the sound of a baby crying over their shouts. Now I’m beginning to hallucinate, he thought.

“Flavored tea eggs! Pancakes! Watermelon seeds!”

Klim passed along the temple fence and almost tripped over a pile of rags lying under a streetlamp. Without knowing why he inspected the rags with the tip of his umbrella… and froze. It was a new-born Chinese girl with her umbilical cord still attached to her belly. She was no longer crying but jerked her little hands, blue with cold.

Klim looked around. The mother, of course, was nowhere to be seen. He knew that prostitutes and beggars often abandoned their unwanted children in the street in the hope that someone might pick them up. If no one did, then the baby wouldn’t have long to suffer, an hour or two at most. According to the statistics, up to forty dead street children or abandoned babies were found in Shanghai every day.

Klim unbuttoned his coat and held the baby next to his chest as though she were a puppy.

It was a coincidence that bordered on the miraculous, as if the benevolent Chinese gods had taken pity on him and placed Katya’s soul into a new body. She was not a white girl, but in the greater scheme of things, race and color were not really their concern.

He ran to the House of Hope, bounded up the staircase to his apartment. The light was on in the kitchen; Ada had found a church candle and placed it up on the shelf they used for dishes.

Klim grabbed Ada’s apron hanging from a nail in the wall, put it on the kitchen table, and carefully took the baby from his bosom.

Nina watched in horror at the disheveled big-headed creature with its eyes screwed up into small slits.

“Where did you get it from?” she gasped. “Take it away!”

“It’s too late,” said Klim, panting. “In China, if you save someone’s soul, you have to take care of it until you or it dies. The baby is hungry. Your breasts are swollen with milk. You’ll feel better if you feed her.”

“Are you crazy?”

“She’s going to die!”

“Do you think you are going to replace my Katya with—this?”

Ada put her hands on her hips. “And you’re very much mistaken if you think I’m going to put up with a screaming child in my apartment. You should take it to a convent or an orphanage. The nuns will take care of it.”

“The child will stay here,” Klim said stubbornly.

“How are you going to feed her?” cried Ada. “You’re at work all day long.”

Without taking her half-mad eyes from Klim, Nina ran her hand over her breast. Her hands were shaking, but she nevertheless began to unbutton her mourning dress.

Ada howled in disgust. “It’s probably covered in lice.”

“And so were you when we first arrived here,” Klim barked. “Now do me a favor, go to your room.”

With an offended air, Ada stomped out of the kitchen, slamming the door so hard that the candle flame went out.

Nina sobbed in the dark.

“Do you really want to keep this child?” She sounded like a person on the verge of doing herself a mischief but still hoping for salvation.

“I don’t know how we’re going to do it… but if we don’t—” Klim hesitated and avoided finishing his sentence.

He heard the stool scrape across the kitchen floor in the darkness. The girl mewled softly and smacked her lips. Klim sighed, relieved. Nina had chosen the path that led to life.

He found the matchbox and lit the candle. Nina was sitting with her eyes closed, tears streaming from under her lashes.

“There you go,” Klim said, forcing a smile. “Now you’re caring for her as well.”

“This is an insult to the memory of my daughter,” Nina said. “No one could ever replace her.”

“I would never want her to replace Katya. But I believe she’s been given to us to fill the gaping hole.”

Nina was silent for a long time.

“It’s my fault that Katya died,” she said at last. “I didn’t tell you, but three days ago, Wyer called me and told me to get out of Shanghai. He said, ‘I don’t care who the father of your baby is. People believe that she’s Daniel Bernard’s daughter, and I will not have you and her bringing disgrace down on my family.’ I refused to leave, and then he rang again and said I would have no one to blame but myself for what was about to happen.”

“Do you think that Wyer sent someone to kill Katya?”

“The car deliberately swerved onto the sidewalk, hitting the nanny and the pram. If I had been taking her out for a walk that day, it would have been me that died.”

Nina buttoned up her dress and rose, still holding the girl.

“Let her stay with me for a while. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this milk.”

Klim nodded slowly. He could hardly take in what he had heard.

Klim called for a taxi and accompanied Nina to her house.

He imagined that every driver coming towards them was an assassin sent to kill Nina.

“Be extremely careful,” he told her repeatedly. “Lock the doors and close all the shutters. What if we really do have to leave Shanghai?”

“It’s not going to be possible for the time being,” Nina said. “You can only work at an English language newspaper or news agency, so our only options are Peking or Hong Kong. But we have to get there first and we don’t have enough money.”

Their situation was untenable: Klim lived from one paycheck to the next, and Nina’s account had been frozen.

At her house, they put the baby into Katya’s outfit. It seemed unreal to see her lying in the bed where only two days earlier their baby had been sleeping.

Nina started to cry again, and Klim hurriedly took her out of the nursery.

“We’re not going to give up,” he whispered, hugging Nina’s shoulders.

Klim was afraid that she would say that there was no ‘we,’ but she said nothing. Emboldened a little, he recited his reassurances like an incantation: “Everything will be alright. Everything will fall into place.”

“It really doesn’t matter to you, what child is lying in that bed,” Nina said suddenly, with a tortured look in her eyes. “But why are letting me know about this now? Why now?”

Klim was taken aback. “I’m just trying to help you.”

“Exactly!” Nina freed herself from his arms. “These aren’t your sufferings. You’re not sharing them with me, you’re just another ‘sympathizer.’ You would never have brought me this Chinese girl if you had thought Katya was your daughter. As far as you were concerned, Katya was just my toy, and you really don’t see the difference between her and this other girl lying in that nursery. You think that if one toy is lost or broken, you can always just get me another one.”

“Why are you always so unkind and unfair?” Klim began. “I did it because I love you—”

“Hell no!” she interrupted. “You don’t accept me for what I am, the same way as you didn’t accept Katya. For you, I’m just a woman that you don’t want to share with anybody else.”

Klim felt as though his whole life had just collapsed in on itself.

“And who am I for you? Just a substitute for Daniel Bernard? If he hadn’t left you, you wouldn’t have given me the time of day.”

It was a foul, insane, and meaningless fight. They hurled the most appalling accusations at each other, without any regard for the consequences.

“If you want my respect, earn it first,” Klim said. “How can I accept you for who you are if you run around behaving like a hustler?”

Nina gave as good as she got. “Great! Your wife is a whore, your baby a bastard. Can’t you see that it’s you who ruin everything you touch?”

“I promise I won’t touch you ever again.”

Klim marched off to the nursery. “If that’s your attitude to the baby, I’ll take her back. What sort of mother are you going to be anyway?”

Nina barred his way, her face contorted in a cold fury. “Get out of here and don’t ever come back!”

Klim went outside and looked for a while at the glowing windows of Nina’s house. His mind was in a state of dark chaos. Instead of comforting each other, they had said things that could never be forgiven.

Nina was right: his heart was drained of love. She would expect warmth and intimacy from him, and he would no longer be able to provide her with them. She would become indignant, and he would become ever colder and go deeper into his shell.

Previously, Klim had felt that one day they might break out of this vicious circle, or that at least they could try. But Katya’s death had dashed the last of his hopes, and this Chinese baby wouldn’t be able to help them.

I’m still going to keep the girl, Klim kept repeating to himself as he walked home. If I wasn’t able to love my own child, I’ll love somebody else’s baby.

His despair gradually transformed into rage. Wyer had crushed Klim’s life by destroying his daughter’s. And he had done this without the slightest personal malice; the captain probably hadn’t even given Klim a second thought. He had done it because he was used to solving problems with force and violence. Wyer believed that he could do whatever he wanted, and if that led to some foreign immigrants suffering, then so be it. After all, nobody had invited them to come to Shanghai in the first place.

As God is my witness, Klim thought grimly, he’s going to pay for this.