“I longed to throw the ring at him. But this dramatic gesture was impossible because I had already traded the ring for a winter coat.” So quips Tania Manooiloff Cosman during her description of a rather nasty encounter with a Texan marine named Jim in a cabaret on Taku Road in Tianjin in 1931, the same year the Japanese took over Manchuria, where she’d been born. This is one of many episodes revealing the combination of tact, wit, humor, luck, and pragmatism that enables the heroine of this remarkable story to survive and ultimately to prosper despite numerous hardships.
Written in the 1990s, her amazing memoir My Heritage with Morning Glories (Washington DC: Creative Communications Services, 1995) looks back upon the early years in the life of a White Russian woman born into poverty in China’s harsh northeast, known then as Manchuria. The book tells her story from her own perspective, as she struggles to survive poverty, the death of her mother, life in an orphanage and many other trials and tribulations in the tumultuous era of the 1930s, when that region of China was being taken over by the Japanese military. After living in Harbin, she eventually makes her way down to the international city of Tientsin (Tianjin) near the former imperial capital of Peking (Beijing, then known as Beiping), for the purpose of an arranged marriage with a Russian named Ivan, keeping in mind that she was 14 years old at the time.
When the arrangement goes sour, she is persuaded to join a cabaret on Taku Road that caters to soldiers and sailors of various nationalities. What follows here is the end of Chapter Seven, where she makes the fateful decision to join the cabaret, and the whole of Chapter Eight, which tells the story of her working in the cabaret. In all my research on nightlife in China during this era, I have never encountered such a rich and evocative portrait of the cabaret or taxi-dance hall in 1930s China as told from the perspective of a young Russian ingenue who was being initiated into that world (or from that of a much older, well-educated and worldly woman looking back on her youthful days). Luckily, she has a guardian angel, the mysterious Olive, who helps her to navigate and survive this world.
Spoiler alert: After her experiences in the cabaret, Tania goes to Peking where she is “rescued” by Ida Pruitt, the great doyenne of Peking’s expatriate intellectual society. In this story, Ida Pruitt comes out smelling like a rose—a Saint or a Living Buddha even—and the chapters on western expatriate life in Peking are absolutely fascinating as well. This is a gem of a memoir and it deserves republishing! (Thanks to R. Steven Upton for alerting me to this wonderful book).
End of Chapter seven
“Ivan has a lot of good in him, but he lives in a world of fantasy,” Madame Givet said, stroking Petrushka with one of her twinkling little hands. “Did he by any chance tell you how his father saved the Imperial portraits?”
“Yes, he did. Why? Isn’t it true?”
“Not a word of truth in it!” she laughed. “The rescue didn’t even happen here in Tientsin, but in Shanghai while I was there. Poor Ivan, he thinks it makes him important because his father engaged in such a heroic escapade, so he goes everywhere telling that lie to anyone who will listen. That’s one reason Captain Givet doesn’t like him — that, and the opium, and also the way Madame Petroff earned her living. Me, I know what it’s like to be poor and Russian in China, but dear Henri is French and rich and doesn’t understand.”
“The more I hear of Ivan, the more I realize how lucky I am,” I said at last. “What if he had given me his sickness? Or passed it on to our child? And at any time he could be seized by the Chinese police!” At the thought of all these terrible possibilities tears came to my eyes, and I groped for a handkerchief.
“Well, what are you going to do now?” Madame Givet asked after she had given me a few moments to recover. I told her of my hopeless week of job-hunting.
“Isn’t there anything you can do besides housework?” she asked. “Think, child, think!”
“I guess I can sing a little, although not well enough to get a job as a singer. And I can dance a bit too.”
Madame Givet sipped at her beer and studied me thoughtfully.
“You’re not bad looking, either,” she said finally. “And you’re very pretty when you smile. So, clearly, there’s only one thing for you to do, Tania. Become a taxi dancer in a cabaret. It’s not the best job for a young girl, but it’s not the worst, either.
“I know this because I, too, was once young and penniless and became a taxi dancer in a soldiers’ bar in Peking. It wasn’t bad, and in fact that’s where I met the dear Captain.”
“But don’t people look on you as a prostitute when you work in a cabaret or a soldiers' bar?”
“Yes, Tania, unfortunately they do. But that’s no reason you have to become one! You can keep your head, it seems to me and I think you’ll be all right. So tomorrow I’ll take you to see a good English friend of mine who works in a soldiers’ bar, and we’ll see about a job."
Miss Olive, Madame Givet’s friend, lived in a dark and narrow street in the poor-Russian part of the English Concession, and although her makeup made her look tough, her eyes were kind and her voice soft and cheerful with only occasional sad undertones. She seemed very old to me, but I suppose now that she was around forty.
“I’m sorry you want to become a taxi dancer, Tania,” she said. “But if you are hired you’ll come and live with me and I’ll take care of you and see that no one insults you or takes advantage of you.”
She led the way down to the lower Taku Road, which was famous for its bars catering to American, English, Italian, and French soldiers and sailors. In one of them she introduced me to a fat, bejeweled Russian Jewess, who was the owner. The woman looked me over appraisingly and decided to hire me. She lay down her rules, one by one:
“Your salary will be fifty dollars a month.
“You’ll have a free dinner every night if you get here by five-thirty.
“You’ll also get twenty cents from every dollar drink that a guest buys for you.
“If you don’t want any dinner you’ll have to be on the job promptly at six.
“You’ll be fined a dollar for every fifteen minutes you are late.
“You work seven days a week from six until midnight. “Do you want the job?”
I accepted, and she waddled after us to the door.
Believe me, you’ll make a lot of money in no time!” she exclaimed, winking. Just remember that you are young and pretty so watch your step. Soldiers are the toughest customers in the world.”
No matter, I thought, as I began to fall asleep at Miss Olive's that night. Fifty dollars a month and a free dinner every night! I’d be all right, and I would never, never have to go back to Uncle!
Chapter Eight
Taku Bar in Tientsin; Tania and Miss Olive
Miss Olive looked at the clock. Almost four. She glanced at me in my days-on-end, job-hunting dress and feverishly started rummaging in her clothes closet. A bright orange creation caught her eye.
“Tania, just slip this on, dear; soldiers like bright fussy dresses. Yours looks like a determined wallflower.” And she tossed her choice to me.
I was barely listening. My eyes were adoring and consuming the orange fluff in my hands, the heavenly puff that might vanish if I did not don it immediately. I examined the dress gingerly — too big here, too tight there, the armholes playing hide-and-seek, the hemline randomly irregular. But I put the dress on, conquering all its obstacles.
I looked like a princess at her first ball!
Miss Olive’s hand mirror went up and down as I danced on tiptoes admiring myself. All the soldiers, I was convinced, would swoon and desperately fall in love with me. I was elated.
I had such a glamorous job where I had to wear such gorgeous gowns.
If, at that moment, someone would have tried to prove me wrong, it would have been easier to convince Ghandi or Twiggy that they were overweight.
I was fourteen and life was alluring with dangling expectations.
When Olive’s voice brought me back to reality, I must have been lost in narcissism for quite a while.
“Come on, dearie. You look fine. We must not be late, remember!” she said, pinning a big red silk rose to her left shoulder.
Once outside, we could feel the cool autumn breeze. Olive in her blue and I in my orange creation fluttered like poplars down the street. We had no coats. Olive walked first. I had my orange chiffon to keep me warm. The two of us did not look at anyone or anything on the way. We must have been a sight for the passers by. A few even turned around as we dashed by, staring at us,
muttering wonderings under their breath.
Exactly at five, we entered the Taku Bar and went straight into the dressing room—a small room with greasy walls, a beat- up basin, a rickety wooden chair, an unshaded light bulb hanging high in the ceiling, dingy towels on a nail, a pair of shoes flung in one corner, a spotty ragged undergarment wadded up under the chair, and the unswept floor with dozens of footprints.
Other taxi dancers straggling in saw Miss Olive before the mirror and craned their necks to admire themselves. Some mechanically greeted me in Russian; one turned to me questioning:
“You’re new, aren’t you? Awfully young. Thirteen?”
“No, fourteen.” I said.
“And in this den already! You’re starting early, girl!”
I blushed, ashamed. I wanted to explain and assure her that I was not an eager apprentice, that I did not plan to work here, but it was the only way to survive, that— But she had her say, was already living in her own world, in her own thoughts, and no longer concerned with me. She saw me coming toward her and hurriedly left the room.
Her comment made me realize how others saw me. Suddenly I felt trapped, but more determined than ever to find my way out of the Taku Bar. At that moment, however, I could only think about tonight. Yesterday and tomorrow were far away.
Olive and I finally joined the other taxi dancers who were all sitting at dinner eating. There were twelve altogether. Most of them I had already seen in the dressing room. All, except Olive, were in their twenties and all were Russian.
As we were eating, my eye caught a familiar face. I recognized one of my teachers from the Harbin school. Timidly I addressed hert “Olga Stepanovna! I am Tania! Your student from Harbin! I am so happy to see you!”
Olga glared at me. I wanted to fall through the floor. “Don’t be so forward. I am Olga but not Olga whatever-she-is. I have never been to your Harbin. Don’t bother me. Get lost.”
I did. I never dared to speak to her again. But I knew the large bosom, the straight black hair in a bun, the broad brow and thin cheeks, the haughty expression. I had seen this face daily for years, sitting in class. ‘Why did she not want to recognize me? Was she also ashamed to be here?’
Suddenly, I felt water running down the back of my head and a voice:
“Golubka, little pigeon, you’ve got such pretty red hair, but it looks terrible now. I’ll fix it for you. All right?”
Elizaveta, one of the dancers, lay the pins beside my place and while I ate twisted my hair into tight, wet little ringlets and stuck a pin through each one.
This attention to my hair made my heart feel lighter, after the verbal exchanges. I was pleased that somebody admired my hair and wanted to put it up in curls. The fancy orange dress and ringlets in my hair—all that and more in one night!
In the meantime. Miss Olive was eating intently, occasionally exchanging smiles with me and the other girls, most of whom were lamenting the departure of a consignment of American marines from Tientsin. A scramble was now on to find replacements for the boyfriends who had just left. Elizaveta, my plump hairdresser, was particularly hard hit.
“They don’t come like Joe, my sweet, dear Joe,” she was saying tearfully, while trying to balance some pins on my shoulder.
“Don’t move your arm so much, golubka. The pins will fall off.. I really loved my Joe and he loved me,” she continued.
“You love easy,” said Olga. “How could you make love to that scarecrow. I would never, never. But for you, any man will do, as long as he is good....” She was ready to go on and on, nagging at Elizaveta. But just then Tamara, a tall blond, started snickering and Olga ploughed into her:
“You bitch! You’d better shut up. You’re nothing but scum, running after every pair of pants that’ll buy you a drink. Always scheming how to get away from your penniless customers. Bitch!” and Olga jumped up, ready to hit Tamara.
But nobody paid any attention to Olga, to Tamara, to anyone or to anything. Everybody knew this litany of insults, jokes, and jibes. Tonight it was just as boring as last night and the nights and weeks before.
Everyone just silently continued to eat. The woman bar owner kept on waddling around the room, switching on weak, unshaded bulbs in wall brackets, and the lights slowly and dimly started illuminating the long, dark room, throwing shadows on the wall drawings of naked women. I was embarrassed to look at them; they were so erotic, even the tables seemed to cling to them, to hug them, to encircle them, as if expecting to merge with them completely.
The ceiling, perhaps to relieve the eye, perhaps to emphasize the murals, was barren. At one time probably whitewashed, now it was darkened by the smoke, the heat, and many years of neglect.
The door opened. One by one, slowly, silently, five men all very thin, all very pale, all dressed in black shabby, baggy suits, walked in. Quietly, with heads bowed as if afraid to look up, they began unpacking their black instrument cases.
“Who are these creeps?” I asked Elizaveta, who still was busy on my hair.
“They’re our musicians. One of them,” she whispered, “is a Jew. These men never talk to us. They think we are bad, lost women and they are scared to death of us.”
The clock struck. A quarter to six. Wang, a Chinese waiter in a long white gown, began clearing the table in a hurry. Some of the girls had not yet finished eating and were scraping the last few spoonfuls on their plates.
“Hurry up, girls, hurry up!” the owner was saying. “If you’re not ready at six o’clock you’ll be fined. Remember that.” The girls looked at her indifferently as she bustled off again.
Just at that moment, the door opened again and a girl slithered in. She had on an extremely short, tight skirt, and her hair was plastered down like mine in wet ringlets. She did not glance at anyone but walked directly into the dressing room.
“That’s Yelena,” Tamara, the blonde, explained to me.
“Is she afraid of us too?” I asked.
Tamara shrugged. “No. She just minds her business. Sometimes I think..” and she tapped at her forehead.
At last, at six sharp, the bar doors were flung wide open. In excited waves, by threes, by fours, and then in swarms like bees searching for exotic and fragrant flowers, the soldiers gushed in. We, the dancers sat quietly at the tables along the walls, hoping to be chosen quickly by anyone at all.
My first few nights in the bar, I thought all the soldiers would rush to pick the most beautiful girls. But the pattern was quite different: the English picked the ones in the brightest dresses; the Americans chose the good dancers; the French selected girls with seduction in their eyes, and the Italians preferred voluptuous figures.
Luckily for me, on my first night at the bar the servicemen had just been paid so every girl was in demand. Giggles and shrieks rose and fell and were finally drowned in the Russian rendition of American jazz, the dancers’ feet moving faster and faster with the tempo. A short marine approached me. I took it as an invitation to dance. I was elated and happy, but felt sorry for my partner. I knew I was not a great find. I stumbled, I floundered, I looked furtively at the marine, hoping he would not feel the beating his feet were taking. And to make matters worse, whenever I looked at my own feet in the clumsy flat black shoes with drooping cotton stocking protruding from the yellow chiffon.... I must have been the saddest sack on the dance floor that night!
My marine had perseverance, however. We lasted out the dance. The music stopped, he steered me to a table, bought a whiskey for himself and the standard lemonade for me. He said something to me in English. I smiled, silently staring at him. After a few minutes of this mute exchange, he finished his drink in a hurry, mumbled something, and vanished.
A Frenchman tried his luck next—just two dances but no drink. Then a succession of American sailors with their bell bottoms. I had never seen such pants. They fascinated me. I forgot about my feet completely, began to relax, to dance better, and was soon quite able to follow the new and strange rhythms.
In the first few weeks, whenever my partner and I sat down at a table, conversation, for me at least, was no problem, due to complete lack of English and the loud music. Over and over, to the utmost capacity of their lungs, the five men in solid black, night after night, blared their entire repertoire of American jazz. To this day, I can sing “You’re Driving Me Crazy,” “If I Had a Talking Picture of You,” and “My Baby Just Cares for Me.”
We, the girls, loved most of all the song, “I’m Dancing with Tears in My Eyes,” written in 1930 but already in 1931 popular in China. The hero’s heart is weeping because he is not dancing with the girl whom he passionately loves, but with a complete stranger. He tries hard to smile while tears slowly envelop his heart.
A Russian could have written this as well—Ivan loved Olea but she loves Boris. Thus all three are unhappy- a frequent Russian theme. In the bar, our Slavic souls sympathized fully with the forsaken American and reminisced about our past sad loves and dreamt blissfully of better encounters in the future. When that tune was played, the girls without male partners danced mournfully together, eyes glistening in reveries.
The most popular number among our customers was undoubtedly “The St. Louis Blues.” It was also the masterpiece and the pride of our band. The trumpet player’s cheeks ballooned and his face turned scarlet with effort. Time and time again he was saved from probable apoplexy in the nick of time by the bar owner who frequently bustled over and enforced pauses between the dances, hoping to persuade the soldiers to sit and buy a round of drinks.
The evening wore on with the din, the shrieks, the drunken men, the grabbing, goosing, pulling hands, hands holding so tightly that one suffocated, hands making lewd gestures. All this created havoc, confusion, ugliness, despair, and utter loneliness.
The only person who seem unperturbed by it all was the bar owner. Facing the door, she sat like a gypsy princess in a large armchair; a red shawl with huge cabbage-flowered roses over her shoulders, big ring-shaped earrings, bracelets, and rings. With her fiery black eyes, her face powdered and rouged, and her proud glance, she reigned with an iron hand over her salacious and unruly kingdom, demanding and getting attention and obedience from everyone in the room. The old timers knew her ways and knew the limits of permissiveness in her bar.
But not the American sailor sitting a few tables down from her. He rebelled at paying a dollar for his girl’s lemonade, seized Wang by the arms, and pounded his fist on the table, demanding a real whiskey for his companion. Wang was outraged—no one had ever touched him this way before—and wailed for his boss. She waddled up, waved her finger at the culprit, her bracelets, necklace, and flesh shaking in unison. The girls began giggling, interpreting her tirade into Russian: “No Strong drinks for the girls, the first and foremost rule of the bar.” The young sailor hurriedly ducked away from the waving finger, repeating constantly, “Shut up, shut up,” and, grabbing his hat, fled into the night.
Then we heard a scuffle at the opposite end of the room. An Italian officer was glaring at an English tommy. A fight was in the air, we could sense it. We recalled the lurid stories about Italians carrying knives and using them eagerly and quickly. Sometimes we even saw the result of such fights when, after a prolonged silence, an old English customer would come in, minus a few fingers or an ear or sporting an impressive gash across his face. Naturally, all this lent a certain color and excitement to our lives and was a source of endless conversation and speculation on many, many dull evenings in the bar.
This time an Italian officer started a fight over Olga, the teacher. She was the statuesque idol of the Latin clientele. That night she was wearing a shocking green dress with enormous purple polka dots—just what the English admired. The officer was so determined to have Olga as his partner that he pulled out a knife and was on the point of stabbing the tommy. Everyone screamed, petrified. A group of American marines rushed in, wrenched the knife away, and pushed both contenders out the front door.
Our boss trundled in the wake of the melee, grumbling and gesticulating. Payday nights were good for business, but pretty rough on her nerves. On nights like these, they probably felt like the strings of a guitar tightened up for a major chord.
The noise, the jostling, the crowding went on and on. Out of the babble of unfamiliar languages, one distinct phrase, “Shut up! Shut up!” kept recurring from all over the room. I thought of it as one word, “Shuddup.” I had no idea what it meant, but I knew it was English and I filed it carefully in my vocabulary, happy that I was beginning to learn the language.
At times, I lost track of Miss Olive in the crowd, but every now and again, I would feel a little nudge against my foot and there she was, walking by with an escort and flashing back a quick smile of reassurance. It cheered me to know she was nearby, that she cared, that she kept an eye on me.
At long last, when I had despaired of the evening’s ever ending, the boss began herding out the last guests. The musicians finally put away their instruments. When the bar closed, some girls left with a soldier or sailor, some walked home with other Women, Olive and I among them. A few uniformed men were loitering outside the bar, but Olive lost no time leading our way. She looked rather severe as she rapidly made her way through the throngs, but when the men jostled her, she called out replies in a good humored fashion.
On the way home, the events of my first evening at the bar kept churning over and over in my head—the sights, slights, and humiliation. I was disappointed I was neither the Cinderella nor the belle. The soldiers were completely indifferent to me. To them I was merely a new face, no more than that if they had thought about me at all. Most likely they did not.
Suddenly I also realized it was October 1, 1931—my intended wedding day. In the last two weeks, my life indeed had taken a strange twist. And it hurt. I needed desperately to talk to someone. But by now, there was just Miss Olive at my side and she spoke no Russian. I racked my brains for some of my Harbin classroom English. And it came:
“Great Britain,” I said aloud, slowly and carefully, “is sit- u-a-ted on an island.”
Miss Olive stopped abruptly. He mouth dropped open and then she shrieked and howled with laughter. After a moment, so did I. We laughed all the way up the stairs and after we got in bed.
I fell asleep immediately. I dreamt I was wearing my wedding dress but now it was bright orange like a radiant midday sun. How beautiful it was, how happy I looked, how everyone loved me. I woke up hearing Miss Olive move about stealthily, preparing tea on our primus stove.
After breakfast, Olive and I got a few things from Madame Givet. Fortunately, she was not home. There was no need to talk, to rehash impressions of my first night at the Taku Bar.
Olive and I settled down in the rooming house in the British Concession to a frugal and circumspect daily life. By one in the morning we were always ready for bed, a huge double bed for the two of us. At nine, Olive made strong tea, I put rolls on the table and we had our breakfast. Then we cleaned our small, dark room, trying hard to get rid of the musty smell and fetid air. I can still remember the smell of the highly perfumed cheap soap m the house. That smell was running in dead heat with the claustrophobic stairway air of the entire establishment, especially on our top floor. It is said that the nose is the most sensitive of the sensory organs and tires most easily. This is true After a whilewe hardly smelled anything.
A lunch of bread, tea, and sausage about noon. Then chores and rare visits to other tenants, gossiping with them over sunflower seeds. Newspapers, books, or magazines did not exist for us or the other tenants. I do not remember reading one word during my entire stay in Tientsin. We had no radio either and gathered the local and world news either from our customers or other dancers in the bar. Frankly, we did not really care what was happening in the world as long as we had enough to eat, could keep warm, and had a place to sleep. The huge city of Tientsin with its million and a half multinational population, its vast commerce, its beautiful foreign concessions, cathedrals, manors, glittering shops, did not touch our lives at all. We lived in a cocoon for the day and by the day.
Only occasionally, to break the boredom and monotony, we went to the English Park in the British Concession. We admired its tenderly tended shrubs, flower beds, spacious alleys and broad walks, baby carriages attended by uniformed nurses, and Chinese amahs watching over children at play. But we never saw any Chinese men or women strolling about. I asked Olive about this once. She rather shyly muttered something to the effect that the Chinese were not permitted in this park. I did not know enough to press the issue further.
The days passed slowly, but five o’clock never failed to come. Then we hurried to put on our good dresses and get to the bar on time. By five-thirty, we were there, waiting for our free dinner, the bridge that linked the dullness of the day with the bedlam of the night.
On a night like my first one, when the men had just been paid, every girl was in demand. But as payday receded, competition to get the men who still had money sharpened. Only Yelena—who moved like a marionette with her short bright skirts, her long thin legs, and her dead-pan expression, and who was beginning to give me the feeling that I was seeing a living corpse— favored the English tommies. The rest of us, like cabaret girls everywhere in the world, preferred the American marines. They were the best paid and the biggest spenders. All the others, even the Italian officers, the only officers who ever visited our bar, were usually poor. We dreaded being stuck with them for an evening, laughing and sitting the whole six hours with one drink, from which we earned a mere twenty cents.
But just before payday, even the Americans had barely enough money to buy themselves a couple of beers. We were pretty well forgotten. We missed our small commissions, but sometimes were glad to sit, rest our feet, and gossip.
Miss Olive was more successful with her customers than any of the rest of us. They were relatively few, but they were loyal, constant, and generous. Mostly they were middle-aged American marines. She rarely danced. Instead she sat at a corner table and held court, often with four or five drinks of lemonade in front of her at once. Her customers hung around her in a little group, plying her with more lemonades and avidly listening to an inexhaustible supply of stories. I could not understand her rapid and colloquial English, but I could understand that she was telling her stories well. The men listened attentively and looked up annoyed if anyone tried to break into their corner of the room or if others at the tables nearby got too loud. Then simultaneously they would break into roars of laughter and pound each other on the back while Miss Olive sat looking pleased and a little priggish.
The other girls thought that, on the whole. Miss Olive was very strange. All sorts of rumors floated around about her past. In fact, I gathered she was something of a legend throughout Tientsin. One story had it that she once owned a prosperous brothel in the French concession. Another said that she had been married to an English remittance man who got involved in some confidence game and was jailed. Miss Olive was supposed to be awaiting his release and in the meantime trying to make the best of her life. But she never told me, or anyone else as far as I knew, one scrap of information about herself.
I lived with Miss Olive when I hardly knew any English from October 1931 to mid-January 1932. Many a time, I must have been a nuisance to have around. Yet she never raised her voice, never scolded me. She was seriously annoyed with me only once—I used her delicate cuticle scissors to cut my toe nails. I broke the scissors. I remember Miss Olive with love and eternal gratitude. She saved me from all evil in the Taku Bar. She was like a mother hen and I was her ugly duckling.
Miss Olive occasionally took part in the idle talk of the women in the bar, but never in their quarrels. And they spent a lot of time at that. One never knew just who, at the moment was a friend and who was the enemy.
Living with Olive, I worked hard at my English and in the bar I was working hard in learning to dance. I was becoming popular among the American marines. This brought me commissions but also a good share of bad feelings. “You greedy pig!” Elizaveta shouted at me venomously one evening in the dressing room. “I saw you making eyes at my partner. You’ve already had two Americans tonight. Oh I’d like to wring your neck, you rat!”
Immediately Tamara and a dark, gypsy-like girl named Maria came to my defense. “Anybody could see your partner didn’t like you, Elizaveta. Why don’t you learn to dance!”
It so happened that everyone was temporarily jealous of Elizaveta because she had been able not only to replace Joe with another American, but her new mate had already applied to his commander for permission to marry her, a rare occurrence and the dream of many Russian taxi dancers in China. Naturally, everyone envied and hated her.
The next night at supper, Elizaveta, perfectly amiable again, was plastering down my hair as usual—I think she must have been a frustrated hairdresser—and sticking up for me while Dusia complained that having a silly, know-nothing child around was a nuisance.
Everyone loved giving advice. I should use my opportunities to get a man to shack up with me; I should stay clear of men away from the bar. The same girls would advise me one way one day, the other way the next. As for me, at first I had no conscious viewpoint on this matter, one way or the other. Indeed, I had no particular point of view about anything that went on in the Taku Bar or about my own place in this new,bewildering life.
But points of view and attitudes develop almost of themselves, and if there is no important incident to hasten or to crystallize them, small incidents will do. On the surface, nothing really happened at the Taku Bar. Night after night, seven nights a week, there was simply more or less the same confusion and racket: “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” white-gowned Wang flapping back and forth with his tray of whiskeys and lemonades, walking with a duck-like gait, shrieking girls being pulled onto soldiers’ laps, fogs of cigarette smoke, uniforms, uniforms, uniforms.
But out of the hordes of men, three emerged as individuals. One after another, three gave me a jolt. I progressed from bewilderment at my surroundings and lack of direction about my own behavior, to decision, to stoical determination to make the best of things, and finally to outrage.
The three were all Americans: Steve, the simple, homesick farm boy; Charles, of the sophisticated and inquiring mind; and
Jim, the Texas soldier of fortune.
Steve was first. He came into the bar one evening, blond and chubby cheeked, and sat down at my table, keeping his knees out from under as if he were prepared to get up and run at a moment’s notice. “You like drink?” he asked indifferently.
All evening, at intervals, he repeated, “You like drink?” and I responded “Thank you with much pleasure.” In between, we sat looking at the dancers and occasionally smiling at each other.
When the bar closed, Steve said, “You and me, we get along fine.” I thought so too.
The next night Steve turned up again, this time getting his knees under the table and asking “You like drink?” with greater confidence. Making his words low and simple for me, he told me that his parents had gone to America from Poland. At home he lived on a farm. He had farmers’ hands, big and stubby, and farmers’ eyes, blue as the sky, not darting and alert, but quiet and focused far away. His nose was short and buttony, like a baby’s nose. He was very homesick in Tientsin.
Before I met Steve I had never wondered why the soldiers came to our bar. Steve did not tell me in as many words, but I soon understood he was there because there was no other place for him to go. He opened my eyes to the fact that Europeans in Tientsin classified enlisted men, even of their own nationality, with Chinese coolies. I learned from Steve’s artless remarks, made without malice, that “no nice girl” in Tientsin would speak to a soldier or a marine.
“How soldiers not in bar make fun?” I asked him once in pidgin English.
“Just drink,” he said.
I felt sorry for Steve. He was healthy and big and four years older than I, but he wasn’t as tough as I was.
It was a good week, having him as a steady customer. Then on Saturday night he came in as usual and sat down as usual but did not ask, “You like drink?” Instead he said, “I come here week now. You like Steve?”
“Yes, thank you,” I replied.
“Today I find place,” he said. He grinned bashfully and blushed. “I buy nice presents. We live together. Later we like, we marry.” He blushed again. “Hey, you like drink?” he asked.
“Steve,” I said. “I no go tonight. I think.”
And I did think. Steve’s offer was tempting. Maybe this was a way to escape from the bar. Maybe this was the way to find security. I asked nobody’s advice, not even Miss Olive’s.
What instinct of self preservation came to my rescue, I do not know. But the next day, as Miss Olive and I were dressing for work, both of us silently preoccupied with our own thoughts, the whole notion struck me as absurd. Didn’t I know that eventually Steve would leave Tientsin like the others? Didn’t I know there would be a hunt for somebody else and then somebody else? And what would happen finally to me?
When I told all this to Steve, he scolded me a little, became depressed, bought me a last lemonade, and said goodbye.
That was that.
A few days later, Elizaveta told me her new husband was a buddy of Steve’s. Steve was moving in with them, and he had given Elizaveta all the presents he prepared for me. As she combed and pinned my wet hair, she described each item in lengthy, glowing detail—the fancy pillows all covered with embroidery, the bright blue rayon dress, the rhinestone necklace, the celluloid powder box. Steve told her the gifts were for me. She was aghast at my stupidity. “A nice fellow like Steve! You must be crazy!” she exclaimed. Yes, everyone agreed I must be crazy. I didn’t care. I had settled it with myself, once and for all, that I would do no shacking up.
In our bar was a handsome, willowy girl named Galia. She ate and walked with exaggerated refinement. She was one of those Russian exiles who always talked about her family’s position and influence and lost wealth. For some reason, perhaps because she herself felt trapped in a life of shacking up and wanted to believe there had been no alternative, she seemed to take my decision about Steve as a personal affront.
One evening when I was sitting alone, I heard my name mentioned amid giggles. I glanced around at a party of girls and marines nearby. “I swear it’s the truth,” Galia was saying shrilly, “We’ve got a virgin in our bar.”
“Where is she?” asked one of the marines.
“Over there. Sitting by herself,” squealed Galia. “Afraid to lose her virginity!” This was followed by screams of laughter.
The marine, a rather nondescript looking fellow with black hair that kept falling into his eyes, rose and walked toward me.
“Like to dance, gal?” he asked.
“Sure, sure. I’ll dance with great pleasure,” I said,
mumbling one of the English sentences I had learned by heart.
The dance over, he took me to a table and bought me a lemonade. For himself he ordered nothing. “You long time here?” he asked.
“No, I here month. No can do other things so dance and drink for bread,” I said, expressing myself the best I could.
“My name Charles. You like here very much? People nice?” He was making a real effort at conversation.
I had been taught to say that I was very happy, that I liked the work, that soldiers and sailors were the most welcome guests. I looked around to make sure no one was near us. “I no like here but please, Charles, you no say other people. The boss she throw me out, she hear I say this.”
His face was sympathetic. He understood my pidgin English.
In the next several weeks I had many talks with Charles. He was much more curious about Tientsin and its people than anyone else I had ever met. He would ask me question after question and, jerking his head back to flop his hair out of his eyes, would listen patiently to my halting, awkward answers. He made me feel that I was an interesting person and that Tientsin, even the bar was an interesting place. Probably he was the best example of those who “join the Navy to see the world.” In return he told me about a kid sister who lived in a place called Brooklyn. “You my Russian kid sister,” he said, smiling.
I asked him if life was wonderful and easy in America and he gave a short, hard laugh. “Things tough. No jobs,” he said. I puzzled over this awhile and gave up. America was supposed to be a rich place; people did not have to work there.
Charles liked to take me to lunch in the various foreign restaurants in Tientsin. I was always hungry, always ready to try new and exotic dishes.
One late fall afternoon he took Miss Olive and me to a Japanese restaurant. We were welcomed at the door by a little man in a silk kimono, bowing from the waist and welcoming us effusively.
“You’ll have to take off your shoes, so you won’t dirty their floors,” Charles told me. Miss Olive and I were quite amused, as we put on the slippers. I laughed even more when I had to sit on the floor. Charles’ long legs stuck out on either side of the tiny, low table. I tickled his stocking feet gently. He tickled me back and said, half laughing:
“You’re getting pretty fresh, my redhead. It’s o.k. with me. But go easy with some of those bozos off the boat. The first chance you give them, watch out!”
“Oh, Charles, I no fresh girl. I, lady.” I said reproachfully.
“If you’re a lady, you shouldn’t eat so fast,” seeing me stuff my mouth full of rice and sukiyaki.
“But I like,” said I, pouting.
“That’s what I lake about you, you always lake everything.” Charles teased me, imitating my accent.
As we ate, two Japanese waitresses fluttered about us, adding sauce to the sukiyaki simmering over a charcoal brazier. To Miss Olive and me they paid little attention but made a great fuss over Charles, who teased us about it, saying that Japanese girls were brought up with the proper respect for men.
Olive and I were having such a good time that we didn’t care whether we were late at the bar or not. But Charles finally urged us out.
Later that evening, he dashed into the bar in great excitement, sought out Miss Olive and me and sat us down together. An hour after we left the restaurant, the whole place was blown up, he announced. He shook his finger at me. “Miss Olive and you stay English concession,” he said. “Japanese take Manchuria. Now think they do anything in China. Maybe trouble here next. You be careful.”
Trouble came as he expected. Tientsin experienced a mild warfare during the next few days. Japanese were caught and beaten up when they ventured out of their concession. Reprisals followed. The soldiers and marines who came to the bar were tense and fidgety, arguments and fights were more frequent.
And then the blow struck us. The zone in which our bar stood was declared off limits for troops. Her clientele gone, the boss decided to close the bar. We were dumbfounded when we realized our sole source of income was cut off.
It was close to a new payday, but we were given no money because our full month was not up.
For the first week Miss Olive and I were fortunate. Every night Charles bought us our dinner. We were sure of one meal a day at least. But then his ship was ordered out of Tientsin for patrol duty. Before he left, he emptied his pockets into my hand.
“This is all I have, Tania,” he said. “Let’s hope it’ll do until the bar opens. Can’t be too long. You be good and brave. If you get in trouble, you send postcard, and he wrote down for me his ship address.
In the lean month that followed, when the money Charles left was gone, I was often hungry and always cold. It was mid- November. The bitter North China winter was in earnest. Icy winds were blowing from the Mongolian plains.
Miss Olive’s winter coat had yielded up its interlining years before. It was now a bed quilt and I had only a thin fall coat. When we were hungry, we roamed the streets purposelessly, driven out of our room by the dreariness and the cold, the cold which seemed almost worse indoors than out.
Many times I made up my mind to write and ask Charles for money. But I did not do it, whether out of pride, shyness or fear of disappointment. However, the very thought that I had this untouched resource was a bulwark. If it had not been for Charles and for Miss Olive’s matter-of-fact confidence, I have no idea where I would have turned. But as it was. Miss Olive and I shared our hunger and shared our food. It was then I began to learn her technique of concentrating on each hour’s existence and of smiling at the triumph of getting by another day. I never really gained her wise old mastery of that art, but stiffened by the intangible security of Charles parting words, I made a good disciple.
And somehow, before we reached the ultimate desperation of too much cold and too much hunger, something always turned up. Once it was Madame Givet with a pound of ham, butter and cheese, and two loaves of bread. Sometimes it was the other tenants of our house inviting us in for tea and maybe a bite of cake. Twice it was a message from the bar owner to hasten over and slip in by the back door, summonses that were really for Miss Olive only. Some of her faithful coterie had
managed to elude the military police and sneak back to the bar. I lagged along, however, and while the men listened to her stories in the darkened room, they bought me lemonades too and later dinner.
At last, one bitter, blustering December day, came the news that hard times were over. The bar reopened, noisier, rowdier, more crowded than ever. “Merry Christmas,” people were saying and, in my newly won determination to accept everything cheerfully, I said it too without understanding that this was our Russian holiday with a different name and a different date.
Then in a few nights, English tommies turned up by the score, almost bursting with exuberance, and invited us girls en masse to a party the next night in Gordon Hall, a place they described proudly as “a castle.”
For this occasion, I bought a new and singularly inappropriate dress, street-length brown wool with a heavy woolen jacket, for I was temporarily obsessed with the notion of keeping warm. Miss Olive wore her blue fluttering dress and stuck close by me all evening. Whenever a tommy began to paw me too enthusiastically, she rescued me with the nicest possible mixture of firmness and good humor. Happily I abandoned to her the job of watching out for me. It didn’t matter about my dress. Nobody noticed. There were so many, many people, and all of them happy, loud, and affectionate and shouting “Merry Christmas” at everyone.
Back at the bar after the holiday, the soldiers seemed to have more money than ever and to be more reckless with it. Good times had returned with a vengeance.
The most ostentatious spender of the lot was Jim. Jim was a marine newcomer and he fascinated all of us, not only because of his money but because of what we called his “dangerous look.” He had very black, heavy eyebrows, was apparently permanently half-drunk, and he had a lanky, sinister sort of grace. On his cheek was a bandage, the trophy of a fist fight, and he wore it like a decoration. It was whispered around that he came from Texas. Now, neither I nor any of the other dancers knew what or where Texas was, but for some reason it seemed glamorous and we thought it worth repeating. He reminded me of the swashbuckling czarist officers in the Harbin Black Shirts.
One night early in January, Jim got into a rousing brawl with tall Tamara. Drawn by his roars and Tamara’s screams, we all left off dancing or talking and crowded around the furious pair. Jim held Tamara by the wrist; she was trying to pull away, and both were shrieking accusations. Some of the other soldiers, egged on by our boss, attemped to calm Jim down, but most of them simply enjoyed the scene and screeched their own entertaining comments.
“That’s the way, treat ‘em rough, Jim.”
“Want some help?”
“Come on, come on, a little more action.”
Jim gave Tamara’s arm a cruel jerk. Her face went white and she staggered to gain her balance. Jim grinned and returned to the audience. “She doesn’t want to dance until I’ve bought her ten drinks. The damned whore!”
With the flat of his hand against her chest, he shoved her against the table, turned his back and strode through his audience. All the girls scuttled back to their tables.
He sauntered down the room, glancing loftily at each dancer, and then stopped where I was sitting. With an air of great unconcern, he pulled me from my chair and began to dance. “You don’t think I’m so bad, do you kid?” he breathed in my ear.
“I am most pleased to dance,” I said, actually scared to death. Miss Olive, I noticed, was keeping a watchful eye on us.
Her intervention was not needed, however. It was already almost closing time and though Jim was sullen, he was self-controlled.
“Meet me tomorrow afternoon at two at the corner of Davenport and Cousins Road,” he ordered, as he was leaving. To avoid trouble, I agreed.
Still with the notion of avoiding trouble, I turned up at the appointed time, bringing Miss Olive with me of course. Jim greeted her politely, then bade her goodbye. I was secretly delighted to observe his mystification and irritation as she bluntly stayed with us, then his dawning realization that she was one of the party. Pulling me off a little, he demanded, “Why in hell did you bring that old dame?”
“Miss Olive always comes my dates,” I answered.
“Oh Jesus, well come on!” he exclaimed. A crowd of rickshaw coolies had gathered around us hoping for fares. Cursing at them, he seized my hand and pushed our way through.
Miss Olive nimbly followed.
The coolies shaken off, he muttered something about a present. Miss Olive and I exchanged glances. We were thinking of the first rule of the cabaret dancer: watch out for trouble when you get a present.
“No want present,” I said, lack of English forcing me to be rude.
But Jim looked down his nose imperiously, took me firmly by the elbow and steered me into a jewelry shop on Victoria Road, the Fifth Avenue of Tientsin. I stood with Olive, ill at ease, while Jim rummaged through a tray of rings. Finally he called me over curtly and thrust an alexandrite set in white gold on my finger.
“Many thanks,” I said aloud, wondering to myself, “What happens now?”
What happened was the last thing I expected. Miss Olive’s attitude toward presents went into reverse. She began diffidently admiring various small articles in the shop windows and with much coy hesitation accepted Jim’s gallant offers to purchase a lipstick and handkerchief. Then she progressed to more expensive items and less subtle hints. Rewarded by a large and fancy box of powder and an ornament comb, she finally dropped all pretense of being coaxed and boldly requested a warm jacket.
The whole afternoon was spent in shopping. My embarrassment at Miss Olive’s shenanigans changed to apprehension and then to rather delighted stupefaction. When the spree was over and Jim had deposited us at our door, he had only one dollar left from a tremendous roll.
As we dressed to leave for the bar. Miss Olive cheerfully surveyed her pile of loot. Every now and again she would meet my eye and grin, then quickly compose her mouth into a thin, prim line.
Jim, to my relief, didn’t turn up at the bar again for a couple of weeks, probably because he was so broke. But on the next payday, he came again. He took me to a table, ordered a drink for me, and in rapid succession he drank a few whiskies.
He told me a tall tale about his friendships with John Gilbert, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, and a new star named Jeanette MacDonald. I believed everything he said and was eagerly waiting for more when he leaned over confidentially and whispered, “Tonight we go to a hotel.”
My impulse was to jump up and run. Stuttering and blushing, which of course gave me away, I pretended not to understand him. “I have room with Miss Olive,” I told him. “I no need room in hotel.”
“Cut it out,” he said, raising his voice. “You know damn well what I mean.”
I naively tried a new tack. “You have sweetheart in America, no? What she think?” I slipped from the seat, my eye on the dressing room door.
With one quick movement, Jim was up and barring my way. Now I was in Tamara’s shoes. He slapped me hard across the cheek. “Damned bitch!” he shouted. “You promised to sleep with me when I bought you that ring!”
“This damn prostitute! This cheat,” he shouted to the bar at large. Turning, he slapped me again on one already stinging cheek, then on the other.
I longed to throw the ring at him. But this dramatic gesture was impossible because I had already traded the ring for a winter coat. While the bar owner railed at him and two soldiers held him, I ducked miserably through the door into the dressing room. There I leaned against the wall, hot tears of humiliation streaming down my face. The girls came in to comfort me. The woman who had denied she was my teacher and had always ignored me patted me on the arm, then blurted, “It can’t always be school days for people like us, Tania.” Yelena came too and tonelessly said the only words she ever spoke to me, “I could kill them all.” Then Miss Olive gently suggested we go home early.
All the way home I sobbed. When we reached our room I put my head in her lap and poured out all the accumulated fear and anger of my fourteen years. She let me talk on and on, in a sobbing, inarticulate mixture of Russian and English, while she patted my head now and again and made sympathetic cooing sounds.
I won’t go back! I cried over and over. “I won’t go back to the Taku Bar!” °
Olive comforted me but never said what both of us knew. I had no alternative but the Taku Bar.
The next day neither of us talked of what happened When five o’clock struck, we put on our bar dresses closed the door to our room, and left for another free dinner and another night of noise and lemonades. There seemed no way out. Tacitly we agreed that the old routine still stood.
