Nightfall Over Shanghai

by Daniel Kalla

  The sight of two soldiers patrolling on the other side of the street sent her into a silent rage. Where have you savages taken him? She had never known such hatred. It scared her, but it was also liberating and helped tamp down the grief.

  Sunny pushed the pram toward Garden Bridge—the iconic double truss bridge that spanned Soochow Creek. She had to bend her knees and push from her calves just to manoeuvre the pram’s uncooperative wheels onto the walkway. As she wheeled it, her gaze drifted out to the harbour again and she began to mentally sort the vessels, focusing on the warships.

  She knew more about identifying naval craft than most civilians. Her father had been a consummate anglophile with a fascination with the Royal Navy. In the summertime, he would sometimes take her down to the Public Garden or the Bund. There, he had taught her to identify the different classes of warships in the harbour from the size and shape of their hulls and turrets. Aside from the Idzumo, Sunny counted three destroyers in port. She also spotted four riverboats and three patrol boats. She noted the subtle differences in their shapes and markings, which made even the riverboats distinguishable from one another.

  Sunny came to the end of the bridge’s walkway and quickly looked about. No one, not even the cluster of sailors standing on the nearby corner, paid her any attention. Just a mother walking her children along the riverfront. How easy it would be to make this a routine.

  As she passed the sailors—close enough to pick up the odour of their sweat—her blood boiled again. She had to bite her tongue to stop herself from screaming, What right do you have to take everything from us?

  ***

  Sunny’s anger melted into limp fear as she wheeled the pram onto the streets of Germantown. She checked that her scarf was secured tightly around her head, and hid as much of her face as possible. She kept her eyes to the ground and quickened her pace as she headed for Ernst’s flat.

  At the corner of his apartment block, she stole a glance up the street. Her heart stopped when she spotted three dark uniforms approaching. For a horrified moment, she thought the older man leading the group might be the odious Major Huber. But she calmed slightly when she realized he was just some other self-important Nazi. She lowered her eyes again and continued on toward the building, forcing herself not to run.

  At Ernst’s door, she had to knock three times and identify herself in the quietest voice possible before the door opened a crack and then swung wider. Simon reached for the pram and pulled it into the apartment, closing the door as soon as Sunny had cleared the threshold.

  Simon bent down and eased the sleepy Jakob out of the pram. “Oh, there’s my little fella. Jakey.” He kissed the toddler repeatedly until the boy squirmed so violently that Simon had to set him on the floor.

  Jakob tottered over to Sunny and grabbed her leg while staring up suspiciously at the bearded man. Simon crouched down to his level and rubbed the scruff on his cheeks. “Buddy, it’s me. Your daddy. Papa.” And then he even added the Yiddish that Esther often used: “Tate.”

  Jakob didn’t budge. He tugged at Sunny’s leg and said, “Up. Up.”

  “Teaches me for being too lazy to shave.” Simon laughed, undeterred by his son’s guardedness. He covered his face with his hands. “Where did Daddy go?” He flipped his hands open like shutters and cried, “Peekaboo. Here he is.” After a few rounds of this, Jakob let go of Sunny’s legs. Soon he was giggling. And then he raced over to Simon and grabbed at his hands, trying to pull them away from his face. Eventually, the two fell into a playful wrestle, with Jakob crawling on top of his father’s chest.

  Sunny was relieved to see Simon in a gregarious mood, but as she watched the display of paternal love, she couldn’t help longing for Franz. After a few more minutes of wrestling, Simon stood and swept Jakob up in an arm. “Don’t suppose I could interest you in a cookie?” he asked.

  Jakob tugged at the collar of his father’s stained shirt, pleading. Simon carried him to the kitchenette and took a tin down from a shelf. Jakob’s eyes went wide as he clumsily thrust his hand inside and extracted a shortbread.

  “Sorry, buddy. Uncle Ernst’s cookies aren’t very fresh.” Simon released Jakob back to the floor, where he sat happily gnawing on the tough cookie. Simon rushed over to Sunny and wrapped her in a bony hug, scratching her face with his whiskers. “Ah, Sunny. Bringing my little guy to me—I can’t thank you enough. I just can’t. You have no idea.”

  Stepping back, Sunny indicated the pram where Joey was still sleeping. “I do, actually.”

  Simon leaned over to peek inside. “Ah, look at this guy. He’s adorable. He and Jake are going to be such great pals. That poor ghetto won’t know what hit them.”

  “Soon,” she agreed with a small laugh. “Where’s Ernst?”

  Simon straightened, his smile fading. With his face thinner than ever, his nose appeared even more prominent against his sunken cheekbones. “He told me he was going to the market. To look for more art supplies.”

  She cocked her head. “You think he might be somewhere else?”

  “I wonder if he’s out with that Gerhard again.” Simon frowned. “Ernst spends a lot of time with that one.”

  “He has been alone for a long time now.”

  “Maybe so, but why does he have to choose a Nazi?”

  “Gerhard was the one who tipped Ernst off about the Christmas Day bomb plot.”

  “A Nazi is a Nazi,” Simon snorted. He gently laid a hand on her shoulder, and when he spoke, his tone had softened. “Have you had any word about Franz?”

  Sunny shook her head, swallowing. “He could be anywhere. Even in the middle of some battlefield.”

  “They took him for his medical skills, remember?” Simon reassured her with deliberate optimism. “They wouldn’t risk putting their top surgeon at the front lines or anything so moronic.” Sunny nodded emptily. “He’s coming back, Sunny. I know it in my bones.”

  She didn’t comment, but that didn’t deter Simon. His face lit up with fresh enthusiasm. “You should think about coming with us.”

  “Oh, where are you going?”

  “We are going to the Bronx. All of us. Where else?” He laughed. “I know the perfect spot. In Highbridge. The cutest brownstone. We could each have a floor. The boys could wreak havoc in the neighbourhood. We’d find you jobs at Lincoln Hospital or somewhere. We’d all get season tickets for the Yankees, of course. And don’t worry,” he added with a laugh. “The place is as Jewish as the ghetto, so you’d feel right at home.”

  “And how are we going to get to New York?” Sunny scoffed. “On a Japanese battleship?”

  “It’s only a matter of time now, Sunny. And not much, at that. The Allies are sweeping through Europe. The Pacific won’t be far behind.” He nodded in the direction of Jakob and Joey. “Time to start planning for these kids’ future—ours too—after the war.”

  As inviting as the idea was, Sunny was desperate not to succumb to false hope again. So she reached into the back of the pram and pulled out Esther’s letter.

  Simon’s eyes brightened as he took the envelope from her. “How is she?” he asked.

  “As good as she can be without you.”

  “It kills me to be away from Essie.” His face reddened. “I’m sorry, Sunny. Oh God, what an idiot I am. I don’t need to tell you, of all people, that.”

  “It’s all right, Simon.”

  He looked over to Jakob, whose face was smeared with wet cookie crumbs, before turning his attention back to the envelope. “Go ahead,” Sunny encouraged. “Read it.”

  Simon tore it open. He was chuckling as he began reading, but the laughter soon turned to sighs. By the time he finished, he was shaking his head.

  “What did Essie say?” Sunny asked, intuiting Simon’s unease.

  “That she won’t write me anymore if I keep leaving the apartment.” He cleared his throat. “She won’t even let you bring Jakob to see me if she hears I have.”

  “She’s only trying to protect you, Simon.”

>   “From what? My own sanity?” He rolled his eyes. “I’ve been cooped up in this walk-up for a year with nothing but that crazy painter for company. Sometimes, I forget what it’s like to breathe anything but oil-paint fumes and smoke. Every once in a while, I have to get out and stretch my legs.”

  “And what if the Nazis spot you?”

  “How? None of them have a clue who I am.”

  “You don’t look like them, Simon. And you certainly don’t sound like them. Even I can hear your accent when you speak German.”

  Simon pointed toward the window. “I’m always careful out there.”

  “I am too,” Sunny said. “But I still ran straight into von Puttkamer.”

  “If I happen to, trust me, it will be worse for him.”

  She stiffened. “What does that mean?”

  “It would be so easy, Sunny.”

  She lowered her voice. “To kill him?”

  He just nodded.

  Sunny exhaled. “Even if you could get your hands on a gun …”

  “I don’t need a gun.”

  “Then how?”

  Simon shrugged. “I would have surprise on my side. That, and the long butcher knife I always carry with me.”

  The calmness in his eyes concerned Sunny as much as his words. “Stop this nonsense. You’re a husband, a father, a provider, a nurturer—not an assassin. It’s not in you, Simon.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “Not this way. No. It would never work. Jakob would lose his father, and Essie her husband. Is that what you want for them?”

  He tipped his head from side to side. “If it meant they were free of von Puttkamer?”

  “There are countless other Nazis to take his place. Some worse than him. You know it as well as I do.”

  “Von Puttkamer is the one with the schemes. The one who tried to blow up the synagogue and the hospital. The one who tried to abduct Franz in plain daylight.” Simon paused. “Maybe the others would think twice if they saw what became of him.”

  “It will never work,” she repeated.

  Simon pulled Jakob to his chest and hugged him tightly. He looked back up at Sunny with plaintive eyes. “After everything they’ve done to us, Sunny? Don’t you ever just want to fight back?”

  CHAPTER 22

  There was no rest at the field hospital. Franz’s first seven days had blended into a blur of exhaustion. In some ways, he felt as though he had been reliving the same day: wakened by a bugle blast at four thirty, performing rounds and changing dressings on patients for an hour or two, followed by twelve or more hours of operating—sometimes as the only surgeon, other times as Suzuki’s assistant—and then more post-operative care. He didn’t return to his tent until well after midnight. Franz ate his meals with the lowest-ranking soldiers, and only if he could find time to get to the canteen between duties. Aside from the people who worked in the operating tent, the others at the camp treated him like a ghost; he half suspected he could walk naked down its pathways without anyone noticing.

  The work taxed Franz more than anything he had ever experienced, even more than his busiest days as a surgical intern at the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, the general hospital in Vienna. His fractured rib had healed to the point of painlessness, but his knees and back ached from all the time he spent on his feet. And alarmingly, the bouts of dizziness had recurred. He had almost collapsed twice, and he had started to keep track of the nearest available support posts he might prop himself up against in case of sudden light-headedness.

  As Franz now stood beside the operating table waiting for the next battle victim to be carried in, he noted that Captain Suzuki’s mood was particularly sour. Then again, it had been a grizzly day, even by the field hospital’s standards. It felt to Franz as though most patients who reached the table left with one less limb than they’d had on arrival. Worse, some patients were beyond salvaging.

  The orderlies carried in a stretcher bearing an unconscious man, his eyes open but rolled back in their sockets. His hands were draped across his belly, and it took Franz a moment to realize that the man had been holding in his own intestines. Before the orderlies could transfer the patient onto the operating table, Suzuki shouted in Japanese and snapped his fingers wildly at them. Their heads bowed, the two orderlies hurriedly carried the doomed man out of the room.

  Suzuki glowered at Franz. “Banzai charges.”

  “Excuse me, Captain?” Franz said.

  “Why we are seeing such carnage today. Banzai charges.”

  “Is that some kind of weapon?” Franz asked.

  Suzuki snorted in disgust. “I suppose it’s best described as a military tactic. But not a particularly good one.”

  Franz shook his head in bewilderment, feeling the room spin a little as he did so.

  “Tenno Heika Banzai!” Suzuki said. “Or, ‘Long live the Emperor!’ What the soldiers cry as they launch a wave of human assault against the enemy line. In olden days, when guns or bows and arrows took time to reload, it made some degree of strategic sense to storm the enemy with swords drawn. Less so now when they are charging with sabres at men who point machine guns back at them.”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” Helen piped up.

  “Awful loses its meaning in times of war, Mrs. Thompson. But the banzai …” Suzuki shook his head. “Those are wasteful.”

  Franz only nodded. The last five years had numbed his capacity to be shocked at the extent of human stupidity, cruelty and waste.

  The orderlies returned, carrying a new patient. This man’s entire upper body was covered in a sheet and, for a confused moment, Franz wondered if they had brought in a corpse. But then he spotted movement under the sheet and recognized the acrid smell of burned flesh.

  The sheet fell away as the patient was transferred onto the operating room table. His face was blistered and distorted beyond recognition. The man’s clothes were blackened and singed, and every exposed inch of skin on his arms and torso were burned as badly as his neck and face. One of his eyes was swollen completely shut, and the other opened little more than a slit, revealing a pale brown eye that moved watchfully around the room.

  Franz glanced over to Suzuki, assuming he would chase the orderlies back out along with the patient. But instead, Suzuki stepped up the table and spoke to the man in a calm voice. The man answered so hoarsely that Suzuki had to put an ear to his mouth to understand him. After a short conversation, Suzuki turned to the anesthetist and nodded for him to put the patient to sleep.

  Franz turned to Suzuki with a quizzical expression. “What happened to him?”

  “The truck he was driving flipped over. He was trapped inside. The engine, it caught fire.”

  “I see. But, Captain, his injuries …”

  “We will debride the blisters,” Suzuki snapped. “Only then can we know whether the skin might heal.”

  Franz nodded, catching Helen’s skeptical eye across the table.

  They worked in silence, removing layers of blisters and destroyed flesh from both sides of the patient’s body. Suzuki must know how hopeless the man’s condition was, Franz thought, but he carried on as if it were routine surgery. After the operation was finished and the man was wrapped in bandages—the only gap an opening for his one working eye—Suzuki announced that he was leaving Franz to finish the rest of the cases.

  With Helen’s assistance, Franz operated on several more casualties. None of the others was burned but their wounds were horrific, and Franz doubted that even half of them would survive to see the next morning.

  After the day’s last surgery had been cleared from the operating room, Franz joined Helen out in front of the tent, where they had stood on his first night at the camp. The tip of her cigarette radiated in the fading twilight. “Do they provide you with cigarettes?” Franz asked.

  “Not officially,” Helen said. “The captain gives me his supply.”

  “That’s generous of him.”

  “Not really. He has no interest in them. He calls it a ‘fi
lthy habit.’” She coughed into her hand again and then laughed. “I suppose he might be right too.”

  “When did you take it up?”

  “In Shanghai. Shortly after my husband left.”

  “Left?”

  “When they took Michael to the internment camp.” It was first time Franz had heard Helen mention her husband by name. She hardly spoke of him at all. “I was never much of a knitter.”

  “A knitter? I do not understand, Helen.”

  “The smoking. I needed something to do with these.” She wiggled her fingers. “Idle hands and all.”

  “Ah.”

  They stood quietly together before Helen asked, “Your daughter, Hannah. How old is she?”

  Franz felt a slight pang in his chest. “Fourteen.”

  “Practically a young woman.”

  “She can be so grown up at times, yes. After all, she has experienced more … change than some people see in a lifetime.” He paused, remembering how Hannah had clung close to his side in the days after he had been allowed to return home from the Country Hospital. “And yet, other times, I still see the child in her.”

  “Sounds like a teenager.” Helen chuckled. “I remember what that was like.”

  Franz smiled to himself. “I am too old to remember any of that.”

  “I knew about change back then too. My family moved to Tokyo just before my thirteenth birthday. Come to think of it, I am an only child, just like your Hannah.”

  “Yes, well, Hannah might not be an only child anymore.”