by Daniel Kalla
The captain was fluent in English and coolly polite. He hardly spoke more than a few words to her, and his face never hinted at the agony that he must have endured as she teased away the dressings that invariably stuck to the raw flesh. And yet, behind Kanamoto’s impassive eyes, Sunny sensed a hardness and violence. Her stomach turned each time she saw him; more and more, Kanamoto came to remind her of the sailor who had assaulted her and ended up murdering her father.
Sunny surprised herself with the conspiratorial thrill she took in recording the details of Kanamoto’s visits: the time of day he arrived, the length of his stay, the number of soldiers accompanying him and the type of vehicle they drove. She kept logs in code, recording series of numbers on the inside flaps of envelopes. To further disguise the communications, she stuffed the envelopes with letters written in Shanghainese to a fictional uncle. Wen-Cheng had sent her to a series of destinations to drop off the envelopes. Once she had deposited them in a hole in a wall created by a mortar shell; another time she slid them under the door of an abandoned shop.
Near the end of July, Kanamoto stopped showing up at the hospital. Sunny realized that the Underground had to be responsible for the captain’s disappearance but, when she questioned Wen-Cheng, his only response was a shrug. To her surprise, and slight horror, Sunny experienced no remorse or regret. In fact, she felt a certain satisfaction that verged on thrill—as if her role in Kanamoto’s undoing had somehow avenged her father’s murder and restored her family’s honour.
Sunny suspected that first mission had been as much a test of her resolve as anything else. After all, Wen-Cheng could easily have gathered the same information on Kanamoto himself. As months passed without Wen-Cheng even mentioning the Underground, she had begun to wonder if she had failed her audition. In truth, she hoped that there would be no further missions.
But then, two days earlier, Wen-Cheng had asked her to meet him in the park again. Sunny’s heart sank. Despite her initial enthusiasm, the Resistance seemed more mysterious, nebulous and frightening than ever to her. Who were they? The question troubled her. She would catch herself staring at shopkeepers, waitresses and even coolies, wondering whether one of them was carrying a secret message or even concealing a bomb. Although she still felt guilty about Irma and the two teenagers, Sunny rationalized that she was contributing to the war effort enough by helping to hide and care for Charlie. It was about more than just the risks, too. The dark, vengeful side of herself that she had glimpsed after Kanamoto’s disappearance scared her almost as much as the danger of being caught.
She entered the Public Garden warily to find the park almost deserted. The scorching summer and subsequent monsoon season’s floods had battered the grounds beyond recognition. Sunny spotted Wen-Cheng at the bench where they had met before. To her surprise, across the pathway stood the old man in the grey Zhongshan suit, the one she had pictured a bird fancier. Hoping he would leave soon, she strolled around the perimeter of the park, tripping once over the wild bamboo roots that wove across the pavement like exposed telephone cable.
Finally, when it was clear that the old man was not about to go anywhere, Sunny meandered over to the bench and joined Wen-Cheng. He didn’t acknowledge her arrival. They sat together in taut silence, staring out at the withered park.
After a while, the old man finally began to move down the pathway. Sunny assumed he was on his way out of the gardens, but instead he stopped in front of their bench and slowly pivoted toward her. The sun had made his face leathery, and the bags under his eyes resembled rawhide pouches.
“Your husband,” the man said in a genteel Shanghainese accent. “In the hospital, he has tended to members of the local Japanese leadership. Is this so?”
Sunny’s head swam. Wen-Cheng offered her an encouraging nod, but it took her a few moments to accept that the wistful-looking old man was, in fact, Wen-Cheng’s Underground contact. “Yes, yes, it . . . er . . . is,” Sunny stuttered. “Last year, he operated on General Nogomi.”
“He saved the governor’s life. It was a perforated stomach ulcer,” Wen-Cheng offered.
The old man nodded. “And the other leaders—Colonel Tanaka, Vice-Admiral Iwanaka and Colonel Kubota—Dr. Adler is familiar with these men as well?”
“Yes,” Sunny said, deciding to not mention that Tanaka had overseen Franz’s torture in Bridge House, while Kubota had saved his life and possibly the entire refugee community.
The old man’s craggy face was an expressionless mask. If anything, he looked saddened by her answers. “Has your husband been inside the homes of these men?”
Sunny glanced over at Wen-Cheng, unsettled. “No, of course not.”
“Their offices inside the Astor House building, then,” the old man said. “Has your husband been there?”
Sunny nodded. “I believe Franz has visited all their offices but, as I understand it, Colonel Tanaka’s office is not at Astor House,” she said. Tanaka was the head of Shanghai’s Kempeitai and headquartered elsewhere. “At least, it was not there when the colonel interrogated Franz.”
“This is correct,” the old man said, his face unreadable. “Tanaka keeps his office at Bridge House, where he can hear the screams from the prisoners below.”
Sunny felt embarrassed but said nothing.
“Have you yourself been to their offices?” the old man demanded.
“Only Colonel Kubota’s,” she blurted and immediately regretted it. She felt as if she had betrayed a friend.
The old man grunted. “We need you to speak to your husband. To learn as much as you can about each of these offices.”
She shifted in her seat. “What sort of information?”
“The precise locations. Which floor. Which side of the building. Where their desks are situated. How many guards are posted inside and out.” His tired gaze fell to the ground. “Anything you can possibly find out will be of use.”
“My husband—” Sunny began to say but caught herself.
Wen-Cheng laid a hand on her wrist. “Her husband is not involved.”
The old man nodded, looking as though he had lost his capacity for surprise. “Surely a clever wife can learn anything that her husband knows.”
Chapter 22
“Warum bin ich lila, Herr Doktor Adler?” Frau Engelmann demanded from her back. Lying on the stretcher, she held her arms outstretched above her and rolled her wrists left and right to show him that her skin had acquired a violet hue.
Franz stifled a laugh. “You have Dr. Feinstein to thank for that, Frau Engelmann. Of course, you also have him to thank for saving your life.”
At the mention of his name, Max Feinstein crossed over from the other side of the ward. “You had two choices, Frau Engelmann,” he said without a trace of sympathy. “Be purple or be dead.”
“What is the cause of this?” she said, studying her arms with wonder.
“This has been a terrible summer for malaria,” Franz said. “The humidity, the flooding, the crowding and all those mosquitoes . . .”
The woman nodded sombrely. Her expression, never naturally cheerful, turned grave. “I lost my niece only last week to malaria. Aleha ha-sholem. God rest the dear soul.”
“God?” Max shook his head and sighed. “He seems to be on sabbatical these days.”
“Dr. Feinstein!” Frau Engelmann scolded.
Franz held out a hand. “We used to get quinine, our anti-malaria remedy, through the Dutch East Indies but—”
“Ach, that was before the Japanese decided to pillage the Far East—before the Nazis could get there,” Max grunted. “I tried violet bismuth because it bears a chemical resemblance to quinine. It’s a poor stand-in. Nowhere near as effective. And anyone who takes it will turn one shade or other of purple from head to toe.”
The woman laughed humourlessly. “On balance, Dr. Feinstein, I would rather be purple than be dead.”
Max le
t out a snort, as if doubting the wisdom of her choice. Without another word, he turned away.
Frau Engelmann stared up at Franz. “Will the doctor be all right?”
Franz considered it. “I wish I could answer that.”
“I heard about Dr. Feinstein’s daughter and her poor children . . .” Her voice dropped to a hush. “They never made it out, did they?”
“No.”
Max had not heard a word from his daughter in three years. Although Max had never said as much, the internist had clearly resigned himself to the fact that his only daughter and her family was already lost. Max and his devoted wife, Sarah, never spoke of their daughter in front of him, but Franz found it difficult to spend time with the couple, especially at their home. Photographs of the family papered their walls, and their daughter’s absence was a spectre in the room.
Frau Engelmann’s face creased with concern again. “Dr. Adler, do you believe the . . . the rumours?”
“Who knows what to believe anymore?” Franz still tried to convince himself that the persistent whispers among the refugees about mass murders in Eastern Europe were nothing more than hysteria and fear mongering. But it was no use. Last year he had spoken with a man named Aaron Grodenzki, a Polish Jew who had escaped from the concentration camp at Chełmno. Franz had met the man only once, and the Pole did all the talking. He could still picture Grodenzki struggling to grasp his coffee cup with his damaged hands; frostbite had spared only one finger. He could hear Grodenzki’s mechanical description of SS men cramming trucks full of men, women and children—including Grodenzki’s own parents and sister—then redirecting the exhaust back inside and running the vehicles until the screams died away. Grodenzki’s empty eyes, more than his words, had convinced Franz that he was telling the truth. His last doubts vanished two weeks later when Grodenzki leapt to his death from the twentieth floor of the Park Hotel.
Franz turned from the bedside. “I will check in on you later, Frau Engelmann.”
His thoughts wandered to his own family. Few days passed when the loss of his father and brother did not cross his mind. But it was almost a relief not to have left any relatives behind to suffer as Max’s presumably had.
* * *
As Franz headed down Ward Road, the bright sunshine lifted his mood. The late August heat wave had abated and the monsoon season had come and gone. Three weeks before, a typhoon had pounded Shanghai, flooding the streets and causing mayhem for those with ground-floor apartments, like the Adlers. Water had pooled ankle deep inside, but they had managed to dry out their home over a few days. Still, Sunny’s antique rugs, a cherished inheritance from her father, had been ruined and, despite the windows being kept open, the sewage-stained water all around gave off a smell strong enough to quell Franz’s appetite.
The Adlers had weathered other storms, too. The Japanese still had not connected Charlie to the refugee hospital but, in the early summer, the donations of medical supplies had ceased as abruptly as they had begun. Only an impassioned plea from Franz to the leaders of the Russian Jewish community—with Joey translating almost in pantomime—had persuaded the Russians to continue funding the refugee hospital, albeit at a bare-bones level. The availability of medication was more sporadic than ever, and sometimes the hospital ran only by candlelight. But it had remained open for the summer, and with the help of Max’s violet bismuth concoction, they had already saved numerous lives during the malaria outbreak.
Franz’s concerns over his daughter’s mood had lessened, too. He was pleased to see glimmers of her old joie de vivre. Esther’s spirits had also improved. Now that she had weekly contact with Simon, she had truly become a fawning Jewish mother—fussing over Hannah and the adults almost as much as she did Jakob. Esther had reason to take joy in her son. At seven months old, Jakob had a smile for everyone and possessed an infectious tinkling laugh.
Franz was pulled from his thoughts by the sight of two men approaching from across the street. They wore red, white and green armbands and were locked in a lively conversation, their hands as busy as their lips. Franz knew that, up until a few weeks earlier, the Italian government had been allied with the Japanese. However, after the Italian defeat in Europe, overnight her citizens had gone from welcome guests to hostile aliens in Shanghai. The Italians were facing the same threat of internment that had befallen the local British, Dutch, American and Canadian nationals.
Italy’s sudden switch of allegiance typified the confusing and contradictory nature of recent war developments. Franz had no access to a wireless at home. He had turned down the offer of a free radio from a grateful engineer from Potsdam whose appendix he had removed. The penalty for possessing unauthorized radios was steep, and Franz wasn’t willing to gamble on Hannah’s or Jakob’s safety. Despite the danger, many refugees, including some of the nurses and doctors at the hospital, did conceal wirelesses, and Franz sometimes dropped in on their homes to catch up on war news. The reports were inconsistent and changed by the hour. Depending on the weather, the signal from Allied stations such as the BBC or CBS was often too weak to pick up, so they were often forced to listen to the Japanese-censored or even local German broadcasts, which invariably told a very different story. Regardless of the source, though, the facts were inescapable: the Allies were steadily gaining ground in Europe and the Pacific. With each success—the Soviet recapture of Kharkiv, the sinking of the German battleship Tirpitz or the fall of the Solomon Islands—the optimism among the refugees grew. But Franz’s own hope was tempered by the steadily worsening conditions in the ghetto. Franz feared that the refugee community might not be able to sustain itself until an Allied victory, if it ever came.
The two Italians waved to him, and Franz reciprocated. As he rounded the corner, he ran into Hannah and Ernst walking arm in arm. He was surprised by the sight: of late, she steadfastly avoided physical contact with her father in public.
“Papa!” Hannah’s face beamed. “Onkel Ernst just bought me a strudel at Kaplan’s. The absolute best in the world.”
“Wunderbar.” Franz tried, unsuccessfully, to remember when he’d last tasted strudel. Still, he fed off Hannah’s contentment. “It’s good you have such a rich uncle.”
Ernst stuck out his lower lip. “The worse I paint, the better the Nazis pay me. If I produce much more of this schlock, they just might make me Führer like they did with that crazy little third-rate painter.”
Hannah giggled. “Stop it, Onkel Ernst. Someone might hear.”
Ernst rolled his eyes. “Let them.”
Hannah slid her arm free of Ernst. “I must go meet my friend.”
“Would this friend be Freddy, by chance?” Ernst asked.
“We have homework,” Hannah mumbled. She spun away just as the colour crept into her cheeks. “Thank you again, Onkel Ernst. Bye-bye, Papa,” she called over her shoulder.
Ernst watched her hurry off. “You do realize that your daughter is in love.”
“Ernst, you exaggerate,” Franz said. “Only a teenage crush, surely. She is just a schoolgirl, after all.”
“Love is love.”
“What has she told you?”
“Nothing, really.” Ernst tapped his temple. “You might not know it from my recent work, but I still have the eye. I am attuned to emotion. Besides, the girl positively glows at the mere mention of his name.”
Franz bristled at the thought of his daughter having romantic feelings. He knew precious little of Freddy or his family. Besides, she was his little girl. Franz was not ready to accept any of it. “Precisely, you are an artist. Prone to romanticism, fantasy and excess.”
“Guilty on all counts.” Ernst held up both hands in a mea culpa. “Still, I am not wrong about Hannah.”
Eager to change the subject, Franz looked up and down the street to convince himself that no one was within earshot. “Have you visited Simon and Charlie recently?”
Ernst nodded. “Th
is morning. I spent most of the time trying to talk Charlie out of sneaking out of the city.”
Franz sighed. “Never mind his leg, with those weakened lungs of his . . .”
“Charlie wouldn’t stand a chance on two legs, let alone one. But at heart, he is a soldier. It’s all he knows, really.”
“Will he stay, then?”
“This week, perhaps.” Ernst inclined his head. “He will not stay indefinitely. Of that, I am certain.”
“We must delay him as long as we can.”
“Agreed.” Ernst leaned in close enough for Franz to catch a whiff of his hair grease. He lowered his voice. “I went to that rally last night.”
Franz frowned. “Ernst, you are still a fugitive.”
Ernst flicked at his long hair and then stroked his beard. “The Japanese don’t recognize me. And those philistines I sell art to as Gustav Klimper have never heard of Ernst Muhler or any real artist of my generation.”
Franz was not convinced, but he was too intrigued to argue. “The rally?” he prompted.
“Von Puttkamer spoke. He is something, that baron.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, the usual Nazi doublespeak and claptrap. More nonsense about how all the recent retreats and withdrawals are part of some brilliant strategy. As best as I can tell, Hitler and Göring plan to win the war by fighting backwards.”
Franz laughed nervously but didn’t comment.
“Still, von Puttkamer is very persuasive.” Ernst lowered his voice to a hush. “He spent much of the time talking about you.”
