Mohr

by Frederick Reuss

  It is getting hot, the air damp and heavy. It rained all June, but nothing compared to the heavy floods of two summers ago, when 200,000 bodies floated down the Yangsee. He puts Zappe’s cage on the windowsill. The bird bobs its head, ruffles its feathers. He lights his first cigarette of the day. Three Castles, usually. Chesterfields “when there is company”—as the enormous new billboard across the road proclaims. A row of idle rickshaws stands against the curb, the pullers gathered around a steaming tea cart. Yesterday he had photographed a young mother on the sidewalk feeding her child from a dirty bowl, shoveling scraps of food into the little mouth with chopsticks. He’d treated the child some weeks earlier for scarlet fever and was pleased to see it so well recovered. The rickshaw pullers laughed as he took the pictures. He clowned for them a little, dropping to one knee, then standing up; backing away, then coming forward to snap a quick set of pictures. There is something comforting about the mask a camera provides: the photographer’s intentions so plain to see, yet also inscrutable. Standing at the window now, he can hear the voices of the rickshaw coolies blending in with the steady roar of traffic. Vogel is always urging him to move, find someplace quieter. He has offered to lend whatever money it will take; an old China hand, as the British say. But Vogel isn’t British. He’s a Jew from Berlin, and displays all the affectations of having lived in Shanghai for too long, most notably a big Packard, an armed driver, and a mysterious web of connections reaching like tentacles up and down the social ladder.

  Mohr glances at his watch. He’s due at the Country Hospital on Great Western Road at eight o’clock. Finishing there, he’ll go straight to Lester Hospital on Shantung Road and work there until two. The hospital work is an important supplement to his income from the practice. Shanghai is crowded with doctors of every nationality, but the Germans all want Aryan doctors. “A Jewish doctor getting started has only so many options in this city,” Vogel explained to him the very day he arrived. “In Shanghai it’s scrape scrape scrape, friend.”

  And that is what Mohr does. He scrapes and supplements and spends half of what he needs on the practice and loses half of what he manages to send back to Käthe through transaction fees, inflation, and other rogue factors. It’s ridiculous—both what he needs and what he’s able to send. He needs clean towels and linen and medicine and cotton bandages, too. But how to explain to Käthe, to whom he managed to send only two hundred dollars last month, that he now has a car? Does he really need it? Bussing and rickshawing to and from the hospital was exhausting. He hates to complain and accounts for every last dollar in letter after letter.

  He finishes the cigarette and returns to the woman, whose baby is probably going to die. She is sitting where he left her. He squats down, holding on to one arm of the chair for support, and looks directly at her. “Diphtheria.” He pronounces the word slowly, as best he can in English. He doesn’t know the Chinese word for the disease but assumes it’s more descriptive than Corynebacterium diphtheriae or KlebsLöffler. The ethereal vocabulary of medicine has always been difficult.

  The woman stares back, uncomprehending.

  “Wong!” he calls, and stands back up.

  Wong appears almost instantly.

  “Catchee car, Wong.”

  “Car bottom-side, Master.”

  He slips the stethoscope from his neck, goes to the sink, and begins to scrub. Speechless and cold, the woman holds her baby in her lap. He glances at her, then down at his stained white coat, his cracked and spotted brown leather shoes. The pipes chatter when he shuts off the water. He wrings his hands—once, twice—over the basin, dries them with a clean towel. The woman is watching. Without really looking, she is watching; in watching, she is telling him she knows there is nothing he can do. Nothing. He drops the towel into the laundry bin. It isn’t the small, measured movement of the herbalists he has observed in the old Chinese City, rich with age and patience, but just the crumple, crumple, snip, snip of modern medical practice, so big and powerless it makes him want to whistle.

  THE COUNTRY HOSPITAL is for foreigners only, but 1937 has been a good year for epidemics and overcrowding is forcing an uneasy egalitarianism on all Shanghai hospitals. In early June, the Country Hospital began admitting Chinese cases of scarlatina, meningitis, and diphtheria. Seventy-six at last count. As of a day ago, seventeen have died. Over at the Chinese-only Shantung Road hospital, 2,412 cholera cases have been admitted since the first of the month. As of yesterday, 735 have died. Mohr can’t help taking note of these numbers. Statistics have never interested him much, but life in the International Settlement is nothing but numbers: commerce, nationalities, frightened people.

  The car makes its way through morning traffic. Mother holds her baby tightly, pressing herself into the farthest corner of the backseat. Mohr sits silently, taking in the view. Rickshaw traffic, roadside commerce. Tea, rice, sugarcane, watermelon and sunflower seeds, candy, fruits, vegetables, full-course meals bubbling on kerosene stoves, ear cleaners (who keep him supplied with a steady stream of patients with infections), astrologers, letter writers, tailors, beggars, monks, cripples. Red silk banners hang from every shop front, billboards and neon lights in every direction. The war in the north has not altered the pace of the city. Every morning he scans the headlines in the North China Daily News. He would like to meet the mordant White Russian cartoonist who signs his name “Sapajou.”

  Cigarette smoke curls up between his fingers. He glances again at the young mother and her baby and suddenly recalls a dream he had had the night before about Wolfsgrub. Very detailed. He flew over Tibet, swooped down over the forest edge, and landed. Everything was very still. He stood on the hill looking down at the house. The meadow was plowed. Everything as it always was—and very, very distinct. Eva wasn’t there. She was in school. The sofa stood before the front door, the old green one. Käthe had just finished cleaning. She was wearing a kerchief, and the dog was lazing on the ground. Sunshine, plowed earth on the high, steep fields, and blue delphinium, row upon row of them, top-heavy, in full bloom. His shoes grew heavier and heavier as he walked downhill. Käthe was dusting the sofa and looked up but didn’t see him. His guilt became overwhelming as he drew closer. He told himself that now everything would be good again. He’d come from Tibet, run back home. Wutzi growled. As he took Käthe in his arms and saw her blue eyes shining, he woke up. Wong was standing there with the morning paper and tea and warm milk. His clothes were laid out; the bath water was running. Outside, the sound of an argument on the street, some rickshaw pullers from Yates Road, moving in on the ones who are regularly encamped here . . .

  WONG OPENS THE car door. The mother glances nervously across the vast plateau of backseat, unsure, then steps from the car, clutching her bundle. Mohr leads her past the two Sikh policemen standing guard at the front entrance to the nursing station on the first floor. After a brief flurry over what to do, he watches as the young woman and her baby are taken through the doors and into the isolation ward. She glances over her shoulder just as the doors begin to close. He smiles, offers a halfhearted wave, feeling that, perhaps, his skills of dissociation have been developed a little too far.

  Then upstairs to Nagy’s office. The Hungarian pediatrician manages the staff of part-time doctors who work at the hospital. It has been two weeks since Mohr has received any salary. Nagy is in his office. “Good morning,” he says without looking up. A compact man in his midfifties, bureaucratic in the old-school manner. His upper lip, though always clean-shaven, seems to bear the shadow of a large Balkan mustache. If he has never worn one, perhaps he should start. As Mohr waits for Nagy to finish writing, his eyes wander to the wall of photographs that have interested him from the first day he called here. They are arranged in four rows of five, in identical black-lacquer frames. Dead trees. Nothing else. Just dead, leafless trees. As Nagy finishes the note, he begins talking about a refrigeration crisis and the problem of evaporating ether. Then, suddenly, he breaks off, opens a drawer in his desk, and takes out a book. “Your nov
el,” he beams. “Die Freundschaft von Ladiz. Would you do me the honor of signing it?”

  Mohr is too surprised to answer.

  “I got it at Kelly and Walsh. They ordered it directly from Zurich.” Nagy smiles, offers the book.

  Mohr flushes, red heat in his cheeks, his ears. He turns the book over, reads the description on the back cover: A mountain-climbing adventure, a story of heroism and friendship. Then he shakes his head and places the book facedown on the edge of the table. “No.” He shakes his head again. “Thank you, but no.”

  Nagy is taken aback. “But I thought you would be pleased to know that your books are still available.” A nervous smile. “Personally, I would find it an honor to have my work banned by the Nazis.”

  Mohr glances at the book once again, then at Nagy. “I don’t know,” he stammers. A rising anger, a familiar and unwelcome lack of clarity. He fingers the handle of his medical bag, feeling unsteady and somehow trapped, regards Nagy for a moment longer. Then, with sinking calm, he mutters, “I’m sorry,” and strides out of the office without another word—down the corridor, down the crowded, narrow staircase, through the front doors, and out into the full heat of day. “Shantung Road hospital,” he tells Wong as he climbs into the backseat.

  Driving through the crowded city, the big Ford V8 feels excessive, big enough to house an entire Chinese family. He has always felt conscious of taking up too much space here, rushing about, tactless and not quite welcome. It is hot. He lowers the window, takes the little ivory fan from the side pocket of his medical bag, begins to fan himself. Beautiful little objects, fans. In one of his first letters home he drew a picture of one for Eva, with pagodas and dragons and promises to take her out to find one for herself the moment she arrived—of paper or bamboo or ivory, painted and carved and decorated and hanging in roadside stalls all over the city. And moonstones—because anything that falls to earth from the moon brings good luck, little Eva. And noodles. And bean sprouts. He smiles at the thought of Eva using chopsticks. It is something he still can’t do himself, in spite of several attempts, and Wong eager to demonstrate. “No b’long plopper, Doctor. No can do.” Food dribbling down his chin, he persisted until the front of his shirt was completely ruined. Wong laughed and shook his head. “Doctor no b’long Shanghai side.”

  He is right. Doctor no b’long Shanghai side. Mohr’s temper subsides as he flicks the little fan back and forth near his cheek, takes in the tree-lined elegance of Avenue Foch. Dr. Mohr no b’long.

  THE LESTER HOSPITAL for Chinese, generally referred to as the Shantung Road hospital, is one of the oldest in Shanghai. Twice a week, Mohr treats a steady flow of outpatients in the “chit clinic,” where, upon presentation of a signed note, free treatment is given to the Chinese employees of foreign-owned firms whose contributions support the hospital. “The coolie hospital” is the other name, and an accurate description of the medical work he does here, setting fractured limbs, suturing the wounds of godown porters, dock workers, and other manual laborers.

  He heads straight to the second-floor ward, taking the stairs two at a time and hoping, as he does every day, not to run into Timperly, the hospital superintendent. The corridors of the old building are narrower and dingier than those at the Country Hospital. The way the light filters in through the tall, north-facing windows, and these furtive daily arrivals, reminds him of school, the old Königliches Gymnasium in Würzburg.

  “Dr. Mohr!” Timperly calls up the stairwell. The black bag feels like a dead weight as Mohr turns and waits on the second-floor landing. “You’re here early,” Timperly says. Mohr is about to offer an explanation, but Timperly cuts him off. “We’re closing the pediatric ward.”

  “Closing?”

  “We’ve taken in forty diphtheria cases since yesterday. There are no more beds and we’re out of antitoxin.”

  “I saw one this morning. Mother and child.”

  Timperly takes this in. “It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting any more antitoxin until tomorrow.” He looks at his watch. “If you don’t mind a little change, I’d like you downstairs in the emergency room. Nurse Simson will assist you for the day.”

  “If that’s where I’m needed.”

  “That’s where you’re needed,” Timperly quips back. His manner has always been distant, professional, which is either a general antipathy toward Germans or latent anti-Semitism. Or, maybe, both. Timperly’s manner hasn’t changed since the day he had walked into Mohr’s practice and announced he wanted to hire him.

  “What brings you here, to me?”

  “We’re always on the lookout,” Timperly had explained. “Anyone willing to treat poor Chinese. I’ve heard your clinic spoken of. You treat for free.”

  “That’s not exactly correct.”

  “Excuse me. According to ability, of course.”

  “According to willingness would be more accurate.”

  “I can offer you a small salary. Not much, you understand. But at least it’s something.”

  “I will do it,” Mohr said straight out.

  “If you need some time to consider.”

  “Not necessary. I will do it.”

  Timperly didn’t hide his surprise. “I appreciate a man who can decide things quickly,” he said. “I don’t think you will regret it.”

  Mohr lit a cigarette and smiled from behind the curtain of smoke. “Purple plums, yellow melons, the village roads smell sweet,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “From Su Tung Po.” He gestured to the window, still smiling. “I am always surprised by all this city offers, the sights and the smells.”

  “Ah, I see. You are a student of Chinese poetry.”

  “Not really,” Mohr said, enjoying the difficulty the Englishman was having in taking his measure.

  In eighteen months the measure-taking has not ceased. Mohr follows Timperly to the emergency ward. His scruffy red hair is uncombed, and in his wake Mohr detects a faint odor of unmetabolized gin and tonic, that drink the British here are so fond of. In the emergency ward, Timperly introduces Mohr to nurse Agnes Simson, then excuses himself and hurries off.

  Mohr stands aside as the nurse finishes removing the bandage from a man with a deep gash in his leg. “He was run over by a truck unloading cargo,” she says over her shoulder, then steps aside, invites him to examine the wound.

  “His son was hit, too,” she explains. “They were carrying a large crate and didn’t see the truck coming.” She is in her midthirties, with black hair and dark eyes that seem on the verge of cheer, but somehow only on the verge. She talks as Mohr examines the leg. “Disgraceful conditions. Landing piers, godowns. Nothing but death traps.”

  Mohr nods agreement. She is Anglo-Chinese, and he immediately feels they have something in common. He can’t say exactly what it is, beyond the assumption that she must also feel herself to be something of an outsider.

  “How long ago was he injured?”

  “He came in this morning.”

  “The leg is already becoming infected. It must have happened some time ago.”

  He stands aside as she prepares a new bandage. When it is ready, they work together, cleansing the wound with carbolic acid. The man lets out strangled gasps and sucks air between rotting teeth. Although he can’t be more than forty, his face is dark and leathery, deeply lined. When he tries to sit up, Nurse Simson pushes him gently back down onto the cot.

  As Mohr finishes cleaning out the wound, another nurse appears. Her name is Chen Siu-fang and he has noticed that she comes and goes from the hospital by car and driver. She is young and pretty. Her bearing suggests a class element that Mohr can only guess at.

  “Excuse me,” she says politely, then whispers something quietly to Nurse Simson, who winces and shakes her head.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “His son has just died.”

  Chen Siu-fang excuses herself and hurries off. Mohr glances up the row of cots as Nurse Simson pats the man’s brow with a damp cloth,
carefully refolds and places it on his forehead, then resumes bandaging. He notices the finely articulated bones of her hands, how she concentrates on her work as if attending to some inherited custom. By her hands he can see that she is older than she looks. She finishes wrapping the leg, then turns and asks, “Will you tell him, Doctor?”

  “Me? But I don’t speak Chinese.”

  “Tell him in English. Or German, if you like. I’ll translate.” She begins clearing away the blood-soaked cotton.

  “May I ask why?”

  She stuffs a bundle of dirty bandages into the metal pail underneath the rickety instrument cart and turns to Mohr with a careworn look. “A few minutes ago I said his son would be fine. It was the only way I could get him to calm down and let me look at his leg.”

  The man senses something as Mohr steps up to his side, touches his forearm lightly. “Es tut mir sehr, sehr leid,” he begins, then switches to English. “I’m very sorry, but your son has passed away.”

  The man stares, uncomprehending, then looks to Nurse Simson, who speaks to him softly in Chinese. He regards her for a moment, then turns away. Tears well up; he shakes his head from side to side. Mohr touches the man’s forearm again, lingers for a moment, and steps away from the cot. Nurse Simson remains with the man while Mohr moves to the next patient, trying to collect himself.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she says, catching up some moments later. Mohr glances at the man, who has covered his eyes and is weeping into the crook of his arm. It isn’t the first time he has had to break such news, but every time feels like the first time. He is about to say this to the nurse, then realizes by her look that he has just done so.

  “How old was he?”

  “Eleven or twelve.”

  “My daughter is twelve,” Mohr says all at once, then stops short. Nurse Simson acknowledges his sudden embarrassment with a smile, and sets straight to work on the next patient.

  For the rest of the morning he follows her ward to ward, cot to cot, patient to patient. A thirty-minute rest at midday, then they resume work in the afternoon. Very little passes between them, but he observes her closely. The way she tilts back the head of a semiconscious man by pressing the heel of one hand against his forehead, then pinching open an eyelid with her thumb; the way she unwinds a bandage with rapid circular twists of the wrist. By late afternoon the air on every floor of the old building is stifling. He pats his forehead and neck with his handkerchief, pauses here and there, embarrassed to be slowing down. In spite of open windows and ceiling fans slowly turning overhead, his shirt has become damp with perspiration and clings to his back.