Over dinner, she learned a little bit about him. The enormous ring on his finger, for instance, signified graduation from a private military school called The Citadel. His father—who had been an Army officer, a colonel—had also graduated from The Citadel. As had his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. They had all been soldiers; he was the first Marine in the family.
Though she had also come from a military family, she didn’t tell him everything there was to say about that. She did tell him that her father had been an officer, but not that he had been a lieutenant general on the General Staff of the Imperial Army, for fear he would not believe her, or else think she was boasting. Neither did she tell him that her father had been a count, and that, on the death of her parents, she had come into possession of the title.
Every other Russian in Shanghai with a Nansen passport claimed he was a Count, or a Grand Duke. So what? That life was gone forever anyway.
All through dinner, Ed Banning behaved with absolute correctness. And when they danced, he carefully avoided all but the most necessary body contact.
At her apartment door, he very properly shook her hand, thanked her for the pleasure of her company, and asked if they could have dinner again sometime soon.
When she went to the window to watch him leave, he was already gone. The depth of her disappointment surprised her.
Twenty minutes later, just as she was about to slip into bed, the telephone rang.
“Milla, this is Ed,” he said. His voice sounded strange.
“Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“What?”
“I probably should have told you this at dinner, but I couldn’t work up the courage.”
Oh, God, he’s going away! Or, just as bad, our perfectly innocent, wholly businesslike relationship has come to the attention of his superiors, and despite his claims to be able to discern inappropriate relationships for himself, he has been told to sever his relationship with me.
“Tell me what?”
“I’m in love with you,” Ed Banning said, and the phone went dead.
That’s insane, if it’s true. If it isn’t true, then he wants me for his mistress—the proposition he’s been hiding behind his gentlemanly mask. If he really means what he said, about being in love with me…that’s hopeless. People in love get married…unless the people concerned are a Russian refugee with a Nansen passport and an officer in the United States Corps of Marines. For them marriage simply is not possible.
Milla got very little sleep that night, as she ran the possibilities through her head over and over again. None of them was appealing.
What she would do, she finally decided, was speak to him the next day when he showed up for his lesson. She would tell him that under the circumstances it would be better all around if he found someone else to help him perfect his Chinese.
But when he appeared next day at her door, she was suddenly struck dumb. All she could do was smile—carefully not looking at him—and motion him into her living room. Their conversation session was perfectly routine. Afterward, all she could remember was that he was wearing an aftershave lotion that smelled like limes. When the time was up, he stood up and offered her his hand. Touching it made her feel very strange in her middle.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” she said.
“And thank you for not being offended by my call last night.”
“Were you drinking?” Milla asked.
“Not then, except for the wine we had at dinner. Afterward. Yeah.”
He let go of her hand and walked to the door.
Milla suddenly knew what she wanted to do. Had to do. No matter what the ultimate cost.
“Just a minute, please, Ed,” Milla said.
“What?”
“It won’t take a minute,” she said, then walked into her bedroom and closed the door.
And then she stared at the closed door and glanced around the room.
It was, of course, insane.
Her eyes fell on a faded photograph of her father.
“Life is a gamble, Milla,” the former Lieutenant General Count Vasily Ivanovich Zhivkov had told her many times. “Sometimes, if you want something very much, it is necessary to put all your chips on the table, and wait to see where the wheel stops. If you understand that the ball will probably not fall into your hole, you will know, when it does not, that you at least tried. It is better to risk everything and lose than not to take the chance.”
Looking at herself in the faded mirror of her dressing table, she unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged out of it and let it fall to the floor. Then she slipped out of her skirt and underwear and leaned over to pick up her only—and nearly empty—bottle of perfume. She dabbed perfume behind her ears and between her breasts and then—embarrassed, averting her eyes from her reflection—between her legs.
Then she threw the cover off her bed, crawled in, and pulled the sheet up under her chin.
She called his name. She didn’t seem to have control of her voice. She wondered if he had heard her through the closed door.
“What?”
“Would you come in here, please?” she called.
He opened the door, and asked “What?” again when he saw her in the bed.
When she didn’t reply, he said her name, “Milla?” and she saw that he was having trouble with his voice, too.
“I have been in love with you from the moment I saw you drive up in your car,” she said.
And then she threw the sheet away from her body and held out her arms to him.
“Oh, Jesus H. Christ, Milla!” Ed said softly, and then got in bed with her and put his arms around her.
She had, she knew, just put her last chip on the table.
[TWO]
“I got a cable from my father today,” Captain Ed Banning announced a week later.
They were in his apartment. He was on his back, his hands folded under his head. She was on her stomach, her face on his chest, her right leg on top of his. Their coupling had been intense, and he had been sweating. Even though she could smell his underarms, she didn’t mind that at all, but worried—because she’d been sweating, too—that her own odor might offend him.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, as a matter of fact, things are looking up.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“First things first,” he said. “Will you marry me, Maria Catherine Ludmilla Zhivkov? Will you promise to love, cherish, and obey me, in sickness and in health, et cetera, et cetera, so long as we both shall live?”
She felt the tears come.
“Don’t do this to me, Ed,” she said softly.
“What is that, a no? After I spent all that money—it’s twenty-two cents a word—cabling my father about you?”
“You cabled your father about me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Not much. I told you, it’s twenty-two cents a word, but I did tell him that if he wants to be a grandfather, he’d better go see good ol’ Uncle Zach and ask him to pass a special law allowing the future mother of his grand-child into the States.”
“Ed, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You haven’t answered the question,” Ed said. “Let’s start with that.”
“What question?”
“Will you marry me, Milla? Would you rather I got out of bed and got on my knees?”
“We can’t get married; you know that as well as I do.”
“Well, for the sake of argument, if you could, would you?”
“Ed, for the love of God, don’t start saying things you don’t mean, or making promises you won’t be able to keep,” Milla said. “Please.”
“I never do,” he said, a little indignantly. “Answer the question.”
“Oh, Ed, if it were possible, I would try very hard to be a good wife to you.”
“I didn’t
detect a whole hell of a lot of enthusiasm.”
“How can I be enthusiastic about something both of us know will never happen?
“You don’t seem to understand, Milla,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you that the Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand.”
“Damn you! Stop this. I don’t think it’s funny. It’s cruel. It’s perverse!”
“Before I cabled my father,” Ed said, “I went down to the legation and asked the consul general some questions.” He caught her eye. “He’s a nice guy and won’t run off at the mouth about that.”
“Questions about us?”
“About you,” he said. “Your Nansen status. Specifically, I asked him how I can get you into the United States.”
“And he told you that that’s impossible. I’m surprised you don’t know that. You can’t immigrate to the United States on a Nansen passport.”
“Unless you get a special law passed by Congress, is what he told me.”
“What do you mean, a ‘special law’?”
“The Congress of the United States in solemn assembly passes a law stating that so much of the applicable laws pertaining are waived in the case of Maria Catherine Ludmilla Zhivkov, and the Attorney General is hereby directed to forthwith issue to the said Maria Catherine Ludmilla Zhivkov an immigration visa.”
“That’s possible?” she asked incredulously.
“We can’t get married here. I’d need permission, and the Colonel would never grant it. And I can’t resign from the Corps now. Resignations have been suspended for what they call ‘The Emergency.’”
“So what are you talking about?”
“What we have to do is get you to the States,” he said. “Once you’re in the States, we can get married. I won’t be the first Marine officer with a foreign-born wife. And I really want to stay in the Corps.”
“You’re dreaming the impossible. Didn’t your consul general tell you what we both know? I can’t get into the United States on a Nansen passport.”
“That’s where good old Uncle Zach comes in with his special law,” Ed said. “My father’s cable said that he had gone to see Uncle Zach, and Uncle Zach came on board.”
“Your Uncle Zach has political connections?”
“He’s not really my uncle. He and my father were classmates at The Citadel. But I’ve known him all of my life.”
“But he has political connections?”
“The Honorable Zachary W. Westminister III has the honor to be the Representative to the Congress of the United States from the Third Congressional District of the great state of South Carolina.”
“And he will help?”
“The way my father sounded, it’s a done deal. It won’t happen next week, but it can be done.”
Oh, Holy Mary, Mother of God, is it possible? Has thewheel stopped spinning and the ball really dropped into my hole?
Milla started to weep.
He raised his head to look down at her and saw the tears running down her cheeks.
“Hey,” he asked, very tenderly, touching her cheek with his fingers. “What’s that all about?”
“Ed, I want so much to believe, but I’m so afraid.”
“I told you, baby, the Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand.”
“What does that ‘Marines have landed’ mean?” she asked, confused.
“It means that between now and the time the next Pan American Clipper leaves for the States, we have to go to the legation and get certified true copies made of all your documents, including your Nansen passport and what they call a ‘narrative of the circumstances’ by which you wound up here. Then we stuff everything in an airmail envelope and send it off to Uncle Zach. Who will get a special law passed for us.”
“Really, Ed? This can be done?”
“Really, baby. It will be done.”
Believe the dream. Why not? A dream is all I have.
She kissed his chest.
“But we don’t have to do that right now,” Ed said. “And, anyway, I see that something else has come up we’re going to have to do something about.”
“Excuse me?” Milla asked, looking up at him.
He pointed to his midsection.
“Oh,” she said.
“Does that suggest anything to you?” he asked.
Milla put her hand on him, rolled over onto her back, and guided him into her.
[THREE]
They had three months together.
Without telling Ed, Milla went to her Russian Orthodox priest. Father Boris didn’t have a church. He supported himself exchanging one foreign currency for another. He’d even shaved his beard and wore a suit so that he would look like a respectable businessman. But before the Revolution, he had been a priest at St. Matthew’s in St. Petersburg. She didn’t remember him there—she had been too young—but he remembered her family, and he had buried both her father and her mother here in Shanghai with the holy rites of the church. Several times, when he looked particularly desperate when she saw him on the street, she had given him a little money, and once, a little drunk on the anniversary of her mother’s death, she had gone into the hem of her mother’s girdle and taken a stone from it—one of the small rubies—and given it to him “for the poor.”
When they met, he called her “Countess”; and when she asked, he heard her confession. She was having carnal relations, she told him. And while she was sorry to sin, she was not ashamed, for she loved the man very much.
Since she was not willing to swear an oath to break off the sinful relationship, Father Boris could not grant her absolution. But she believed him when he told her he was sorry. “Your sin is now between yourself and God,” he went on to say, “and you will have to answer to him.”
That was all right with Milla. She didn’t see how a merciful God could be angry with her for being in love. God had to know that she and Ed would already be married, if that had been possible. And just as soon as it was possible, she would marry him, and be a good and faithful wife to him.
In a sense, they were married. She didn’t feel like a mistress, even though, after the first week, she slept more in Ed’s apartment than her own.
In time, a letter came from the congressman, acknowledging receipt of her documents, and advising Ed that he would move on the special bill as quickly as he could, but that it was going to take time.
A very nice letter also came from Ed’s mother. “You must really be a special person,” she wrote, “because we had always assumed that Ed was married to the Marine Corps until we got the wire from him announcing your engagement…. Meanwhile,” the letter continued, “we’re anxiously waiting for you to come to the States. When you arrive, why don’t you plan on living in our house with us, for the time being at least. There’s plenty of room, and I look forward to the company.” She signed the letter, “with much love to my new daughter-to-be.”
With one exception, she didn’t meet any of Ed’s fellow Marines. She understood why. Theirs was an inappropriate relationship in the eyes of the United States Corps of Marines.
The one Marine she met, a corporal, was a very strange young man. One morning Ed asked her if she would prepare a little dinner party for this young man. The next day he was returning to the United States.
She was happy to do that. She roasted a chicken, made blini and rice, found some nice wine, and even, since it was a farewell party, a bottle of French champagne.
When Ed introduced the young man to her—his name was McCoy—the one thing Milla most noticed about him was his cold eyes. He also looked as though he didn’t approve of the inappropriate relationship. And a few moments later, when Ed told him to relax and take off his uniform tunic, Milla was startled to see that McCoy was wearing a nasty-looking dagger strapped to his left arm, between his hand and his elbow.
She was also surprised that he spoke better Chinese—Wu, Mandarin, and Cantonese—than Ed did, and even knew a few words of Russian.
He didn’t stay long aft
er dinner; and when he left, Milla asked Ed if the rules were different in the U.S. Corps of Marines than in Russia. Could officers have friends who were common soldiers?
“The Killer’s not a common soldier, honey,” Ed said. “Not even a common Marine. And, though he doesn’t know it yet, he’s going to be an officer. He thinks he’s being reassigned. But I’ve arranged for him to go to Officer Candidate School.”
“‘Killer’? What’s that mean?”
“He hates to be called that,” Ed told her, “but the truth of the matter is that he’s killed a lot of people. Around the Fourth Marines, he’s something of a legend.”
He went on to explain that he had met McCoy when assigned to defend him against a court-martial double charge of murder. What had actually happened was that four Italian Marines had ambushed McCoy—Ed had had to define the word for her—and he had killed two of them with his knife. “It was self-defense,” Ed said. “But I thought he was going to go to prison anyway. It was the word of the two surviving Italians against his, and they said he had attacked them.”
“So what happened?”
“Do you know who Captain Bruce Fairbairn is?”
“Yes, of course.”
Fairbairn was Chief of the British-run Shanghai Police Department, and one of the best-known westerners in Shanghai.
“Fairbairn came to me—he and McCoy are two peas from the same pod. They’re friends, and that knife McCoy carries is the one Fairbairn designed. He gave it to McCoy and taught him how to use it—anyway, Fairbairn came to me and said that if the Marine Corps went forward with the ‘ridiculous’ court-martial, he had three agents of his Flying Squad prepared to testify under oath that McCoy was the innocent party, they had seen the whole thing.”
“Had they?”
“I don’t really think so, baby. But Fairbairn didn’t think McCoy attacked anybody, and he wasn’t going to see him sent to prison for twenty years—or life—so an unpleasant diplomatic incident could be swept under the rug.”
“So he was set free,” Milla observed. “And now they call him ‘Killer.’ He has a killer’s eyes.”
“He’s a tough little cookie,” Ed said. “But the Italians weren’t the only people he had to kill. One time when he was on a supply convoy to Peking, the convoy was ambushed by Chinese ‘bandits’—almost certainly in the employ of the Kempeitai, the Japanese Secret Police. Anyhow, McCoy and the sergeant with him, Zimmerman—but mostly McCoy—really did a job on them. After it was over, there were twenty bodies. When that word got out, he became ‘Killer’ McCoy for all time.”
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