Эльвира Барякина - White Ghosts

The tannery owner told Klim and the other workers to drag the hides out of the pools and scrape off the semi-decomposed bristle on them. It was hard to imagine how this slimy, foul smelling skin could ever be transformed into a pretty handbag or an elegant pair of shoes.

Lime dust filled the air, obscuring the sun and covering the workers’ faces and clothing with a fine white powder. The pale figures moved around like ghosts in a hellish pall of smoke and fumes, waving their hooks, dragging stacks of hides, and carrying heavy barrels filled with dyes on their shoulders.

The Chinese workers laughed at Klim. “You’ve finally become a real white person.”

“Have you taken a look in the mirror yourselves recently?” he snapped back.

That evening, when everyone was lined up in front of the cashier to get their day’s pay, a shiny car appeared at the open gates, and a white lady stepped out. She was young, tall and slightly stooped, with a long narrow face and light-brown almond-shaped eyes. She was dressed in a small French beret, Oxford suede shoes, and a checkered suit that didn't really become her, even though it was obviously expensive.

The stench was so overpowering that she visibly flinched. The workers roared with laughter.

“Does anyone speak English here?” the lady asked in a loud voice.

Nobody answered. The Chinese looked at her as if she was completely mad and asking for trouble.

“I’m a journalist,” the lady introduced herself. “I work for the North China Daily News, and I’m planning to write an article about the children working in this tannery.”

Klim watched her silently. Had she just said “journalist”? He had almost forgotten that such a profession ever existed.

He pointed at a gang of grubby-looking boys who were sitting near the fence. “Those are the characters you’re looking for.”

“Oh, thanks!” she said delightedly. “Could you—”

“Who let you in?” the tannery owner yelled in broken English, running up to her. “Get back to your settlement and stop sticking your nose in around here! This is our territory and none of your business.”

“Yeah, right!” the workers echoed in Shanghainese. “Go away!”

The lady took a step back. “But I wanted to—”

“Get out of here!”

She hastily got back into her car to a chorus of cat calls and whistling. The driver started the engine, and they drove away in a cloud of dust, clods of dirt following in their wake.

Annoyed, Klim frowned at the jubilant workers. At one point, he really thought this might have been his lucky break to meet a fellow journalist from an English language newspaper. He might have been able to help the lady as an interpreter—his Shanghainese had improved significantly over the last few months. Apparently, it wasn’t to be.

Klim received his pathetic wages, went out of the gate, and walked along the road lined with the huts of the poor. The coolies, their faces red with effort, pushed big carts with three or four women sitting on them. The women were match factory workers whose feet were so deformed that they had had to hire carters to drive them to and from work.

Old men played mahjong on their porches, little children watching by their sides. There was a slit in the rear of the children’s pants, and if they needed to relieve themselves, they would squat and do their business right in the middle of the road.

Klim’s whole body was numb with fatigue. The lime dust was still tickling his throat, and the skin on his face and neck felt as if it was on fire. Another month of this work, he thought, and I’ll be a prime candidate either for asthma or tuberculosis.

A car horn blared behind Klim, and the lady journalist’s car stopped right next to him.

“Get in,” she said as she opened the rear door for him. “I’ll give you a ride.”

Klim stared at her in amazement. “Are you sure? I’ll only dirty your car—” he began, but the lady waved her hand dismissively.

“Don’t worry, the servants will clean it up. My name is Edna Bernard. What’s yours?”

Klim introduced himself.

“So, I was right in guessing that you’re a Russian,” Edna said. “Where are you going now?”

“To the French Concession.”

“Great. You can tell me what’s going on with the children in your tannery on the way.”

When was the last time I rode in a car? Klim thought as he took the rear seat next to Edna. It must have been at least several years ago, when he had been given a ride on a half-broken boneshaker belonging to a White Army official. Edna Bernard had a brand new Buick with a polished dashboard, shiny door handles, and comfortable leather seats. I bet she has no idea how the leather on these seats was made, Klim thought, smiling to himself.

He told her that the children working at Chinese tanneries were set the job of stretching the skins out to dry. Each hide had to be nailed to a wooden board with a dozen nails to prevent it from wrinkling. It was not a very difficult job, but the children had to work at it from twelve to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, constantly breathing in the lime dust and the poisonous fumes.

The children were supposed to get seven dollars a month, but very few of them ever received their full salaries, since the owner would fine them for the most insignificant misdemeanors. Daydreaming or dozing during working hours would cost them five cents, going to the toilet without permission twenty cents, and any homesickness or crying would set them back as much as a dollar. The owner had lied to their parents, telling them that the children would get sixty dollars and three changes of clothing during their apprenticeship. In reality, all he and his foremen did was rob and beat them.

“Few of these factory kids will ever make it to their twenties,” Klim said. “And those who do will be illiterate, angry, and hard-bitten adults.”

“But how do you manage to survive there?” Edna asked, shocked.

Klim shrugged. “The same way everybody else does.”

The chauffeur drove them to Avenue Joffre.

“I still have to pay a visit to the silk factory and then to the match factory,” Edna said. “I want to investigate what’s going on there. Will you go with me?”

Klim shook his head. “Mrs. Bernard, my work starts at six in the morning.”

“I’ll pay you. How much do you want? Five dollars? Ten?”

Klim made five dollars a week maximum, but for Edna this sum was nothing, a trifle.

She gave him an advance, and they agreed to meet the next day at nine in the morning at the same place.

When her article about the Chinese factory children was published, Edna received one hundred and fifty letters from her readers. This was a bumper response for her.

She was commissioned with a new assignment to write an article on refugees, and she and Klim spent several days in the markets and shanty towns, talking to the Russian immigrants.

Previously, the poor had not been particularly eager to tell Edna about their troubles. They either saw her as a false friend who was only pretending to be kind, or rather as an eccentric who was sticking her nose into other people’s business.

But with Klim, things were different. He was observant, able to get in with the people, and he had an eye for details that gave Edna’s reports a vital element of spice.

With the money she paid him, he bought a new outfit for himself, complete with a hat and canvas shoes, and he took on a new lease of life.

“What were you before the revolution?” she asked him one day. “A Tsarist officer?”

“You’ll never guess,” he replied. “An Argentine journalist.”

He recounted his story to Edna, not mentioning Nina, of course.

“If your English was up to scratch,” Edna said, “and you could provide the editors with letters of recommendation from your previous employers, you wouldn’t be unemployed for a single day. Let me think how I can help you.”

As soon as the Shanghai authorities had allowed the refugees to go ashore, Nina started looking for Klim. But he had never registered himself in the Russian Consulate, and when she went to the Orthodox church, she met some ladies who knew her from the refugees’ ship.

“Look at that shameless woman all dressed in fur!” they spat at her. “How dare you step foot in this church, you hussy? Where’s your Czech lover boy?”

What should I do now? Nina thought, at a loss.

Her money and confidence were dissipating rapidly. Initially, Shanghai had almost seemed like a fairy tale to Nina, but she was soon hit with a sobering dose of reality. Time was passing, and she still hadn’t come up with a single good idea about how to make a living. For all her fine clothes, Nina found it difficult to slip into the glittering fast stream of connections, opportunities, and wealth that the city had to offer. Firstly, she was a woman, and a woman, according to the established order of things, shouldn’t be involved in business. Secondly, she was a stateless person with no start-up capital; and thirdly, she didn’t have much of a head for business.

Jiří was convinced that Nina would soon fritter away all her money and turn to petty crime, while he would end up drinking himself into an early grave. He was angry at his own impotence, and even more angry with Nina—for trying to do something about their situation, thus emphasizing his lack of courage and application.

“Let’s open a cinema?” she proposed. “We could rent a place and hire benches and a projector.”