by Vivian Yang
As Mother described this to me, I could visualize the characters stabbing with a bayonet and body, Japanese for sashimi, as Coach Long had told our team.
“As you’d expect, the Japanese let Kirill and his Chinese girl pass without bowing or body search?”
“But why?”
“Because the Japanese are obsequious to Westerners, then and now. In a Far East city like Shanghai or Tokyo, a Caucasian face could always help matters.”
“Was Kirill offended by the double standard?”
“To him, this was the other peoples’ war, I suppose. Sweet rice, sticky rice, short grain, long grain, crops from the paddies are staples for the East Asians themselves. The excitement of romantic adventure had never before so stirred the man who lived in a borrowed land on borrowed time. He must not have wanted to spoil that.”
Mother drew a breath and went on with her fantastic tale: in the heat of that night, my grandparents were intoxicated by our port city’s sights and sounds. The sampans’ sails sagged. The Shanghainese lassie sighed. The Petersburgian lad asked what was on her mind. She jerked her head in an attempt to suppress a bout of cough.
“Xi-qian sa-le!” – How deadly annoying, she had complained, her voice raspy.
Kirill soothed her by way of kissing, oblivious to the passing rickshaws, pedicabs, wheelbarrows, and the chauffeured Daimlers or Packards. Kirill, inhaling the exotic exhalations from herbal lozenges, wanted to seize every moment of it.
As for Nga Bu, this was the first time she felt a prickly chin and smelled vodka breath. Kirill unbuttoned his shirt to let the breeze in. Sweat had soaked her summer cheongsam, rendering it clingy. With each lungful of air her chest rose like a pair of the Chinese steamed buns, Kirill gasped at the sight. Brassieres were unfamiliar undergarments. Shanghainese women of Nga Bu’s generation were lucky to have escaped foot-binding by a mere decade, having been born just after the 1911 emperor-deposing Revolution. She coughed and giggled as he gasped at the outlines of her childish frame.
They gazed at the ripples on the Whampoa and the silhouette of the Bund edifices in architectural styles from Baroque to Romanesque. Pointing out the Russian Consulate, Kirill waxed homesick and began to reminisce. Between coughs she tittered at his fractured Shanghainese lingo. He had grown up on the banks of the Neva, no junks, no sampans, “Niet, niet,” he gesticulated for emphasis. A drawbridge would rise on schedule to let the ferries pass. The magnificent Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul was in the background. The annual “White Nights” period when it is bright day and night would occur in just about now.
She tried to visualize the romantic atmosphere his deep-set eyes portrayed. Growing up in the tenements surrounding the Western concessions, she looked up to the privileged Europeans and hated the Japanese. Her father made his living peddling snacks across cobblestone lanes on a wheeled kitchen: hard-boiled eggs in five spices, noodles with sesame sauce, and wonton in soup. On Sunday he wore his Mandarin jacket with broad white cuffs to the cathedral. Despite sermons in Latin peppered with broken Shanghainese, he could make out the gist: Believe in Our Lady and help thy brethren. Send thy young to schools, be it boy or girl: they were children of our Risen Lord, first and foremost.
Rudyard Kipling was not taught in school yet Nga Bu had absorbed the concept of “the White Man’s Burden”. “The Western Christians want to help us poor in China,” she thought, justifying to herself her attraction to this white knight from the land of the White Night.
No “White Night” over the Whampoa but there came a white morning. The sky above the water had taken on an orange and white hue, heralding the arrival of another dawn. Kirill began to croon Utro (Morning), a favorite native tune, which Mother now hummed to me with deep feelings:
“Ljublju tebja!”
Shepnula dnju zarja
I, nebo obkhvativ, zardelas’ ot priznan’ja,
I solnca luch, prirodu ozarja,
Sulybkoj posylal jej zhguchije lobzan’ja.
“I love you!”
Daybreak whispered to day
and, while enfolding the skies, blushed from that confession,
and a sunbeam, illuminating nature,
with a smile sent her a burning kiss.
“Do you know what vision I had when I sang ‘Red Is the East’ just now? I saw that day’s dawn in Shanghai and I heard the tune to Utro. Strange, uh?”
Nga Bu and Kirill dated for a few months before she abruptly vanished. Kirill must have been disappointed but not devastated. Shanghai was the type of place where one came and went. In his spare time he sang and made love to his accordion. A customer introduced him to a Filipina dancer named Coco. Over shots of vodka he joined her in polka.
In fact Nga Bu had left due to circumstances beyond her control. Her father had carted her to the Ziccawei Ward for the poor, next to the yellow Jesuit building. St. Ignatius Cathedral’s 50-meter high Gothic spires had inspired their awe. “You’re in God’s hands and you’ll be fine” were the parting words of this working-class convert to his ailing teenage daughter.
In time, the confessional felt tinier and tighter to her. After repeatedly failing to kneel fully on the prie-dieux, Nga Bu was taken to see the head of the facility Father Michel. It was there that she saw on his desk a black box under a dumbbell with a long tapeworm-like tail. A metal plaque was affixed under the clock face dial with the words: Bell Telephone. MFG. Company. ANVERS. BELGIQUE. Between bouts of coughs she confessed that there was more than tuberculosis growing inside her. Father Michel pointed to the device and offered her its use but Nga Bu knew neither the number nor the exact address of Figaro Coiffure.
During Mass several days later she was rushed away by a sister whose solemn face was framed by stiff coifs. At the clinic, a white-coated nurse in angular cap and soft-soled shoes gave instructions as the lassie wailed. There was blood from her mouth and down below. She exhaled her last breath when a Eurasian infant was pushed out of her small frame. One look at its features and the nurse cried: “Sinful, sinful! Holy Mary, Mother of God, we ask for your mercy and forgiveness!”
An envelope was safety-pinned to Nga Bu’s clothes. Inside was a photo with the words “Kirill Molotov” in the back and a note in an origami knot.
Dear Father Michel:
If I die and the baby survives, a boy shall be named Dmitry De-ming (virtue and enlightenment) and a girl, Nadia Na-di (beauty and enlightenment). I came to this mortal world in darkness; I shall go having seen Light and Truth. The baby is innocent. I beg you to keep it here in our Lord’s sanctuary.
“Remember the special origami pattern I taught you on the train?” Mother asked. “I learned that from carefully folding and unfolding the origami Nga Bu had left.”
“Really? Thank you, Mother, for teaching me something so precious to you. Is it in your room with the other ‘important things’ and can I see it?”
Mother sighed and gave me a conflicted look. “I handed it in voluntarily shortly after starting music school to prove that I had drawn a clear-cut line of demarcation between the spiritual opium world that was Christianity and my young revolutionary stance. A conservatory leader burned the origami in front of my eyes and I didn’t even flinch. As a result, I was included in the first batch to become a Communist Young Pioneer. Unbeknownst to them, I kept the photo, at great risk of course.”
“You really are a brave survivor, Mother,” I said admiringly.
She shook her head. “I may have survived but I’ve not thrived professionally … but let me continue.”
Nga Bu’s last wish was granted. Baby Nadia Molotova was transferred to the Ziccawei Orphanage next door. Father Michel had a Chinese nun put her name down as Mo Na-di, acknowledging that it was always easier for the Chinese to read in Chinese, bien sûr.
Kirill Molotov never knew that there existed a Mo Na-di. The duet “Coco & Molo” was formed. It played in nightclubs until May of 1949, when the People’s Liberation Army took over Shanghai. One of its last numbers was Rachmaninov’s Pr
okhodit vse:
Prokhodit vse I net nemu vozvratal
Zhizn’ mchitsja vdal’, mgnovenija bystrejl
Gde zvuki slov, zvuchavshikh nam kogda-to?
Gde svet zari nas ozarjavshikh dnej?
Rascvel cvetok, a zavtra on uvjanet.
Gorit ogon’, chtob vskore otgoret’…
Idet volna, nad nej drugaja vstanet…
Jan e mogu veselykh pesen’s pet’!
Everything is passing with no return.
Life goes by in the blink of an eye.
Where have the sounds of the words we once listened to gone?
Where are the dawns of yesteryear?
A flower blossoms today but withers tomorrow …
A blazing fire burns out in time …
The next wave will rise over the current one …
Happy songs I can sing no more!
Foreigners of any color or creed were declared persona non grata. Coco and Kirill shanghaied themselves to the Philippines’ Tubabao Island, to seek new fortunes and to play new tunes, waving Dasvedania! forever to the “Paris of the East” and Street Neva …
When Mother was finished, my hair was dry. “I never realized that you are somewhat of a brunette,” she said. “Perhaps that was the color of my father’s hair.”
“I’m glad I have something of him in me. As to Nga Bu, I think of her in the image of Ah Bu, for she is a devout Shanghainese Christian, too.”
“You still remember that Ah Bu?”
“I’ll never forget her. She loved me.”
A harsh expression flashed in Mother’s eyes. “What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing. I suppose I just envy you for having something tangible relating to your father, unlike me.”
“It’s for your own good that you don’t. He’s dead so it won’t make any difference to you. You’ll just have to go on with your life. I did.”
“Yes, I know. You were an orphan but I still have you, right? But do you realize that I may have the same desire to know about my father? Your mother died and your father disappeared. Why do I sometimes feel I’m in the same boat?”
Mother pulled me by the hair and jerked my head around. Inevitable slaps landed on my cheeks. “You ungrateful little bastard! I hope that nobody will ever love you!”
“I’ll be more loved than you ever will be!” I shouted, unyielding and unapologetic.
7 Dreaming Stanislavsky
The very next day after school I asked Wang Hong, “Can you verify something for me from your dad as soon as possible?”
“Depends on what I get in return.”
“How about some Russian bread?”
“The kind they sell at the Second Food Provisions Store bakery on Huaihai Road? Of course! Here, let’s do a pinky swear.” She hooked my pinkie and chanted, “Heaven has eyes, Earth has soul. Whoever breaks the promise will be doomed!”
I told her about my elimination and wanted to confirm that the Film Studio Young Actors Training Program would soon be reestablished. If so, I planned to apply to the people in charge without going through Mother.
Wang Hong soon returned with the news that Studio Party Secretary-General Ouyang had just received clearance from the “higher up” – commonly understood to be Madame Mao, a former actress in Shanghai herself – to reinstate the Young Actors Program in the fall.
It had been almost a decade since I was last in the Administration Building where Wang Hong and I played catch in its marbled hallways. A dreamy sense of familiarity propelled me up the winding stairs to the second floor where I was greeted by a cigarette odor. I peeked in from the half-closed office door marked “Secretary-General” and was taken aback. Sitting behind the mahogany desk was none other than the senior cadre who had boarded our train from Guangzhou to Shanghai in February of 1966!
Mo Mo, I told myself, your opportunity is here. Take heart and go for it!
After knocking gently on the door, I walked past a cluttered small table towards his desk.
“Secretary-General Ouyang, how do you do?” I announced, standing upright and looking directly at him.
Ouyang popped his head up in reflex and tried to place me. “You are …?”
“My name is Mo Mo. I was the girl …”
“Ah -- yes, of course. You’re the daughter of Teacher Mo! How you have grown!” He cast a glance at the small table behind me and asked, “Did your mother send you here to tell me something?”
“No. I came here by myself.”
“Is that right?” the Secretary-General said, lifting his eyebrows. “How can I help you, little comrade?”
“I’m here to apply to you directly for the Young Actors Training Program.”
“Was this your mother’s idea?”
“Not at all. It’s my own decision, and she doesn’t know I’m here.”
The Secretary-General lit himself a cigarette and studied me. “You have a lot of guts to come and see me. I like that in a young girl. Tell me, little comrade, why do you want to join the program?”
I gave him my pre-rehearsed line. “Because I want to entertain the people by tapping into my artistic talent.”
Ouyang clapped his hands twice and said, “Good.” Rising from his leather upholstered armchair, he walked by me to close the door before heading back. “Impressive, very impressive, little comrade. Our revolutionary ranks need young actresses like you,” the Secretary-General said as he placed his arm on my shoulder. “Would you like to perform a song and dance number for me now?”
Enveloped by a nameless sense of apprehension, I eased myself away from him and replied, “I’m sorry Secretary-General, but I didn’t come prepared with one today. Please let me get prepared and show you next time. Of course I will schedule it through the Training Program’s political instructor first.”
No sooner did I finish than he turned his back on me as if to avoid letting me see the expression on his face. But I had already caught a glimpse of a surprised, perhaps even shocked look.
Ouyang returned to his desk, took a long drag of his cigarette, and extinguished a good half of it. “That won’t be necessary. I was just testing you and I see you can certainly make a good actress,” he declared, suddenly all smiles.
“Does that mean I’ll be in the program?”
“I’m not the best judge to determine that professionally. Why don’t you tell Teacher Mo to come to speak to me and we …”
“Sorry to interrupt, Secretary-General, but I really don’t want to get my mother involved. In fact, could you please promise me not to mention our meeting today? I’m determined to enter the program on my own strength. Should I contact the political instructor to schedule for a professional audition, then?”
Ouyang looked at me and considered for a second. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. You’re good enough to be in the program.”
“So I’m in for September?” I asked excitedly.
He nodded deliberately and said, “Your mother won’t know about this meeting and you’ll have to promise me not to contact anybody else regarding the program, understand?”
“Yes, and thank you so much, Secretary-General! But how do I know for sure if …?”
He waved his hand. “Admissions material will be sent to your school in due course and you can go from there. Now I’m very busy so you can just leave the door ajar on your way out.”
“Yes, of course, Secretary-General. Thank you so much for your time, and of course for promising that I can join the program. You won’t regret it!”
“Good bye, little comrade.”
Hopping down the marble stairs, I came face to face with a bespectacled man on his way up. Uttering an instinctive “Excuse me,” I rushed down, realizing with a thumping heart that he was Ouyang’s assistant on the train.
My bubbly swimsuit, intentionally dampened, continued to be dried on the days I used to train. Since our confrontation following the hair-washing, neither Mother nor I talked much. I prayed daily for the Studio admission informati
on to reach my school. It would be a great relief for both of us once I moved out in the fall.
Meanwhile, I had saved five jiao (a quarter) to cash in my promise to Wang Hong about the bread. We went to the Second Food Provisions Store in the early evening to take advantage of the bakery’s forty-percent discount after six o’clock. I loved food and knew the counters there well, although Mother was the person who actually shopped there.
Hand in hand Wang Hong and I gallivanted about in the store before stopping under the big wall clock with Roman numerals. Our eyes darted between that and the bakery counter.
“What’s the foreign name for that type of bread?” Wang Hong asked.
“It’s called khleb in Russian. Hard crust with soft dough inside, kind of like a Chinese streamed bun that has sat in the air for a while and the skin breaks.”
“I’m sure it’s much better that a stale streamed bun. How much money do you have?”
“Five jiao.”
“Enough for a loaf after six o’clock?”
“I hope so. If not, I can always buy five jiao worth of slices and you can have them all.”
“Can I hold the five jiao note for you?”
I let her. Wang Hong smoothed the purple profile of Chairman Mao’s head.
As it turned out, during the discounted period they only sold the bread by the loaf, which cost six jiao. Our disappointment was not unnoticed by a chef-capped baker. He said to the female cashier, “It’s Teacher Mo’s daughter -- just give her a few slices.”
“For free?” Wang Hong asked.
“I can pay five jiao!”