White Gardenia (9 page)

‘The Tsar and Tsarina,’ she said, picking up one of the teacups from the table and showing it to him. ‘See.’

‘I’m afraid we probably won’t find your necklace,’ said the policeman, opening the doors of the car for us. ‘Those thieves have most likely already broken it up and sold the stones and chain separately. They
spied on you and the old woman from the café. They won’t return to this part of the city for some time.’

Sergei tucked a roll of bills into the policeman’s pocket. ‘Try,’ he said, ‘and there will be an even bigger reward waiting for you.’

The policeman nodded and patted his pocket. ‘I will see what I can do.’

The next morning I opened my eyes and felt the sunlight dancing over me through the shifting curtains. There was a bowl of gardenias on the bedside table. I remembered putting them there a few days ago. I stared at the flowers and had a flash of optimism that I had been dreaming and that none of yesterday’s events had really taken place. For a moment I believed that if I slipped out of bed and opened the top drawer of the dresser I would find the necklace again, safe in its box where it had been since I came to Shanghai. But then I caught sight of my leg poking out from under the ruffled sheets. Purple scratches crisscrossed over it like cracks on a porcelain vase. The sight of them brought reality bearing down on me. I pressed my fists to my eyes, trying to block out the images that came to torment me: the Soviet soldier, the derelict apartment stinking of faeces and dust, the necklace dangling from the gypsy’s hand moments before I lost it.

Mei Lin came to open the curtains. I told her to leave them shut. I saw no point in getting up and facing the day. I could not imagine myself in school, the nuns looking at me with their bare, pale faces, asking why I hadn’t been in my classes the day before.

Mei Lin put my breakfast tray on the side table. She lifted the cover before scuttling away like a thief. I had no appetite, just a pain in the pit of my stomach. Through the window the faint sound of Madame Butterfly’s
‘Un bel di’
drifted in on a ring of opium
smoke. The realisation that Sergei was taking his fix early did nothing to lift my spirits. It was my fault. He had come to me late in the night. In the shadows, with his dark brow and worried eyes, he had looked like a tormented saint. ‘You’re too hot,’ he had said, putting his hand on my forehead. ‘I’m worried that the drug the old hag gave you is turning into poison.’

I was his nightmare relived again. He was terrified that I might slip into death unnoticed. Sergei’s first wife, Marina, contracted typhoid during the epidemic of 1914. He was by her bedside every day and night for the worst of her illness. Her skin felt like fire, her pulse beat erratically and her bright eyes turned dull and deathlike. He called in the finest physicians to save her with their forced-feedings, cold baths, fluid infusions and mysterious medicines. They managed to fight the primary infection but she died two weeks later from a massive internal haemorrhage. It was the only night Sergei had not been by Marina’s side, and he had only left her then because the doctors and his staff had assured him that she was recovering and that he should sleep in a proper bed.

Sergei wanted to send for the doctor to examine me, but I clutched his trembling hand and held it against my cheek. He sank down to his knees and rested his chin on his elbows on the side of the bed. A giant bear of a man, kneeling like a child in prayer.

I must have fallen asleep soon after, for that was the last I remembered. Even in my misery I knew I was lucky to have Sergei. And that made me terrified that I would lose him too, without warning, as I had lost my mother and father.

Later, when Amelia was out at the races and Sergei was sleeping off his opium, Mei Lin brought me a note on a silver tray.

Come down. I want to talk to you and I won’t be allowed up there.

Dmitri
.

I scrambled out of bed, smoothed my hair and grabbed a clean dress from the wardrobe. I took the stairs in twos and leaned over the balustrade when I reached the landing. Dmitri was waiting in the parlour, his hat and jacket beside him. His eyes were darting about the room and he was tapping his foot. He clutched something in his fist. I took a gulp of air and composed myself, trying to be as graceful as Francine and nothing at all like my girlish self.

When I stepped into the room he stood up and smiled. There were shadows under his eyes and his cheeks were puffy, as if he had slept badly.

‘Anya,’ he said, opening his hand and passing me a velvet pouch. ‘This was all I could retrieve.’

I pulled the drawstrings open and poured the contents into my hand. Three green stones and part of a gold chain. I fingered the remains of my mother’s necklace. The stones were scratched. They had been carelessly torn from the chain with no thought to their real worth. The sight of the jewels reminded me of the night my father’s mangled body was brought into the house after the accident. My father was returned to us, but he was not the same. The men had brought him back in pieces.

‘Thank you,’ I said, trying to put on a brave smile. The policeman had said the necklace would be impossible to find. I was afraid to ask Dmitri how he had come across these pieces. What methods he had used. For I sensed that, like Sergei, he moved in a darker world sometimes. A place that had nothing to
do with the handsome, well-spoken man who stood before me. A world that would never intrude on us.

‘It was very kind of you,’ I said. ‘But I was stupid. I knew the old woman would lie to me. I just didn’t expect her to rob me.’

Dmitri strolled to the window and stared at the garden. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had much of an education for a place like Shanghai. The Russians you have grown up with have been…refined. I grew up among the lesser kind and I know what scum those people are.’

I studied him for a moment, the straightness of his back, his broad shoulders. I was overwhelmed by how handsome he was, yet his darkness was a mystery to me.

‘You must think I’m very dull and spoilt,’ I said.

He spun around, his eyes full of surprise. ‘I think that you are very beautiful and very clever. I’ve never seen anyone like you…you’re like someone from a book. A princess.’

I slipped the remains of my mother’s necklace back into the pouch. ‘That’s not what you were thinking that afternoon I saw you in the garden. The day you were with Marie and Francine,’ I said. ‘You thought I was a stupid schoolgirl.’

‘Never!’ said Dmitri, looking genuinely alarmed. ‘I thought Amelia was rude…and I was jealous.’

‘Jealous? Of what?’

‘I would have liked to have gone to a fine school. To have studied French and art.’

‘Oh!’ I said, staring at him in amazement. I had spent months thinking he looked down on me.

The parlour door opened and Mei Lin sprang into the room. When she saw Dmitri she froze and stepped back, shyly clinging to the arm of the sofa.
She had lost her two front teeth the week before and lisped when she spoke. ‘Mr Sergei asked if you would like tea now,’ she said in polite Russian.

Dmitri laughed and slapped his knee. ‘She must have learned that from you,’ he said. ‘She sounds like an aristocrat.’

‘Would you like to stay for tea?’ I asked him. ‘Sergei would be pleased to see you.’

‘Unfortunately I can’t,’ he replied, gathering up his hat and coat. ‘I’m auditioning a new jazz band for the club.’

‘And you would rather study French and art?’

Dmitri laughed again, and the sound of it ran over me like a warm wave. ‘One day,’ he said, ‘Sergei will bend and bring you to the club.’

Outside, the air was fresh and the sun was blazing. I had been depressed that morning, but Dmitri had lifted my spirits. The garden seemed alive with sounds, smells and colours. The doves were crooning and purple asters were blooming in the borders. I could smell the pungency of the moss that dappled the fountain and those parts of the wall that were in constant shade. I had an urge to link my arm with Dmitri’s and skip with him to the gate, but I resisted it.

Dmitri glanced back at the house. ‘Are you all right here, Anya?’ he asked. ‘It must be lonely.’

‘I am used to it now,’ I said. ‘I have the library. And a few friends at school.’

He stopped and kicked at a piece of gravel on the path, frowning. ‘I don’t have much time because of the club,’ he said, ‘but perhaps I could visit you, if you like. What if I came for a couple of hours each Wednesday afternoon?’

‘Yes,’ I said, clapping my hands together. ‘I would like that very much.’

The Old Maid opened the latch on the gate for us. I was afraid to look into her eyes. I wondered if she had heard what had happened to the necklace and despised me even more for it. But she was her usual grim-faced, silent self.

‘What shall we do next Wednesday then?’ Dmitri asked, whistling for a rickshaw. ‘Do you want to play tennis?’

‘No, I do enough of that at school,’ I said. I imagined one of his smooth hands between my shoulderblades, the other clutching my fingers in his, our cheeks pressing. I bit my lip and studied Dmitri for some sign he felt the same way. But his face was a mask. I hesitated a moment before gushing: ‘I want you to teach me the dance you did with Marie and Francine.’ Dmitri stepped back, startled. I felt colour rush to my face but I wasn’t going to back down. ‘The tango,’ I said.

He laughed, throwing his head back so I could see all his white teeth. ‘That’s a very forward dance, Anya. I think I would have to ask Sergei.’

‘I’ve heard he was an excellent dancer himself once,’ I replied, my voice turning wooden with nerves. Despite what Dmitri had said about thinking I was beautiful and clever, I could see that I was still a little girl in his eyes. ‘Perhaps we can ask him to teach us.’

‘Perhaps.’ Dmitri laughed again. ‘Although he is being very proper with you. I’m sure he will insist on the Viennese waltz.’

A rickshaw boy in torn shorts and a threadbare shirt pulled up to the gate. Dmitri gave him the address of the club. I watched him climb into the seat.

‘Anya,’ he called. I looked up and saw that he was leaning down towards me. I hoped he was going to
kiss me, so I turned my cheek to him. But he cupped his hand to my ear and whispered: ‘Anya, I want you to know that I understand. I lost my mother too when I was your age.’

The thump of my heart in my chest was so loud I barely heard him.

He signalled to the boy and the rickshaw moved off down the street. Just before it took the corner, Dmitri turned and waved. ‘Next Wednesday then,’ he shouted.

My skin was tingling. It felt so hot I thought it must be melting on my bones. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the Old Maid staring at me, her bone-thin hand holding the gate. I ran past her, back through the garden and into the house, my feelings a Chinese orchestra clashing and clanging within me.

W
inter in Shanghai was not as cold as in Harbin, but not as beautiful either. There was no whitewash of snow to blanket buildings and streets, no stalactites hanging from eaves like crystals, no retreat into peaceful silence. Instead there was an endless grey sky, a procession of pinchfaced bedraggled people in the dirty streets, and air so damp and full of sleet that one inhalation left me shuddering and melancholic.

The winter garden was monstrous. The flowerbeds were barren mud patches out of which only the hardiest of weeds would raise their heads. I surrounded the gardenia tree with mesh and a cover. The rest of the frost-nipped trees stood naked without leaves or snow. They cast forbidding shadows on my curtains at night, like skeletons standing up from their graves. The wind would howl through them, making the glass in the windowpanes shudder and the ceiling beams creak. I lay awake for hours many nights, crying for my mother and
imagining that she was out there somewhere in the tempest, hungry and shivering.

But while the flowers and plants were lying dormant, my body was sprouting. First my legs grew longer, stretching towards the end of the bed so I could see I was going to be tall, like my parents. My waist thinned and my hips broadened, and my childish freckles began fading into ivory skin. Then, to my delight, buds of breasts began to swell out of my chest. I watched them with interest, expanding, pushing against my sweater like spring blooms. My hair remained strawberry blonde, but my eyebrows and lashes darkened, and my voice became more womanly. It seemed that the only feature apart from my hair that remained the same was my blue eyes. The changes were so rapid I couldn’t help thinking that my growth the previous year must have been stunted, like a river blocked by a log, and that something had happened in Shanghai to dislodge the obstacle, sending forth a stream of startling changes.

I spent hours perched on the rim of the bathtub, peering in the mirror at the stranger I was becoming. I was both exhilarated and depressed about the changes in me. Each step towards womanhood was a step closer to Dmitri
and
a step away from the child I had been with my mother. I was no longer the young daughter to whom she had sung songs about mushrooms and whose stubby hand she had bruised because she held it so tightly, never wanting to let me go. I wondered if my mother would even recognise me.

Dmitri remained true to his promise and visited me every Wednesday. We moved the sofas and chairs to the sides of the ballroom and begged Sergei to teach us to dance. As Dmitri had predicted, Sergei insisted on
the Viennese waltz. Under the stern eyes of the portraits hanging on the walls, Dmitri and I practised our turns and glides to perfection. Sergei was an exacting teacher, stopping us often to correct our footwork, our arms, the position of our heads. But I was happy beyond my expectations. What did it matter what style we danced or to what music, as long as I danced with Dmitri? When I was with him those few hours each week I could forget my sadness. At first I worried that Dmitri might only be coming because he felt sorry for me, or because Sergei had secretly urged him to do so. But I watched him like a cat eyeing a mouse, searching for signs of eagerness, and I found them. He was never late for our lessons, and seemed disappointed when our time was over, lingering in the hall longer than necessary to collect his coat and umbrella. Often, when he thought I wasn’t looking, I would catch him staring at me. I would swiftly turn and he would glance away, pretending that his attention had been on something else.

By the time the daffodils were poking their heads through the soil and the birds were returning to the garden, my first period finally came. I asked Luba to tell Sergei that he had to let me go to the Moscow-Shanghai now. I was a woman. The reply was given to me on a silver card with a sprig of jasmine taped to it:
After your fifteenth birthday. You need more practice at being a woman.

But Sergei did tell Dmitri that he would teach us the bolero. I was longing for the tango and, never having heard of the bolero, was disappointed.

‘No, this dance is much more symbolic,’ Dmitri reassured me. ‘Sergei and Marina danced the bolero the day they got married. He would not be teaching it to us if he didn’t think we were serious enough.’

The following week Sergei dimmed the lights in the ballroom. He positioned the needle on the record and set Dmitri and I so that we were opposite each other, me slightly to the right, and so close that the buttons of Dmitri’s shirt pressed into me. I could feel Dmitri’s pulse and the beat of his heart against my ribs. The amber light made Sergei’s face look demonic and our shadows became grotesque shapes looming on the walls. The music was a relentless marching rhythm set to the beat of rolling drums. Then a flute, hypnotic as a snake charmer’s pipe, began a melody. Trumpets full of bravado and horns full of passion joined in the frenzy. Sergei began dancing, teaching us the steps without words. Dmitri and I followed, keeping time with the clashing cymbals, dipping and rising, treading forwards then rocking slowly back, swaying our hips in the opposite direction to our feet. The music seized me and dragged me spiralling down into another world. For one moment I believed Dmitri and I were the king and queen of Spain presiding over our court, the next we were riding horseback across sweeping plains in the company of Don Quixote, and yet the next we were a Roman emperor and empress parading in a chariot before our subjects. The dance was a fantasy, the most erotic experience I had ever known. Sergei striding before us, his arms flowing softly over his head but his footwork masculine; Dmitri and I almost touching, lingering for a moment, then moving away. The music’s melody repeated itself over and over again, plunging us in and out of each other, impelling us forward, seducing us, rising to a climax.

When Sergei came to a stop, Dmitri and I were breathless. We clung to each other, trembling. Sergei was a sorcerer who had taken us to the underworld
and back again. I was burning with a fever but could not get my legs to move across the room to sit down.

The needle clicked off the record player and Sergei flicked on the lights. I was startled to see Amelia, a cigarette perched in the tips of her fingers and her black hair sleek like a mink’s pelt against her pale face. The sight of her sent a shiver through me. She blew out a ring of cigarette smoke, considering me as if she were an army general gauging the size and nature of her enemy. I wished she would stop staring at me. She was grinding down the elation I felt after the bolero. She must have read my thoughts because she sniggered, turned on her heel and left.

I hadn’t quite believed Sergei’s promise to take me to the Moscow-Shanghai after my fifteenth birthday, but one day in August the following year he emerged from his study and announced that I would be going to the club that night. Amelia produced the emerald green dress Mrs Woo had sewn for me but I could barely get it over my head, I had grown so much. Sergei called a seamstress in for an urgent refitting. When she left, Mei Lin was sent to brush my hair. Amelia came after her, swinging a beauty case in her hand. She smudged rouge on my cheeks and lips and dabbed musky perfume on my wrists and behind my ears. When she had finished she leaned back and smiled, pleased with the result. ‘I don’t mind you so much now you’re an adult,’ she said. ‘It’s pouty children I can’t stand.’

I knew she was lying. She still couldn’t stand me.

I sat between her and Sergei in the car. Bubbling Well Road passed by like a silent movie. Young
women of every nationality stood in the doorways of nightclubs, sparkling in their sequined dresses and feather boas. They waved to passers-by, soliciting customers with their smiles. Groups of revellers lurched along the crowded pavements, drunkenly bumping into other pedestrians and hawkers, while gamblers huddled together on the street corners, like bugs under the neon lights.

‘Here we are!’ announced Sergei. The door swung open and I was helped out of the car by a man in a Cossack’s uniform. His hat was bear fur and I couldn’t resist touching it, at the same time gaping at the magnificence that opened up before me. A red carpet ran up a set of wide stone steps, bordered on either side by gold-braid rope. A queue of men and women were waiting to get into the club, their gowns, furs, satins and jewels gleaming under the sepia-coloured lamps, the air electric with their chatter. At the top of the stairs was a portico with giant neoclassical columns and two marble lions guarding the entrance. Dmitri was waiting there. We exchanged smiles and he rushed down the stairs to meet us. ‘Anya,’ he said, his head close to mine. ‘I will always have you to dance with from now on.’

Dmitri commanded respect as the nightclub’s manager. When he directed us up the red carpet, the guests parted way in deference to him and more Cossacks bowed to us. Inside, the foyer was breathtaking. White artificial marble walls and gilded mirrors reflected the light of a giant chandelier hanging from a Byzantine ceiling. The false windows were painted in with a blue sky and white clouds and gave the impression of permanent twilight. The hall made me think of a photograph my father once showed me of the Tsar’s palace and I remembered
him telling me about the caged birds that would sing whenever anybody entered. But there were no singing birds at the Moscow-Shanghai, only a squad of young women in embroidered Russian dresses checking in the guests’ coats and stoles.

The nightclub’s interior had a different ambiance altogether. Wood-panelled walls and red Turkish rugs surrounded the dance floor which was crowded with people gyrating to the music spun out by the band. Among the glamorous couples, American, British and French officers were waltzing with pretty taxi dancers. Other patrons looked on from the mahogany chairs and velvet sofas, sipping champagne or whisky and gesturing to waiters to bring them caviar and bread.

I breathed in the smoke-filled air. Just as had happened the afternoon Sergei taught us the bolero, I was being plunged into a new world. Only the Moscow-Shanghai was real.

Dmitri led us up a staircase to the restaurant which was on a mezzanine level overlooking the dance floor. Dozens of gas lamps decorated the tables, all of which were occupied. A waiter rushed by with flaming shashlik on a sword, filling the air with the aroma of tender lamb, onions and brandy. Everywhere I looked there were diamonds and furs, expensive wools and silks. Bankers and hotel managers sat down to discuss business with gangsters and taipans, while actors and actresses made eyes at diplomats and shipping officers.

Alexei and Luba were already seated at a table at the far end of the restaurant, a half-finished carafe of wine at Alexei’s elbow. They were talking to two British shipping captains and their wives. The men stood up for us, while their tight-mouthed wives
glanced from Amelia to myself with thinly disguised distaste. One of the women stared so hard at the splits in my dress that my skin began to tingle with embarrassment.

Waiters in tuxedos brought us food on silver platters, laying out a feast of oysters,
piroshki
filled with sweet pumpkin,
blini
with caviar, creamy asparagus soup and black bread. It was more food than we could possibly eat, but they kept the courses coming: fish in vodka sauce, chicken Kiev, compotes, and a dessert of cherries and chocolate cake.

One of the captains, Wilson, asked me how I liked Shanghai. I hadn’t seen much of it, except Sergei’s house, my school, the stores on the few routes I was allowed to walk on my own and a park in the French Concession, but I told him that I loved it. He nodded his approval and leaned closer to me to whisper: ‘Most Russians in this city do not live like you, young lady. Look at those poor girls down there. Probably daughters of princes and nobles. Now they have to dance and entertain drunkards to earn a living.’

The other captain, whose name was Bingham, said he had heard that my mother had been taken to a labour camp. ‘That Stalin madman won’t be there forever,’ he said, heaping my plate with vegetables and knocking over the pepper shaker in the process. ‘There will be another revolution before the year’s out, you’ll see.’

‘Who are these fools?’ Sergei muttered to Dmitri.

‘Investors,’ Dmitri replied. ‘So keep smiling.’

‘No,’ said Sergei. ‘You will have to train Anya to do that now she is old enough. She’s so much more charming than any of us.’

When the after-dinner port was served, I slipped
away to the powder room and recognised the voices of the captains’ wives speaking to each other across the stalls. One woman was saying to the other, ‘That American woman should be ashamed of herself, not running around like the Queen of Sheba. She ruined a good man’s happiness and now she’s taken up with that Russian.’

‘I know,’ said the other woman. ‘And who’s that girl she’s got with her?’

‘I don’t know,’ answered the first. ‘But you can bet before long she’ll get a bad streak in her too.’

I pressed myself against the sink, dying to hear more, hoping my heels would not click on the tiled floor. Who was the good man whose life Amelia had ruined?

‘Bill can spend his money how he likes,’ said the first woman, ‘but what good can come of associating with such riffraff? You know what those Russians are like.’

I let out a giggle and both women stopped talking. Their toilets flushed in unison and I dashed for the door.

At midnight the orchestra stopped and a Cuban band took over the stage. The rhythm of the stringed instruments was gentle at first, but as soon as the brass and percussion joined in the music changed tempo and I could feel the excitement rush through the crowd. Couples ran to the floor to dance the mambo and rumba, while those without partners joined in a conga line. I was entranced by the music, so savage and yet sophisticated. I found myself unconsciously tapping my foot and clicking my fingers along with the beat.

Luba let out a throaty laugh. She nudged Dmitri and pointed to me. ‘Come on, Dmitri, take Anya out
to dance and show us what Sergei has been teaching you.’

Dmitri smiled at me and offered his hand. I followed him to the dance floor, although I was terrified. To dance in the ballroom of Sergei’s home was one thing, but on the dance floor at the Moscow-Shanghai was quite another. The mad rush of people rolling their hips and swinging their legs was like a wild frenzy. They danced as if their hearts would stop beating if they didn’t. But Dmitri put one hand on my hip and clenched my fingers in his, and I felt safe. We moved together in short, syncopated steps, twisting our hips and rolling our shoulders. We were playful at first, and bumped knees and feet and into other people, laughing each time. But after a while we moved gracefully together and I found I had forgotten my self-consciousness.