White Ghosts

33. THE SENTENCE

Levkin would regularly bring Nina new notes from her husband—words of encouragement and short silly poems that Klim had composed to keep her spirits up.

He never wrote about his feelings for her or made any mention of making up, and Nina still had no clue what his intentions were. Was Klim being so diffident because he didn’t want Levkin to learn about his feelings? Or was Klim just supporting his wife out of compassion? He had, nevertheless, given up his beloved radio station for her sake, so surely that suggested that he was seeking a reconciliation.

If I’m released, what is going to happen next? Nina asked herself. She knew that once this major threat was over, Klim would always be prone to suspicion, and the round of jealousy and rejection would start all over again.

They seemed to find it much easier to love each other in times of trouble when they weren’t faced with the small humdrum problems of everyday life. But Nina now realized that true happiness rested on the precious everyday trinkets that adorn our lives. Of course, a person could live without them, in much the same way as people could survive without books or music, but an existence without such things soon becomes a pale imitation of what life really should be.

Soon Levkin brought her another thing to ponder.

“Your Shanghai friend says hi to you,” he whispered into Nina’s ear during his next visit. “The one who helped you with the antiques. I saw him yesterday, and he asked me to convey his best wishes to you.”

Nina gasped. “Does Klim know that this man is here in Peking?” she asked.

Levkin nodded. “Yes, they came to our embassy together. I think they are good friends.”

Nina had no idea what it all meant.

Finally, the trial began. The recently renovated courtroom was empty except for the participants in the proceedings, the clerks, and the guards. As Levkin had predicted, it was essentially a closed hearing.

Before the session started, he gave the accused his instructions: “Please be sure to control your feelings—that’s the most important thing. And we,” he exchanged glances with his Chinese colleagues, “will see to everything else.”

“All rise!” the interpreter intoned coldly.

To Nina, the old judge with his embroidered coat, silk hat, and ethereal sallow complexion looked more like a dark spirit floating over the surface of the floor than a normal human being. His face was as blank and inscrutable as a death mask.

He interrogated the accused one by one.

“Declare your name and how long you’ve been living in China,” he said. However, it was unclear whether he was listening to the Russian “white ghosts” or their lawyers at all.

Nina stared intently at his waxen face, with its barely visible apertures for eyes. For an instant she imagined that the judge didn’t have any eyes at all and that she was staring straight into a black void. The man is completely hollow inside, nothing more than an empty wrinkled husk, she thought.

The hearing dragged on forever, like a school lesson taught by an uninspiring teacher.

Huo Cong told Fanya that her husband was an evil man. “From the documents seized in your embassy, it has come to light that Mikhail Borodin called Dr. Sun Yat-sen ‘a simpleton who thinks too much of himself.’ Here in China, we believe that only the greatest scoundrel would possibly condemn his master behind his back.”

Fanya fidgeted on her bench, and Nina thought she was going to blurt out something terrible. But, thank God, Fanya managed to control herself and merely repeated what Levkin had told her to say: “I’m just a woman, and I don’t interfere in my husband’s business.”

Nina was questioned about the airplane, where had it come from and who was the person she was going to sell it to.

“I was slandered!” she said passionately. “Ask the people who signed the search protocol. Let them prove that it was my airplane.”

The judge mumbled something, and the interpreter shook his head. “These people are not here,” he said. “The matter could take several more weeks if they are summoned. So it’s not in your best interests.”

Nina looked helplessly at her lawyers. What did the judge have in mind? Was he just hoping to close the case as soon as possible? Or was he really trying to help her?

The lawyers talked interminably in their incomprehensible Mandarin dialect.

If Huo Cong were to sentence me to death, what would happen to me? Nina thought. She had often had nightmares of being dragged to a place of execution through an angry, jeering crowd. She would try and fail to find Klim among the sea of hostile faces. She would scream his name, but he would never respond.

The judge finally announced that there would be an adjournment. Everyone stood up while he went out, and the guards escorted the exhausted prisoners out of the courtroom.

“It seems that Huo Cong might be willing to listen to Ma Dazhang,” one of the diplomatic messengers whispered to Nina.

She nodded blankly. She still couldn’t remember which of her lawyers was Ma and which was Guo.

On the night before sentence was to be pronounced, Nina couldn’t sleep a wink. I want to fall asleep and never wake up again, she thought with a macabre shiver. Although that might be exactly what happens to me once Huo Cong pronounces his verdict.

Nina passed her hand over the back of her neck and caressed the dimple that Klim so loved to kiss. This was the spot that the curved blade of the Chinese executioner’s sword would hit, and in a split second, everything that had once been Nina—everything that had been so warm, precious, and full of life—would be nothing more than a bloody mess.

How will Klim and Kitty cope with my death? she thought, trying to suppress the convulsive sobs that wracked her body. Will they feel sorrow at my passing? Will they remember me at all?

Never before, even during the war, had Nina experienced such a desperate fear of death.

She remembered herself as a child watching a baby deer with broken hind legs. Hunters had found it in the woods and taken it to the city to show to the children. It had been looking at little Nina, shaking with pain and terror, its face covered with dirt and snot smeared all over its matted fur.

Then the baby deer had been taken away, and later one of the hunters had brought Nina’s mother a chunk of meat, still warm and bloody, with a clump of red fur hanging off it. “Here,” he said, “feed your children.”

Nina now felt as helpless as that little animal.

Nina found herself back in the courtroom again, intersected with dusty rays of sunshine and stuffy with the smell of fresh paint. Huo Cong began to read the introductory part of the sentence, and the interpreter translated, barely able to suppress his yawns.

Nina kept her eyes peeled on the judge, a single thought pulsating through her head: This man is about to pronounce my death sentence.

Huo Cong applied his seal to a piece of paper and said something quietly and impassively. Here it comes, thought Nina.

The interpreter scratched his cheek.

“On behalf of the Republic of China,” he declared, “Judge Huo Cong declares you—not guilty.”

Fanya and Nina burst into tears, and the diplomatic messengers hugged each other and shouted in relief.

Someone grabbed Nina by the shoulder. She turned and was surprised to see Levkin’s tense and deadly pale face.

“Let’s get out of here!” he hissed to her. “Hurry up if you want to live.”

Huo Cong had decided that the two hundred thousand dollars that the Soviets had offered him would be sufficient to support him for the rest of his life. He and Klim had agreed that he would get half the money before the sentence, and the other half after the prisoners’ release.

Klim was now waiting for him in a gas lamp repair shop used by Bolsheviks as a safe house. It was a stone’s throw away from the courthouse, and it had been arranged that Huo Cong would come there immediately after pronouncing sentence to receive his second payment.

Klim stalked between the drawers and boxes, constantly glancing at his watch, anxious with anticipation. If all was going to plan, he would see Nina in less than an hour. According to the agreement, the judge would release her from the courtroom, and Levkin would immediately take her and the other prisoners to the Soviet Embassy.

Klim tried to imagine seeing Nina in person again. What would it be like? What would they say to each other?

He knew that Daniel had asked Levkin to pass on a message to Nina, too. Previously, Klim thought that he would nobly step aside and refrain from standing in their way, but now the very thought of doing so made his fists clench. Nina is mine, he thought. I won’t give her up.

Now it was 11:00 a.m., and the judge should have already pronounced sentence.

Klim wanted to see what was going on up the street and approached the glass door with a “Closed” sign on it, but the master repairman, an old Polish communist named Janek, stopped him. “Stay inside.”

Time crawled by so slowly that Klim thought that his watch had broken. Every time the shadow of a passerby flashed past the glass door, his heart skipped a bit.

Everything will be just fine, he kept telling himself. The main thing is not to panic and to stick to the plan.

Daniel had promised that he would bring a car that would take Klim and the judge to the Legation Quarter, but so far, there was no sign of him.

What if Daniel has lied to me? Klim thought. What if he had decided to get rid of his competitor and informed the police where they could find a corrupt judge and the Bolshevik agent, Klim Rogov?

At last he heard footsteps on the porch, and a bony finger tapped at the glass. Klim rushed to the door and was met by Huo Cong, who had already changed into a European suit and hat.

“Where’s the money?” the judge asked.

Klim gave him the bundle of money, and Huo Cong dumped it on the workbench.

“Did you release the prisoners?” Klim said anxiously.

The judge nodded and began to count the bills.

Klim was so overwhelmed with joy and relief that he wanted to hug the old man.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, but Huo Cong wasn’t paying any attention.

There was still no sign of Daniel’s car. Huo Cong lost count and began to start all over again.

“Hurry up!” Janek urged him as he looked through the blinds to the street. “If you two don’t have a car, then you’ll have to go on foot.”

Suddenly his face turned an ashen gray. “Damn it!”

Klim rushed to the window and saw a policeman walking down the street.

“Do you have a back door?” Klim asked.

“I do,” said Janek, his jaw shaking, “but it’s a dead-end alley. The only way out is on to the main street.”

Klim cursed and looked at the judge.

“Are the police after me?” Huo Cong asked, pressing the wads of money to his chest.

“They are,” Klim said, grimly watching a man in the distance talking to the policemen and pointing at Janek’s shop. “I guess the neighbors must have spotted you coming in.”

He noticed a number of rusty gas lamps standing along the wall.

“Are these carbide lamps?” he asked Janek.

“Yes,” the repairman said. “Why?”

Klim pushed him aside and took the lid off an iron box labeled with the chemical formula CaC2.

“Janek, I need a container—a jar or a vase—anything. We need to scare off the police. ”

The repairman nodded, finally realizing what Klim was up to, and took a couple of empty beer bottles from under the table. Klim filled them with dull gray fragments of carbide, poured in some water, and shook the bottles.

“I’ll be right back,” he said running out into the street.

The policemen rushed towards him, blowing their whistles. Klim left the bottles on the sidewalk and ran back into the shop. Two explosions went off, one after the other, shattering the window, and the policemen scattered, shouting.

“They’ll kill us all!” yelped the judge.

“Janek, do we have any more bottles?” Klim barked.

At that moment there was a roar of an engine, and a black car stopped at the back door.

“Get in!” Daniel shouted.

Klim, Janek, and Huo Cong got into the car, and it set off at top speed towards the main street. The policemen started to shoot at them, but it was already too late; the car had turned the corner and driven off, bouncing over the cobbled road.

Huo Cong was still clutching his money; Janek sat beside him, his hands pressed over his head.

“What happened back there?” Daniel asked.

Klim laughed nervously. “When I worked at the radio station, we used small amounts of calcium carbide to create the sound effect of explosions in our shows. I just repeated the performance for our police friends back there. Where’s Nina?”

“With Valdas,” Daniel said.

Klim was relieved. His mind was completely numb. How had they been able to make all this happen? He still couldn’t believe that everything had worked out fine.

They entered the Legation Quarter, and the car drove up to the gate of the Soviet Embassy, where journalists and photographers had already gathered.

Daniel stopped and let Klim and Janek get out of the car.

“Find out what’s going on here, and I’ll take the judge to the German Embassy,” he said.

His heart pounding, Klim approached the agitated crowd.

“Stand back!” the Red Army soldiers yelled at the crowd.

“Where are Fanya Borodin and her people?” someone shouted.

“We know nothing.”

Klim and Janek pushed their way to the gate and showed the guards their passes.

As they reached the porch with the stone lions, they met a stranger in a military jacket.

“Comrade Borodin and her companions have already left,” he said.

“Where to?” Klim asked in alarm.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know.”

“Where are Valdas and Levkin?”

“They have also left. All the embassy’s employees have been evacuated back to the USSR.”

Klim grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where are they?”

Pushing the man aside, Klim ran into the building, dashing from one room to another and throwing the doors open. A couple of guards chased after him. When they caught him, they pinned his arms behind his back and hurled him out of the gate.

Oblivious to the excited crowd around him, Klim stood frozen to the spot, staring at the embassy fence that looked as menacing and impregnable as a stockade of spears. How could they have taken Nina away, without even letting him say a word to her? Levkin must have realized a long time ago that he and Nina were more than “just friends.”

Maybe we just missed each other, Klim thought. Zhang Zuolin is bound to turn the entire city upside down to find Fanya Borodin and the other prisoners. They must be in hiding somewhere, I just need to figure out where.

Klim rushed to the German Embassy but the guards wouldn’t let him in. They told him they had never heard of Daniel.

Peking’s walls and fences were covered with portraits of the traitor judge Huo Cong and the political criminals he had released. A huge reward had been promised, but they had disappeared without a trace.

Klim felt as if his entire misadventure in Peking had been some sort of delirious dream. Depressed, he would drink himself into oblivion and wander the city for hours with no idea of where he had been and why he had gone there. He would then return to his hotel room and sit there hoping against hope that someone would call him.

Finally, Daniel Bernard appeared at the door of his room, thin, unshaven, and haggard.

“Any news of my wife?” Klim asked hopefully.

Daniel shook his head. “When I learned that you were still here, I figured that you’d been unable to find Nina either. So here we are with nothing to do but to live in the past.”

He took Klim’s “Receipts and Expenditures” diary out of his pocket and opened it at the middle page. He tore out the second half that was covered in his own handwriting and handed the front half to Klim.

“You keep the Russian part,” said Daniel, “and I’ll keep the German.”

Klim flipped through his mutilated diary. Its inside covers had doodles all over them—airplanes, cars, and portraits of Nina, some of them quite well executed.

“If you have something good to remember, then you have not lived your life in vain,” Daniel said, and he left without so much as shaking Klim’s hand.

A minute later a bellboy brought Klim a telegram from Tamara: “Kitty is missing you. Come back soon.”

The next day, Klim bought a ticket to Shanghai.