by Karin Tanabe
“Just remember,” said Max when they first saw a Japanese officer berating a Chinese beggar on the side of Nanking Road, “they may be isolating us, but they are not persecuting us. They are letting the Jews in when no one else is. They may be allies of Nazi Germany, but they are, in many ways, friends to the Jews. That doesn’t make what they are doing to the Chinese right, but it’s something to remember before we complain about our conditions.”
But the Chinese, Leo knew, did not care if the Japanese treated the Jews better than they were treated in Europe. They hated the Japanese for what they did to them.
One of the few Chinese who did not appear to hate them was Jin’s father, Liwei Zhang, as some of his nightclub patrons after the war broke out were Japanese businessmen.
Leo, who had been heavily shielded from the realities of sex until he was having it, was still surprised that his parents let him work in a nightclub six days a week, but money was money and Leo was bringing more home than Hani or Max was.
“I don’t want handouts anymore,” was Hani’s answer when Leo had asked why she was letting him work in such a place. “You’re not a child. You will make your own decisions. But I am sure that the son I raised will not go from Emi Kato to a Russian prostitute in a snap.”
“A snap?” said Leo. “I haven’t seen Emi since 1938, and I haven’t received a letter from her since ’41. I can’t exist in a state of blind hope. Besides, if she really wanted to keep our childhood promises to each other, she would have found a way to contact me. With who her father is? This is Shanghai, which is essentially Japan.” He saw his mother’s face fall and started to laugh. “Don’t worry, you know I still think about her often. We promised that we’d find each other again after the war, and who knows, maybe a miracle will occur, but I’m less optimistic every year. Aren’t you?”
“We are indebted to the Katos and will see them again,” said Hani confidently.
“I wonder where in Japan Emi is right now,” said Leo, picturing her on the Ferris wheel in Vienna, her face so full of worry for him. “In Tokyo I assume. And safe,” he added.
The truth was, Leo’s lustful thoughts over his years in Shanghai had slowly been transferred from Emi to Agatha. Though nothing had occurred between them beyond Liwei’s dance floor, Leo’s days were now broken up into the hours before and after he danced with Agatha, and the perfect five minutes that he spent against her body every night. He wanted so badly to hold her outside of the club, to see what was underneath her homemade dresses, but he knew that the last thing she needed was to be involved with a Jewish refugee, even if, in a past life, he was very well-off.
“Mother,” said Leo, grabbing his one nice shirt, which Liwei had given him to wear at the club, “the women working in Mr. Zhang’s establishment. They’re not prostitutes. Just women who men enjoy chatting with,” he finished, parroting Liwei’s favorite line.
“Fine,” said Hani. “I will never again judge a woman for doing what she needs to do to stay alive, especially in a feral city like this one during a war.”
“Are you sure you’re my mother?” said Leo laughing, letting Hani kiss him on the cheek.
That night, when Leo had finished his shift, a nightclub regular named Hiroyoshi Asai, a wealthy Japanese businessman who had lived in Shanghai since long before the war broke out and still dressed as if he were off to the races instead of a home behind blackout curtains, beckoned to Leo to join him at his center table. Whenever he was sober enough to spot Leo, he would wave him over, as he loved practicing his German, which was very good before he began drinking and nearly perfect after.
Leo came over, prepared to discuss Hiroyoshi’s two favorite topics: Shanghai before the war and beautiful women.
“Ah, my favorite Austrian,” Hiroyoshi said, gesturing to the waitress to bring Leo a drink. Leo looked out across the crowded room at Liwei, who nodded. Yes, it was fine for him to be entertaining the customers, especially one as rich as Hiroyoshi.
“Sit with me,” he said, pushing a small glass of whiskey toward Leo. In Vienna, Leo had had a stocky, athletic frame, but he had grown skinny during his first two years in Shanghai. It wasn’t until he started working for Liwei that he started to gain back some weight, his cheeks filling out again.
“Remind me,” said Hiroyoshi, “when was it that you arrived in the wicked city of Shanghai.”
“January 1939,” said Leo, taking a sip of his drink. He had told Hiroyoshi this a dozen times, but he knew that he liked to use it as a segue into reminiscences of old Shanghai.
“Then you missed it all, young man!” said Hiroyoshi, throwing his hands up in the air, his sport jacket creasing perfectly at the elbow. “You missed the miracle city. You should have seen this town in the twenties, in the thirties. The Bund, the women with the blond curls living in the French Concession with their rich, boring husbands. The prostitutes. Those were the girls you turned to after the married French women all went to bed. It was something marvelous. The whole city, it was filthy and full of terrible people, but it sparkled. It was so full of life. What is it full of now?”
“Japanese soldiers,” said Leo.
Hiroyoshi shook his head and said, “I don’t care for those pompous men walking around here in their brown uniforms with that garish orange rim on their hats. With the swords, always with the swords, like they are going to slice off some poor man’s head in the street. I don’t like it at all. It’s not Japanese to spit on the world as if they own everything. That’s not the country or the people I know.” He took a long drink and put his glass down in front of Leo. “I’m a practicing Buddhist,” he said. He looked at the women around him and added, “Most of the time. This war, the Buddhist monks are against it. I’m against it.”
“War doesn’t seem in tune with any religion,” said Leo, and Hiroyoshi nodded.
“Except it is good for the women, it brings out the best in them,” he said, reaching over to Leo to straighten his wrinkled collar.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because their husbands die, and then so many more of them are available.” Hiroyoshi broke out laughing and beckoned to Agatha, who was waiting by the dance floor. She came over at once.
“This one is my favorite,” he said, patting her curvaceous backside. “Agatha from Germany. She won’t marry me. I keep asking, but she just says no.”
“Yes, of course I know Agatha,” said Leo, removing Hiroyoshi’s hand from her body. “Every man in here notices Agatha as soon as they walk in.”
“Fine, fine,” the businessman said, waving his hand to excuse her. “Go back to doing whatever it is you do. Whatever it is, you do it beautifully. I will come and rediscover you later.
“You like her?” he asked Leo.
“Of course. What’s not to like? Though to be honest with you, after nearly three years of watching her, it might be even more than like.”
Hiroyoshi drained his glass with one long gulp and squinted at Leo, as if he were trying to keep him in focus.
“Why did you come here? To Shanghai?”
“So that the Nazis wouldn’t kill me or my parents.”
“A good reason,” said Hiroyoshi as a waiter came and replaced his drink. “They truly do hate the Jews. It’s strange to hate that much. Tiresome. I didn’t come here for any such reason. I came here to make money. For adventure. To escape custom. In Japan, my parents kept threatening me with a wife. All these years later and I still don’t have a wife.”
“That’s . . . depressing,” said Leo, laughing.
“The city is depressing now, but I still love it. I should probably stop proposing to Agatha if I don’t want a wife. She might say yes one day, and then what?”
“Then you’d have a lovely wife,” said Leo. “No, lovely isn’t strong enough a word. An intoxicating wife. But please don’t marry her.”
“She’s the prettiest one here—a face like a doll and round in all the right places. Though it’s the thighs that I’d really like to get my hands on.”
Hiroyoshi looked around him at the buffed wooden floors and circle of dark green lacquered tables. “I love this place,” he declared. “Every day I am thankful that the Kempeitai hasn’t shut Liwei down.”
“Why would they shut him down?” asked Leo. “Some of them come here, too.”
“A surprising turn of events,” said Hiroyoshi. “I thought they just raped the women and didn’t bother paying them. They’ll all be shot when the war is over. Or at least they deserve to be.”
Leo nodded and stood up to leave, but Hiroyoshi protested. His hair, worn long and impractical, was falling around his face in two halves, like a theater curtain. His face had grown more chiseled over the years, since, like everyone in Shanghai, he didn’t have enough to eat, but his exterior was always polished. He looked to Leo as if he were floating above the war, regarding it as nothing but a small nuisance.
“Stay and sit with me. Tell me about the life of the young and persecuted,” he said, tapping his gold ring on the table.
“I can’t,” said Leo. “If I’m not back in the restricted area in the next hour, I won’t eat again until noon tomorrow.”
“You picked the wrong time to be a Jew,” Hiroyoshi said, lighting a cigar. He handed his glass and the last sip of his whiskey to Leo. “For you, because during a war, it’s the young men who suffer most of all.”
He drank it down and thanked Hiroyoshi, heading to the kitchen to finish off the night. As usual, he took the long way around the room, so he could see Agatha from all angles before he disappeared with the rest of the low-level staff in the back.
Leo was doing a last round of dishes, laughing with Jin about the customers and getting ready to leave, when he heard a collective silence spread through the room. He looked at the front door and plunged his hands back in the hot soapy water to keep from dropping the bowl he was holding. Two men, in German officer’s uniforms, had just walked in. He glanced at the back door, prepared to run out, but Jin stopped him from moving.
“Do not say one single word,” said Jin, passing behind Leo and greeting them at the door. One stopped to speak to Jin, pointing out the table he wanted, but the other, the more handsome one, went straight to Agatha, kissing her cheek as if he knew her well, or wanted to.
“He does know her,” said Jin when he’d returned from seating them and taking their drink orders. Leo looked at him with a worried, searching expression, no longer desperate to leave the room.
“How?” he whispered.
“In 1942,” said Jin, turning his face toward the back of the kitchen, “when there were a few German military men in town, that man that just kissed Agatha, Felix Pohl, used to come in regularly. You were working here then. You never saw him?”
Leo shook his head no, afraid to speak.
“Lucky you,” said Jin, turning away, but Leo grabbed his shoulder, desperate for more of an explanation.
“You’re a glutton for punishment,” said Jin, his voice as quiet as Leo’s. “Pohl came in many times last year, often with several high-ranking officers. I don’t know why they were in Shanghai—maybe meetings with the Japanese—but they stayed a month at least.” Jin, who had heard all of Leo’s stories about Vienna, tried to calm him then told him to go back to washing dishes. “They are spending the war in Japan. Pohl and the other officer.”
“In Japan?” said Leo, thinking of how terrified Emi had been every time she saw an SS officer.
“Yes, Japan. Their ally.” Jin placed his finger to his lips and put Leo’s hands back in the dishwater. “Just stay calm and quiet. When they’re a little drunker and more oblivious, slip out the back. It should only take a few minutes at the rate they’re going. You’ll make it back before curfew.”
Leo focused his energy on the sink and only dared glance out to the main room a few times to see the two officers dancing. The other officer danced with several different women, but Pohl only with Agatha, his hungry hands all over her.
After just a few minutes, Agatha’s thin red dress, one of her most low-cut, was wrinkled all over the backside from Pohl reaching for her and Leo saw, out of the corner of his eye, that she was imploring the German to sit back down. “You came in here drunk,” she said in German. “You must take a rest. Please.”
Pohl, a big man, both tall and wide, his thick brown hair slicked back, leaned into her neck and whispered, too low for Leo to hear.
“Of course, I’m happy to see you,” Agatha responded. She was smiling, but Leo could tell that she was anything but happy.
“Aren’t you worried about Agatha?” Leo finally said to Jin, abandoning the dishes and forgetting the curfew that was threatening him in Hongkew.
Jin looked out at Agatha, her blond hair messy around her shoulders, her dress wrinkled, and said, “She’s dealt with much worse. I’ve seen him—and many other patrons—much drunker, and so have you. I know you think Agatha is just another one of our innocent girls, pocketing money for survival, but she had an affair with him last year.”
“What?” said Leo, too loudly. “She was involved with that Nazi? With Pohl?”
Both Agatha and Pohl looked toward the kitchen.
“Involved because he paid her to be involved,” whispered Jin, pulling Leo away from the door out of frustration. “Agatha’s parents are dead, you know that. She’s lived here alone for years. Don’t judge her. She’s just trying to stay alive and the German soldiers have money.”
“Because they steal it,” said Leo. “She shouldn’t be with him now. Not this time.”
“Why?” said Jin, holding Leo’s arm. “She still needs the money. Are you going to give it to her?”
“But he’s an SS officer,” Leo countered, starting to panic. “Did you see his high-ranking insignia? Do you know the type of things he has certainly done to gain such status? And now he’s going to have his hands all over Agatha?”
“They all look the same to me,” said Jin, letting Leo go. “Do what you want, but don’t cause trouble inside. You know my father will cut your pay if you do.”
“Of course I won’t,” said Leo, rushing out of the hot kitchen to see if Agatha was still in Pohl’s arms. He looked around the big room for her, but she was gone, and so was Pohl. The other German officer was in a corner with Svetlana, one of the youngest Russian girls.
Without turning back to tell Jin, Leo ran out the front door, hearing Liwei call out his name as the door closed behind him.
He ran around the most trafficked corner, avoiding rickshaw drivers and drunk young men, and screamed for Agatha, but didn’t see her. Turning on his heels, he started running in the other direction. Right away, he spotted them. Pohl, his crisp jacket draped over his arm, was hand in hand with Agatha, the lights of the city encasing their intimacy, though it looked to Leo like she was trying to break free from his grasp.
Leo ran forward and called out her name, letting all sense go. He didn’t think about what had happened to his father in front of their apartment, or to his relatives since he’d left Austria. He could only think about beautiful Agatha in bed with a Nazi.
She turned around smiling—her red dress wet at the bottom from the dirty street, her skin even more exposed than it had been inside—but she shook her head when she saw him. “Go away, Leo!” she yelled, breaking free of Pohl. “Go back to Liwei’s.”
“Who is this boy?” said Pohl, frowning. He was starting to sweat from all the alcohol. “A German? Was he at the dancing club?”
“He’s a dishwasher,” she said, turning to Pohl and trying to move him along. “Ignore him.”
“With pleasure,” said Pohl, reaching his hand low on Agatha’s waist.
“I’m fine, Leo,” she called out, her expression indicating otherwise. “Please don’t get involved.”
“Yes,” said Pohl, pulling her forward, roughly. “She’s going to be perfectly fine in my bed all night. I’ll return her to taxi dancing tomorrow. Little Agatha, beautiful Agatha, and the exquisite things she will do for money.” Pulling her arm out with a jerk,
he did a little spin with her in the middle of the busy road, yelling at a rickshaw driver as he ran his lopsided cart close to them.
“Agatha, come back with me!” Leo yelled out, walking closer to them, his clothes wet with dishwater.
“Get away from us!” said Pohl, turning in Leo’s direction. “Listen to the girl. Go back to your washing.”
“Agatha, come with me,” said Leo again. He was close enough to touch her so he reached out for her hand.
“Is this who is in your bed now?” Pohl asked angrily, his face inches away from Agatha’s, shaking her shoulders.
“No,” said Agatha, frozen in his grip. “He works with me. You must have seen him at the club, Felix. He’s just a dishwasher.”
Leo took a step back as someone yelled in Chinese for them to get out of the road, but Felix stayed right where he was, a vise around Agatha’s body.
“You don’t need money this badly,” said Leo, fully realizing how foolish he was being, but he just couldn’t stop himself. Agatha would not be climbing in a Nazi’s bed, not right in front of him.
“She’s not just doing this for the money,” said Pohl, still holding on to Agatha, shaking her. “I’ve known her for many years.”
Leo knew he should stay quiet, warn Agatha to be careful and then walk away, but he was fixed to the spot. “Just one year,” said Leo, loudly, his heart racing as he thought of Jin’s words. “It’s only been one year since you met.”
Agatha was quietly imploring Leo to leave, but he kept talking over her. “You barely know her. But I know that she will not be with you tonight. She’s returning to work with me.”
