Breakfast in the Ruins

11 Shanghai Sally: 1932: Problems of Diplomacy

— We protect ourselves in so many foolish ways, says Karl's friend.—But let the defenses drop and we discover that we are much happier.

— I don't feel much happier.

— Not at present, perhaps. Freedom, after all, takes some getting used to.

— I don't feel free.

— Not yet.

— There is no such thing as freedom.

— Of course there is! It's often hard to assimilate a new idea, I know.

— Your ideas don't seem particularly new.

— Oh, you just haven't understood yet, that's all!

Karl is sixteen. Shanghai is the largest city in China. It is one of the most exciting and romantic cities in the world. His mother and father came here to live two years ago.

There are no taxes in Shanghai. Great ships stand in the harbor. War ships stand a few miles out to sea. Anything can happen in Shanghai.

— Why do people always need a philosophy to justify their lusts? Karl says spitefully.—What's so liberating about sex of any kind?

— It isn't just the sex.

Black smoke boils over the city from the north. People are complaining.

— No, it's power.

— Oh, come, come, Karl! Take it easy!

Karl Glogauer is sixteen. Although a German by birth, he attends the British school because it is considered to be the best.

— Who do you like best? — asks Karl.—Men or women?

— I love everyone, Karl.

KARL WAS SIXTEEN. His mother was forty-two. His father was fifty. They all lived in the better part of Shanghai and enjoyed many benefits they would not have been able to afford in Munich.

Having dined with his father at the German Club, Karl, feeling fat and contented, ambled through the revolving glass doors into the bright sunshine and noisy bustle of the Bund, Shanghai's main street and the city's heart. The wide boulevard fronted the harbor and offered him a familiar view of junks and steamers and even a few yachts with crisp, white sails, sailing gently up towards the sea. As he creased the crown of his cream-colored hat he noticed with dissatisfaction that there was a spot of dark grease on the cuff of his right sleeve. He adjusted the hat on his head and with the fingers of both hands turned down the brim a little. Then he looked out over the Bund to see if his mother had arrived yet. She had arranged to meet him at three o'clock and take him home in the car. He searched the mass of traffic but couldn't see her. There were trams and buses and trucks and cars, rickshaws and pedicabs, transport of every possible description, but no Rolls-Royce. He was content to wait and watch the passing throng.

Shanghai must be the one place in the world where one never tired of the view. He could see people on the Bund of virtually every race on Earth: Chinese from all parts of China, from beautifully elegant businessmen in well-tailored Europeans suits, mandarins in flowing silks, singing girls in slit skirts, flashily dressed gangster types, sailors and soldiers to the poorest coolies in smocks or loin-cloths. As well as the Chinese, there were Indian merchants and clerks, French industrialists with their wives, German ship-brokers, Dutch, Swedish, English and American factory-owners or their employees, all moving along in the twin tides that swept back and forth along the Bund. As well as the babble of a hundred languages, there was the rich, satisfying smell of Shanghai, a mixture of human sweat and machine oil, of spices and drugs and stimulants, of cooking food and exhaust fumes. Horns barked, beggars whined, street-sellers shouted their wares. Shanghai.

Karl smiled. If it were not for the present trouble the Japanese were having in their sector of the International District, Shanghai would offer a young man the best of all possible worlds. For entertainment there were the cinemas, theatres and clubs, the brothels and dance-halls along the Szechwan Road. You could buy anything you wanted—a piece of jade, a bale of silk, embroideries, fine porcelain, imports from Paris, New York and London, a child of any age or sex, a pipe of opium, a limousine with bulletproof glass, the most exotic meal in the world, the latest books in any language, instruction in any religion or aspect of mysticism. Admittedly there was poverty (he had heard than an average of 29,000 people starved to death on the streets of Shanghai every year) but it was a price that had to be paid for so much color and beauty and experience. In the two years that he had been here he had managed to sample only a few of Shanghai's delights and, as he neared manhood, the possibilities of what he could do became wider and wider. No one could have a better education than to be brought up in Shanghai.

He saw the Rolls pull in to the curb and he waved. His mother, wearing one of her least extravagant hats, leaned out of the window and waved back. He sprang down the steps and pushed his way through the crowd until he got to the car. The Chinese chauffeur, whose name Karl could never remember and whom he always called "Hank", got out and opened the door, saluting him. Karl gave him a friendly grin. He stepped into the car and stretched out beside his mother, kissing her lightly on the cheek. "Lovely perfume," he said. He nattered her as a matter of habit, but she was always pleased. It hardly occurred to him to dislike anything she chose to do, wear or say. She was his mother, after all. He was her son.

"Oh, Karl, it's been terrible today." Frau Glogauer was Hungarian and spoke German, as she spoke French and English, with a soft, pretty accent. She was very popular with the gentlemen in all the best European circles of the city. "I meant to do much more shopping, but there wasn't time. The traffic! That's why I was late, darling."

"Only five minutes, Mama." Karl looked at his Swiss watch. "I always give you at least half-an-hour, you know that. Do you want to finish your shopping before we go home?" They lived in the fashionable Frenchtown area to the west, not too far from the Race Course, in a large Victorian Gothic house which Karl's father had purchased very reasonably from the American who had previously owned it.

His mother shook her head. "No. No. I get irritable if I can't do everything at my own pace and it's impossible this afternoon. I wish those Japanese would hurry up and restore order. A handful of bandits can't cause that much trouble, surely? I'm sure if the Japanese had a free hand, the whole city would be better run. We ought to put them in charge."

"There'd be fewer people to manage," said Karl dryly. "I'm afraid I don't like them awfully. They're a bit too heavy-handed in their methods, if you ask me."

"Do the Chinese understand any other methods?" His mother hated being contradicted. She shrugged and pouted out of the window.

"But perhaps you're right," he conceded.

"Well, see for yourself," she said, gesturing into the street. It was true that the usual dense mass of traffic was if anything denser, was moving more slowly, with less order, hampered by even more pedestrians than was normal at this hour. Karl didn't like the look of a lot of them. Really villainous wretches in their grubby smocks and head-rags. "It's chaos!" his mother continued. "We're having to go half-way round the city to get home."

"I suppose it's the refugees from the Japanese quarters," said Karl. "You could blame the Japs for the delays, too, mother."

"I blame the Chinese," she said firmly. "In the end, it always comes down to them. They are the most inefficient people on the face of the Earth. And lazy!"

Karl laughed. "And devious. They're terrible scamps, I'll agree. But don't you love them, really? What would Shanghai be without them?"

"Orderly," she said, but she was forced to smile back at him, making fun at herself for her outburst, "and clean. They run all the vice-rings, you know. The opium-dens, the dance-halls..."

"That's what I meant!"

They laughed together.

The car moved forward a few more inches. The chauffeur sounded the horn.

Frau Glogauer hissed in despair and flung herself back against the upholstery, her gloved fingers tapping the arm of the seat.

Karl pulled the speaking tube towards him. "Could you try another way, Hank? This seems impassable."

The Chinese, in his neat grey uniform, nodded but did nothing. There were carts and rickshaws packing the street in front of him and a large truck blocking his way back. "We could walk," said Karl.

His mother ignored him, her lips pursed. A moment later she took out her handbag and opened the flap so that she could look into the mirror set inside it. She brushed with her little finger at her right eyelid. It was a gesture of withdrawal. Karl stared out of the window. He could see the skyscrapers of the Bund looming close behind them still. They had not gone far. He studied the shops on both sides. For all that the street was crowded, nobody seemed to be doing much business. He watched a fat Indian in a linen suit and a white turban pause outside a shop selling the newspapers of a dozen countries. The Indian picked his nose as he studied the papers, then he selected an American pulp magazine from another rack and paid the proprietor. Rolling the magazine up, the Indian walked rapidly away. It seemed to Karl that some more mysterious transaction must have taken place. But then every transaction seemed like that in Shanghai.

The Rolls rolled a few more feet. Then the chauffeur saw an opening in a side street and turned down it. He managed to get half-way before a night-soil cart—the "honey-carts" as the Chinese called them—got in his way and he was forced to brake quite sharply. The driver of the cart pretended not to notice the car. One wheel of his cart mounted the sidewalk as he squeezed past. Then they were able to drive into the side street which was barely wide enough to accommodate the big Phantom.

"At least we're moving," said Frau Glogauer, putting her compact back into her bag and closing the clasp with a snap. "Where are we?"

"We're going all round the world," said Karl. "The river's just ahead, I think. Is that a bridge?" He craned forward, trying to get his bearings. "Now that must be north... My God!"

"What?"

"Chapei. They must have set fire to it. The smoke. I thought it was clouds."

"Will it mean trouble—here, I mean?" asked his mother, taking hold of his arm.

He shook his head. "I've no idea. We're pretty close to the Japanese concession now. Maybe we should go back and speak to Father?"

She was silent. She liked to make the decisions. But the political situation had never interested her. She always found it boring. Now she had no information on which to base a decision. "Yes, I suppose so," she said reluctantly. "That was gunfire, wasn't it?"

"It was something exploding." Karl suddenly felt an intense hatred for the Japanese. With all their meddling, they could ruin Shanghai for everybody. He took up the speaking tube. "Back to the Bund, Hank, as soon as you can get out of here."

They entered a wider thoroughfare and Karl saw the crowds part as if swept back by invisible walls. Through the corridor thus created a Chinese youth came running. Hank had pulled out into the street and now the car was blocking the youth's progress.

Behind the youth came three little Japanese policemen with clubs and pistols in their hands. They were chasing him. The youth did not appear to see the car and he struck it in the way that a moth might strike a screen door. He fell backwards and then tried to scramble up. He was completely dazed. Karl wondered what to do.

The Japanese policemen flung themselves onto the youth, their clubs rising and falling.

Karl started to wind down the window. "Hey!"

His mother buried her face in his shoulder. He saw a smear of powder on his lapel. "Oh, Karl!"

He put his arm around his mother's warm body. The smell of her perfume seemed even stronger. He saw blood well out of the bruises on the Chinese boy's face and back. Hank was trying to turn the car into the main street. A tug went past on the river, its funnel belching white smoke which contrasted sharply with the oily black smoke rising over Chapei. It was strange how peaceful the rest of the tall city looked. The New York of the Orient.

The clubs continued to rise and fall. His mother snuffled in his shoulder. Karl turned his eyes away from the sight. The car began to reverse a fraction. There was a tap on the window. One of the Japanese policemen stood there, bowing and smiling and saluting with his bloody club. He made some apology in Japanese and grinned widely, shaking his free hand as if to say "Such things happen in even the best-run city." Karl leant over and wound the window right up.

The car pulled away from the scene. He didn't look back.

As they drove towards the Bund again, Karl's mother sniffed, straightened up and fumbled in her handbag for a handkerchief. "Oh, that awful man," she said. "And those policemen! They must have been drunk."

Karl was happy to accept this explanation. "Of course," he said. "They were drunk."

The car stopped.

— There is certainly something secure, says Karl, about a world which excludes women. Which is not to say that I deny their charms and their virtues. But I can understand, suddenly, one of the strong appeals of the homosexual world.

— Now you're thinking of substituting one narrow world for another, warns his friend.—I spoke earlier of broadening your experience. That's quite different.

— What if the person isn't up to being broadened? I mean, we all have a limited capacity for absorbing experience, surely? I could be, as it were, naturally narrow.

Karl feels euphoric. He smiles slowly.

— No one but a moron could be that, says the black man, just a trifle prudishly.

A girl you know has become pregnant.

You are almost certainly the father.

The girl is not certain whether she wants the baby or not. She asks you to help her to decide.

Would you try to convince her to have an abortion?

Would you try to convince her to have the baby?

Would you offer to support her, if she had the baby?

Would you deny that the baby was yours and have nothing further to do with the girl?

If she decided to have an abortion and it had to be done privately, would you offer to pay the whole cost?

Would you tell her that the decision was entirely up to her and refuse to be drawn into any discussion?