There was a surprisingly large crowd at Katya’s funeral—many just curious to see the infamous and disgraced Ms. Kupina.
Nina was too wrapped up in herself to notice anyone, let alone take offense. In the church and then at the cemetery, she stood apart from everyone else, a fragile figure with a thick black veil pulled over her velvet hat.
“Leave me alone,” she repeated lifelessly whenever anybody came up to her to offer their condolences.
After the funeral, Klim took her to the House of Hope, so she wouldn’t have to deal with all this “sympathy.”
She entered the apartment and slumped down on a stool in the kitchen.
Ada stared at her with wide eyes. “What’s that on your breast?” she asked, noticing two wet spots spreading on Nina’s black dress.
Nina looked at her blankly. “It’s the milk that should be feeding my daughter.”
Hearing this, Klim felt crushed inside.
Evening fell, the room became dark, and Ada wanted to light the lamp, but it had run out of oil.
Klim rose. “I’ll go and get some.” He had to do something; he couldn’t just sit next to Nina, slowly sinking with her into utter despair.
He grabbed his umbrella and went out into the street. Low chanting voices could be heard from the Buddhist temple on the corner, competing with the noisy street stalls parked at its gate.
“Fresh almond and lotus seed squash for sale!” the street sellers yelled. “Hot shrimp soup! Noodles! Rice noodles!”
It seemed to Klim that he could hear the sound of a baby crying over their shouts. Now I’m beginning to hallucinate, he thought.
“Flavored tea eggs! Pancakes! Watermelon seeds!”
Klim passed along the temple fence and almost tripped over a pile of rags lying under a streetlamp. Without knowing why he inspected the rags with the tip of his umbrella… and froze. It was a new-born Chinese girl with her umbilical cord still attached to her belly. She was no longer crying but jerked her little hands, blue with cold.
Klim looked around. The mother, of course, was nowhere to be seen. He knew that prostitutes and beggars often abandoned their unwanted children in the street in the hope that someone might pick them up. If no one did, then the baby wouldn’t have long to suffer, an hour or two at most. According to the statistics, up to forty dead street children or abandoned babies were found in Shanghai every day.
Klim unbuttoned his coat and held the baby next to his chest as though she were a puppy.
It was a coincidence that bordered on the miraculous, as if the benevolent Chinese gods had taken pity on him and placed Katya’s soul into a new body. She was not a white girl, but in the greater scheme of things, race and color were not really their concern.
He ran to the House of Hope, bounded up the staircase to his apartment. The light was on in the kitchen; Ada had found a church candle and placed it up on the shelf they used for dishes.
Klim grabbed Ada’s apron hanging from a nail in the wall, put it on the kitchen table, and carefully took the baby from his bosom.
Nina watched in horror at the disheveled big-headed creature with its eyes screwed up into small slits.
“Where did you get it from?” she gasped. “Take it away!”
“It’s too late,” said Klim, panting. “In China, if you save someone’s soul, you have to take care of it until you or it dies. The baby is hungry. Your breasts are swollen with milk. You’ll feel better if you feed her.”
“Are you crazy?”
“She’s going to die!”
“Do you think you are going to replace my Katya with—this?”
Ada put her hands on her hips. “And you’re very much mistaken if you think I’m going to put up with a screaming child in my apartment. You should take it to a convent or an orphanage. The nuns will take care of it.”
“The child will stay here,” Klim said stubbornly.
“How are you going to feed her?” cried Ada. “You’re at work all day long.”
Without taking her half-mad eyes from Klim, Nina ran her hand over her breast. Her hands were shaking, but she nevertheless began to unbutton her mourning dress.
Ada howled in disgust. “It’s probably covered in lice.”
“And so were you when we first arrived here,” Klim barked. “Now do me a favor, go to your room.”
With an offended air, Ada stomped out of the kitchen, slamming the door so hard that the candle flame went out.
Nina sobbed in the dark.
“Do you really want to keep this child?” She sounded like a person on the verge of doing herself a mischief but still hoping for salvation.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it… but if we don’t—” Klim hesitated and avoided finishing his sentence.
He heard the stool scrape across the kitchen floor in the darkness. The girl mewled softly and smacked her lips. Klim sighed, relieved. Nina had chosen the path that led to life.
He found the matchbox and lit the candle. Nina was sitting with her eyes closed, tears streaming from under her lashes.
“There you go,” Klim said, forcing a smile. “Now you’re caring for her as well.”
“This is an insult to the memory of my daughter,” Nina said. “No one could ever replace her.”
“I would never want her to replace Katya. But I believe she’s been given to us to fill the gaping hole.”
Nina was silent for a long time.
“It’s my fault that Katya died,” she said at last. “I didn’t tell you, but three days ago, Wyer called me and told me to get out of Shanghai. He said, ‘I don’t care who the father of your baby is. People believe that she’s Daniel Bernard’s daughter, and I will not have you and her bringing disgrace down on my family.’ I refused to leave, and then he rang again and said I would have no one to blame but myself for what was about to happen.”
“Do you think that Wyer sent someone to kill Katya?”
“The car deliberately swerved onto the sidewalk, hitting the nanny and the pram. If I had been taking her out for a walk that day, it would have been me that died.”
Nina buttoned up her dress and rose, still holding the girl.
“Let her stay with me for a while. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this milk.”
Klim nodded slowly. He could hardly take in what he had heard.
Klim called for a taxi and accompanied Nina to her house.
He imagined that every driver coming towards them was an assassin sent to kill Nina.
“Be extremely careful,” he told her repeatedly. “Lock the doors and close all the shutters. What if we really do have to leave Shanghai?”
“It’s not going to be possible for the time being,” Nina said. “You can only work at an English language newspaper or news agency, so our only options are Peking or Hong Kong. But we have to get there first and we don’t have enough money.”
Their situation was untenable: Klim lived from one paycheck to the next, and Nina’s account had been frozen.
At her house, they put the baby into Katya’s outfit. It seemed unreal to see her lying in the bed where only two days earlier their baby had been sleeping.
Nina started to cry again, and Klim hurriedly took her out of the nursery.
“We’re not going to give up,” he whispered, hugging Nina’s shoulders.
Klim was afraid that she would say that there was no ‘we,’ but she said nothing. Emboldened a little, he recited his reassurances like an incantation: “Everything will be alright. Everything will fall into place.”
“It really doesn’t matter to you, what child is lying in that bed,” Nina said suddenly, with a tortured look in her eyes. “But why are letting me know about this now? Why now?”
Klim was taken aback. “I’m just trying to help you.”
“Exactly!” Nina freed herself from his arms. “These aren’t your sufferings. You’re not sharing them with me, you’re just another ‘sympathizer.’ You would never have brought me this Chinese girl if you had thought Katya was your daughter. As far as you were concerned, Katya was just my toy, and you really don’t see the difference between her and this other girl lying in that nursery. You think that if one toy is lost or broken, you can always just get me another one.”