The Shanghai Wife

by Emma Harcourt

  ‘I don’t like this, it is cruel to treat the animal like a performer,’ Natalia spoke loudly. Annie nodded in agreement but she was curious to see what the monkey would do. When she turned back to reply, Natalia had wandered off and was leaning against a building further down the lane, smoking.

  The crowd was laughing again. Annie turned back to see the monkey move to a big box in the middle of the circle. It opened the lid and picked out a black gauze cap which it placed on its head, pushing the elastic band awkwardly under its chin before jumping around to face the outer circle. People jeered and children threw small stones at the animal to make it move. It walked around the audience, and Chow explained to Annie that it was pretending to be a feudal official. Each time the man smacked his stick on the ground behind the monkey, it moved forward and around the circle, chattering furiously in response before turning a series of somersaults. The audience clapped and shouted. Annie noticed some of the adults turn away from the show at that point.

  Then the monkey was in front of them, offering up the cap. None of the children had any money, and very few of the adults offered as the monkey scurried around the circle. It came towards Annie and she fingered the copper she had ready in her palm. But the monkey caught hold of her leg and climbed up Annie’s body. It happened so quickly she couldn’t stop it and cried out in shock which made the other spectators laugh and point. The monkey stank and Annie reared back as it chattered and screeched madly. It held on to her arm painfully and she tried to push it off. Chow grabbed at the monkey as he shouted to the handler who was doing nothing to help. There were tiny insects crawling around its eyes and disappearing into its nose. Then Annie felt something in her pocket.

  ‘Heh, get out of there!’ The monkey was digging around feverishly; it was trying to pickpocket her. ‘Get this thing off me!’

  The animal’s handler slipped a collar over the monkey’s head and yanked. It rolled over on the ground before hopping up onto his shoulder. The handler seemed unperturbed by his monkey’s behaviour.

  Chow led Annie to where Natalia waited.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked her.

  ‘No, just completely taken by surprise. I didn’t expect that to happen!’ Annie couldn’t help laughing a little hysterically. The monkey was just a small creature but he’d reduced her to jelly.

  ‘I know his kind, exploiting the animal for his own gain.’ Natalia kicked a stone on the ground. ‘He will not spend any money on the monkey.’

  ‘Let us find somewhere to sit and collect ourselves a moment.’ Chow stood to the side and directed the ladies forward. Swallows darted through the air and into the eaves of a house where a woman appeared in the doorway and threw a bucket of water across the hot paving stones. Steam rose in a fast swirl. A group of boys ran past the party pushing a large steel ring with a long iron wire, shoving against each other in their excitement.

  The trio rounded a corner into a large community square. Wooden tables and stools filled the space. Men stood beside enormous fired metal woks throwing dumplings into baskets to steam. Women sat on the ground rolling small pockets of dough into flat pancakes they then filled with aromatic meats, before folding and pinching the edges together in an efficient parcel. Standing a short distance apart was a woman in dirty padded gloves behind a coal oven with a ring of bulbous-shaped sweet potatoes on its lid and more roasting inside. The noises from cooking and so many customers blended into a continuous hum. Queues of people waited their turn for a basket of dumplings. Chow stood in line, motioning for Annie and Natalia to sit down at a table.

  Annie looked around and was glad of the sense of space now they’d left the tight alleyway behind. A line of sweat tickled her brow. Her throat was dry and her arm stung where the monkey must have scratched her. She hoped Chow would return with something to drink. A group of diners passed close by and Annie smiled encouragingly for them to join her. But the group ignored the gesture and sat at the next table.

  In fact, no one joined the foreign women. Annie watched a table of young men frequently turn to stare. Her good humour after the monkey’s antics faded at their intrusive attention. She felt unease creeping into her pores. Natalia lit one of her cigarettes and offered the packet to Annie. For a moment it seemed a good idea to accept one, even though Annie had never smoked, just for a distraction and to appear unconcerned by the attention they were receiving. But she shook her head, straining to see Chow through the moving crowds.

  ‘I don’t feel comfortable waiting here. The way these people are staring is making me nervous.’

  ‘I will find Chow, Annie.’

  Before Annie could reply, Natalia had walked off into the crowds that were growing larger each moment as more people joined the lunchtime swarm. Now she was on her own, Annie sat straight-backed, looking ahead. She wanted to leave. A man coughed loudly at a table across the square and spat into the dirt. She recognised him as the monkey handler and saw the cage at his feet. She took a deep breath, willing her stomach to settle, hoping the flush of anxiety she could feel wasn’t clear across her face. A group of women passed by, laughing into their hands. Their small, bound feet shuffled through the dusty ground. She looked about for Natalia and Chow, wondering where they could be. Instead she saw one of the young men at the next table stand and begin dancing a childlike, clownish version of the waltz. He turned his feet out at awkward angles and strutted like a peacock. His head seemed to dip towards Annie, though she thought it must be her nerves making her see things. She took off her broad-rimmed sun hat quickly. It was a very European appendage. The man’s performance continued and now tables of diners around Annie clapped in rhythm as the stranger moved about, madly mimicking the European dance. Then he looked straight at Annie without turning; appraising her even as he mocked her. His stare stripped her bare and she turned abruptly away from him, heart beating madly, sweat prickling on her skin. She sat as though frozen, because there, at a table now in her line of sight, was Chow, head bent deep in conversation with a very large man with a pock-marked face, and the monkey man.

  ‘Annie, Annie.’ Natalia’s voice was close and urgent in her ear. ‘We need to go now, follow me. Quickly, get up.’

  ‘But we can’t leave without Chow, he’s over there.’ Annie pointed to the table, but to her astonishment the monkey handler sat alone, bent over a bowl of food. Chow and the other man had disappeared.

  ‘I don’t understand? He was just there, I saw him.’

  ‘Come on, Annie, we’re not welcome here. Follow me. Chow can find his own way.’

  ‘We can’t leave without him.’

  ‘I don’t want to stay, do you? And Chow’s already gone, so come on, get up!’

  Annie felt Natalia’s grip on her arm and her friend roughly pulling her along. Two young men rose slowly after them. Panic pressed on Annie’s temple as she watched the men but still she pushed Natalia away and craned to find Chow. Surely that had been him talking to the monkey handler? But there was no more time to think. The men were pushing through the crowd towards them. The two women hurried down a laneway. The smell of burning wood from the woks was close as they passed the food stalls. Footsteps sounded fast and clipped behind them. Annie looked back and could only see clouds of cooking smoke above a crowd of strangers. She searched for Chow’s face too, but he was nowhere to be seen. Annie stumbled and felt Natalia grab her arm to stop her from falling. Behind them she heard a monkey screech and turned to see the performer and his animal standing silently watching the foreign women retreat.

  They turned down another laneway and another in their confusion and haste, half walking, then running. They passed a bookshop, a school building and then the last house in a row and came out into a large square of barren wasteland.

  ‘We’re lost, Natalia.’ Annie looked about to see if they’d been followed, swinging this way and that to scour the perimeter and back to the alley from where they’d come. Her head throbbed with the exertion of running. A stinging pain pressed against her chest and her b
reathing came in shallow gulps. She anxiously took in their surroundings. On three sides a stone wall bordered the area and it felt like a forgotten dead end. It was poorly tended, with patchy dried grass amongst the rough dirt. A few children played in one corner but there was no interest in the two foreign women and as they caught their breath no one else appeared. Annie saw discarded old pots and crates, some there so long the grass had trapped them in its roots.

  ‘We must go back again, we’ve turned the wrong way, follow me.’ Natalia tried to take her arm but Annie stood frozen. A dead baby’s body rolled in a piece of old sheet lay on the ground. A few tufts of brown grass stuck up through the ripped end of the sheet where the baby’s toes peeped out in stiff, little stubs. Flies hung about the small mound.

  ‘Don’t look Annie, come on.’ Natalia grabbed her arm but Annie didn’t move. Her legs felt stuck though when she looked down there was nothing holding her to the ground, only those other smaller feet, visible through the dirt and grass. It seemed, in that moment, as though they’d been transported to an incomprehensible world framed by old stone walls with her and Natalia lost in the failed humanity at its centre.

  Annie grabbed at her nose. The stench was unbearable. The children playing nearby laughed and the sound filled her head with horror. She turned full circle in a confused blur looking for the exit; she had to get out. Her feet stumbled through the stones and grassy dirt as she ran. Behind her Natalia called out. She heard her shoes clip against the stone path but she couldn’t see anything through the tears that stung her eyes. Someone bumped roughly against her and Annie fell into a wall, wincing with pain. She pushed herself off and kept moving. She had to get as far away from the dead baby as possible. At a corner she turned one way, then the other, unsure where to go. Her chest heaved and she grabbed at her knees, overcome with pain and fear. A baby cried nearby and she shook her head madly. The small, stiff foot was still there in the grass at her feet. Annie ran again, doubled over, heaving and panting and barrelled straight into a pair of legs. Arms reached down and held her as she mumbled apologies and tried to clear her face of hair and tears. It was Chow and at the sight of him she felt her legs give way. He lifted her gently and Annie didn’t care that his arms were round her waist, supporting her. She turned her head into his chest and smelt musk and smoke. Chow carried Annie to the waiting car. She felt the smooth rhythm of his gait as they made their way along the path and kept her eyes closed and her head buried against his shoulder.

  ‘Where have you been? You made me mad with worry.’ Natalia put an arm around Annie’s shoulder as Chow placed her gently on the seat. ‘You ran off so quickly I lost sight of you, silly little thing.’ Natalia wiped Annie’s face with a handkerchief. ‘Thank goodness you ran into Chow like that.’

  Annie turned away and watched the street recede as the car began to move. She didn’t want to be fussed over. A burning had started in her chest.

  Chow turned to the women from where he sat beside the driver. ‘I apologise. There has been too much anger in the streets. Though I thought it would not reach so deep into my community.’

  Annie wound down the window and let the wind blow into her face til her eyes stung.

  ‘Why did you leave us, Chow?’

  ‘When I returned to the table you were gone. I did not know where to look. It is my fault this has happened, please forgive me.’

  ‘It was just so shockingly heartbreaking to see a baby’s body abandoned in the wasteland.’

  ‘I am sorry you saw such a thing. The sight must seem terrible to you but very few can afford a burial. Sometimes a charity organisation will collect the bodies and take them to a burial ground for the destitute. Otherwise they stay abandoned wherever there is open ground, as you discovered. It’s purely practical, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t grief in the family for the loss of the child.’ Chow spoke kindly but firmly.

  ‘But it shows such little regard for life, for common decency.’ Annie felt the blood pump in her head as she spoke. A wave of revulsion washed over her again. ‘How can you talk so unemotionally about such an unspeakable thing? I wish I could forget what I’ve seen.’

  ‘This is my Shanghai, Mrs Brand, the vitality and the poverty, but perhaps you are not ready. Remember, please, that your standards are not ours, do not judge what you don’t understand.’

  Annie didn’t speak again. They drove along the Rue du Consulate and turned into Tibet Road, towards home, through streets Annie recognised. As the pace of her heart slowed, she thought about what Chow had said. It was impossible to condone the practice of abandoning dead bodies, especially those of children. She knew how precious life was, how tragic death, both deserved respect. This must be part of a universal set of values, surely Chow believed the same. She considered him as he sat in the front seat, oblivious to her scrutiny. This was a caring man, a thoughtful man. She mustn’t judge him, yet how would she ever forget that sight? What social rules applied in the face of such pitiable humanity? Perhaps none, at least not her own, as Chow had politely told her; she couldn’t judge the people in Zhenye Li for simply doing what was necessary to survive, especially when her own people had such little regard for Chinese life. Yet she couldn’t help her intense aversion to Chow’s pragmatic explanation for the presence of the baby’s body. Annie thought about Chow sitting with the monkey handler, and there’d been another man too.

  ‘I thought I saw you sitting with the monkey man, Chow?’

  ‘No, you were mistaken.’

  ‘How strange, there was another man too, a large Chinese fellow?’

  ‘I don’t know who you saw Mrs Brand, but it was not me.’

  ‘We were followed, weren’t we Natalia, by two men. That’s why we got lost, trying to escape them.’

  ‘Really, Annie, I think you’ve been reading too many adventure novels.’ Natalia laughed off the question.

  ‘But you saw them too, I know you did.’

  ‘No, I took you away from the diners because I could see they did not like us being there. Those men were mocking you, Annie.’

  ‘Yes, I know, I felt it too. But I thought we were followed.’ Annie was quiet for the remainder of the journey, trying to make sense of what she thought she’d seen and by the time they stopped outside her house, she was no longer sure they’d been followed at all or if, indeed, it had been Chow sitting with the monkey handler.

  ‘Will you both come inside? Some tea might help restore us.’ She hoped Chow and Natalia would join her.

  ‘That is most kind, but I will not disturb you any further.’ Chow held the door as Annie, then Natalia stepped out of the car. Then Annie heard Natalia’s voice.

  ‘Of course you must join us, Chow. We all could use a calming drink and it would be rude to refuse Mrs Brand’s invitation.’

  Chow nodded and followed Natalia through to the formal lounge.

  ‘You have a charming home. It is very spacious.’ Annie looked around the room and tried to see it from Natalia’s perspective. Hardwood panels on the walls, the mirrored sideboard with her display of wooden figurines, three-piece upholstered lounge suite, enough space to add a few extra chairs when company came round. It was comfortable, but not grand by Shanghai standards. Yet in the light of what she’d seen that day her home could easily be a mansion.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is big.’

  ‘How many rooms do you have?’

  ‘I’ve never counted. Let’s see, there’s this formal lounge, the dining room, my sunroom out by the garden, three bedrooms, powder rooms of course, and the kitchen: how many does that add up to?’

  ‘A palace.’

  The house boy laid out the tea service. Natalia walked around the room, admiring pictures and small objects but Annie found it hard to join in; her house seemed suddenly pretentious, with its gaudy display of Chinese artefacts. She looked at Chow who stood by the wall, his expression unreadable.

  The house boy stared at the Chinaman and clucked his tongue a few times. Chow ignored him. Then th
e house boy said something to Chow and Annie watched them talking in hurried, hushed voices before the boy stood back, bowed to Chow and left the room.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Annie’s question was directed at Chow.

  ‘He thought I belonged in the kitchen, with the other servants. I corrected him. Have you ever entertained a Chinaman before?’

  Annie motioned for Chow to sit as she poured the tea. Natalia had already dropped into a chair, and was lounging comfortably, one leg hooked over the armrest.

  ‘I don’t like entertaining terribly much, and you’re right, you are my first local guest. But that’s no excuse for my house boy’s behaviour.’

  ‘Don’t punish him on my account, Mrs Brand.’ There was a formal air about Chow which Annie associated with the Club.

  ‘Of course I won’t punish him; I’m not Mrs Marsden, you know! But I won’t put up with rudeness.’

  Chow was walking to the door. Annie hurriedly put down the teapot and followed him out. ‘You’re going so soon? You haven’t even finished your tea.’

  ‘It is time for me to leave.’ He was holding out a small wooden Buddha statue. ‘I have a gift for you; you rub his stomach for good luck.’

  The statue was a standing Buddha, with his arms raised above his head and flat palms turned inwards. Annie had seen them for sale in a few stalls in the bazaar. He had unnaturally long ears that swooped down and out in two curved lobes from his chin line. His eyes were made of ivory and thin strips of ivory teeth filled his open, happy smile. The portly figurine’s dominant feature, however, was the smooth, round dome of his belly, which overflowed the open robes carved low beneath its bulge.

  ‘How beautiful. Thank you, Chow.’ She rubbed the Buddha’s stomach. ‘Do you have to leave so soon?’

  Chow nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry for my house boy’s rudeness.’

  ‘He did nothing wrong. I am a servant, Mrs Brand, your house boy was correct.’

  ‘In my house you are a guest, and while I think of it, please don’t call me Mrs Brand; I’m Annie to my friends.’ Annie bit her lip. ‘It’s exactly this prejudice I can’t stand.’