Эльвира Барякина - White Ghosts

What could he say to Nina? That he was listed at the paper as a courier and shared a room in the House of Hope with a fifteen-year-old girl? That all these months, he had been wandering around the city, peering at the faces of passersby in the vain hope of catching a fleeting sight of his wife?

He could sense Nina standing in front of him—his darling, invisible, and inaccessible wife. What was the point of deluding himself? She would never come back to him.

“We should get a divorce,” Klim said flatly. It was better not to wait for Nina to broach the subject.

“Have you already found someone else?” she asked.

“Marriage is like a house; if you’re not using it, you should either get new tenants in or knock it down completely and build everything up again from scratch.”

Klim could hear the floor creak, and Nina’s silk skirt slide against his knee. She was so close that he could feel her breath on his temple.

“Our marriage certificate is lost,” Nina said, “so the only way we could get a divorce would be to get married again.”

Klim could not stand it anymore. He pulled Nina close to him, making her sit on his lap. She shrieked faintly: “What are you doing?” but he pressed her head against his shoulder and kissed her on the lips.

The window shade turned red with a pulsating glow; the people outside had poured new fuel onto their fire and started chanting a barbaric, incomprehensible song.

Klim’s head was full of jubilant horror. I don’t care anymore. What will be, will be.

His hand travelled along the Great Silk Road—down to Nina’s waist and then her thigh, tightly sheathed by her dress. At first she grasped Klim’s hand as if not wanting him to go further, but then she let out a short gasp and started to unbutton his shirt.

Tony Aulman had been right: the documents for the fake consulate weren’t difficult to arrange. All it took was a well-aimed bribe and an official-looking letter to the Foreign Affairs Office, and very soon one of the houses near the Tibet Road got a brand new polished plaque with the legend “The Consulate of the Czechoslovak Republic” engraved on it.

Nina was forbidden to mention the horrors she had experienced during the Bolshevik Revolution to anyone.

“In your situation,” Tamara said, “it’s not only senseless, but also harmful to seek sympathy. People are only able to feel sorry for you if they can imagine themselves in your shoes. You don’t clutch your head every time you hear about a hurricane in the West Indies, do you? Well, likewise, don’t expect any degree of compassion for your suffering during the revolution in Russia.”

“The real reason people don’t sympathize with us is because they know so little about us,” Nina said with vehemence. “And I can tell them a lot about what’s happened—”

“And your guests will decide you are one of the losers who lost their country to the Bolsheviks. The gentlemen from the Shanghai Club are convinced that if they had found themselves in the same position as your White Army officers, they would have seen off the Bolshevik riff-raff in a couple of months.”

“Anyone can win a war from the comfort of the smoking room in a gentleman’s club,” Nina said. “I’d like to see how these ‘armchair heroes’ would have fought without reinforcements, ammunition, or transportation.”

“And how do you think you are going to disabuse them of their puffed-up illusions?” said Tamara, smiling. “Believe me, you’d be much better off telling them tall stories about European aristocrats. That is a topic that is always in demand.”

Tamara had kept a lot of old Russian magazines from the pre-revolutionary era, and Nina spent hours studying the descriptions of diplomatic receptions and opening nights in Imperial theaters. Then she would rehearse them to herself in front of a mirror, using her newly-acquired English.

The High Society in One Hundred Years Time masquerade was a great success. Thanks to Tamara’s advice, Nina was judged by all to be a consummate and brilliant hostess. The Chinese government was missing customs duties for ten crates of champagne, and soon Don Fernando had given Nina her first share in the profit.

“Not bad for a party girl, heh? Keep dancing, and we’ll have ourselves a good little business.”

A couple of weeks later, Nina invited her new acquaintances to a Masquerade of Lookalikes, which was also a great success. Among the glittering array of guests were three black Florence Mills cabaret singers, two mustachioed Thomas Beecham orchestra conductors, four Mary Pickford Hollywood actresses, and one revolutionary Leon Trotsky who pestered the ladies by demanding that they give him their “bloody diamonds.”

Before each party, Tamara would set Nina an assignment to work on a special anecdote to drop into a conversation or to flirt with this or that gentleman. Tamara took infinite delight in making fools of her former friends.

Everything was going smoothly, but Nina felt no joy at her success. She was Tamara’s ‘kept woman.’ Nina’s white house, her furniture, and dresses all belonged to the Aulmans; her guests were Tamara’s friends, not hers. Worst of all Nina wasn’t even mistress of her own past anymore. On Tamara’s advice she told everyone that for the entire duration of the civil war in Russia, she had had been living in a grand hotel on Lake Geneva.

Thanks to an endless whirl of social events, her consulate was scarcely ever out of the limelight, and Nina shuddered at the thought that sooner or later, her cover will be blown.

“Do we really need to keep up the facade of the consulate for our parties anymore?” she asked Tamara. “Why don’t we keep the events going but just quietly close the consulate down?”

But her mistress rejected the idea outright. “Don Fernando sells your liquor to the Governor’s assistant. If there is no consulate and no cheap champagne, Tony will lose a very valuable friendship.”

Nina had got into the habit of wandering around antique shops. For her, beautiful trinkets were symbols of wealth and represented a confidence in the future. At Rue Montauban, she would buy smoke-colored watercolors, porcelain, and lacquer boxes, and the finest embroideries and perfume bottles made of green and white jade at the stores on the Broadway. Soon Nina’s house began to resemble a museum but it did not feel like home at all.

One day, Nina came to visit Tamara and noticed a new photograph on her bedside table. It was a picture of Tony Aulman and a blond gentleman wearing a yacht club sweater. The man was in profile, and Nina was immediately struck by his high forehead and chiseled jaw.

“Daniel Bernard is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met,” said Tamara. “Did you know that China joined the Great War on the side of the Allies, and under that pretext, it confiscated the property of German and Austro-Hungarian citizens? The poor Germans were herded like cattle into barracks, and when the Spanish flu epidemic hit, our ‘patriotic’ doctors refused to lift a finger to help them. Only Mr. Bernard showed any decency and organized a temporary hospital for the sick. He is a Czech by nationality, and his nation had suffered from Austrian and German oppressors for centuries, but it didn’t stop him from being human and helping them in their misfortune.”

“It would be nice to meet such a person,” Nina said. “Let’s invite him to my party?”

“Daniel is currently out of Shanghai,” Tamara replied.

For no apparent reason, Nina’s acquaintances also began telling her about Mr. Bernard, and she learned that he was selling tea and Chinese art to Europe. His erudition and sophistication were combined with a number of manly passions, such as sports, politics, and hunting. He was an avid reader, a successful entrepreneur, and a keen philanthropist.

The more Nina learned about Daniel, the more often she would glance at the picture on Tamara’s bedside table. A strange chain of coincidences seemed to be bringing them together, she thought. She had come up with the Czechoslovak Consulate idea, and Daniel was a Czech. He had gone to Europe soon after she had arrived in Shanghai, as if deliberately to give her time to get herself back on her feet. He was a friend of the Aulmans, and she would have every opportunity to meet him through them. Nina had an inkling that her mistress wanted to bring her and Daniel together, and, for now, she was fine with the idea.

When Nina learned from the newspapers that Mr. Bernard was among the hostages on the Blue Express, she immediately called Tamara.

“What do you think will happen to him?” she asked, shocked at the thought that her fragile hope for personal happiness might be crushed.

“The Chinese will buy their relatives’ freedom, and the representatives of the Great Powers will negotiate the release of their subjects,” Tamara said unemotionally.

There was no one to stand up for Daniel Bernard, a Czechoslovak national.

Nina announced to Jiří that they were going to Lincheng. “We have to save your countryman.”

“Are you out of your mind?” he cried. “What can we do for him? And why?”

“Get ready, I said!”

Nina couldn’t wait for the Chinese authorities to eventually see through their scam or for Tamara to get bored of her little games. Daniel Bernard seemed to offer Nina’s her best chance to take her destiny into her own hands.

At Lincheng, all she found was chaos and filth, and they learned that hostage release negotiations could often run for months.

“I knew that our journey would be completely pointless,” Jiří kept saying.