The Diplomat’s Daughter

by Karin Tanabe

  “She’s probably right, unfortunately,” said Emi, her voice sympathetic. “The baby would be alive if you all weren’t here. If the Americans weren’t so scared of their own shadows.” She looked at Christian and said, “Not Americans like you.”

  “She doesn’t look the same, either,” said Christian. “She’s pale and sick and spends the day staring at nothing. I was terrified to go to Germany when I first heard about it, but am less scared now. My mom needs to get away from this place. She’s already dreaming about Germany, and you know it takes a lot for a person to long for a country fighting a war.”

  “Especially because she’s already lived through one,” said Emi.

  “That’s strange to think about,” said Christian, realizing that his parents almost never talked about the Great War.

  “Japan and Germany fought against each other in the Great War. And now they’re allies. Does a country really go from hate to love in twenty years? I don’t think so. It’s just money, power, expansion by any means necessary, and we all have to sit idly by.”

  Christian’s stomach turned at the thought of it. War. They were going to be sailing into war. He, who had up until a few months ago thought hardship was a football game that ended in defeat, a cold winter that you weren’t quite dressed for, or a girl who wasn’t as interested in you as you hoped. Those were the little wars that Christian had waged. Now he was going to be dropped into Nazi Germany. He knew how unprepared he was and that nothing, not even a children’s home and an internment camp, was going to change that.

  “And you?” Emi asked, picking up on his anxiety. “Are you ready to go to Germany?”

  “Me? Of course not,” said Christian, rolling an orange in his hand. “I’ve heard that Americans who speak German are easy targets. I won’t have to fight for Germany, because I’m American, but the Nazis will probably throw me in prison for that exact reason. That’s what some people are saying, anyway. They worry we’ll be seen as on the wrong side of the war. Or they’ll think we’re spies. Kurt keeps telling me that that’s the most likely scenario, and that they’ll cut off my toes one by one and feed them to me. I’m trying not to believe him. Whatever my fate is though, it’s lose-lose. They hate me here, they’ll hate me there. I can’t think of a corner of the world that would want me, us, the German-Americans, right now. It’s like I want to run somewhere safe but there is no somewhere safe.”

  “It might be the same for the Nisei in Japan,” said Emi. “I hope not.”

  Christian ran his foot through the dirt and checked over his shoulder to make sure they hadn’t been spotted. It was nearly dark, so he was starting to feel safer. “I’ve only been to Germany three times, so I don’t know my family there well at all. The FBI agents who came to our house accused my mother’s cousin Jutta of being a Nazi. I only remember her looking and smelling like cooked potatoes, but I suppose anyone can change. My father’s family, I don’t know. I assume the Americans did their homework, but maybe they found one Nazi in our family tree and that was enough to arrest us. Maybe my father’s side is littered with them. My dad, he keeps saying that we will live with his family and somehow their lifestyle will shield us from the realities of war, but I don’t believe him. War puts everyone on equal footing.”

  “I lived in Austria in 1938,” said Emi. “With my parents. And it wasn’t even war yet, not officially anyway, but it was already horrible. The chaos didn’t put everyone on equal footing. For some it was much worse.”

  Christian was about to respond when they saw a beam of light circling the watchtower nearest to the orchard, on the edge of the north fence.

  “Time to go,” said Emi, moving quickly toward the southern boundary with Christian behind her. “Let’s wait until the light passes again and then run toward the pool.”

  “You go there. I’ll make it home,” said Christian. He reached for her hand and she let hers rest inside his. He waited another moment to gauge her reaction and brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it.

  “Let’s watch each other swim again tomorrow,” he whispered.

  “I can’t speak to you there,” she replied, bringing her face closer. “You know people will talk.”

  “I know. Let’s meet underwater then. Where no one can see us. You swim one way, and I’ll swim the other, and for just a few seconds, we’ll meet in the middle.”

  Emi smiled. “Okay. Tomorrow evening. Head to the pool right after roll call.” She squeezed his hand just as the light shined over their feet and then they both took off running.

  CHAPTER 11

  EMI KATO

  JUNE 1943

  For the next week, Emi and Christian met underwater every evening. Emi would do her flawless dive into the pool, with her legs pin-straight and her toes pointed, and then she’d swim four lengths. When she did her second flip turn, Christian would jump sloppily in on his side before doing a messy breaststroke toward her. Their eyes open, they’d watch each other approach, then brush hands quickly under the water, making it look like an accidental touch in a crowded pool. Then Emi would swim through the groups of laughing children, gliding through with very little splash, before getting out to lie on her brown towel, bleached in so many places that it looked polka-dotted, and watch the sun melt over them, their orange and pink painting.

  After seven days of touching hands in the pool, without any mention of them meeting again in the orchard, Emi decided it was time she bring it up.

  She had wanted to see him again, alone, since the night he kissed her hand under the orange trees, but her longing for Leo kept her from doing anything more than brushing Christian’s fingers in the pool. It was June 1943 and she had not had a letter from Leo since December 1941. The lack of any communication with Leo had made her so much lonelier and the camps even harder to bear.

  And now, there was Christian. He had come into her life at a time when her depression had started to feel permanent. There he was, standing in the hospital with his movie star looks and raw desperation over his mother and dead sister. He had looked at Emi in a way that made her blood go warmer, just like it used to with Leo. She realized she was desperate for companionship, and for the feeling of being wanted, rather than all the hate and apathy she’d been surrounded with since Pearl Harbor. Really, since they’d come to America.

  The next time they were at the pool together, nine days since meeting in the orchard, Emi pushed her thoughts of Leo away and motioned to Christian as subtly as she could. She pulled her wet hair over her right shoulder, wrung it out, and stared at Christian until he turned and looked at her. She mouthed orchard, like he had done the first time they’d gone, and made the outline of an orange with her hand. She quickly flashed nine fingers and then put her hands behind her back, lying back down on her towel, propped up only high enough to see Christian’s reaction. He looked up at the clock near the bathhouse, which read seven thirty, then nodded yes and left the pool. She watched him go, his tall, tan body bathed so perfectly in an American summer. She wished that she were observing him somewhere else, on a beautiful beach or a neighborhood pool without curfews and patrols.

  She breathed in deeply. Somewhere in the camp, something was burning. It smelled like smoke in winter, refreshingly out of season. She inhaled again, thinking of how fresh the air used to smell in Europe when it was cold. Stale and old. The best air in the world.

  There was something different about that night. Something was going to happen, something more than touching hands in the pool. The fire in her nose felt like it matched the rest of her. It was desire—she admitted to herself as she breathed slowly in and out, transported by the smell of burning—the kind of physical craving that could stamp out misery in any circumstance.

  After the darkness started to take over, and it was almost nine, Emi got dressed slowly and walked carefully toward the orchard, feeling like someone young and beautiful for the first time in so long.

  Alone, in their corner, Emi waited for Christian, sitting on the ground in one of the hom
emade camp dresses with seams that looked as if they had been stitched by knitting needles, her back against an orange tree. She smiled when she heard him coming, and was very aware of how her pulse had quickened. When he was in view, a small flashlight in his hand, he extended his other hand, calloused from his hours of dishwashing, to help her up.

  “Are you looking at this ugly dress?” she said, as his light shined on it. “I used to wear my nice clothes when I got here, but I realized there was no point. I might as well save them for when I return to Japan, since I doubt I’ll have anything new for a long while. My father has informed me that I won’t need my nice clothes there, but at the very least, maybe I can sell them. So for now, this.” She looked down at her dress, the outline of her body just visible in the lamplight. She had lost ten pounds the month after she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, but working at the camp hospital was helping her gain it back. Being on her feet all day was building muscle and she was finally feeling strong again.

  Christian started to protest about her dress, but she hushed him.

  “One day we’re going to get in trouble for being here. It’s more a matter of when than if. But let’s just keep enjoying it until we do. It’s invigorating to be doing something a little risky, don’t you think?”

  Christian took a step closer, keeping the flashlight angled down toward the ground, making sure the guards could not see the light.

  “Even if you’d said we’re going to get shot instead of we’re going to get caught, I don’t think I could stop coming here with you,” said Christian. “Not after these past few days spent underwater.”

  “Really?” Emi said, playfully. She knew from the first time she walked to the pool with Christian that he might fall in love with her. It was like Leo. She could tell that her differences were interesting to him, even pretty.

  “Touching my hand was enough to make you fall in love with me?” she said, reaching out for his hand, which he gave her eagerly.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Christian, his change of tone showing his embarrassment.

  “You wouldn’t have wanted to know me a few months ago. When we were in Seagoville, I was the worst version of myself. I was anything but optimistic.” Emi leaned against his shoulder, her thin frame against his broad one, and tilted her head back, exposing the length of perfect skin on her neck. Christian leaned down and kissed it, causing a rush of warmth to shoot from her heart up to her head. It was hard to keep quiet from the joy it brought her.

  “Look at the camp lights, they’re almost pretty,” she said in response, trying to calm herself. “Let’s try to imagine they are stadium lights or theater lights. The bright lights of Texas.” She turned to him. “When my father told us we were moving to America, I never thought it would mean this.”

  “Of course not,” said Christian.

  “I still think about the boat ride over here. I wasn’t convinced I would like America yet, but it was one of the most glamorous experiences of my life. Beautiful cabin, well-dressed women mingling happily on deck. I loved that boat. I’ve done some of my best thinking on the deck of a ship, but especially that particular ship.”

  “I think the nice things, the memories, matter even more during war,” said Christian.

  “Aren’t you sentimental,” said Emi. “What are you holding on to, then? Besides my hand,” she said, looking down at their fingers, interlaced again, both their nails short and brittle, their skin dry and his sun tanned.

  “Well . . . as juvenile as this may sound, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much peace I’ve had at home with my parents all these years,” said Christian, holding her hand tighter. “That I’ve been lucky, because I know so few people have what I’ve had. My mother didn’t. My dad, maybe, but there was a strictness that came with his privilege growing up in Germany. My parents have done a good job giving me more than I need while not sacrificing the time they spent with me. They’ve coddled me too much, I understand that now, but always with good intentions. As a boy, I was practically sewed to my mother’s hand, and she still makes me feel that way. It’s weird, but some of the happiest times I’ve spent with her have been sitting in our kitchen—we have this big kitchen in Wisconsin. Even on rainy days it feels like it’s sunny. Anyway, we didn’t do anything special. It was just a very warm room and my mother always made me feel like it belonged to the two of us.”

  “Your poor mother,” said Emi, thinking of the day she’d helped discharge her. “I hope you have that sense of happiness with her again soon. Even if it’s in Germany.”

  “Germany. I won’t have any freedom there,” he said flatly, “but we have freedom here. Not real freedom,” he clarified as Emi looked at him questioningly. “But here with you, hiding among the trees, it feels something like freedom.”

  “Do we have something?” she asked, her blood going warm again. She looked up at his face, less and less visible as the sky went from dark blue to black, and put her arms around his back. Without letting reason start to hum between her ears, she tilted her head up and kissed him. Caught by surprise, his lips were stiff at first, but in seconds they had relaxed into hers and the kiss turned into the perfect moment she hoped it would. She had kissed him, and he had kissed her back, but soon after that initial touch of flesh, it was him, desperately moving his mouth against hers, holding her firmly, and more confidently than she thought he would. She wanted to write off his age, but she was even younger when she’d first kissed Leo and she’d felt very grown up.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his face very close to hers. She could still make out the stubble on his chin, very pale, but there, and the small freckle he had under his right eye. His face, she realized, had become very familiar. He ran his hand across her cheek and said, “Kiss me again so I can see what we have.” Emi, who even in flat shoes was only a few inches shorter than him, tilted her head up and kissed him. “Emi,” said Christian, holding her bare arms, her skin sticky with the evening humidity. “We definitely have something.”

  CHAPTER 12

  EMI KATO

  AUGUST 1943

  Emi rolled over in bed, hugging her flat pillow and thinking about the orange orchard and the hours she was spending there with Christian. Night after night, after they finished dinner on their respective sides, they would escape to the trees, lips and bodies against each other as soon as they came together in the dark. Emi flipped over on her back, wearing, against her will, her nice cotton nightgown, far too well made for the Texas heat. When she went to the orchard that first night, thoughts of Leo had accompanied her. They’d promised each other, when they separated in 1939, that they would find a way to be together forever. What was she doing then? Running off after dark with someone else?

  But now, when she went to meet Christian, no thought of Leo came with her. Leo who had become a ghost—and perhaps one who no longer needed her.

  Maybe it wasn’t right, but she was happy. She was finally happy. Not wholly and completely, like she had been in Vienna—she would never again be that innocent and naïvely in love—but at least she wasn’t always looking over her shoulder, relying on her memories to get through each day. For the first time in four years, the present was more important than the past. Happiness now, guilt later, she told herself as she got out of bed.

  Back in the orchard that night, life felt like it was normal again. The new normal. One where danger seemed a little further away and intimacy was unbreakable. So it didn’t surprise Emi when three days later, Christian didn’t just brush her hand in the pool, but grabbed it and pulled it above the water for everyone to see. “I’ve decided it’s time to stop caring about getting into trouble,” he said as she lowered her hand back under the water.

  “Really?” she said smiling. “Because you sure are courting it right now.” She was happy that Christian wasn’t ashamed of her, but she was scared that the gossip would get back to her mother, who had yet to say a thing about Christian. Emi assumed she knew, that some in the camp had seen them together and
had told her. But Keiko seemed to be erring on the side of discretion, probably thinking more of her daughter’s happiness than her own.

  “I have a surprise for you,” Christian said, just above a whisper. “But you have to come to the German side to get it. Meet me by the water tower on Airport Drive. Just past the Japanese market at the usual time.” The usual time didn’t have a number attached to it. It was thirty or so minutes after roll call was completed, when the sun was starting to sink low in the sky.

  Before Emi could answer, Christian was underwater again, and she watched him as he swam choppily through the pool and then pulled himself up, heading toward a reclining Kurt.

  That evening, Emi watched the emotionless guard check her and her mother’s names off the list yet again, then she ran to the water tower in her best pair of shoes. She’d been on the German side plenty of times before. It was impossible not to crisscross the camp, for while the houses were grouped together by nationality, the public areas like the Japanese market and the German bakery were built close to one another.

  She saw Christian standing near the chapel, looking slightly guilty. His blond hair was combed and he was in what looked like clean clothes. She watched him for a moment, staring along the dusty road trying to spot her coming. She was happy that she had reached him without him seeing her arrive. She liked to be the one to startle him.

  “Is it a real surprise?” she asked as she approached.

  He turned around to look at her. “I think you know what it is by now. But let’s just pretend you don’t. Come on.” He motioned for her to follow him across the road to the chapel.

  “Is the surprise in the chapel? Is the door open in the evening?” she said, trying to look past him. She knew it was a piano, she couldn’t imagine what else it would be, and she felt silly for not looking in the chapel before.