“Here, all girls have their feet bound,” the rickshaw man said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “We don’t want their feet to grow; it’s ugly.”
“How come?” Nina said with indignation. “Your women can’t even walk normally, let alone run.”
“That is how it should be. Otherwise, the wives would run away from their husbands.”
Nina frowned, remembering Klim. She was going to get a room in the best hotel in Shanghai, and he had been left behind on that stinking ship.
There is nothing I can do about it now, she thought.
The Astor House doorman was baffled by the shabby appearance of the white guests.
“We have just come back from a hunting trip,” Nina told him in French. “To Swan Lake.”
Reluctantly, the doorman ushered them into the brightly lit lobby.
“I’d almost forgotten that these sorts of places existed,” Nina murmured, gazing at the crystal chandeliers and marble floors.
Paying no attention to the porters gawking at her, she went straight up to the reception desk.
“Hello! We need two adjoining rooms. For a month.”
The receptionist blinked at her in confusion. “But that will be a hundred and fifty dollars, ma’am, and I’m not sure you’re going to be able to—”
“Do you need a deposit?” Nina pulled out a wad of cash from her pocket, which made the receptionist even more flustered.
“Oh no, ma’am, no deposit necessary. Here, in Shanghai, we pay with chits; we’ll send you an invoice later. I hope you enjoy your stay.”
“He didn’t even ask for our passports,” Jiří whispered when they entered the elevator.
“Our white skin is all the passports we need,” Nina replied. “Klim told me that they even offer loans on a white man’s word of honor. Although I’m not sure that’s going to last for much longer.”
The bellboy led Nina and Jiří past stained-glass windows and sumptuous mahogany-paneled walls to a gallery that wound its way around a large ballroom. Downstairs, under a huge glass roof, an orchestra played next to tables covered with pristine white linen.
Nina stopped to look at the dancing couples. Half of the ladies had their hair cut short, and they wore dresses with belts that were fastened at the side to accentuate their hips. Wow!
“What kind of music is this?” Nina asked Jiří.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard anything like it before.”
“And you call yourself a musician?” Nina teased. “Oh, we’re hopelessly behind the times.”
The bellboy informed them that the music was known as jazz, and that the event going on downstairs was tiffin—a kind of late second breakfast complete with cocktails and dances.
He turned the lock on one of the polished doors. “Monsieur, madame, welcome!”
It was a little chilly in the room, and it smelled of lavender soap. Nina put her hat on the neatly made bed, threw the curtains open, and laughed. “Jiří, I love this city!”
After a luxurious bath and breakfast, they decided to go shopping.
Nina was awe struck by Shanghai’s wealth and modernity. She observed the well-heeled crowd promenading down Nanking Road and gasped at the staggering dresses on display in the giant shop windows. The trees had been trimmed, all the sidewalks had trashcans, and dashing traffic policemen stood at the road crossings, waving on pedestrians with their batons.
To all intents and purposes it was a European city, with the exception of the Chinese shop signs, rickshaws, and pedestrians carrying ducks in cages or bundles of cabbage on bamboo yokes.
It now seemed strange to Nina that she had ever been so afraid of emigrating. What was there to miss about ill-starred Russia? Shanghai was a city where you could live life to the full.
While she and Jiří were roaming the Wing On department store, Nina wanted to laugh and cry with happiness. To think that only yesterday she hadn’t even had enough thread to sew a button, and now she could buy herself whatever she wanted: an American photo camera or a set of fine porcelain cups from Japan, or a fine British leather purse, or even a fountain pen with a golden nib. Everything was available if you could afford it, without even waiting in line, and the prices were ridiculously cheap.
Clerks in gray gowns heaped silk on the counter, cut a little nick into the weightless fabric, and then tore it in a perfect line the rest of the way. “Bye-bye makee me pay,” they said. “Mee send chit.”
They didn’t ask for money in the shops, either; it was enough just to show a hotel card and sign for the purchase.
“Jiří, wake me up!” Nina moaned. But Shanghai had completely benumbed his senses as well.
They returned to their hotel completely different people: well-dressed, refreshed, and with a gleam in their eyes.
Nina led Jiří to the big mirror that stretched from the floor to the ceiling.
“This is the real us,” she said, “and this is how we should always remain. We’ve been under a curse, but now it has been lifted forever.”
Jiří glanced at his crippled hand and quickly hid it behind his back. “Yes, you’re right. Most likely.”
That evening, Nina lay in bed reading the menu from the French restaurant as if it were the most delightful novel. “Capon fillet and chestnut mash. Roasted pheasant in a sauce of woodcock mince, bacon, anchovy, and truffles. Mandarin fish aspic with wild saffron rice. Oh Lord, have mercy on us!”
Her feet ached from the shopping marathon, and she hadn’t quite found her land legs after the long days spent at sea. Shopping bags and boxes were spread all over the floor—‘a woman’s basic necessities’ as Klim used to call them.
Thinking of him made her feel uneasy. He would probably be devastated when he learned how she had escaped from the steamer.
There was a quiet knock, and Jiří appeared in her doorway, looking like a choirboy with his neat new haircut and his full-length terrycloth robe.
“I’m sorry to intrude on your daydreams,” he said. “But I have a question. How do you plan to pay for all of this?” He pointed at the shopping bags.
“I’ll think of something,” Nina replied breezily. “I can put an ad in the newspaper: ‘Impeccably bred young lady available to entertain and hold court with the cream of society. One hundred dollars an hour. Satisfaction guaranteed.”
Jiří snickered. “I’ve just read a very similar ad in the newspaper. The young ladies providing this service in Shanghai are geishas from the Japanese settlement, and they’re paid a miserly two dollars an hour.”
2. THE HOUSE OF HOPE
At the age of fifteen Ada Marshall had become an orphan. Her American father, who was contracted to an Izhevsk factory in Siberia, had been killed right at the start of the revolution, and Ada’s Russian mother had died from pneumonia on the refugee ship.
After her mother’s body had been buried at sea, Ada had found a hiding place for herself behind the large crate containing the life jackets, and it was there that she had created her own little world, complete with a red blanket on the floor and the stack of books that her mother had been carrying with her ever since they had left Izhevsk. Ada had stayed cocooned there for weeks, while the refugees negotiated with the Shanghai authorities.
Finally, the Russians were allowed to go ashore, but they had to leave all their weapons behind, and the ships had to remove themselves from Chinese territorial waters.
The news stirred joyfully throughout the ship.
“Come with us, poor child,” Father Seraphim said.