White Ghosts

28. THE ANCIENT CAPITAL

“Where’s Mommy?” Kitty keeps asking me. “When will she come back home?” I tell her I don’t know and that makes her angry: “You must know! You must!”

How can I explain to a three-year-old what has happened between Nina and me?

We met each other when the whole world around us was crumbling. Both of us were looking for a pure soul to love and to be loved by, a soul that would deliver us from every evil. Alas, ideal people, like distilled water, don’t exist in the real world, and eventually our delight gave way to bewilderment. Far from behaving like guardian angels, we only brought trouble into each other’s lives.

I have finally been acknowledged for my professional achievements, but what now? I go to work, read the latest bad news to my audience, and then try to cheer them up with a new song, “I Hope You’re Happy Now.” I no longer perform monologues to my fictional girlfriend, Anna. Despite the constant demands from my fans to bring her back, I don’t have the heart.

Every day, my secretary drops a huge stack of letters onto my desk from local young ladies declaring their undying love for me. Who can honestly say that they have never dreamed of being the object of such sincere adulation and devotion? But now that I have achieved it all, I couldn’t care less.

The Chinese section of the city is full of armed bandits who are constantly fighting turf wars with each other, while here, in the foreign concessions, we are busy dealing with the white refugees arriving from the south-west. More than eight thousand of them poured into the city in January 1927 alone.

The only good news is that reinforcements have finally reached Shanghai, most of them colonial troops from India. It’s winter, and they arrived in short-sleeved shirts and khaki shorts, and after one night in an unheated barracks, almost all of them came down with a chill.

The people in the foreign concessions do everything they can to welcome the military. They try hard to be hospitable in the hope that these foreign soldiers will be more willing to fight for us and for Shanghai. The ladies sew them warm pants and jackets; the Holy Trinity Church has been turned into a lecture hall where the officers can learn more about our city, and the twenty-four-hour restaurant in the American Club welcomes our saviors with the best food available at the cheapest prices. Every night there are balls in the French Sports Club, the Majestic Hall, and the Astor House. Girls flirt with the officers, looking hopefully into their eyes and silently imploring them, “You won’t leave us to our fate, will you?”

Frankly speaking, I don’t care what happens anymore. If it weren’t for Kitty, I would join the Russian crew on the Great Wall armored train. I’m pretty sure that eventually either the NRA or the Red Guards will blow it up, and that is a fate that sounds quite tempting at the moment.

Klim had finally been invited to become a member of the Shanghai Club, the most exclusive club in the city.

Its main staircase was made of white Sicilian marble; its restaurant boasted a menu with fine roast beef, saddle of lamb, and steak and kidney pie. It had an array of forty rooms at its disposal, an army of servants, and ironed newspapers—so they would feel pleasing to the touch.

The Club’s main attraction was its famous mahogany Long Bar. The closer your place to the window, the higher your rank in the Club’s hierarchy. According to tradition, the best seats were reserved for the pilots who sailed the Yangtze River. Top managers and bank directors would sit in the middle and the furthest, gloomiest end was reserved for new members like Klim Rogov.

The sad winter twilight descended swiftly, and a gray-haired waiter lit the candles in the thick-walled glass candleholders.

The bar was empty, and Klim was sipping his pink gin by himself, half-listening to the voices floating in from the next room: “To defend the city effectively, we need at least a division.”

He pulled a coin out of his pocket and put it on the edge of the candleholder directly over the flame. The coin had a phoenix on one side and a dragon on the other, a symbol of the happy union between yin and yang, the male and the female.

When the coin was hot, Klim pushed it into his palm. The pain was as sharp as the blade of a knife, but he closed his eyes, punishing himself with his self-inflicted agony. Let the scar be a souvenir, he thought.

“Mr. Rogov!” cried Tony Aulman as he ran into the bar. “Thank goodness I’ve found you! I’ve just been talking to Don Fernando—he’s informed me that Nina has been arrested by soldiers from the Dogmeat General’s army and taken to a prison in Nanking.”

Klim flinched, the coin rolled along the bar and jingled quietly as it hit the floor.

“They suspect your wife of supporting the communists,” Tony added. “I just can’t understand what on earth Nina is doing in Nanking?”

“I tried to warn her,” Klim said, “but she never listens.” He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. “Will you… will you come with me to Nanking?”

“The Dogmeat General’s troops control the city now, and they are going crazy with the hopelessness of their situation. But, on the other hand, the Yangtze River is still controlled by the Royal Navy—”

“Will you come?” Klim repeated with a strained voice.

Tony threw up his hands. “Tamara would never forgive me if I let Nina down. And I wouldn’t forgive myself either.”

It would take several hours longer to reach Nanking by boat, so Tony and Klim decided to book a compartment for two on the night train.

At one of the stops hundreds of soldiers and coolies, who had been commandeered to build fortifications, crowded onto their train. The car was immediately filled with the smell of garlic, sweat, and cheap cigarettes. Within thirty minutes the lavatory was filthy, and in order to get to it, passengers had to pick their way past an obstacle course of shovels, mattocks, and sleeping workers.

Six armed soldiers joined Klim and Tony in their compartment. As soon as they had sat down, they started to crush the lice in the folds of their clothes and play endless rounds of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Every few minutes, the sliding door flew open with a crash, and hawkers would appear at the door offering hot tea, watermelon seeds, and green slices of pickled eggs.

There was no point in protesting. Klim angrily watched the soldiers eating, burping, and spitting on the floor. One of them was sleeping with his mouth open, and another had the effrontery to take a small spirit lamp, an opium pipe, and a small lump of opium out of his travel bag. He placed a piece of the dark-brown resin in a spoon, heated it a little, and then put it into the pipe and shared it with his friends.

Tony pushed the window up to let the fresh air in. The wheels clanked, cinders from the engine’s funnel flashed by the window, and the wind brought with it the smell of burning coal. Soon the soldiers were snoring, their heads lying at awkward angles on the headrests.

Klim sat, transfixed by the trembling sooty curtain and the thought of Nina.

He had talked to Fernando before leaving, and the Don had said that she had been going to Wuhan to see her lover, but the Dogmeat General’s soldiers who had stopped her boat, looted her luggage, and handed her over to the Nanking authorities, along with the other passengers.

“She’s a bitch,” the Don had said, “but I feel sorry for her. I’ll pay for Tony Aulman to get your Nina out of jail. I just hope the Holy Virgin takes all this into account when I get to the Pearly Gates.”

When Don Fernando had heard that Klim was planning to go to Nanking, he went crazy.

“Are you out of your mind?” he yelled. “Hasn’t she already done enough by breaking your heart?”

He had a point. What was Klim doing here, in this rocking, overcrowded car, listening to the soldiers’ snores and looking nervously at the barrel of the rifle pointing directly at him in the hands of the young soldier sitting opposite him?

I can play the hero as much as I want, Klim thought. But there will be no prize for my bravery. Even if I do rescue Nina, she'll still leave me for Daniel Bernard.

Anyway, it was sheer foolishness to think in terms of what he would gain from all this. Klim had already received ten years of passionate love—not a bad prize when all was said and done really.

By 7:00 a.m. the train had reached the suburbs of Nanking, where the railroad station, the river port, and the trade company headquarters all converged. Klim and Tony hired a cycle rickshaw and told the boy to take them to the city.

At one time Nanking had been one of the great capitals of the world, but five hundred years ago, the imperial court moved to Peking, and the city gradually fell into decline.

Nanking, which had once boasted a population of two million, was now reduced to a mere two hundred thousand, and large areas of it that had once seen thriving neighborhoods were now covered with bare fields and rustling bamboo groves. The city’s ancient canals had dried up long ago, and Klim marveled at the grand stone bridges adorned with ornately carved lions and dragons. The bridges led nowhere and served no purpose.

The majestic city wall, the longest in the world, was still standing too, almost untouched by time, its watchtowers embellished with colorful flags.

Tony noticed a column of enemy prisoners being marched past, their heads clamped into wooden cangues, and proceeded to tell Klim what the Chinese do to their criminals. Many forms of torture had been officially banned, but the judges still entertained and intimidated the people with public executions, from burying miscreants alive to cutting small chunks of flesh from their bodies, right down as far as the bone.

Klim felt cold, deaf, and unable to speak—his senses numbed. Only his eyes seemed to register anything, but then only annoying details like the thin thread of saliva that stretched between Tony’s upper and lower lip every time he laughed.

An unbearable reek of smoked sausage rose from the basket nestled next to their legs. It contained Nina’s essential provisions: a warm woolen blanket, three pairs of stockings, an English-Chinese phrasebook, and antiseptics. Oh God, this whole misadventure was so outlandishly unlike her!

“They also put their criminals into bamboo cages,” Tony went on, completely oblivious to his companion’s discomfort.

“For Christ’s sake, shut up will you!” Klim snapped and squeezed Tony’s hand so hard that he whimpered.

The prison warden informed them that the Pamyat Lenina had been scuttled in the middle of the Yangtze, its crew had been sent in chains to a dungeon, and that Fanya Borodin along with the other important prisoners had already been sent to Peking.

“We have nothing more to do here,” Tony said and went out into the street. “Let’s get back to Shanghai.”

Klim remained pre-occupied all the way to the train station, where it turned out that the railroad company had been hit by another strike. He was silent when they reached the river port, with its huge, snow-dusted navy ships. The sky was low and gray, and it looked as if a soft felt blanket was about to fall onto the earth and smother it.

“It seems like we’re stuck here for the time being,” Tony grumbled as he returned from the ticket office. “The next steamer to Shanghai will set sail the day after tomorrow.”

The only European hotel in the area, the Bridge House, was occupied by cavalrymen, and the Chinese inns were packed with refugees.

Tony and Klim went back to the prison and asked the warden if he had a spare cell that could provide them shelter for the night. The warden was surprised but nevertheless gave them a “room” with a stove and no bedbugs.

“We’re much safer here than in the hotel,” Tony began, but catching sight of Klim, he cut himself off midstream. “How are you? You look terrible.”

“I’m fine,” Klim replied rubbing his face.

They improvised a dinner of smoked sausage and some other supplies from the basket. Tony lay down and in a second was fast asleep, but Klim couldn’t sleep a wink.

It felt strange that the person most dear to him might not be of any value to anyone else. It felt even stranger to suddenly realize that Nina was the dearest thing in the world to him—in much the same way that a drowning man values his last desperate gulp of air.

Before his wife had left him, or to be more precise, before Klim had emotionally abandoned her, there had always been an unspoken safety net between them: I can always come back. But now he felt as if a large chunk of flesh had been torn from his stomach, and there was no way of ever sewing it back in place.

In the morning, they were woken by the sound of artillery. Dressed in nothing but his underwear, Tony ran into the corridor demanding to know what was going on.

The warden rushed towards him. “Whatever you do, don’t leave the prison!” the man yelled, his eyes full of horror. “It’s the NRA! They’ve captured the city!”