“’Allo, kids. Wanna buy me a drink and hear l'histoire de ma vie?”
“Sure,” said Jean Paul and signalled for her to join them. Olga didn't look too pleased, but what did it hurt to talk to someone? He called to the waiter, “Catchee gin tonic, chop chop,” and the waiter scurried off.
To Tatiana's inexperienced eyes, the woman was very beautiful. She was probably in her late twenties and had thick, curly red hair that she had piled on top of her head so that some of the curls cascaded over her forehead and ears. Her green eyes and milky skin were dramatically set off by the emerald green silk shawl she wore draped over her pale shoulders. Her full bosom was enhanced by the cut of her dress, but she was otherwise slender, with long legs and slim ankles. She wore startling red lipstick on her full lips that emphasized the paleness of her beautiful skin. She introduced herself as Annette and began to tell them her story.
She had been born in France but had grown up in Saigon, in Indo-China, where her father had owned a small textile factory. Her family had fallen on hard times, however, when her father had become ill, and she and her brothers were forced to leave school to find work. Annette and her mother had worked as seamstresses, but sewing bored Annette. “So I found myself a rich lover,” she said. But he was Vietnamese and had been betrothed since childhood to the daughter of a wealthy Saigon family. “I knew he would never marry me, but what did I care about marriage? I was only sixteen.”
On the day of his marriage, Annette discovered she was pregnant. “That's when I decided to leave Saigon and the whole mess behind. I came to Shanghai to have my baby.” She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “I know what you're thinking,” she said. “Why didn't I try and get money from him? I could have had a comfortable life, right? And raised my son, who would be called a bastard and half-breed, in some backstreet in Saigon. No, thank you. Not the life I wanted.” She indicated that her glass was empty, and Jean Paul ordered more drinks all round. When Tatiana, who had listened intently to every word, asked for a gin and tonic, Olga raised her eyebrows in annoyed surprise, but Tatiana ignored her and turned to Annette.
“Qu'est-ce que vous avez voulu?” she asked. What did you want?
“I wanted adventure. I wanted to be surprised by life, not to have every day the same.”
“And what about your child?”
“My son, my Daniel, is six years old, and he's beautiful, the best part of my life.”
“But how do you support him?” Olga asked.
Annette just laughed. “Shanghai is full of opportunities, if you know where to look. Maybe I'll show you someday, chérie.”
Tatiana looked at Olga and laughed, but Olga frowned and shook her head. Tatiana was fascinated by Annette and wanted to know more—about everything.
They were to run into Annette often after that night. She was usually in the company of a man or with a party of men and women. The men were always in well-tailored evening clothes, mostly French but sometimes British. Occasionally she would be on the arm of an American businessman who wore cologne and smoked large, smelly cigars. Olga usually clucked her disapproval, but to Tatiana it was all very glamorous. To be out drinking champagne and dancing every night with rich men didn't seem so bad to her.
“You are so innocent,” said Olga. “Can't you see she's a whore?”
“She is not. Do people call you a whore because you dance with Jean Paul?”
Olga was clearly annoyed. “I can't believe you're being so stupid.”
“Oh, leave her alone,” said Jean Paul. “She's just a kid.”
But Tatiana wasn't a child any more, at least not in her own mind. She was almost seventeen and ready for life to surprise her, like Annette. Lily was going to leave for finishing school in Switzerland soon and would be away for a whole year. Tatiana wasn't sure what she was going to do without her friend. Read books and listen to her father's lectures? Hang around with Olga and Jean Paul? The prospect was not appealing.
Tatiana and Lily cried the whole afternoon before Lily left for Switzerland. They gave each other diaries to write all their thoughts in and promised, promised, promised to write letters every day. Tatiana had begged her father to let her go to Switzerland with Lily, but he said it was impossible. It would cost more money than he made in a year. The truth was, he was afraid to let Tatiana spend a year away from home, even if she went with Lily. He saw that Tatiana was becoming restless, a dangerous thing in a young girl. Boys, he knew, could take care of themselves. Restlessness was a good quality in a young man. It made him curious and adventurous. Young men needed to take risks, find out what they were made of, especially before they settled down to marriage and a family. They needed to get that energy out of their system so they could take on the responsibility of work and family. But young women were a different thing altogether. No man wanted to marry a restless girl, and Sergei wanted his daughters to be married to fine and responsible men who would take care of them and their children, his grandchildren. Olga he was not worried about. Tatiana, he could see, was going to be a problem.
Tatiana did not believe her father when he told her they weren't rich. She knew they were rich, especially when she compared how they lived to the way most of the Shanghai Chinese lived. She had no concept of real wealth, however, and assumed that because they lived in a large stone house and were well-dressed and well-fed and had servants, they must be very rich. Her mother, who remembered how wealthy they had been in Russia, smiled sadly when Tatiana complained to her about her father's decision not to let her go to Switzerland and said, “My darling Tatiana, you have no idea.”
They had been in Shanghai for almost a decade, and with each passing year, Katarina missed Russia even more. They had made friends in Shanghai, of course, mostly through Sergei's business connections, and the few Russians who had left, like them, before the situation became critical and even dangerous for people of their class. But these were not people that Katarina ever felt close to. These were not the people who inhabited her soul the way her family did. She could never replace that feeling of profound connection that had nourished her every minute of her life. She loved her husband and daughters desperately, but they were a fragment of the broken bowl that had been her life, one that had once been filled to the brim with meaning and life, with people whose love and support went to the heart of who she was and where she had come from. Katarina needed this more than her husband and daughters did. They did not understand how bereft she was and why her world got smaller while theirs seemed to grow larger. Why can't I be like them? she often wondered. Why can't I let go of what I once had and can never have again?
As I grew taller, my mother seemed to get smaller and smaller. I could practically touch fingertips when I put my hands around her waist. She rarely left the house and lived for news from home. I didn't understand how she could just let her life float away on a cloud of sadness. It seemed like such a waste to me. Wasn't life to be lived? To be experienced? Why couldn't she pull herself together and just get on with it? Sometimes I was angry with her because her sadness and melancholia made me unhappy.
“It isn't fair,” Tatiana complained to her father.
Sergei once again summoned Tolstoy. “‘Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.’ Unfortunately your mother does not see joy in Shanghai. She left her happiness behind in Russia.”
“But, Papa,” she protested, “it's been nine years. I don't
