White Ghosts

13. THE SECRET MISSION

That evening when Klim went for the lamp oil, Ada told Nina what she had heard from the servants at the Bernards.

When Edna and Tamara were young, they had been best friends and both had fallen in love with Daniel, who had just arrived in Shanghai from Europe. He had ended up proposing to Edna, but the servants suspected that Daniel was more taken with her father’s connections, than Edna herself.

Mrs. Bernard knew that her husband occasionally visited places of ill repute and, feeling powerless to stop him, she avenged herself on the city’s prostitutes.

When she had been told that Daniel had got himself a mistress and made her pregnant, Edna almost gone crazy with grief.

“She hates you so much!” Ada told Nina with a sigh. “She calls you that femme fatale.”

“Oh really?” Nina smiled bitterly. “Well, I and your stupid Edna have a lot more in common than she thinks. But unlike her, I don’t have money or an influential daddy to fight my battles for me.”

Nina was more convinced than ever that her acquaintance with Daniel Bernard had been no coincidence. Tamara had clearly never got over her rivalry with her old friend, despite her own marriage being much more successful. In all likelihood, it was Mrs. Aulman who had spread the word about Nina’s illegitimate child. Nina would have loved to tell Tamara to her face that she was partly responsible for the death of her daughter, but she couldn’t afford even that luxury. Nina’s house belonged to the Aulmans. Where would she go if she had to move? To Klim and Ada?

Besides, Tony had promised her he would get her confiscated savings back, and she could forget about them if she fell out with Tamara.

The next time Tamara called, Nina told her that she wouldn’t be able to visit her. “I’ve adopted a Chinese baby girl that I found on the street, and goodness knows what people would think if they saw me breastfeeding her. Your reputation would be in tatters.”

“What induced you to do such a thing?” Tamara gasped. “It’s utter madness. You’ll become a complete pariah in polite society. You’d have been better off adopting a monkey.”

“It’s a bit late to be worrying about polite society in my position, don’t you think?” Nina said.

On the plus side, Nina’s Chinese baby provided her with the means to escape from Tamara’s suffocating custody without having to have an open fight with her.

The case of Katya Rogov’s and her nanny’s murders was pushed from one office desk to another until the investigating officer finally announced that the suspect had probably fled to the Chinese territory and it would be impossible to find him.

Nina tried to console herself with the thought that most women would have to deal with the death of a child at some time in their life, be it through miscarriage, abortion, or a fatal illness. But nothing made it any easier for her. Every night Nina dreamed of her daughter, only to wake up to the reality of having to take care of Kitty, the name Klim had given to his foundling.

Everybody who knew Nina thought that she had gone completely crazy adopting a Chinese baby. After all, it was clear from the outset that the girl would have a hard life: an Asian child would never be allowed into a good school for white children or completely accepted into white society. Kitty was destined to be like a zebra in a herd of horses, and with the handicap of Russian foster parents, she would never be a fully signed up member of Chinese society.

But Nina realized from the start that rejecting Kitty would mean losing Klim as well, and she couldn’t face being all alone. She knew that there was no point arguing with him about the foundling. Nina had recognized that familiar stubborn obsession in his eyes: in the most difficult moments, Klim would make sudden decisions that would dramatically change his life, and no one could change his mind. This was what had happened many years ago when he had run away from home, after a quarrel with his father, leaving his family fortune behind. The same had happened when he had decided to stay with Nina in revolutionary Russia, even though he could have gone back to Buenos Aires and escaped all the hardship they had had to endure. These decisions had cost him dearly, but Klim had his own unswerving view on what was the right and the wrong thing to do.

Although Nina had told him to never come back, he still returned, bringing her money and looking after the baby to allow Nina to get some sleep. But now he treated her as if she was merely a wet-nurse for his surrogate daughter. Klim found it easier to act this way. Tired of its unwieldiness, he had deprived his love of its freedom, constraining it in a straitjacket like a psychopathic criminal.

Nina and Klim had reversed roles. It was she who now felt secretly jealous of the baby and performed her parental duties reluctantly, while Klim behaved as if there was no one in the world dearer to him than Kitty.

Ada tries hard to convince me that no good can come from adopting a Chinese child and that I’m just wasting my time with Kitty.

I rather spitefully told Ada that she was just being jealous. “Did you want me to adopt you instead? But how could I adopt a girl who is constantly throwing herself at me?”

My not very subtle hint made Ada spit blood, and she started cursing at me, employing the entire range of choice language she had picked up while working as a taxi-girl.

Ada knows absolutely nothing about little children. Kitty has turned into a lovely baby. She has a round face, eyes as black as currants, a cute little nose, and eyebrows that look like little clouds. Not long ago, her first two bottom teeth came through, and she tries them on everything she can sink them into—from her own feet to a utility bill Nina had absentmindedly left on a chair.

It seems strange now to think that I could ever have been bothered that she isn’t my flesh and blood. Who cares? Kitty radiates happiness the same way as a light bulb radiates light, and she always makes me laugh. She is a bundle of joy—and that is the best description I can find for my daughter.

Nina has fallen for Kitty’s charm too, even though there was a time when just looking at our baby girl made her feel sick to the heart. Now Nina sings her lullabies, patiently spoons porridge into her, and talks to her in a hilarious way: “Who is this little girl? And where has she been today? Has she been with Mommy to hire some men to move the furniture around the house?”

Kitty stares at Nina wide-eyed and appears to understand her questions perfectly, answering them with a loud “Ah-ah-ah.” The performance is so amusing that even the servants come into the room to watch.

While Nina and I have fallen in love with Kitty with surprising rapidity, our own relationship is nothing like as rosy. It’s as if we are living in a movie: everything is black and white, and the actors have such a thick layer of makeup on their faces that their attempts to communicate with each other are reduced to the farcical and grotesque. The plot of our movie is also in black and white, and lacking in subtlety—the sort of primitive Western that the residents of Shanghai go mad for. The Fair Lady has been abused and is in distress, and the Lone Cowboy has sworn to avenge her no matter the cost. Don’t ask me what good this vengeance could possibly do him or the Fair Lady; he has no idea himself. But his natural sense of justice won’t allow him to tolerate the Sheriff’s brazen actions. The villain must be punished.

Captain Wyer is a British citizen with all the benefits that his powerful imperial state can bestow on him. I have no official status whatsoever; I can barely stick my head over the parapet let alone demand justice. The only redress I can find is through spiteful articles that I publish as a freelancer in a Chinese student newspaper, which is happy to accept anything publicizing the corruption of local white officials. Nina told me that I ruin everything I touch, so now I’m going to try this theory out on Captain Wyer’s reputation.

I have become a great expert on his life story. It turns out that as a young man Wyer was shanghaied out of his home city of London and brought to China. In those days, very few people went voluntarily because of the fear of fatal oriental diseases, so the merchant ships were often reduced to abducting unsuspecting young men in the ports. Once they were out at sea the poor wretch could complain as much as he liked, but no one was going to listen to him.

When the young Wyer arrived in Shanghai he jumped ship and joined the local self-defense unit, which later became the International Settlement’s police force. At first, he sold opium himself but then he found he could make more money by taking bribes from the dealers. As he moved up the ranks of the new force, he was quick to learn the manners of his superiors and, like many other newly arrived adventurers, invented a socially acceptable past that had him adopted into the local elite. When opium was banned, he realized there were fantastic amounts of money to be made by fighting a phony war against the drug.

I still can’t figure out the way this man’s mind works and why he is trying so hard to soil his own nest. Even if he doesn’t care about the city he is living in and his ultimate plan is to retire to a life of luxury back home in London, he must surely understand that his daughter has no plans to abandon Shanghai and that she would be left living in a city of drug addicts, gangsters, and corrupt officials of his own making.

I don’t need to look hard to find material to ruin Captain Wyer’s reputation with the Chinese. A simple translation of the speeches he openly gives at the banquets in his gentlemen’s club is more than sufficient.

“Imperialism brings the backward peoples modern science, and the teaching of Christ,” he says. “We have no choice but to use force against the Chinese because they are not willing to give up their ignorance and lack of hygiene. Why is a Chinese life worth no more than a couple coppers? Because that is its true price. A coolie has no valuable skills, and he is easy to replace. If he dies, no one will mourn his departure. Indeed, the people he shares his quarters with are only too grateful to have the extra space.”

The student newspapers don’t have a very large circulation, but each issue is stuck to public walls and fences and read by a large number of people. The students use a special varnish, which sticks the newspaper firmly onto board or wall masonry, and it’s not easy to remove it. The authorities try to paint over these seditious articles, but within a couple of hours, a new sheet appears on a different wall around the corner.

Wyer knows that the Chinese harass him in the press, but he can’t do anything about it. The entire local population hates him, including the policemen who work under him and carry out his orders. Unsurprisingly, they aren’t exactly busting a gut to defend his “good name” either.

The irony is that Wyer himself has had a big hand in creating a society where any problem can be solved with a bribe. If he closes down one objectionable newspaper, it will only reappear a week later under a new title. The students have the money for it—partly from local patriotic merchants and partly from the Soviet government which hopes to shatter the corrupt colonial system.

Ten years from now, I’ll be telling my children amazing stories about how I and the Bolsheviks worked together to kick the Police Commissioner out of Shanghai.

Although it’s painfully presumptuous to talk about children in the plural at the moment. Children are hard to come by if, according to the script, the Lone Cowboy is not even allowed to kiss the Fair Lady. Like the films on show in the Shanghai cinemas, all content of the remotest sexual nature is censored out of our movie and there’s little chance of it ever being restored.

The deeper I dig into Wyer’s case, the more grisly the details that come to light.

He has created a small slave state in the International Settlement’s prison. Every prisoner has a job to do: some weave straw mats, some sew uniforms for the police, and some carve tombstones.

The lower ranking guards earn good money supplying the inmates with opium, tobacco, food, and letters from home. The officers get even more in bribes from the inmates to avoid heavy labor and to arrange visits from wives or prostitutes. But the biggest money is made by the firms owned by Captain Wyer, which use the free labor provided by the prisoners to fulfill big contracts.

I was told that there is a pond behind the prison where the convicts wash the dirty tablecloths from restaurants. When I went to investigate, it turned out that they were being guarded by none other than Felix Rodionov.

He was sitting under a tree, watching the prisoners chained to each other, crouching on a jetty, green with slime, while beating wet tablecloths with laundry paddles. It was an eerie sight—all those unkempt heads with their matted hair, sweaty backs, protruding ribs, and gray, cracked heels.

Felix was delighted to see me. He told me that last winter Wyer had seconded him to Hong Kong to learn from the local police there, but when Felix came back, he had been transferred to the prison staff. This certainly wasn’t the sort of “promotion” he had been expecting, but he wasn’t in a position to argue with Wyer. As an immigrant, Felix was grateful to have any job, no matter what it was.

I told him that I wanted to write an article about the prison system, and he provided me with a story of a Chinese woodcarver who makes decoy ducks that are almost indistinguishable from the real birds. The man has spent two years waiting for his case to be heard. He has no relatives to intercede for him, and he is illiterate and can’t write a petition for himself. When the committee from the Municipal Council visits his cell, he tries to attract attention to himself, but the translator from the prison administration won’t translate anything that might cast a shadow on his bosses. Captain Wyer loves duck hunting and has no intentions of parting with his woodcarver. He has ordered that the man should be kept detained for an unlimited period, but not hurt.

My article is translated and published in the Chinese student newspaper. I hope it’ll engender wide public outrage, and the poor woodcarver will be rescued by his fellow countrymen.

Felix sent me a note: “Come. It’s urgent.” I thought he had a new story for me and rushed to meet him at his pond. But what he had to say exceeded all my expectations.

“Today our senior warden got drunk and blurted out to me that Jiří Labuda was strangled on Wyer’s orders. I think that our ‘Czechoslovak Consul’ was planning to spill the beans on the wrong people and that was why he was sent to meet his maker.”

It appears that Wyer sent Felix out of Shanghai on purpose, so he wouldn’t ask awkward questions about his suspicions.

We wracked our memories to recall the complete chain of events that had led to Labuda’s death. Wyer had initially decided to make a scandal out of the Czechoslovak Consulate case and told me to write an article about Nina and Jiří. But later he realized that this was not in his interests and had ordered Jiří’s disappearance.

I had wondered at the time why Wyer had allowed Nina to remain under house arrest: he wasn’t exactly known for his leniency or pity, especially to a woman who had led his son-in-law astray. The only logical explanation was that he didn’t want to draw any attention to the false Czechoslovak Consulate. In a sense, Nina belongs to Shanghai high society, and if she had gone to prison, especially with a baby, reporters would have been eager to delve more deeply into her case.

Wyer had even been prepared to leave Nina alone if she agreed to get out of town, but she refused, and then the captain had arranged a car accident to get rid of Katya. Jiří Labuda’s case was buried for good; the child who represented a threat to any legitimate heirs Edna might have was dead, and getting rid of Nina was just not worth the trouble as far as Wyer was concerned.

No matter how hard we tried, Felix and I couldn’t figure out what kind of information Jiří might have had on Wyer. Apparently, his testimony was related to the weapons in the crates, so I decided to ask Nina if she could possibly guess who Jiří might be selling arms to.

When she heard my question, Nina turned white. “It’s none of our business. For your sake and mine, please, don’t go into it, or Wyer will destroy you.”

Perhaps, from a pragmatic woman’s point of view, Nina is right. She is prepared to accept life with all its injustice and not challenge the rich and mighty. But I can’t do that. My male pride screams out for revenge.

Wyer has killed Katya, and if the authorities can’t provide me with satisfaction, then I’ll have to find it myself.

Two days passed, and then I got an unexpected message from Nina telling me that we needed to talk about Jiří. Like me, she hasn’t been able to forgive or forget anything.

“I know a smuggler, his name is Jose Fernando Burbano,” she said. “He used to be into weapons, and I think he and Jiří were trying to do a bit of business together.”

Now that was a name from the past. I remembered Don Fernando from my early days in Shanghai. Fifteen years ago we had played cards together and enjoyed every moment of each other’s company.

“Don’t have any dealings with him without telling me first,” Nina implored me when I told her about our previous acquaintance. And then she suddenly added: “I didn’t even think that you were giving Katya a thought.”

Like many unhappy couples, Nina and I often fail to see things that are obviously good about each other, instead choosing to concentrate on vices that end up being a figment of our imaginations.

Tomorrow, I’ll give Don Fernando a visit and try to figure out what the link is between him, Jiří, and Captain Wyer.