Эльвира Барякина - White Ghosts

Klim tried to imagine seeing Nina in person again. What would it be like? What would they say to each other?

He knew that Daniel had asked Levkin to pass on a message to Nina, too. Previously, Klim thought that he would nobly step aside and refrain from standing in their way, but now the very thought of doing so made his fists clench. Nina is mine, he thought. I won’t give her up.

Now it was 11:00 a.m., and the judge should have already pronounced sentence.

Klim wanted to see what was going on up the street and approached the glass door with a “Closed” sign on it, but the master repairman, an old Polish communist named Janek, stopped him. “Stay inside.”

Time crawled by so slowly that Klim thought that his watch had broken. Every time the shadow of a passerby flashed past the glass door, his heart skipped a bit.

Everything will be just fine, he kept telling himself. The main thing is not to panic and to stick to the plan.

Daniel had promised that he would bring a car that would take Klim and the judge to the Legation Quarter, but so far, there was no sign of him.

What if Daniel has lied to me? Klim thought. What if he had decided to get rid of his competitor and informed the police where they could find a corrupt judge and the Bolshevik agent, Klim Rogov?

At last he heard footsteps on the porch, and a bony finger tapped at the glass. Klim rushed to the door and was met by Huo Cong, who had already changed into a European suit and hat.

“Where’s the money?” the judge asked.

Klim gave him the bundle of money, and Huo Cong dumped it on the workbench.

“Did you release the prisoners?” Klim said anxiously.

The judge nodded and began to count the bills.

Klim was so overwhelmed with joy and relief that he wanted to hug the old man.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, but Huo Cong wasn’t paying any attention.

There was still no sign of Daniel’s car. Huo Cong lost count and began to start all over again.

“Hurry up!” Janek urged him as he looked through the blinds to the street. “If you two don’t have a car, then you’ll have to go on foot.”

Suddenly his face turned an ashen gray. “Damn it!”

Klim rushed to the window and saw a policeman walking down the street.

“Do you have a back door?” Klim asked.

“I do,” said Janek, his jaw shaking, “but it’s a dead-end alley. The only way out is on to the main street.”

Klim cursed and looked at the judge.

“Are the police after me?” Huo Cong asked, pressing the wads of money to his chest.

“They are,” Klim said, grimly watching a man in the distance talking to the policemen and pointing at Janek’s shop. “I guess the neighbors must have spotted you coming in.”

He noticed a number of rusty gas lamps standing along the wall.

“Are these carbide lamps?” he asked Janek.

“Yes,” the repairman said. “Why?”

Klim pushed him aside and took the lid off an iron box labeled with the chemical formula CaC2.

“Janek, I need a container—a jar or a vase—anything. We need to scare off the police.  ”

The repairman nodded, finally realizing what Klim was up to, and took a couple of empty beer bottles from under the table. Klim filled them with dull gray fragments of carbide, poured in some water, and shook the bottles.

“I’ll be right back,” he said running out into the street.

The policemen rushed towards him, blowing their whistles. Klim left the bottles on the sidewalk and ran back into the shop. Two explosions went off, one after the other, shattering the window, and the policemen scattered, shouting.

“They’ll kill us all!” yelped the judge.

“Janek, do we have any more bottles?” Klim barked.

At that moment there was a roar of an engine, and a black car stopped at the back door.

 “Get in!” Daniel shouted.

Klim, Janek, and Huo Cong got into the car, and it set off at top speed towards the main street. The policemen started to shoot at them, but it was already too late; the car had turned the corner and driven off, bouncing over the cobbled road.

Huo Cong was still clutching his money; Janek sat beside him, his hands pressed over his head.

“What happened back there?” Daniel asked.

Klim laughed nervously. “When I worked at the radio station, we used small amounts of calcium carbide to create the sound effect of explosions in our shows. I just repeated the performance for our police friends back there. Where’s Nina?”

“With Valdas,” Daniel said.

Klim was relieved. His mind was completely numb. How had they been able to make all this happen? He still couldn’t believe that everything had worked out fine.

They entered the Legation Quarter, and the car drove up to the gate of the Soviet Embassy, where journalists and photographers had already gathered.

Daniel stopped and let Klim and Janek get out of the car.

“Find out what’s going on here, and I’ll take the judge to the German Embassy,” he said.

His heart pounding, Klim approached the agitated crowd.

“Stand back!” the Red Army soldiers yelled at the crowd.

“Where are Fanya Borodin and her people?” someone shouted.

“We know nothing.”

Klim and Janek pushed their way to the gate and showed the guards their passes.

As they reached the porch with the stone lions, they met a stranger in a military jacket.

“Comrade Borodin and her companions have already left,” he said.

“Where to?” Klim asked in alarm.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know.”

“Where are Valdas and Levkin?”

“They have also left. All the embassy’s employees have been evacuated back to the USSR.”

Klim grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where are they?”

Pushing the man aside, Klim ran into the building, dashing from one room to another and throwing the doors open. A couple of guards chased after him. When they caught him, they pinned his arms behind his back and hurled him out of the gate.

Oblivious to the excited crowd around him, Klim stood frozen to the spot, staring at the embassy fence that looked as menacing and impregnable as a stockade of spears. How could they have taken Nina away, without even letting him say a word to her? Levkin must have realized a long time ago that he and Nina were more than “just friends.”

Maybe we just missed each other, Klim thought. Zhang Zuolin is bound to turn the entire city upside down to find Fanya Borodin and the other prisoners. They must be in hiding somewhere, I just need to figure out where.

Klim rushed to the German Embassy but the guards wouldn’t let him in. They told him they had never heard of Daniel.

Peking’s walls and fences were covered with portraits of the traitor judge Huo Cong and the political criminals he had released. A huge reward had been promised, but they had disappeared without a trace.

Klim felt as if his entire misadventure in Peking had been some sort of delirious dream. Depressed, he would drink himself into oblivion and wander the city for hours with no idea of where he had been and why he had gone there. He would then return to his hotel room and sit there hoping against hope that someone would call him.

Finally, Daniel Bernard appeared at the door of his room, thin, unshaven, and haggard.

“Any news of my wife?” Klim asked hopefully.

Daniel shook his head. “When I learned that you were still here, I figured that you’d been unable to find Nina either. So here we are with nothing to do but to live in the past.”

He took Klim’s “Receipts and Expenditures” diary out of his pocket and opened it at the middle page. He tore out the second half that was covered in his own handwriting and handed the front half to Klim.

“You keep the Russian part,” said Daniel, “and I’ll keep the German.”

Klim flipped through his mutilated diary. Its inside covers had doodles all over them—airplanes, cars, and portraits of Nina, some of them quite well executed.

“If you have something good to remember, then you have not lived your life in vain,” Daniel said, and he left without so much as shaking Klim’s hand.

A minute later a bellboy brought Klim a telegram from Tamara: “Kitty is missing you. Come back soon.”

The next day, Klim bought a ticket to Shanghai.

Klim was sitting in his studio in front of the microphone, reading the world news.

“In response to increasing tensions with Great Britain and the other Great Powers, the Soviet Union has organized a National Defense Week teaching the population how to shoot and use gas masks. There are continuing clashes between the police and socialists in Vienna.”

After Klim had bid his audience goodnight, Don Fernando stuck his head around the studio door.

“Hey, Klim, have you heard the latest about your crazy friend Martha? Some respected figure in the local church community ran up a huge tab at her brothel and refused to pay it. So last Sunday, Martha went to his church, and when they handed the baskets out for the offertory, she put every one of his signed chits into the basket. ‘The bearer of this note promises to pay for debts accrued in the Havana brothel.’ What a mad scandal that was!”

Klim chuckled. “That’s funny.”

It was only then that he noticed a technician waving frantically behind the glass screen.

“Oh no, we forgot to switch the mike off!”

Don Fernando roared with laughter and then let loose a long list of profanities, before declaring that the whole mishap must have been decreed by Virgin herself: now people would be talking about his honest mistake in every tram, providing free advertising for his radio station and Martha’s brothel.