Everything Under the Sky (2 page)

What was I to do? According to the dispatch, I had to go to China to make arrangements for his body and settle his legal affairs. But now I was also guardian of this Fernanda (or Fernandina, as she preferred, though I refused to call her that), born a few years after I'd severed all ties with my family, in 1901, and moved to France to study art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière—the only school in Paris with no enrollment fees. There was no time to fall apart or feel sorry for myself. I left a few gold chains at the pawnshop, sold all the paintings in my studio for a song, and bought two very expensive tickets to Shanghai on the first boat sailing from Marseille the following Sunday. After all, apart from anything else, Rémy De Poulain was my closest friend. I felt a stabbing pain in the middle of my chest whenever I realized he was no longer in this world, laughing, smiling, walking, simply breathing.

“What hat would you like to wear to disembark, Auntie?” Fernanda's voice brought me back to reality.

“The one with the blue flowers,” I murmured.

My niece remained still, watching me with the same opaque stare her mother had used when we were children. That inherited trait of hiding her thoughts was what I liked least about Fernanda, because you could still see what she was thinking. I'd played that game for many years with her mother and grandmother, so this young lady was no match for me.

“Wouldn't you rather the black one with the buttons? It would go well with one of your dresses.”

“I'll wear the flowered one with my blue skirt and blouse.”

Her expression remained the same. “You remember, don't you, that someone from the consulate will be here to meet us?”

“Precisely why I'm going to wear the outfit that suits me best. Oh, and the white shoes and purse, please!”

Once all my trunks had been closed and the clothes I asked for were laid out at the foot of my bed, Fernanda left without another word. By then I was feeling much better, thanks to the relative immobility of the ship. From what I could see out the porthole, we were slowly moving through heavy traffic. There were other boats as big as ours and a bevy of swift craft where solitary fishermen or entire families—including the elderly, women, and children—took shelter in the shade of enormous square sails.

I had hurriedly bought a Thomas Cook travel guide at the American bookstore Shakespeare and Company the day before we set sail. It said we were heading up the Huangpu River. The great city of Shanghai lay on its shores near the confluence with the mighty Yangtze, or Blue River, the longest in all of Asia, crossing the continent from west to east. As strange as it may seem, even though Rémy had lived in China for the past twenty years, I'd never been there. He'd never asked me to come, and I'd never been tempted to make such a journey.

The De Poulain family owned large silk factories in Lyon. Initially, Rémy's older brother, Arthème, sent the raw material from China, but he returned to France to take over the business after their father died. Rémy, who until then had only ever lived an idle, carefree life in Paris, was left no choice but to take up Arthème's post in Shanghai. So, at forty-five and never having done a day's work, he suddenly became representative and agent for the family's spinning mills in the richest, most important metropolis in Asia, the so-called Paris of the Far East. I was twenty-five at the time and, in all sincerity, relieved when he left. I became mistress of my own house, free to do whatever I wanted—exactly what he'd been doing while I studied at the Académie. Of course, from that moment on I had to rely solely on my own meager income, but time and distance healed our topsy-turvy relationship. Finally Rémy and I became the best of friends. We wrote often, told one another everything, and there's no doubt that without his prompt financial assistance I'd have found myself in a real predicament more than once.

By the time I finished dressing, there was a considerable amount of hubbub on the ship. From the light coming into the cabin, I guessed it was approximately four in the afternoon and, based on the noise, that we must be docking at the shipping company's wharf in Shanghai. If the trip had gone as planned, it should be Thursday, August 30. Before leaving my cabin to go up on deck, I added one final, outrageous touch to the summery outfit I, a forty-something widow, was wearing. Undoing the ties on my blouse, I knotted around my neck a beautiful soft white silk foulard embroidered with flowers. The one Rémy had given me in 1914 when he was back in Paris as a result of the war.

I picked up my purse and stood in front of the mirror, placing the hat firmly on my short
à la garçon
hair. I touched up my makeup, applying a little rouge to detract from my pallor and the dark circles under my eyes—luckily, pallid tones were in that year—and walked unsteadily toward the door. And the unknown. I was in Shanghai: the most dynamic, opulent city in the Far East, famous all over the world for its unbridled passion for pleasures of any kind.

From the deck I could see Fernanda striding down the gangway. She was wearing that terrible black bonnet and looked exactly like a crow in a field of flowers. The uproar was tremendous: Hundreds of people were crowding to disembark from the ship while thousands more were gathered on the wharf among the sheds, customs buildings, and offices flying the French tricolor. Bundles and luggage were being unloaded, cars offered for rent, and rickshaws for hire. Many were simply waiting for friends and family arriving, like us, on the
André Lebon.
Policemen dressed in yellow with cone-shaped hats and stripes down their pant legs were attempting to bring order to the chaos by brutally caning Chinese vendors. Barefoot, half-naked men carried oscillating bamboo poles across their shoulders with woven baskets on either end containing food or cups of tea they sold to Westerners. The poor coolies’ cries were drowned out by all that human clamor, but you could see them run from the rod only to stop a few feet farther on and continue their sales.

Fernanda was perfectly visible in that crowd. All the colorful hats in the world, all the bright Chinese parasols, all the canopies on all the rickshaws in Shanghai wouldn't have been able to hide that plump, black-robed figure charging through like a German tank on its way to Verdun. I couldn't imagine what had caused her to leave the ship with such determination, but I was too busy trying not to get trampled by the other passengers to worry. Fernanda had received an education befitting a Spanish señorita from a family of means—French, sewing, religion, a little painting, and a little piano—however, the girl was big enough to trounce a couple of little Chinese men with pigtails in the blink of an eye.

As I walked down the gangway, the pungent odor of putrefaction and filth rising up from the wharf made me feel sick all over again. Thankfully, we were moving very slowly, so I had time to put a few drops of cologne on my fine linen handkerchief, which I held over my nose and mouth. Other ladies around me quickly followed suit, while poker-faced gentlemen resigned themselves to inhaling the overpowering fecal stench. At the time I assumed that the smell came from the dirty waters of the Huangpu, given the additional aromas of fish and burned oil. Only later did I discover that this was the usual smell of Shanghai, something you eventually had to get used to. And so I stepped onto Chinese soil for the very first time, my face hidden behind a perfumed mask that revealed only my eyes. Surprisingly, my diligent niece was right there at the bottom of the gangway, accompanied by an elegant gentleman who courteously broke in to kind greetings after offering his condolences on the death of my husband. It was Monsieur Favez, attaché to the consul general of France in Shanghai, Auguste H. Wilden. He had the great pleasure of inviting me to lunch the following day at his official residence if, naturally, I did not have other plans and was sufficiently recovered from the trip.

I had only just arrived, and my calendar was already filling up: a meeting with Rémy's lawyer in the morning and lunch with the consul general of France at noon. I felt as if it would take me a few lifetimes to feel steady on solid ground again. For some reason Fernanda looked fresh, rested, and in top form. Never, in the month and a half that I'd known her, had I seen my niece exude anything so akin to happiness. Could it be the stench of Shanghai or perhaps the crowds that had changed her? Whatever the reason, the girl's chubby cheeks were flushed and her sour grimace had sweetened immensely, not to mention the courage and determination she'd shown by setting out on her own through that crowd to find the consular attaché (who was, in fact, glancing at her with a not-at-all-diplomatic look of astonishment on his face). However, that pleasant impression was as ephemeral as a ray of sunshine in a storm. As M. Favez helped us with our paperwork in the Compagnie offices, Fernanda reverted to her habitual stone face and leaden personality.

In no time at all, a handful of coolies had loaded our things into the trunk of M. Favez's car—a splendid white convertible Voisin with a rear spare tire and a silver starting crank. Without further ado we left the wharf in a lovely screech of tires that caused me to exclaim in delight and put a satisfied smile on the attaché's face as he drove down the left-hand side of the Bund, that beautiful avenue on the western shore of the Huangpu. I know I didn't look at all like a widow who'd arrived in Shanghai to make arrangements for her husband's body, but I couldn't have cared less. It would have been worse to feign proper mourning, especially when the entire French colony had to know perfectly well that Rémy and I had lived apart for twenty years. In all likelihood, they were very aware of his hundreds, even thousands, of amorous affairs. Rémy and I had a marriage of convenience: I married for security and a roof over my head in a foreign country, he to have a lawful wife and thus gain access to the considerable inheritance from his mother. The poor woman had died desperate to see her libertine son settle down. Having fulfilled its objectives, our marriage grew into a beautiful friendship. Only I knew how much it hurt me to lose Rémy, and I was certainly not about to display that pain in public.

As my eyes leaped from one strange character to another on that busy street, M. Favez explained that the majority of people in Shanghai were Celestials and yet it was an international city controlled by Westerners.

“Celestials?” I interrupted.

“That's what we call the Chinese. They consider themselves subjects of the Son of Heaven's Empire. The last emperor, the young Puyi,
¹
still lives in the Forbidden City in Peking, although he hasn't held power since 1911, when Dr. Sun Yat-sen overthrew the monarchy and established the republic. Many Chinese still believe they are superior to Westerners, whom they cal
yang kwei
or ‘foreign devils’ in return, so we sarcastically call them Celestials. Or yellows. We also call them yellows,” he stated with a smile.

“And doesn't that seem a little insulting?” I asked, surprised.

“Insulting? No, not any more than when they call us barbarians or ‘big noses.’ Quid pro quo, don't you think?”

There were three major territorial and political divisions in Shanghai, the attaché explained as he drove full speed, honking the horn for people and vehicles to move out of his way. First, there was the French Concession, where we were, an elongated strip of land that included the wharf on the Bund at which the
André Lebon
had docked. Second, there was the old Chinese city of Nantao, an almost-circular space south of the French Concession. It was surrounded by a beautiful boulevard built on the remains of ancient walls that were demolished after the republican revolution of 1911. Finally, there was the much larger International Concession to the north, which was governed by the consuls from every country with diplomatic representation.

“And they all have equal power?” I asked, holding the foulard against my chest to keep it from blowing up in my face.

“Monsieur Wilden has full authority in the French colony, madame. In the International area, most political and economic weight is held by England and the United States—the strongest nations in China—but there are Greek, Belgian, Portuguese, Jewish, Italian, German, and Scandinavian colonies. Even Spanish,” he emphasized. I was French by marriage, but my accent, my name, my rich brown hair and brown eyes were obvious signs of my heritage. “And these days,” he continued, gripping the wheel, “Shanghai has many Russians, Bolsheviks who live in the consulate and surrounding areas, and White Russians who fled the revolution. Mostly the latter.”

“The same thing has happened in Paris.”

M. Favez turned to look at me for an instant, laughed, and then quickly looked back at the road. He honked and skillfully avoided a streetcar so packed with Celestials wearing hats and long Chinese garments that some even clung to bars on the outside of the car. All the streetcars in Shanghai were painted green and silver and displayed bright, colorful advertisements written in Chinese characters.

“Yes, madame,” he conceded, “but wealthy Russians, the czarist aristocracy, went to Paris. Only the poor have come here. In any event, the most dangerous race, if I may put it that way, is the Nipponese. They've been trying to take control of Shanghai for years. In fact, they've created their own city within the International Concession. Japanese imperialists have great ambitions for China, and, what's worse, they also have a very powerful army.” M. Favez suddenly realized that perhaps he was saying too much and smiled with concern. “Did you know, Mme De Poulain, that two million people live in this beautiful city, the second-busiest port in the world and the largest market in the Orient? Only fifty thousand of those are foreigners, and the rest are yellows. Nothing is simple in Shanghai, as you'll no doubt find out for yourself.”

M. Favez suddenly turned left onto boulevard Edouard VII. It was a shame we saw only the short bit of the Bund belonging to France that first day. I'd have liked to have seen the architectural marvels along Shanghai's most impressive street: the most luxurious hotels and sumptuous clubs, the tallest buildings, and the most important consulates, offices, and banks—all in front of the dirty, stinking waters of the Huangpu.