White Ghosts

18. THE DIARY

Daniel returned home, and Edna decided not to reproach him for his affair. They needed to make a fresh start, but things didn’t go quite as she had expected. During the day, Daniel was always in a hurry, and he spent his evenings at the Shanghai Club where women were denied access.

Every day Daniel would insult Edna—not directly with his words but with his coldness and reluctance to spend any time alone with her. She could tell that he no longer felt at home in Shanghai. She could see it in everything he did—the way he talked to servants and the way he couldn’t even remember where his neckties were in his own dressing room. Daniel wasn’t even pretending to “visit Edna”—her house was no more than a temporary shelter for him.

Edna began to lose sleep over her predicament.

It was late. She had already gone to bed, but Daniel had still not returned from the club yet.

She was listening out for the slightest sounds from the street—the sound of a car parking, somebody’s steps echoing along the pavement. Was it Daniel? No, it was only the neighbors.

Edna felt terribly thirsty. She pulled down her nightgown, which had rolled up around her armpits, and headed downstairs into the dining room. The house was as dark and quiet as an old cemetery. The carpets seemed as soft as moss, and the dark silhouettes of the heavy furniture looked like ancient tombstones.

Edna saw a man standing by the window and shrieked.

“It’s me,” Daniel said flatly. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

She approached him and sat on the window sill. A night bird was chirping in the garden. The air smelled of cigarette smoke and damp earth.

Daniel moved into the shade where Edna couldn’t see his face.

“Is there something you wanted to ask?” he said.

“Yes… I need your help,” Edna hurriedly said. “It’s about a bill. My friends and I are trying to impose a ban on child labor, at least within the International Settlement limits. But we’re at a deadlock.”

“What are you talking about?” Daniel said, annoyed.

Edna knew that her words sounded out of place. Should they really discuss bills in the middle of the night? But what else could she say to her husband? Since his return home, they’d had little to talk about.

Daniel made a step towards the door, and she was afraid that he was going to leave.

“Did you know,” Edna said, “that the owners of the silk mills make little girls pull the silk cocoons out of boiling water? These children have permanently scalded hands. The Moral Welfare League has initiated a bill prohibiting child labor, but the Chinese unions threaten to go on strike if our bill passes. It seems they don’t want to do anything to better the lot of their own children.”

Daniel took the matchbox from the mantelpiece and lit his cigarette. The orange flame illuminated his tired face for a few seconds.

“Did you know that these kids are often the only breadwinners in their large families?” he said. “Their parents frequently can’t find work, so if you discharge the children tomorrow, they and their parents will starve to death.”

Edna was taken aback. “And what’s your suggestion? Leave things as they are? Let the children continue to be scalded with boiling water? Let them breathe in cotton dust in the factory shops? They don’t play, they don’t go to school, and if they die, other kids will immediately be sent from nearby villages to take their places. They don’t have a single chance in life!”

“If you want these poor children to have a chance, you will have to create a society where their parents will be able to provide for them,” Daniel said, sighing. “What kind of schooling are you talking about, for goodness sake? Here, in China, even adults have the most primitive education. Their most advanced idea is to take money away from the rich.”

“Precisely!” Edna exclaimed. “If you do nothing, the poor will turn into communists. Our librarian, Ada, has a friend who lives in Canton. He sent her a letter in which he described how he lived among the Bolsheviks—”

“What’s his name?” Daniel’s voice sounded so strange that Edna got scared.

“I don’t know. You should ask Ada. Why?”

Daniel threw his half-smoked cigarette into the fireplace and took Edna’s hand. “Let’s go to sleep. It’s too late to be discussing such things,” he said tenderly.

Edna looked at him, perplexed. A minute ago, he had been so distant and patronizing, and now suddenly everything had changed. He walked Edna to her bedroom and even kissed her goodnight.

He still loves me, she thought. He’s just tired and needs some rest.

Betty met Ada in the street and invited her to have a cup of hot chocolate in the café.

She took one look at Ada and demanded, “What’s up? You look worried.”

Ada admitted that Klim had left the House of Hope, and she could no longer afford to pay for her two-bedroom apartment. Time had passed, and the landlord had told her that he might have to start taking her household items to cover her debt.

In order to get Mrs. Bernard to increase her wages, Ada had suggested getting an aquarium. “I could take care of it for you,” she had ventured. But Edna had no interest in aquariums or anything else for that matter. Her relationship with Mr. Bernard was going nowhere, and the gossip among the house servants was that most likely, he would get himself a mistress again.

Listening to Ada, Betty laughed and then said in a serious tone, “If that Mr. Bernard is such a womanizer, you should seduce him. Then he’ll give you a raise and maybe some valuable presents as well.”

Betty’s idea had impressed Ada so much that from that moment on she could think of little else.

A couple of weeks previously, she had received a parcel from Canton with a sealed package inside it—Klim had asked Ada to pass it on to Nina. But Ada was in no mood to comply with his request. She missed Klim desperately. She had been so worried about him, and all he had written to her were a couple of lines ordering her to act as his messenger girl.

Ada didn’t know how she came to open someone else’s mail. She was just curious to know what Klim had sent to his wife.

Inside there was his diary, and when Ada started to read it, it reduced her to tears. Klim called her “an extra worry” and “an angry teenager.”

Oh, it would be wonderful if Mr. Bernard were to fall in love with Ada. Then she would be able to thumb her nose at Klim and his precious wife. Nina would probably turn green with envy, learning that Mr. Bernard had forgotten about her because of his beguiling and lovely young librarian.

Of course, Ada didn’t want to hurt Edna’s feelings, but it was not as if the Bernards had a happy marriage anyway. It was much better that at least two out of three unhappy people find love.

Daniel Bernard was working for German military intelligence, and he had been greatly relieved when his Berlin command had ordered him to move to the hustle and bustle of Canton, away from the increasingly irritating Edna—and some other unexpected complications.

He had never considered returning to Shanghai, but his major supplier, Don Fernando, had been seriously wounded in Xiguan when the shells the Don himself had brought to Canton started pouring out of the sky. The surgeon said that Fernando would have to spend at least six months in hospital, and Daniel had to go back to Shanghai to re-establish his connections with other smugglers.

Daniel guessed immediately that Ada’s friend from Canton was Klim Rogov. After all, it was he who had introduced her to Edna as a new librarian. Daniel was anxious to find out when Klim had sent his letter to Ada. If it happened after he had met Daniel at the airfield, it could jeopardize his entire operation in Shanghai.

Daniel watched Ada closely for several days and noticed that she had started wearing lipstick. As soon as he would leave his room, she would follow him out from the library and try to attract his attention.

“Mr. Bernard, did you check the new catalog from the bookstore?” Or, “Have you read Edmund Husserl’s works? He wrote Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phe—Phenimore— Oh, now I remember! Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. I have a feeling you’ll enjoy it.”

Out of mischief, Daniel began to tease the poor foolish child. Whenever he saw Ada, he would pass a weary hand over his eyes, sigh, and then abruptly turn his head away, as if her beauty were too overwhelming for him to behold. Without fail, Ada would blush and run back into the library.

One day when she was out for lunch, Daniel went into the library and found a blotting paper on the desk, covered with doodles of hearts, doves, and the letters “D. B.” next to them.

Edna had decided to go to a meeting of philanthropists and had let the house servants go home early. From his window, Daniel watched Ada as she headed towards the gates and out of the house.

“My car, please,” he told Sam.

Daniel caught up with Ada at the crossroads. She was trying to get into a grocery store but was surrounded by a gang of child beggars, no older than six or seven.

“No mama, no papa, no whiskey-soda,” they whined, stretching their dirty palms towards her.

Clutching her bag to her chest, Ada backed away, frightened.

“Go away!” Daniel snapped at the children and pressed the horn several times. The little ragamuffins scattered.

“Get in,” he told Ada, and swiftly she leapt into his car. “How on earth do you manage here in Shanghai if you can’t deal with some street urchins?”

“They scared me to death,” she said. “I heard they can bite you, and their saliva is full of rabies… What are you laughing at? I read an article about it in the newspaper.”

“Do you want me to take you home?” Daniel asked.

Ada was taken aback. “Really? I’ll be fine, you don’t need to waste all that fuel for my sake.”

However, Daniel ignored her protestations and insisted that he give her a lift to her home in the French Concession.

All the way Ada was as excitedly as a schoolgirl who has unexpectedly been given the top grades in her class.

“Edna told me that you only get twelve dollars a week,” Daniel let slip casually, once they had stopped outside the gate of the House of Hope. “How can you get by on such a small amount?”

Ada blushed. “Well, it’s not much, of course. To tell the truth, I’m a bit worried my landlord will kick me out of here soon.”

“Show me your bills,” said Daniel.

He followed her to her modest but neat apartment, which smelled of faded flowers, and Ada showed him a big pile of menacing messages from the landlord.

Daniel glanced through them. “Don’t you have friends or relatives to help you?”

“No.” Ada frowned. “Before I had a roommate, Klim Rogov, but he left for Canton.”

Daniel’s heart skipped a beat. He had been right about Klim.

“I know that Mr. Rogov sent you some papers,” he said. “May I see them?”

Ada’s expression changed. “But—why do you need them? They’re in Russian, and you don’t speak Russian, do you?”

“I have business in the south, and it would be very useful for me to have the latest first-hand news.” Daniel took a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet. “This will be your fee for translating it for me.”

“I can’t,” Ada protested. “It’s a private diary. Klim didn’t send it to me but to Nina Kupina.”

“What has she got to do with Klim Rogov?”

“The two of them were married back in Russia. But she never fully appreciated him—she seems to be like that with all the men she meets.”

Daniel took out his cigarette case, but no matter how hard he tried to get the lighter to work, his fingers betrayed him.

Ada obligingly offered him a match.

“So let me get this straight,” Daniel said inhaling deeply. “You haven’t given Nina Mr. Rogov’s diary yet?”

“I didn’t have time. I have so much to do at work, and—”

He counted out forty dollars. “That’s more than enough to pay off your debts. Now translate for me what Mr. Rogov has written.”

Ada looked at the money, then at Daniel, and nearly in tears she nodded her assent.

Ada was sitting at the open window, recounting to Daniel what was written in the small notebook with the worn corners.

Daniel listened to her, stunned. Only now did he realize what his acquaintances had been talking about when they had been dropping hints about some baby. Nina had had a daughter, and everybody had decided that Daniel was the father of the child.

As God was his witness, Daniel had had no intention of starting an affair with Nina Kupina. But this woman had attracted him like the mystical will-o’-the-wisp lights that lead travelers astray at night in fairy tale forests.

She had reminded him of the magical foxes of Chinese and Japanese folklore who could transform themselves into beguiling women. In China, they were known as húli jīng and in Japan kitsune. With their magical abilities, these vixens could fool men into falling in love with them. And woe to the man who failed to recognize the bushy tail concealed beneath her silk robe. Even if she were to reciprocate the love of a mere mortal, nothing good could ever come of it. Sooner or later the fox would reveal her true nature.

“What has made Nina and I so angry and suspicious?” Ada continued reading Klim’s diary. “We have fenced ourselves in with barbed wire and minefields only to become the victims of the traps that we ourselves have created.”

Daniel clenched his jaw and fists until they hurt. Then he tried exhaling to relax but to no avail. He was overwhelmed by an all-consuming, suffocating jealousy. How was it even possible for that man, Edna’s courier or whoever he was, to dream about Nina?

Back then, in 1923, Daniel had tried to reduce his relationship with Nina to a game between two adults who enjoyed living in opulent style, engaging in ironic debate, and abandoning themselves to an all-consuming but obligation-free lasciviousness. But Nina’s intentions had turned out to be serious, and this had discouraged Daniel. What had she seriously expected him to do? Marry her? The idea was too absurd.

He had realized all that but had waited for his orders to go south with a heavy heart. He could see his life being reduced to a shapeless lump like a festival marquee that has crumpled to the ground after its main pole has been snapped in a storm. No longer would he enjoy the almost excruciatingly painful anticipation of their trysts, or the furtive exchange of stolen looks or ambiguous, witty remarks, which he loved to recall at the end of the day.

On arriving in Canton, Daniel had tried to spend as much of his time as possible in the cockpit. He had slept six hours a day and eaten whatever came to hand. He had done everything he could to exhaust himself completely so that he would have no time to wallow in his fond memories. What was the point of regretting that which was beyond his reach?

Klim Rogov had made no mention of Comrade Krieger or the airfield in his diary. When Ada finished reading it, she wanted to put it back in the drawer, but Daniel wouldn’t let her.

“Give it to me,” he said.

Ada silently handed him the notebook.

“I’ll increase your salary, so you can pay your rent,” Daniel said curtly and left the apartment.

The Filipino women were hanging their laundry in the courtyard, and the tortured sound of a badly played violin was coming from the open window.

Daniel felt dizzy as if he had been poisoned. As soon as he got home, he locked himself in his studio.

So, the kitsune woman that had driven him crazy had given birth to another man’s baby. A hatred for her flared up within Daniel and then as quickly receded. He reproached himself and then Nina, laughing hoarsely. Then he began to leaf through Klim’s diary, tightly packed with its small Slavic letters.

I should kill that son of a bitch right away, he thought in impotent rage.

That evening, Daniel sent a cable to Canton demanding to find out what had happened to Rogov.

He couldn’t work out why he felt such a strong resentment for Klim—there was nothing to be envious of. And yet he felt like an ugly freak who has been spurned on the dance floor by a beautiful woman for a handsome and inspiring tango dancer.

It was a mystery to him how he could ever have let another man have Nina. What had he, Daniel Bernard, been doing with his life instead? Serving Sun Yat-sen’s cause at the expense of his own? Propping up a joke of a marriage with Edna for the sake of the ties that her brute of a father had to offer?

Daniel had desperately wanted to possess and take Nina away with him, no matter the cost. He was sure she had been ready to love him. Her pregnancy had been an irrelevance. She could always have had an abortion.

Daniel felt as though he had missed the greatest chance of his life. He was thirty-eight; all he had to look forward to was a civil war and, quite possibly, a senseless death, but he still hadn’t experienced even the palest semblance of the love that Klim Rogov had enjoyed.