Page 7

Shanghai

After two days on the train, Anyu had misgivings about going to Shanghai.

Her legs cramped, her bottom sore, she wished she had thought it through before spending a good portion of her money on a train ticket.

The journey was an excruciating test of strength and patience.

She couldn’t walk in the aisle crammed with piles of luggage, nor could she draw with the train’s incessant rocking and jolting.

Once, she awoke at midnight to find a hand fumbling in her shirt.

Panicked, she screamed. Luckily, a man with a missing front tooth took pity on her and changed seats with her.

As the train continued to chug along the tracks, her ears filled with people’s voices, and she was tormented by erratic thoughts that had never occurred to her before: What would happen after she found the shop?

What if the jeweler told her to get lost?

What if he wasn’t there? What if he had forgotten about her?

Fifteen days later, Anyu arrived in Shanghai.

It was raining when she stepped out onto the crowded train station.

Following the flow of people disembarking the train, she came to the street, where an army of rickshaw pullers waited in the misty rain.

On the train, she had asked about Shanghai, and some well-wishers had told her directions to the jewelry shop.

The easiest and fastest way, they had said, was by rickshaw, and it cost two cents.

But she had never ridden a rickshaw, and she wanted to save money, so she decided to walk all the way to the shop.

She had just left the station when a group of men holding clubs ran down the sidewalk across the street from her. They shouted, grabbed a man with an umbrella, and struck him violently. Gangsters.

Anyu hesitated, holding tight to her sack.

On the train, she had heard the Nationalist government had a tenuous hold on the city, which was overrun by gangsters.

Between the chance of getting harassed and spending two pennies, she decided to stay safe, after all.

She went up to a rickshaw puller, a skinny man wearing a vest, and told him the jeweler’s address; the man looked at her curiously and nodded.

Gingerly, she climbed into the vehicle, sat on the edge of the seat, and gripped the pole.

The puller lifted the poles and raced down the street.

It was hard to stay on the slippery bamboo seat; the ride was bumpy, and the rickshaw was very fast and reckless, weaving between cars and carriages and ramming through the crowds on the sidewalk, narrowly missing people’s shoulders.

The traffic rules, obviously, didn’t apply to rickshaws.

After a while, Anyu grew accustomed to the turns and bumpiness and began to study her surroundings.

She had not imagined Shanghai would be like this—very much like Harbin.

Clusters of idle men squatted on the side of the street, legless beggars scooted along on the dirty ground, and suntanned laborers scurried around, carrying baskets with bamboo sticks.

The city was different in some ways, though; there were no piles of snow on the street, no Kokoshnik Russian cathedrals.

She sat silently as the rickshaw puller shot her one question after another— Where are you from?

How old are you? What are you doing in Shanghai?

Why are you alone? —in a strange lilt. It hit her.

She was not in Harbin anymore; people here spoke Chinese with a song in it, and she with gunfire.

The ride felt endless, and the rain felt good on her face, soft like a stream.

Anyu was hot, so hot, as if she were inside an oven—it was much warmer, and more humid, in Shanghai.

She was wearing four layers: a coat, a cotton jacket, and two shirts for the nippy spring weather in Harbin.

She could take off her coat, but it would be indecent to disrobe in a rickshaw in public.

She squirmed on the seat, then nearly slipped off as the rickshaw dipped into a groove, muddy water splashing on her shoes.

After they crossed a bridge, the scenery began to change.

There were sleek, towering Art Deco buildings, palatial yellow Buddhist temples, colorful Taoist gardens with pink and purple columns, narrow-lane houses linked with clotheslines, and shops selling jars of coiled vipers and ropes of ox penises.

And cars. So many cars. They honked and roared, belching clouds of fumes in the air.

Inside sat young men dressed in fine Western-style suits, stylish women in fancy gowns adorned with plum blossoms, and middle-aged foreigners in top hats and tuxedos.

Shanghai, like Harbin, was a destination for many people from around the world.

And like Harbin, the city had areas governed by the Chinese authorities alongside districts controlled by foreign powers—a sad legacy of the Qing Dynasty’s concessions after their defeat in the Opium Wars decades earlier.

These foreign-controlled districts included the International Settlement, primarily administered by the British and Americans, and the French Concession, overseen by the French.

The jewelry shop she was looking for was located in the French Concession.

The rickshaw slowed in front of a blockade—a checkpoint—where a guard in a black uniform stopped them.

It seemed that the locals traveling between the districts were required to show their passes.

The puller bowed and bowed, smiling obsequiously as he produced a pass from his pocket, and then they were waved through.

We are getting closer, the rickshaw puller announced in his strange accent, and finally, he stopped in front of a two-story building with a simple sign: “Jewelry,” in Chinese and English, right next to a shop selling handbags.

Anyu paid the puller and walked up to the sidewalk, her shoes wet, her long braid dripping with rain.

The thought of entering the shop and talking to strangers made her nervous, so she passed it deliberately.

And then, because she knew she must, she turned around, pushed open the door, and entered the first jewelry shop she had ever visited, the place that would change her life.

The showroom was small, and quiet, but very bright.

So bright that Anyu had to squint. She could make out a golden trapezoid light fixture on the ceiling, casting a blaze of incandescent light.

Below it, an L-shaped glass counter with gleaming brass frames displayed rows of necklaces with geometric designs, sparkling bowknot and flower brooches, and gold rings set with colorful gemstones.

There were also lustrous purple velour curtains, a round floor rug, a faint fragrance mixed with cigarettes, and neat shelves on the wall.

Dazzled by the brilliance of electricity, which she had not had the privilege of growing up with, in awe of the luxury jewelry that she had never set her eyes on before, she didn’t see the cheap chairs, the cracked windowsills, or the frayed edge of the floor rug.

“I’m sorry. We’re closing.” The young woman at the glass counter was scrutinizing her.

Her tone was impatient, and her Chinese was barely comprehensible with her thick Russian accent.

She looked to be in her early twenties, with large gray eyes and voluminous blond hair.

She wore an elegant burgundy velvet dress fastened by a black belt with a cluster of keys; a gold necklace, delicately crafted with circles of varying sizes, hung around her neck.

But the look that the woman gave her, the look that should have been reserved for the homeless at the train station, told Anyu she didn’t belong in this place.

Anyu felt like turning around and fleeing the shop. But no. She stepped closer to the counter. “I’m not looking for jewelry ... I came here to see Mr. Mandelburg,” she said in Russian.

The woman looked surprised to hear Russian, but she frowned. “Who?”

“Mandelburg. The jeweler.”

In her nervousness, Anyu had failed to recall the jeweler’s first name.

“May I ask who you are?”

“I’m Anyu, Anyu from Harbin.”

“I’m sorry. If you don’t mind—”

“Wait. I can’t leave. I have to find him. I won’t leave until I see him. He knows me. He knows who I am. Look, I have his handkerchief. He gave it to me.” She dug into her pocket and handed it to the young woman, realizing too late that it was wet.

The Russian woman held the handkerchief, but her frown deepened. “He gave it to you?”

“Yes. I found his egg and gave it back to him.”

“His egg?”

“A Russian egg.”

“You’re not making sense. He doesn’t have any Russian eggs.”

“He does. He lost it in Harbin, but I found it. Maybe he didn’t tell you.”

The Russian woman raised her arm, and Anyu instinctively ducked. Then she realized the woman wasn’t going to slap her like her landlord did—she was only pressing her own forehead with her middle finger, but the flaming anger in her eyes could have lit a match had she held one.

“Esther, why are you not packing up?” A man’s voice came from behind Anyu. She turned around.

In the doorway were two men: one was elderly, stout, with a bald head, and the other was Isaac Mandelburg, the man for whom she had traveled across the country.

Of course, this was what he looked like!

Tall, reserved, with an elusive air. He wore a black apron covered with stains, a black turtleneck, a black shirt with a single pocket that held a loupe, a pencil, and some papers.

There was no desperation on his face, nor any of the effusive gratitude she remembered; in fact, he appeared distinguished, aloof, with a look of tiredness as if he had trudged for ten thousand miles and longed for a place to sit.

But the most disappointing thing about him was when he glanced at her, he didn’t seem to recognize her.