she said.
“Lovely city. Do be sure to make the rounds at the Cathay during the cocktail hour,” I said, mentioning the Chinese outpost famed for its watering hole for wealthy visitors. I rambled on about the interesting members of the literati I often found lingering at the bar. I paid no attention to the blank look on her face. I merely wanted to get rid of her. A stronger urge pulled at me as I continued to stare at the Bar Supplice and I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. I still ached for Ramzi’s arms around me, his sensuous voice spinning tales. Lies, but I didn’t care.
Meanwhile, the Jewish girl rambled on, begging me to help her. I tried to ignore her. What did her problems matter to me? Surely it couldn’t be as bad as all that in Germany. Not too long ago I’d traveled to Berlin with Lord Marlowe to attend a photography show at a gallery for my friend Maxi von Brandt. We knew each other from the old days when we both worked the cabarets, me as a dancer, her as a photographer, chatting up strangers on the telephones at each table and drinking in the pleasure palaces of Berlin. Haus Vaterland and the Resi. Fun days, filled with all the wildness and proclivity and sexual abandon of the Weimar Republic.
“Lady Marlowe, please, listen to me. You don’t understand what’s happening to Jews in Germany. The nightly arrests, the forcedlabor camps—”
“Rumors, all rumors.” I avoided her eyes, not believing her theatrics. Didn’t all young girls go through a stage of dramatics? I couldn’t help her, I insisted, walking away, my eyes going again and again to the boarded-up building I’d known as Bar Supplice. I haunted the street with a vacant stare in my eyes. Hoping, dreaming it was all a mistake and Ramzi would return. I couldn’t bear the thought that the sumptuous den of decadence where I’d stripped down to my soul was dirty and crude, infested with rats, their vermin sticking to me like broken promises.
So absorbed was I in my plight, I barely listened to the mournful tale of the young Jewess following me. She implored me to tell the world what was happening to Jews, the camps, the deaths, the rape of Jewish women by the Gestapo.
“I wouldn’t have gotten out of Germany,” she said, “if a man hadn’t taken me to Genoa with him.”
“A man?” I asked, interested. “Then why are you asking me for help?”
“You don’t understand. He—he gave me a passport and said I was to tell anyone who asked I was a dressmaker.”
“A dressmaker? Why?”
“He promised me there’d be no trouble getting through customs and immigration if I did as he asked.”
“And did you?” I said, aware of the implication in my voice.
She lowered her head. “Yes. I had no choice.”
I thought about how I’d been young once and had nearly fallen for that same trick in the back alley behind a Berlin bar. In my case, the man met an untimely end when he was robbed by local thieves. And me? I ran and ran and ran, never looking back.
“Don’t you see, you must help me, Lady Marlowe,” she pleaded, her fearful eyes darting everywhere. “Without family or papers, I—I will have no way to pay for what I need in Shanghai except—”
“Yes. I understand.” I opened my purse, wrapping my hands around some bills. I was about to give her some money and be on my way, when a commotion caught my attention.
“Lady Marlowe, you’ve retrieved my hat!”
I spun around, surprised to see Lady Palmer bouncing down the dirty street hatless with both her sagging bosom and her daughter in tow. But who was that man in the dark jacket, bow tie, white pants and Panama hat behind them? His gait was uneven, as if he had a crippled leg, and his right hand was in his pocket in a way that disturbed me. Was he reaching for a gun?
“My pleasure, Lady Palmer,” I said, plopping the hat on her head and trying to smile, though I cast a wary eye toward the man observing us. I turned my back and chatted with Lady Palmer about the impudent camel who dared to pluck her designer hat off her head. Silly, infusive talk, but I was grateful to once again enter that parallel dimension I lived in whose portal was accessible to a privileged few.
When I turned around to give the Jewish girl some money, the man in the Panama hat had her by the elbow and out of my reach. Then she was gone. Off to Shanghai, I imagined.
I recounted the girl’s story over tea to Lady Palmer, if only to assuage the guilt burning in my soul. I knew what happened to white women in Shanghai. Not even a heated fainting spell from Lady Palmer kept me from telling her how disease was rampant in the miserably squalid, decadent city. And how procurers of human flesh forced women to service customers in dirty backrooms, lying in a bunk in a cloud of smoke while one, two men fondled them, opening them to the probing of fingers, mouths, with only opium to help them forget. Intense nausea gripping them from the drug, their skin turning sallow, their bodies growing thin and frail until they took their last breath and found release.
Lady Palmer dismissed the entire incident as a scheme to cheat me. The whole thing was an act, she insisted, admitting she’d also been approached with the same story the week before in the bazaar.
Later in my room, I collapsed on the bed, sobbing. I couldn’t stop shaking, fearful to face what I’d become. I had money, privilege, yet I had done nothing to help the young Jewish woman. Why did that bother me so?
No, Lady Palmer was right, I convinced myself. Her story was a fabricated tale like Ramzi’s, designed to glean money from me. I owed her nothing.
I put aside the unpleasantness in the Port Said market, reminding myself though I was faced with the rigidity of British society, I would find no shortage of gentlemen wishing to escort me to the races or to the ballet. Taking a lover would be difficult. Sexual freedom was considered a gentleman’s sport among the royals, though I often dared to join the hunt with discreet weekend affairs at country estates.
I was after bigger game now. Ramzi. Setting into motion my plan to find him obsessed me. I used my fortune to hire guides to get leads on his whereabouts, sent cables to the local authorities in Cairo to track him down and bribed bank officials to check his financial records. So consumed was I with my hunt, I forgot all about the Jewish girl. Whatever curiosity I’d experienced about her dissipated like dewdrops sucked up by the greedy tongue of the sun. I continued to hide from the problems of a world on the brink of war, dismissing them as easily as I eliminated anything in my life that didn’t please me, whether it was weak tea, cotton underwear or a snoopy maid. Little did I know I couldn’t escape. The seeds of war grew slowly, nurtured by those like myself who refused to see them sprouting under our feet, though I had personal reasons for ignoring them I dare not explain here, fearing you’ll detest my actions even more so.
I cringe now, my hand aching, cramping though I must fight through the physical pain and write down these words of truth so you can see, dear reader, what a ruthless, rapacious woman I’d become. I cared only for my own endless carnal satisfaction, seeking to possess every moment and entwine it around my senses and never let it go. My hunger was a sexual journey not ending in submission or physical satisfaction, but a yearning for the passion left unfulfilled by the death of my husband.
My whole being quivered when, after two weeks, I again picked up the scent of the man I believed would satisfy that hunger. I received a telephone call. My contact at the bank had news. Good news, he said. Ramzi had returned to Port Said.
I put the phone down, shaking, my pubic muscles tightening. I moaned as a sense of heightened anticipation took hold
