CHAPTER 21

THE CLUB 1939

After a succession of unsuccessful odd jobs, I am fortunate to have found employment as a hostess in a posh nightclub where I am required to stand by the entrance to a magnificent ballroom, to smile and welcome the well-heeled patrons as they are ushered in. My German language and growing familiarity with English were helpful to me in gaining the position. Shanghai has a well-earned reputation throughout the world for its dark mysteries and exotic allure and here, in the Bolero Club, all of the most outrageous tales of glamorous women and powerful men mesh in a kind of dream world, like a scene from a motion picture.

At the outer doors, under a striped canopy, a red carpet is unrolled to the street. By the doors stands an imposing tan-skinned doorman, a coal-eyed Sikh. He seems a giant, towering above me at about six foot six, with a turban wrapped like a white beehive on his head. He is wearing high black rubber boots and a traditional Indian garment with a long-sleeved tunic and softly draped trousers. He greets me with a kind smile when I arrive for work, and opens the door for me to enter. I think how hot he must be in that clothing, in this heat that envelops us as though we lived in the centre of a furnace.

“Good evening, Missy,” he says. “Many customers coming tonight. Maybe good night for tips,” he adds, his white teeth bright against his brown face.

“Yes,” I reply with a nod, “I hope you’re right. I’ll see you later.”

Stepping into the club each evening when my shift begins, I am always aware of the transition from the mundane life of the masses on one side of the doors to this kind of Shangri-La on the other. Even the air is different. It is cool, air-conditioned, blocking out the stagnant heat outside. I am in a surreal, clandestine milieu that is completely cloistered, an oasis shielded from the effects of the conflicts in Europe and from the wretched misery in the streets just on the other side of the heavy oak doors, with their huge polished brass knobs. Opulent wealth, wealth beyond comprehension, is boldly flaunted inside the candle-lit rooms, their booths lushly upholstered in tufted crimson velvet, crystal chandeliers brilliantly flashing overhead, and music throbbing in the air. The band is playing the popular American music of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin as couples, elegantly attired like actors in Hollywood films, are clicking their shoes on the buffed wooden floor and swaying to the sounds of brass slide trombones, gleaming trumpets, and saxophones.

Our clientele at the Bolero is made up of the same people who frequent the exclusive private clubs during the day. Everyone knows about these places, although they are hidden behind ivy-covered walls, shielded from prying eyes by security gates and armed guards. Social events of special note are described in the newspapers and there, in the smiling photos, we see how another segment lives in Shanghai. The upper class, made up of foreign diplomats, business moguls, and dignitaries, passes the time luxuriating in cool pools, playing croquet or tennis in lush courtyard gardens. Wild orchids bloom around them as they sip afternoon tea from dainty porcelain cups and amuse themselves at billiards or a game of backgammon or bridge. There is the American Club, downtown on Foochow Road, the British Country Club, and the French Club, renowned for its swimming pool, among the largest in Shanghai, each club with precise rules to keep out undesirables. At the German Garden Club businessmen are known to congregate, to raise their arms in national pride, to salute their Fuhrer. Hitler’s birthday is celebrated with considerable fanfare.

Behind the solid protected walls, gleaming floors are laid with Italian marble, and the very restricted membership plays lords and ladies. Chinese servants speak in “pidgin English” and remember to keep their place. They are hardly more than slaves, tending to every need and whim, and bowing in obsequious servitude. They pad about in soft small steps, unobtrusive and efficient, made to humble themselves before the strangers who have invaded their land. Within this secluded and segregated world of the privileged, life is lived on a scale to rival royalty, and it is certainly not a place that might welcome impoverished Jewish refugees. We are excluded from that select realm.

For those with the right connections and the money to indulge in the excesses, there is plenty of opportunity to revel without restraint in this city. These people frequent the many nightclubs of Shanghai and find their way into the Bolero, dressed in the most ostentatious flourish of furs and flashing jewels. There is a cosmopolitan mix of British, German, influential “White” Russians, still supporting the overthrown Tsarist regime, and Chinese of unbelievable wealth and influence who spend their nights here and already have become familiar to me.

Shanghai is a sumptuous playground for anyone with sufficient means. The British are living a wonderful life in Shanghai as in other British holdings throughout the Far East such as India, Hong Kong, and Singapore. They have established their clubs, secluded hideaways of rarefied splendour carved out of lush vegetation in steamy climates where an underclass is available to ensure that the grand lifestyle is maintained. Since their victory in the Opium Wars here in China, their position as representatives of the Empire has given them unparalleled freedom and afforded them every luxury. Regularly, they arrive by Rolls-Royce at the door of the Bolero and move among us with a nearly tangible air of superiority.

One of them, Brigadier General Smedley Whitehall, and his party are frequent guests. He is retired from military service, having been sent to Shanghai as a reward for dedicated duty and to enjoy the aristocratic position in which he finds himself in this society. As always, he is dressed in formal military uniform, his impressive array of medals glinting in the reflected light. His wife, in a floor-length gown and mink wrap, chats with their friends. She doesn’t acknowledge me, turning her powdered face away, in arrogant disregard. He appears a bit flushed tonight, obviously ruffled about something.

He speaks to me as he hands his hat to the girl at the coat check, smoothing back his thick mane of white hair and patting his moustache into place: “Damn shame about my chauffeur, disappeared overnight, don’t you know. We nearly didn’t get out at all this evening. Managed to find a replacement in the nick. It’s all this blasted nuisance with the Japs. Live and let live, I say, isn’t that so? You Jews know what it’s about, the war and all. Just an annoyance. It’s too much really, isn’t it? Disrupts one’s peace of mind. Wouldn’t you say?”

To him the disappearance of the chauffeur is an irritation, but I know that the man was probably waylaid and murdered. Fleetingly, an image of a severed head, still wearing the chauffeur’s cap, flashes in my mind, set among a fresh batch of those chopped by Japanese bayonets and mounted on spikes for the morning’s viewing.

“Yes, General, we’re so glad that you could come.” I smile and nod. This is not a job I can afford to jeopardize and what good would it do to express any indignation? Besides, this man’s life is so far removed from the coarse realities of Shanghai that it would be impossible to explain anything to him. What would he care, so absorbed in his petty complaints and spoiled circumstances, so completely untouched by any suffering or concern for anyone else. Why bother? In the Bolero he is free to be himself, which is the reason that he comes here. No, I will not argue with him nor any of his kind.

“You’ve got our regular table reserved, have you?” General Whitehall asks. “Must have some things to rely upon, mustn’t we? Thank heavens for the clubs, only civilized thing about this blasted place. I thoroughly dislike this constant upheaval, not being certain of things. Too distracting really, much too distracting.”

“Yes, of course, sir,” I answer. “The maître d’ will show you to your table, just the same as always.”

“Yes, yes, that’s splendid. Come along, my dear.” He guides his wife gently by the arm, and they descend the steps set between cream marble pillars framing the entrance to the club.

All evening a constant parade of guests swishes through the massive doors to be escorted inside. One particular Chinese man arrives at precisely ten o’clock every night. The source of his money is whispered about discreetly, behind a fluttering fan or into a cocked ear. It is suspected that the opium trade and prostitution, both flourishing enterprises here, have put him into this position, but no one is prepared to judge him or anyone else. Here, in Shanghai, “No Man’s Land,” a country where there is no such thing as law, tucked away in the most obscure corner of this insane world, who can condemn a rogue when justice and morality no longer have meaning?

He enters. On each arm is wrapped a woman of breathtaking beauty, sultry and elegant, tall and slim, dressed magnificently in fine silk brocades, gowns slit to the thigh, perched on high heels, with dangling earrings and glittering necklaces dipping towards their breasts. They are white women, a sign of power to the Chinese, one blonde, her smooth hair shining and softly sweeping over her left eye like Veronica Lake. The other is a red-head, like Rita Hayworth, her mass of auburn curls bobbing as she walks. It is no coincidence that these women look like movie stars. They have been especially chosen for their resemblance to the screen goddesses of Hollywood. The man himself is garbed in a traditional caftan of ancient Chinese royalty; it reaches to the floor, silken threads woven by hand into the regal garment. Patterns of dragons and long-necked cranes are depicted in emerald green and sapphire blue swirling among the gold, dazzling the eye of the observer. A husky bodyguard, with broad shoulders and thick neck, walks grimly behind, his eyes darting around the room, side to side, and then returning to settle on his charge.

The gentleman nods to me in his now-familiar manner of composed elegance and assurance. He and his entourage are seated at his usual table, the ideal location to view the nightly activity and to be certain that his entrance is observed. From the breast pocket within his robes, he withdraws an intricately carved ivory cigarette holder, inlaid with rubies. The small finger of his right hand has a long, tapered nail, used, it is said, to scoop and sample cocaine. On the finger he wears an entrancing star sapphire ring. Then he removes a gold cigarette case, completely encrusted in diamonds, brilliantly flashing like a handful of stars. From it he selects a narrow white cylinder of wrapped tobacco and inserts it with care into the long holder. One of his female companions lights the cigarette for him, then he contentedly leans back into his plush seat and inhales the warm smoke. Waiters, dressed in tuxedos, hands sheathed in white gloves, bustle about with silver trays and deposit sparkling snifters of French cognac, like liquid topaz, that shimmers in the reflected candlelight as he lifts it to his mouth and swallows it in slow pleasure. An icy bucket of French champagne with frosted glasses and a bowl of Russian caviar, set in a bowl of crushed ice, are placed on the table before him.

There are many others who come to be seen at the Bolero every night, sweeping into the club in grand style, cashmere coats swung casually over finely tailored Italian suits. They emerge from chauffeured limousines, the splendour of outrageous wealth apparent with every gesture. Each of them is preceded and surrounded by uniformed bodyguards, rifles slung from straps on their shoulders. Dazzling perfume-drenched Chinese and European women, swathed in luxurious furs, glide by their sides. The famous Baghdadi Jewish magnates, the Kadoories and Sassoons, and members of the European aristocracy of Shanghai congregate here in the realm of supreme riches that has set them above and apart from the mundane lives of mortals.

Located directly next door to the Bolero is an opium den. This is not one of the lowly hovels for the poor Chinese but instead a grand salon established exclusively for the decadent pleasure of the wealthiest inhabitants of the city. I have watched as patrons leave our club and make their way into the mysterious cavern night after night. There, the heroin is said to be of the purest grade, and pleasures beyond this world are waiting to be had. Curiosity overcomes me one night after work, so, suppressing a quiver of nervous tension, I wander inside. The air is a dense fog of sweet overpowering smoke, so thick that it’s difficult to see, and I stumble over a body curled on a small woven carpet, spread on the floor.

As I peer further into the immense building I can detect men and women, puffing on long-hosed water pipes, inhaling the addictive fumes until they attain a state of glassy-eyed semiconsciousness. Chinese servants scamper about, tending to the needs of the rich patrons, who languish in a groggy haze. Bodyguards, standing, arms crossed, watch over their employers, who have fallen into a drugged stupor. They are sprawled on woven rugs or, for those willing to pay the price, on lacquered opium beds, intricately carved of cinnabar and ebony, inlaid with jade, ivory, and mother-of-pearl, piled with puffed raw silk cushions and covers. But as the addicts inhale the yellowish fumes, they are no longer aware of the decadent splendour of their surroundings. The women, in silken evening gowns, are glittering in the foggy darkness, gold jewellery adorning their limp bodies. Men, in expensive business suits, lie in heaps of numb oblivion, having descended into this hazy netherworld, in their quest for elusive pleasure.

Unnoticed and insignificant as a cat that might have strayed into the den, I slip out again as I had entered, wading back through the bodies and smoke. In the early hours of dawn I make my way back to our flat. Out in the real world again, I am keenly aware of the other Shanghai. I am straddling the two opposing extremes. The odours of fine perfume, dusky cigarette smoke, and the pungent scent of opium still cling to my clothing, but my nostrils are already inhaling the foul stench of the streets. From the most opulent display of riches that European and Asian civilization can produce, within minutes, I am cast into such unparalleled poverty that human bodies, ravaged by starvation, are lying in the street. Frozen to death in the winter or rotting in the glaring heat of summer, they are ignored. The newspapers report that the Chinese Benevolent Society picks up and disposes of between 25,000 and 30,000 such bodies a year. Survival in Shanghai is a cruel game that many will lose.

I return to the refugee apartments, separated from the refinement of the aristocratic homes. Here, in the shadows, disconnected from the grandeur, is where we live. We rest precariously on the lowest rung of European society. We are ignored for the most part, here in Shanghai, left alone by the authorities who are unconcerned whether we live or not. Death is accepted and understood so that the demise of Jewish refugees in this overpopulated metropolis is of no note when added to the countless others who perish each day. Besides, the Japanese have more to deal with than the few thousand of us flung on this shore.

Nonetheless, as I turn the knob to the door of our home, I smile. Against innumerable odds, I have earned a reasonable day’s wage and carved a safe corner for myself in this unbelievable spot on the globe. Mama hears me come in and mumbles to me from her slumber, “Nini, are you all right? You’re home, thank God.”

“Yes, Mama, I’m fine, go back to sleep. We will have something nice to eat tomorrow.”

As I get ready for bed, I think of my small family, who will soon be starting their working day. Stella has a job in a gift shop. Erna has Lily with her and is still teaching needlework at the convent under the supervision of Mother Laula; Fritz and Walter are employed in a factory. Willi is working in a bar. We are settled here and can support ourselves in this way for as long as it takes. There must be an end somehow, we are convinced, so we are able to live in security until that day. My eyelids shut and my weary mind begins to float into dreams, and I reason that it is better not to worry about the future.