The Far Side of the Sky

by Daniel Kalla

  Three stops later, Sunny stepped off the bus and walked over to Ward Road. As she neared the address of the refugee hospital, she wondered if she had confused the numbers. The decrepit building, an abandoned schoolhouse, had lost a chunk of its side wall and a portion of its roof from bomb damage. She could not imagine it functioning as a shelter, let alone a hospital.

  Sunny noticed lights burning through the few windows that weren’t boarded. She rounded the corner and saw a flatbed truck parked at the side entrance. Two Chinese labourers unloaded mattresses from the back with the aid of a lean man in a trench coat and fedora. The man in the hat glanced over to her. “Can I help you, lady?” he asked in English.

  “No … well, yes …” Sunny said. “I have come to see the refugee hospital.”

  The man stepped closer. Sunny saw that his lips had broken into an amused grin. “You don’t look particularly Jewish to me.” “I am a nurse.”

  “A nurse?” The man pulled off his hat, held it over his chest and tipped his head in a slight bow. “Welcome to our world-famous, as yet unnamed, refugee hospital. Simon Lehrer at your service.”

  The young man possessed intelligent brown eyes, curly black hair and thick eyebrows that converged above his prominent nose. Sunny found his looks intriguing if not quite handsome. “You are American,” she said.

  He nodded. “From the Bronx. Just like the Yankees.”

  “Which Yankees?” she asked.

  Simon laughed. “The baseball team, of course. And you? You sound British.”

  “Not exactly. I was born here in Shanghai. My name is Soon Yi. Mah Soon Yi.”

  Simon tipped his head again. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Mah. What brings a not-exactly-British nurse from Shanghai to our little hospital?” Sunny fought back a smile. “Employment.”

  He sighed. “I would love to offer you work, Miss Mah. God knows we could use all the nurses we could dig up and then some, but we’re on a bare-bones budget.”

  Embarrassed, Sunny looked to the ground. “I intended to volunteer.”

  “Ah, that’s a whole different ball game.” Simon whistled. “You do understand that most of the patients and the doctor are German? Only a few speak English.”

  “Ich spreche ein bissien Deutsche,” she said.

  “Well, aren’t you just full of surprises?” he said with unconcealed admiration. “How would you like the grand tour of our facility, Miss Mah?” “I would, Mr. Lehrer. Or is it ‘Dr. Lehrer’?”

  “I wish! My mother could die happy.” He chuckled. “No, I’m nowhere near brainy enough to be a doctor. It’s just plain Simon.”

  Sunny felt an immediate rapport with the New Yorker. “Pardon me for prying, but what brings you to Shanghai?” she asked.

  Simon shrugged. “Nepotism.”

  Sunny tilted her head, waiting for more of an explanation.

  “My family owns a furniture factory in New York. After I graduated from college, I was supposed to go back and help run the outfit, but I wasn’t ready to devote my life to coffee tables and recliners.” He laughed again. “My granddad had done business with Sir Victor Sassoon’s family. They pulled a few strings and got me the job—well, more like internship—with Sir Victor. They sent me over here to learn all about high-stakes real estate and financing.” He winked. “But I came to see a little of the world beyond Coney Island. Besides, it wasn’t until the refugees started to pile into the city that Sir Victor found any real use for me.”

  “You speak German, I assume.”

  “As a tyke, I learned German and Yiddish from my nana. She’s lived in the Bronx forever but wouldn’t speak English if you held a gun to her head.”

  Sunny studied Simon’s face, deciding that he was no older than thirty. “Pardon me for saying so, but you seem very young to run a hospital.”

  “Run it? Hardly.” Simon waved the suggestion away. “That would be the CFA—the local charity struck up by established Jewish families like the Sassoons, Herdoons and Kadoories to help out the refugees.” He gestured to the two Chinese men lifting a mattress from the truck, one of whom held a cigarette between his lips. “The boys and I just do some of the CFA’s legwork. Truth be told, it’s my first job that I haven’t wanted to quit in a week. I’ve already stayed in Shanghai half a year longer than I planned to. Come on. I’ll show you around.”

  Simon turned to his two helpers. “Missy and my wantchee walkee.” He spoke to them in the local dialect of pidgin English—a curious hybrid of English, Chinese and Portuguese words used for basic but effective communication between the Chinese and Shanghailanders.

  The man with the smoke squealed with laughter. “All right, we’ll wait here, boss,” he replied in English.

  Sunny laughed too, realizing that Simon was joking with the men. She found it impossible not to warm to him.

  Approaching the front entrance, Simon pointed up to the missing section of wall. “With a little brick work and a coat of paint, you won’t even recognize it. Try to imagine it. Why, it will be a …” He winked again. “A dump with a makeshift wall and a fresh coat of paint.”

  Inside, they walked down a narrow hallway that opened onto a modest-sized ward. The cement floor and white walls were spotless. Only the mismatched beds, some wood and others steel-framed, hinted at the improvised nature of the hospital.

  Half of the beds were empty. Some patients were asleep. A few peered back at Sunny but none stirred or spoke. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the steady sobs coming from behind a curtain in the corner. Sunny motioned toward it. “That woman sounds terribly upset.”

  Simon nodded. “Her husband died earlier this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon?” Sunny frowned. “Why is the wife still here?”

  “Jews believe that the soul stays near the body after death. We never leave a corpse unattended until the burial. Normally, a shomer, a male Jew, volunteers to sit with the body.” Simon shrugged. “But the widow insisted on staying at her husband’s side too.”

  A balding, middle-aged man stepped out from behind the curtain, shaking his head. Sunny would have recognized him as a doctor even without the lab coat or stethoscope. “This is still no hospital, Mr. Lehrer,” he grumbled in German.

  “I’m pretty sure it took a few days to build Rome, Max,” Simon said agreeably. He motioned to the doctor and then to Sunny. “Dr. Feinstein, allow me to introduce Miss Mah, a nurse from right here in Shanghai who has come to volunteer.”

  “Nurses are helpful,” Maxwell Feinstein said with a small smile. “X-ray and laboratory facilities would be too. And fluid solutions to administer intravenously. Now, those would be most helpful of all, Mr. Lehrer.”

  Simon began to translate his German into English, but Sunny stopped him. “Ich verstehe.” She turned to the doctor. “You need fluids to run through the veins.”

  “Exactly so,” Max stammered, shocked to hear an Asian woman speaking in his tongue. “Pardon my abruptness, Miss … ah … Miss Mah.” He nodded in the direction of the sobs, which had grown even louder. “That young man over there died from dysentery acquired from drinking the contaminated water that runs through all the pipes here.”

  “Surely everyone is told that the drinking water always has to be boiled?” Sunny said.

  Simon ran his hand through his thick hair. “We warn all the new arrivals.”

  “People forget. At home, it was never a concern.” Max groaned. “Regardless, in Hamburg, I could have easily managed his illness. He would be going home soon to his own bed, instead of into the ground. And his poor wife knows it too.” He held up his palms. “At my old hospital, the challenge was in making the right diagnosis. Here, a correct diagnosis does not help because I rarely have much to offer in the way of treatment.”

  “We’re working on that, Dr. Feinstein,” Simon said patiently. “You got to give us just a little more time.”

  “I can give you all the time you want.” Max pointed toward the curtain. “He is the one who ran out of time.”
>
  On their way out, Simon said, “You have to excuse Max. From what I hear, he was a top-drawer doctor back in Germany. He’s not used to working under these stringent conditions.”

  “I can only imagine,” Sunny said.

  “Same goes for our other five or six doctors. They’re bright, well trained and full of good intentions, but they’re like a school of fish on land. We’ll get this hospital better stocked, but in the meantime we need some good old-fashioned common sense care. I get a feeling you know a thing or two about that.”

  Outside, the two assistants had cleared the truck of the mattresses and were standing on the empty flatbed sharing a cigarette.

  Sunny’s stomach knotted at the thought of having to navigate the drunken Japanese soldiers on Broadway on her way home. She wished that her father’s driver, Fai, was in town. Anxious to get going, Sunny edged toward the road. “When would you like me to begin?”

  “Is now too soon?”

  Sunny smiled. “Tomorrow would be a little more practical.”

  Simon put his fedora back on and adjusted it carefully. “Where do you live, Miss Mah?”

  “Frenchtown.” She turned for the street. “Good night, Mr. Lehrer.” “You don’t think I’d let you walk home alone in the dark at this time, do you?”

  Sunny was too proud to show her relief. “I have been doing so since I was a child.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Simon applied one final bend to the brim of his hat. “But if I have my history straight, Shanghai wasn’t under an enemy’s foot when you were a kid.” His smile faded. “Can I ask you something, Miss Mah?”

  “Please, Mr. Lehrer. My name is Soon Yi, but my friends call me Sunny.”

  “Sunny. Suits you!” He laughed. “And I am Simon. No more of this ‘mister’ stuff.”

  She smiled. “Simon, you had a question?”

  “Forgive my curiosity, Sunny, but you’re only half Chinese, right?” She nodded. “My mother was American. She came from Chicago.” “Do the Japanese make a distinction?”

  “Between someone of pure Chinese descent and me?” She exhaled.

  “No.”

  His face clouded with disgust. “I have seen how they treat the locals.” “So have I,” Sunny murmured.

  Simon shook his head. “The Nazis in Germany … the Japanese here in Shanghai …” He sighed. “Treating people as less than human because of the shape of their faces or the sound of their last names. Where will it end, Sunny?”

  III

  CHAPTER 12

  NOVEMBER 13, 1938, TRIESTE, ITALY

  A briny breeze wafted in from the harbour. Franz looked over at his daughter, who stood beside him at the wharf’s railing. Eyes wide with wonder, she drank in the sights and smells of the sleepy coastal town. Franz thought back to his first visit to Trieste. He’d been around the same age as Hannah was now, there to take a one-day Adriatic cruise with the rest of his family. The small ship had barely steamed out of sight of land, but to Franz—whose nautical experience was limited to sailboats, toys or real ones, that never strayed far from the lakeshore—it was as though they had ventured into space.

  Inhaling the fresh sea air, Franz realized he had only once before travelled on an ocean liner. For their honeymoon, Hilde and Franz had cruised the Adriatic coast aboard the aptly named Rapsodia. Curious and brimming with desire, they had spent most of their time secluded in their cabin. The ports of call and the open sea had served as pleasant backdrops—a chance to stretch their legs or fill their stomachs—for a mutual and fiery sexual awakening. Franz could recall the minutest details, from the cream-coloured linens at the dining table to the sleekness of Hilde’s black stockings as he slid them off her thighs, but their days of lovemaking seemed somehow surreal, more like a favourite dream than an actual memory.

  Hilde had so effortlessly nurtured his passions in three years of marriage, but that side of him withered after her death. Focused on raising Hannah and building a surgical career, Franz never found time to pursue other relationships, despite the well-intentioned meddling of friends and family. And, for reasons he did not fully understand, nor did he ever feel the need to seek out a new partner.

  Franz glanced over to Esther. He wondered if, in the wake of Karl’s death, she was destined to fall into the same romantic void as he had.

  Esther motioned to the Conte Biancamano. “She’s a gorgeous ship, isn’t she, Hannah?”

  “It’s so huge,” Hannah murmured.

  Franz shared his daughter’s awe. By far the largest of the vessels moored at the wharf, the Conte Biancamano’s white hull cut an imposing figure as her bow nosed out into the harbour like a skyscraper flipped on its side. Hannah pointed to people crossing the gangplank onto the ship. “Are we allowed to go on now, Papa?”

  “I think so.” Franz mussed her hair. “But you probably don’t want to go aboard so soon,” he teased.

  “I do. I do!” she cried as she spun from the railing.

  Franz and Esther fell in line after her, but a familiar voice stopped them. “Adlers, ahoy!”

  Ernst Muhler strutted toward them in a black beret that matched his blazer. Hannah reached him first and leapt into his arms. “Onkel Ernst, what are you doing here?”

  “You didn’t actually believe I would let you go to China without me, puffin?” Ernst laughed and swung her around in the air before lowering her.

  Franz shook Ernst’s hand, and Esther leaned over Hannah to kiss him on the cheek. “Are you really joining us?” she asked.

  “You talked me into it.” Ernst chuckled. “Actually, with all my prattle about art and excess in Shanghai, I suppose I talked myself into it.”

  “Wunderbar!” Esther laughed. “How did you possibly manage it?” “Your agent, Mr. Rolf, secured me a spot in your cabin. I hope it’s all right.”

  “It’s perfect,” Esther said, and Franz nodded his encouragement.

  “The rest was easy.” Ernst touched a fresh abrasion on his cheek. “My Gestapo shadow, Captain Erhard, expedited the paperwork. Short of packing my bag and driving me to the station, the little fascist couldn’t have been more eager to see me off.”

  Esther frowned. “And what of your … your friend?”

  Ernst’s eyes flickered with sadness. “My friend decided it would be advantageous to his career to embrace Nazism, with all its lofty principles.” His expression hardened and his lip curled into a hint of a sneer. “Needless to say our friendship is kaput.”

  Esther wrapped Ernst in another hug. “Then it’s for the best.”

  “No question. I will miss Vienna, though.” Ernst turned to Hannah and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Ach, no more of this sentimental nonsense. We’re embarking on a wonderful new adventure, aren’t we, puffin?”

  The smile slid from Hannah’s lips as she held up her rag doll to show Ernst the torn seam and the cloth Franz had tied around it to hold in the stuffing. “The soldier at the station stabbed Schweizer Fräulein. Papa is going to do surgery on her later.”

  Ernst examined the doll before passing it back to Hannah. “Ah, not to worry, Hannah. There is no one your father cannot put back together.”

  They headed together for the short queue at the gangplank. They had waited only moments when a handsome young officer approached, clipboard in hand. He wore a starched white uniform with one and a half bars on each epaulette. “Buon giorno!” The officer beamed and fired off several Italian words Franz did not understand.

  “Mio italiano è …” Franz faltered.

  “Pardon me.” The man switched seamlessly to German. He stroked Hannah’s cheek. “The signorina is so beautiful. I just assumed she had to be Roman.” He winked at her and then straightened. “Ensign Luigi Comparelli at your service.”

  Franz introduced himself and the others. Luigi scanned the manifest in his hand. “Of course, Dr. Adler and family. And Signor Muhler. Bene.” He ticked off their names. “It is my pleasure to welcome you aboard the Conte Biancamano.”

  Luigi guided t
hem across the gangplank. On the other side, a waiter in a white dinner jacket stood offering glasses of champagne and a selection of warm hors d’oeuvres. They hungrily sampled the savoury puff pastries and smoked salmon crackers. Franz and Esther declined the drinks, but Ernst grabbed a glass and downed it in a single gulp.

  Luigi led them farther along the shining deck, past tidy rows of deck chairs and tables. Officers, waiters and porters bustled about offering food, blankets, books, newspapers and sundry other distractions. More than the pampered excess, the warm hospitality overwhelmed Franz. In the past six months, he had come to expect only indifference or cruelty from strangers. With a pang of guilt, he thought of his father and the other Jews left in Vienna.

  The moment Hannah spied the swimming pool near midship, her face lit up. “Papa, look!” But the smile vanished as fast as it had appeared. “Will I be … allowed?”

  The Nazis had banned Jews from the recreational club in Vienna where Hannah had been learning to swim in the indoor pool. She missed swimming more than any other pastime. “Of course you will, liebchen!” Franz said. “We can catch up on our lessons.”

  Hannah’s smile resurfaced. Luigi chuckled. “I know where I will be able to find signorina for the rest of our voyage.”

  Ernst cupped his hand over the cigarette as he lit it. “But if you happen to be in search of this signore any time soon, you’re best advised to check the bar.”

  “I will keep that in mind, Herr Muhler,” Luigi laughed as he led them inside the ship and into the main dining room. A high ceiling supported the most elaborate chandelier Franz had ever seen. The servers had laid out a sprawling lunch buffet stacked with foods to appeal to every sense, including fruit baskets, roasted chickens, pyramids of cheese and multilayered cakes that stood two feet high. The irresistible mélange of aromas set Franz’s stomach growling. But his appetite was tempered by the thought of the deprivation and hunger among those left behind.