Mohr

by Frederick Reuss

  Timperly no longer bothers hiding his resentment of the foreigners-only hospital out on Great Western Road, and his impatience with Mohr’s divided loyalties. Mohr would like nothing better than to devote himself exclusively to the Lester Hospital, but with war and the collapse of his practice, he’s become more dependent than ever on the other hospital for income.

  “No. Today I am all yours.”

  “Are they even taking soldiers there?”

  “Not yet. But they’re assisting at the Red Cross camp along the Nanking rail line. Supplies and medicine.”

  “To keep the wounded from being brought into the Settlement. How orderly.”

  “The wounded get quicker attention near the front.”

  “No doubt they do,” Timperly says acidly.

  Mohr can only shrug. He isn’t especially proud of his arrangement with the Country Hospital. The place is emptying out, part of the general evacuation of foreigners from the Settlement, a slow attrition of doctors and staff. Last week even Nagy packed up and joined the British evacuation to Hong Kong. It came as no surprise, and Mohr wished him well. There was something hollow in all the Shanghailander “solidarity” being trumpeted in the local press—as if there were something epic and heroic in the forbearance of inconvenienced colonials.

  “You realize, Mohr, I would prefer you to remain here. This war is only just beginning. And now to make things worse, Chen Siu-fang is missing.”

  “What do you mean, missing?”

  “I mean that she left here at six o’clock this morning with three ambulances and Dr. Soo from Chun-Teh Hospital and has still not returned.”

  “Where were they going?”

  “To collect wounded up in Paoshan, near the North Railway Station. The fighting up there has been heavy since yesterday.”

  Mohr leans against the banister, suddenly light-headed and slightly sickened. He had been with Chen Siu-fang at one of the refugee stations just last week, spent the entire day with her. “Nobody has gone to look for her?”

  “We’re too short-staffed and it’s too dangerous.” He fixes Mohr with a hard look. “I want you to make this hospital your only commitment. At least for now. You’re one of my best doctors.”

  A surge of emotion prevents him from answering. The news of Chen Siu-fang mixes precariously with Timperly’s compliment. “Very well,” he says at last, not as much in consent as in recognition of something all too familiar: the point where the living must begin filling in for the dead.

  They shake hands a little awkwardly, and Timperly starts up the stairs. Suddenly he turns and says, “I forgot to tell you. I had a visitor the other day from the German Embassy. Some man named Fuchs.”

  Mohr is puzzled, then rolls his eyes, recalling the name and the incident at the cocktail party. “What did he want?”

  “It was very unpleasant. He told me about an inquiry that came into the embassy about you from the Municipal Police. He seemed particularly interested to learn that you’d gone to Japan.”

  “What did he ask you?”

  “He wanted to know how long you have worked here. How did I hire you.” Timperly clears his throat. “He asked me if I realized you were a Jew. Said there was an inquiry under way.”

  “What sort of inquiry?” Mohr would be angry but for the tinge of bemusement in Timperly’s voice.

  “He wasn’t too clear. Something about Jews and false claims to military service. He asked if you’d claimed to be a veteran.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said yes, indeed. I told him I also knew that you had been a prisoner of war, and had received the Iron Cross.” Timperly’s eyes twinkle. “You should’ve seen him. He went red in the face, insisted I was mistaken, that you’d never been in military service, that you’d misrepresented yourself in order to get the job here. He said it was these sorts of falsehoods the German authorities were investigating. Not only that, but he told me he was unable to find any evidence that you had ever attended medical school! And suggested that I fire you immediately!” Timperly laughs. “Don’t worry, Mohr. I know a doctor when I see one. And a Nazi, too, for that matter.”

  Mohr is not amused. He goes to the dispensary to see if the vaccine has arrived from Hong Kong. An investigation! He should’ve expected it. Start with burning books, end with burning people. The man in charge of the dispensary shrugs indifferently when he asks about the shipment, leads him out to the loading dock at the rear of the building. Crates and boxes of donated supplies are piled up everywhere, guarded by three Chinese men in Red Cross volunteer whites. They watch as he fills a wooden crate with eggs, two containers of Milco powder, cod-liver oil, Rexona ointment, Monsol disinfectant, Cenovita yeast, and two woolen blankets.

  Wong leaps from the car as Mohr struggles up with the crate. He tries to relieve him of the load, but Mohr nods for him to open the door. He sets the crate on the rear seat, is about to tell him about Chen Siu-fang, then decides to wait. No point saying anything until they know more. Wong ticks off all the things that he has heard are available at the market today.

  “Pin-go, hung-tsai-tou!” Wong says.

  Mohr digs into his pocket for money, understanding that Wong means to buy fish, apples, and beetroot on the way home. “Dang hsin,” he cautions.

  “Ní djao hu dzï gí yào dang hsin!” Wong shoots back. “My come by’m-bye,” he says, and hops into the car.

  “Come ye-ye lí shí,” Mohr tells him, pointing to the glove box where the extra curfew pass is kept.

  Wong drives off, smiling and shaking his head. Mohr repeats the words, ye ye lí shíh, realizing he’s just spoken complete nonsense. Grandfather mile time, something like that.

  Agnes suddenly appears at the hospital entrance with a group of volunteers. He hurries to catch her. Beside the parked ambulances some sort of effort is under way to assign and coordinate volunteers. In his haste, he trips over a newspaper boy hawking the North China Daily News. The boy falls with a yelp, and drops his bundle. He is no more than ten, barefooted and wearing a tattered cap with a faded and indecipherable insignia. “Pay my pay my!” the boy shouts.

  Mohr grips him by the upper arm, looks him over, then presses a few coins into the boy’s hand. The road is clogged with cars, rickshaws, clanging trams. A motley of military police, Red Cross, and hospital staff work to clear a path for the wounded Chinese soldiers being unloaded from ambulances. A shortage of stretchers and an oversupply of stretcher bearers only adds to the confusion. He presses forward, thoughts careening: bacon and sardines are good to have on hand. Chemistry is interesting. Subclinical avitaminosis. Rilke: Geh in der Verwandlung aus und ein— Go with change, out and in. . . .

  “Max!”

  It is Agnes. She runs toward him up the steps, taking them three at a time. “Chen Siu-fang is missing.” She is out of breath. Strands of wet hair cling to the side of her face.

  “I know. Timperly just told me.”

  “Nobody has heard from her all day.”

  The military police guarding the front doors suddenly begin shouting and swinging sticks. Mohr puts an arm across Agnes’s shoulders and draws her close. “I’ve been worried, too. I tried calling you all last night and this morning. The telephones are out.”

  The front lobby is filled with soldiers, laid out in ever denser rows of folding cots. He leads Agnes over to a corner, glancing around at the mounting chaos inside the hospital. They sit down on a wooden bench. Absurdly, it seems just the time for a private moment together. “A letter came a few days ago,” he begins. For days now he’s been going over it in his mind. How to broach the subject. He can’t see anything clearly.

  She stands up and looks squarely at him. “I’ve been trying to find a way to put this into words, Max. I’ve been thinking about it since we got back.” She sits back down, conscious also of the absurd moment. “This morning my mother was waiting for me at the breakfast table, the way she does every morning. And I realized something. I realized . . .” she breaks off, confused.r />
  “You realized?”

  “Well, I realized this is how it has to be for now.”

  Mohr is unsure what she is trying to tell him. “How what has to be?” His heart is beginning to beat faster. He puts his hand in his coat pocket, feels for the tablets he now carries. He began taking them in Japan, after the climb up Fuji. Glyceryl trinitrate. Agnes procured the tablets with the help of the hotel’s manager, who had them sent from Tokyo. It took three whole days to recover, weak, with swelling ankles.

  “Everybody must just keep up what they’ve always been doing,” Agnes says, speaking slowly, deliberately. “Especially now, with everything topsy-turvy. Doctors doctor. Nurses nurse. Cooks cook. Shopkeepers keep shop. My mother waits for me to come to the table. Everybody doing what they’ve always done so things can seem normal.” She stands up again.

  He is unsure how to respond, and feels overcome by something cold and automatic, something he knows from the last war. It’s the opposite of an emotion, a petrifying substance that invades the blood, hardens vision, clogs the heart. He is still thinking about it a short time later, struggling to clamp a bleeding artery in the leg of a Chinese soldier. The tourniquet that was applied by the medic in the field lies in a heap on the man’s stomach, where Mohr flung it at the first gush of blood. There are electric fans all around the room to circulate the air. The blowing makes it harder to work. He calls a nurse over, nods at the fan. “Point it away.” The soldier’s leg is a crimson purple mess of shattered bone and tissue from midthigh to just below the knee. Mohr is soaked with blood to the elbows. The nurse points the fan away, then pats his forehead with a towel as he thrusts his fingers deep into the wound, takes hold of the torn artery, and applies the clamp. The bleeding stops. He stands back, looks down at the soldier, whose pallor is on the verge of chalk. He pries open an eye, feels for a pulse. “Disinfect and wrap the leg,” he instructs the nurse. “Then send him up to the second floor.” All amputations are carried out upstairs, away from the overcrowded public areas.

  He makes his way through the maze of cots toward a washbasin that has been set up at the bottom of the staircase. An orderly pours water from a large jug onto his hands and forearms. He watches the crimson water swirl into the basin, glances up at the large electric clock over the entrance doors. It has a sweeping second hand that is pleasing to watch, not the jerking tick tick tick of old clocks, but a sweeping, continuous movement, inexorable and modern and painless. He suddenly realizes that he is hungry. And tired. The orderly offers a clean towel. Mohr pats his arms dry, looking around to see where he is needed next.

  Wounded soldiers arrive throughout the morning. Toward noon, he finds himself involved in a heated discussion with Timperly, two Chinese doctors, and a representative of the National Child Welfare Association. How to handle the tide of malnourished refugees who were bypassing the overcrowded stations and coming directly to the hospital for food?

  “There isn’t enough space,” Timperly says.

  “I noticed this morning that the Lyceum Theater up the street has been sandbagged.” Mohr offers. “We can try sending them there.”

  The Child Welfare man perks up. “And you should begin sending the soldiers to the military facility up at North Station. They can be kept there or discharged or sent back to their units, as their officers see fit.” He glances around at the doctors.

  Mohr lights a cigarette, blows out a thick cloud of smoke. “Sending them up there would be the same as killing them.”

  The man rushes to object. “The Chinese positions have been consolidated. You can read it in today’s papers. This is a civilian hospital. Combatants need to be brought under control of the military authorities as soon as possible.”

  “They’re not combatants. They are wounded.” Mohr is astounded by the man’s idiocy, and looks to Timperly. Returning wounded soldiers to the war zone was beyond stupid. It was criminal. He waits for someone to take up his argument; then it dawns on him that there are things going unsaid, a bizarre complex of agendas.

  “This is not exactly the view of Mr. Kobeyashi or Mr. Takeshita.” Timperly’s tone is ironically mild.

  “Who are they?”

  “Mr. Kobeyashi sits on the board of the Municipal Council. And Mr. Takeshita sits on the board of this hospital.”

  And they are Japanese. The picture becomes suddenly clearer. Tending the Chinese enemy. Mohr puts his cigarette to his lips, glances at the Child Welfare man. “And who sits on the board of your organization? Mickey Mouse?”

  A loud burst of machine-gun fire drowns out the laughs of the doctors. It is followed by the high whine of airplane engines. People begin moving toward the doors out of dumb curiosity.

  “Get away!” Timperly shouts, and darts into action. “Get down!”

  Mohr joins Timperly’s example, begins pulling people away from the doors, shouting, “Get down! Get down!” as the machine gun is joined by another, bigger gun and the sound of winding engines. Seconds later an explosion shakes the building. A shower of splintered glass rains down on the lobby. There is the briefest silence, then the room erupts in panic.

  Mohr stands up, examines his arms, legs. He is still holding his cigarette. He drops it on the floor, crushes it underfoot, then scans the room. A throng of people is pushing through the shattered glass doors. They are met by an equal throng trying to get out. The electric fans have all stopped, as has the sweeping second hand on the clock. Mohr joins Timperly, who is leading a group of nurses and hospital staff toward the entrance. Someone takes his arm. It is Agnes. “Are you all right?” she asks in a daze.

  Mohr nods. “Are you?”

  “Yes,” she says and, with a firm squeeze, lets go of his arm and disappears into the crowd.

  The bomb landed just up the block. Several automobiles are on fire. The air is thick with smoke. Military police blow their whistles and wave their guns, push back the gathering crowd. A group of hospital staff is already pulling the injured from the rubble. Several ambulance corps volunteers brought stretchers and have already begun the grim work of sorting the living from the dead. Mohr suppresses an urge to retch, and pushes deeper into the wreckage.

  Timperly appears suddenly. “We need to get back inside,” he says, and is gone again. Mohr continues on. An elderly man approaches, leaning on a stick. His face is smeared with blood. Mohr dabs the bloody face with a wad of gauze, revealing a large splinter of glass embedded in the man’s scalp, just above the hairline. Gently, he pulls it out, holds it for the man to see. “Glass,” he says. “No shrapnel, only glass.” The man nods, seeming to understand. Mohr presses the gauze against the wound. “Du wirst es überleben, alter Mann,” he says under his breath, guides the man’s hand to the gauze, and presses firmly against the wound.

  Moments later he is pressing through the crowd at the hospital entrance, rowing with his arms. A group of English soldiers—Royal Welsh Fusilliers—has materialized, and they are pushing at the perimeter of the crowd using batons and rifles. Mohr feels part of a great wounded organism falling to pieces, can see Timperly standing at the doorway, flanked by soldiers. He is pointing out those who may be allowed to pass. The soldiers seesaw with their rifles, clear the area in front of the doors. Glass crunches underfoot and thin trails of blood streak the concrete. Mohr pauses to catch his breath, hears Timperly’s voice. A soldier uses his rifle butt against the crowd. Mohr continues to shove his way through until he reaches the top of the steps. It feels as if his chest is being squeezed by a great hand. Suddenly the soldier butts a bloodstained woman in the stomach. Mohr lunges. The startled soldier steps back and raises the butt of his rifle, lip curling.

  “Stop, Mohr! Are you mad?”

  And then they are inside the lobby again. Timperly lets go of Mohr’s arm with a forceful shove. “What’s the matter with you, man?”

  Mohr’s ears are ringing. He scans the sea of cots, dusted with splinters of glass and fallen plaster, makes eye contact with a Chinese soldier sitting just a few feet inside the
entrance. The man had watched Timperly hauling Mohr through the doors. The expression on his face seems divided between mirth at the sight of scuffling doctors and sympathy for the absurdity of their struggle.

  WHO IS HE? Did you treat him? How was he wounded? What did the lobby look like just a few minutes ago? What are you supposed to be doing?

  “GO AND SIT down,” Timperly orders, pointing to the staircase across the lobby.

  Mohr marches off like a truant, sits on the bottom step, and reaches into his pocket. As he lights his cigarette, he shakes out two extra and tosses one each to the men on the cots directly in front of him. A sudden rush of clarity. “We’ll mow down to the pond,” he is thinking. “Until it’s too hot.”

  Bright sunshine, a warm, humid day. They had stopped to sharpen their scythes, were sitting in the grass in the shade of an old chestnut tree at the far edge of the field. Käthe took the whetstone from the pocket of her smock and handed it to him. As he set to work, Käthe began to talk about planting a crop of flowers. “Delphinium,” she said. “From there to there.” She pointed from the top of the field down to the pond.

  “That’s a lot of flowers.”

  “Not for the flowers. It’s for the bulbs. People will buy them. They’re popular.”

  He listened as she began to outline her idea. The last few months hadbeen a disaster. Money was getting tighter and tighter. Publishers were purging Jews (Mohr had got by thus far as an angeblicher Jude—an alleged Jew) from their lists. The radio show he’d done with Heinrich George had not resulted in anything beyond some free dinners and a handful of reviews. He had started making plans to leave. Käthe didn’t know yet.

  “It’ll be hard work,” he said, passing the stone along the curved edge of the blade. “I think it’s a good idea.”

  Käthe jumped up happily, brushed the hair from her face, and began to pace as she described her plan. The whole field would have to be plowed under, the soil turned and fertilized. Planting would have to start indoors, in February, and be staggered through the season. As she went deeper into details, a wonderful feeling of relief welled up. His stomach did a little forward roll that he managed to contain by focusing on the long scythe blade. He held it close, sharpened and sharpened, with glances down the gently sloping field to the little pond where Berghammers’ cows were grazing at the bank. He could imagine Käthe’s delphiniums, row after row of deep blue flowers bending on their stalks, lovely against the deep green of the larches at the forest edge. He could close his eyes and see it all, close his eyes and know that whatever happened to him, everything here would be just fine. He put the freshly sharpened scythe into Käthe’s hands. She waded back into the tall grass, swinging back and forth in a wide swath. He swiped the stone over his blade quickly, too quickly to have sharpened it much, then hurried to catch up to her.