White Ghosts

22. MATERIAL EVIDENCE

Strangely, Edna was relieved when Daniel mysteriously disappeared again. At least she wouldn’t have to wonder where he was and with whom. She had enough problems as it was: her father had been suspended on paid leave and his whole future was at risk.

When he was summoned to a meeting of the Municipal Council to answer about the events of May 30, Edna went there to provide her father with moral support.

The room was full of high-ranking officials, captains of industry, police officers, and foreign journalists. Naturally, no Chinese had been invited.

“My enemies deliberately organized the Nanking Road massacre,” Wyer barked from the podium. “They bribed the protesters by giving them five dollars each. They are willing to do anything to undermine me and the defense of our settlement. But we’ll never allow these street thugs to dictate terms to us.”

Edna thought her father would be laughed out of the meeting. Did he really think they would believe his story that the students had surrendered their lives for a mere five dollars? But to her surprise, the captain’s speech was greeted with a storm of applause.

“Don’t expect the Chinese to be reasonable,” said Johnny Collor. “They were afraid that the ban on child labor would deprive them of an important source of income, but now they have nothing whatsoever other than the free rice distributed by charities. Is anyone even thinking about what is going to happen after the strike? If workers ruin their employers, where are they going to find another job after the strike is over?”

Mr. Sterling, the Chairman of the Municipal Council, took the podium.

“We conducted an investigation,” he said, “and found out that all this was possible only because Chinese merchants are secretly financing the strikers. They think it will ruin their foreign competitors and increase the demand for local products. But their own factories rely on the electricity produced by our power station that they have conveniently ‘forgotten’ to shut down. Well, we’re going to stop supplying our electricity to any factories whose owners support the strike. If they hate the West so much, let’s see how they manage without our technical know-how.”

Then Mr. Sterling thanked Captain Wyer for his excellent service and promised the audience that the white man will never leave China.

His speech was met with even more enthusiastic applause. Officials and businessmen patted each other on the back, laughing loudly and threatening to have the strike leaders strung up from lampposts as a lesson to others. Finding a compromise wasn’t even on the agenda.

Wyer was confident that after his speech the Municipal Council would recall him to his position. But a week later Mr. Sterling, who had been such an ardent admirer of captain’s merits and achievements, quietly announced to the press the arrival of a new Police Commissioner for the International Settlement. Captain Wyer, Sterling said, would be taking an early pension and returning to the mother country.

Enraged, the captain stormed into Edna’s study.

“The scoundrel has organized a farewell dinner without even consulting me,” he yelled. “That Nina Kupina is behind all this. She’s made herself indispensable to him, and now that Russian vixen has turned him against anyone who has the true interests of the empire at heart.”

Edna reluctantly lifted her head from her book. “You know perfectly well that Miss Kupina has nothing to do with it.”

Wyer’s face contorted with rage. “So, you’re taking her side too now, are you?” He took a stack of photographs out of his map case and tossed them on her desk. “I showed them to Sterling, but he wasn’t even remotely bothered. Perhaps you should be?”

Edna glanced at the photographs of Daniel and his mistress and threw the whole lot into the wastebasket.

“I’m past caring,” she said.

Ada was secretly hoping that the Bernards’ servants would join the strikers, giving her an opportunity to be promoted to maid or even housekeeper. But Yun called all the servants into his kitchen and in no uncertain terms told them that anyone upsetting Missy would become his personal enemy.

“One of my students works as a cook at the governor’s, and the other at the house of the leader of the Green Gang,” said the old man menacingly. “So I’ll find a way to deal with you.”

Ada had no choice but to wait for Mr. Bernard’s return and dream about one day setting up her own restaurant or store with the seed capital he had promised to give her.

One day Sam rushed into the library and gave Ada a stack of photographs.

“Look what I’ve found! I was taking the trash out from Missy’s study and found these pictures in the wastebasket.”

At first, Ada thought these were old photographs that had been taken two years previously when Mr. Bernard was courting Nina Kupina. But then she noticed one of Daniel in a new hat he had recently bought.

“I wonder where these pictures came from?” Sam asked. “And what should I do with them now?”

“I’ll keep them,” Ada replied in a barely audible voice.

From that day on, she wasn’t able to sleep a wink. If Mr. Bernard was in love with Nina, why on earth was he messing around with her, and why had he registered his airplane in her name?

The only explanation she could come up with was that the Avro had been stolen, and Daniel had decided to dupe her so that she would carry the can if anything were to happen. It was the perfect solution: Ada couldn’t sell or use the airplane—she didn’t even remember where they had left it.

If this was the case, she was in a pretty serious fix. She was so anxious that she began to lose weight, and Yun even started giving her an extra ladleful of soup at lunch.

“Are you pregnant?” he asked. “Or have you just get worms in your guts?”

“My great aunt is very good at curing all sorts of diseases,” Sam said. “She even had a butcher as a client and removed all his warts.”

“Leave me alone,” Ada moaned and escaped into the library.

At night, she would look at the pictures Sam had given her and nearly weep with envy.

Why did the men she liked never fall in love with her? One of the photographs showed Daniel Bernard kissing Nina’s hand, looking at her as if she were a queen. What was so special about her? She was ancient, almost thirty for goodness sake!

Chen the landlord told Ada that he had recently seen Klim on the street. “Mr. Rogov is now living next to the racecourse with his wife and daughter. He seems to be doing all right, and said to say hello to you.”

Does Klim know that Nina has cheated on him again? Ada wondered. Apparently not.

It was then that she came up with a new plan: what if Klim were to fall out with his wife and return to the House of Hope? They would become friends again, and he would be able to help her find a way to protect herself from Daniel Bernard.

Ada stood on the porch of Nina’s house and was about to press the doorbell when she noticed that the front door was already slightly ajar. Her knees were shaking from fear, but she mastered herself and made her way into the hallway.

A slanting beam of sunlight from a semicircular window illuminated the disorder. Parasols, scarves, and gloves lay in a pile on the console table, and rows of children’s leather sandals lay under the shoe rack. Ada was impressed and even envious of their quality next to her poor, rough canvas shoes.

She could distinctly make out angry voices coming from behind the sliding doors to the living room.

“Miss Nina hasn’t paid us on time for months,” a young woman with a Chinese accent was complaining, “but we said nothing because we wanted to help her to get back on her feet. We thought that she wasn’t going to be like the other whites, but then she sent her Russian strikebreakers to the factories, and they’ve ruined everything we’ve achieved since the beginning of the protests.”

“Nina is just trying to help her fellow countrymen find employment,” Klim replied coldly.

“Do you seriously think that justifies what she’s done? The moment you Russians arrived in Shanghai, you began stealing our jobs. You have no right to interfere in our affairs. Tell Miss Nina that as of today she doesn’t have a publishing house any longer. We all quit.”

The doors were opened with a crash, and a Chinese girl, her face wet with tears, ran past Ada out into the street.

Klim entered the hallway and stared at Ada. “What are you doing here?”

She immediately realized she had come at a bad time.

“Oh, hi… Is Miss Nina at home?”

“No. Why?”

Ada took the photographs from her purse and handed them to Klim. He fanned them out and then put them back into the stack.

“Where did you get them?” he asked in a low voice.

“Miss Edna threw them away, and my friend Sam gave them to me.”

“Go home,” Klim said thrusting the photographs back to Ada and disappeared behind the sliding doors.

She stood in the middle of the hallway, confused. Klim had neither invited her into the house nor asked her how she was doing. He didn’t even thank her for the information she had provided. Was he not even a little bit curious?

Annoyed, Ada threw the pictures on the floor and went out into the street, without even closing the door. Let thieves come and steal his daughter’s shoes. What did she care?

Nina came home very late.

She entered the dark bedroom, took off her robe, and got into the bed, naked. Klim didn’t move, but by the way he was breathing Nina could sense immediately that he was not asleep.

“Today we signed a contract to guard a parking lot for the municipal rickshaws,” she said, snuggling up to him. “We should think about setting up a transport company of our own. I’ve already made some calculations: a rickshaw costs a hundred dollars and has a service life of about five years. We could rent it out to a coolie for a dollar a day, and if it breaks, he would be responsible for its repair. So that means that within under a year and a half we will have clawed back our capital outlay and from there on everything we make will be profit.”

Nina ran her fingers over Klim’s chest, but he brushed her hand away. Her heart sank; never before had he been so brusque with her.

“Are you mad at me for being so late?”

“No.”

“What’s the matter then?”

“Stay out of the rickshaw business,” said Klim. “It’s the most base form of exploitation. A rickshaw boy runs in all weather twelve hours a day for twenty cents a job. Almost none of them reach the age of forty before dying from overexertion.”

“Nobody would be forcing them to work for me,” Nina protested. “There are plenty of coolies in Shanghai who are desperate for any kind of job. Otherwise, they and their families would just starve.”

Klim got up without a word. Frightened, Nina sat up in bed.

“Where are you going? Let’s forget about the rickshaw business. I’m not interested in it if you’re not happy about it.”

“I’ve got a sore throat,” Klim said. “I need to take something for it.”

Nina could tell from the sound of his footsteps that he hadn’t gone to the bathroom, where the cabinet with medicines was, but to Kitty’s room. She waited for ten minutes, twenty, and then she picked up her robe from the floor and followed Klim.

A nightlight was on in Kitty’s room, and soft toys were scattered all over the floor. Klim sat at the footboard of the bed, his back slumped, elbows pressed into his knees. He looked as though he had just learned about somebody’s death and still couldn’t believe it.

“Daddy, cover me,” Kitty said in her dream.

Klim covered her swarthy little legs.

“And give me the bunny.”

Obediently, he obliged.

Nina opened the door a little wider. She wanted to come in, but Klim waved her away with his hand. “Go, go. You’ll wake her up.”

He never returned to the bedroom and spent the night on the couch in his study.

In the morning, Nina found an envelope with the photographs on her desk. There was a note attached:

Hua Binbin told me that your publishing house was on the verge of bankruptcy and was kept afloat only thanks to Daniel Bernard.

I can see that you had to provide for Kitty and yourself, but I still need some time to process what has happened and decide what to do next.

As soon as the power to the Chinese factories was cut off, their owners sued for a negotiated settlement with the foreigners, and the strike came to the end.

The only beneficiaries of the strike have been the Russians who have managed to drag themselves out of abject poverty, and of course the Green Gang. The Chinese state is unable to protect the lives and property of its citizens, and organized criminal gangs have formed to fill the vacuum. They collect taxes from their territories, patrol them, and lay down the law. Their influence is growing by the day, and now the only branch of the state capable of coping with the Green Gang is the army. But our governor takes loans from the gangsters and is not going to pick a fight with them.

Nina and I are “fine.” Wyer has left for London, and we no longer have the burden of the unsuccessful publishing business on our shoulders. Nina’s security agency is flourishing, I still work for Reuters, and it seems that all our problems have been solved and we are finally settled.

But in reality, things have never been worse. Nina is constantly angry with me, one day crying then the next trying to explain that she and Daniel were just friends. But I can’t bear it when she starts telling me where they went and what they did together.

If I pretend that everything is all right again, it won’t change a thing. While I was dying in the hospital, unable to help Nina, she went running back to her sugar daddy to solve all her problems for her. She doesn’t see anything wrong or remarkable about this because frankly there is more of the courtesan about her than the dutiful wife.

I’m surprised it took me so long to figure out that she wanted to go to Canton with Daniel. Her commercial venture failed, and evidently, he offered her the chance to be his kept woman. I returned in the nick of time to spoil Daniel’s well-laid plans, and he was a bit unlucky. Or, maybe, on the contrary, I did him a favor, saving him from a load of unpleasant surprises in the future.

I need a home, a safe haven, a place where I can go back to knowing that my wife is waiting for me, accepting me for who I am. But living with Nina means being in a constant state of anxiety, wondering whether she is going to leave me for someone new. Today Nina’s heart belongs to me, tomorrow it could be Bernard’s, and the day after that anybody else who takes her fancy.

I ought to walk away from Nina and never look back, but I can’t leave Kitty behind and I can’t take her with me and deprive her of her mother and a home. Probably the wisest solution would be to stay calm, avoid conflicts, and not expect too much either from myself or Nina. Life is short, and we should enjoy what we have, instead of demanding the impossible.

Sometimes I wonder, what might have happened if I had never had the misfortune to chance upon Nina in Lincheng? I’d still be working at the Daily News and would probably have met another woman by now. There would have been no flight from Shanghai, and no near-death experiences in Canton. But, on the other hand, if everything had turned out differently, Kitty would have died the day she was born.

Unlike the public gardens in the International Settlement, the Chinese were allowed to visit the park in the French Concession—on the strict condition that they wore smart and tidy European-style clothes. An armed policeman was permanently stationed at the gates to ensure the rules were obeyed and the twenty cent tickets paid for and checked.

When Klim brought Kitty to the playground swings, the white moms would grab their children and move them away from her as if she had an infectious disease. Roaring with laughter, Kitty would chase after them and then come back and enjoy the deserted swings and slides all to herself.

“Let’s go throw some pebbles in the pond,” Klim told her, feeling uneasy.

Her delight knew no end when a flat pebble skimmed over the water to disappear under the branches of a willow tree.

“Now, look who’s here!” came a familiar roar.

Klim turned to see the indomitable Don Fernando striding towards him, arms wide open. In one hand Fernando held his hat and in the other an ice-cream on a stick. One-Eye and the other bodyguards scurried after him, uncomfortable in their European style garb.

“Wow, who’s this lovely little thing?” Fernando exclaimed as he noticed Kitty. “Hey, Klim, did you get yourself some Chinese piece with a child? Tut-tut! You’re right, the Chinese are more reliable, and if you ever fancy a white girl, you can always go to Martha’s. Her prices are outrageous but at least her hookers are checked by the doctor every week.”

Klim took Kitty up into his arms. “I’d be grateful if you watched your language in her presence.”

“Oh, come on!” the Don laughed. “We need to discuss business, amigo. Have you ever heard of Dame Nellie Melba?”

“No,” Klim said, frowning.

The Don rolled his eyes. “The world famous soprano? In the past, only the very rich could get tickets to see her, but now any fool can enjoy her wonderful voice. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

Klim looked at him, perplexed. God only knew what sort of crazy ideas inhabited that swarthy and irrepressible head of his.

“We need a radio station, that’s what!” roared the Don. “Here, in Shanghai. And you know who’s going to run it? You. I’ve already hired a room and installed the transmitter. We’ve got the technicians and what we need now is a journalist with the gift of the gab. It’s a job with your name written all over it. What do you say?”

“I’ve already got—”

“Don’t upset me, amigo. This is the future. From now on, ideas are going to be transmitted straight into people’s homes and you’re going to be in on the ground floor.”