China to Me (14 page)

There was another place where Jean might have met Japanese, now that so many were about, but I don't think she did. This was Louise's. Louise was one of the Shanghai characters that you don't hear so much about. The good old days for houses of prostitution were over by the time I reached Shanghai, and though the Kiangse Road district still had its famous addresses, the glory had departed from the business. A hundred years ago, when the British first settled a city on the Whangpoo mud flats, the foundation was laid for a brisk trade between San Francisco and the China Coast. I am not now talking about the kind of white-slave traffic that brings to mind South America and hypodermic needles: the “business girls” who came to Shanghai usually started secondhand from the Barbary Coast and came quite willingly, under their own steam. They were hard-boiled. Their names still live in Shanghai annals, and at least one or two of the girls themselves have married well and had settled down to happy old ages in the Orient until they were dislodged, like everyone else, by the war.

Some of the more righteous of our American statesmen out there, however, put a damper on the traffic a long time ago, and the old houses flourished no more, or used a different sort of bait for their clients. The personnel of the unsavory business before I left Shanghai consisted of Russian girls who were refugees from the Revolution or who were born in Harbin or Shanghai or Tientsin of parents who had escaped.

Jean, before leaving my house, took me to meet Louise. Louise was a large fat woman, a Canadian who had formerly been a trained nurse. Her place was reputed to be more expensive than the others, and it had a large clientele among the Chinese bankers who preferred white girls to their own kind. I can't understand such a preference, but the Chinese, like other people, follow the fashion in these matters, and for a while Louise's was the fad. Jean had been a great favorite of the bankers. They pitied her and made a pool to get her out of Louise's and into a little apartment where she could go straight. They paid the tuition, too, at business college. But that was a long time ago. Since then Jean had not stayed with Louise.

Telling me about it, she grew a little nostalgic for the old days, and decided to take me to see the place for myself. I was quite willing, but my first plan, to go there simply as a friend of Jean's and to be introduced and spend a few minutes in chatting politely, was not met with favor. Jean always preferred telling a lie if it was a good one. She telephoned Louise and told her that she was bringing a friend to meet her who was down on her luck, an American girl married to a Chinese student who had forsaken her in Shanghai. My name for the purposes of the call was Mrs. Wong.

It was an idiotic idea, and if I hadn't fallen into the habit of indulging Jean like the child she was I wouldn't have done it. Jean had a lot of fun dressing me up. She made me wear slinky black, with a large hat and plenty of eye shadow. And so we set out for Louise's. I parked the car at some distance from her house, “where everyone always does,” explained Jean, pointing it out.

The drawing room was done in a spare, chaste, modern style; not quite chromium-plated, because Louise liked her comfort, but getting near to it. I was amazed by Louise's own personality. I don't know what I had expected: the sort of madame you read about, I suppose. Louise was just a comfortable, chatty fat woman. She deplored bad language and dirty jokes, Jean had told me, and Louise bore this out by saying disapprovingly of some absent friend that her language was not ladylike. We had tea and chocolate cake that was very rich and heavy. Louise said her chocolate cake was famous. She and Jean talked of the girls, where they were and how they were doing. Nobody else came in that afternoon and we left before five. The only thing I thought at all out of the way was the appraising manner in which the houseboy looked at me as he let us out.

“He runs everything,” Jean explained as we found the car; “I don't think Louise could manage without him. She says her boy friend helps her out, but don't you believe it. He just helps use the money. She's awfully hard up for girls, Louise is. She says the Japs are coming in quite often now and asking for new girls.”

I lived to regret that silly prank. Jean had left our phone number with Louise, and the fat woman began to call up and ask for Mrs. Wong, and invite me down to meet some friends. I suppose Jean had expected that to happen; I know she was inordinately amused. At last I made a date with Louise, though it wasn't the kind she had in mind; I explained that I didn't like meeting new people but that I would be delighted to have lunch — just a family affair — with herself and Jean.

It would have been all right except for an unforeseen circumstance. We were waiting politely for lunch to be served. Louise's boy friend, a retired and run-down Shanghai policeman, made the cocktails, talking vivaciously as he did so of old days in India. So much Empire atmosphere staggered me a little and I reached out eagerly for my daiquiri. Louise, in the corner, was telling Jean enthusiastically about a new boarder she had just welcomed from Honolulu. “She's the prettiest thing,” said Louise. “Red hair and such a nice disposition.”

“Half-caste?” said Jean superciliously.

“No indeed!” Louise was indignant. “She's pure American. I'd introduce you right now, only she was a little bit homesick and Eddie — you remember Eddie — he took her out for a look around town, just to cheer her up. I expect they're still at Del Monte's or somewhere.”

We had finished the cocktail when the new redhead came in with Eddie, and I froze with horror, because I knew Eddie. I gave scarcely a glance to the redhead, though she was indeed a vision, pure mahogany. I was wondering wildly if my black-eye-shadow disguise would hold. It wasn't as it I knew Eddie very well.

Louise introduced us, calling me “Mrs. Wong,” and Eddie didn't look surprised or anything. I breathed again, and found myself listening to Jean's jealous whisperings against the redhead: “That's just like Louise,” she said, “all over the girl, just because she's a novelty. You mightn't believe it, but I used to be the favorite here.”

“Oh, I can well believe it,” I assured her. “You're way ahead of that redhead.”

Eddie accepted a cocktail and settled down in his chair, leaning back comfortably. He smiled at me in a friendly way.

“Seen Johnny Morris lately?” he inquired.

A much more publicized part of Shanghai's night life was the taxi dance. We have the same thing here at home on Broadway, but with an enormous difference. In Shanghai the dance halls are enormous and everybody goes, sooner or later, to all the better-known ones. It is not incumbent upon a visitor to hire a dancer, but they are important attractions. The Chinese think of their best taxi dancers as they used to think of their successful singsong girls, the hired entertainers at dinner parties, or as we think of our musical-comedy stars. Each dance hall has its Number One girl, and only the veriest tenderfoot would think of giving her only one ticket for a dance. The really proper behavior is to give her books and books of tickets, or to pay the management heavily for the privilege of her company at your table during half an hour or so. This is a good way to make yourself popular with both the lady and the proprietor. Gossip columnists for the Chinese papers watch the market eagerly and report it daily in their sheets. “Chu Wen-ching paid Old Lau three hundred dollars last night. Miss Golden Beetle entertained his happy friends for an hour.” “Who gave the Hong Kong Beauty her new jade ring? The answer is not far away from the Majestic Hotel.” We had dance halls that specialized in Korean girls, dance halls with Russians, dance halls with Japanese. The Frisco, a place beloved of sailors, was a dance hall with white girls of any nationality at all.

As women, we the bourgeoisie didn't know much about these places. Our men visited them, but I myself, for example, set foot inside the dance halls only when I was showing tourists around, or when the few cabarets had closed down and we still wanted good music on which to finish off a late evening. I had a friend, Betty, the tall, handsome wife of Victor Keen; she was working for the United Press and living away from her husband while she made up her mind to a divorce. We decided to investigate the mysteries and the technique of taxi-dancing. I can't remember now just how it all began, but I think we must have been drinking a little when we got the idea. I do remember how it ended. An insurance salesman, Betty's acquaintance, carried it through by applying to his friend, the manager of the Frisco, for permission for us to work there one evening.

“He'll have to talk it over with the regular girls,” explained Buster, the insurance man. “If not, and if you're sprung on them cold, there's liable to be an awful row. But he's putting it up to them that you're only going to be there one night, trying to earn an honest penny to carry you on to India, and I don't think they'll mind.”

I felt pretty silly about it when we started out at last, dressed in evening clothes. Betty was gloomy too, because she had a boy friend she cherished for one reason and one reason only — he topped her six feet two by another inch — and he didn't approve of the project at all. He was, she told me in exasperated tones, being stuffy.

The manager greeted us hastily and gave us our station, a tiny table just off the dance floor. All around the restaurant were other girls, sitting at inviting little tables that had extra chairs for clients. They stared at us and we realized that we were badly overdressed; the others wore shabby frocks, some short, some long, but all of them frayed at the hem and sweated out under the arms.

It was ten o'clock, still early for the sailors, who liked to go to the movies first. Pretty soon, though, they started to drift in. Our dresses may not have been admired by our rivals, but they worked quickly with the sailors. One of them joined us immediately.

He was a Briton, a cockney, and he didn't seem to have any money. We noticed that because he ordered no drinks and he didn't suggest dancing. Evidently it was wrong of him to take up space and time under these circumstances, and he knew it better than we did, because when the manager strolled watchfully around the floor he went away. After that the British contented themselves with sitting as near to us as they could get without joining the party, talking to us over the intervening space.

I had heard that the British and the Americans always had trouble at these places because of the difference in their rates of pay. The Yanks were wealthy and took what they liked, whereas the poor sterling-based British had to think twice before they ordered single beers. It was an obvious state of affairs and Betty and I commented on it in decently lowered tones.

In the meantime a few of the girls were dancing with special friends, old acquaintances who evidently came in every night. Still Betty and I sat there, resplendent in our dresses, with the non-dancing British sitting around us out of reach, if admiring.

“This is dreadful,” said Betty. “It's just like my first party at high school. I'm being a wallflower. Do you suppose we are going through the evening without anybody asking us to dance?”

“Looks that way,” I said gloomily. But the jinx was broken just then; an American Marine took Betty off to dance, and a moment later I got an Italian sailor.

Our conversation was on a high moral plane. After remarking that he hadn't seen me around before, the sailor said that the weather was mild but seasonable, and I said it was. He told me I danced well and I complimented him on his style. By that time the dance was over; they liked a quick turnover at the Frisco. My Wop didn't linger or buy me a drink, but he gave me five tickets. Betty's Marine sat down with us and set out to run up a bill.

After that we did fine. I collected a lot of tickets and Betty would have done better than I if her real boy friend hadn't suddenly marched in, a deep frown on his forehead, and planted himself at our table. The Marine who was sitting there at the time took one look at his face and withdrew, intimidated.

“Go away,” said Betty. “You're spoiling everything. I told you not to come.”

“Didn't I hear you making a date with that man?” demanded the angry swain.

“You did. What's it to you?” demanded Betty. I missed the rest of it because I was taken off to dance by a man who was, surprisingly enough, British. He was a Scottish engineer, and his first line was the same one I had heard about ten times already: “What are you doing here?” he asked.

I didn't want to cut in on the family quarrel at our table, so I accepted my engineer's offer thankfully and had a drink (cold tea with commission) at his. He was drunk. After a little while he asked for the story of my life. I gave him a pretty good one, concocted by Betty specially for the occasion. When I had finished the Scot announced that he was going to Take Me Out of All This. He was going to buy me a ticket straight back to the States where I belonged. What was more, he intended to come along with me and tell that stepmother exactly what he thought of her. Then he gave me a lot of tickets and went off to sleep.

I did pretty well out of the evening, but I would have done better if one American Marine hadn't cheated me out of my rightful earnings. He walked off without giving me even one ticket. I could have appealed to the manager, but I felt funny about it. Anyway, we didn't cash in on our tickets: we gave them to be distributed among the regular girls. Betty's young man took us home, in one of those uncomfortable silences. It lasted for half an hour, but he relaxed over coffee in Betty's apartment when we held our post-mortem. What cheered him up was our decision never again to enter the gay life.

Chapter 13

Way off across the world, in Germany and the adjoining territories, Hitler was shouting and jumping up and down and bothering people generally. I can't remember now how many times he instituted drives to purge his land of the Jews, but we in Shanghai watched him with a special interest. Whenever people were kicked out of Germany in any appreciable number some of them turned up in China. There were few other places where they could go, and even these few places were beginning to turn them away. For two or three years Shanghai had been the last resort of these wanderers, and our society showed an increasing flavor of German. The ordinary Germans, of course, we had had always with us. They had their own school for their children, and as they grew less and less popular the diplomats showed a tendency to stay more and more to themselves, or at least to mix only with the Danes, Norwegians, and such. The refugees were more companionable.