by Emily Hahn
The drawing room was done in a spare, chaste, modern style; not quite chromium-plated, because Louise liked her comfort, but getting near to it. I was amazed by Louise’s own personality. I don’t know what I had expected: the sort of madame you read about, I suppose. Louise was just a comfortable, chatty fat woman. She deplored bad language and dirty jokes, Jean had told me, and Louise bore this out by saying disapprovingly of some absent friend that her language was not ladylike. We had tea and chocolate cake that was very rich and heavy. Louise said her chocolate cake was famous. She and Jean talked of the girls, where they were and how they were doing. Nobody else came in that afternoon and we left before five. The only thing I thought at all out of the way was the appraising manner in which the houseboy looked at me as he let us out.
“He runs everything,” Jean explained as we found the car; “I don’t think Louise could manage without him. She says her boy friend helps her out, but don’t you believe it. He just helps use the money. She’s awfully hard up for girls, Louise is. She says the Japs are coming in quite often now and asking for new girls.”
I lived to regret that silly prank. Jean had left our phone number with Louise, and the fat woman began to call up and ask for Mrs. Wong, and invite me down to meet some friends. I suppose Jean had expected that to happen; I know she was inordinately amused. At last I made a date with Louise, though it wasn’t the kind she had in mind; I explained that I didn’t like meeting new people but that I would be delighted to have lunch — just a family affair — with herself and Jean.
It would have been all right except for an unforeseen circumstance. We were waiting politely for lunch to be served. Louise’s boy friend, a retired and run-down Shanghai policeman, made the cocktails, talking vivaciously as he did so of old days in India. So much Empire atmosphere staggered me a little and I reached out eagerly for my daiquiri. Louise, in the corner, was telling Jean enthusiastically about a new boarder she had just welcomed from Honolulu. “She’s the prettiest thing,” said Louise. “Red hair and such a nice disposition.”
“Half-caste?” said Jean superciliously.
“No indeed!” Louise was indignant. “She’s pure American. I’d introduce you right now, only she was a little bit homesick and Eddie — you remember Eddie — he took her out for a look around town, just to cheer her up. I expect they’re still at Del Monte’s or somewhere.”
We had finished the cocktail when the new redhead came in with Eddie, and I froze with horror, because I knew Eddie. I gave scarcely a glance to the redhead, though she was indeed a vision, pure mahogany. I was wondering wildly if my black-eye-shadow disguise would hold. It wasn’t as it I knew Eddie very well.
Louise introduced us, calling me “Mrs. Wong,” and Eddie didn’t look surprised or anything. I breathed again, and found myself listening to Jean’s jealous whisperings against the redhead: “That’s just like Louise,” she said, “all over the girl, just because she’s a novelty. You mightn’t believe it, but I used to be the favorite here.”
“Oh, I can well believe it,” I assured her. “You’re way ahead of that redhead.”
Eddie accepted a cocktail and settled down in his chair, leaning back comfortably. He smiled at me in a friendly way.
“Seen Johnny Morris lately?” he inquired.
A much more publicized part of Shanghai’s night life was the taxi dance. We have the same thing here at home on Broadway, but with an enormous difference. In Shanghai the dance halls are enormous and everybody goes, sooner or later, to all the better-known ones. It is not incumbent upon a visitor to hire a dancer, but they are important attractions. The Chinese think of their best taxi dancers as they used to think of their successful singsong girls, the hired entertainers at dinner parties, or as we think of our musical-comedy stars. Each dance hall has its Number One girl, and only the veriest tenderfoot would think of giving her only one ticket for a dance. The really proper behavior is to give her books and books of tickets, or to pay the management heavily for the privilege of her company at your table during half an hour or so. This is a good way to make yourself popular with both the lady and the proprietor. Gossip columnists for the Chinese papers watch the market eagerly and report it daily in their sheets. “Chu Wen-ching paid Old Lau three hundred dollars last night. Miss Golden Beetle entertained his happy friends for an hour.” “Who gave the Hong Kong Beauty her new jade ring? The answer is not far away from the Majestic Hotel.” We had dance halls that specialized in Korean girls, dance halls with Russians, dance halls with Japanese. The Frisco, a place beloved of sailors, was a dance hall with white girls of any nationality at all.
As women, we the bourgeoisie didn’t know much about these places. Our men visited them, but I myself, for example, set foot inside the dance halls only when I was showing tourists around, or when the few cabarets had closed down and we still wanted good music on which to finish off a late evening. I had a friend, Betty, the tall, handsome wife of Victor Keen; she was working for the United Press and living away from her husband while she made up her mind to a divorce. We decided to investigate the mysteries and the technique of taxi-dancing. I can’t remember now just how it all began, but I think we must have been drinking a little when we got the idea. I do remember how it ended. An insurance salesman, Betty’s acquaintance, carried it through by applying to his friend, the manager of the Frisco, for permission for us to work there one evening.
“He’ll have to talk it over with the regular girls,” explained Buster, the insurance man. “If not, and if you’re sprung on them cold, there’s liable to be an awful row. But he’s putting it up to them that you’re only going to be there one night, trying to earn an honest penny to carry you on to India, and I don’t think they’ll mind.”
I felt pretty silly about it when we started out at last, dressed in evening clothes. Betty was gloomy too, because she had a boy friend she cherished for one reason and one reason only — he topped her six feet two by another inch — and he didn’t approve of the project at all. He was, she told me in exasperated tones, being stuffy.
The manager greeted us hastily and gave us our station, a tiny table just off the dance floor. All around the restaurant were other girls, sitting at inviting little tables that had extra chairs for clients. They stared at us and we realized that we were badly overdressed; the others wore shabby frocks, some short, some long, but all of them frayed at the hem and sweated out under the arms.
It was ten o’clock, still early for the sailors, who liked to go to the movies first. Pretty soon, though, they started to drift in. Our dresses may not have been admired by our rivals, but they worked quickly with the sailors. One of them joined us immediately.
He was a Briton, a cockney, and he didn’t seem to have any money. We noticed that because he ordered no drinks and he didn’t suggest dancing. Evidently it was wrong of him to take up space and time under these circumstances, and he knew it better than we did, because when the manager strolled watchfully around the floor he went away. After that the British contented themselves with sitting as near to us as they could get without joining the party, talking to us over the intervening space.
I had heard that the British and the Americans always had trouble at these places because of the difference in their rates of pay. The Yanks were wealthy and took what they liked, whereas the poor sterling-based British had to think twice before they ordered single beers. It was an obvious state of affairs and Betty and I commented on it in decently lowered tones.
In the meantime a few of the girls were dancing with special friends, old acquaintances who evidently came in every night. Still Betty and I sat there, resplendent in our dresses, with the non-dancing British sitting around us out of reach, if admiring.
“This is dreadful,” said Betty. “It’s just like my first party at high school. I’m being a wallflower. Do you suppose we are going through the evening without anybody asking us to dance?”
“Looks that way,” I said gloomily. But the jinx was broken just then; an
American Marine took Betty off to dance, and a moment later I got an Italian sailor.
Our conversation was on a high moral plane. After remarking that he hadn’t seen me around before, the sailor said that the weather was mild but seasonable, and I said it was. He told me I danced well and I complimented him on his style. By that time the dance was over; they liked a quick turnover at the Frisco. My Wop didn’t linger or buy me a drink, but he gave me five tickets. Betty’s Marine sat down with us and set out to run up a bill.
After that we did fine. I collected a lot of tickets and Betty would have done better than I if her real boy friend hadn’t suddenly marched in, a deep frown on his forehead, and planted himself at our table. The Marine who was sitting there at the time took one look at his face and withdrew, intimidated.
“Go away,” said Betty. “You’re spoiling everything. I told you not to come.”
“Didn’t I hear you making a date with that man?” demanded the angry swain.
“You did. What’s it to you?” demanded Betty. I missed the rest of it because I was taken off to dance by a man who was, surprisingly enough, British. He was a Scottish engineer, and his first line was the same one I had heard about ten times already: “What are you doing here?” he asked.
I didn’t want to cut in on the family quarrel at our table, so I accepted my engineer’s offer thankfully and had a drink (cold tea with commission) at his. He was drunk. After a little while he asked for the story of my life. I gave him a pretty good one, concocted by Betty specially for the occasion. When I had finished the Scot announced that he was going to Take Me Out of All This. He was going to buy me a ticket straight back to the States where I belonged. What was more, he intended to come along with me and tell that stepmother exactly what he thought of her. Then he gave me a lot of tickets and went off to sleep.
I did pretty well out of the evening, but I would have done better if one American Marine hadn’t cheated me out of my rightful earnings. He walked off without giving me even one ticket. I could have appealed to the manager, but I felt funny about it. Anyway, we didn’t cash in on our tickets: we gave them to be distributed among the regular girls. Betty’s young man took us home, in one of those uncomfortable silences. It lasted for half an hour, but he relaxed over coffee in Betty’s apartment when we held our post-mortem. What cheered him up was our decision never again to enter the gay life.
Chapter 13
Way off across the world, in Germany and the adjoining territories, Hitler was shouting and jumping up and down and bothering people generally. I can’t remember now how many times he instituted drives to purge his land of the Jews, but we in Shanghai watched him with a special interest. Whenever people were kicked out of Germany in any appreciable number some of them turned up in China. There were few other places where they could go, and even these few places were beginning to turn them away. For two or three years Shanghai had been the last resort of these wanderers, and our society showed an increasing flavor of German. The ordinary Germans, of course, we had had always with us. They had their own school for their children, and as they grew less and less popular the diplomats showed a tendency to stay more and more to themselves, or at least to mix only with the Danes, Norwegians, and such. The refugees were more companionable.
I knew a lot of refugees who were now Shanghai citizens of fairly long standing. One of them was Horst Reihmer. In Shanghai he was one of the first to open a little boîte of the sort which later flooded our night-life districts. The walls were decorated by Schiff, another refugee. It was a good little place, the Maskee bar. Then they came thick and fast, as fast as the boats brought in refugees who had a little money and business sense.
Ultimately there was such a huge flood of Germans that the Shanghai Council, our administrative body, became alarmed. The rush of people was due to Hitler’s last all-over drive before the Polish debacle and we saw immediately that this crowd was of different kidney to the preceding arrivals. They were poorer, more broken down, of a different type of education. Sir Victor, who with Speelman, a local Dutch financier, was working at the head of the relief committee, explained it to me by saying that most of this lot were “the sweepings of the country. They didn’t have the guts or the brains to get out when they should have,” he said. “They hung on as long as possible. Naturally they’re not as likable as the others. This doesn’t go for the old people or their very young relatives, but if you look at the young men in this crowd you’ll see what I mean.”
An emergency camp was fitted out, down near the city limits on the Hongkew side, and all around this camp there sprang up a number of little bakeshops and bars. There were bazaars to drum up money for the camp, and dozens of schemes to help put people into shops, and adjustment bureaus to find jobs for them — all the paraphernalia that can be found in any big town now that has received refugees in large number. We have learned the pattern. But in those days it was new to us and I found it hard to get used to the peddlers who came to the door all day with things to sell. I interviewed every one of them until I found that it was taking ninety per cent of my time. They sold everything from handbags and rugs and porcelain to shoelaces. All the moneyed residents of Shanghai went mad for Austrian glassware and china. Two or three exchange shops were set up downtown to accommodate the articles the refugees had brought with them out of Europe for sale: the Nazis had permitted them to carry with them household goods, and so the Jews had bought as much of the furniture and china and bedding as they could carry.
We reveled in good European cookery, cakes and preserves and goose. We had the best tailors in the world, I think — Leschiner and Jellinek. We all had Rosenthal dinner sets and elegant crystal. I spent too much on old-fashioned watches (but they came in handy later, when I myself needed money). The Jews, in spite of their appalling numbers, did so well that the Russians who had fled to Shanghai under similar circumstances back in 1917 became bitter and spiteful and frightened. Rumors began flying about; it was said that Sassoon and Hayim were sacking all their Russian doormen and bill collectors to give the jobs to the newcome Jews. These stories were indignantly repudiated by the financiers, and a newspaper editorial reminded the Russians sharply that there should be room in Shanghai for everybody. The Russians still muttered, though.
We had German entertainment in the night clubs; Germans trying to organize concerts and shows, German dancers, languishing mink-coated ladies looking for new sugar daddies. I knew an enterprising young couple who set up a gymnasium school, but they were perfectly willing to teach languages too, or higher mathematics or anything.
The Russo-Czech lady who had first called on me when Charles brought his card to the house kept up our acquaintance. Her name — at least the only one of her many names which I can spell — was Regina Petersen, and I called her Peter. Don’t ask me why a Russo-Czech should have a Swedish name. Peter explained it once, but I have forgotten. She was an eccentric person, fond of refugees, Yogi, India and Indian dances — any number of disassociated interests. She took on an Indian name which she used when she gave concerts: Indra Devi. I don’t know anything about India but I thought she danced awfully well, and her different saris were fascinating. Peter was in and out of the house all day, playing with the gibbons, trying in vain to make me take Yogi seriously, or indulging in one of her “days of silence,” which days were dreaded by me because they made Peter such uncomfortable company. Instead of staying at home on these occasions she went out and did her usual business, shaking her head and placing her finger to her lips mysteriously if some uninitiated person spoke to her. Sinmay adored her in his own way; she appealed to his love of the bizarre. He could sit and watch her for hours, smiling to himself, now and then asking a question guaranteed to send her pelting off in pursuit of one of her hobbies. It was when Peter threw herself heart and soul into the cause of the refugees that I really lost patience with her.
I was spending ninety per cent of my time on them anyway. Peter added the missing ten per cent to my program, though I
was not willing to be shoved into doling out more of the phony kindness that was all she could elicit from me those days.
“I’m a testy, selfish old maid,” I would argue. “Please, oh, please let me alone. I can’t help anybody more, not any more. There are too many of them.”
But Peter only laughed and patted my cheek for being impatient, and brought the refugee. He was probably a very bright boy, but he irritated me so much that I could not be fair and study him impartially. It was all too evident that he had not insisted upon this introduction in order to be criticized, though he had brought with him a couple of manuscripts. He wanted me to admire him wholeheartedly.
It was a trifling encounter. I certainly never saw this Mr. Levin again: I was careful to avoid him, and to be adamant with Peter on the subject. But the fact that I have remembered him even to this day shows that he made an impression out of proportion to his weight, and I recall that my exasperation had an effect on my life. I took stock of it.
That afternoon, I told myself sternly, I had wasted more than two hours not just in being bored but in being acutely bored. It was happening more and more often these days. Either I was losing my zest for life, or the world was definitely too much with me. I saw too many people at the best of times, and at the worst they were mostly people I would rather do without. I went over a list in my mind of the individuals who had taken up my time that week: Don Chisolm for one. He was editor of a little advertising paper. I didn’t like or approve of Don, or admire him, but he had begun to drop in on me with his Russian popsies and I was too lackadaisical to resist. Indeed, he was practically an intimate of the house. That was all wrong. Then there was Mr. Chen from Fukien. He was always taking me out to meet singsong girls of his acquaintance, hoping I would write them up and make them rich and famous through notoriety. I didn’t particularly enjoy his company, but he enjoyed mine, I suppose — anyway, he had a lot of it. I had been too lazy to say no. And the women I knew, who dropped in to talk the precious afternoons away! It wasn’t only Peter, by any means. There were dozens more. There were so many, and yet I can’t remember their names. There was a blonde nurse who was subnormal mentally, but who just knew she could write a wonderful book if only she had the time. That woman victimized me, week after week.