The Fan Tan Players, page 7
If only, she thought, if only they’d gone back earlier to look for Papashka.
Her mind went white.
She looked at Uncle Yugevny, saw his eyes squinting angrily. He caught her looking at him and his eyes jumped away. She wanted desperately to change the subject. Nadia watched her uncle’s expression as she spoke, saw that the line of his jaw tightening. She felt her cheeks burn. ‘‘I think it would better if we don’t talk about this now. Remember your heart, Uncle Yugevny,’’ she said.
The old man grew silent, picked up a pebble from the ground and tossed it hard against the wall. The cats scattered.
‘‘And now look at the country,’’ he said. ‘‘After bloody revolution what do we have? Stalin! A Georgian madman! He’s now planning to resettle all the Russian Jews in Birobidzhan, a small town on the Russian-Chinese border. Why? So that he can murder them all quietly? He changed his name from Dzhugashvili to Stalin, meaning ‘man of steel’ – that says it all does it not!’’
A minute passed. Nadia gave him a nervous glance. He looked red-faced and uneasy, but a little calmer now. The two horizontal lines on his forehead were receding. ‘‘I hear that they’re doing a new dance in New Orleans,’’ Nadia said, turning to Izabel ‘‘Do you know the Black Bottom?’’
Izabel must have seen the look on her face because she responded quickly, apologizing with her eyes. ‘‘Of course,’’ said Izabel.
‘‘Can you teach me?’’
Izabel got to her feet and pulled on Nadia’s arm. They took half a dozen steps and reached the far corner of the courtyard. ‘‘The thing you have to do,’’ she said, ‘‘is sway your knees. Begin by standing up straight with your legs about a foot apart.’’
‘‘I’m sorry,’’ Nadia whispered, talking through clenched teeth as she rotated her hips. ‘‘He’s gets very … my grandparents were killed, you see.’’
Izabel nodded, frowned, understood. ‘‘You don’t have to explain,’’ she whispered back. ‘‘You’ve both suffered terribly.’’ She held onto Nadia’s sleeve. ‘‘On the first count sway your knees to the right,’’ she said loudly. ‘‘At the same time remember to raise the heel of your left foot. Remember the knees have to be kept together. On the second count sway both knees to the left and raise your right heel, yes, that’s good. The art is to combine two slow, swaying movements and quickly follow them up by three very fast swaying movements.’’
Nadia, who had been watching her feet, looked up, saw Izabel smiling. ‘‘Like this?’’
‘‘Just like that, very good.’’ Izabel began to laugh. ‘‘How would you like to try it out tonight?’’
‘‘What’s happening tonight?’’
‘‘Carlos is taking us dancing,’’ said Izabel with a mischievous smile. ‘‘Because of the children we rarely ever go out, but this evening’s an exceptoion. We’re going somewhere called Club Camoens. And I think I have found you the perfect dance partner.’’
Nadia stood there, looking at her friend, trying to imagine what her ‘date’ would be like. A small sharp burst of restlessness, of excitement, crossed her face. The Club Camoens was in the more daring, racier, part of town, in the Pleasure District. Close to a street named Rua da Felicidade, or Happiness Street; it was somewhere Nadia had never been before at night. She swallowed, looked down at the heavy shadows on the patio floor. It had been months since she was last out dancing. She worked her fingers into her skirt pockets.
‘‘Who is he?’’ she said, a little wary. ‘‘My date, I mean?’’ She was staring at the ground now like a shy little girl.
‘‘Well it’s not my cousin Anna.’’ Izabel laughed and gave a quick shrug of her shoulders, shook her head. ‘‘Oh, you’ll see …’’ she said.
Nadia hissed, ‘‘Tell me.’’ But Izabel’s shadow had turned from her, vanished so that only Nadia’s dark shadow remained on the patio floor. And when she looked up Izabel was already gone, disappeared through the door that led into the wet kitchen and beyond.
‘‘Going out tonight?’’ asked Uncle Yugevny from his bamboo stool. The ear-cleaning session had ended and Ping was rinsing his tools in alcohol.
‘‘Yes, to Club Camoens.’’
Ping stopped what he was doing. Both he and Uncle Yugevny stared at Nadia.
‘‘Club Camoens? On Happiness Street?’’
‘‘Veewy naughty pwace,’’ said Ping, shaking his head.
‘‘You’d better let your mother know.’’
‘‘Oh, come on, Uncle Yugevny, I’m a grown woman. How bad can it be?’’
9
That evening, Nadia crossed the road from the Tabacaria and climbed the stairs of the building opposite, up to the rooms at the top, passing the ochreous wallpaper and the bait boxes filled with cockroach poison. She knocked on Izabel’s apartment door. Her husband, Carlos, showed her in, smiled, and ushered her down the narrow hall. A kind-faced man with the loose, droopy eyelids of a bloodhound, Nadia liked him for his courteousness and for accepting her wholeheartedly as Izabel’s new friend. They approached the children’s bedroom. Izabel had a big storybook open and held it in her hands, facing her two boys. Nadia grinned when she looked up, said hello to the children as their heads shot around to take her in.
‘‘Mrs. Lo should be ready for you now meninos,’’ said Izabel. ‘‘You’re to go straight to bed when she tells you to and you’ll do precisely as she says. Do you understand?’’ She took both boys in her arms and hugged them.
Nadia went along the corridor and waited in the small drawing room as Izabel said her goodnights to the children. She turned to look in the direction from which a faint scratching noise was emanating. On a chiffonier she saw a mantis that was hopping about in a square, bamboo cage. Round and round the dark wooden bars the insect went and, not for the first time that evening, she was reminded of her father, Ilya Shashkov. The way it danced on its hind legs, swaying like a leaf in the wind, was curiously similar to the way he used to dance with Nadia when she was about five years old, holding his little girl by the arms, elbows kinked awkwardly to compensate for Nadia’s lack of height. After several seconds’ hesitation, she remembered what she was like when she first came to Macao – how desperately she wanted to be grown-up, to make her own decisions, how strange it was that her father was no longer in her life; she hadn’t taken well to being a child once Papashka had gone.
The wall clock struck eight. Izabel came running into the room. ‘‘Before we go,’’ she said breathlessly, putting her hand on Nadia’s arm and handing her a sheet of paper, ‘‘take a look at this.’’
‘‘What is it?’’
‘‘A petition to the Governor about the babies left out on the streets. I wrote it this afternoon.’’
Nadia gave Izabel a quelling look. Her eyes glided over the page. ‘‘Are you sure you want to go through with this? I mean, it’s not really the done thing to confront the Governor. There are rules and conventions …’’
‘‘Phooey! I don’t give a rooster’s doodle-doo about conventions. Anyway, it’s too late. I’ve already sent copies to the Governor and his ministers. I’m going to Government House first thing Tuesday.’’
‘‘What are you going to do if he turns you down? Demonstrate, picket?’’
‘‘If I have to, yes.’’
‘‘By yourself?’’
‘‘No, with you of course.’’
‘‘Bawzhemoy!’’
‘‘You’ll do it, won’t you? You said you’d help me.’’
Nadia’s powdered cheeks reddened. ‘‘Izabel, I mean, come on now, it seems a bit extreme.’’
‘‘You said you would help me!’’
Nadia saw Izabel frown. She laughed at the futility of the idea and shrugged. ‘‘Fine, fine,’’ she said, if only to indulge her friend. ‘‘I’ll do it.’’
‘‘Promise?’’
Nadia sighed. ‘‘Yes, I promise.’’
Holding her friend’s eye, Nadia stepped out onto the landing while Carlos sloped down the stairs to hail two coolies from the rickshaw rank. They waited by the banister.
‘‘Who are we meeting tonight?’’ Nadia asked.
‘‘You’ll have to wait and see,’’ Izabel said with devilish glee. Nadia noticed that Izabel had used a number of different tints on her face, and had rubbed a powdered pink blush onto her cheeks. She was wearing a lovely rust-coloured dress trimmed with red sequins, so short it gathered an inch above the knees, and a long rope of pearls, tied in a knot across her chest. Nadia noticed, too, that the bumps of her friend’s knees had been dabbed with rouge.
‘‘Bawzhemoy, look at me,’’ said Nadia, smoothing the front of her outfit. She wore a green silk brocade cheongsam adorned with plum blossom and bamboo patterns. It was calf-length and sleeveless and featured a mandarin collar with cloth buttons running down the side. ‘‘Compared to you I look like a twig of grass.’’
‘‘Phooey, what nonsense. You look just doocky!’’
‘‘No, I don’t:’’
‘‘Wait here a minute,’’ Izabel said, rushing back into the apartment. She returned with a pair of shoulder-length evening gloves and a black velvet headband with ostrich plumes. ‘‘Try on these.’’
Thrilled, Nadia held the headband in place with a soapstone pin and pulled on the gloves. ‘‘Choodnee,’’ she said in Russian, as she covered the scar-tissue on her right arm. ‘‘Wonderful.’’
‘‘Ready?’’ said Izabel.
‘‘Yes, oh, just one last thing,’’ Nadia said, diving into her little glass-beaded purse and extracted a tiny essence bottle. She drizzled scent on a handkerchief and handed it to Izabel. ‘‘You’ll need this for the rickshaw ride,’’ she said. ‘‘Hold it to your nose when we go through the gai sih, the fish market.’’
Ten minutes later they were stepping off the rickshaw onto the crescent-shaped Rua de Felicidade. Although not much more than a thousand yards from the Largo da Sien, the mood of Happiness Street was vastly dissimilar. All along the narrow road oil lanterns hung from hooks, and in the doorways of the three-storey buildings with the carved red lacquer facades, the prostitutes were flaunting their brazenness unashamedly. They beckoned to Carlos good-heartedly. Seeing the peach-cheeked women, Nadia was undisguisedly embarrassed, if a little humbled. She had expected them to be morose and surly; instead their expressions were full of mischief and laughter, not what she had anticipated at all.
Izabel smiled, a wry little twist of her lips. ‘‘Fascinating, don’t you think?’’
‘‘I think it’s this way,’’ said Carlos.
Nadia stepped through the cobbled street, over globules of spit and cracked melon seed husks and puddles of paraffin oil rainbows. At the end of the crescent-shaped lane, in a large three-story building with a green-tiled roof and curved eaves, there stood a huge door made from burnished brass and steel. Carlos banged it with the side of his shoe. A peephole in the door opened. Nadia was aware of a face watching her; the red-flecked eyes in the window had pupils that were gorged with opium. Nadia tried to peer into the room. All she caught was a crush of people, slippery pools of lamplight and whirling spirals of smoke. Carlos thumbed a five pataca note through the peep hole. Half of the man’s face broke into a smile. The window of the peephole was drawn shut. The bolts of the iron door slid open, allowing the swinging gate to bite its edges into the floor.
Once inside they were led into an expansive foyer and were each given a steaming hot towel to clean their hands, followed by a complimentary glass of cold mint tea.
‘‘Excited?’’ asked Izabel.
‘‘Very,’’ said Nadia, as they strolled from the foyer into the main hall.
‘‘I wish my cousin Anna in Barreiro could see this. She loves places like this.’’
The rectangular, high-ceilinged room was full of vast mirrors, elaborately carved ironwood chairs, and twenty-foot-long gambling tables covered in light brown, grass matting. The people were well-dressed and noisy, laughing and shouting with equal gusto. Nadia could smell the rose-water scent that masked the cigarette smoke and the piquant aromas of Cantonese cooking. High above her, to her left and right, on two separate levels, were a series of balconies where guests played fan-tan while they dined, lowering their bets and pulling up their winnings via wicker baskets on strings.
‘‘Onde e o bar?’’ Izabel asked.
‘‘The bar and main restaurant ees thees way,’’ said Carlos. At first Nadia thought there was only one long table, but then, as her eyes focused on the far corners of the hall, she saw two, then three, additional games taking place. By each table there was a railed-off area and a high chair for the cashier. Beside him a small blackboard was erected where the stakes were marked. As the odds were written up, the t’an kun, or banker, dressed in a shiny-blue pyjama suit, placed two large handfuls of white bone buttons under a silver bell-shaped cup. He then allowed the players to place their bets in one of the four squares, numbered 1,2,3, and 4. Once all the bets were laid, the cup was turned over and the beans removed four at a time until there were four beans or fewer left on the table.
‘‘Do you want to play?’’ said Nadia to Izabel.
‘‘I don’t know how.’’
‘‘Watch the banker as he scoops up a handful of buttons and places the cup over the pile. There are probably between thirty and forty buttons there. Your job is to guess how many are left over after he’s drawn the buttons away four at a time.’’
‘‘The restaurant is through here,’’ said Carlos with impatience, about ten paces ahead of them, looking back over his shoulder.
‘‘I think there’ll be two buttons left over,’’ said Izabel, ignoring her husband.
‘‘So stick your money on square number 2,’’ Nadia said.
Izabel removed some money from her purse. ‘‘I used to play the weekly lottery back in Barreiro,’’ she whispered. ‘‘Carlos never knew.’’
‘‘What in ceu are you doing now?’’ he asked peevishly.
‘‘Uma minuto, Carlos!’’ said Izabel. She placed her bet. A few seconds later a bell was tinkled and the bell-shaped cup upturned. The t’an kun raked the beans, four at a time, to one side of the table using a tapering blackwood rod that resembled a small backscratcher. A two was marked on the blackboard as the winning number. Izabel yelped with delight.
Carlos, encouraged by his wife’s windfall, began telling them what he knew of the place. ‘‘Not only do they have fan-tan here, they also offer baccarat, poker, thirty-seex card ch’a t’an, dice, dominoes and eeven quail fighting. I’m told the birds are furnished with metal spurs.’’
As Izabel leant forward to collect her winnings, Nadia noticed a waiter hurry by carrying a tray laden with plates of steamed garoupa with ginger, mui-shui pork with taro, and crispy fried shrimp rolls on saddles of baby bak choy. Distracted by the aromas of Cantonese cooking, aromas that reminded her that they still hadn’t eaten, Nadia led Izabel away from the table. ‘‘Can we eat soon, Carlos?’’ she asked.
‘‘Sim, sim,’’ said Carlos, nodding vigorously. He led them along the middle of the room to a place where a vast satin curtain with a dragon motif came down from the ceiling. He pulled it to one side. Holding out his hand, he took Nadia’s arm. Stepping through, Nadia entered a large suite where the walls were matt black and draped with antique Hanlin scrolls. She saw red prayer flags and embroidered tapestries depicting wispy golden carp and graceful waterfalls. Six sprawling opium daybeds made of intricately sculpted dark wood were spaced evenly across the suite. A silent figure, a slack-muscled man, lay calmly on his side on one of the beds. His shoulders were being massaged by a pretty Chinese girl. Nadia saw him rolling a ball of black opium between his finger and thumb, noticed the long ivory pipe by his hip with the jade mouthpiece, the small, glass lamp, and what appeared to be a set of metal needles arranged on a piece of cloth. The man squinted vaguely at her as she walked past.
‘‘Through here,’’ said Carlos. In the adjoining room they sat at a small, round rosewood table encircled by samphire-green pillars. The accompanying hardwood chairs were backed with marble. Songbirds twittered in cages hung from the ceiling. There were ivory chopsticks, cloisonné-handled spoons and two bowls of pickled ginger already set out in front of them. A waiter, dressed in loose, black fu, felt slippers and a mandarin jacket made from red embroidered silk placed four small glasses and a broad-necked bottle of saam sair snake wine on a sideboard; he then proceeded to pour monkey-picked oolong tea into delicate bone china bowls.
‘‘Today shoo-wimp very fwesh. Plegty good,’’ said the waiter. ‘‘Only fee guest tonight?’’ he said, placing the teapot on top of a methylated spirits lamp at the centre of the table.
‘‘No, quatro,’’ said Carlos.
‘‘Who’s the fourth?’’ asked Nadia.
‘‘Me.’’ The gravelly, rain-rinsed voice came from behind one of the samphire-green pillars.
