THE YEAR OF THE RAT
By Lucille Bellucci
Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2011 by Lucille Bellucci
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Renato, I remember us
Preface
So many said Mao Tse-tung would not change the China they had always known. It was only a civil war; business would resume, China would absorb this alteration in its government to fit and continue to be as good to its taipans as before. Later, the phrase “How The Far East Was Lost” would resound in the halls of the United States State Department, and in endless articles on the phenomenon, for good or ill, that the revolution had wrought.
Acknowledgements
I owe so much to my sister Maria and my brother Victor for their patient instruction of what occurred in the years when I was too young to remember all of it, and my friend Emily Chung for supplying me with the name Ming Chu, which means Bright Pearl, a perfection of choice for the woman she was. I am grateful to my friend Paul Fletcher for his knowledge of insignia and uniform, his reminiscences of the Jeep known to the troops as the Double Deuce, and for connecting me with the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and always, as in my entire life with him, my husband Renato for his devotion in helping me.
CHAPTER ONE
The house was full. That is to say, five of the nine tables were occupied, the best showing since The Camellia opened six months ago. Maria Conti had objected to that name the moment Zoya had thought it up. A night club that was really only a hole to drink in, called The Camellia? Could they hope to attract the American servicemen who threw their dollars around like funeral paper money in genuine night clubs like the Lido, Del Monte, Delmonico’s, Eventail, Merry Widow, Ciro’s, and the splendid Metropole? Not to speak of the Palace Hotel, where they hired the best bands and acts?
Zoya was stubborn, and her friend Galia, who sympathized with her sentimental fancies, sided with Zoya. Oh, by all means, let’s keep her dreams alive, said Maria, And of course as our partner she’s going to share in our zero profits from running a nothing place called The Camellia with pink walls and a bandstand big enough for two infant mandolinists. In reply, Galia had uttered one of the imprecations that sounded twice as menacing in Russian and kissed her cheek.
Maria was outvoted, regardless. Her money covered ten percent of the startup costs; Galia and Zoya owned the major shares. Yet she worked the same hours, helped with the books, helped with the bar, and helped with the kitchen, where the sole dish produced by their chef was a dubious sort of club sandwich. Yung made his own mayonnaise with peanut oil. For bacon, he had found a cheap substitute, a Chinese ham whose origins only he knew.
She also served as hostess. When necessary, she emerged from behind the stubby little bar and took orders from the customers. The cotton dress she wore clung like silk because of frequent washings; it was nothing she could help. Her father had never visited here and so cherished a belief that Maria worked in the office as full-time bookkeeper. Her mother, Maria knew, had understood from the beginning what she did because she understood her daughter.
A rating from the HMS Amethyst, berthed across the Whangpo River at Pootung, whistled as she crossed the floor. She knew she possessed certain physical assets. They came from both parents: her Italian father, a tall man whose hair, when he had had any, was auburn; her Soochow mother, a slender woman with a fair complexion and delicate features.
She asked the rating if the drinks and his meal were to his satisfaction.
“Not so you’d notice. Then the view improved things,” he said gallantly. He was sweet, with his clipped hair and baby’s mouth. Maria was twenty-four, and often she was amazed she was not older. The war had wrought powerful lessons during the Japanese occupation. In fact, the American assaults on the city to drive away the Japanese had hardly been much easier on the people of Shanghai than the Japanese soldiers had been.
“Another drink?”
The rating turned to his companion, the Russian who had brought him here. Maria’s partner Galia disliked her compatriot, particularly his habit of escorting enlisted men around town. The sailor appeared to be no older than a schoolboy, a fact that worried Maria. The Russian’s name was Grigory Gromeko. Galia said he had been a spy for the Japanese, then he had been a pimp when the Americans had taken back Shanghai, and though he no longer pimped—as far as Galia knew—he went regularly to all the night spots in Shanghai. Oh, then we are officially a night spot? Maria said. Galia laughed. Don’t be a wise ass, malenki, little one.
Gromeko smiled, showing neglected teeth, and said politely, “For me, cointreau. My friend will have another Johnny Walker, Black Label, no ice.”
Maria nodded and reminded them to pick up their drinks at the bar. She was a hostess, not a waitress. The Camellia, she told the customers, was still interviewing for the post of waitress. This information was often taken for the joke it truly was, for the city overflowed with women of a dozen nationalities who were out of work and would have taken the job for twenty American dollars a month. The Camellia budget concentrated on stocking the best whiskies and brandies, now that these were available again. The partners were fully agreed on that. Quality spread the word for itself and would attract quality spenders. In Maria’s private opinion this was as likely as her other partner, Zoya getting her dream husband and house with camellias in the garden.
She collected more drink orders. The civilians were Portuguese, Filipino, and perhaps a Frenchman who looked as though he were out of work. All asked for Tsingtao beer. It was good beer, but not profitable.
The record on her father’s old gramophone lapsed into hisses. She put on another one, “Blue Heaven,” and caught an incredulous grin from the British sailor. Well, it was old, and she was old. She held out her arms to him and smiled. He got up at once, the grin pulling down at the corners. She knew that look. Assailed by groin and armpit aromas of sexual arousal, Maria held him a staid six inches from herself. Zoya’s beloved pink walls, cloaked in dim lighting, whirled gently around them as they foxtrotted to the clomping beat. Sometimes Maria was almost convinced that this illusion of a night club was working.
“I don’t want to spoil your evening,” she murmured into the rosy ear of the sailor, “but do watch your pockets around Gromeko, would you? Perhaps you should get together with some of your own shipmates before you leave our club.”
Before the sailor, pulling back to look at her, could respond, Galia appeared behind him; her pale face, broad of cheekbone and balanced by a long upcurved nose, was unaccustomedly flushed. She tapped the sailor on the shoulder. “I always cut in on the good-looking ones.” To Maria she said softly, “Go and see what Yung’s moaning about. I don’t know what the hell he wants.”
As soon as he saw Maria, Yung burst out in the Shanghai dialect, “Upstairs, hsiao-tzia. The landlady wants you up there. Something terrible has happened!” Maria saw blood on his apron, smelled something burning and scanned him up and down and then around the kitchen. Had someone attacked him? Had he attacked someone?
Understanding, Yung said, “No. Not me. I only cut my finger, the landlady gave me such a fright. Go upstairs. She’s waiting for you.”
The stairs behind the kitchen led to a second floor. The moldy treads gave no one privacy, singing their news to the world: steady creaking—a woman; a lopsided creak along with a screech—a woman and her man of the moment. Galia did not trust the shaky structure and always trod on the edge, near the wall. On the first landing, Maria saw the landlady standing in a doorway, her hands clamped over her nose and mouth. The smell of burning yet not burning was strong, a smoky bluish gas of a smell that made Maria cough.
The landlady pushed Maria inside the room. “Look at this disgrace,” she said harshly. “Your dirty foreigners can never be trusted. I don’t care what her trouble was, just get her out of here by tonight.”
Maria took in the figure on the bed and the charcoal brazier beside it. She ran to the window and flung it wide, then bent over the girl. “Tasha,” she said, shaking the shoulders and knowing the girl had gone beyond this room. She tried to lift her, but the inert weight was too much. “Help me get her away,” she panted.
The landlady did not move. She looked tired. “You know it isn’t any use. She must have started that thing burning yesterday. One night will do what she wanted from it.”
“Could you fetch Zoya for me, Chen Tai-Tai?” As she asked this, she realized there was nothing to keep her from going to find Zoya herself. But the landlady turned and walked to Zoya’s room, two doors down. The middle room belonged to Galia. Mrs. Chen tapped on the door, then again, harder. Zoya’s voice, high-pitched and annoyed, told the knocker to go away. Mrs. Chen continued rapping with her knuckles. At last Zoya opened the door, tying the sash to her flowered robe, her hair a black tangle. “I need to sleep,” she complained. “Last night was awful, the customers were awful. You know how tired I get.”
At the door of Tasha’s room, Maria beckoned. “Over here, Zoya. You’re needed tonight.”
“What’s that smell?” Reluctantly Zoya advanced to Tasha’s room. “Oh, my God.” She began to wail. At the age-old tones of lament, heard everywhere outside on the streets, coming out of demolished doorways, from heaps of rubble where refugees made their shelters, from mothers rocking dead babies to shrunken breasts, until Maria dreamed that she was the one uttering these cries, she felt her control begin to crumble. She had listened to enough nightmare shrieks of pain and grief and loss during the war. The respite had been brief after the surrender of Japan and Germany. Three years afterward, the sounds of anguish had begun again all over the city.
Zoya clung, weeping, under Maria’s chin. “You have to get Galia. I can’t go down like this.”
“I know. Get dressed as quick as you can.” Maria detached herself from Zoya and went downstairs.
Galia was dispensing drinks. Several more customers had wandered in; unbelievably, all the tables were taken. Of all nights for business to pick up, thought Maria. “Tasha is dead,” she told Galia. And she had done it the Chinese way; the newspapers no longer considered killing oneself by coal gas news.
“Over to you,” Galia said, and left.
Maria finished making up the drinks.
A short while later Zoya appeared. Dressed and powdered, her hair swept up over “rats” in the current popular fashion, she looked nearly herself. Her pink walls were kind to the hung-over swelling of her eyes. “You’d better go up and help her. I can’t do it.”
Zoya’s tender heart. If Galia coddled her, Maria could do no less.
Mrs. Chen had gone; she had set the charcoal brazier, perilously balanced, on the windowsill. The fumes had thinned but not by much; a muggy August breeze barely stirred the short curtains. Wearing rubber gloves, Galia stood over Tasha. A huge wad of cotton wool sat on Tasha’s stomach. Her dress had been pulled over her hips, her panties a little heap at the foot of the narrow bed. Her bare feet and pretty ankles turned outward, an attitude of helplessness that made Maria want to weep.
“We have to hurry,” Galia said, all nurselike. Well, she had been a nurse, that was why she was the one they all had thought of right away.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Turn her over. Here, we’ll do it together.”
She was forced to lean over Tasha’s face as she slipped her hands under the body and pulled and heaved her over in concert with Galia. In muted horror Maria saw that Galia had stuffed cotton wool in Tasha’s mouth and nostrils. The girl’s flesh had hardened; her right arm thumped against the wall like a stick of firewood. Only nineteen, Maria thought, staring at the smooth skin of Tasha’s averted jaw. There were parents, who lived in Frenchtown in a decent enough apartment. Tasha spoke good English, having graduated from the British School. She had enjoyed advantages few Russian emigres ever attained.
As Galia worked, she cursed men. She wished unspeakable disease upon the universe’s race of males, their male offspring, and upon the male get of those offspring. Had Maria not known her well, the ferocity of her curses would have convinced her that Galia hated men. The true Galia loved them at the same time she despised them; she kidded them while she pitied them. She had a lover, a Norwegian sea captain who put into Shanghai twice a year and each time asked her to marry him. Seeing you twice a year is enough, Galia said. Any more would make me dislike you.
Maria had found a comb on the dresser and busied herself with Tasha’s hair at the back of her skull. This is stupid, she thought, but kept on tugging at the matted hair. Anything to keep from looking at what Galia was doing. She felt grateful for the obliterating smell of coal gas. The charcoal must have been mixed with cheap coal briquettes, for the carbon monoxide from pure charcoal was almost odorless. They had not found her soon enough; the sheet beneath her body was already stained.
“Is…was she pregnant?” she asked.
“What else?” Galia said, busy packing cotton. “About three months, I’d say. Those parents of hers think they are still in Russia. The mother acts more like an aristocrat than she ever was in Russia. A lousy baroness. Did she expect Tasha to find a prince?”
“Was he that sergeant? The one who came downstairs with her sometimes for a drink?”
“Of course. It was Love, darling,” said Galia in a good imitation of Zoya’s breathy style. Maria had never heard her make fun of Zoya before.
“And he left with his unit,” guessed Maria. “And she never heard from him again.”
Galia shrugged. “We’d better turn her onto her back again.” When they had done so, she picked up the soiled panties and put them back on Tasha and pulled her dress down. Then she stripped off her rubber gloves. “Do I call the police, or will you?”
“I’ll do it.” Galia would nev er manage it right, with the broken Chinese that she spoke.
“All right, I leave it with you. But tell them to be careful taking her down the stairs or they will crash through that rotten wood. And before you do that little thing,” Galia said, her dark eyes large and glistening, “send me up a bottle of the best, would you? A nice, full one, Black Label. And a big glass.”
Maria was exhausted when she chased the customers out at two o’clock and closed up. Normally she let them stay as long as they were buying, which they were doing tonight. Daniele had been sitting at the near table the last hour, his haughty countenance as usual out of place in an atmosphere of tipsy conviviality. The glass of water in front of him remained full. Though Maria kept assuring him that Yung always‘ boiled their water supply for twenty minutes, Daniele only pretended to drink it, for her sake.
When she had locked the door, he took her arm and they walked toward Garden Bridge and the former International Settlement. Across the street, lights showed at only a few windows at the Astor House Hotel. The Astor was moldy with age and not located in the center of life downtown. Next to the Astor stood the Japanese Consulate, and next to that the Russian Consulate. Their people seldom dropped in at The Camellia. On the corner opposite The Camellia stood the sixteen-story structure of Broadway Mansions. At this hour, people still came and went; the building housed a good restaurant and bar (an excellent reason why The Camellia got only the enlisted men along with the usual down-and-out Europeans). The Foreign Correspondents Club occupied some of thòe floors and she knew that American military personnel did mysterious things on some of the others.
Daniele said, “I hate it when you get so tired. It makes me feel like a pimp, to see you pandering to all those men.”
How would he feel if she told him what had happened upstairs tonight? She had no intention of telling him anything. One word, and he would start in again about finding a respectable job in the Settlement. He had told her last night there was an opening for a cashier at Jimmy’s Cafe on Nanking Road. Cashier! She could never explain in a hundred nights that working for herself was better than committing her future to the drudgery of a job behind a cash register. How long could Jimmy’s survive when the Reds broke through to Shanghai? Jimmy, the owner, was an American; he would get out with the rest. She and Galia had worked for that epitome of American might, the petroleum company Caltex, which shut up shop and let them go to scramble for themselves. How long, for that matter, could The Camellia keep open? Her owners were two Russian emigres with no passports and one Italian citizen with no cash. It was all the same. The Reds would level everybody as they saw fit. Daniele dealt from a position righteous as it was unjust; he received a monthly pension check from the Italian Navy via the Italian consulate. And he was free to go home anytime he pleased to his wife and two children in Bari. Maria did not insist on sending him away because his presence, abrasive, confining, often tiresome, was still that of a man who loved her. It was a comfort in a world of rare comforts.
“I love walking with you, Dani, it’s such a peaceful night and it’s finally cooled off, but could we please catch a pedicab now? My feet hurt.”
“Not until we get over the Bridge.” The pedicab drivers always wanted more money on the Hongkew side because of the hump in the center of the Bridge. You either held a loud, long, bargaining session, or you walked to the other side.
Perfectly aware that Daniele thought he was disciplining her by making her walk, Maria laughed, and as expected he stiffened and snapped, “What was that for?”
“Nothing, caro. You’re sweet, you really are. There’s a rickshaw. I’m going to get him.”
And she did, giving in at once to the man’s outrageous price while Daniele stood by no doubt seething. When they were settled in the narrow seat—rickshaws were built for one—Maria snuggled against him and Daniele, unwillingly pleased, put his arms around her. Males had their uses; their strong arms felt wonderful when you had need of them. For a little while tonight she would draw strength from Daniele, who loved her. She was fond of him, and sometimes she did love him, especially when he helped her father.
On the other side of Garden Bridge they passed the British Consulate at the head of the Bund. A single light burned, on the ground floor. Foreign nationals (her own father included) still believed the fighting between the Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists had nothing to do with them. Despite the refugees flooding into the city, despite the hasty evacuation of foreigners from the major cities of Peking to the north and Chungking to the west, people who were not Chinese refused to believe anything was really going to change for them.
China has had so many revolutions, they insisted. The foreign nationals are needed here, for business and the routes to the West, you know.
The bobbing of the rickshaw went on and on, off the Bund to Nanking Road, then into Bubbling Well Road, passing a late tram, mostly empty, at the corner of Yates Road. Home was at the opposite end of the International Settlement, on the western edge of the French Concession which everyone called Frenchtown. Grayish lumps of bedding, ten thousand watchers in the night freeholding their bits of sidewalk, lined Maria’s route home. She fell asleep.
When the rickshaw finally halted, near three o’clock in the morning, in front of her lane on Route Magy, Daniele pushed away her hand holding the money and paid the coolie himself. Round two for him, and he was welcome to it. She was glad that he did not have the coolie take them two blocks farther to the room he rented in a house on Tifeng Road. Rather than physical love she longed for a soak in a tub and to wash her hair. He had not commented on the smell in her hair, probably having lumped that in with all the cheap cigarettes smoked in The Camellia.
The lane of stucco row houses was cluttered with garbage, as usual. Yesterday’s rain had backed up the drains at the last house, which belonged to the Contis, so that she had to hop over the puddle to the doorsill. Out of habit, she stamped her heels down noisily going past the door of the Wong apartment, then tiptoed up the stairs to the Conti apartment on the second floor. Their living quarters consisted of two rooms, a bath and a kitchen. Her parents occupied one room, and she and Nola shared a bed in the rear portion of the dining room. Curtains divided their cubicle from the eating section. Amah slept in the kitchen on a pallet. Maria teased her about her snoring, calling them roars, and Amah always protested that the hsiao-tzia was exaggerating.
In the bathroom, Maria pushed the open window wider, turned on the gas to the pilot of the ancient gas water heater, lit it with a match, then stepped back as far as the door and waited for the loud fwoom! of the gas jets coming alive. Twice in the past year the steady gas leak, though infinitesimal, had blown the hood off the heater.
Bathed, weary, her hair at last free of coal fumes, Maria lifted the mosquito netting and crawled into the double bed and found her sister sprawled on her face on Maria’s side of it. She felt for a small hip and pushed. Nola responded by humping on her stomach, like a caterpillar, a few inches east.
Maria sighed. “Nola, my child, one of these days I am going to…” She leaned over, but Nola knew what was coming and ducked before Maria could blow into her ear.
“Were there lots of customers tonight? Did you get any dollars?” asked Nola professionally.
Maria stretched out and stared at the dim white canopy of their mosquito netting. “We did all right,” she said.
CHAPTER TWO
A decade ago, Leopoldo Felice Conti, known to his friends as Poldo, had been a man of means, a business force within the international community. He had owned two freighters, which carried woven silk and raw flax and cotton, wicker and rattan furniture, and wheat and rice to Hong Kong, Singapore and India. In exchange his ships steamed back with manufactured goods, radios, refrigerators, automobiles, European furniture, the latest American films made in Hollywood, and electric cables for Hungjao. Hungjao was the burgeoning country enclave of foreigners west of the Settlement.
His glory days. A handshake sealed a contract. Not one had ever been dishonored.
His old Chinese partners, for all he knew, were either still flourishing, or had journeyed the slow, humiliating slide to poverty, as he had. It was possible they survived better than he; their ships had not been sunk in the Whangpo on Pearl Harbor Day. Perhaps his friends were safe and prosperous in Hongkong; he hoped so. Unlike him, they would have had the acumen to know when a good thing was over even when the war ended in 1945. If they could see what he was doing now!
Peering at labels—his eyesight not what it had been—he measured out, into a large glass pitcher:
1.3 oz. Butyric Acid
2 oz. Acetic Acid, 66% by volume (he was still experimenting with the proportions)
1/2 oz. Acetic Ether
1/2 oz. Butyric Ether
24 drops Oil of Caraway
The door opened and Nola came in, home from school. This second child of his and Ming Chu’s always caused a a hurtful twinge of the heart when he saw her like this, unsmiling, her thin arms laden with books. She seldom went out again. The scenes of scourged humanity along her daily routes caused Nola to dive deep into the well of her books. It was not right, Poldo thought. She should have a gaggle of girl friends, play games, whatever little girls did, and above all have decent food to eat. What she seemed to do was eat up those books of hers. One of Maria’s Russian friends ran a lending library full of English-language books. Poldo had seen some of the titles she brought home. He did not object to selections of Rudyard Kipling’s stories and poems. But having scanned a few pages of The Well of Loneliness and Ethan Frome while Nola was away at school, he had suggested that she return those books unread. Nola looked puzzled. Why, Daddy? They are only stories in books, not real things that happen here in Shanghai. What can be wrong with them?
Poldo found himself at a loss to explain. He already knew that the reins of guidance over this child had somehow slipped out of his hands. If not for Ming Chu, this household would be Bedlam.
Nola wrinkled her nose. Butyric acid at its purest smelled like rancid butter.
“Pew! Did you get an order for whisky? And the color’s all wrong. Here, let me taste.”
Poldo removed his glass stirring rod from the pitcher and allowed two drops to fall onto her extended tongue. She rolled them upon her palate, separating flavors, considering. Her eyes, closed now, resembled her mother’s dark ones, with eyebrows like gentle strokes of a calligrapher’s brush. He felt a foolish qualm about her hair: it grew so thick and long; perhaps it depleted her bones of growing food. Both his daughters resembled their mother, for which he was grateful. They possessed comely lips, unlike his wide ones, and well-shaped noses, unlike his big one. Nola’s cheeks lacked the normal blush of youth. Poldo resolved to tell Ming Chu to reserve for Nola what good meat they managed to get. The others would eat the fatty bits. Oranges and apples, her raw materials of sun and vitamins, he could not buy in the quantities she needed.
For God’s sake, man, he told himself. Do something useful, or die and let your family get on with it. They will do a better job without you.
“You put in too much caraway, Daddy. That’s strong stuff. Cochineal could make it redder without the taste.”
“I’m running short of cochineal. My last order from Bush House didn’t get through.” The company in London had probably written off Shanghai as a market. Cochineal was a red dye made from the dried bodies of insects. He would have to find a safe substitute. A vegetable dye? He suppressed a bitter laugh. Why bother to make it safe? People died eventually, and a lot faster this year than last.
“Don’t add the alcohol yet,” Nola said. “I’ll help, as soon as I change.”
Her precious blue serge uniform. The nuns at the Loretto School would be deeply suspicious of a student who turned up reeking of the seamen’s dives in Blood Alley.
To avoid disturbing Maria still sleeping in the cubicle, and because the girls’ closet was only big enough to hold a few dresses, Nola kept her clothes in her parents’ bedroom. He could hear her and Ming Chu speaking in the room next door. No matter how his wife asked about school, the substance was always the same. Did you learn?
Ming Chu’s anxieties for her younger child felt like reproaches to Poldo that she never voiced. She did not say outright to him what was on her mind: She must learn to save herself. She isn’t even twelve, yet, Poldo thought. Ming Chu asked too much.
“The Wongs are setting up to wash their clothes today,” Nola remarked, when she came back.
He knew what she meant. Poldo had once made the error of calling down to ask if they couldn’t be less noisy. The result had been a tumult of banging of washtubs and loud talk in the small yard below the Contis’ windows.
Nola held the funnel in place while he poured the contents of the glass pitcher into a clean five-gallon demijohn. Without being told, she began uncapping a gallon bottle of distilled water. The grain alcohol went in last. The supplier of alcohol, a Chinese grocer who ran a still in his home, swore that the alcohol was pure; he had never topped it up with any other kind. Poldo had to trust him though he heard stories of deaths from wood alcohol. These occurred among the emigre population, usually Russian and a few incautious Frenchmen.
As he rotated the demijohn, gripping its neck with both hands, Nola got up on a stool and surveyed his shelf of essences. “Maria says there’s a Frenchman who keeps asking for pastis. Isn’t absinthe the same? Let’s make up some for her to take tonight. She says he gets homesick and starts crying when he’s had a few.”
The curtain of the bedroom cubicle parted, and Maria came out, yawning. “‘Had a few’? Is that a proper way to talk?” Poldo’s old pongee bathrobe was large on her, but Maria refused to have it cut down, for in the winter she was able to wrap it around almost twice. “Did you worship Sister Maureen today? She used to be mean to me, you know, so you ought to show a bit of loyalty to your own sister. Hello, Daddy. Did Amah save me something to eat?”
Mulling over her essences, Nola said, “You shouldn’t say ‘worship’ about anybody but God. Amah has noodles in a pot, but you have to help yourself. Mama sent her out to buy up cooking oil with our old dollars. And I took your stockings to the mender. She wants‘ six million old dollars or five new ones. She always says afterward there were more ladders than I showed her. I think she cheats.”
At the end of every month Poldo hated his existence more than at any other time, yet doggedly he made the rounds as surely as the tides flowed in and out at the Whangpo’s mud flats. It was not a small matter of pride. He wanted it known that Leopoldo Felice Conti had not given up his right to demand rightful compensation for what was his.
He climbed the stairs to the top landing. Of course the Samoyed, the whited hound from hell, knew it was he. Dog claws scrabbled upon flooring that had become splintered grooves; the dog throat emitted roars that had frozen Poldo in terror the very first time he met the animal. Porcupine-ruffed, the Samoyed threw itself to the limit of its chain again and again. The invisibleò other end of the chain was hitched to something inside the half-open door. Poldo thought it appropriate if that something happened to be grandmother Bordokoff/Krichevsky.
Poldo stood just out of reach. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted above the roars, “Bordokoff or Krichevsky, whatever your name is this month, I have come to collect your rent! You are thirty-two months in arrears. Show me you have self-respect. Begin by paying for this last month.”
He paused. The dog, as if awaiting a directive from within, subsided to a growling.
Poldo pronounced the Russian words he had taught himself, his ritual closure: “Kak nde beni stedna.” Shame on you. Indifferent now, the dog allowed him to walk within inches of his nose as Poldo approached the second door and knocked.
Almost at once it opened, and Leon Kwilecki’s apologetic brown eyes confronted him. The man’s embarrassment enraged Poldo as much as the Bordokoff/Krichevsky flintiness did. Kwilecki always had an excuse. There was never a political action in the most obscure corner of the government that did not affect Kwilecki’s fortunes. A minor functionary deep within Shanghai’s public works department who happened to change the hour for garbage-collecting from eleven o’clock to noon somehow managed to disrupt Kwilecki’s budget. Kwilecki and his wife were the most trouble-prone individuals Poldo had ever known. Obviously he was an educated man—an engineer, he claimed to be.
Poldo pitied Kwilecki’s wife, a physical specimen of dramatic contrasts: dead-white skin, tar-black hair, and tragic eyes. Further, she suffered from a disease no one could name. One might be speaking to her and suddenly she became a heap on the floor at one’s feet. She did this several times a day; Kwilecki alone earned their keep, such as it was.
“You see, Mr. Conti, the labor union kept back a big part of my salary this month,” said Kwilecki in his accented English. “I can give you a quarter, and maybe next month I can make it up.” He proffered a sheaf of paper currency. Naturally, the money was old Chinese dollars, which as of the beginning of August everyone was frantically trying to convert to the new “gold” dollar before the rate depreciated further. Yesterday’s rate was four million old dollars to one new gold dollar. Today, one American dollar was worth either five million Chinese dollars, or two cans of sardines, or one can of evaporated milk, or a stick of margarine. The world had gone mad. Kwilecki’s handful of paper had extra zeros stamped over the original denomination.
Poldo accepted the paper. He did not say Yes, do try next month. He did not offer a Good day. Dispirited beyond speech, he turned and walked down the stairs.
For this, he had sold the big house in the Hongkew district. He had exchanged twelve rooms, servant quarters, a landscaped garden, a garage that once had housed a Fiat, and Maria’s horse for the Plan. The Plan, since his ships were sunk and his offices had shriveled to two rooms in a godown, had been to buy income property. The Plan would provide rents for the Contis to live on; they could manage in two rooms for a little while, until Shanghai had recovered its old commercial powers.
Poldo had met the previous owner of this hellhouse briefly. He was French, liquidating his assets, as he put it, so that he could repatriate to his country. Jovially, he wished the Contis good fortune and departed the next day. Poldo had not appreciated the cause of his happiness until the Contis had moved in and met the Bordokoff/Krichevsky sisters and their grandmother. One B/K was easily the equivalent of ten million Kwileckis. Print that on your banknote, Chiang Kai-shek.
On the ground floor, before Wong’s door, Poldo consulted with himself. Could he go through with this today? He lifted his hand andı knocked.
To his surprise the door opened and Wong stood there. Then he fell to the floor. Bewildered, Poldo wondered if Mrs. Kwilecki had infected Wong with her disease. “AYAAAA!” screamed Wong, clutching his stomach. His wife came into view and dropped to her knees beside the writhing Wong. “Police! Police! This man is beating my husband!” Their daughter Grace was right behind her mother. The combined noise of all three made Poldo’s ear canals crackle. He did not hear his wife come down the stairs, nor his daughters. Ming Chu touched his arm; he turned. He said, “I don’t know what happened,” and could not hear himself.
Then Grace Wong dashed past them and ran down the lane.
Ming Chu said, “She is going to fetch the police.”
“Not if I catch her first,” said Maria. Followed by Nola, she ran after Grace.
Wong continued to scream. After a while, since no policeman had yet come, his crying diminished. He said conversationally, “You shouldn’t have beaten me, you know. The police don’t like foreigners anymore.”
Ming Chu said, “They do not care for liars of low quality, either. Leave them here, Poldo. If the police do come we will deal with them in our own home.”
Mrs. Wong laughed. She had pulled at her hair and torn open the top button of her cotton dress. “Oh, listen to the grand Mandarin! Her own home! They live like mice in a miserable nest, and they treat us like persons of no background. Frankly, I am tired of you snooty foreigners, and I do include you, Ming Chu Conti.” The Wongs occupied the best unit in the building, two bedrooms and a living room in addition to the cement-paved yard.
“Do not speak to her, Ming. Come away.” Poldo took his wife’s arm and they began to ascend the stairs.
Multiple footsteps clattered up the lane. At the entrance a policeman, a young man of about twenty-five, stood peering at them. Poldo saw a revolver in his hand. Maria’s voice, sounding bored, said, “The scene of the crime is right before you. Isn’t there a lot of blood? I wonder who really beat whom?”
Wong recommenced his cries, and his wife returned to tearing at her hair. Grace Wong shoved past the policeman and shouted, “There. There. Do something! This foreign landlord has been forcing us to pay twice as much rent as anyone else, and he just raised it again. He won’t listen to reason! When my father opened the door the foreigner began beating him. He fell on him without a word!”
Poldo said, “They have not paid one dollar in rent in three years, and that is why theÈy are acting this way.” His Shanghai was quite good, and he saw this surprised the policeman. The young officer holstered his sidearm; he glanced at Ming Chu, who stood above him on the stairs. She said nothing, her bearing straight-backed, disdain in her lifted chin. He turned back to Wong and snapped, “Shut your howling,” then in the sudden quiet, said wearily, “I suppose I have to take both parties in to the station.”
Maria descended the few steps to her father. “I’ll go with you, Daddy. Nola, you go upstairs with Mama.” Nola opened her mouth to protest, looked at her mother, then nodded.
The policeman’s glance flicked to Ming Chu’s tiny bound feet; all knew she would not keep up with them, not unless she rode a pedicab or rickshaw to the station. “Get off the floor,” he told Wong. To Mrs. Wong he snapped, “Button up your clothes.”
The sound of leather soles clicked in the lane. Everyone turned to see who it was.
Daniele appeared in the doorway and stopped there. Uncertainly he said, “Buon giorno.” He looked around at the still figures: the policeman; Wong upon his elbow on the floor and Wong’s disheveled women; the Contis, distributed along the hall, up to Ming Chu on the stair, as though counting each one to make sure their numbers were intact.
“He is my friend,” Maria told the policeman. “He will come with us.”
The station house on Avenue Petain had once been staffed by French police. The French had style as well as palate. One entered the station grounds through a handsome wrought-iron gate, and then walked upon cobbles patterned in diagonal T’s. Poldo and Maria Conti, Daniele, and the three Wongs filed into the station house and were told to wait. As far as Poldo could tell, very little of the motion and talking in here appeared to concern the business of policing. Men wearing uniform trousers but without their jackets, and some in civilian clothing, loitered sipping tea and talking. “…fifty thousand trapped in Changchun…Chiang can’t supply them anymore…Hsuchow won’t last much longer.” Hsuchow was the corridor to the Yangtze River, three hundred miles from Shanghai. In Mao’s path, Nanking lay before Shanghai. There were rumors that the Chinese police had been deserting; a Communist purge would not overlook leavings, however minor, of the Nationalist government.
Wong had limped all the way to the station, now and again rubbing a hip, an arm, his stomach. He too, had overheard the gossip in the room. He glanced at Poldo and said, “Things are changing fast. Foreigners no longer have any power over us Chinese. And when you leave China, be sure and take those half-breed girls of yours, especially the whore.”
Poldo felt the blood leave his face. He looked down at his hand, which had become a fist. “You may say what you wish about me, Wong. You will keep your dirty mouth shut where my children are concerned.” He had never struck anyone in his life. A small pain jabbed below his windpipe.
Uncomprehending the exchange in Chinese but seeing Poldo’s anger, Daniele asked, “Has he insulted you? I’ll drag him out of here by the neck and deal with him outside.” Though not a large man, he was physically strong. He had been first officer of the Italian gunboat Lepanto and personally saw to her sinking to the bottom of the Whangpo River. Allies no more of the Japanese, the Italian crew had been rounded up and interned.
Maria inserted herself between her father and Wong. She topped Wong’s bushy locks by three inches. They grew in a crest, like a rooster’s comb. Bending to his egg-shaped face she said, “Do you know something? If you aren’t careful you’ll find yourself with a half-breed grandchild. I’ve nearly broken my leg a dozen times stumbling over Grace and her Portuguese boyfriend saying good night.”
Poldo shook his head, Do not stoop to their level. Grace flinched from her mother, who began to speak to her in a fierce whisper. Grace was pretty, though like her mother’s the outside corners of her eyelids were severely pinched. Upon Ming Chu’s first sight of the two women she had remembered a Chinese proverb: Beware the hidden eye; it takes what it wants and gives nothing away.
Their young police officer brought them a ledger and a pen. “Write down your names here, and your addresses. We’ll look into this.”
Wong heard the lack of conviction in the man’s tone. “But shouldn’t you make an arrest now? He cannot be allowed to gouge tenants the way he has.”
At this, the officer seemed to lose patience. “Mr. Wong. Do you want to know something? No one in this police station has been paid for two months. We have ration cards that get us one catty of rice per week. Our captain walks or takes the tram because there is no gasoline for his official car. Chiang’s war has requisitioned every resource there is. Now, if you want to take your case to the Central Station on Foochow Road you are free to go there.” He walked away from them and joined a group talking hotly around a desk.
Maria said, “Goodbye, Wongs,” and left the station with her father and Daniele. Hesitating, the Wongs consulted among themselves, then followed, a few yards back.
As they walked hom!e Poldo’s fatigue felt like death approaching. He could not care properly for Ming Chu and Maria and Nola, his family. He should have taken them home to Italy at the first shot of the war between the Japanese and Chinese in 1937. Instead, he had stayed on for the second act, World War II. Wong was not entirely mistaken. The foreigners were, indeed, greedy fools.
They walked down the lane to their house, the Wongs a hostile rear guard. At the foot of the stairs Maria paused. Poldo continued up; he heard Maria say, “The gods hate a liar. I’m doing you a favor, you know,” and he turned to see Maria smack Wong on the head with her purse. It was Mrs. Wong who screeched and tried to attack Maria; her husband grabbed his wife and daughter and opened his door and shoved them inside. The ‘door slammed.
Ming Chu was tallying the few purchases Amah had made in the markets. They were meager: four catties of rice—about six pounds, two tins of cooking oil, a lump of meat which looked to be pork, and some carrots. Amah, a stout woman who seldom smiled in public for fear of revealing to thieves the gold in her teeth, recounted for the third time how she had inveigled her way to the front of the line at the bakery, only to find they had run out of bread. “When my husband visits next month, Tai-Tai, he will bring fresh vegetables and a couple of chickens. You will see. He will not let us starve.” She returned to her mistress one bundle of old dollars that she could not unload on the wary merchants. These bundles were called “bricks,” an apt term for a currency so unpliable in the chaos marking this year.
Why do you stay with us? Mingò Chu often wanted to ask. It would be easy to get on with your daughter-in-law as long as you had enough to eat. But Amah was stubborn. Let her husband truckle to her daughter-in-law, who acted as if she and their son had already inherited the farm.
Poldo came into their bedroom, and Amah said she hoped the police had given the Wongs their due. Flashing a smile full of gold, she rapped her fists upon her head to show what she meant.
When she had gone, Poldo said, “Maria gave him his due with her handbag, just now.”
Ming Chu made a gesture denoting exasperation. Her older daughter had too lively a spirit. She liked to think she was tough, and perhaps she was; Ming Chu hoped so. “I almost wish Daniele would take her away with him.” She knew he would not keep her if he did; Maria would leave him when she pleased. Ming Chu had searched her conscience and found it tolerant of considerable tarnish where it concerned the safety of her children. If a man who was not free to marry nevertheless wished to possess a woman, he suffered whatever consequences came of it. She supposed she had changed her views; in these times, who had not?
They must have gone to his place, she thought. Nola was next door, doing her homework at the dining table. The little routines to attain privacy were carefully observed. Poldo had switched on his shortwave radio and was tuning in to the Voice of America. She hesitated, then said, “Amah heard some rumors.” These daily doles of anxiety were punishing, yet they all had a need to know. “People are saying the Americans are not going to help us.”
Bent to the radio, Poldo did not reply. The radio’s antenna, a complex device comprising mast and boom with driven elements set into the boom, had been rigged by Daniele. During thunderstorms, Poldo dismantled what parts of it he could reach outside the window. One never knew what lightning would do.
Reception at sunset was always poor. Volume as high as it would go, the broadcaster said, through static, “The United States Department of State confirms that no support, directly or indirectly, will be given to a coalition government in China with Communist participation. Secretary of State George C. Marshall reiterates that the United States has no intention of again offering its good offices as mediator in China. Earlier this month he declared that it was not likely the situation will make it possible for the United States at this juncture to formulate any rigid plans for our future policy in China. This policy directive was issued to the staff of the American Embassy in Nanking.”
Ming Chu could not follow this rapid and official English. She waited as long as she could bear, and then asked if Poldo had heard anything important.
Slowly, as though he had aged a hundred years within a minute, Poldo turned to her. “What Amah heard was correct. President Truman is pulling out.”
CHAPTER THREE
He was suffocating, but without the handkerchief protecting his mouth and nose Leon Kwilecki fared worse. Chaff and fine powder from the rice, plus burlap lint floating about his head got into his eyes. He knew how he looked. The men working beside him and across the long flat metal table all sported caked runnels of moisture from sore, weeping eyes. Lifetimes past—centuries ago, his sympathy for Metzenbaum’s dry coughing had given way to a desire to strangle him. Though Metzenbaum did not know it, he owed his life to the foreman. Any interruption in the shoveling of rice from big burlap bags into small bags was punished with a cut in pay. Kwilecki could not afford a cut in pay while he took time to kill Metzenbaum. I may kill him on our break, Kwilecki thought. He would, gladly, work twice as fast to make up for the loss of Metzenbaum’s labor.
The prospect of violent release sustained him for another hour.
The mountain of burlap sacks containing rice dwindled too slowly for the pleasure of their elderly foreman. Roaming up and down the cavernous godown, with frequent detours to one of the open windows for fresh air, Hsung exhorted, prodded each of the twenty men with a stick; sometimes he called the foreigners insulting names. Kwilecki’s special designation was “turtle dung.”
Hsung was not a bad man. The size of his daily pay depended upon the same shadowy powers that produced jobs for people such as Kwilecki and Metzenbaum.
Kwilecki finished transferring the contents of his burlap sack and went to fetch another. Warily, he reached for two corners of a sack and pulled it to the edge of the tier, a foot above his head. When it tilted and began falling he pushed at the same time to keep it from hurtling, unchecked, to the floor. One of the newer men had allowed his bag to hit the concrete too hard; Hsung had made him sweep up every single grain of rice that had burst from the bag. A hundred pounds of loose, raw rice had cost that man half a day’s pay.
The large stenciled letters on the burlap sacks spiraled in Kwilecki’s brain in lunatic song: SIN-RAH, SIN-RAH, SIN-RAH RAH RAH, I LOOOOVE YOU. Thank you, Chiang Kai-shek, I suppose. The letters were actually CNRRA and stood for China National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The American people donated food to the starving people of China, and the Nationalist government sold it on the black market. Well, they did need the money for the war effort, didn’t they? The one-catty cotton sacking bags had nothing stamped on them, but any fool on the street could tell they contained rice.
I’ll slip a few grains into my pocket every hour or so, Kwilecki thought. In a week he could save up enough to pay Mr. Conti his rent in rice. Two pockets’ worth was food for two days for him and Zina. But he never did it. Hsung watched too closely.
Metzenbaum’s wife, everybody’s wife or sister or girl friend except Kwilecki’s poor Zina, shut¸tled between the men’s big table and their own big one, where they sewed up the one-catty bags. Hsung refrained from speaking to these women if he could possibly avoid it. Shame, embarrassment—Kwilecki could not decide, or could it even be compassion?—flitted over Hsung’s wrinkled features when he had to look at them. Perhaps it was resentment, for the jobs could have been filled by the Chinese women in his family, which would be a large one, given Hsung’s age.
Then why did the SIN-RAH people allow the hire of foreign men?
Because we work even cheaper than Chinese men, Zwilecki thought. He was the only Pole among the Germans here. The German and Austrian Jews lived in the Wayside district across Garden Bridge, in the waterfront section of Hongkew. In the late thirties, 50,000 refugees built a community of small factories, tailor shops, and kosher butcher shops. They had a good, working wharf, too. Hitler would have admired their industry, though it was the Japanese who created the ghetto.
Hsung rapped the table with his stick. The skilled drumming suggested that Hsung had once been a dumpling chef. One heard the strumming spatulas inside a doorway and knew at once the specialty of the shop. Thinking of that, Kwilecki’s dried-up mouth moistened a little. Such delicious dumplings, sprinkled on top with sesame seeds and stuffed with meat and fried golden on the bottoms. His very first time, he had eaten two before noticing Zina’s stricken expression. “It’s pork,” she said. “But I am so hungry.” We couldn’t have known, he and Zina told each other. But that was partly a lie. The aroma and cheapness of the dumplings had overcome their caution. When they spoke together, it was always in Yiddish. Talking in Yiddish about having eaten the pork made Zina feel worse about their sin.
In the godown, Hsung’s dumpling-shop rattle signified the lunch break.
The break lasted twenty minutes. Kwilecki at once drank the boiled water Zina had put in a bottle. He managed to chew and swallow two pieces of black bread and longed for more water. He thought that drowning must be a delight, to be swallowed up by more water than he in turn could ever hope to swallow to sate his thirst.
Metzenbaum and his wife, their faces turned up to the overcast sun, were sitting among the weeds in the back lot of the godown. I give him three months, Kwilecki thought, listening to him cough. He’ll die without my help. Tuberculosis had cleared out half the inhabitants of Metzenbaum’s flat in Wayside. It was too bad the Metzenbaums weren’t going to live to enjoy the extra space. The wife had a bad color, too; her skin wore a prickly pink sheen. Kwilecki thanked God that Zina could not work. Zina, instead, cursed herself for doubling her husband’s burden. Never to worry, libe, he told her when she cried over his cracked hands. Once he had come home reeling on his feet; a tire rim had popped off its mounting with force enough to knock him out and he had nearly lost an eye. He blamed his own lack of experience as a mechanic, though he had done quite well assembling bicycles for CNRRA, better than scooping rice in this godown. Once, for two weeks, he had put together film projectors, a commodity that someone in the bureaucracy deemed vital to the reconstruction of China’s economy.
His own noonday meal finished, Hsung bellowed “Chi leh! Chi leh!” Kwilecki knotted his handkerchief in place and walked into the gloom of the godown.
At six that evening, the day’s pay in his pocket, Kwilecki trudged out to the lot with the rest of the work gang. The group, automatically stringing out into a rough column, crossed the dirt path to the pocked wall of the godown where Harry Truman waited for them.
This area of godowns in Pootung, on the east bank of the Whangpo River, was arid as the Asian steppe; the village of Yangching lay a few miles inland, where there were farms and rice paddies. Kwilecki had heard the countryside was pretty; he and Zina had never enjoyed the luxury of an excursion outside Shanghai.
The line formed; Kwilecki took his place in it. His SIN-RAH song hummed in his head as he shuffled forward.
The Chinese who called himself Harry Truman spoke good English, and even Kwilecki with his English acquired secondhand recognized the man’s university education. The workers knew he called himself Harry Truman because it amused him; the money made a round trip, so to speak.
As always, he nodded pleasantly. The men and women who had worked that day filed past silently and one by one handed him their “union” dues. Kwilecki took his pay out of his pocket and divided it exactly in half. He was receiving the new gold dollar now; the number of banknotes felt disturbingly thin in his hand, even though its value was no more than it used to be. Harry Truman accepted the money with a polite thank-you, and Kwilecki walked on. He no longer questioned the system. No tribute to Harry Truman, no jobs.
Zina would take the money Kwilecki had left and buy bread and some vegetables. The remainder went for tram fare. Kwilecki felt a detached pity for Mr. Conti, destined never to receive his rent money. He dared not explain about Harry Truman. What if Conti talked about it? What if that unfathered son of his mother, Wong in the ground floor unit, heard and worked some mischief? They’d had clashes before. No. Kwilecki’s only recourse was to dig in and play on Conti’s sympathies.
I used to be an honest man, Kwilecki thought. And I have lost my humanaity. I no longer feel anything for anyone else.