White Shanghai

by Elvira Baryakina

  “I understand now why your wife left you,” Ada muttered. “You think more about strangers than those closest to you.”

  “You’re asking for a spanking,” Klim replied, frowning. He looked confused, as if caught red-handed.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE CADET CORPS

  1.

  Felix Semenov Rodionov was an eighteen-year-old cadet: Russian, Orthodox Christian, an orphan in care of the Corps, currently serving time in a dungeon.

  The Corps was stuffed into the manor house on Sinza Road. Seven hundred cadets slept side-by-side, even on staircases. Felix’s dungeon was a narrow walk-in-wardrobe.

  Egorych, an elderly attendant, allowed Felix to open the door a chink for some light.

  “Eh, cadets, cadets, get your lives sorted for Heavens,” he hummed, while sewing a button onto his shirt.

  Felix was fiddling with a wardrobe latch, pretending it was a rifle bolt.

  He was punished for insulting a lady. While they were still on the ships, the ethereal Mrs. Grosse, the wife of a former Russian Consul General, had come to visit.

  “It would be better if you returned to Russia,” she said. “We have already sent a cable to the Soviet government asking for your return.” Pink and well kept, she’d never known the taste of rotten cured meat or stale hard sea biscuits. Mrs. Grosse had spent all the war years in Shanghai.

  Felix broke ranks and told her she didn’t understand what was going on in Russia and should go to the Bolsheviks herself. Mrs. Grosse took offense and complained to the Director of the Corps.

  “Rodionov, apologize!” he demanded.

  Felix looked the Director straight in the eyes. “No.”

  It was decided to postpone his sentence, since a merchant’s wife and her children were taking shelter in the ship’s guardroom. When the Corps disembarked, Felix told the Director, “Put me in the dungeons.” The Director gave the order, but in farewell, squeezed the cadet’s hand and told him, “Well done.”

  2.

  Felix did not remember his mother: she died when he was just two. They said he looked like her: dark-skinned, green-eyed, with a long neck. From his father, he took a hawk nose and long, bandy legs.

  His father was killed in the Great War and Felix, now orphaned, was sent to the second year of the Cadet Corps.

  Before he started, Egorych told him, “You’ll be beaten here, my sweetheart.”

  “What for?” Felix asked, surprised.

  “Just because. To make a cadet out of you. They don’t like civvies here, my sweetheart.”

  Felix still remembered his first day. He was deafened by thundering drums and an avalanche of boys on the stairs. After lessons, they went to a canteen, marching in ranks. A choir shouted a prayer, and dishes began to clink.

  In class, Felix felt he was a little beast meant to be eaten. His neck itched from cut hair behind his collar left by the Corps’ barber. Or, maybe it was from the intense looks of the other boys watching him.

  “During the two hundred years of the Russian Cadet Corps, they gave our Motherland a great number of warriors and outstanding statesmen,” lectured a teacher-officer.

  That evening, Felix met Bashkirov, a flaxen-haired, strong fellow. Both rushed to the same tap in the washroom, neither willing to give in. They ended up locking horns, rolling on the tiled floor. A circle of cadets stood around hallooing cheerfully.

  Their class supervisor sent the fighters out washing windows on the second floor. The Corps didn’t have much money, so they carried out all maintenance themselves.

  “One is washing—another is supporting him at the belt,” the supervisor said. “If you do a poor job washing, you’ll be doing it over again. If you do a poor job supporting each other and drop your fellow on the road, you’ll be burdened with that sin for the rest of your life.”

  From that day on, Felix and Bashkirov were best friends. They voraciously read front-line reports together, whispering at night how they would grow up and show those cursed Germans what for.

  Then the revolution struck and the emperor’s murder followed. The Soviets decided to turn the Corps into the Red Proletarian Military High School: shoulder straps were cut off, flags and icons—burned.

  During a school meeting, the cadets decided not to comply.

  “Bastards! They’ll pay for this!” Bashkirov roared with tears flowing down his cheeks.

  Senior cadets fled to join the White partisans and left the juniors in

  the care of a seminary. At the end of 1919, the Board of Directors decided to evacuate the cadets from their hometown of Irkutsk. Typhoid fever, lice and famine ravaged the boys. On Sludyanka Station, the Bolsheviks had organized a railway strike. The frost was so bitter that birds were dying on the wing. Hundreds of children were stuck in immobilized railway cars without fuel or supplies. Felix caught pneumonia. If the workers hadn’t provided the engine and coal, he would have died.

  Soon after that, Felix killed a man. The Reds had dismantled rail tracks and opened fire on the train. The cadets shot back, took fifty-three prisoners, forced them to fix the rails and then executed them all. Felix took aim between a commissar’s eyes and scored a direct hit.

  They reached Vladivostok and, for several months, settled into barracks on the Russian Island. The Allies provided them with clothing: the Japanese gave boots, the French—pants, the Americans—field jackets.

  When the Corps fled Vladivostok, all Felix’s friends, except Bashkirov, went on the Lieutenant Dydymov. The ship sank in the storm in front of their eyes.

  3.

  “Out, prisoner!” yelled Bashkirov.

  Felix emerged from the wardrobe, stretching. “Any news?”

  “The French Consul and Russian merchants, who settled in Shanghai before the Great War, promised to organize a Charity Committee to help us, poor orphans. For a start, they gave a dollar to each cadet of the first platoon. I signed in for you.”

  Felix looked at the dollar coin with a head of a fat Chinese man engraved on it.

  “I can imagine what they think giving us the money: Here they come, the free-loaders.”

  “They can think whatever they please,” said Bashkirov carelessly. “What are you going to do with your cash?”

  “Eat all I can.”

  “Silly! You need a proper suit. I’ve worked it all out: we’ll learn about the city and offer our service to tourists from the ocean liners, ‘Hey, mister, would you like a tour guide? Souvenirs to your heart’s content.’ What do you think?”

  “Damn this. It would be sickening to lick the dust like that.”

  Bashkirov frowned. “Offer something better then. I saw Russians pulling rickshaws and Chinese beating them up. They don’t want competition. I’d rather work for rich foreigners.”

  “What about the language?”

  “We know their language. Si vivis Romae, romano vivito more!”— “When in Rome, do like Romans do.”

  “It’s Latin.”

  “Who cares? The Consul General promised to send us some English tutors, so we can learn. Oh, check it out! A girl!”

  Felix looked out the window. “Where?”

  “Over there, on a bench. No doubt, she’s English or French. Stay here—I’ll be back.”

  Bashkirov went to introduce himself. Felix saw from the window the girl running away.

  “Silly,” said Bashkirov, coming back. “It’s okay. We’ll take our money, put them into business, and in a year’s time, all the girls in Shanghai will be ours.”

  4.

  Even though the cadets continued to study, many of the classes had been canceled: there were no copybooks or textbooks. To fill the time, teachers would arrange excursions out of the city. Marching in ranks, singing cadets made villagers run in panic. Locals were terrified of military men. Good iron is not wasted on nails; a good man is not wasted on the army was what they thought of their own military. And with good reason: their armies were crowds of ragamuffins gathered by local warlords, given guns and ordered to
go plundering. The raiders wouldn’t touch the well-defended cities but swept clean through the villages.

  Over time, the cadets became more settled. A merchant had donated some wood boards and they built three level bunk beds where the boys slept in turns. They used public bathhouses to wash, where the first floor was for working people and the second for the rich. Servants would hang clients’ clothes from the ceiling with long bamboo sticks so pickpockets couldn’t reach them.

  The city authorities were trying to figure out what to do with the hundreds of young castaways. Shanghai just couldn’t afford to keep the cadets. The Director started sending letters to European powers saying that they had a perfectly formed Corps capable of producing fine military officers.

  Every cadet was on tenterhooks. Where are they going to send us? To Denmark? Or maybe Bulgaria? They say there’s a Foreign Legion in France, maybe they would want us?

  “God forbid!” Bashkirov said anxiously. “We would be on a contract to Africa, and what if they started kicking the Reds out at the same time? Our people will be spilling blood and we…sunbathing?”

  The first platoon was allowed to look for jobs. But only the orchestra made progress: they were invited to play at weddings or in cinemas.

  Bashkirov came up with a way to make profit out of a dollar. A silver coin could be changed into some coppers and then back again into a silver coin or a paper banknote, at a higher rate. If you knew where the rate was better, you could make about ten cents; but you had to constantly scamper around the city for it.

  Ten cents was a fortune. You could buy noodles and sugar-roasted nuts. But you had to always have your eyes open: the bastard street sellers sometimes added sand to make the food heavier.

  Five coppers would get you some breadcrumbs from the backdoor of Da Bing pastry shop. They gave you a cup of tea with it, too. Seven coins would buy two pickled cucumbers. For a cent, you could read an English or French textbook rented from a street librarian. The books were tied to a bar with a piece of rope to stop thieves.

  “I’ve heard of a great way to get some cash,” boasted Bashkirov. “We need to change into monks’ clothes and walk around playing cymbals. We’ll get money in no time. We can even sing.”

  Felix was amused by his friend’s naivety. Sure, sure, he’d get rich. Dream on. The whole city was living on the occasional jingle of coins and scurrying dreams of street urchins. If anyone was making more than a dollar a day, it was by crime—probably robbing houses or fleecing street sellers. Or even bringing little kids from villages and selling them into slavery at the factories. A boy would cost five dollars; a girl—two.

  5.

  If Lady Luck smiled on Felix and Bashkirov they would make twenty cents. On these happy days, they would cross into an industrial area over an iron bridge, walk along banks of a stinking river and arrive at a pub called the Three Pleasures.

  Bashkirov had heard about the place from a drunken seaman. “It’s a labor exchange place for mercenaries,” he said. “Anyone can find exciting jobs there.”

  Indeed, business in the Three Pleasures included much more than just liquor. People sat around battered tables—riffraff of all kinds: Indians, Greeks, Portuguese and Mongolians, a truly wild bunch.

  Felix and Bashkirov would sit in the far corner, order a beer and eavesdrop hungrily on all the conversations. Thanks to their lessons, they could understand a fair bit of English and French.

  Sometimes sweaty girls would try to sit on their laps.

  “Get lost, bitches!” Felix would hiss. The girls would swear back— each in their own language.

  A Malayan midget would appear from the darkness and offer a pipe of opium. If the young gentlemen didn’t wish to smoke, then they could buy some opium water for five coppers. This water was very easy to make: you just had to clean un-burned remnants from opium pipes and boil them in water. Drinking this would make you higher than cocaine.

  The air was filled with drunken voices, the shuffling of cards and the clattering of mahjong tiles. At the table next to the cadets, a couple of Germans were talking to a Chinese officer through a translator.

  “What are they discussing?” Felix asked. His German was not as good as Bashkirov’s.

  “Wait, let me listen.”

  At the table next to the door, Felix noticed a gloomy man in a long gray coat and a checkered cap. The man’s face was pale, wisps of hair curling on his forehead.

  “Shady one,” said Felix. “I haven’t seen him here before.”

  Suddenly, a Manchu with a glass eye stumbled into the bar and looked around. His master followed, leaning on a cane.

  “Oh my God, look who’s here!” yelled the pub owner. “Monsieur Lemoine!”

  Greetings, roars of laughter and invitations to have a drink accompanied the newcomer. Felix had already seen this specimen before. Everyone in the port knew him: Lemoine was a Canadian, a great mechanic, a chemist and a specialist in small weapons.

  Lemoine approached the Chinese officer who talked to the Germans.

  “So, you’re taking my Mausers?” he asked in English.

  “General Feng Yuxiang is not happy with the last lot.”

  “Really? What’s wrong with them?”

  “A gun shouldn’t twist the hand of the shooter.”

  Voices died. Everyone stared at them, waiting. Felix felt for the brass knuckles in his pocket—just in case.

  Lemoine turned to his Manchu. “This slant-eyed scum is suggesting that I sell goods of poor quality.” He gave a feigned sigh. “What are we going to do with him? This ugly mug is asking for a fight.”

  The door flew open. Felix thought it must be Lemoine’s cronies arriving, but instead, a stunning woman swept into the room. Bashkirov dropped his cigarette onto his pants.

  The lady wore a white suit and a blue hat and held a little purse in her hands. She went to Lemoine.

  “We need to talk,” she said in French.

  Lemoine instantly forgot the Chinese officer and turned to her. “Oh Madam! Look at you! It’s hard to recognize you. Hey, Boss, we need a separate office,” he cried to the pub owner.

  They headed to the back rooms. “

  Listen, I know her,” said Bashkirov to Felix. “She was with us in the Gensan camps. Look at her! Found a cushy place, no doubt; even wears high heels.” He shuffled on his chair. “Let’s introduce ourselves… as fellow nationals.”

  Felix shook his head. “If she’s got rich, it’s her business. Probably illegal anyway. Decent people don’t come here.”

  “But for connections? Maybe we’ll get a job?”

  Felix put some coppers on the table and headed to the exit. Suddenly, he sensed the intent stare of the person in the long gray coat.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE GREAT IMPOSTERS

  1.

  Most mornings, sprightly young men with polite smiles knocked on Nina’s door. They were payment collectors from the shops. Lemoine’s money was disappearing like stones thrown into a pond.

  Months of running around and fussing slipped by with no results. No income, no friends, no idea what to do next.

  Memories of Nina’s school years returned to her. She was so proud of being accepted into the best school in the city: this was something unthinkable for a girl from a modest family. Mother spent all her savings on a uniform dress with a white collar, expensive textbooks and an exercise pad with bright brass buckles, so her daughter could share poems and drawings with her noble friends. But when young Ms. Kupina entered the classroom, no one wanted to sit with her. She would return home and cry into Mother’s lap, “I hate this school!”

  Now, she started to hate Shanghai, too.

  Jiří’s worries were unfounded: the police didn’t care about refugees without documents. The principle of a crammed railway car ruled in Shanghai: those who were in were friends; those who were out were enemies. Hundreds of thousands of people lived in the city without documents.

  In the beginning, Shanghai intoxicated Nina. Everythi
ng was so new and unusual, and she was flooded with emotions. She even tried to start a diary to describe everything she saw and heard. But the sobering up came shortly after. As a silly country girl, Nina kept making a fool of herself. Several times she was almost killed forgetting cars in Shanghai drove on the left side of the road. She didn’t know how to make payments, how to tip or how to talk to servants. It turned out that with the Chinese, the white people switched into Pidgin English. My God, one more language to learn!

  People looked at Nina, puzzled; others sneered. It exhausted her so much that she had to push herself in the mornings to get out of her room. She didn’t feel like seeing anyone.

  I want to go home, cried her inner being. It was like a fever stuck deep inside after a futile operation. She could try to placate it, going through numerous cures and remedies, but it would still burn.

  Where could she go? To Nizhny Novgorod? Bolsheviks in shabby coats, guns atilt on their guts, had all but demolished her native city.

  And it was the same with the rest of Russia, with the rest of the Russians. Did she miss her people? Here they were, on the North Sichuan Road, seven hundred souls waiting for a handout from a charity kitchen. The Chinese looked at them, perplexed: How come white, but poor?

  It only took Nina a split second to pick Russians out in a crowd: they always looked ragged and lost, and every time she saw one, she would cross over the street. God forbid, somebody would recognize her. She never spoke Russian in public and didn’t allow Jiří to speak it either.

  Inside her, pity was coupled with a desire to dissociate: I am not with you.

  Probably other Russians didn’t exist anymore. She felt such a shame for her confused nation! They lost the Great War, and even in China, where white skin meant nobility, they couldn’t settle properly. However, it was clear to Nina that she was no better. Even worse: she robbed her own people and convinced herself that it wasn’t a scam but business acumen, skill at seizing an opportunity. She used to swell with pride: I’m the smartest, but in reality, she hadn’t moved an inch forward.