White Ghosts

15. A FUGITIVE’S NOTEBOOK

The boat woman took me to the Santa Maria.

When Don Fernando learned that Wyer’s thugs were after me, he offered to take me with him to Canton immediately. Feverish after the chase, my head foggy, I didn’t have much time for reflection. At the time, it seemed to make sense to me to disappear from the city and draw the heat from Nina, Kitty, and Ada.

I was worried crazy about what might happen to my girls. What would Nina do with Gu Ya-min’s collection? How were she and Kitty going to survive while I was away? What would happen to Ada? What if Wyer decided to take petty revenge on them? But there was no way I could take them with me to Canton on a smuggler’s boat that might come under fire from the patrol ships at any moment.

It was agonizing that I didn’t have time to let them know what had happened. In any event, Wyer might have had my apartment watched, and Nina would never have agreed to drop everything and make a break for it with the baby to consider. I could imagine what she must be thinking about me. She had told me a hundred times not to provoke Wyer, and now I’d gone and ruined everything again.

I can only hope that she’s put two and two together and guessed that I had to leave Shanghai because I had no other choice. It’s such bad luck to be finally reconciled with Nina only to lose her the very next moment.

The Santa Maria is three days into the East China Sea, and Don Fernando and I kill time playing cards.

I will have no means of supporting myself in Canton, and the Don has offered me a job as his interpreter. There are dozens of Russian military experts in Guangdong province, and Fernando wants to make friends with them to get orders supplying arms to Sun Yat-sen’s army.

I can’t stand the idea of playing a part in another civil war, but Don Fernando has no time for my protests. “You have no choice,” he laughs at me. “By the way, why don’t you learn some German while you’re at it, since you’re so good at languages? I really need a German interpreter.”

According to the Don, Germany is keen to get involved in Canton’s political affairs. The Germans were expelled from China, and now they want to get back in with the help of Sun Yat-sen. After the Great War, the victorious Allies forced Germany to disarm, but Berlin had no intention of giving away everything for free. Now they are trying to sell whatever they can, and are secretly bringing shiploads of the stuff to neighboring ports, which the Don then obligingly smuggles into Canton for them.

He told me that previously he used to register everything as “diplomatic cargo,” but this loophole had been closed after Jiří Labuda’s untimely death. I remember the little Czech saying that he had got his guns from the Germans, but so far I haven’t been able to glean any more details from the Don. Despite our agreement, Fernando has refused to grant an interview or answer any of my questions. “We’re quits,” he told me. “I haven’t charged you for your passage out of Shanghai, have I? And I don’t think you’re in any position to lay down the law with me at the moment.”

We sleep in the open on the upper deck, and I always dream of Nina and Kitty. I wake up suddenly, as if I’ve been given an electric shock, and then watch the night sky through the gaps between the bales and crates. There are so many stars up there that it seems as if a huge luminescent deluge has been suspended in time and space over our little planet. At the moment these dreams and optical illusions are the only things that prevent me from plunging into oblivion myself.

As we passed Formosa Island, our ship caught the tail end of a typhoon. Every forty seconds a wave would hurl us down into the boiling abyss, the bulkheads were at breaking point, and a permanent foam danced over the greenish waves like a crowd of sea demons.

I don’t even know how we managed to limp into Hong Kong—our junk was on its last legs. With such a sensitive cargo onboard, there was no way that we could just roll up to the docks. So we spent what seemed like an eternity stuck out at sea, waiting for Don Fernando to negotiate safe harbor with the right people in the city.

Bored and with nothing to do, I would spend hours observing everything around me through binoculars: the sea dotted with countless small islets, outcrops of rock covered with dense vegetation, and a string of ships waiting in line to be unloaded. The heat was so stifling that the air felt as if it had thickened into hot jelly. The humidity not only soaked into my clothes but through every fiber of my being.

I desperately wanted to go ashore to send Nina a cable, but the Don wouldn’t stand for it. He was afraid that I’d spill the beans about his cargo, and customs would arrest the Santa Maria. He ordered his men to confiscate my money, including the not inconsiderable sum I had won from him at cards, so I wouldn’t hire a boatman and sneak away. I should have known the old crook would double-cross me.

Finally, the junk was repaired, but Fernando was in no hurry to set sail. He’d heard that the Cantonese merchants were at complete loggerheads with Sun Yat-sen. He is convinced that the political temperature will soon rise around here and with it the price for illicit arms and ammunition.

We only got underway when the Soviet steamer, the Vorovskoy, entered the harbor. Like the Don, the Bolsheviks smuggle arms to Sun Yat-sen. Their documents claim that they’re shipping an exceptionally large load of pianos, but in reality, the oversized crates and packaging contain machine guns and ammunition.

The Don decided that we need to get to Canton before our competitors, and so we sailed up the Pearl River, our Mexican flag fluttering gaily from our stern.

I had assumed that Southern China is a jungle kingdom but it’s nothing of the sort. The forests along the coastline have long been cut down, and the land has been turned into uniformly square rice paddies. Flocks of birds fly over the patches of reeds. Sharp-horned buffalo watch indifferently as our junk sails by, small boys astride their humped backs, which protrude out of the water like semi-submerged rocks.

On our way to Canton, the Santa Maria dropped anchor at the island of Whampoa, the site of Sun Yat-sen’s military training camp.

After long negotiations in Cantonese, of which I don’t understand a word, we were finally allowed to go ashore.

“I have to talk to some Russians,” Don Fernando said. “You’ll be my interpreter.”

I told him I wasn’t going anywhere until he gave me my money back, and reluctantly the Don counted out one hundred Hong Kong dollars. “I ought to shove it down your throat, you stubborn old goat,” he said. “I’m beginning to regret saving your worthless ass from Wyer.”

Don Fernando had already visited Whampoa Island, and he confidently led me through the training ground packed with obstacle courses and dark-skinned cadets. They couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old and resembled a jamboree of innocent boy scouts in their short trousers, short-sleeved shirts, sandals, and red neck scarves.

I couldn’t believe that these kids were about to be sent into battle. However, it’s a well-known fact that teenagers make the most dedicated and unquestioning soldiers. A world-weary, experienced men would never rush to die for the sake of someone else’s ideas, while an idealistic teenager can easily be convinced to sacrifice his life to change the world.

Their military instructors are the Red Army and German officers. They teach their cadets how to march in formation and shoot at straw dummies, and the political instructors fill the boys’ heads with a heady cocktail of Marxism, nationalism, and half-baked patriotism—a perfect and explosive recipe to transform semi-literate young men into fanatical cannon fodder.

We had arrived at the island at the ideal moment. After another fight with the Chamber of Commerce, Sun Yat-sen had moved to Whampoa and was preparing his counter-offensive. The head of his military academy, Chiang Kai-shek, had learned that Fernando had brought weapons and summoned him urgently, and I stayed waiting for the Don in the shade of a banana tree. It was there that I met a young man by the name of Nazar, who had come from Moscow in order to complete an internship at the English-language Bolshevik newspaper, the People’s Tribune.

Nazar is nineteen years old, fair-haired, rosy-cheeked, and as full of youthful energy as a spring lamb. I told him that I work for the Daily News, and for some reason, Nazar assumed it was a Soviet newspaper.

“We are so lucky to be here,” he enthused. “Canton is now the main arena of our struggle against global capitalism.”

When he told me that he was about to get a motorboat into the city, where he lives, I realized I wasn’t going to get a better chance to escape from Don Fernando. I casually asked Nazar if he could take me with him, saying that I needed to find a telegraph office to send a cable to my wife. He agreed.

Canton was astonishing—but not in any positive sense of the word. From a distance, its slums are as unremarkable as anywhere else in the world. But it’s only on closer inspection that you realize that this sprawling mass of planks, rags, and rubbish is floating on water, with boats filling the numerous canals and backwaters as far as the eye can see. I had seen people living on sampans in Shanghai before, but nothing quite on the phenomenal scale of Canton’s floating neighborhoods. According to Nazar, this place is home to about two hundred thousand people. They use the river to wash their clothes, quench their thirst, and as a final resting place for their dead, even those who have succumbed to infectious diseases.

Nazar took me to Shamian Island where the foreign concessions and the telegraph office are located. However, we were met by a patrol as soon as we approached the landing stage. I tried to hail them but was given very short shrift when they heard my accent. “Are you Russian? Don’t even think of landing or we’ll open fire.” Shamian Island is on total security lockdown following recent developments in the city, and anyone speaking with a Russian or German accent is treated as an enemy.

It was too late to look for another telegraph office, and since I had nowhere to go, Nazar invited me to stay the night in his Soviet dormitory.

We ended up taking a couple of palanquins. Nazar apologized profusely for this exploitative, imperialist mode of transport, but the sun had already set, and it was unsafe to walk Canton’s streets at night. The locals here hate “white ghosts” so much that the Russians and the Germans have to wear an armband with a special insignia indicating that we are “friendly.” These work quite well during the day but are no good after dark.

Nazar and I got into the carved booths, the porters then picked us up and ran, their wooden sandals clattering against the pavement.

Canton’s streets are so narrow that in some places I could have stretched arms through the palanquin’s open windows and touched both walls. I had a feeling that we were traveling through a catacomb and that there was no way out.

Finally, we reached a three-story building with a balustrade, located in a quiet street. This was the Soviet dormitory.

Nazar lives in a room furnished only with a portrait of Lenin, a painted Chinese cabinet, and floor mats with blue porcelain bricks, which the locals use instead of pillows. Supposedly, they’re pleasantly cool to the touch when you rest your head on them.

The bathtub also made a big impression; it was a clay vat, half my height, but so narrow that you can only wash while standing.

Nazar gave me a piece of black sticky soap and a bottle of Lysol, the surest precaution against parasites.

“Put at least a tablespoon into the water,” he said, “or you’ll end up with scabies or maybe something even worse.”

When I returned to his room, it was full of foul smelling, suffocating smoke, which emanated from a glowing cord twisted like a snake in a clay saucer.

“This is to keep the mosquitoes away,” Nazar said. He had come equipped with a mosquito net but had put it in the closet before leaving for Whampoa Island, and now after a couple of days, it was covered with black mold. Neither Nazar nor I dared to touch it. Goodness knows what kind of pests it contained now.

We stretched out on our floor mats, and Nazar told me about the life and customs of the Soviet commune.

He seems to have two completely contradictory personalities that coexist within him simultaneously. One is a very sensible, intelligent young man who appreciates the benefits of civilization, the division of labor, and personal comfort. He is perfectly happy with the fact that the Soviets employ maids to clean the dorm rooms and do the laundry. He doesn’t consider this to be exploitation of the working people in the slightest.

However, Nazar’s alter-ego is not of this world at all. In this incarnation, he lacks any sense of irony or self-criticism whatsoever. He believes that private property should be banned and all exploitation nipped in the bud. This Nazar talks entirely in Soviet newspaper clichés. In his world, everyone who is poorly dressed is “an oppressed worker, looking with hope to their Soviet brothers.” Every slightly better-dressed person is a “puppet of world imperialism,” and every Russian immigrant can only be a “corrupt counter-revolutionary running dog constantly seeking to undermine the USSR.”

I wonder which category I would come under if he knew my real identity. Probably, the “bourgeois toady, trembling with fear and impotent rage at the sight of the unstoppable rise of the Soviet Union’s prestige and power.”

Soon Nazar was happily snoring, but I couldn’t fall asleep. I’m currently sitting at the window and writing my diary by the light of a candle stub.

There is a railroad nearby and trains rattle by every ten minutes. The cicada and frog choruses are in full song, and boat whistles float up from the river.

I have to admit that my life in Shanghai was paradise in comparison. I had a pleasant apartment that was marred only by Ada’s occasional teenage antics. I could put my clothes in closets without worrying whether they would have rotted by the next day from the humidity. I had a decent job, I could see Nina and Kitty whenever I wanted—and I still had the nerve to be dissatisfied with my lot. It seems the Chinese gods have decided to punish me for my ingratitude.

I have no idea what I should do now and how long my exile will last.

Back in the dark ages when Moscow had barely been established, Canton was already a thriving city with a thousand years of history. It was from here that the great Sea Silk Route started from China to the Middle East. It was here that the Chinese built their great ships and the world’s finest carvings in ivory, amber, and precious wood were created.

Canton is a city of craftsmen. The local men make embroideries of extraordinary beauty and the women the famous Cantonese shawls with their customary long fringes. This craft was brought here from Portugal and then exported back to Europe. The Chinese don’t wear shawls themselves but are quick to spot a business opportunity when they see one.

In the Xiguan area, every street is devoted to a specialized craft—silver, embroidered shoes, brocade robes, or turtle shell combs. The second floors of buildings jut out over the sidewalks, protecting the lower floors from the sun, and the townspeople busily make their way along these shady passages, carrying iron rings with hooks for their purchases, a kind of alternative shopping bag.

There are stores with stained-glass windows and counters of polished wood. There are little shops, where the pork carcasses hang from the ceiling, covered with flies. On the ground along the walkways, there are barrels of fish and cages with frogs, snakes, chickens, and crickets. A little to one side, there are small sculptures of the Buddha with gleaming thin candles and incense sticks devotedly placed in front of them. The stifling wind sweeps away the fallen petals and charred pieces of paper, the debris of yesterday’s offerings to the gods.

I wish I could share my impressions of Canton with Nina, but I daren’t write to her openly. If Wyer is checking her mail, he would soon be on to us.

My cryptic cable to Nina read as follows:

Nina is a smart cookie and responded immediately:

It was such a relief to learn that she has at least partially understood what has happened.

By exchanging cables full of allegories and allusions, we agreed that I would secretly return to Shanghai, and then we would move to another city.

Here in Canton, there are daily clashes between Sun Yat-sen’s people and the traders who have been driven to their wit’s end by his extortionate taxation. It usually kicks off with the sound of distant shouting, the roar of drums, and the clatter of wooden sandals on the pavement. Before long the whole street is filled with two opposing protest marches—one side holding banners of Karl Marx and Chinese nationalists, and the other portraits of the leaders of the Chamber of Commerce. Soon a fight breaks out, and the locals watching from their second-story windows make bets on which side will be victorious. Once the fight is over, they throw their winnings to each other—directly over the heads of the fallen fighters.

Then the police come and lead away those who haven’t managed to escape, and within a few minutes the battlefield is flooded with small boys collecting up the junk, trampled portraits, and other debris that has been left behind.

I have decided to stay in Canton for another couple of weeks and will try to return to Shanghai in late October. I still have no idea where Nina, Kitty, and I will go. Since the Great War, there are migrants everywhere and, as a result, tighter borders, and I’m afraid we won’t be welcomed anywhere. So far, we have only been able to stay here, in China, because the Peking government has neither the power nor time to deal with us immigrants.

Money is tight, and I’m very grateful to Nazar for letting me stay in his room. I asked how I might be able to thank him, and he replied that helping a fellow revolutionary in the struggle against global capitalism was more than enough reward.

I wrote an essay about the unrest in Canton and took it to the People’s Tribune. They were very pleased with it and even gave me a reward: the third volume of the collected works of Vladimir Lenin.

“I’m so glad that you can write in English,” said the editor, a sweet American girl who is besotted with socialism. “Would you like to make a weekly report about the rallies and demonstrations in the city?”

If they had been able to pay me, I would have been happy to write more articles, but I don’t think I need another tome by Lenin. The one I already have is more than sufficient, and it’s a bit softer than the porcelain brick that had been serving as my pillow.

No one in our dormitory asks the other about their past or present occupation because each has a secret mission or assignment from the Communist party, the Intelligence Agency, the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, the Comintern, or the political police—the OGRU. They call themselves the “South China group,” and they live a hard, isolated, and ascetic life—much like the warrior monks of centuries past. The only difference is that the Soviet government pays them a salary and lets them have families.

Westerners believe that the Bolsheviks are materialists. But nothing could be further from the truth. Their lives are subject to strict rituals filled with hymns, sermons, and festivals. They resolve any issue with quotations from their holy books—the “Old Testament” by Karl Marx and the “New Testament” by Vladimir Lenin.

My neighbors are essentially good guys, and I could get along with them fine under normal circumstances. But my goodwill evaporates as soon as they transform into “revolutionary fighters,” brutal crusaders who don’t have an ounce of pity for infidel unbelievers.

Just as medieval fanatics were always looking for the snares of the Devil, the Bolsheviks are constantly on the lookout for the “web of conspiracies that are being hatched against the Soviet Union.” In their minds, Satan is a fat gentleman dressed in a top hat and sporting a monocle—the malicious face of Imperialism. Satan has many servants in many guises, including us, the White immigrants, who “have treacherously switched to the camp of the enemies of progressive mankind.” Their credo dictates that these evil forces dream of enslaving everybody, and if it were not for Lenin the savior, the world would long ago have sunk into darkness.

I found a rather curious map of the world hanging on the wall on the ground floor of our dormitory. The artist has painted the USSR red and depicted Moscow as a star which radiates bright rays of light to the rest of the world. All the other countries are colored black. It reminded me of those medieval maps made by crusaders, with Jerusalem at the sacred center of the world, surrounded by the kingdoms of Christendom, with the lands of the infidels banished to the outer darkness and oblivion.

While Westerners come to China to exploit it and make themselves rich, my neighbors the Bolsheviks genuinely want to sacrifice themselves for the working people of the future. They come here, to the other side of the world, to expose themselves to danger, hellish heat, mosquitoes, and deadly diseases, utterly convinced that all this suffering is worth it and that they are doing the right thing.

None of these modern “crusaders” speaks Cantonese, so how can they possibly know what the local people want? Who told them that the millions of the Chinese would like to be “saved” from the “Imperialist Satan” through violence and civil war?

Personally, I don’t believe there will be any “triumph of the proletarian idea” in Canton—for the simple reason that there is no proletariat here. It is a city inhabited by artisans, fishermen, and traders. Here Marx’s portraits are adorned with flowers as if he were a reincarnation of the Buddha, and much of the city looks as though it belongs in the sixteenth century rather than the twentieth.

It seems that the Bolsheviks don’t realize that they are playing the role of the distant rich uncle at someone else’s wedding. He might be sitting in the place of honor next to the bride and bridegroom, everybody might be listening politely and nodding in agreement at his words of wisdom, but the real reason he has been invited is to provide the lavish gifts. He will be quickly forgotten once the party is over and the bride and bridegroom are left to enjoy his generosity.

After a while a quiet young man, who claimed to be an administrative assistant, approached me and asked cautious questions about who I was and where I had come from. I just glared at him and told him not to intrude on my mission.

Fortunately for me, as far as the South China group is concerned, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. There is a simple reason for this: telegraph communications with the Soviet Union are unreliable and very expensive, and many departments are only allocated funds to send ten to fifteen typewritten pages per year. It takes three to four weeks for a courier to reach Moscow, so if someone has made a request about me, it’s going to be a long time before they get an answer.

But in the meantime, I need to prepare myself for all eventualities. I have to move out before someone finds my diary or figures out that the Daily News is not quite as “proletarian” as they first thought it was.

I have come up with a brilliant idea: I’ll mail my diary to Ada. Not to the House of Hope address, where Wyer’s spies might intercept it, but to the Bernard’s. I’ll disguise the envelope to make it look like some publisher’s catalogue.

I’ll ask Ada to pass on my diary to Nina. This will be the best way to contact her and explain what has happened to me.