Эльвира Барякина - White Ghosts

What a dressing gown she had on! Ada had never seen such a robe in her whole life. It had a dragon on the back, and its hem and sleeves were trimmed with fur.

Klim and Martha embraced each other. “How are you doing, my lovely?” he asked.

Ada gave him a puzzled look. Has he gone blind? His friend’s face was puffy, and she had a large nose and a double chin.

“Come on in. It’s cold out here,” Martha said, shivering, and led her guests into the lobby.

Ada followed Martha and Klim upstairs, her face blushing and her heart racing. The walls were papered with striped wallpaper, the stairs were laid with carpet, and a dusty chandelier made of different colored glass hung from the ceiling. So this is what brothels look like, she thought.

Upstairs was a large elegant room with a green grand piano, a gramophone player, and velvet sofas. Clients had evidently been carousing there recently, and the maid hadn’t had time to sweep the floors and take the dirty glasses away.

“So where have you come from, Mr. Rogov?” Martha asked, scrutinizing Klim’s shabby outfit. “Just out of jail?”

“Just out of a civil war.”

“I bet you came out of it decorated?”

“Of course. The Order of the Legion of Refugees and the broken Purple Heart.”

“Did you come with the Russians? Sit down and tell me all about it.”

Klim told her his story and those of a number of mutual acquaintances they both knew. Ada was sitting next to him, embarrassed, holding her blanket and books close to her chest.

Oranges and cookies were sitting in a dish on the round table in front of her. It would be nice of Martha if she offered us a treat, Ada thought. It must have been five years since she last had a cookie, and she had only ever seen oranges in pictures before.

But Martha was busy talking and complaining about the Russian refugees who were ruining her business.

“I used to get a good price for a white girl,” she said. “Now anyone can just go to the Russian Consulate and choose any sweetheart they want. There are hundreds of them. All a man needs to do is to take a frightened little chick to a café, order a muffin, and the poor thing will be happy to do anything for her shining new Prince Charming.”

“I need a job,” Klim said. “I don’t have two pennies to rub together.”

Martha shook her head pensively. “It’s difficult with jobs now. The Chinese are ready to do anything for ten cents a day. And now we have your Russians on our hands. Only a nice-looking girl can get a job in certain establishments.” She glanced at Ada. “Who is she?”

Klim frowned. “Her mother died, and she has nowhere else to go.”

“How is she going to support herself?”

“I can teach English and French,” said Ada, blushing.

“Let me have a look at you.” Martha stretched her hand to undo Ada’s coat.

“Don’t touch me!”

Martha started to laugh. “She’s going to teach French—to whom, may I ask?”

“Give her a job as a taxi-girl in the Havana,” suggested Klim. “We used to have dancing parties on our ship, and I think she’s a very good dancer.”

Ada froze. “What is a ‘taxi-girl’?”

“A paid dance partner,” Klim explained. “There are a lot more men in Shanghai than women, and all the bachelors hang around the restaurants. They don’t have their own girlfriends, so they dance with taxi-girls. There’s no prostitution involved.”

Klim stood up and undid his jacket and took off his scarf.

“Come on. Let’s show off your talents.”

Trembling, Ada placed her blanket and books on the sofa and approached Klim.

“If Martha gives you an offer, take it,” he whispered in Russian. “It’s a difficult job, but this way you might earn a living.”

Martha wound up the gramophone, and the strangled melody of a tango poured from its flaring horn. Klim pulled Ada to him by the waist, and again she experienced that novel flush of sensation caused by the close proximity of an adult male. His breath was too hot, his eyes were too ardent; it was as if in a split second Klim had fallen in love with her.

She readily anticipated his every move. If there was one thing you could say about Ada Marshall, it was that she loved to dance.

“Oh, my girl! Bravo, bravo!” Martha said, clapping her hands. “She’s very good indeed.”

“Then get her something to wear,” said Klim, releasing Ada from his embrace. “She must have grown out of this dress three years ago.”

“I’ll find something for her,” Martha replied and ran into the next room.

Panting with excitement, Ada sat down on the edge of the sofa. She didn’t dare look Klim in the face. What had happened between the two of them? While they had been dancing, he had been so gentle with her.

Ada looked at him out of the corner of her eye. It was strange: now, there wasn’t even a hint of the passion he had shown on the dance floor. His face betrayed nothing but indifference and fatigue.

Martha returned with two dresses on hangers. “I won’t let you try them on—you clearly haven’t had a bath for ages. I’ll just hold the dress up to you.”

Ada obeyed, silently.

“So, this one will be alright and this one will do, too,” Martha said. “Do you have shoes? Show me your foot.”

She gave Ada a pair of expensive, but slightly worn shoes and announced that she would give her a dollar and a half a day and deduct the cost of the dresses and the shoes from Ada’s salary.

“I’ll skin you alive if the girl runs away with the dresses,” Martha warned Klim.

“Where’s she going to run?” he replied glumly. “Back to the Bolsheviks?”

“You brought her here so you’re responsible for her. Where are you staying?”

“We haven’t got anywhere yet.”

“Ask Chen—he rents rooms and speaks English.” Martha scribbled Chen’s address on a piece of paper. “Now go—I need to get my beauty sleep. Make sure that the girl is at the Havana at seven tonight.”

Klim gallantly kissed Martha’s hand and headed towards the stairs. Ada followed him, with a sigh. No oranges today, she thought.

As Ada was about to go, Martha grabbed her by the shoulder. “If you’re a virgin, I beg you, don’t sleep with anyone without letting me know first,” she whispered, giving Klim a meaningful look. “I could get you the sort of client that you could only dream of.”

After a long search, Klim and Ada found a three-story building, a bizarre U-shaped hodgepodge of classical European architecture and Chinese poverty. The last time its walls had seen whitewash must have been well into the last century, and its latticed gate was bent, as if it had been hit by a truck. Above it, a plaque read in Chinese and in English: “The House of Hope and a Burgeoning Career.”

“Well, with a name like that, we can’t go wrong here,” Klim chuckled.

Ada followed him into the inner courtyard, a grim enclosure of gray walls and windows, each adorned with caged pet birds. The rectangle of sky overhead was cross-stitched with bamboo poles festooned with washing. In the center of the yard under a ragged straw canopy stood a stove. A dark-skinned woman in a quilted vest over her long shirts was busy cooking.

Klim asked her something, and she made an incomprehensible din, pointing at a grand but dilapidated old entrance with a door knocker in the form of a lion’s head.

“Wait for me here,” he told Ada and went off to negotiate with the landlord.

Please God, help us find a room! Ada prayed silently. To get a job and a place to live in one day would be incredible luck. I wonder where Klim met Martha? she thought. Surely, he wasn’t using her services when he used to live here?

A sudden recollection of their tango sent shivers down Ada’s back. What would she do if Klim were to make advances towards her? The very idea made her blush, and she hugged herself, as if in self-defense. Oh, what a horrible thought! But on the other hand, maybe it might be quite nice to drive a grown man crazy with passion for you.

Klim emerged from Chen’s apartment. “It looks like we’ve agreed on a price: we pay ten dollars a month and get a room and boiling water in the dorm kitchen. I’ve told the landlord that you are my concubine; otherwise he wouldn’t let us stay together. The Chinese are very strict when it comes to moral standards.”

Now even Ada’s ears were flushing with embarrassment.

Klim laughed. “Don’t worry, no one’s going to check.”

Chen, a stooping Chinese man with a long thin pigtail, led them upstairs on squeaking wooden steps.

He didn’t stop at the third-floor but took them even higher.

“We’re in the pigeon-loft,” Klim said to Ada.

“Please, please,” Chen repeated as he pointed to a low cracked door.

Behind it was an unheated cubbyhole that smelled of damp wood and was only a tad bigger than a train compartment. A stove fashioned out of a metal barrel and labeled Kerosene stood in one corner, and a bunk bed, made out of boards and bamboo poles, was positioned by the wall.

“Where’s the lavatory here?” Ada asked.

“Chinese houses don’t have sewage systems,” Klim explained. “Everybody uses night pots with lids. Early in the morning, they put them outside, and the night-soil man collects them and then returns them clean.”

“So there’s no bathroom at all? How are we supposed to wash ourselves?”

“You can lug water up here, heat it up, and wash yourself. Or you can go to the river. But I wouldn’t recommend it: it’s full of cholera.”

“Are you going to bring water up here?”