“It’s a deal,” Nina said and, without a second thought, shook Binbin’s hand.
She froze, thinking that it was a very inappropriate move, but to her surprise, Binbin didn’t recoil and returned her handshake heartily.
Klim’s telegram came like a bolt from the blue, and Nina’s spirits immediately revived. It didn’t matter that they were separated by hundreds of miles and that their future was at best precarious. Nina didn’t dare rail against her fate. He was alive!
They needed money to move to another city, and Nina threw herself into her publishing business.
She rented a small house on Babbling Well Road for her office and art studio. Binbin invited her friends to be models, and Nina had her artists on easel duty.
They didn’t have much time. The calendar distributors usually gathered in Shanghai every November. They would meet up at the Green Lotus Tea House to examine drafts and set prices based on sales figures from the previous year.
Artist Shao, a grumpy pessimist, told Nina and Binbin that ten years previously somebody had tried selling calendars with Chinese models but it hadn’t worked out.
“We’re just wasting our time,” he muttered, chewing the end of his thin brush.
But Binbin wasn’t having any of it. “Times change! My first film came out in the middle of summer and they had to entice people in by offering them ice-cold wet towels. No one had ever made that kind of movie before, but we tried and we succeeded. The audience was given the option to ask for their money back in the interval if they didn’t like the film. But there wasn’t a single person who took us up on our offer.”
Nina was pleased that Binbin had stood up for her project. She wanted her to be a colleague and also a friend. They had a lot in common, but they had their cultural differences too. Nina was used to open exchanges of opinion, long working hours, and late informal conversation. But Binbin preferred a much more structured day and a guaranteed lunch at noon. Nina still couldn’t decide whether Binbin was just trying to please her because she was effectively her boss, or whether she really did want the business to be a success.
Binbin quickly realized that Nina knew very little about her target market.
“Why did you ask that model to put her hands behind her head?” she asked.
“What’s wrong with that?” Nina said. “I don’t want her to sit as though she’s in church.”
“It’s very important to keep everything decent. If the pose is too vulgar, the only people who will buy your calendars are drunken soldiers.”
“Is putting your hands behind the head vulgar?”
“Of course. It’s an inviting gesture.”
They had disagreements on politics as well. Binbin was convinced that China needed a revolution to sweep away the warlords and the “white ghosts” who funded and protected them.
“You have no idea how it will all end,” Nina said sadly. “Revolutions often start out with good intentions but always end in hunger and tyranny.”
“Don’t you think it’s a tyranny that Chinese people living in their own country are not allowed to go to their own parks?” said Binbin.
They soon realized that it was better not to talk about these things if they didn’t want to end up fighting.
After a lot of hard work, they had a dozen sample calendars ready by November, and the distributors from the Green Lotus Tea House agreed to give them a try. Nina and Binbin were so thrilled that they threw a party for the artists and models.
Shao cautiously tried one of the Russian pies Nina offered him.
“The world has gone mad,” he said. “People have no idea what they are putting into their bodies anymore, and they forget to pray to the spirits of the ancestors. There’s no good can come of it,” he muttered. However, he didn’t a refuse a second pie.
The next day, Nina sent a cable to Canton:
The samples are on their way. Looking forward to seeing the provider to discuss our plans.
But she never got a reply from Klim—neither from this cable, nor the next one she sent.
18. THE DIARY
Daniel returned home, and Edna decided not to reproach him for his affair. They needed to make a fresh start, but things didn’t go quite as she had expected. During the day, Daniel was always in a hurry, and he spent his evenings at the Shanghai Club where women were denied access.
Every day Daniel would insult Edna—not directly with his words but with his coldness and reluctance to spend any time alone with her. She could tell that he no longer felt at home in Shanghai. She could see it in everything he did—the way he talked to servants and the way he couldn’t even remember where his neckties were in his own dressing room. Daniel wasn’t even pretending to “visit Edna”—her house was no more than a temporary shelter for him.
Edna began to lose sleep over her predicament.
It was late. She had already gone to bed, but Daniel had still not returned from the club yet.
She was listening out for the slightest sounds from the street—the sound of a car parking, somebody’s steps echoing along the pavement. Was it Daniel? No, it was only the neighbors.
Edna felt terribly thirsty. She pulled down her nightgown, which had rolled up around her armpits, and headed downstairs into the dining room. The house was as dark and quiet as an old cemetery. The carpets seemed as soft as moss, and the dark silhouettes of the heavy furniture looked like ancient tombstones.
Edna saw a man standing by the window and shrieked.
“It’s me,” Daniel said flatly. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
She approached him and sat on the window sill. A night bird was chirping in the garden. The air smelled of cigarette smoke and damp earth.
Daniel moved into the shade where Edna couldn’t see his face.
“Is there something you wanted to ask?” he said.
“Yes… I need your help,” Edna hurriedly said. “It’s about a bill. My friends and I are trying to impose a ban on child labor, at least within the International Settlement limits. But we’re at a deadlock.”
“What are you talking about?” Daniel said, annoyed.
Edna knew that her words sounded out of place. Should they really discuss bills in the middle of the night? But what else could she say to her husband? Since his return home, they’d had little to talk about.
Daniel made a step towards the door, and she was afraid that he was going to leave.
“Did you know,” Edna said, “that the owners of the silk mills make little girls pull the silk cocoons out of boiling water? These children have permanently scalded hands. The Moral Welfare League has initiated a bill prohibiting child labor, but the Chinese unions threaten to go on strike if our bill passes. It seems they don’t want to do anything to better the lot of their own children.”
Daniel took the matchbox from the mantelpiece and lit his cigarette. The orange flame illuminated his tired face for a few seconds.
“Did you know that these kids are often the only breadwinners in their large families?” he said. “Their parents frequently can’t find work, so if you discharge the children tomorrow, they and their parents will starve to death.”
Edna was taken aback. “And what’s your suggestion? Leave things as they are? Let the children continue to be scalded with boiling water? Let them breathe in cotton dust in the factory shops? They don’t play, they don’t go to school, and if they die, other kids will immediately be sent from nearby villages to take their places. They don’t have a single chance in life!”
“If you want these poor children to have a chance, you will have to create a society where their parents will be able to provide for them,” Daniel said, sighing. “What kind of schooling are you talking about, for goodness sake? Here, in China, even adults have the most primitive education. Their most advanced idea is to take money away from the rich.”