We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [198]
She and Markussen needed each other.
He'd met Cheng Sumei in Shanghai. He'd been trying to break into the Chinese market, but being too inexperienced and ill-equipped to weather the losses that a beginner inevitably suffers, he was faring badly.
Cheng Sumei's background seemed unusual to him, as a Dane. But in fact it wasn't extraordinary for the type of woman foreigners met then in a city like Shanghai. She'd been orphaned at an early age and had survived on the street by selling flowers. And flowers weren't all she sold. But that wasn't where he came across her. She'd been adopted by a benevolent Jewish businessman from Baghdad, a Mr. Silas Hardoon, who would almost literally pluck urchins from the gutter and offer them a home, an upbringing, and an education, teaching them English, Hebrew, and Confucian ethics. He'd died relatively young and left a legacy to each of his twelve adopted children. This money had enabled Cheng Sumei to buy a share in a popular bar, the Saint Anna Ballroom. Markussen had first met her at a party there. Spotting the foreign guest who was clearly feeling like an outsider, she'd approached him.
Her beauty was all too apparent, but it was her intelligence that attracted him more than the perfect curves of her face. They spoke about nothing other than business. "That's all I can talk about," Markussen added coyly.
Klara Friis could tell it wasn't the first time he'd used this line.
He'd come to China to "carve up the melon," as foreign initiative was referred to in those days. But others had carved it up before him, and he found that Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, and even Norwegians were in a more favorable position than Danes with no connections. He'd done quite well under the circumstances. He'd established himself on the Bund, chartered out ships for coastal sailings, built warehouses, and founded a shipyard. But he hadn't made a profit from any of it yet.
"Fill your warehouses," Cheng Sumei said.
He gave her a baffled look. What with? Yet more goods he couldn't move?
She shook her head and laughed.
"Just do it on paper, lao-yeh. Fill your warehouses, but only in your account book."
"And what if people find out that I forged them?"
"Stack your board with bigwigs from the cream of society. Then no one will know. That's the Shanghai way, lao-yeh."
When that crisis was over, she suggested that he move the activities of his shipping company to Port Arthur. There, not Shanghai, was where the Russian expansionists had their headquarters.
"But there's a war coming."
He was well informed about politics: he had to be. And he'd heard the Russian interior minister say that it was bayonets, not diplomats, that would make Russia great. The question of who had the right to plunder the defenseless giant that was China would be decided by weapons, and he had no doubt as to who'd win.
"Exactly," she said. "But there will come a time after the war that you can turn to your advantage."
The war came, and Port Arthur was besieged. Following her advice he stayed on, rather than pull out his staff and dispose of his enterprises. Could he bear the loss if the town fell? It fell, and instead of loss he reaped an unexpected reward: Russian troops and refugees were evacuated on board his company's ships, and he was paid handsomely for it. His fleet also transported war matériel to the embattled Russians when the Japanese fleet blockaded Vladivostok; and there was a need for neutral-looking ships that could be loaded and unloaded without rousing suspicion, whose cargo would travel on to the Russian fortifications near Nikolayevsk, at the mouth of the Amur.
"Have you learned your lesson now?" Cheng Sumei asked him. The question was teasing. But as always with her, it was pointed too. "Listen to your little sampan girly. You succeeded in Port Arthur for the very same reason you failed in Shanghai, lao-yeh. You failed