by Daniel Kalla
Esther sighed. “It breaks my heart to see her suffer like this.”
“Mine too.”
“She has always been more than a niece to me,” Esther said. “Before Jakob, I never thought I would have one of my own. Hannah never knew her mother. I liked to think …” She cleared her throat. “Of course, you are here for her now. Everything is completely different.”
Sunny gazed into Esther’s compassionate eyes. “You are the closest to a mother that Hannah has ever known. That hasn’t changed. It never will.”
Esther nodded gratefully. “Ironically, in Vienna, it was my Karl who was so involved with religion. Franz was nothing like his brother in that regard.” She sighed. “He was suspicious of the Zionists. He viewed them as nothing but troublemakers.”
“Even when I first met him here, he was the same. Something has changed in him.”
“Regardless, Franz has taken it too far.” Esther shook her head disapprovingly. “Of course, America I would understand. To come with us to New York. To keep the family together. But Palestine? With a baby? And a wife and daughter who do not even want to go? It’s madness.”
“It’s very important to him.” Sunny again found herself in the strange role of defending her husband’s views even though they differed from her own.
“Family is the most important,” Esther declared. “Even the Torah says so.”
Sunny stroked her arm. “We Chinese always say the same.”
Another paroxysm of sobs could be heard coming from the loft.
“I can’t bear it, Sunny,” Esther said, turning to the ladder that led to the loft. “I must at least try to talk to her.”
This time, Sunny didn’t try to stop Esther.
Sunny watched her son move the wooden blocks around on the floor. When Jakob reached out and grabbed one right out of Joey’s hand, Joey just picked up another, unbothered. She smiled to herself at how much her son’s temperament reminded her of her father’s unflappable manner.
There was a knock at the door. Jakob sprang to his feet and ran over to answer it before Sunny had time to stop him. On the other side stood the young male prostitute whom Chih-Nii had sent to Sunny a year before.
Sunny’s stomach plummeted. “It’s Jia-Li again, isn’t it?” she demanded.
The boy simply turned and beckoned her to follow.
***
The rickshaw ride was a blur of worry and awful imaginings. The boy hadn’t told Sunny anything other than that there had been “another incident.”
Inside the Comfort Home, girls and clients milled about as usual, but Sunny picked up on the charged air even before Chih-Nii arrived. The madam silently slipped her elbow into the crook of Sunny’s arm and swept her up the circular staircase.
“How bad is it, Mama?” Sunny asked, fearing the answer.
“Bad, buttercup,” Chih-Nii replied in a monotone. “Very bad.”
Upstairs, two towering guards in matching black suits stood shoulder to shoulder blocking the entrance to the landing. They parted only briefly to allow Sunny and Chih-Nii to pass.
Sunny smelled the blood as soon as they stepped into the bedroom, but she couldn’t see any. Jia-Li was lying on the room’s four-poster bed, covered up to her neck by a flower-patterned quilt. Her face was devoid of colour, and she stared vacantly at Sunny as a young woman dabbed at her forehead with a damp washcloth. Ushi stood tucked into the corner of the room, looking like an overgrown child being disciplined at school.
Sunny rushed over to her friend, and the woman with the cloth skittered away. Only when Sunny reached the bedside did she notice the middle-aged man collapsed on the floor beyond it. He was wearing a Kempeitai officer’s uniform. His eyes were rolled back in their sockets, and a knife protruded from his abdomen. Blood had turned most of his khaki shirt reddish brown. A revolver lay on the floor only inches from his body.
“What has happened, băo bèi?” Sunny demanded, yanking back the quilt.
The right side of Jia-Li’s white corset was soaked red. It took a moment for Sunny to see the bullet’s entry wound just above her breast.
“I wasn’t going to break my promise to you.” Jia-Li’s voice was ragged and breathless. “You must believe me, Sister.”
“Of course I believe you.” Sunny’s fingers looked for the pulse at her friend’s right elbow. It was alarmingly rapid and faint. She looked over her shoulder at Chih-Nii, who stood as still as a marble Buddha at the foot of the bed. “Get some men and a stretcher,” Sunny cried. “We need to get her to the hospital straightaway.”
Jia-Li fumbled a hand out. Her fingers felt like icicles on Sunny’s arm. “No hospital,” she moaned. “I don’t want to leave here.”
“We have to take you to the operating room,” Sunny cried. “We must stop the bleeding and repair your chest.”
Jia-Li ignored her. “The devil, he kept telling me about the ‘Chinks’ he had killed,” she breathed heavily. “How he loved to capture guerilla fighters. How he kept them alive for days and days, even after he’d cut off their arms and legs. How easily he could make them beg for death—without giving it to them.” She stopped to pant for air.
“You must conserve your energy,” Sunny implored.
But Jia-Li didn’t listen. “It excited him, xiăo hè. I could see the stiffness in his pants as he told me about those brave patriots he tortured. I couldn’t stop thinking of Charlie. What this devil would’ve done to my Charlie if he’d got his hands him on. I couldn’t take it, xiăo hè. I just couldn’t listen to another word.”
“Oh, Sister,” Sunny breathed, touching her forehead to Jia-Li’s frigid cheek. “And the knife?”
“Ushi gave it to me. To protect myself from dangerous clients.” Jia-Li’s breathing grew even more laboured. “I keep it under the mattress. I didn’t even realize I was reaching for it. I was thinking only of Charlie.”
“Please, save your strength,” Sunny pleaded. “We can discuss it all later. Right now we have to get you to the hospital. Franz will be able to fix you. I know he will.”
Jia-Li’s breath was cool on Sunny’s cheek. “It doesn’t hurt, Sister,” she reassured quietly. “Only cold. And numb. So very numb. Just like how it used to be on the pipe. Floating above the room again. I always loved that feeling, xiăo hè. It feels like escape.”
Sunny knew her best friend was in severe shock. Without immediate surgery, she would either suffocate on the blood accumulating in her chest or die from the hemorrhage. Sunny lifted her head away from Jia-Li’s and glanced over to Chih-Nii. “Where are the men with the stretcher?” she screamed.
“No one is coming,” Chih-Nii replied calmly.
“Are you crazy?”
“Don’t you see, Soon Yi?” Chih-Nii said, her voice cracking for the first time. “Even if the hospital could help my beautiful orchid, the Japanese would only come for her. For all of us. There is no escape.”
“Mama is right,” Jia-Li said weakly. “Besides, I don’t want to leave my bed, xiăo hè. I just want to be with Charlie again.”
Sunny felt the tears dampening her cheeks before she even realized she was crying. “Please, Sister, you can’t leave me.”
Jia-Li reached up tremulously and wiped the moisture from Sunny’s cheek. “I will never leave you, Sister,” she said. “But stay here with me now, xiăo hè. That is all I need.”
CHAPTER 45
May 31, 1945
By the time Franz reached the Kadoorie School, his shirt was drenched in sweat. He knew the mugginess only heralded the first of many approaching summer heat waves.
In the past, Franz had often walked his daughter to and from school, but months had passed since he had last stood out front waiting for the school bell to ring. The work at the hospital had been more intense than ever and, besides, he knew Hannah preferred the company of her friends these days. But he promised himself now that he would resume the school routine with his daughter and do the same for Joey once the boy reached school age.
While Franz waited, he ref
lected on the surreal happenings of the past month. Germany’s surrender had come and gone with surprisingly little fanfare in the ghetto. The sheer scale of the mass murder of European Jews, which was becoming more widely known now, overshadowed any joy the refugees could take in the Nazis’ defeat. The Japanese occupation prevented people from learning the specifics of what had happened to family and friends left behind in Europe, but Franz, like almost every other refugee, assumed the worst. No one could have been left untouched by the genocide. The question on most people’s minds was whether any of their loved ones had survived.
It struck Franz as ironic that the level of anxiety among the Jewish refugees had actually risen in the wake of Germany’s surrender. The threat of starvation had become even more acute since local farming and food distribution networks had been disrupted by the American bombing and Chinese ground advances. Stories of kamikaze pilots sacrificing their lives to attack American ships only fuelled the belief in the ghetto that the Japanese would never surrender. And if they planned to fight to the last man, then wouldn’t they be certain to take the refugees down with them?
Reports of empty barges spotted on the Whangpoo River had ignited a rumour that the Kempeitai were about to invoke a plan—apparently first suggested three years earlier by visiting SS officials—to load the Jews onto empty ships and incinerate them upriver. Panic seized the ghetto. Franz was summoned to an emergency meeting of the Refugee Council. No one presented any evidence to support the rumour, but people were worried because Ghoya had refused to refute it. Franz tried to convince the others that such behaviour was typical of Ghoya, but his reassurances fell on deaf ears. The night after the meeting, several families stole out of the ghetto after curfew, attempting to disappear among the masses living in Frenchtown and the International Settlement. All of them were caught and viciously punished. Franz, who had tended to several of the victims, had not been surprised by the severity of the men’s injuries, but he found the sight of women beaten to the point of unrecognizability deeply unsettling.
It wasn’t an isolated episode either. As the Japanese sensed impending defeat, they behaved increasingly erratically. A few days before, a group of drunken soldiers had savagely attacked several elderly Hasidic Jews, seemingly for sport, killing two of them and maiming three others. Ghoya had blamed the old men for “inciting the soldiers.”
All the while, American bombers and fighter planes passed overhead with increasing frequency. Sometimes they flew low enough to buzz the ghetto. Many of the Chinese and even a few brazen refugees would stand on the rooftops to cheer on the planes, waving flags and shouting out their support. The planes inevitably targeted ships in the harbour or buildings outside the city, but Franz kept his word to Sunny. At the first sign of the bombers, he would head for the shelter nearest to the hospital, often finding himself alone inside as others went about their business without paying any attention to the planes overhead.
The pall hanging over the ghetto was magnified at home. Hannah had become withdrawn and sullen. Esther blamed Franz. She had confronted him the week before with uncharacteristic ire. “How can you be so selfish, Franz?” Esther cried, her cheeks flushed. “To force this … this Zionist fantasy on your family. Your daughter is heartbroken and your wife is in despair. Is this what you want for them?”
The guilt was eating at Franz. He had tried to talk to Hannah after Esther’s scolding, but his daughter refused to engage in discussion. Meanwhile, Sunny was lost in mourning.
Chih-Nii had spared no expense on Jia-Li’s funeral, turning it into a spectacle for seemingly all of Shanghai to take part in. No one knew how Chih-Nii had deflected the blame for the Kempeitai officer’s murder away from the Comfort Home, but Franz suspected considerable sums of money and other favours must have been involved. Regardless, the madam had held a three-day wake at the Comfort Home, with Jia-Li’s casket ensconced in a mountain of white irises. On the day of the burial, the funeral procession wound its way through Frenchtown, led by the haunting tones of a traditional Chinese band. It wasn’t until they reached the cemetery that Sunny finally broke down. Kneeling at the graveside and lighting the joss paper, she suddenly toppled forward, her soft sobs evolving into something much more anguished. To see Sunny, usually the epitome of composure and poise, weeping and clawing at the loose dirt beside the grave, broke Franz’s heart. She hadn’t shed another tear since the funeral, but sadness cloaked her like a cape.
The ringing school bell pulled Franz out of the memory. Students streamed out of the decrepit building, which still looked to him more like an old warehouse than a school. He spotted Freddy’s tall figure among the pack of students and assumed that the girl with him was Hannah, but as soon as Franz glimpsed her dark hair, he realized that she wasn’t his daughter. Freddy caught his eye and flashed him an awkward grin before veering off in the opposite direction.
Hannah emerged a minute or two later. Herschel Zunder stuck close by her side, but her gaze was fixed on the ground. “Hannah,” Franz called to her.
She turned to Herschel and spoke to him briefly. The boy nodded before walking off.
“What are you doing here, Papa?” Hannah asked as soon as she reached him.
Franz hugged her, but she was stiff in his arms. “Do I need a reason? I used to walk you home all the time.”
“I’m not a child anymore.”
Franz might have teased her about her age but, reading her fragile mood, he held his tongue. “I saw Freddy leaving a little earlier,” he said.
Hannah only shrugged.
“Is something the matter between you two?”
“We are fine.” She turned and began to walk.
Not that long ago, Franz would hold hands with Hannah on their way home. She would talk non-stop, sharing news from class: quizzes she had excelled on, plays she planned to audition for and new friends she had made or, occasionally, lost. But now she kept her distance from him and didn’t say a word, forcing Franz to fill the void with small talk.
Once they reached Ward Road, Franz finally stopped and turned to her. “Listen, Hannah-chen, nothing is decided.”
“Decided?”
“About Palestine. We don’t know when Shanghai will be liberated. And once it has been, we don’t know when or even if we will be able to leave.”
Hannah only nodded, her eyes as despondent as ever.
“It hurts me to see you so unhappy.” He cleared his throat. “I would never do anything to make you suffer. I want only the best for you, Hannah. You must know this.”
“I do, Papa,” she said quietly.
“When you were a very small child, I took such comfort in knowing we lived in the most enlightened and peaceful city in the world. That you would always be safe. But surely, if this terrible war has shown us nothing else, it has shown that we Jews will never be safe outside our own homeland.” He paused, waiting for her response, but none came. “Believe me, Liebchen, I am not so keen on moving to a strange land in the Middle East that might be even hotter than Shanghai. But you were the one who used to tell me how badly they would need people like us—doctors, students, families and so on—to build this new country.”
“I know.”
Franz hung his head, his chest heavy. “Hannah, I will not force you to go. And we will never leave here without you. So, when and if the time comes, if you still feel—”
“I want to go, Papa,” she said nonchalantly.
Franz couldn’t hide his surprise. “You want to go?” he echoed.
“Yes. I want our family to move to Palestine.”
“But … but Esther said that you were so upset.”
Hannah sniffled. “It’s not that.” Her voice cracked.
Franz slid an arm around her shoulders. “What has happened, Hannah-chen?”
“It’s Freddy.” She buried her face in his chest.
Franz couldn’t believe his own obtuseness. Even after seeing the boy on the steps with another girl, he hadn’t put it together until now. “He has hur
t you? Again?”
She just nodded into his chest and continued to weep quietly.
Franz rocked Hannah in his arms, listening to her sobs. His heart ached for her while his thoughts turned dark. Never again will I allow that boy anywhere near you. Never.
***
An hour later, Franz was back on the hospital ward. As he reset a cast on the arm of an elderly Hasidic Jew, his mind was miles away, fuming over Freddy.
“Don’t you look official, Herr Professor Doktor,” a voice said from somewhere behind him.
Franz turned to see Ernst, cigarette dangling from his lips and pet monkey straddling the back of his neck.
“Sir, the monkey,” Miriam called frantically to him from across the ward.
“Is doing fine, Nurse,” Ernst said. “However, we both thank you for your concern.”
“No, sir, it’s … it’s not proper. The germs …”
“Kaiser Wilhelm has a strong constitution,” Ernst said. “I am quite certain he will not catch anything here.”
Franz stifled a laugh as he stripped off his gloves. He hurried over to Ernst and guided him off the ward and away from the flustered nurse.
They sat together at the table inside the staff room while Kaiser Wilhelm scurried about and climbed the furniture as though looking for something he had lost. “What brings you to the hospital?” Franz asked.
“People are disappearing from Germantown right, left and centre,” Ernst said.
“Which people?”
“Your friend, the baron, to begin with.”
“He’s gone?”
“Yes, along with Major Huber and several others. Gerhard tells me they’re trying to reach South America. To catch a boat to Argentina, of all places.”
“I hope his ship sinks.” Franz snorted.
“I will not miss the arrogant sod.” Ernst blew out a stream of smoke. “I will, however, miss Simon. Well, eventually, anyway. Right now I am appreciating the blissful quiet.”
“What does that mean, ‘miss Simon’?” Franz sat up straighter. “Where did he go?”
