“I can’t,” Ada protested. “It’s a private diary. Klim didn’t send it to me but to Nina Kupina.”
“What has she got to do with Klim Rogov?”
“The two of them were married back in Russia. But she never fully appreciated him—she seems to be like that with all the men she meets.”
Daniel took out his cigarette case, but no matter how hard he tried to get the lighter to work, his fingers betrayed him.
Ada obligingly offered him a match.
“So let me get this straight,” Daniel said inhaling deeply. “You haven’t given Nina Mr. Rogov’s diary yet?”
“I didn’t have time. I have so much to do at work, and—”
He counted out forty dollars. “That’s more than enough to pay off your debts. Now translate for me what Mr. Rogov has written.”
Ada looked at the money, then at Daniel, and nearly in tears she nodded her assent.
Ada was sitting at the open window, recounting to Daniel what was written in the small notebook with the worn corners.
Daniel listened to her, stunned. Only now did he realize what his acquaintances had been talking about when they had been dropping hints about some baby. Nina had had a daughter, and everybody had decided that Daniel was the father of the child.
As God was his witness, Daniel had had no intention of starting an affair with Nina Kupina. But this woman had attracted him like the mystical will-o’-the-wisp lights that lead travelers astray at night in fairy tale forests.
She had reminded him of the magical foxes of Chinese and Japanese folklore who could transform themselves into beguiling women. In China, they were known as húli jīng and in Japan kitsune. With their magical abilities, these vixens could fool men into falling in love with them. And woe to the man who failed to recognize the bushy tail concealed beneath her silk robe. Even if she were to reciprocate the love of a mere mortal, nothing good could ever come of it. Sooner or later the fox would reveal her true nature.
“What has made Nina and I so angry and suspicious?” Ada continued reading Klim’s diary. “We have fenced ourselves in with barbed wire and minefields only to become the victims of the traps that we ourselves have created.”
Daniel clenched his jaw and fists until they hurt. Then he tried exhaling to relax but to no avail. He was overwhelmed by an all-consuming, suffocating jealousy. How was it even possible for that man, Edna’s courier or whoever he was, to dream about Nina?
Back then, in 1923, Daniel had tried to reduce his relationship with Nina to a game between two adults who enjoyed living in opulent style, engaging in ironic debate, and abandoning themselves to an all-consuming but obligation-free lasciviousness. But Nina’s intentions had turned out to be serious, and this had discouraged Daniel. What had she seriously expected him to do? Marry her? The idea was too absurd.
He had realized all that but had waited for his orders to go south with a heavy heart. He could see his life being reduced to a shapeless lump like a festival marquee that has crumpled to the ground after its main pole has been snapped in a storm. No longer would he enjoy the almost excruciatingly painful anticipation of their trysts, or the furtive exchange of stolen looks or ambiguous, witty remarks, which he loved to recall at the end of the day.
On arriving in Canton, Daniel had tried to spend as much of his time as possible in the cockpit. He had slept six hours a day and eaten whatever came to hand. He had done everything he could to exhaust himself completely so that he would have no time to wallow in his fond memories. What was the point of regretting that which was beyond his reach?
Klim Rogov had made no mention of Comrade Krieger or the airfield in his diary. When Ada finished reading it, she wanted to put it back in the drawer, but Daniel wouldn’t let her.
“Give it to me,” he said.
Ada silently handed him the notebook.
“I’ll increase your salary, so you can pay your rent,” Daniel said curtly and left the apartment.
The Filipino women were hanging their laundry in the courtyard, and the tortured sound of a badly played violin was coming from the open window.
Daniel felt dizzy as if he had been poisoned. As soon as he got home, he locked himself in his studio.
So, the kitsune woman that had driven him crazy had given birth to another man’s baby. A hatred for her flared up within Daniel and then as quickly receded. He reproached himself and then Nina, laughing hoarsely. Then he began to leaf through Klim’s diary, tightly packed with its small Slavic letters.
I should kill that son of a bitch right away, he thought in impotent rage.
That evening, Daniel sent a cable to Canton demanding to find out what had happened to Rogov.
He couldn’t work out why he felt such a strong resentment for Klim—there was nothing to be envious of. And yet he felt like an ugly freak who has been spurned on the dance floor by a beautiful woman for a handsome and inspiring tango dancer.
It was a mystery to him how he could ever have let another man have Nina. What had he, Daniel Bernard, been doing with his life instead? Serving Sun Yat-sen’s cause at the expense of his own? Propping up a joke of a marriage with Edna for the sake of the ties that her brute of a father had to offer?
Daniel had desperately wanted to possess and take Nina away with him, no matter the cost. He was sure she had been ready to love him. Her pregnancy had been an irrelevance. She could always have had an abortion.
Daniel felt as though he had missed the greatest chance of his life. He was thirty-eight; all he had to look forward to was a civil war and, quite possibly, a senseless death, but he still hadn’t experienced even the palest semblance of the love that Klim Rogov had enjoyed.
19. YIN AND YANG
Don Fernando replied to Daniel Bernard’s telegram telling him that he had been with Klim Rogov when they both came under artillery fire and that the fugitive journalist had been struck on the head by a falling statue of the Guan Yin goddess. It appeared that the celestial forces had decided to come to Daniel’s aid.
On his return to Shanghai Daniel had bought the Avro 504 from the Cossacks, and every day now, he went up in the air to spy on the movements of the warships on the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers. He made a point of flying over Nina’s house on these reconnaissance missions. Sometimes he would see a woman’s silhouette down below, and every time his heart felt as if it were falling into an abyss.
I’ll get her back, he repeated to himself, but still he didn’t dare visit Nina. After all that had happened between them, he was worried that she might not let him into her house.
He found out through Tony Aulman that Nina had started a calendar publishing business and that she had hired an actress named Hua Binbin to help. Daniel arranged a meeting with Binbin and learned that she was dreaming of shooting a film of her own but so far had failed to find any sponsorship. The issue of women’s rights she was trying to address was too divisive, and the authorities could easily end up banning the movie, which would lead to financial losses for everyone involved.
Daniel found a way of inveigling himself into Binbin’s confidence. He told his wife about the screenplay, and Edna immediately coughed up the money for the good cause.
Binbin didn’t know how to thank the Bernards. Excited, she began preparing for the movie, working at Nina’s publishing house in the mornings and rehearsing with her fellow actors in the evenings. Now, instead of the Shanghai Club, Daniel would go to see her on the set and make casual inquiries about Nina.