Эльвира Барякина - White Ghosts

During the night she was tormented by bedbugs, screeching iron doors, and the other prisoners’ distant cries.

In the early mornings before sunrise, Nina would get up, walk to the window, and observe the pitched roof covered with black tiles. The city’s roofs stretched away like giant scaly fish on their way to their spawning grounds.

The sky turned pink, the smoke began to rise from the chimneys, and the trees were transformed from dark gray to bright green. The birds performed a cheerful if chaotic chorus, and finally the rich, low sound of the signal bell swept over the city.

One day Nina watched an oncoming yellow cloud rapidly fill the morning sky. A minute later the window quivered as it was hit by a strong wind, and the room became as dark as night. A dust storm had rolled into Peking from the Gobi Desert.

The prisoners spent the next few days inside their cells. Nina could barely see the ridges of the roofs in the brown haze that had descended outside her window, and the prison was filled with an eerie silence. Sometimes Nina was under the impression that everyone had died and she was the only survivor.

She had tried to avoid painful thoughts about Klim, but the dust clouds that swept past her window reminded her of the smoke from the fires during the Russian civil war. How had she and Klim managed to survive that nightmare only to destroy their lives once the worst had passed?

Nina was surprised to realize that despite everything, nearly all her best memories were associated with Klim.

One day she had casually mentioned that she was keen to read a book by an Italian opera singer called Lina Cavalieri. Nina hadn’t even asked Klim to buy it, but a few weeks later she found the book on her dressing table.

Gifts like these meant much more to her than diamonds and furs. Klim remembered what Nina was interested in and had tried to make her happy, even though he personally could see no value in Mme. Cavalieri’s writing.

Klim used to write little notes for Nina: “You are beautiful” next to the mirror in the lobby, “Look on the top shelf” in the pantry, where a bar of her favorite marzipan candy awaited her.

She remembered Klim lying in their bed and herself leaning over him to kiss him. He had pulled a white feather out of the pillow and blown it. It had floated through the collar of her blouse, out the other side and landed on his stomach. It had been silly but it had made them laugh at the time. Did he remember that?

Finally one night a storm broke over Peking. In the morning the roof tiles were shining like new, and a big tree behind the prison fence was in full blossom.

From that time on, Nina would admire it every morning and savor the memories of her precious but ill-starred love: that time when they had danced the tango and Klim had sung the words of the music to her in Spanish, that time when they had imagined what they would look like in their old age—a slim and sprightly couple at the head of a sparkling and talented family.

Initially, Nina thought she would soon run out of these kinds of reminiscences, but to her surprise, she had an amazing store of memories available to her from her ten years of married life with Klim.

Nina tried to recall similar memories of her time with Daniel. There had been a lot of witty talk, sarcastic remarks, excitement and emotions, but nothing that could compare with the kinship, freedom, and absolute trust that she had shared with Klim.

Like it or not, he had been the only man she had ever truly loved, even though they had experienced the most terrible and shameful ups and downs.

1

Daniel and Klim were driving each other mad but they had to put up with each other in order to get to Peking in safety. By sticking together it was much easier to keep an eye on their suitcases, find food, and deal with Chinese officers keen to take their seats in their compartment.

However, Daniel didn’t miss a single opportunity to wind Klim up. He regaled him with the minutest details of his relationship with Nina and let him know that she had been ready to run away with him anywhere, to be as far away as possible from her lousy husband.

“The most ridiculous thing about this whole affair,” Daniel said with a sigh, “is that your suspicions were totally absurd. We’ve never been lovers. So, what do you plan to do when you see her again? Are you going to beg for her forgiveness? Or perhaps you’ll be more melodramatic and deliver your final ultimatum: ‘It’s me or him—you can’t have us both.’”

Sometimes Klim felt an overwhelming urge to punch him in the mouth and be done with it. However, if he was going to save Nina, he knew he would need Daniel’s help.

“Neither of us will get her,” Klim said to Daniel. “You’ve had every opportunity to steal Nina away from me, but you didn’t really want her, just like you never really wanted Edna or any of the women you’ve ever had for that matter. You have no interest in them as people. You want Nina just in order to prove to yourself that you’re no worse than me.”

Daniel laughed. “That’s what celebrity does to people. With all your pathetic besotted fans, you think the whole world revolves around you, don’t you? Well, sorry to disillusion you, old chap, but I couldn’t give a damn about you. Although I have to say, I’m fascinated by your extraordinary ability to ruin your own life.”

2

In Peking, Daniel and Klim rented a room in the Central Hotel, and Daniel immediately went to the Legation Quarter. He discovered that while they had been traveling up to Peking, Zhang Zuolin’s soldiers had conducted a search of the Soviet Embassy under the pretext that the Russians were sheltering Chinese communists. Zhang had violated every diplomatic rule in the book, but nobody cared. During the search, his soldiers had discovered conclusive evidence that the Soviet Union was conducting subversive activities in China.

The Soviets had always claimed their actions had no bearing on the struggle of the local proletariat to liberate themselves from oppression, insisting that any uprisings were purely the initiative of local workers. But here were papers documenting the shipments of weapons and the supply of money and instructions to saboteurs, lists of secret agents, cyphers, and all sorts of other paraphernalia. Soviet agents had been directly instructed to organize provocations, robbery, and murder, in order to turn the Chinese masses against the West and their own government.

Newspapers around the world had published these documents proving the Bolsheviks’ guilt and denouncing their perfidious actions. But it was all water off a duck’s back for the Soviets—they were incapable of shame or embarrassment. Pretending to be offended, Moscow sent a formal protest to the Peking government, declaring itself a victim of a misinformation campaign directed against all the working people of the world.

Zhang Zuolin became even more incensed after this impudent reply and ordered that every Chinese person found on the territory of the Russian Embassy should be shot. However, he refrained from harming Soviet citizens, fearing that this could lead to direct military reprisals.

“Mr. Rogov, we are out of luck,” Daniel declared on his return from another trip to the Legation Quarter. “Moscow has withdrawn its charge d’affaires and all its employees in protest. They only have a skeleton staff left, manning the consulate and working on the Borodin trial.”

“So the Soviets are at least trying to defend them?” Klim asked hopefully. “Is there any chance of us making an appointment with the Russian Embassy?”

“Are you kidding? The Russians have been stripped of their diplomatic immunity, and they now see every stranger who comes to visit them as a spy or assassin. I need to think of a way of reaching them.”

3

Klim found the city jail, but couldn’t find out if Nina was being kept there or somewhere else.

Peking is a city of walls, he thought. The houses, office buildings, theaters, and entire neighborhoods were all surrounded by insurmountable barriers. As he wandered through the Chinese capital, Klim felt as if he’d entered a labyrinth of stone rectangles and squares.

One day he managed to make his way to the top of an ancient Bell Tower overlooking half of the city. A huge bell hanging from a wooden frame had been used to keep track of time for centuries.

“If you throw a coin at the bell and make a wish,” the keeper hinted, “it will be bound to come true.”

Klim knew that the keeper had invented the legend in order to trick the incredulous “white ghost” into throwing away his money, but nevertheless he still took his wallet out. To the bell keeper’s great disappointment, Klim’s coin vanished into the shadows under the ceiling and silently fell into the thick layer of dust on top of the bell.

“Time’s up, the tower is closed,” the keeper said angrily.

With a heavy heart, Klim trudged back to his hotel. While he’d been in the Bell Tower, a crazy idea had occurred to him. What if he were to overpower the keeper and use the bell to send Nina messages in Morse code to let her know that he was in the city and looking for her? Unfortunately, she didn’t know Morse code.

When he reached the Central Hotel, Klim was met by Daniel.

“Get dressed for dinner,” he told him. “I’ve figured out a way of making contact with the Russians.”

Half an hour later Klim found himself in a small European restaurant next to the Legation Quarter. It was full of noisy foreigners gathered at round polished tables. Waiters ran to and fro with unimaginably large trays, dishes crashed, and the flags of the Great Powers swayed in the cigarette smoke under the high ceiling.