Nina looked at One-Eye, puzzled. “Am I really in China?”

He grinned. “This is Band, this where the International Settlement works and lives. China is a bit further upriver.”

At last, the junk moored up to one of the piers. The disheveled Don Fernando emerged from his cabin, scratching his belly.

“You should get a passport for yourself,” he said to Nina genially. “People in your line of business need documents.”

“How much does one cost?” Nina asked.

“Three hundred Chinese dollars.”

“For a fake? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Don Fernando shrugged. “Well, as you wish. Let me kiss your pretty hand goodbye?”

Nina put her hands in her pockets. “I’d rather you told me what the best hotel in Shanghai is.”

“The Astor House. Why?”

“Just curious.”

4

Nina and Jiří crossed the gangway onto the promenade and froze, stunned by the sight of the shiny cars parked along the snow-covered street.

“I’ve never seen so many cars in one place,” Nina whispered.

Brown smoke curled from chimneys; large buses forged their way through swarms of rickshaws, single-seated passenger buggies pulled by Chinese men dressed in quilted jackets and pants, and canvas shoes. They would pick up the thin shafts and start to jog, easily outstripping the heavily laden single-wheeled carts.

Despite the early hour, the sidewalks were already crowded. White gentlemen in expensive coats with fur collars were buying newspapers from Chinese boys who yelled in English: “Breaking news! Soviet Russia is now called the Soviet Union.”

Chinese clerks wearing almost identical blue coats and black satin caps hurried to their offices and shops. Workers were working hard removing Christmas wreaths tied with red ribbons from street-lamp posts. Unlike Russian Orthodox Christians, who celebrate Christmas on January 7, Shanghai’s Catholics and Protestants had already celebrated their feast thirteen days earlier.

A detachment of black-bearded horsemen in blue coats and red turbans galloped by.

“Those are Sikhs,” Jiří told Nina. “I read that the British brought them over from India to police their colonies.”

They heard a little bell jingling as a street peddler pushed his cart with a steaming brazier piled high with pots, bowls, and teapots.

Jiří gave Nina a pleading look. He was evidently very hungry.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said sternly. “Today we will be breakfasting at the Astor House.”

“Are you out of your mind?” gasped Jiří, “We are illegal immigrants. The police will catch us there for sure.”

“A fancy hotel is the last place they’ll be looking for illegal immigrants.”

Nina boldly headed toward a row of parked rickshaws. “Astor House!” she called.

Several men immediately ran up to her. “Here, Missy! Come with me, please!”

Pretending that she was not in the slightest bit embarrassed, Nina climbed into the cart, and the rickshaw puller, a young man in a torn quilted jacket, covered her lap with a leather lap-robe.

Nina turned to Jiří. “Are you coming with me or not?”

He hesitated. “I can’t ride a cart pulled by a human being.”

“Just arrived in Shanghai?” the rickshaw man asked him in broken English. “People power is good! People need food. I bring money to my family.”

Jiří resignedly waved his hand, got into the cart, and they drove on along the elegant promenade.

Shanghai was lit up with the morning sun. Tram bells rang, horns blared, horseshoes clattered, and Nina’s head spun from the sheer din of it all.

Suddenly she noticed a Chinese girl walking with a very strange gait, followed by another and then another. Instead of normal feet, they all seemed to have tiny hooves wrapped in embroidered shoes.

It took Nina a while to construct her question in English, and when the rickshaw stopped at an intersection, she asked: “What’s wrong with these women? Why do they have such small feet?”

“Here, all girls have their feet bound,” the rickshaw man said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “We don’t want their feet to grow; it’s ugly.”

“How come?” Nina said with indignation. “Your women can’t even walk normally, let alone run.”

“That is how it should be. Otherwise, the wives would run away from their husbands.”

Nina frowned, remembering Klim. She was going to get a room in the best hotel in Shanghai, and he had been left behind on that stinking ship.

There is nothing I can do about it now, she thought.

The Astor House doorman was baffled by the shabby appearance of the white guests.

“We have just come back from a hunting trip,” Nina told him in French. “To Swan Lake.”

Reluctantly, the doorman ushered them into the brightly lit lobby.

“I’d almost forgotten that these sorts of places existed,” Nina murmured, gazing at the crystal chandeliers and marble floors.

Paying no attention to the porters gawking at her, she went straight up to the reception desk.

“Hello! We need two adjoining rooms. For a month.”

The receptionist blinked at her in confusion. “But that will be a hundred and fifty dollars, ma’am, and I’m not sure you’re going to be able to—”

“Do you need a deposit?” Nina pulled out a wad of cash from her pocket, which made the receptionist even more flustered.

“Oh no, ma’am, no deposit necessary. Here, in Shanghai, we pay with chits; we’ll send you an invoice later. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

“He didn’t even ask for our passports,” Jiří whispered when they entered the elevator.

“Our white skin is all the passports we need,” Nina replied. “Klim told me that they even offer loans on a white man’s word of honor. Although I’m not sure that’s going to last for much longer.”

The bellboy led Nina and Jiří past stained-glass windows and sumptuous mahogany-paneled walls to a gallery that wound its way around a large ballroom. Downstairs, under a huge glass roof, an orchestra played next to tables covered with pristine white linen.

Nina stopped to look at the dancing couples. Half of the ladies had their hair cut short, and they wore dresses with belts that were fastened at the side to accentuate their hips. Wow!

“What kind of music is this?” Nina asked Jiří.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard anything like it before.”

“And you call yourself a musician?” Nina teased. “Oh, we’re hopelessly behind the times.”

The bellboy informed them that the music was known as jazz, and that the event going on downstairs was tiffin—a kind of late second breakfast complete with cocktails and dances.

He turned the lock on one of the polished doors. “Monsieur, madame, welcome!”

It was a little chilly in the room, and it smelled of lavender soap. Nina put her hat on the neatly made bed, threw the curtains open, and laughed. “Jiří, I love this city!”

5

After a luxurious bath and breakfast, they decided to go shopping.

Nina was awe struck by Shanghai’s wealth and modernity. She observed the well-heeled crowd promenading down Nanking Road and gasped at the staggering dresses on display in the giant shop windows. The trees had been trimmed, all the sidewalks had trashcans, and dashing traffic policemen stood at the road crossings, waving on pedestrians with their batons.

To all intents and purposes it was a European city, with the exception of the Chinese shop signs, rickshaws, and pedestrians carrying ducks in cages or bundles of cabbage on bamboo yokes.

It now seemed strange to Nina that she had ever been so afraid of emigrating. What was there to miss about ill-starred Russia? Shanghai was a city where you could live life to the full.

While she and Jiří were roaming the Wing On department store, Nina wanted to laugh and cry with happiness. To think that only yesterday she hadn’t even had enough thread to sew a button, and now she could buy herself whatever she wanted: an American photo camera or a set of fine porcelain cups from Japan, or a fine British leather purse, or even a fountain pen with a golden nib. Everything was available if you could afford it, without even waiting in line, and the prices were ridiculously cheap.

Clerks in gray gowns heaped silk on the counter, cut a little nick into the weightless fabric, and then tore it in a perfect line the rest of the way. “Bye-bye makee me pay,” they said. “Mee send chit.”

They didn’t ask for money in the shops, either; it was enough just to show a hotel card and sign for the purchase.

“Jiří, wake me up!” Nina moaned. But Shanghai had completely benumbed his senses as well.

They returned to their hotel completely different people: well-dressed, refreshed, and with a gleam in their eyes.

Nina led Jiří to the big mirror that stretched from the floor to the ceiling.

“This is the real us,” she said, “and this is how we should always remain. We’ve been under a curse, but now it has been lifted forever.”

Jiří glanced at his crippled hand and quickly hid it behind his back. “Yes, you’re right. Most likely.”

6

That evening, Nina lay in bed reading the menu from the French restaurant as if it were the most delightful novel. “Capon fillet and chestnut mash. Roasted pheasant in a sauce of woodcock mince, bacon, anchovy, and truffles. Mandarin fish aspic with wild saffron rice. Oh Lord, have mercy on us!”

Her feet ached from the shopping marathon, and she hadn’t quite found her land legs after the long days spent at sea. Shopping bags and boxes were spread all over the floor—‘a woman’s basic necessities’ as Klim used to call them.