“I’ll find one,” Nina replied.
CHAPTER 62
NAGASAKI PORT
1.
Ada glowered at Betty lying on a sofa, smoking. “They’ll kill him. You do understand?”
Without make up on, Betty’s face resembled a colorless sketch. She was Ada’s last hope: Betty had a Mexican passport.
“I’ll give you two hundred and three dollars,” Ada uttered, barely audible.
It was all she had. Ms. Kupina had taken the airplane to pay the lawyer’s fee and Ada’s debts for keeping the machine on the airfield. Felix’s map-case would definitely come in handy now, but Ada did not have the slightest idea where it had disappeared to. She didn’t regret a thing, though.
“You’re, silly,” Betty chuckled. “You’ve got such a crush on this Felix that you’re ready to give him to another woman?”
“I need Felix alive and that’s all that matters.”
“Okay, okay. … I don’t care.”
Ada gave a huge sigh of relief. Betty was still the same: kind-hearted and generous.
2.
Betty demanded that Felix convert to Catholicism. “I’m not going to marry a heretic!” she declared.
Felix refused, prompting a furious visit from Johnny Collor.
“Pig! Because of you Ada has turned the whole city upside down and found you a Mexican whore—”
Felix tried to find an excuse, but received a mighty blow to his ear.
“I see they haven’t kicked your ass hard enough in here,” Collor grumbled, rubbing his sore knuckles.
Felix stood shakily from the floor, wiping blood from his face. “Was it Ada who organized everything?”
“No, the holy Pope!” Collor roared. “He’s so eager to save your butt, he paid a Mexican Consul General and a priest to marry you.”
“It’s terrible to marry a whore,” Felix moaned.
“It’s terrible to be an idiot! Why did you get into that opium hole? You had a chance to be a decent person!”
Felix looked at him with a tortured look. “How’s the office?” he changed the subject.
“They transferred me to the intelligence department,” Collor grumbled. “We’re chasing Chinese communists—loads are arriving from Java and Hong Kong. The local authorities are brutal towards them. There are cages with cut-off heads all around the Chinese City. Felix, marry this girl, promise?”
“I promise.”
3.
Betty and Ada rushed to the mooring where the steamer to Nagasaki departed from.
“Why are you fussing like a chicken ready to lay an egg?” Betty shook her head. “Just look at me, I’m married with no wedding, no presents and no first wedding-night. My blessed is in penal servitude and, amazingly, I’m happy—not even grieving!”
Ada went over all the details from the wedding again. How was Felix? What did he say? But all her questions paled into insignificance compared with Betty’s client who’d given her a fake banknote last night.
“What a bastard!” she exclaimed in outrage. “For three years he came to me, groveled at my feet, kissed my hands…and there you go, that’s human gratitude!”
“Betty,” Ada moaned. “Tell me, is he healthy?”
“I hope so but I’ll go to the doctor anyway. I wish there were no syphilis; it’s a bore to get rid of.”
“I’m talking about Felix!”
Ada wasn’t given permission to say goodbye to Felix, but Betty as his wife was let behind the police cordon. It was a cargo steamer and the foreign convicts were placed between huge boxes covered in canvas on the deck, each person accompanied by a guard. From Nagasaki, they would be sent further away, to their native countries in America or Europe.
Ada stood on tiptoes, hoping to see Felix in the crowd, but it was in vain. Finally, Betty returned from the steamer. She took a handkerchief from her purse and started to wipe her hands.
“It’s not a steamer, it’s a rubbish dump,” she complained in disgust. “I’ve touched a handrail with snot on it.”
Betty had seemed to decide it was humorous not to tell Ada about Felix.
“I’m going home,” she said and headed towards a rickshaw stand.
Ready to cry, Ada watched her climbing up into the cart and opening her parasol.
“Go!” Betty ordered to the rickshaw boy as he took up the shafts.
“Wait!” Ada screamed. Pale, with wild eyes, she grasped the edge of the rickshaw cart. “Have you seen Felix?”
Betty nodded. “I have. What a husband you’ve found me—a total cucumber, plus skinny as a worm.”
“Did he give me anything?”
“No. Nothing.”
Ada’s heart plummeted.
“Actually, yes,” said Betty, grinning. “Here’s the dispatch.”
Ada seized the crumpled paper in Betty’s hands. It was written in Russian. “Everything will go well. I’m with Father S.”
Ada pressed the note to her lips.
“My husband expresses his feelings to another woman,” Betty chuckled.
“You don’t understand!” Ada exclaimed. “Seraphim is his guard. Collor helped us again. Thank God!”
4.
Nagasaki looked like a seabirds’ nesting site, with its houses clinging to slopes and little boats bobbing in the harbor.
Smothered with heat and the stench of fish, Felix and Seraphim staggered onto the quay, attached to each other by a short chain. They were instantly surrounded by half-naked beggars, street kids, sailors, workers in straw hats and white tourists with dazed eyes. Local girls looked indifferently at the crowd from under their decorated parasols.
“Where now?” Felix asked.
Seraphim looked gloomy. “Now, we’ll wait for the steamer to Manila.”
No one knew when the steamer was arriving. Seraphim harassed one deck worker, then another. Felix followed, not interfering with his attempts.
Sweat poured down Seraphim’s face, his shirt went dark under his armpits and back. He looked completely exhausted.
“Eh, heretics…” he sighed and dragged Felix along.
Felix pulled him by the chain. “Let’s find somewhere to have a beer. I’ve got a little money—my treat.”
They settled under electrical fans in an English bar, and Felix ordered Seraphim a mug of beer. The barman, a bold fellow with fat lips, listened curiously to their conversation.
“Where are you from?”
“From Shanghai,” Felix replied.
They talked about prices and wages in China and Japan and where it was better to live.
“It’s not fun now,” the barman said, wiping a mug. “I’m thinking of going to Australia. It should be more stable there. After all, they’ve found gold again. Or maybe it’s all lies, who knows?”
“You can babble pretty well in English,” Seraphim told Felix once the barman left to serve other clients.
Felix sneered. “Try working in the police as long as I did and you’ll learn it too.”
“I’m dealing with foreigners all the time and it hasn’t helped me at all,” Seraphim confessed. “I’ve had enough of it.”
They went silent for a while. Seraphim finished his beer and wiped his lips with his palm.
“If they called me now to join a Russian steamer as a stoker or kitchen hand, I would agree without a thought. Let them arrest me; hang me…only let them take me home to Russia. I can’t…with all these...” He motioned to a rowdy group of American sailors nearby.
Felix bent close. “Take the key and unlock my handcuffs.”
Seraphim pulled away from him.
“Listen to me,” Felix insisted. “We’ll go back, but not to Shanghai. Let’s go north to the Dogmeat General. He has a Russian detachment in his army. You’ll get a salary, annual leave and board—everything’s done properly there.”
Seraphim brushed it off. “No way…”
“Listen, what’ve you not seen in your prison? Okay, you’ll get me off to that Manila steamer and return to
Shanghai. And then back to the dungeons? There’s nobody there you can even have a chat with.”
Seraphim breathed heavily, looking at the floor. “That might be true, but—”
“With the help of the Dogmeat General we’ll create an army of our own and then go back to Russia to fight the communists.”
“Let’s go!” Seraphim slammed his fist on the table. “Let’s go, Rodionov, my dear fellow! I have nothing to lose. I’m a lost person. Maybe Russia still has some use for me.”
CHAPTER 63
PILOTS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
1.
Edna went to Canton to interview General Chiang Kai-shek.
Mr. Green had told his journalists in the editor’s meeting, “We need to find out everything about the new leader of the Kuomintang. Is he the peasants’ ringleader or just another warlord? I’ve heard he’s issued a manifesto promising to rid China of foreigners and militarists. I’m guessing that the Northern Expedition to take control over Shanghai is a done deal.”
Mr. Green couldn’t send his favorite to Canton, because Michael Vesborough had dislocated his shoulder playing tennis.
“I’ll go,” Edna announced.
For several weeks, she’d lived alone in the house, hating herself: Daniel had left her, it was all over.
Lissie tried to talk her out of it, “Let’s forget about our husbands, make a magazine and start over! Why do you have to get caught up in that wasp nest of revolutionaries?”
Edna shook her head. “News is my job—I have to go.”
“I think you want to slit your veins. Like back then.”
Maybe Lissie was right. But Edna couldn’t live without a meaning in her life. Daniel had torn it from her, now she had no choice but to go to the hotspots for her job: at least, that gave her a reason to respect herself.
Staying at home, Edna was slowly suffocating with a cold emptiness that filled all the rooms. She didn’t even have anyone to hate. At the beginning she’d thought Daniel was after Nina Kupina, but he’d left her as well. That was the most unbearable: Edna had no answer to why?
The tiny steamer Suzhou, with goats on the dirty deck and several passengers in its cabins, was bound for Canton. The little boy ran around the deck, loudly admiring herds of flying fish and dragons painted on the noses of Chinese junks.
He was a son of an American couple, Margaret and John Prutt; his name was Vladi, after Vladimir Lenin. The Prutts were great fans of the Russian Revolution.
“Mommy and Daddy have never been to the Soviet Union,” Vladi told Edna, “but they know all about it. We have millions of books on Russia in our house in New York. And Daddy can say burzhui nedorezannyi. It means bloody bourgeois. My Dad learned how to speak Russian all by himself.”
Edna looked at Vladi’s golden blonde head, at his white sailor’s hat…exactly the same as the one the Crown Prince of Russia, Alexei, had worn before he was killed by the Bolsheviks.
Vladi was swinging his toy sword; the goats freaked out and dashed about the deck in horror.
Edna truly wanted to avoid Lenin’s fans, but they were the only other passengers in first-class and their lunch was served at one big table.
Margaret turned out to be a small, plain woman with a long fringe. John was two heads taller then her; he wore glasses in tortoise frames and a large ring with a pink stone.
The Prutts were shining, exuding health and calm. Edna couldn’t resist them: she hadn’t been in the company of happy people in such a long time.
Mr. Prutt had lived in China for almost half a year, working as a translator for the People’s Tribune newspaper. Margaret and Vladi had just arrived in Shanghai and now John was taking them to Canton.
As soon as the Prutts heard Edna was a reporter they couldn’t contain themselves.
“Oh, it’s my dream to travel to different countries and meet interesting people!” Margaret exclaimed. “But I’m at odds with letters: I make four mistakes just writing John a note to get the bread and butter for dinner.” She roared with laughter, winking at her husband.
“By the way, our editor’s office is in the same building as Borodin’s apartment.” John said. “I’m ready to pray for this saintly person.”
Edna tensed: Borodin was the main political advisor of the Kuomintang Party.
“Would you be able to introduce me to him?” she asked.
John shook his head, “He’s in Peking now: there’s a lot of work up north. Can you imagine, mean old Chiang Kai-shek used Borodin’s absence to arrest several advisors from Russia! He declared that they were imperialists worse than the Westerners and they are only concerned with their own goals and not the good of the Chinese people. If Borodin didn’t interfere, that would have been the end of the union of the USSR and the Kuomintang. It’s very, very unstable up there.”
Edna couldn’t believe her ears: in Shanghai no one knew about this friction between the Russian communists and Chinese nationalists.
“And what did Borodin do?” she asked carefully.
“He is a political genius!” John cried in ecstasy. “To calm the suspicions, he said to Chiang Kai-shek that he was right and those people did go too far, and he promised Moscow would send new advisors, much more professional ones.”
Mr. Prutt carried on for quite a while about Borodin’s political acumen, his likeable approach, about his incurable malaria and how bravely he endured it.
Nothing has changed, Edna thought. White people believe that they’ll bring China to the Kingdom of Heaven. Missionaries, capitalists, communists— no difference between any of them. They come to a country, declare themselves its leaders and don’t fight for Chinese enlightenment, but to show the other enlighteners they’re wrong.
2.
The heat was oppressive. The steamer passed innumerable islands covered in green foliage as it made its way up the Pearl River.
“If you’re a white person in Canton, then you’d better wear an arm band,” Mr. Prutt said as he fanned himself with his hat. “If you’re Russian—a red star, if you’re German, then write a note in Chinese stating—I’m German. The Chinese like the Germans here as the Germans suffered greatly thanks to the Great Powers.”
“And if you wear nothing?” Edna asked.
John shook his head. “Not a good idea. They’ll chase you through the streets shouting, ‘Foreign devil!’ The whites, in particular the British and Americans, were up to no good around here, so it’s better we keep quiet about where we’re from.”
With a star armband and a suitcase at her feet, Edna sat in a rickshaw threading through the narrow streets.
“Even the air is different here,” Margaret shouted from another cart.
The sun went down and electric light engulfed the city. Images of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Lenin flapped in the blazing heat. Soldiers marched— dark-skinned, in short pants, wearing caps and carrying large straw hats behind their backs.
Edna and the Prutts went to the Victoria Hotel on Shameen Island, which used to belong to the foreign concession. The building had a tall turret, topped with a steeple; the floors of the luxurious lobby shone and clerks in neat uniforms stood by, ready to oblige. It seemed the revolution had not changed much here.
Through the looking glass, Edna thought coming down the stairs into a restaurant. We’ll see what I’ll find here.
Vladi was wriggling in his chair: he’d never seen such elaborate ceilings and lavish furniture.
“It’s not too expensive here?” Margaret asked her husband, overwhelmed.
John laughed, “In Canton everything is cheap, especially now that most of the foreigners have gone. The owners will bend over backwards to attract customers.”
During dinner, he told them that soon every worker would be able to eat and drink in such a restaurant.
“Do you know anyone from Chiang Kai-shek’s people?” Edna asked on the way to their rooms.
John thought for a moment. “I can introduce you to our aviators. Most of them know the General personally. He
loves them to bits. After all, aviation is the future of warfare.”
“When will the Northern Expedition start?” Edna asked.
“Soon. Right now the Revolutionary Army eats up five-sixths of the province’s budget. The money won’t last long, so they’ll have to attack.”
3.
The motorboat tore over the waves. Rice fields, banana plantations and thickets of weeping willows gave way to more of the same. Hills saturated in greenery competed for splendor with the bluish mountains in the background.
Splashes of water kept wetting John Prutt’s glasses, so he took them off. Without specs his face looked strange, as if something was missing.
The prow of the boat nudged the sand. A tall, silent Chinese guide in a military uniform helped Edna out of the boat.
“This way, please,” he said in English.
The drill fields and barracks looked neat and clean. Cadets practiced bayonet attacks with wooden rifles.
“They’re children,” Edna whispered to John, pointing at their arms, thin like twigs.
He smiled. “Who did you expect to see?”
“I don’t know…peasants, laborers…”
“A middle-aged peasant has a family to feed, he can’t go to war. Moreover, he doesn’t believe in anything. Chinese soldiers used to fight for the warlords’ interests, but now they have a chance to struggle for their own freedom. Young men come here because they don’t want to follow their fathers’ ways; they’re ready to die for their right to make decisions. For the right to be an equal human being…like me and you.”
“Do you really think that an illiterate peasant boy is equal to you?” Edna asked. “Can you really put him into your place?”
“But where am I from?” Prutt laughed. “I was the same peasant boy toiling at a farm. The communists gave me some purpose in life, the knowledge, the very possibility to travel the world, and I want everyone to have a better chance.”
Airplanes were lined up on a well-trodden runway. Workers in overalls busily tended to them.
“I’ll introduce you to the best people in the world,” John said to Edna. “One is a legless Canadian, a war veteran, an ingenious chemist and engineer. The other one is Daniel Bernard—this whole airfield is under his command. All deliveries, purchases of weapons and spare parts are his domain. He is totally in love with aviation and flies himself. The third—”
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