“Then you’ll have to expel a lot of the English men as well,” Edna replied. “Let’s face it, their moral standards aren’t exactly exemplary either.”

“So you’ve found out, have you?”

“I’ve found out what?”

“That your philandering husband has gone and made Nina Kupina pregnant and left you to deal with the mess.”

Edna recoiled visibly as if her father had slapped her. “That can’t be true,” she said in a barely audible voice, but her father wasn’t listening.

“Daniel has no children with you, and it won’t bode any good if he has an heir on the side. What if he decides to adopt the baby? What will happen then is that this Russian whore’s bastard will inherit all your property.”

Ada backed away and quietly slipped away from the dining room door.

3

Klim had been held up at work, and Ada waited impatiently for him at their apartment. She was eager to tell him the news about Nina’s pregnancy.

Finally she heard keys turning in the door, footsteps, and the sound of something heavy being dragged along the floor. Ada ran out into the hallway and saw Klim pulling a large crate into their apartment.

“What is it?” Ada asked.

“A Victoria gramophone,” Klim announced cheerfully. “Where do you think would be a good place to put it? Do you want to have it in your room?”

He dragged the crate to Ada’s room and pulled a gleaming polished box out of the straw packaging.

“It’s a beauty,” he said. “See, the horn is neatly stored inside, and all the mechanical parts are made of nickel.”

“How much did it cost?” Ada asked.

Klim waved his hand dismissively. He took a brand new record out of its envelope and started winding the Victrola’s mechanism.

“Is señorita dancing?” he asked with a smile.

The sounds of a tango rumbled from the depths of the Victrola, and Ada put her hand on Klim’s shoulder.

“Do you make enough money to pay for toys like this?”

“Who cares about money when you can tango?”

Ada leaned towards him. It was lovely when he brought all sorts of curious presents, and even better to have him all to herself to dance with.

Later, they had their dinner together in the kitchen. Ada had baked an apple pie, and it had been the first time the recipe had worked out. Klim was drinking tea from his recently purchased painted cup and was telling Ada about a story he had picked up about the rivalry between two dance halls in the French Concession. The owner of the first one had hired men to release a bag full of snakes onto his competitor’s dance floor. The second man had got back at him by hiring thugs who just sat in his rival’s premises spitting chewing tobacco all over the dance floor.

Ada listened politely but in the end she couldn’t restrain herself any longer.

“Did you know that your wife is going to have Mr. Bernard’s baby?” she asked. “But as soon as she got pregnant, he just left her.”

Ada expected her words to make Klim furious, but he just shrugged.

“Everybody in our editorial office knows about it. A lot of people are jealous of Edna and happy to spread rumors like that around. They are saying that’s what happens to a woman who concentrates too much on her work and not enough on her family.”

Klim was much more worried about Edna’s wounded pride than his own, and he had spent a long time taking the gossipers to task for showing pleasure in a colleague’s misfortunes instead of standing by her.

“But what about you?” Ada asked. “Nina has cheated on you as well.”

“Who cares? We weren’t together for more than a year.”

Klim told Ada that he had to get up early tomorrow and excused himself from the table, without finishing his tea.

“Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone that Nina and I were married,” he instructed Ada. “It would be better for both of us if Edna knows nothing about it.”

4 RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES Klim Rogov’s Notebook

It might have been easier if Daniel Bernard had been a complete stranger to me. But we’ve shaken hands on many occasions at Edna’s. The world of white Shanghai is a small one.

I don’t fully understand why I’m so ashamed of Nina. We have nothing to do with each other anymore. Nevertheless, I still feel like a man who has donated his last coins to a church only to find out that the priest has squandered everything on drink.

I’m trying not to think about what has happened, but my desk is close to the door, so I can hear every word coming from the corridor and the smoking room where people are discussing the minutiae of Edna’s misfortunes.

I started to avoid her out of embarrassment, the woman I owe my very survival to. She is perplexed by my behavior, unable to understand what’s going on. It’s hard enough when your loved one betrays you, but even more so when it seems that everybody else is turning their back on you. But I can’t master my feelings. The sight of Edna, broken and gloomy, causes me to recall the craziest things from my childhood. I still remember the smallest details of the scenes that my father used to make if my mother so much as smiled at a younger or better-looking man. A bit of my father’s envious green blood would appear to be flowing in my veins as well, and it takes me a great effort to stop myself from…

Well, I’m not going to put to paper some of the notions that come into my head at times like this.

Now that everybody knows who Nina is, it’s not been difficult to track down her address, and yesterday I went to negotiate our divorce and put an end to this vile farce of a marriage.

It turns out my wife is living in a white mansion with a perfectly clipped lawn in the front yard. She’s managed to acquire all the material things that she always dreamed of, but it would appear that all her well-laid plans have come to nought now that she is pregnant and no longer of any value to her sugar daddy lover. Alas, even the most gregarious and gorgeous courtesans don’t remain in a powerful man’s affections for long.

I wonder what will happen to my “sing-song girl”? Who will take care of her now?

While I was standing there looking at her house, a black Ford with bright white lights and yellow wheels came out of the gate, and I spotted Nina’s face in the car window. I don’t know if she saw me, or maybe she chose not to recognize me. Anyway, we never did meet.

For months I have been trying to work out what it was that brought Nina to Lincheng. Now it’s all as clear as day to me. She went there for the sake of Daniel Bernard. But if that’s the case, why did she bring me back to her compartment that night? I’m afraid I’ll never get to the bottom of it.

I keep trying to accept that Nina will soon be giving birth to another man’s child. Even though I have no rights over her any longer, it all appears to be some kind of sacrilege to me, a gross violation of the most basic laws of life. Now it seems incredible to imagine that at one time, little more than a couple of years ago, we were lying in each other’s arms thinking up names for our future children. I wanted to call our daughter Katya after my mother, and if we had a boy we would have called him…

But there’s no point writing any of this now. I’m only rubbing salt into my own wounds.

5

In his heart Klim’s was dying to find someone to pick a reckless fight with, it didn’t matter who. Being employed to write the newspaper’s regular column on the city’s criminal underworld, he didn’t have long to wait for an opportunity to let out his pent-up frustration.

A police team in plain clothes had surrounded a house with a sign in English and Chinese saying: “Magic Cloud Pharmacy. Reliable remedies for all ailments.”

The pharmacy’s owner was not there, and Klim was waiting for him on the corner of the street, along with the head of the Drug Enforcement Division, Johnny Collor, and his assistant Felix.

Felix, a tall, dark-haired and hook-nosed young man, had been a former Russian cadet.

“What foul weather!” he grumbled, shoving his reddened hands into the pockets of his great coat. “But who’s complaining? This is much better than having to hide in barrels on the docks in the summer heat. The sun roasted us from above, and the mosquitoes were biting our butts from below. It was a whole fortnight before I could sit comfortably again after that operation.”

Johnny peered around the corner.

“Here’s our pharmacist,” he whispered excitedly, pointing at the elderly Chinese man climbing up the pharmacy porch.

Short and stocky, Johnny resembled a gray-haired fox terrier, ready to lunge for his prey’s throat. His eyes were shining, and he was constantly reaching for the holster under his jacket.

“Don’t give any quarter, boys,” Johnny warned Klim and Felix. “The pharmacy belongs to the Green Gang. Those bastards won’t hesitate to put a bullet through your brain.”

He looked at his watch and raised his hand. “It’s time!”

Klim ran behind the policemen into the pharmacy and stood squinting under the bright light of a lamp. The policemen searched the place as calmly and efficiently as if they were on a training run. Glass crunched under their shoes, and the air was filled with ashes from a raked-up oven.

Klim looked around the cluttered rooms. Along the walls there were dark red cabinets with lots of drawers. The shelves were crammed with sealed pots, and on the table, next to the brass weights and writing implements, lay a large white doll studded with long needles. Its body was covered with lines showing the flow of qi, life energy.