White Gardenia (5 page)

The entrance hall was spacious with sea-green walls and cream tiles. My footsteps echoed in the space while the maid’s made no sound at all. The silence of the house stirred in me a queer sensation of transience, as if I had passed from life into something that was not life but not quite death either. At the end of the hall I could see another room decorated with red curtains and Persian carpets. Dozens of French and Chinese paintings hung on its pale walls. The maid was about to lead me there when I noticed the woman poised on the staircase. Her milky face was framed by blue-black hair styled in a sleek bob. She fingered the ostrichfeather collar of her dress and considered me for a moment with dark, severe eyes. ‘A very pretty child indeed,’ she said to the maid in English. ‘But so serious-looking. What on earth will I do with that long face around me all day?’

Sergei Nikolaievich Kirillov was nothing like his American wife. When Amelia Kirillova led me into her husband’s study, he immediately stood up from his cluttered desk and embraced me with kisses on
both cheeks. His gait was heavy like a bear’s and he was about twenty years older than his wife, who looked my mother’s age. His eyes darted about keenly and, apart from his size, the only frightening thing about him was his thick eyebrows which made him look cross even when he was smiling.

There was another man sitting by the desk. ‘This is Anya Kozlova,’ Sergei Nikolaievich said to him. ‘My friend’s neighbour from Harbin. Her mother has been deported by the Soviets and we must take care of her. In return she is going to teach us the good manners of the old aristocrats.’

The other man grinned and stood up to shake my hand. His breath smelled of stale tobacco and his face had an unhealthy tinge to it. ‘I am Alexei Igorevich Mikhailov,’ he said, ‘and God knows us Shanghailanders could do with some good manners.’

‘I don’t care what she teaches you as long as she speaks English,’ said Amelia, taking a cigarette from a case on the table and lighting it.

‘Yes, madam, I do,’ I said.

She gave me a look that wasn’t quite a smile and pulled a tasselled cord by the door. ‘Good then,’ she said, ‘you will have ample opportunity to show it off at dinner tonight. Sergei has invited someone he thinks will be very entertained by a young beauty who can speak Russian and English and teach him good manners.’

A child maid shuffled into the room, her head bowed. She couldn’t have been more than six years old, with skin like caramel and her hair pulled into a topknot. ‘This is Mei Lin,’ Amelia said. ‘When she actually manages to open her mouth she speaks only Chinese. But you probably do too. So she’s all yours.’

The little girl was staring, as if mesmerised, at a point on the floor. Sergei Nikolaievich gave her a gentle push. She looked from the giant Russian to his willowy wife to me with wide, startled eyes.

‘Rest for a while and come down when you are ready,’ Sergei Nikolaievich said, squeezing my arm and leading me to the door. ‘I feel for you and I hope tonight’s dinner will put you in better spirits. Boris helped me when I lost everything in the Revolution. And I intend to repay that kindness to you.’

I let Mei Lin lead me to my room, although I would have preferred to have been left alone. My legs were trembling with fatigue and my head throbbed. Each stair was agony but Mei Lin’s eyes were fixed on me with such innocent fondness that I couldn’t help smiling at her. She returned the expression with her own brimming, baby-toothed grin.

My room was on the second floor, overlooking the garden. It had dark pine floors and gold-papered walls. An antique globe stood by the bay window and in the centre of the room was a four-poster bed. I walked to the bed and put my hand on the cashmere shawl covering it. As soon as my fingers touched the fabric I was filled with despair. It was a woman’s room. The moment they had taken my mother away I had ceased to be a child. I covered my face with my hands and longed for my loft in Harbin. In my memory I could see each doll perched on the roof beam and hear each creak of the floorboards.

I turned from the bed and ran to the window, spinning the globe around until I located China. I traced an imaginary journey from Harbin to Moscow. ‘God be with you, Mama,’ I whispered, although in truth I had no idea where she was going.
I took the matroshka doll from my pocket and assembled the four daughter dolls in a row on the dressing table. They were called nesting dolls because they represented a mother, a place where children could find rest. While Mei Lin ran a bath, I slipped the jade necklace into the top drawer.

There was a new dress hanging in the wardrobe. Mei Lin lifted herself on tiptoes to reach the hanger. She laid the blue velvet dress on the bed with the seriousness of an haute-couture saleswoman and then left me alone to bathe. She returned sometime later with a set of brushes and combed my hair with childish, awkward movements that scraped my neck and ears. But I bore it all patiently. It was as new to me as it was to her.

The dining room featured the same sea-green walls as the entrance but was even more elegant. The cornices and panels were painted gold and embellished with a maple leaf pattern. The motif was repeated on the frames of the red velvet chairs and the legs of the sideboard. I only had to look at the teak dining table and the chandelier that hung over it to know that Sergei Nikolaievich’s suggestion that I teach him the ways of the old aristocrats had been in jest.

I could hear Sergei Nikolaievich and Amelia talking with their guests in the adjoining parlour but I hesitated before knocking on the door. I was exhausted, worn out by the events of the past week, and yet I felt obliged to put on a polite face and accept whatever hospitality they offered me. I didn’t know anything about Sergei Nikolaievich except that he and Boris had once been friends and that he
owned a nightclub. But before I could call out, the door opened and Sergei Nikolaievich appeared before me, grinning.

‘Here she is,’ he said, taking me by the arm and guiding me into the room. ‘Gorgeous little thing, isn’t she?’

Amelia was there, wearing a red evening dress, bare on one shoulder. Alexei Igorevich came towards me and introduced his plump wife, Lubov Vladimirovna Mikhailova. She threw her arms around me. ‘Call me Luba, and for heaven’s sake call my husband Alexei. We don’t have such formalities here,’ she said, kissing me with rouged lips. Behind her a young man of no more than seventeen waited with his arms clasped in front of him. When Luba stepped aside he introduced himself as Dmitri Yurievich Lubensky. ‘But likewise, please just call me Dmitri,’ he said, kissing my hand. His name and accent were Russian but he was not like any Russian man I had seen before. His sharply cut suit gave off a sheen in the lamplight and his hair was slicked back from his sculptured face, not brushed forward in the fashion of most Russian men. The blood rushed to the surface of my skin and I lowered my eyes.

Once we were seated the old Chinese maid served us shark’s fin soup from a large tureen. I had heard of the famous dish, but I had never tried it. I swished the stringy soup around my bowl and took my first sweet mouthful. I looked up and saw that Dmitri was watching me, his fingers resting lightly on his chin. I couldn’t tell if it was amusement or disapproval I saw on his face. But then he smiled kindly and said, ‘I’m glad to see that we are introducing our northern princess to the delicacies of this city.’

Luba asked if he was excited that Sergei was going to make him the club’s manager and Dmitri turned away to answer her. But I continued to study him. Next to me, he was the youngest person at the table and yet he seemed old for his age. In Harbin my schoolfriend’s brother had been seventeen and he had still played with us. But I could not imagine Dmitri riding bicycles or running down the street in a rowdy game of tap and run.

Sergei Nikolaievich glanced over the rim of his champagne glass and winked. He raised his hand for a toast. ‘Here’s to the lovely Anna Victorovna Kozlova,’ he said, using my full patronymic name. ‘May she blossom as well as Dmitri has under my care.’

‘Of course she will,’ said Luba. ‘Everyone blossoms under your generosity.’

The older woman was about to say something else when Amelia interrupted her by hitting a spoon against a wine glass. Her dress made her eyes look deeper and blacker, and if it were not for the drunk squint that twitched on her face, I would have thought her beautiful. ‘If you don’t all stop speaking in Russian,’ she said through pursed lips, ‘I’m going to ban these get-togethers. Speak in English, like I’ve told you to do.’

Sergei Nikolaievich let out a belly laugh and tried to rest his hand on his wife’s clenched one. She pushed him away and turned her icy stare onto me. ‘That’s why you’re here,’ she spat. ‘You’re my little spy. When they speak Russian I can’t trust any of them.’ She threw the spoon down. It bounced off the table and clattered to the floor.

Sergei Nikolaievich’s face turned pale. Alexei glanced awkwardly at his wife while Dmitri stared at
his lap. The Old Maid scrambled for the spoon and retreated into the kitchen with it, as if by removing the spoon she could remove Amelia’s source of anger.

Luba was the only one brave enough to retrieve the moment.

‘We were just saying that Shanghai is full of opportunities,’ she said. ‘Something you’ve always claimed yourself.’

Amelia’s eyes narrowed and she recoiled like a snake about to strike. But slowly a smile appeared on her face. Her shoulders relaxed and she slumped back into her chair, raising her glass with an unsteady hand.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we
are
a room full of survivors. The Moscow-Shanghai survived the war and in another couple of months will be swinging again.’

The gathering raised their glasses, clinking them together. The maid returned with the second course and suddenly everyone’s attention turned to the Peking duck, the excitement in their voices erasing the tension of the moment before. Only I seemed to be left with the awkward feeling of having witnessed something ominous.

After dinner we followed Sergei Nikolaievich and Amelia through their small ballroom to the library. I tried not to gape like a tourist at the fine tapestries and scrolls that lined the walls. ‘This house is exquisite,’ I confided in Luba. ‘Sergei Nikolaievich’s wife has very good taste.’

The older woman’s face crinkled in amusement. ‘My dear,’ she whispered, ‘his
first
wife had excellent taste. The house was built back in the days when Sergei was a tea merchant.’

The way she said ‘first’ chilled me. I was curious and afraid at the same time. I wondered what had
happened to the woman who had created all the beauty and refinement I saw before me. How had Amelia come to replace her? But I was too shy to ask, and Luba seemed more interested in talking about other things.

‘You know that Sergei was the most famous exporter of tea to the Russians? Well, the Revolution and the war have changed all that. Still, no one can say that he hasn’t fought back. The Moscow-Shanghai is the most famous nightclub in the city.’

The library was a cosy room at the rear of the house. Leather-bound volumes of Gogol, Pushkin and Tolstoy spilled from the wall-to-wall shelves, books I could never imagine Sergei Nikolaievich or Amelia reading. I ran my finger along the spines, trying to get a feeling for Sergei Nikolaievich’s first wife. Her mysterious presence now seemed obvious in all the colours and textures I saw around me.

We sank into the leather couches while Sergei Nikolaievich laid out glasses and a new bottle of port. Dmitri handed me a glass and sat down next to me. ‘So tell me what you think of this crazy, wonderful city,’ he asked, ‘this Paris of the East?’

‘I haven’t seen much of it. I only arrived today,’ I told him.

‘Of course, I’m sorry…I forgot,’ he said, then smiled. ‘Perhaps later on, when you settle in, I will show you Yuyuan Park.’

I shifted in my seat, aware that he sat so close to me that our faces were almost touching. He had arresting eyes, deep and mysterious like a forest. He was young but he exuded worldliness. Despite his smart clothes and polished skin, in his manner there was something of a swagger and a wariness. It was as if he wasn’t comfortable in his surroundings.

Something dropped between us and Dmitri picked it up. A black, spike-heeled shoe. We looked up to see Amelia leaning against a bookcase, a bare white foot now matching her bare shoulder. ‘What are you two whispering over there?’ she hissed. ‘Scoundrels! It’s all Russian or whispers with you lot.’

Her husband and his companions paid no attention to her new outburst. Sergei Nikolaievich, Alexei and Luba were huddled by the open window, engrossed in their discussion of the horseraces. Only Dmitri stood up, laughing, and handed Amelia’s shoe back to her. She cocked her head and looked at him with vixen eyes.

‘I was just asking Anya about the Communists,’ he lied. ‘They are the reason she’s here, you know.’

‘She has nothing to fear from the Communists now,’ said Sergei Nikolaievich, turning away from his companions. ‘The Europeans have made Shanghai into a massive money machine for China. They are not going to destroy it on some ideological whim. We survived the war and we will survive this.’

Later in the evening, when the guests had gone home and Amelia had passed out on the couch, I asked Sergei Nikolaievich if he had sent word to Boris and Olga Pomerantsev that I had arrived safely.

‘Of course I have, my sweet child,’ he said, covering his wife with a blanket and turning out the library lights. ‘Boris and Olga adore you.’

The maid was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs and began turning out the lights once we reached the first landing. ‘And news of my mother?’ I asked him hopefully. ‘Did you ask them if they know anything?’

His eyes softened with pity. ‘We will hope for the
best, Anya,’ he said, ‘but it would be wiser for you to think of us as your family now.’

I woke up late the next morning, curled up in the fine linen sheets of my bed. I could hear the servants talking in the garden, the clatter of dishes being washed and the sound of a chair being dragged across the floor downstairs. The dappled sunlight on my curtains was pretty, but it couldn’t cheer me. Each new day took me further away from my mother. And the thought of another day in the company of Amelia depressed me.