White Gardenia (15 page)

Luba and I shared a bottle of champagne and ordered chicken Kiev and Vienna schnitzel, with white chocolate cheesecake for dessert. I felt as if I were seeing her for the first time. Looking at her was like looking at Sergei. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t noticed the similarities before. The same bear-like roundness. Her plump hands on her knife and fork were age-spotted but perfectly manicured; her shoulders were hunched but she held her chin high. Her skin looked pliant and well fed. She opened a compact and powdered her nose. There was a little splatter of pockmarks on her left cheek but her face was so neatly madeup that they were hardly noticeable. Although she wasn’t anything like my real mother, there was something maternal about Luba that made me feel warmly towards her. Or perhaps it was because I saw Sergei living on in her.

‘How come neither of you mentioned being cousins?’ I asked after the main-course dishes had been cleared away.

Luba shook her head. ‘Because of Amelia. Sergei wouldn’t listen to us when we told him not to marry her. He was lonely and she was looking for an easy ride to luxury. As you know, the law in Shanghai is complicated for Russians. All the other foreigners are subject to the laws of their own countries but we are subject to Chinese laws on most things. We had to take whatever steps we could to protect my assets.’

Luba scanned the room for the waiter but he was busy taking orders at a large table of women. Not wanting to wait for service, she grabbed the neck of the champagne bottle and refilled our glasses.

‘Anya, I have to warn you,’ she said.

‘Warn me about what?’

She smoothed the tablecloth with her hand. ‘Alexei advised Sergei to make that new will, and to cut Dmitri out of it.’

My mouth dropped open. ‘So Sergei wasn’t in an irresponsible state of mind?’

‘No.’

‘That will nearly broke up my marriage,’ I said, my voice tightening. ‘Why would your husband advise Sergei to do such a thing?’

Luba slammed her glass down, sending up a splash of champagne. ‘Because Dmitri never listened to Sergei when he tried to warn him about Amelia. When they married, Sergei gave Amelia jewels and money. But he never promised her the Moscow-Shanghai. That wasn’t meant for anybody until Dmitri came along. And yet somehow Amelia managed to convince Dmitri that they were going to share it after Sergei’s death.’

I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to tell Luba that I had signed over the club to Dmitri for that specific purpose. ‘I still don’t understand any of this,’ I said.

Luba studied me for a moment. I sensed there was more to the story than she had revealed, but she wanted to make sure I was strong enough to hear it before continuing. I hoped she would decide that I wasn’t. I couldn’t bear to listen to any more.

The waiter arrived with the dessert trolley and placed between us the cheesecake we had ordered to share. When he left, Luba picked up a fork and cut into the creamy cake. ‘Do you know what Amelia really wants?’ she asked me.

I shrugged. ‘We all know Amelia. She wants her own way.’

Luba shook her head. Leaning forward, she whispered, ‘Not her own way. Not really. She wants people’s souls.’

It sounded so melodramatic that I almost laughed, but something in Luba’s eyes stopped me. I could feel my pulse in my throat.

‘She devours them, Anya,’ she continued. ‘She had Sergei’s soul before you came along and freed him. And now you’re taking Dmitri away from her too. Do you think she’s going to be pleased with that? Sergei’s given you a chance to cut her out of your life like a cancer. Dmitri’s not strong enough to do it. That’s why Sergei left the club to you.’

I let out a little snort and took a bite of the cheesecake, trying to hide the terror that was starting to creep through my veins. ‘Luba, you can’t really believe that she wants Dmitri’s soul. I know she’s awful but she’s not the devil.’

Luba dropped her fork onto her plate. ‘Do you know what kind of woman she is, Anya? I mean,
really know? Amelia came to China with an opium trader. When he was assassinated by a Chinese gang, she started pursuing a young American banker whose wife and two children were still in New York. He tried to break away from her, so she wrote a letter full of lies to his wife. The young woman filled a bath with hot water and slit her wrists.’

The cake’s tangy sweetness turned bitter in my mouth. I remembered my first night at the Moscow-Shanghai and how one of the captain’s wives had said that Amelia had ruined a good man’s life.

‘Luba, you’re frightening me,’ I said. ‘Please just tell me what it is that you are trying to warn me about.’

A shadow seemed to pass over the room. My back stiffened. Luba shivered as if she had sensed the blackness too. ‘She’s capable of anything. I don’t believe Sergei had a heart attack. I believe she poisoned him.’

I dropped my napkin onto the table and stood up, looking in the direction of the ladies’ room. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, fighting the black specks that were swimming before my eyes.

Luba grabbed my wrist and pushed me back down into my seat. ‘Anya, you are not a little girl any more. Sergei isn’t here to take care of you now, you must face reality. You must rid yourself of that woman. She is a snake in waiting. Waiting to swallow you whole.’

D
mitri’s prediction that we would be untouched by the civil war was proved wrong by the end of November. Refugees from the countryside were pouring into Shanghai, struggling across frozen paddy fields and muddy roads, carrying all they could in rickshaws and wheelbarrows. There were too many of them to beg. They starved before our eyes, dropping dead in the streets like shrunken bundles of clothing. The slums swelled and every vacant building was invaded by squatters. In the streets they hovered over feeble fires and suffocated their children when they couldn’t bear to see them suffer any longer. The stench of death mingled with the chilly air. People walked the streets with handkerchiefs over their noses; restaurants and hotels sprayed their interiors with perfumes and installed airlocks to keep the odours out. Every morning garbage trucks motored around the city, picking up the dead.

The Nationalist government continued to censor the newspapers, and all we read about were Paris
fashions and cricket matches in England. Although inflation was crippling the economy, the trams and shopping strips were plastered with advertisements for new household appliances. The commercial moguls of Shanghai were trying to convince us that everything was normal. But they couldn’t stop the whispers in cafés, theatres, libraries and drawing rooms. The Communist army was camped on the banks of the Yangtze, studying us. They were waiting out the winter, gathering their strength before they marched into Shanghai.

One morning Dmitri returned later than usual from the club. I hadn’t accompanied him the night before because I was suffering from a bad cold. I was still feverish when I met him at the door. His face was haggard and forlorn. His eyes were bloodshot.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, helping him with his coat.

‘I don’t want you to come to the club any more,’ he said.

I wiped my nose with a handkerchief. I was nauseous so I sat on the sofa. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Our clientele are too scared to come out at night. It’s getting harder to cover our costs. The head chef has fled to Hong Kong and I have just had to pay someone half as good twice as much money to join us from the Imperial.’

Dmitri took a bottle of whisky and a glass from the cabinet and poured himself a drink. ‘I’m going to have to lower our prices in order to attract more people…just until we get through this thing.’ He turned to me. He stooped, like a man who has taken a blow. ‘I don’t want you to see it. I don’t want my wife entertaining sailors and factory foremen.’

‘Is it as bad as that?’

Dmitri slumped next to me. He laid his head in my lap and closed his eyes. I stroked his hair. He was only twenty, but the stress of the past few months had brought up a ripple of wrinkles on his forehead. I ran my finger over the bumps, smoothing them away. I loved the feel of his skin, strong and velvety, like good suede.

We both fell asleep and for the first time in a long time I dreamed of Harbin. I wandered towards the house and heard familiar laughter. Boris and Olga were standing by the fire with their cat. My father was pruning roses to go in a vase, a cigarette perched on the rim of his lip, his hands taking deft snips at the thorns and stems. He smiled when I passed by. Out of the window the green fields of my childhood spread out before me and I saw my mother standing by the river. I ran outside, the wet grass whipping at my feet. I was out of breath and crying by the time I touched the hem of her dress. She lifted her fingers to her lips, and then pressed them to mine. She faded and I blinked into the morning.

Dmitri was still asleep next to me on the sofa, his face squashed against the cushion. His breathing was deep and peaceful. Even when I gently kissed his eyelids, he didn’t stir. I rubbed my cheek against his shoulder and then clasped my arms around him like a drowning person clinging to a log.

By the evening my cold had turned into a fever and my cough was so violent that I was spitting blood. Dmitri called a doctor who arrived just before midnight. The doctor’s hair was a white cloud above his ruddy face and his nose resembled a mushroom. I thought he looked like a fairytale goblin when he warmed his stethoscope in his papery hands and listened to the rasp in my chest.

‘You were foolish not to have called me sooner,’ he said, dipping a thermometer into my mouth. ‘Your chest is infected, and unless you promise to stay in bed until you are completely well, I will put you in hospital.’

The thermometer tasted of menthol. I sank back into the pillows, folding my arms across my aching rib cage. Dmitri crouched beside me, massaging my neck and shoulders to ease the pain. ‘Anya, please get better,’ he whispered.

For the first week of my illness Dmitri attempted to nurse me and take care of the club as well. But my cough cut into the few hours of sleep he tried to snatch in the late mornings and afternoons. The circles under his eyes and his pallid complexion alarmed me. We couldn’t afford for him to get sick too. I hadn’t got around to hiring a maid or a cook, so I asked Dmitri to send Mei Lin to look after me and suggested that he should try to get some rest at the house.

I was bedridden most of December. Each night brought fevers and bad dreams. I saw Tang and the Communists marching towards me. The farmer I had seen executed by the Japanese appeared nightly in my dreams, pleading with me with his mournful eyes. He’d reach out his hand and I would take it, but I couldn’t feel his pulse and I knew that he was already condemned. Once, when I thought I was awake, I saw a young Chinese girl lying beside me, her broken glasses caught on her collar and her mangled head bleeding onto the sheets. ‘Mama! Mama!’ she wailed.

Sometimes I dreamed of Sergei and would wake up crying. I tried to test myself, to see if I could really believe that Amelia had poisoned him, but despite Luba’s conviction, I simply couldn’t. If anything, since Dmitri had made Amelia his partner at the club, she had been more cordial to me than ever. And when she had heard I was ill, she had sent her manservant over with a beautiful bunch of lilies.

By mid December Dmitri was spending most of his time at the club trying to keep it afloat. He had moved his things back to the house because it was easier for him to stay there. I was lonely and bored. I tried to concentrate on the books Luba brought me but my eyes tired quickly and I ended up spending hours staring up the ceiling, too weak to even sit in a chair by the window. After three weeks, even though the fever had subsided and my cough had eased, I still couldn’t make it from the bedroom to the sofa on my own.

Dmitri came to see me early on the Western Christmas Eve. Mei Lin, whose cooking skills were improving all the time, prepared deep-fried spiced fish and spinach.

‘It’s good to see you eating real food again,’ Dmitri said. ‘You’ll be better before you know it.’

‘When I’m better, I’m going to put on my best dress and knock them dead at the club. I’m going to help you like a wife should.’

Dmitri’s face twitched, as though something had irritated his eyes. I looked at him and he turned away. ‘That would be nice,’ he said.

At first I was puzzled by his reaction. But then I remembered that he was ashamed of the new clientele
.
I don’t care, I thought, I love you, Dmitri. I’m your wife and I want to be by your side, no matter what.

Later in the evening, after Dmitri had left, Alexei and Luba brought me a gift. I opened the box and found a cashmere shawl inside. The shawl was a delicate damson colour and I draped it over my shoulders to show it off for them. ‘It’s very becoming on you,’ Alexei said. ‘It’s pretty against your hair.’

The Michailovs left and I watched them from the window walking down the street. Just before they turned the corner, Alexei hooked his arm around his wife’s waist. The movement was easy and relaxed, the touch of confident affection that comes from having been intimate for years. I wondered if Dmitri and I would be like that one day, but the thought made me despondent. We had been married for just three months and already we were spending the festive season apart.

Things seemed much better the next day when Dmitri came to see me. He was grinning from ear to ear and patted me playfully on the hip. ‘You should have seen it last night!’ he said. ‘It was almost like the old days. Everyone seems sick of this stupid war. The Thorns, the Rodens, the Fairbanks, they were all there. Madame Degas turned up with her poodle and asked after you. Everyone had a good time and agreed to come back on New Year’s Eve.’

‘I’m better now,’ I told Dmitri. ‘I’ve stopped coughing. When will you come back to the apartment?’

‘I see that,’ said Dmitri, kissing my cheek. ‘After New Year’s Eve. I have a lot to do until then.’

Dmitri tore off his clothes and ran a bath, ordering Mei Lin to bring him a whisky. I caught sight of my pale complexion in the hall mirror. There were black splotches under my eyes and the skin around my nostrils and lips was flaking. ‘You look
terrible,’ I told my reflection. ‘But whatever it takes, you must go to that party too.’

‘
Give me a good field and I’ll bring you golden wheat,
’ I heard Dmitri sing in the bath. It was an old song about bringing in the harvest. His singing made me smile. Give me one more week’s rest and a day at the beauty parlour, and I’ll go to your party, I thought. Then I had an even better idea. I’d keep my intention a surprise until the last moment. My appearance would be a late Christmas gift to him.

The steps of the Moscow-Shanghai were deserted when I arrived there on New Year’s Eve. It was a blustery night and there was no red carpet or gold-braid rope set out for a glittering crowd. The two marble lions seemed to stare down at me when I stepped out of the taxi and onto the icy steps. A damp wind ruffled my hair. It irritated my windpipe and I started to wheeze, but nothing was going to stop me from seeing my surprise through. I clutched the collar of my coat and ran up the steps.

I was relieved to see hordes of people in the foyer, filling the white space with colour. Their laughter echoed off the chandelier and gilded mirrors. I lapped up the sight of them. I could only imagine the downmarket patrons Dmitri had said he had entertained to keep the club going, because the people I saw tugging off layers of fine wools and silks and handing them to the cloak-girls were the old crowd. You could taste their scent in the air: oriental perfume, fur, good tobacco and money.

I checked in my coat and noticed a young man watching me. He was leaning on the counter, a glass
of gin balanced in his fingers. The man’s eyes flitted over my dress and he gave me a smile that was more like a wink. I was wearing the emerald green cheongsam, the dress I had worn the first time I had visited the club. I wore it as a good luck charm, for the Moscow-Shanghai and for myself. I slipped past my admirer and searched for Dmitri.

I was almost crushed in the crowd heading for the ballroom. On stage, a black band in aubergine suits were playing hard jazz. The musicians were sharplooking. Their straight teeth and ebony skin glistened under the lights. The floor was packed with people shaking to the squeals of the trumpet and saxophone. I caught sight of Dmitri by the stage door, talking to a waiter. He had cut his hair. It was short above the ears and across his forehead. The style made him appear younger. It amused me to think that we had both gone back in time, me in my dress and Dmitri with his short hair. The waiter left and Dmitri glanced in my direction but didn’t recognise me until I moved closer. When he did, he frowned. I was taken aback by his displeasure. Amelia rushed up to him and said something. But when he didn’t react she followed his gaze to where I was standing. A look of suspicion passed over her face. But what did she have to be suspicious of in me?

Dmitri pushed his way towards me. ‘Anya, you should be at home,’ he said, clutching my shoulders as if I were on the verge of collapse.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll only stay until midnight. I wanted to support you.’

Dmitri still didn’t smile. He only shrugged and said, ‘Come on then. Let’s get a drink in the restaurant.’

I followed him up the stairs. The maître d’hôtel seated us at a table overlooking the floor. I noticed Dmitri glance at my dress.

‘Do you remember it?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes glistening. I thought for a moment that he had tears in them, but it was just a trick of the light.

The waiter brought us a bottle of wine and filled our glasses. We ate two small
blinis
with caviar and sour cream. Dmitri leaned over and touched my hair. ‘You’re a beautiful girl,’ he said.

A ripple of pleasure ran through me. I moved closer to him, aching with hope for the happiness that had escaped us since Sergei’s will. We are going to be all right, I told myself. Everything is going to be better from now on.

He looked away from me and studied his hands. ‘I don’t want there to be lies between us, Anya.’

‘There are no lies,’ I said.

‘Amelia and I are lovers.’

My breath caught in my throat. ‘What?’

‘It wasn’t intentional. I loved you when I married you,’ Dmitri said.

I edged away from him. Goosebumps sprang up on my chest and arms. ‘What?’ My insides twisted. My senses started deserting me one by one. The music slowed down, my vision became blurry, I gripped my wine glass but I couldn’t feel it.

‘She’s a woman,’ he said. ‘Right now that’s what I need. A woman.’

I stood up from the table, knocking over my glass. Red wine splashed across the white cloth. Dmitri didn’t notice. The space between us became distorted. Instead of being at the same table we seemed to be on separate sides of the room. Dmitri was smiling to
himself. The stranger who had once been my husband wasn’t looking at me. He was miles away. A man in love with somebody else.

‘There’s always been something there,’ he said, ‘but it took Sergei’s death to open the door.’

The twisting sensation inside me turned into a crushing pain. If I walk away, none of it will be true, I told myself. I turned my back on Dmitri and edged my way through the tables. People looked up from their meals or stopped mid-sentence to stare at me. I tried to hold my head high, to look like the perfect hostess, but tears mixed with face powder ran down my cheeks. ‘Are you all right?’ a man asked me. ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, but my knees buckled under me. I clutched at the passing drinks waiter. We toppled over together, a champagne glass splintering beneath me.