Читать книгу A Cold Season In Shanghai - S.P. Hozy - Страница 12

The next year passed quickly for Tatiana. The program of study her father planned for her proved a welcome distraction. He engaged the services of Dimitri Lischenko, a well-known Russian scholar living in Shanghai who agreed to come to the house every afternoon to discuss with Tatiana the books she was reading and to test her progress with a series of written essays and examinations. Together, Sergei and Lischenko designed a course of study for Tatiana that included world history, ancient and modern philosophy, Russian, French and English literature, as well as readings in physics, since Sergei believed it was so closely tied to philosophy as to be relevant to the rest of her studies. Ever since Einstein's Theory of Relativity had been published a decade earlier, Sergei had intuited that a major shift in scientific thinking was taking place. He wasn't sure where it would lead the world, but he believed it could be as profound as Copernicus's claim that the earth revolved around the sun. Tatiana drew the line at mathematics, however. She said she had learned all the mathematics at Notre Dame she needed for a lifetime. She would read about the scientists' findings but not how they calculated them.

Dimitri Lischenko had fled Russia after his brother was shot during the “Bloody Sunday” massacre of 1905, the same event that had prompted Sergei's decision to take his family out of Russia. Dimitri, a university professor, and his brother Vladimir, a doctor, had joined the Socialist Revolutionary party in 1901, shortly after it had been formed. As educated left-wing intellectuals in a country deeply split along class lines, they were despised by both the wealthy elite because they wanted to overthrow the monarchy, and by the peasants who saw them as opportunistic dilettantes who could always take refuge in privilege. Dimitri was now nearing forty, unmarried and desperately missing his motherland. He had debated going back to Russia, and many times had been on the verge of returning, but he had always backed down. Dimitri was a true intellectual, a man who lived the life of the mind. Physical courage was not part of his makeup. He was a small, nervous man with a tendency to drink, which led to occasional bouts of melancholia, during which he wrote copious amounts of solemn poetry. His eyesight was poor, his skin sallow, and his fine, light brown hair was slowly but surely receding further and further back on his wide forehead. But he had a brilliant and incisive mind, was a voracious reader and spoke excellent French and English. In other words, he was perfect for the job. Sergei knew the man could challenge Tatiana intellectually and always be ahead of her by several steps. He also knew that there was no danger that Tatiana would fall in love with Dimitri, a complication Sergei did not need.

Tatiana, however, grew very fond of Dimitri over time. Perhaps she recognized his vulnerability in the real world beyond the books he buried himself in. She felt affectionate toward him, the way she would feel about a kitten or a child. She also learned a great deal from him. Not so much factual information that she could read in books, but how to interpret the information, analyze it and decide for herself if she agreed. This was the part of the learning process she enjoyed most. It made her feel powerful, as if this were one area of life she could control, the realm of ideas. She especially enjoyed those times when her father joined in the discussions. Then things would get lively, because her father liked to play the role of devil's advocate.

“So,” he said, looking Tatiana straight in the eye, “if God created Paradise on earth, why did he let Adam and Eve destroy it by eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge? Wasn't he powerful enough to stop them?”

Tatiana had been reading Paradise Lost and had anticipated this question. Dimitri had discussed with her the notion of good and evil and why Eve had succumbed to the serpent's seduction.

“God gave Adam and Eve the gifts of reason and free will,” she said. “So they were free to choose to obey God or to obey Satan. They were free to choose sin.”

“Then why obey Satan instead of God? Didn't they owe their obedience to God for placing them in Paradise?”

“I suppose they did, in a way,” said Tatiana, pondering the question. “But God didn't demand obedience, and he didn't make them perfect. Eve was deceived by the serpent, but she didn't know he was trying to destroy her and Adam out of jealousy and revenge. She gave in to temptation because his words made sense to her.” She quoted from Milton:

“…in her ears the sound

Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned

With Reason, to her seeming, and with truth…

“And then she persuaded Adam to taste the fruit and he chose to join Eve in her disobedience of God. Adam's better judgment told him it was wrong to eat the fruit, because God had told them not to, but he allowed himself to be seduced by Eve because he loved her.”

“And ever since,” smiled Sergei, “men have been led into temptation by women.”

“Papa,” said Tatiana, “that's not fair. If Satan had chosen Adam instead of Eve to eat the fruit, he probably would have found a way to persuade him. Men are just as likely to succumb to temptation as women. Then Adam would have tempted Eve, and the whole world would be different.”

Sergei laughed. “I think we are creating a suffragist, Dimitri. Your pupil is able to turn every argument into a defence of women's rights.”

“I apologize, Mr. Relnikov. I had no idea I was dealing with someone who could use reason so effectively to exert her free will.”

“Ah,” said Sergei. “Perhaps you and God both made the same mistake.”

Tatiana laughed. “You two like to think that men are superior to women and that women were created to serve men.”

“Well,” said Sergei, “weren't they? Doesn't the Bible say that Eve was created to serve Adam and God?”

“Yes. But Eve didn't want to be inferior. She wanted to be equal. She says:

‘And render me more equal, and perhaps,

A thing not understandable, sometime

Superior; for inferior who is free?

“She wanted to be free, which is what everybody wants. If God didn't want Adam and Eve to sin, why did he put the Tree of Knowledge in Paradise? Why did he put free will and temptation on the same plate?”

“It's a good question, Tatushka.” Sergei was genuinely pleased at his daughter's intellectual progress. “Why do you think he did this?”

“Perhaps God needed to provide the opportunity for mercy and forgiveness. How could he be seen as a benevolent God if nobody ever needed forgiving? Why does God even need to exist if everyone is perfect?”

“But if that is the case,” said Dimitri, “then it was in God's divine plan all along that Adam and Eve would be expelled from Paradise for succumbing to temptation. So what your father said is true. God let Adam and Eve destroy Paradise. He was powerful enough.”

Tatiana looked at Dimitri then at her father. They had brought the argument full circle, and she hadn't seen it coming.

Tatiana was still tied to Olga and Jean Paul by invisible strings, but they were beginning to chafe. Despite her interest in her studies, Sergei had begun to sense that Tatiana's desire for independence might get her into trouble, so he did not allow her to go out without a chaperone. He had even started searching for a possible husband for her, a prospect that made her nervous and irritable. She endured many lectures that year about her frequent bad moods and controlling her temper. Mostly, her family's efforts to rein her in just made Tatiana angrier and more determined to break away as soon as possible. Olga, on the other hand, could not wait to be married. Tatiana could muster no enthusiasm for such a future. She was not ready for a husband, marriage, or, God forbid, children. Her father often despaired, knowing that the day would come when he could no longer make decisions for her.

Tatiana was becoming a beautiful young woman. She was tall, like her maternal grandmother, with thick, honey-coloured hair and a fair complexion, which she enhanced by avoiding the sun and rubbing lemon juice on her skin. Tatiana had the kind of face that didn't need make-up, but she was vain about her appearance and liked to dress up and wear powder and lipstick to emphasize her features. Her grey eyes were deep-set, with slightly hooded lids, and she was learning to use them in a way that made people uncomfortable when she stared at them.

Olga resembled the women on Sergei's side of the family. She was a good five inches shorter than Tatiana, with a thick waist and sturdy legs. Her hair was darker than her father's, and so curly that it would tighten into a frizzy ball when the air was humid. She had straight, no-nonsense eyebrows and brown eyes that were almost black. This, combined with her square jaw, gave her the appearance of matronly authority. All she needed was a nun's wimple and robes and she could have been Mother Superior. When she walked with her sister in the streets of the French Concession, the young men looked at Tatiana, not Olga. Fortunately, Jean Paul, who was shorter than Tatiana but taller than Olga, balding and underweight, was devoted to Olga, and they were planning to marry as soon as he completed his army service.

The war in Europe continued, and each year more young Frenchmen were shipped home to do their duty. The few who returned brought back grim stories of something called trench warfare that made Tatiana think of the slimy gutters of Shanghai. She couldn't imagine having to spend days in one of them while being shot at round the clock. Every day she thanked God that she had been born a woman. She had been studying the battles of the great commanders from Caesar to Napoleon, and was fascinated by their strategic and tactical abilities, but it was all in the realm of the imagination for her. She wasn't hearing about the horrors of those battles first hand. Many of the young men Tatiana had known didn't come back from the war, but she refused to believe they'd all been killed. They must have chosen to stay in Paris, she decided. Given the choice between Paris and Shanghai, why would they come back? Much as she loved Shanghai, Tatiana imagined Paris to be a city of stylish and elegant people, as far removed from the chattering masses of China as a swan was from a chicken.

Things became glum in the Relnikov household when Jean Paul left for France. Olga worried herself sick that he wouldn't return. Tatiana prayed daily that he would, mostly because she liked him and really wanted Olga to marry him and be happy, but also because she missed going out in the evenings to the cabarets. Her studies kept her occupied during the day, but at night she wanted to go dancing.

Soon it was June and Tatiana's eighteenth birthday. She had not changed her mind about marriage and children, as her parents had hoped she might. She was growing tired of reading and studying but decided it was the lesser of two evils and far more preferable than marriage.

Lily returned in September. It was apparent as soon as she was home that the plans for her wedding were about to be launched. She and Tatiana had a brief few weeks to themselves, during which Lily told her all about her experiences in Switzerland. Her letters had said a lot, but not everything. It wasn't until Tatiana watched Lily's face as she talked that she realized how much her friend had enjoyed her taste of freedom. Lily's eyes sparkled, and she chattered on and on about all the girls in her class, the friendships she had formed, the school, the teachers, the mountains, and the food, which she had hated. “So bad,” she said. “Dairy, dairy, dairy. Too much cheese. Too much milk. Not healthy.”

Tatiana laughed as Lily showed her how she had been taught to walk with a book on her head, sit with her ankles crossed and serve tea while making polite conversation. Lily's French had improved greatly, but she still couldn't make the throaty “r” sound that only the French seem able to do. And she had never mastered the rolling “r” that Mrs. Wilkinson had prized so highly. Neither, for that matter, had Tatiana.

Lily seemed to have developed a confidence and a charm that she had not possessed when she left. She had been transformed from a shy and awkward girl into a graceful young woman. Tatiana towered over her by about seven inches, and her feet and hands seemed huge compared to Lily's delicate, manicured fingers and toes. Tatiana envied the fragile Oriental beauty Lily had acquired, the gentle voice she spoke with and the still serenity she possessed. Tatiana felt like a giraffe next to her friend.

A wedding date had been set for Lily's marriage to Tang Wu-ling. It had been chosen as a lucky day, declared so by an astrologer because of an auspicious formation of the planets. It was to be a traditional Chinese wedding, and gifts had already begun to arrive. Lily was putting together a trousseau of beautiful clothes, all handmade by seamstresses who appeared to be working around the clock. She and Tatiana spent many hours poring over catalogues and drawings, choosing fabrics and selecting accessories. Her wedding dress and shoes would be the traditional red, in elaborately embroidered silk brocade. She would also wear a bride's headdress, which would cover her face completely with a curtain of beads so that she would see nothing bad on her wedding day. On the day of the wedding, the bridegroom's friends would come to the house and transport Lily to the groom's home in a sedan chair covered in ornately carved decorations and hung with tassels and baubles.

As Tatiana sat in Lily's room surrounded by the trappings of her friend's upcoming marriage, she asked Lily if she was nervous.

“Of course. I will be leaving my father's home to live with a strange family. And I will be expected to respect and obey my mother-in-law. I have not met my husband, and yet I will have to live with him for the rest of my life. Wouldn't you be nervous?”

“I'd be scared to death,” Tatiana said. “I think I'd run away before my wedding day.”

“But wouldn't you want to wait and see if maybe you liked your husband? Don't assume that all arranged marriages are unhappy. Many are successful and last a lifetime. The parents will not allow a marriage to take place if the horoscopes are not compatible.”

“Then if I didn't like my husband, I'd run away the day after the wedding.”

Lily laughed. “You can't tell in one day if you like someone or not. You have to give it some time. Get to know one another.”

Tatiana thought of the Tolstoy quote Sergei seemed to repeat constantly until she wanted to scream: “The strongest of all warriors are these two—Time and Patience.” Tatiana had neither time nor patience. She wanted something to happen now, not a year from now or even a month from now. Lily's acceptance of a fate that Tatiana considered worse than death was incomprehensible to her.

“But by then you'll be trapped,” she protested, “and you'll probably ‘catchee baby’ as Amah would say.”

“But that would be good,” Lily said. “A baby would bring me status and would give me something to do. My husband and his mother will have to treat me with respect.”

“Ah, but only if you have a son,” Tatiana reminded her.

“Yes. I must have a son. But then I can have a daughter who will be my companion.”

Lily seemed to have it all figured out.

Before the wedding, Lily and Tatiana were allowed to go shopping together on the Chinese Bund, the part of the city that was a maze of narrow crowded streets lined with every imaginable kind of shop and kiosk. There you could buy everything from fresh produce, ivory chopsticks, brass bowls and sandalwood-scented soap to fabrics made of cotton, or raw and rough or finely woven and embroidered silk. There were hundreds of handmade items for sale in each little specialty shop—clothing made to measure in a day, gold jewellery, jade carvings, straw baskets in every size and shape, figurines carved from porcelain, stone and wood, hand-painted fans, handbags, hats, and silk and leather shoes. From every shop and stall came the cries of vendors begging, cajoling and shouting at people to buy their wares. The din was thick with their high-pitched, nasal voices. Lily and Tatiana were virtually on their own, even though they were followed everywhere by an ancient servant who carried their purchases and made sure they weren't robbed or kidnapped. Every couple of hours they would stop at a teahouse for cha and sweets, just to give the poor man a rest.

Even though Lily had given Tatiana many presents over the years, that day she bought her an exquisite hand-embroidered, yellow silk shawl Tatiana would keep and treasure for the rest of her life. As a wedding gift, Tatiana bought Lily a platter from the Willow Pattern Tea House. They had been admiring the platter, marvelling at the beautiful hand-painted design, when the shopkeeper told them the story behind the highly prized blue and white willow pattern. The large pagoda-style dwelling painted on the right side of the pattern was the home of a wealthy mandarin who had a beautiful daughter, Koong-see. Koong-see had fallen in love with her father's secretary, Chang, who was also in love with her. Infuriated, her father arranged a marriage between Koong-see and Ta-jin, a wealthy viceroy, and forbade her to see Chang ever again. But the lovers would not be separated. They escaped during the wedding feast and ran across the bridge to elope. Koong-see's father saw them and chased after them, which was why there were three figures on the bridge. They hid in the small home of Koong-see's servants, depicted on the left side of the pattern, but were soon caught. Chang managed to escape and returned with a boat to rescue Koong-see. They went to live on an island but eventually were discovered by Ta-jin, who killed Chang. The distraught Koong-see set fire to the house and also perished. The gods turned the lovers into the two doves that were pictured at the top of the pattern.

After Wu-ling's death, when Lily was sent away, I went to her house to see if I could find the platter. I wanted it to remind me of happier times, and also I didn't want it to end up in the hands of a stranger, either, where it would lose all meaning. I never found the platter. I assumed it had either been broken or pilfered by someone in the days after the fighting that erupted in Shanghai between Chiang Kai-shek's army and the warlords. I was devastated. The platter had come to represent, in my mind at least, much more than the material object itself was worth. The house, in the style of a pagoda with a willow tree beside it, the curved bridge over the river and the two doves in flight came to signify a special place for me where love and friendship were forever enshrined.

I would see Lily many times after her marriage, but the fact was I viewed it as a point of separation, like a wall being erected between us. Lily was going to a place I would never know and could not share. I did not yet know where I was going, but I felt instinctively I would be going there alone.