by Karin Tanabe
“They weren’t scared,” said Hani. “They just knew they could take our things for free as soon as we left. Why would they bother paying us?” Hani looked at the food with dread, but she finally managed to swallow her embarrassment, accept the meal, and thank the men serving it. “We used to give money to support such places in Austria and now we are eating in one,” she whispered when they’d sat down with their tin plates. She uncovered her head, placing her hat on the table, and rumpled her curls a little bit. “We are the beggars. I’m not good at this, Leo,” she’d said, her spoon shaking in her hands. “I’m very thankful, but I’m not good at it.”
“You will be,” he replied.
They got used to the handouts very quickly, as there was no alternative.
Having arrived in winter, they saw in the streets what it looked like to freeze to death. Dead children—babies—lay in alleyways, where they were thrown onto a garbage truck the next morning like day-old bread. The children who were alive were so emaciated, they looked as if they could crumble into ash.
“I would like to see a plump child,” said Leo, looking down at a sickly little boy in short pants during their first week in the city. “Children shouldn’t be so thin,” he told Hani.
“I wish I could save them all,” she replied. They both watched as the boy found his mother, also in rags. A newborn baby was tied to her back, the only member of the little family who looked warm. “It’s amazing to me that women have given birth during the war,” said Hani, looking at the bundled baby. “That there is enough optimism to bring children into the world.”
The Hartmanns were to learn that it wasn’t optimism that kept Shanghai turning, so much as a gritty will to survive. With the help of the established Jews, they, too, soon became cogs, rather than onlookers, in the city’s churning life.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee helped the elder Hartmanns find jobs, with Max hired as an accountant in a grocery store in the French Concession and Hani finding work playing the piano in a place she thought was a restaurant but that turned out to be an opium den. After she had come home for weeks with reddened eyes and her mind “feeling like a cloud,” the family pressed her to quit, for her health’s sake, and she took a job teaching piano to the children of a wealthy Chinese family, whose father had worked for Sassoon.
But as time went on, the poverty started to bite at their ankles—even for the resolutely happy Leo.
Three months after they had arrived, as they walked to their synagogue with other families living in their small apartment building, Hani had looked at her son and said, “Froschi, why do you keep touching your hair?”
Leo took his hand from his scalp, which he had been rubbing as they walked, and said, “I’m itchy. I think I need a bath.”
Hani grabbed his hand before he could touch his head again and quickly examined a few strands of his curly hair.
“You have lice,” she declared. “Turn around and go back to the apartment. You can’t bring that into temple. We will find someone who will shave it off.”
From that day, Leo never let his hair grow back, deciding that even if he could keep the lice at bay, his hair would never feel clean, so it wasn’t worth having. Hani kept one of his brown curls in a bag. She wrote “Froschi’s lice” on the bag and tucked it under a pile of dresses that she planned to sell when they fell on even harder times.
As the months went on, Leo thought he had grown used to the city, its sounds and strangers, but his body could not seem to adapt. Besides the lice, he had dysentery four times, which caused him to have accidents and wake his mother, who slept just a few feet from him.
“What’s wrong?” Hani asked the first time.
“I missed the bucket,” Leo said, looking at the soiled floor. “I’m sorry,” he added, staring at the ground in shock.
“It’s all right. We’ll clean it up.”
“I’ll do it, Mother, you go back to bed.”
Hani reluctantly crossed the room back to her bed and he used an old newspaper and the last of their boiled water in a tin thermos to clean it up. He placed it all in the bucket on their landing.
The next day an elderly Chinese woman took the night soil, as it was called, away. She did this every day, carrying the buckets through the hallways, their contents sloshing over the rims, to the street, where she dumped her foul load into the open sewers or onto a cart that came around to collect it.
Given the smell in their one-room apartment the entire next week, Leo had vowed to never have a mishap again, but the dysentery made that impossible. He guessed that it was from the consommé, the gelatinous rice porridge, which was always littered with vermin. Sometimes gray worms, other times hundreds of tiny flies. But it was never without pests.
In time, they discovered their problems were manageable. Hani and Max were able to keep working, and the family became accustomed to living on top of each other and without hot water or flush toilets. They learned how to sift their rice to remove some of the insects. They picked out rusty nails and dirt from the stolen noodles they bought from roadside vendors. And Leo finally enrolled in school, nearly a year after they arrived. He started at the Shanghai Jewish School, which was housed in a beautiful building paid for by Victor Sassoon. The students were served kosher lunches and they all worshiped in a large Sephardic synagogue. But then, to help make room for a wave of children who arrived in Shanghai from Lithuania, he transferred to the Catholic school, St. Francis Xavier’s.
It was at his new school that he met Jin. As soon as Jin showed him kindness, Leo stuck to him like the lice he once had on his head, realizing how much he needed an ally in the city, particularly one who could navigate it far better than he could. Jin also got Leo a job as a janitor and drink runner in his father’s club.
Liwei’s was not the most expensive nightclub in the city, nor was it the most squalid. It was large and well decorated with just enough beautiful, disreputable women to always attract a crowd. The most upscale club in Shanghai was the Del Monte. The Park, Arcadia, and Farren’s weren’t far behind. Leo had never been inside those, but he’d seen the clientele they attracted and they did not live in Hongkew. There were such clubs in Hongkew, but they veered closer to whorehouses than nightclubs. The Little Barcelona was not far from his apartment, and he’d seen the women in high-cut dresses tending to the men outside, so drunk that they’d sleep draped across café tables like coats, lit cigarettes still between their teeth, burning their chins. But Liwei was Chinese, and with the club’s Chinese name, they attracted the rich Chinese men who were afraid to socialize with Japanese military officers at the other establishments.
Like most of the nightclubs in the city that pulled their weight, Liwei’s club was filled with taxi dancers, most of them White Russians who had seen better days. The women, all dressed as elegantly as they could with what little means they had, weren’t paid by the club outright, but had a mutual understanding with the proprietors of how they would conduct their business. The patrons bought dance tickets in advance and presented them to the girl of their choice. She would then dance with them and if things proceeded from there, the club staff, especially Liwei, ignored it.
He knew that he wasn’t able to attract clients with outdoor space, as Del Monte’s was two floors and had an expansive garden, while his club was on the ground floor and had very few windows. But his wife had decorated it nicely enough—in red silk that had been tattered and resewn, dotted with high-gloss tables that Liwei kept shiny with animal fat. Plus, he told Leo when he first set foot inside, drunks appreciated the lack of light at Liwei’s when the sun started to rise.
On his first night, Leo had been asked to dance by one of the girls, a stunning German named Agatha, even though he couldn’t pay her. From her, he found out that almost all the money the girls made went to keep their gaggle of relatives alive. The men in the Russian families had a much more difficult time finding work than the pretty young women, so everyone pulled together to keep the women emplo
yed, the mothers making their daughters’ décolletés lower so they all might be able to eat for a week.
“But I don’t have a mother anymore,” said Agatha, her body close to Leo’s. “So I have to sew my own décolletés.”
“You do a fine job,” said Leo, trying his best to keep his eyes on her face.
Some of the women, Jin had explained after Leo returned wide-eyed from his dance with Agatha, turned to prostitution, others prayed for a client who turned into a husband, but most just saved their money and dished it out for their malnourished parents at the end of the night.
“They may look like tramps, but they’re family to me at this point,” said Jin, when he and Leo were left sweeping the club after closing on Leo’s first night.
“But pretty little German Agatha doesn’t look like a tramp,” said Jin, watching Leo watch her. “At least not yet.” Jin explained that while Agatha was German, she was in the minority. The Russians dominated Liwei’s. The White Russians had come in large numbers in the twenties, at the end of the Russian civil war, but they had been living as stateless since they made the voyage to Asia. With only League of Nations–issued passports, finding work was even harder. Meanwhile the French lived as if they were at a never-ending party before the war, as they benefited from extraterritoriality, which excluded them from Chinese laws. The Russians were not so lucky. But his father was always happy to assist a beautiful Russian woman in need.
The work at Liwei’s was exhausting, but Leo learned that it was not without its perks. The scantily clad female employees adored him and Jin, and he was allowed to dance with Agatha at least once every night. Leo was also entitled to all the alcohol that was leftover in the customers’ glasses. He sometimes abused the privilege, letting himself get drunk in ways he never had in Vienna.
“It’s what men do in Shanghai,” Liwei and Jin had advised him during his first week, both drinking down a combination of whatever was left that night, which Liwei called “bartender’s choice.”
When Leo’s sense wasn’t clouded by the Shanghai way of life, he would pour the dregs into bottles and bring them back for the men in his building. He didn’t trade the booze for anything in particular, but if a family found themselves with a little extra food one night, and the slop of alcohol they were drinking had come from Leo, that food might find its way to the Hartmanns’ table.
* * *
Finally making his way through the crowded street to his parents, Leo rearranged the load in his arms yet again as his father spotted them. He waved them over. “Here it is, Leo,” he called, pointing to the concrete building behind him. It had been painted gray but now the paint was peeling off like a suntan. “Hurry, please!”
Leo stepped over another pile of human waste and coughed from the smell of something burning in the street. As the Jews had begun to move into the restricted area in February, a wave of typhoid had accompanied them, and the Hartmanns had already attended the funeral of a child killed by it.
Once Leo and Jin reached the house, Max nodded toward the stairs. “We’re at the top,” he said. “Five flights up. Attic dwellers.” His voice was cheerful, but his forehead was dripping with sweat, despite the cold.
“How many families live in this building?” Leo asked as they climbed.
“Ten,” said Max. “We know three of them.” He rattled off the names and followed Leo, Jin, and his wife up the stairs, the laborers already ahead of them.
Leo dropped the bedding on the floor outside their new apartment’s door, opened it, and looked inside, trying not to let his heart drop at the sight. The room was large enough, but the windows had all been covered with black paint, leaving a dim electric light as the only source of illumination. The Hartmanns had sold almost all their furniture and had only their mattresses, one small table, and three chairs. There was a sink with cold water, an electric burner, and unlike in their last apartment, only one bathroom on the ground floor for the whole building to use.
“At least, all the way up here, we’ll be safe from harm,” Max declared when the laborers had gone. He was about to close the door to give them some rare privacy when a large Western woman in Chinese farm pants suddenly walked in. She was holding a knife.
Max took a step back, but the woman laughed and explained to him in German that she always carried a knife with her around the building, as she was suspicious of everyone in Shanghai, Jewish or not.
Her name was Eliza Behnisch and she was the first overweight person Leo had seen in Shanghai. She came from Berlin, she told the family as she sat uninvited on one of their chairs. She lived on the ground floor with her ailing husband, and she was taking it upon herself, despite her bad back and worse vision, to meet with all the new tenants to tell them how life worked in the ghetto.
“You’d better learn the rules of this place quickly or you’ll find yourself on a concrete floor in prison,” she warned the Hartmanns.
“Yes, Mrs. Behnisch, we wouldn’t want that,” said Max politely. “What are the rules, if you don’t mind elaborating?”
“First, Mr. Hartmann, you have to get used to living like rats. Then when you’re used to that, the rules won’t seem so bad. There’s a curfew, and it’s enforced by the Pao Chia, a group of Jewish men who the Japanese have hired to act as the police. They must have very short memories of their own oppression because they can be real asses,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Also, us Jews have to wear buttons letting the world know we’re Jewish. It’s stupid because almost all the citizens of the Allied countries are in the internment camps, but we have to wear them anyway. The buttons are issued by a Japanese officer named Kano Ghoya. He likes to be referred to as king of the Jews. He has a small mustache like Hitler and is as sadistic as they come. He hits people. Spits in their faces. Even women. You’ll see, Mrs. Hartmann. Pretty as you are, you’ll still be spat on.”
Leo translated what she’d said into English for Jin.
“I’ve met him, and she’s right,” Jin said. “Avoid him, his sadism, and his saliva.”
“If you are caught outside the ghetto without a pass, you’ll be thrown in jail, and the jails are full of disease, so that’s on par with a death sentence,” their new neighbor continued. “You need a pass to leave the ghetto to go to school or work outside it, and Ghoya issues the passes.”
She looked at Jin and said, “But the Chinese can run freely.”
Leo translated again, and Jin started laughing, shaking his head at Eliza Behnisch.
“Run freely! We haven’t run freely since before the Japanese occupation in ’37. They killed three hundred thousand people when they occupied Nanjing. Ask those people’s families if their children are running freely. And it’s no better here. Tell her to walk to the stadium and read the sign. ‘No Dogs or Chinese.’ Has she seen that? Or the children strangled to death by the Japanese soldiers for sport near the railway?”
He looked to Leo to translate, and Leo turned to the neighbor and said, “Yes. He agrees with you.”
“I have to go to work,” said Hani. “Leo and Jin, are you coming?”
After the three left, Hani walked the boys to the nightclub, saying hello in her poor English to Liwei.
“The offer to work in my establishment will always stand, Mrs. Hartmann,” he said, after he had kissed her hand. “You wouldn’t have to do anything untoward. Just chat with the city’s lonely men. I am sure they would pay handsomely to see those funny freckles close up.”
“My English. It is still unsatisfactory,” she said politely, making the same excuse she’d been making for the last two years. She left to go to her job, and Jin and Leo went inside to wash glasses.
“I can’t believe we live in that place now,” said Leo as he washed. “I’m thankful we have somewhere to live, of course, but it still feels strange to be dirt poor.”
“Everyone is poor,” said Jin, shrugging. “War doesn’t make anyone rich except the depraved. And they still have to loot.”
“I’m washing dishes in
a brothel. Are you sure I’m not one of the depraved?” said Leo, turning on the hot water and thinking of his house in Vienna, which he was sure was looted down to its studs.
“This isn’t a brothel,” said Jin. “There’s nothing for sale here except the alcohol. Plus, I started to work here when I was ten. If you’re depraved, then I’m truly sick. Plus,” he said, handing Leo a sponge, “from what you’ve told me, it’s better than Vienna, yes?”
“Yes,” said Leo. “We’re very lucky. Bad as it can be, Shanghai is the Jewish Shangri-la.”
CHAPTER 23
EMI KATO
DECEMBER 1943
Emi did not look back at her parents after they brought her to Ueno Station in Tokyo. She took her two suitcases from her father, gave them to a porter, then walked to the platform where her ten-car steam-powered train was already waiting. Looking up at the train, with various stripes on its windows indicating first, second, and third class, she thought about her father’s words: “I’m worried that you will be killed.” A war was tearing her country apart—it was still her country, despite the war she didn’t agree with—and her parents could die on a streetcar or somewhere worse. She regretted that she had parted from them flushed with anger. Once settled in her first-class seat for the five-hour journey, she opened her small bag, taking out her letter-writing box and stamps. She quickly penned a letter of apology to her parents, noting that she obviously needed to be sent away to grow up a little more. The time in the internment camp hadn’t seemed to do it. She told them she loved them and that she was sure they would see each other again soon.
We have to, she thought to herself, her body aching at the thought of anything happening to her little family. Emi bit the inside of her cheeks, looked out the window, and decided that however good or bad Karuizawa was, she would handle her time there as gracefully as she could manage.
As she let her arm hang over her armrest, glad that the seat next to her was unoccupied, she remembered Christian telling her about his train ride to Crystal City, holding the hand of seven-year-old Inge for thirty-one hours. She smiled at the thought. Christian, more than she, had been thrown in the deep end with no warning. She had lived through Vienna, was used to getting certain looks in Washington. He was a golden boy living a seemingly perfect American life, until the government decided that his family wasn’t American enough. She pictured Christian, walking around Crystal City as shocked as she had been before she started working at the hospital, before she met him. All the high school girls’ eyes would follow him as he made his way between school and work, and eventually the orchard. All those pretty German girls, but he had chosen her. She hoped that he would write to her in Japan from Crystal City, and that by some miracle, the letters would reach her. She had told her mother to please send the letters down if he did, as she had given up on receiving anything from Leo, though she was still writing to him every now and then at the only address she had.
