My mother asked him what he meant, and he replied with distaste, ‘She is the daughter of a colonel of the Russian Imperialist Army. A supporter of the Tsar who turned his guns on his own people. She has his blood. And you,’ he sneered at my mother, ‘are of little interest to us but of great interest to the Chinese, it seems. They need examples of what is done to traitors. The Soviet Union just needs to call home its workers. Its young, able-bodied workers.’
My mother’s face didn’t change expression, but she gripped my hand tighter, squeezing the blood out of it and bruising the bones. But I didn’t wince or cry out from the pain. I wanted her to hold me like that forever, to never let me go.
With the room spinning and me nearly passing out from the pain of my mother’s grip, Tang and the Soviet officer made their devil’s bargain: my mother in exchange for me. The Russian got his able-bodied worker and the Chinese man got his revenge.
I stood on the tips of my toes, reaching upwards to the train window so that I could touch the fingertips of my mother’s outstretched hand. She had pressed herself against the window frame so that she could be near to me. From the corner of my eye I could see Tang standing with the Soviet officer by the car. He was pacing like a hungry tiger, waiting to take me. There was much confusion on the station. An elderly couple were clinging to their son. A Soviet soldier shoved them away, forcing the young man onto a carriage, pushing him in the back as if he were a sack of potatoes not a person. In the cramped carriage he tried to turn to look at his mother one last time, but more men were pushed in behind him and he lost his chance.
My mother gripped the window bars and hoisted herself higher so I could see her face more clearly. She was very drawn with shadows under her eyes, but she was still beautiful. She told me my favourite stories over again and sang the song about the mushrooms to calm my tears. Other people were reaching their hands out of the train windows to say goodbye to their families and neighbours, but the soldiers beat them back. The guard near us was young, almost a boy, with porcelain skin and eyes like crystals. He must have taken pity on us for he turned his back to us and shielded our last moment from the view of others.
The train began to pull away. I held onto my mother’s fingers as long as I could, side-stepping the people and boxes on the platform. I tried to keep up but the train gathered speed and I lost my grip. My mother was tugged away from me. She turned back, covering her mouth with her fist because she was no longer able to contain her own grief. My tears stung my eyes but I wouldn’t blink. I watched the train until it disappeared from view. I fell against a lamppost, weakened by the hole that was opening up inside me. But an unseen hand held me upright. I heard my father say to me: ‘You will seem all alone, but you won’t be. I will send someone.’
TWO
The Paris of the East
After the train had gone there was a pause, like the interlude between a flash of lightning and the sound of thunder. I was afraid to turn and look at Tang. I imagined that he was creeping towards me, crawling as a spider does towards the moth it has caught in its web. There was no need to hurry, his prey was trapped. He could linger and savour the pleasure of his cleverness before devouring me. The Soviet officer would already be gone, my mother forgotten and his mind on other business. I was the daughter of a White Army colonel, but my mother would make a more useful labourer. Ideology was a catchcry to him. Practicality was more important. But Tang was not like that. He wanted his twisted justice done and would see this thing through until the end. I didn’t know what he had planned for me, but I was sure it would be something lingering and unspeakable. He wouldn’t just have me shot or thrown from a roof. He had said, `I want you to live daily with the consequences of what you and your mother have done.’ Perhaps my fate would be that of the Japanese girls in my district, the ones who had not been able to escape. The Communists shaved their heads then sold them to the Chinese brothels that served the lowest of the low: lepers without noses and men with such terrible venereal diseases that half their flesh was rotted away.
I swallowed. Another train was pulling in on the opposite platform. It would be easy…so much easier, I thought, staring at the heavy wheels, the metal tracks. My legs trembled, I inched a step forward, but my father’s face flashed before me and I couldn’t move any further. I caught sight of Tang out of the corner of my eye. He was indeed lurking towards me, taking his time. There was hunger, not relief, on his face now that my mother was gone. He was coming for more. It’s over, I told myself. It’s all over.
A firecracker exploded into the sky and I jumped back, startled by the sound. A crowd of people in Communist uniform swamped the station. I stared at them, not able to take in their sudden appearance. They were shouting ‘Oora! Oora!’ and waving bright flags and beating drums and cymbals. They had come to welcome the arrival of more Russian Communists. They marched directly between Tang and myself. I saw him trying to fight his way through them, but he became trapped in their parade. The people were circling him. He was screaming at them but they couldn’t hear him above their cheers and music.
‘Go!’
I looked up. It was the young Soviet soldier, the one with eyes like crystals. ‘Go! Run!’ he shouted, pushing me with the butt of his rifle. A hand grabbed mine and I was pulled through the crowd. I couldn’t see who it was ahead of me. They dragged me through the wriggling onslaught. Everything was human sweat and the smell of gunpowder from the firecrackers. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Tang was pushing through the crowd. He was gaining ground but the stumps of his hands hampered him. It was impossible for him to grab people to get them out of his way. He shouted orders to the young Soviet, who made as if to chase after me but purposely got himself tangled in the crowd. I was bumped and jostled, my shoulders and arms bashed and bruised. Up ahead through the sea of legs a car door opened up and I was thrust towards it. I recognised the hand then. I felt the calluses and knew the largeness of it. Boris.
I leaped into the car and Boris stepped on the pedal. Olga was in the passenger seat. ‘Oh my darling Anya. My little Anya!’ she cried. The road rolled away behind us. I looked through the back window. The crowd on the station was swelling, the disembarking Soviet soldiers adding to its number. I couldn’t see Tang.
‘Anya, get down under the blanket,’ Boris said to me. I did as I was told, and I felt Olga piling things on top of me. ‘Did you expect those people?’ she asked her husband.
‘No, I intended to grab Anya no matter what,’ he said. ‘But it seems that even the mad enthusiasm for the Communists can come in useful sometimes.’
A while later the car stopped and there were voices. The door opened and slammed. I heard Boris talking quietly outside. Olga was still in the front seat, wheezing under her breath. I felt sorry for her and her weak old heart. My own heart was beating wildly, and I clamped my mouth shut, as if that would somehow prevent anyone from hearing it.
Boris jumped back into the driver’s seat and we moved on. ‘A road block. I told them we have things to prepare for the Russians, and we are in a hurry,’ he said.
Two or three hours passed before Boris said I could come out from under the blanket. Olga lifted the bags off me, which turned out to be sacks of grain and vegetables. We were driving along a dirt road surrounded by mountain ridges. There was no one in sight. The fields were deserted. Up ahead I could see a burned-out farmhouse. Boris drove into the storage shed. The whole place smelled of hay and smoke and I wondered who had lived there. I knew from the shrine-like shape of the gates that they had been Japanese.
‘We will wait until dark before going to Dairen,’ said Boris.
We got out of the car and he spread out a blanket on the floor and told me to sit on it. His wife opened a small basket and pulled out some dishes and cups. She scraped some kasha onto a plate for me, but I felt so sick I could hardly eat it.
‘Take some, my darling,’ she said. ‘You need strength for the journey.’
I stared at Boris, who looked away.
/> ‘But we are staying together,’ I said, feeling the fear constrict my throat. I knew that they were talking about sending me to Shanghai. ‘You must come with me.’
Olga bit her lip and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. ‘No, Anya. We must stay here or we will lead Tang straight to you. He is a vile creature who has not yet had his fill.’
Boris put his arm around my shoulders. I buried my face into his chest. I knew I would miss his smell, the smell of oats and wood. ‘My friend, Sergei Nikolaievich, is a good man. He will take care of you,’ he said, stroking my hair. ‘Shanghai will be much safer for you.’
‘And such fine things in Shanghai too,’ said Olga, trying to make me smile. ‘Sergei Nikolaievich is wealthy and will take you to shows and restaurants. It will be much more fun than staying here with us.’
At nightfall, by back roads and across farms, the Pomerantsevs drove me to the port of Dairen where a ship was leaving for Shanghai at sunrise.
When we arrived at the dock, Olga cleaned my face with the sleeve of her dress and slipped the matroshka doll and jade necklace my mother had given me into my coat pocket. I wondered how she had saved them or understood their importance but I had no time to ask her before the ship’s whistle sounded and the passengers were called on board.
‘We have already sent word to Sergei Nikolaievich to expect you,’ she said.
Boris helped me onto the gangway and handed me a small bag packed with a dress, a blanket and some food. ‘Make your way in this world, little one,’ he whispered to me, tears dripping down his face. ‘Make your mother proud. All our dreams now rest with you.’
Later, on the Huangpu River approaching Shanghai, I remembered those words and wondered if I could live up to them.
How many days passed before the towering skyline of Shanghai loomed up in the distance, I do not remember. Perhaps two, perhaps more. I was not conscious of anything except a dark hole that seemed to have opened itself up in my heart, and the stench of opium smoke which choked the air day and night. The steamer was crammed with people fleeing the north, and several of the passengers lay about on their mats like emaciated cadavers, the stubs of their laced cigarettes clenched between their dirty fingers, their mouths like caverns in their faces. Before the war the foreigners had attempted to moderate the damage they had caused by imposing opium on China, but the Japanese invaders had used addiction to subdue the population. They had forced peasants in Manchuria to grow poppies and built factories in Harbin and Dairen to process it. The very poor injected it, the wealthy brewed it in pipes, and just about everyone else smoked it like tobacco. After eight years of occupation, it seemed that every Chinese male on the ship was addicted.
The afternoon we approached Shanghai, the steamer dipped and rose on the muddy river, sending bottles and children rolling. I gripped the railing, my gaze fastened on the makeshift houses that littered either side of the riverbank. They were windowless shacks propped one against the other like stacks of cards. Jammed next to them were rows of factories whose great furnaces exhaled gusts of smoke. The smoke wafted across the narrow, garbage-strewn streets and turned the air into one foul concoction of human waste and sulphur.
The other passengers displayed little interest in the metropolis we were approaching. They remained huddled in small groups, smoking or playing cards. The Russian man next to me was asleep on his blanket, an overturned bottle of vodka by his side and a stream of vomit running down his chest. A Chinese woman squatted next to him, cracking nuts with her teeth and feeding them to her two small children. I wondered how they could be so impassive when I felt that we were being slowly drawn into the world of the damned.
I saw that my knuckles were raw from the breeze and I shoved them into my pockets. My fingers nudged the matroshka doll and I began to cry.
Further on, the slums gave way to a stretch of ports and villages. Men and women lifted their straw hats and looked up at us from their fishing baskets and rice sacks. Dozens of sampans converged on the steamer like carp to a piece of bread. The occupants offered us chopsticks, incense, lumps of coal, and one even held up his daughter. The little girl’s eyes were turned backwards with terror but she didn’t struggle against him. The sight of her made the bruise on my hand twinge, the one my mother had pressed there on our last night in Harbin. It was still swollen and blue. The ache reminded me of the tightness with which she had held it, and the belief her grip had given me that we could never be separated, that she would never let me go.
It was only when we reached the Bund that I could grasp any sense of Shanghai’s legendary wealth or beauty. The air was fresher there and the port full of cruise ships and a white ocean liner whose funnel was letting off steam in preparation for the journey ahead. Next to it a Japanese patrol boat with a gaping hole in the side and its bow half underwater listed against the dock. From the top deck of the steamer I could see the five-star hotel that had made the Bund famous: the Hotel Cathay with its arched windows and penthouse suites, and the line of rickshaws that curved around it like a long piece of string.
We disembarked into a waiting area at street level and were besieged by another wave of hawkers. But the wares the city peddlers offered us were much more exotic than those of the boat people: gold charms, ivory figurines, duck eggs. An old man pulled out a tiny crystal horse from a velvet bag and placed it in my palm. It had been diamond-cut and its planes sparkled in the sunlight. It made me think of the ice sculptures the Russians carved in Harbin, but I had no money in my pocket to spend and I had to hand it back to him.
Most of the passengers were greeted by relatives or whisked away in taxis or rickshaws. I stood alone in the subsiding babble of voices, nauseous with the panic that was rushing through my veins, my eyes flitting to every Western man, hoping that he would be Boris’s friend. The Americans had rigged up open-air screens to play newsreels from around the world of the closure of the war. I watched the scenes of joyous people dancing in the streets, smiling soldiers returning home to their peaches-and-cream wives, the speeches by smug-looking presidents and prime ministers, all subtitled with Chinese characters. It was as if America was trying to convince us that everything would be all right again. The broadcast ended with an honour roll of those countries, organisations and individuals who had helped liberate China from the Japanese. There was one group conspicuously absent from it: the Communists.
A neatly dressed Chinese man appeared before me. He handed me a gold-edged card with my name written on it in a cramped, hurried hand. I nodded and he picked up my bag, gesturing for me to follow him. When he saw that I was hesitant, he said: ‘It’s okay. Mr Sergei sent me. He will meet you at his house.’
On the street, away from the river breeze, the sun produced a sweltering, semitropical heat. Hundreds of Chinese were crouched in the gutters cooking spicy broths or displaying trinkets on blankets. Between them, peddlers pushed wheelbarrows of rice and wood. The manservant helped me into a rickshaw and soon we were being pulled along a road filled with bicycles, rattling tramcars and shiny American Buicks and Packards. I turned my head to look up at the grand colonial buildings, never having seen a city like Shanghai in my life.
The streets off the Bund were a maze of narrow laneways with washing strung from window to window like flags. Baldheaded children with weepy eyes peered curiously from dark doorways. On every corner there seemed to be a food vendor frying something that smelled like rubber, and I was relieved when the rancid air gave way to the aroma of freshly baked bread. The rickshaw ran under an arch and came out into an oasis of cobblestoned streets, Art Deco lamps and shops displaying pastries and antiques in their windows. We turned into a street lined with maple trees and came to a stop outside a high concrete wall. The wall was lime-washed an elegant blue but my eyes fixed on the fragments of broken glass cemented to its top edge and the barbed wire wrapped around the branches of the trees that overhung it.
The manservant helped me down from the rickshaw and rang a bell next to the gate. A few seconds later the g
ate swung open and an elderly Chinese maid greeted us, her face colourless like a corpse against her black cheongsam. She didn’t answer me when I introduced myself in Mandarin. She only lowered her eyes and guided me inside the compound.
The courtyard was dominated by a three-storey house with blue doors and lattice shutters. Another single-storey building was connected to the main house by a covered walkway and I assumed from the bedding slung over the windowsills that it was the servants’ quarters. The manservant handed my bag to the maid and disappeared into the smaller building. I followed the woman across the neat lawn and past flowerbeds bursting with roses the colour of blood.
The entrance hall was spacious with sea-green walls and cream tiles. My footsteps echoed in the space while the maid’s made no sound at all. The silence of the house stirred in me a queer sensation of transience, as if I had passed from life into something that was not life but not quite death either. At the end of the hall I could see another room decorated with red curtains and Persian carpets. Dozens of French and Chinese paintings hung on its pale walls. The maid was about to lead me there when I noticed the woman poised on the staircase. Her milky face was framed by blue-black hair styled in a sleek bob. She fingered the ostrichfeather collar of her dress and considered me for a moment with dark, severe eyes. ‘A very pretty child indeed,’ she said to the maid in English. ‘But so serious-looking. What on earth will I do with that long face around me all day?’
Sergei Nikolaievich Kirillov was nothing like his American wife. When Amelia Kirillova led me into her husband’s study, he immediately stood up from his cluttered desk and embraced me with kisses on both cheeks. His gait was heavy like a bear’s and he was about twenty years older than his wife, who looked my mother’s age. His eyes darted about keenly and, apart from his size, the only frightening thing about him was his thick eyebrows which made him look cross even when he was smiling.
White Gardenia Page 4