Journey from Shanghai

Introduction

The Italy depicted in Journey from Shanghai is what it was in 1952, seven years after the end of WWII. Lacking borders in common with other countries along both its long coastlines, isolated by war, Italians were unused to foreigners, particularly Asians, and demonstrated their curiousity with naivete and child-like fascination. Italians have since grown sophisticated, and, I might say, even jaded with foreigners.

PROLOGUE

1949

The Americans left. Rafaella Bardini’s best friend went away on an American warship which glided into the brown waters of Whangpo Harbor in the night. Twenty-four hours later, running without lights, the ship headed back for the mouth of the Harbor to the Yangtze River, and from there to the open sea. The sampans with their sleeping families barely rocked from her passing.

There had been no real farewell. Rafaella got a telephone call from Judy, who sounded nervous and muddled. I’m leaving Shanghai, she said. On a ship. There’s no time and I’m not supposed to talk about it. I’ll write. ‘Bye.

What ship? Maybe Judy meant she and her brother and parents were going into hiding somewhere. But when Rafaella heard that there actually had been an American ship, she knew she would never see Judy again.

Judy’s sudden, secret departure from the convent school that Rafaella also attended made the fear palpable. The nuns stopped talking about the Americans coming back, and hurried through textbooks and redoubled homework assignments. Time was short; it was precious.

Each day Rafaella struggled to convince her parents to let her out of the house.

I can go around by Nanking Road. They said on the radio the police are keeping it clear and they’re sure to let me through when I show my pass. I just can’t miss another day. Exams are coming up and I’m not half prepared!

It was her first year in high school. That was more important than even losing Judy.

Her mother often sided with her and many times insisted that her father escort Rafaella to school.

What if there’s a blockade? Mr. Bardini protested. She’ll be trapped. Rafaella’s safety obsessed him. He had a ruddy face with an emphatic nose; all color left his skin whenever he thought of something happening to her. She was too noticeable; these days it was not good to attract attention in the streets.

His wife usually had an answer. Then she has to stay until she can come home. The sisters will care for her, and I have put a towel and toothbrush in her bookbag. As long as the American nuns were staying until they were forced out, so would Rafaella.

As a Chinese female who had been allowed the privilege of learning to read and write although little more, Mai-yeen Bardini understood the value of an education.

It was worth sacrifice to save the money for tuition. In this winter of deadly cold, Mai-yeen had sent away the coal vendor because she did not have the price of twenty cattie-weight of his cheapest briquettes, which contained more sawdust and stones than coal.

He had said patiently, I will come back next week, Mistress, and then shouldered his bamboo pole balanced on each end with a basket of briquettes and swung away down Mayen Road. His bare feet in straw sandals were cracked from the cold and black with coal dust. The Bardinis could more easily live without heat than dispense with their amah. A servant maintained the shreds of their social station; Mai-yeen shopping for food without an amah in attendance would instantly expose their ruin to the neighborhood. A European man’s wife buying cabbages on her own? Times had indeed changed!

The lack of coal was insignificant. Bigger disasters threatened.

The fighting in the north pushed closer. Rumors caromed around the city: the American soldiers had pulled out of Chungking in the west; President Truman was sending a division to beat back the Communist insurgents; President Chiang Kai-shek had already given up and fled to Taiwan.

Stateless Europeans left over from old wars and new wars dithered, on edge. Russians who had escaped to China from the l9l7 Bolshevik Revolution either besieged foreign consulates for asylum, or waited apathetically for doomsday.

Chinese fleeing the inland provinces flooded Shanghai and begged on the streets for food.

Rafaella walked to school alert as a sentry. She guarded her pockets and bookbag, tightened her arms and elbows around them whenever someone bumped her. At least twice each day someone nearby on the street cried out and chased the thief but never caught him. There were simply too many places to hide, and no one ever helped.

Past Yenching Road, she dodged human beings more ruined than the clothes hanging from them. She stepped high over newspaper-wrapped bundles. Often tiny purple feet or hands protruded; sometimes dogs had been at the bundles. Rafaella learned not to look. So many infants were being strangled at birth because their mothers couldn’t feed them. It was a detail, like so many in China. If only she had money to ride in a rickshaw! In a rickshaw she wouldn’t look at anything but the clean sky. She could hold her breath long enough until they were quickly past the stinks of the sick and dead.

In class she recited, The Magna Carta was the Great Charter of English liberties granted by King John in l2l5 under threat of civil war and reissued with alterations in l2l6, l2l7, and l225.

Sister Maureen nodded encouragement, or as much as her head could nod inside the wimple pressing her ears flat against her head. She seemed to be the only person in the room who was listening. Patty Wong was staring out the window. Her father was an officer in the Nationalist Army and was reported missing. Annette Guyot, a Eurasian like Rafaella, doodled on the margin of her history book, probably daydreaming of her departure for France in a week. Who cared about what happened in England in l2l5? her attitude said.

Rafaella loved this old brick house—once a millionaire’s mansion—with its curving staircase and mahogany corkscrew balusters. The color reminded her of milk chocolate, which she loved and hadn’t tasted in at least a year. The oddest things reminded her of food; in chapel during Benediction the incense smelled like the sweet herbs roasted with chestnuts. If she were ever to get an allowance she would spend it on hot chestnuts every winter morning, one bag for each pocket of her red corduroy coat to keep her hands warm.

Like the other girls, she played volleyball with a passion none of them had felt last year. They burned off anxieties in fierce competition; no one cared much which team won. The court was two scabs in a lawn packed hard by hundreds of thundering feet. The old Soochow gardener had given up trying to save the grass, retreating to the rare peonies that he had planted for his former employer along the high wooden fence.

After volleyball the girls ate lunch inside a Quonset hut the American G.I.s had built for the nuns before they left China. Rafaella’s homemade sandwich usually was margarine scraped over grayish bread, with a little carrot jam on top.

Although Annette kept both her hands around her sandwich so that no one could see what was in it, Rafaella knew very well that she was eating the same spread as everyone else, unless it was worse, lard dripping with bits of pork rind. Annette disdained volleyball. She told everybody she was going to be a concert pianist.

Please sign my book, Rafaella, she said. She held out a notebook bound in imitation leather. Say something nice to remember you by.

Rafaella took the pencil and notebook and thought, then wrote, Many curtain calls and flowers, and fame and fortune and dowers. From Rafaella Bardini.

It rhymes, Annette said critically, but what does dowers mean?

It’s a word like dowry, I think. So you’ll have no trouble finding a husband like poor girls did in the nineteenth century.

Annette’s oval-shaped hazel eyes glanced coolly at Rafaella’s thighs sticking out of her old serge uniform. She liked to say that she looked more European than Rafaella, whose eyes and hair were dark. Both had fair skin, but Annette was afflicted with pimples, which Rafaella told her was certainly very European. I’m not poor, Annette said. I have plenty of new clothes, and Papa will buy me more in France. I won’t be here to be raped and tortured by the Communist soldiers. When are you getting out?

I don’t know, said Rafaella.

She could barely remember when money was not a problem. The war had destroyed the Bardinis’ country house and her father’s export-import business. His two freighters had been sunk. The town house had sold for one-tenth its value. Their last property was an apartment building; Mr. Bardini got not a single offer for it.

The building was crammed with refugee tenants. None paid rent, and none would leave. The Bardinis themselves were forced to live in a rented house. Their own landlord collected his rent and refused to fix the leaky roof of their small yellow house.

Daily news of imminent invasion drove Mai-yeen to the tiny garden, where she worked fitfully at planting flowers. She did not bother with a lawn. Grass, nurtured to the perfection she once took for granted, was a pretension for which she now had no patience.

One afternoon in late March, the amah announced, Master Guido and his wife are here. I let them into the living room. Her tone suggested she had set roaches loose in the house.

Mr. Bardini looked puzzled, but his wife was immediately mistrustful. Boil water for tea, she told Tsin-li. "But do not serve it until I tell you.

They want something, she said with certainty. They have always come to us when they wanted something.

Don’t worry, Mai, the Vitellis couldn’t hurt us after what we’ve been through.

When Mr. Bardini and his wife appeared in the living room, Guido jumped up from the sofa.

Hello, old man. He beamed as he met Mr. Bardini halfway and embraced him.

His Chinese wife, Lily, rose and pressed Mai-yeen’s hands. It is good to see you, Mai. You look as young as ever. I’ve missed you very much.

Thank you. Mai-yeen did not copy her effusiveness. I see you are as fashionable as ever.

The Vitellis’ well-being offended Mai-yeen. If her husband could not bring himself to do it, she would demand back the money loaned to them when Guido had had business troubles.

Lily and I have been wanting to drop in for the longest time but you know how things have been. We’ve got good news for you, I hope. Do you still have that crazy apartment house and do you want to sell it?

Why yes. Despite a gingerly reserve, Mr. Bardini could not conceal hope. It is still for sale.

I see, thought Mai-yeen. A commission is what they have come for. I can stomach doing business with them, but no more. She strove to hide her nervousness. A small sum would be enough to send Rafaella to safety.

This is confidential, Guido said. A man I’ve done business with is buying up real estate. He doesn’t believe the commies are going to stay. When Chiang Kai-shek is back on top my friend is going to own most of the city.

I don’t see why it has to be confidential, Mr. Bardini said. We’re still a free society here until Shanghai is occupied.

Well, it’s obvious, Guido replied. If the new regime heard about it they’d shoot him. He doesn’t want his name used.

Has he made an offer? Mai-yeen asked.

Oh, certainly. It’s six thousand American dollars. Not much, I know. But I’ll try to get him to raise it. After all, I guess you understand we have an interest in this, too.

Mr. Bardini sighed. I paid the equivalent of fifteen thousand back in l942. But if we can get American dollars…. The cash is better than gold, I think. Do you agree, Mai?

Yes. Dollars in big bills will be easier to carry. To forestall a more generous offer from her husband, she said, Will you consider a five percent commission fair?

Of course, of course. Glad to have it. I’ll run over and see him right away so we can wind this up as soon as possible.

We’re grateful for this helping hand, Lily murmured. Whenever she smiled she showed the vee shape of her upper teeth. Old friends are best friends.

Mai-yeen ignored the last remark. Excuse me. She rose and went into the kitchen. You may serve the tea now, Tsin-li.

That same evening Guido brought back three hundred dollars in earnest money and a power of attorney for Mr. Bardini to sign.

He’ll go to six thousand five hundred dollars, he reported jubilantly. You’ll have the rest of the money day after tomorrow at the latest.

Mr. Bardini handed him the deed. What a relief to be rid of that place. Do you know I’ve even thought of tearing it down, with all the people inside?

My friend will take care of them. Guido laughed. He will have them wishing you still owned it. See you in a couple of days.

When Guido did not return after four days had passed, Mai-yeen became restive.

Her husband tried to reassure her. That much currency isn’t easy to get together nowadays.

I wish we had Guido’s telephone number. The directory was out of date and the telephone people were unwilling to help. Could we not send Tsin-li to their house with a note?

There is no need to worry, Mai, but if it will make you feel better, we can do that.

Dismayed at having to travel miles across town, the amah grumbled, Dinner will be late. And we are out of rice.

Leave it to me. Just please go, Mai-yeen said.

It was dark outside when Tsin-li returned. The Bardinis were eating the omelet Mai-yeen had made.

Mistress, she said, her voice shaking. Mistress. Her chin dug into her chest; she plucked at the hem of her short tunic.

Speak, Tsin-li.

I rang and rang the doorbell, then I banged on the door. And then I went next door and asked where Master Guido and his wife were and the man said…the man said…they packed up and left the city many days ago. She began to weep and covered her mouth with her hand.

Mai-yeen only stared, though her lips moved without sound.

In the silence, Mr. Bardini said, The power of attorney. I should not have signed it. He had, after all, brought three hundred dollars and I gave him the deed in good faith. In good faith, he repeated.

Rafaella realized she was still holding her glass of water to her lips though she did not drink.

Her parents did not look at her or at each other. All three sat in a leaden stillness as Tsin-li clinked dishes in the kitchen.

Of course you had to sign it, and you had no choice but to give him the deed, her mother said listlessly.

I am not feeling well. I have to lie down. With quiet steps, he left the room.

We are trapped, Rafaella thought. The commies will arrest us and beat us and poke hot bamboo splinters under our fingernails and then they’ll put us against a wall and shoot us. Patty Wong’s brother died like that in the interior.

The people of Shanghai scrambled for survival.

A market in foreign marriages prospered. French, German, Belgian, American, British citizens received as much as five thousand American dollars for marrying someone without papers.

American consulate officials began destroying secret documents and registering the serial numbers of bundles of American currency, which they then burned.

On May 25th the People’s Liberation Army marched quietly, almost ambled, into Shanghai. Their demeanor was so meek and their officers so meticulous about paying for what they took that soon everyone was saying the Communists’ bad reputation had been nothing but Nationalist propaganda.

Panic can cause fearful damage, Mr. Bardini told his wife. These people are not monsters after all, and once they reopen the ports I can start working again. China still needs her businessmen. He invested the last of their money with a merchant friend who owned a food store.

Mai-yeen did not argue with him, but she took Rafaella out of school and enrolled her in a shorthand-typing course taught by an elderly British couple. For insurance, she hired a Chinese tutor, a hungry-looking widow, to teach Rafaella reading and writing Chinese.

Each day that Rafaella boarded a tram going in the opposite direction from the convent she felt she had lost something precious. Graduation was now forever out of reach.

A letter came from her friend Judy, every line a lament of homesickness and dislike of her new school in the Midwest.

The town was called Rydersville, and it was dull, dull, dull.

Rafaella wrote back, careful to avoid dangerous words such as regime and American, or that the streets all had new names. The post office had a new department of censorship, zealous cadres who took offense at nearly everything.

The strokes and hooks of Pitman’s shorthand seemed to make the only sense in her world. Her Chinese lessons were pure persecution. Written Chinese remained a mystery whether she studied one hour or ten. The colloquial Shanghai in which she had chattered and joked with her friends was no help at all.

She begged her mother to end the lessons.

You must learn, Rafaella, her mother said. Your survival may depend upon it some day.

This will kill me sooner, Rafaella said in despair.

Whenever she could she fled into books borrowed from a lending library owned by a White Russian who had once made a good living out of his library. He gave Rafaella the use of it for nothing. Take, take, he gasped, wheezing from chronic bronchitis and homemade vodka and tears for Mother Russia. They are no use to me now. Wildly, he tumbled books from his shelves into her arms.

Her face and the books attracted trouble. Both enraged the Chinese. Children and adults, seeing the foreign literature, screamed insults.

Dirty leper! Your mother was a whore! Your mother and father are lice feeding on China! Our Great Leader Mao Tse-tung should exterminate vermin like you for being born!

Head down, she walked steadily past the menacing fists. She did not tell her parents. She would endure rather than lose her books.

On her next visit, she tucked her small gold cross under her blouse and carried the books wrapped in a Chinese newspaper. But they knew her now. As she passed a small storefront on the old Tifeng Road, a stone flew out of the doorway. It struck her on the shoulder. She did not stop. Another stone glanced off an ankle. Footsteps scuffled behind, and more stones pelted her. The missiles were large and jagged, thrown hard enough to take out her eyes had she looked back. A blow on the head made her stagger. A second tore her scalp; she felt the blood flowing down her neck.

Get out of China! You are not wanted! Foreigners have used our country too long! Go drown yourself in a well!

Breathing hard but refusing to quicken her pace, Rafaella trudged on. She did not touch her wounds, not in front of her assailants. On the street corner she spied a uniformed cadre watching. He was smiling.

The number of executions inside the Shanghai Race Course and the Canidrome increased daily by hundreds, thousands, no one knew how many. Perhaps a million had been slaughtered, people whispered, while they made sure their children did not hear. The children now belonged to the People’s Republic and were its eyes and ears. How many had been executed in all of China? The streets were clean. Had the beggars been shot also?

On streets loudspeakers screeched martial songs—Arise, arise, workers, arise—all day and all night. The cadres nailed slotted boxes to lampposts and exhorted citizens to report anyone suspected of working against the People’s Government. The notes did not have to be signed. The Bardinis’ friend and neighbor, Mr. Chu, disappeared on his way home from work. And an old man who wrote letters for the illiterate. The neighborhood cadres denounced the two as spies.

Mr. Bardini visited the Italian consulate to ask for aid in repatriating to Italy. The consul said he had requested authorization and to be patient and wait.

For Rafaella’s sixteenth birthday her mother baked a cake with coarse flour, one egg, and a tablespoon of lard.

Another letter arrived from Judy. She loved Rydersville; she played the flute in the school band and was dating a senior built like Superman. Rafaella did not answer the letter.

1950

The first jumper chose the roof of the Grosvenor Hotel. He fell twenty stories and crushed a rickshaw coolie under himself. Most of the leaps afterward were clean. The ruined businessmen and landlords took nobody save themselves into death.

Halfway through her business course Rafaella’s instructors left Shanghai. Her shorthand speed had reached only eighty to ninety words per minute.

Her Chinese tutor told Mai-yeen, with shame, that she could no longer continue to give Rafaella lessons.

I am so sorry that I cannot pay you more, Mai-yeen said with equal embarrassment.

But it was not the fee. The widow was afraid to come to this household because of Mr. Bardini’s shortwave radio, which brought in the Voice of America and sometimes the BBC.

Reluctantly, Mr. Bardini dismantled his radio set and disposed of it, piece by piece, in various streets of the city.

1951

During the Chinese New Year (renamed Spring Festival) Mr. Bardini’s merchant friend was arrested for profiteering. With eleven other accused reactionaries, he knocked his forehead repeatedly upon the boards of the raised platform that now sat permanently in Worker Square. After all twelve had made public apologies to the people, they were taken to the Race Course and shot. The merchant’s shop was turned over to the cadres and became the People’s Collective Food Center.

Mr. Bardini again went to the Italian consulate.

In two years twenty-five pounds had vanished from his frame and he seemed shorter, especially when he forgot to stand erect. His cheeks looked as though he were sucking on them, but that was because he had lost many teeth as well as the twenty-five pounds. His one good suit had suede patches at the elbows; nothing could be done to hide the worn places at the seat and knees. Frequently he had chest pains but refused to see a doctor, whom they could not afford. Finally, Mai-yeen asked a neighbor to drop in to examine him. Angina, said the doctor, a German Jew who had not practiced medicine legally since he arrived in China in 1939. Get some nitroglycerin capsules. Try to rest, do not worry, he added, and laughed at himself for saying it.

Mr. Bardini returned home from the consulate buoyed by good news.

The authorization has come! The Bevilacquas were there, and I saw old Mrs. Lombardi. The poor lady wept when she saw me. Forty years, she kept saying, forty years in China. She can’t bear to leave her husband buried here. He held his wife’s hand in his own, which had new large, liver spots on the back. At least we three will be together, we have that to be thankful for. We’ll have pictures taken for passports and exit visas, and then we’d better start packing.

Repatriate to Italy, mused his wife. While he was at the consulate she had been worrying about that day, if it ever came. Compared to relocating in an alien land with no money, her past battles suddenly looked puny. How will we live? she asked.

Why, I still have my contacts in America, remember? In Italy I should open my office in Rome or north, Milan, Genoa. He was bright-eyed at the prospect of seeing Italy again.

Matteo, we have no more capital. I do not mean to discourage you, but I have to know how we are going to go about settling in your country.

You’ll have to trust me, Mai. Of course it will be your country as well. I’m sure you will have no trouble adapting. As for capital, I’m going to write to relatives in Naples who may help. If they can’t lend us money, they’ll certainly let us stay with them until I can raise some.

Write, then, Matteo. And may your God help us.

Rafaella felt some of her mother’s terror. She wondered if Guido Vitelli and his wife, wherever they had gone, were happy with the money they had stolen.

The Bardinis brought their photographs to the police station and applied for exit visas. The official they talked to was from the north, Russian-trained, contemptuous equally of foreigners and of Mai-yeen Bardini’s bound feet, symbols of the old China, of corruption, of partition and greedy rulers. China was unified now. After the first glance he did not look again at Rafaella. Eurasians were an abomination that China was finished with forever. Come back in a month, he said. We have to check your records for political activities.

Political activities? We have never involved ourselves in anything political. I am a businessman, you see. Mr. Bardini was careful to make his protest sound respectful.

Next, the official said curtly, and looked beyond the little group.

Next month the police were still investigating. The Bardinis were told to come back in another month.

January 1952

As enemies of the State, and for their crimes of subversion, Matteo Bardini, the woman Huang Mai-yeen known as Mai-yeen Bardini, and the female Rafaella Bardini, are hereby exiled from the People’s Republic of China. They are to be gone within two weeks from this date. The young cadre reading the document paused, taking his time.

He wants us to break down and cry and beg, thought Rafaella. What cruel, sharp eyes. He looks like a wolf.

The cadre’s drab blue cotton uniform was new, and he held his shoulders well back and the paper proudly high. His companion was older, middle-aged, and looked embarrassed.

The cadre resumed reading, glancing up at every other word, vigilant for signs of distress.

Each person may take no more than one suitcase of clothing and fifty American dollars in currency. The currency may be purchased at the People’s Bank of the Revolution. Any person caught with more than fifty dollars in his possession will be punished by execution. He tossed the document onto the dining table. I would advise you to go to the station house at once for your exit visas. You cannot afford to delay. He wheeled, and was gone through the half-open door. Following behind, his partner closed the door gently.

Mai-yeen said wearily, For a year we had asked to leave and now they are exiling us. She noticed her husband’s remote expression, his hand pressed flat against his chest. Pains, Matteo?

They will pass.

We do not need two weeks, she said. We have almost nothing left. She became defiant. That creature did not say anything about jewelry. I am going to take my jade brooches.

Of course.

I am not selling them.

Certainly not, Mai. They are yours, from your parents. We have a right to take out a little personal jewelry. Pin them inside your clothes and trust they won’t search. How odd, he murmured, as he gazed about the room. The walls had become sooty over the years without anyone noticing. We’re leaving this place at last and forever. Well— He had not sounded so brisk in years, —it’s time to write my relatives in Naples.

Are you sure they will take us in?

Everything will be all right, Mai. You’ll see. My father was very close to his young cousin. We were almost the same age, and we went to the same school. Can you believe it, Mai. We are actually, really going to get out.

Rafaella’s mother did not once turn to look back at their empty yellow house. She had wept in private and written brief notes to her family in Soochow. One entire afternoon she and Tsin-li stayed in the kitchen and talked about things Rafaella was too young to remember.

Poor Tsin-li had gone away yesterday to her son and daughter-in-law. The Bardinis gave her an even fourth of their cash and apologized for the small sum. I had wished to retire you comfortably, Tsin-li, Mai-yeen told her in grief.

Bad times, Mistress, no one is to blame. I have the gold in my teeth for emergencies, but that I hope to save to pay for my funeral. Be careful where you go. Tsin-li’s eyes had been red and swollen for days.

Rafaella stepped into one of the two pedicabs they had hired. Some of their neighbors had come out but none dared acknowledge the departing Bardinis.

She was finally going to see some of the outside world. Now she knew how a moth felt emerging from a cocoon.

In the streets of the city between dusk and dawn, trucks cruised. Soldiers caught males between the ages of fifteen and fifty and threw them into the trucks. The war in Korea was consuming recruits as fast as they were being sent.#

PART ONE

Chapter 1

1952

The cranky cargo liner Tripoli, bound for Naples, was not intended by her owners to be a pleasure cruiser. Rafaella hardly noticed its discomforts, for she had made her first friend in years. The coincidence of Stefano Chang’s parentage astonished her. She had never before met anyone else who had a Chinese mother and an Italian father like herself.

He was traveling alone. He explained his Chinese surname wryly: The man ran off and left my mother and me without a legal chit between us. The Italian consul had provided an Italian passport for him anyway, throwing in with it a short,

intense language course. As a result Stefano spoke a facile Italian, though he could not write a grammatical sentence.

They talked in English and to amuse her he sometimes faked an upper-crust accent (Upper-lower-Middlesex).

He was reticent about his mother, who had remained in Shanghai. Of his years in the Shanghai British School: The other kids gave me equal treatment—the same as they treated the gardener.

Stefano was twenty-one; the mature guardedness of his expression suggested thirty. He stood almost as tall as her father used to be (I owe my height to the white race), and was as fair-skinned as Rafaella, with faint freckles across the bridge of a nose melded of both Asia and Europe. The way he walked hinted of athletic skills. She found herself watching him when he wasn’t looking.

Mai-yeen had noticed Rafaella’s increasing attraction to Stefano.

What is growing between the two of you, daughter?

"Nothing, Mother. I just like him so much. And our