However, Nazar’s alter-ego is not of this world at all. In this incarnation, he lacks any sense of irony or self-criticism whatsoever. He believes that private property should be banned and all exploitation nipped in the bud. This Nazar talks entirely in Soviet newspaper clichés. In his world, everyone who is poorly dressed is “an oppressed worker, looking with hope to their Soviet brothers.” Every slightly better-dressed person is a “puppet of world imperialism,” and every Russian immigrant can only be a “corrupt counter-revolutionary running dog constantly seeking to undermine the USSR.”

I wonder which category I would come under if he knew my real identity. Probably, the “bourgeois toady, trembling with fear and impotent rage at the sight of the unstoppable rise of the Soviet Union’s prestige and power.”

Soon Nazar was happily snoring, but I couldn’t fall asleep. I’m currently sitting at the window and writing my diary by the light of a candle stub.

There is a railroad nearby and trains rattle by every ten minutes. The cicada and frog choruses are in full song, and boat whistles float up from the river.

I have to admit that my life in Shanghai was paradise in comparison. I had a pleasant apartment that was marred only by Ada’s occasional teenage antics. I could put my clothes in closets without worrying whether they would have rotted by the next day from the humidity. I had a decent job, I could see Nina and Kitty whenever I wanted—and I still had the nerve to be dissatisfied with my lot. It seems the Chinese gods have decided to punish me for my ingratitude.

I have no idea what I should do now and how long my exile will last.

4

Back in the dark ages when Moscow had barely been established, Canton was already a thriving city with a thousand years of history. It was from here that the great Sea Silk Route started from China to the Middle East. It was here that the Chinese built their great ships and the world’s finest carvings in ivory, amber, and precious wood were created.

Canton is a city of craftsmen. The local men make embroideries of extraordinary beauty and the women the famous Cantonese shawls with their customary long fringes. This craft was brought here from Portugal and then exported back to Europe. The Chinese don’t wear shawls themselves but are quick to spot a business opportunity when they see one.

In the Xiguan area, every street is devoted to a specialized craft—silver, embroidered shoes, brocade robes, or turtle shell combs. The second floors of buildings jut out over the sidewalks, protecting the lower floors from the sun, and the townspeople busily make their way along these shady passages, carrying iron rings with hooks for their purchases, a kind of alternative shopping bag.

There are stores with stained-glass windows and counters of polished wood. There are little shops, where the pork carcasses hang from the ceiling, covered with flies. On the ground along the walkways, there are barrels of fish and cages with frogs, snakes, chickens, and crickets. A little to one side, there are small sculptures of the Buddha with gleaming thin candles and incense sticks devotedly placed in front of them. The stifling wind sweeps away the fallen petals and charred pieces of paper, the debris of yesterday’s offerings to the gods.

I wish I could share my impressions of Canton with Nina, but I daren’t write to her openly. If Wyer is checking her mail, he would soon be on to us.

My cryptic cable to Nina read as follows:

The item from your order 070489 (the date of my birth) arrived safely and will be delivered to you once it has been through quarantine.

Nina is a smart cookie and responded immediately:

Take all necessary insurance and ensure that the item is safe and sound.

It was such a relief to learn that she has at least partially understood what has happened.

By exchanging cables full of allegories and allusions, we agreed that I would secretly return to Shanghai, and then we would move to another city.

Here in Canton, there are daily clashes between Sun Yat-sen’s people and the traders who have been driven to their wit’s end by his extortionate taxation. It usually kicks off with the sound of distant shouting, the roar of drums, and the clatter of wooden sandals on the pavement. Before long the whole street is filled with two opposing protest marches—one side holding banners of Karl Marx and Chinese nationalists, and the other portraits of the leaders of the Chamber of Commerce. Soon a fight breaks out, and the locals watching from their second-story windows make bets on which side will be victorious. Once the fight is over, they throw their winnings to each other—directly over the heads of the fallen fighters.

Then the police come and lead away those who haven’t managed to escape, and within a few minutes the battlefield is flooded with small boys collecting up the junk, trampled portraits, and other debris that has been left behind.

I have decided to stay in Canton for another couple of weeks and will try to return to Shanghai in late October. I still have no idea where Nina, Kitty, and I will go. Since the Great War, there are migrants everywhere and, as a result, tighter borders, and I’m afraid we won’t be welcomed anywhere. So far, we have only been able to stay here, in China, because the Peking government has neither the power nor time to deal with us immigrants.

Money is tight, and I’m very grateful to Nazar for letting me stay in his room. I asked how I might be able to thank him, and he replied that helping a fellow revolutionary in the struggle against global capitalism was more than enough reward.

I wrote an essay about the unrest in Canton and took it to the People’s Tribune. They were very pleased with it and even gave me a reward: the third volume of the collected works of Vladimir Lenin.

“I’m so glad that you can write in English,” said the editor, a sweet American girl who is besotted with socialism. “Would you like to make a weekly report about the rallies and demonstrations in the city?”

If they had been able to pay me, I would have been happy to write more articles, but I don’t think I need another tome by Lenin. The one I already have is more than sufficient, and it’s a bit softer than the porcelain brick that had been serving as my pillow.

5

No one in our dormitory asks the other about their past or present occupation because each has a secret mission or assignment from the Communist party, the Intelligence Agency, the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, the Comintern, or the political police—the OGRU. They call themselves the “South China group,” and they live a hard, isolated, and ascetic life—much like the warrior monks of centuries past. The only difference is that the Soviet government pays them a salary and lets them have families.

Westerners believe that the Bolsheviks are materialists. But nothing could be further from the truth. Their lives are subject to strict rituals filled with hymns, sermons, and festivals. They resolve any issue with quotations from their holy books—the “Old Testament” by Karl Marx and the “New Testament” by Vladimir Lenin.

My neighbors are essentially good guys, and I could get along with them fine under normal circumstances. But my goodwill evaporates as soon as they transform into “revolutionary fighters,” brutal crusaders who don’t have an ounce of pity for infidel unbelievers.

Just as medieval fanatics were always looking for the snares of the Devil, the Bolsheviks are constantly on the lookout for the “web of conspiracies that are being hatched against the Soviet Union.” In their minds, Satan is a fat gentleman dressed in a top hat and sporting a monocle—the malicious face of Imperialism. Satan has many servants in many guises, including us, the White immigrants, who “have treacherously switched to the camp of the enemies of progressive mankind.” Their credo dictates that these evil forces dream of enslaving everybody, and if it were not for Lenin the savior, the world would long ago have sunk into darkness.

I found a rather curious map of the world hanging on the wall on the ground floor of our dormitory. The artist has painted the USSR red and depicted Moscow as a star which radiates bright rays of light to the rest of the world. All the other countries are colored black. It reminded me of those medieval maps made by crusaders, with Jerusalem at the sacred center of the world, surrounded by the kingdoms of Christendom, with the lands of the infidels banished to the outer darkness and oblivion.

While Westerners come to China to exploit it and make themselves rich, my neighbors the Bolsheviks genuinely want to sacrifice themselves for the working people of the future. They come here, to the other side of the world, to expose themselves to danger, hellish heat, mosquitoes, and deadly diseases, utterly convinced that all this suffering is worth it and that they are doing the right thing.

None of these modern “crusaders” speaks Cantonese, so how can they possibly know what the local people want? Who told them that the millions of the Chinese would like to be “saved” from the “Imperialist Satan” through violence and civil war?

Personally, I don’t believe there will be any “triumph of the proletarian idea” in Canton—for the simple reason that there is no proletariat here. It is a city inhabited by artisans, fishermen, and traders. Here Marx’s portraits are adorned with flowers as if he were a reincarnation of the Buddha, and much of the city looks as though it belongs in the sixteenth century rather than the twentieth.

It seems that the Bolsheviks don’t realize that they are playing the role of the distant rich uncle at someone else’s wedding. He might be sitting in the place of honor next to the bride and bridegroom, everybody might be listening politely and nodding in agreement at his words of wisdom, but the real reason he has been invited is to provide the lavish gifts. He will be quickly forgotten once the party is over and the bride and bridegroom are left to enjoy his generosity.