“Why are you bothering to help me?” she asked him. “If you think I’m lying to you about Katya, what do you hope to gain from having anything to do with us?”

“Nothing,” Klim snapped. “Well… to some extent, it was my fault you’re under arrest in the first place. We’re separated now, of course, but you’re still not a stranger to me. And you’ve just had a baby… So, now you understand and that’s that.”

But Nina couldn’t understand a thing.

Tony Aulman was the next visitor.

“I have two pieces of news,” he said, “one good and one bad. Which one do you want to hear first?”

“The good one,” Nina said hopefully.

Tony brought in a smiling Chinese woman with a wrinkled face.

“She’s a nanny,” he said. “She’ll help you out with the baby.”

Nina didn’t even want to hear about entrusting her Katya to a stranger, but Tony was adamant. “If you’re exhausted and not getting enough sleep, you’ll end up spouting all sorts of nonsense to the investigators and find yourself in prison.”

Nina forced herself to hand over her little girl to the nanny.

“You can still feel the cold air on this woman’s clothes,” Nina moaned after the nanny had left the room with the baby. “What do you think is so funny?” she snapped at Tony. “Katya will catch a cold in no time.”

Tony didn’t try to argue or persuade her otherwise.

“I remember when Tamara gave birth, she got anxious over every little thing too,” he said, smiling.

“What’s the bad news then?” Nina asked.

Tony frowned. “Last night, Jiří died in his cell.”

“What?”

“I was told he died of a brain hemorrhage.”

Tony took Nina’s shaking hand and looked into her eyes. “You’ll probably think that what I’m about to say is the height of cynicism. But I think this is your only way out. You need to lay all the blame on Jiří’s shoulders. You must say that he never told you about his shady liquor and arms dealings and that you had no idea that his Czechoslovak Consulate was a fake. Don Fernando is out of the city now and the chauffeur didn’t have a clue what was going on, so the police have nothing to work on.”

“I see,” said Nina in a trembling voice.

Tony patted her on the shoulder. “Tamara and I will take care of Jiří’s funeral.”

“Thank you,” Nina sobbed. “It’s my fault: I forced him to become a consul.”

“Jiří knew what he was letting himself into, so you can’t take all the blame on yourself. Tamara asked you to call her as soon as you’re allowed to use the telephone. She sends you her best regards.”

2 RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES Klim Rogov’s Notebook

I didn’t write the article about the Czechoslovak Consul’s arrest, and Wyer called me demanding an explanation. Without further ado, I told him that Katya was my daughter and I wasn’t prepared to assign paternity to the late Mr. Labuda.

I thought this turn of events would please Captain Wyer, but I’ve evidently misjudged him. He yelled at me so loudly that I had to hold the receiver a good foot away from my ear. He brought up my unfortunate nationality, my corrupted country, and my own vices.

“How much did she pay you to come up with this balderdash?” he asked.

The captain was so infuriated that I had ignored his orders that he failed to realize that my “balderdash” would now make his and Edna’s life much easier. I didn’t argue with him though and eventually hung up.

Soon after, Edna called me and proposed going for a walk along the Bund.

“My father has just informed me that you have recognized Nina Kupina’s child as your own,” she said, perplexed. “I’m grateful to you for this noble gesture, but you shouldn’t have taken my husband’s sin upon yourself. I’m afraid this won’t stop all the gossipers. They’ll just say that you’re paying me back for my help. Do you at least know who this Nina is?”

I had no choice but to admit to her that the woman that had caused her so much pain was my wife.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Edna gasped, and her face darkened. “Now I see what’s going on. When you found out how rich my husband is, you deliberately put your hussy of a wife onto him. You cooked up this scheme to blackmail Daniel and make him pay you off to clear his reputation.”

There was no point trying to appeal to her logic; Edna wasn’t able to see things reasonably. She needed to find a scapegoat for her misfortunes, and, of course, she was too blind to see through her lecherous husband.

“My father warned me that you Russians are unscrupulous swindlers,” she shouted. “But you won’t get a penny from us. Daniel was right to leave the city.”

On her return to the editorial office, Edna packed up her things and told Mr. Green she was quitting forthwith.

“Happy now?” she spat at me on her way out. “I did everything I could to provide you with employment and security, and now you’ve driven me out of the job I love. I could make a scandal and show everyone your true colors, but I’m so disgusted I can’t even bring myself to be in the same room with you.”

What was I supposed to say? That Edna was deceiving herself to cover up for her husband? That she was looking for an excuse to leave her job and crawl into a hole in order to avoid seeing or hearing anyone? Or should I have disavowed Nina and told Edna that we are estranged and that my wife and I have nothing to do with each other?

Unfair accusations make me angry, and I didn’t feel like running after my accuser to justify my actions. I wrote a letter to Edna, but she didn’t answer, and I’m not sure if she even read my explanation or just threw it away.

Perhaps, in other circumstances, I might have found a way to make peace with her, but I can’t deal with this right now. I can do little to help Nina with her court case and my sense of powerlessness in the face of the blunt and clumsy legal machine is overwhelming me.

I wanted to talk to Felix about the investigation but I couldn’t find him. Neither Johnny nor the other boys at the police station know where he is. They seem to think that he’s gone on vacation. But how could he have left without saying anything to anyone?

Nina is incredibly lucky to have Tony Aulman on her side. He is a brilliant lawyer and has found an ingenious loophole in the law. It turns out that the International Settlement police don’t have the right to initiate a case against Nina at all due to the fact that she has not committed any crime on its territory.

Tony believes that if he put some pressure on the judge who signed the arrest warrant, Nina will eventually be released. The irony of all this is that I, who have always condemned bribery and backroom deals, am now ready to worship the ground that Aulman and his connections walk on.

After a lot of trouble, I finally gained permission for Katya to be baptized, and brought Father Seraphim to Nina’s house. In Shanghai, there are dozens of Russian priests without parishes, and they make some extra income by administering the sacraments as and when they are required.

Most of the time Father Seraphim has to work as a whipping boy at the Big World entertainment center. The audience at boxing matches gets great pleasure seeing their plucky Chinese fighters vanquishing such a huge “white ghost.”

During the ceremony he was terribly ashamed of his beaten-up face, but I told him that neither Nina nor I condemned him for it. After all, he needs to make a living as much as the rest of us. However, Nina was not very happy about Katya being baptized by a gladiator priest with a black eye.

I had hoped that our shared concerns would bring Nina and me closer, but everything I do seems to upset her, and even if she doesn’t say it to my face, I can sense it.

When I come to see her, I try to be as circumspect, businesslike, and serious as I can, feeling like a sapper trying to defuse an unexploded bomb. No matter how carefully I tread, an explosion could occur at any moment for the most trivial reasons.

When Nina learned that I was sharing an apartment with Ada, she hit the roof.

“You’ve done well for yourself,” she said in a tone that implied that I was an incurable philanderer.

As with Edna, it was useless to appeal to reason, and the only answer I got to all my protestations of innocence was: “You must take me for a complete idiot.” But at the same time, Nina wants me to believe that her relations with Jiří and Daniel Bernard were also completely innocent.

I can’t imagine what Nina and I are going to do when she is finally released from her house arrest. Will she just turn to me and say, “Thank you for your help. But that’ll be all now”? Or will she decide to try to make a go of it?

If she decides the latter, what we are going to do about Ada? She’s too young to get by on her own, and if she were to live with us, I know that she would be unbearably jealous. Teenagers are a handful at the best of times.

Ada doesn’t yet know that I have achieved a reconciliation of sorts with my wife. I’ve told her that I have a lot of work on and that is why I have been coming home late. I can’t face telling her the truth. If I were to mention Nina and Katya, Ada would only try to persuade me that I’m going to be stuck in a loveless relationship with the mother of another man’s child.

Babies often resemble one of their parents, and I wish I could find at least some of my features in Katya’s little face. But unlike Nina and me, she is blonde, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t dispel the image of Daniel Bernard’s golden mane from my mind.

I’m constantly trying to convince myself that bloodline and paternity issues are of no importance to me. Whoever her father is, it’s thanks to Katya that I now have a means of winning my wife back, and hopefully, one day getting my life back on track.