by Karin Tanabe
When Emi reached the deck, she took a moment to savor the breeze, so welcome after her months in the blazing heat, then set out to find her mother. The ship had just pulled away from the dock, but the deck wasn’t crowded. The passengers hadn’t bothered to gather there since they didn’t have anyone to wave goodbye to. Even the strangers on the dock seemed happy to see them go.
Emi spotted her mother leaning against the south railing, once again holding food. She offered some to Emi when she came up. “Gohan taberu?” her mother asked, pointing to the dish of rice leftover from the train.
“I can’t have anymore,” said Emi, holding her stomach.
Keiko finished eating, and they both watched the New York skyline receding. “I never want to see this version of America again,” said Keiko.
“I’m sorry I got so sick. You should have gone back with father in ’42,” Emi replied, switching back into English.
“Nihongo o hanashite, Emiko,” said her mother, reminding her to speak Japanese as they had been doing since they left Crystal City.
Emi closed her eyes and let the ocean spray hit her face. She thought of all the sea crossings she’d made in her life. How lucky she had been—and then how unlucky. And now, would she be lucky or unlucky in Japan? Each time she and her family returned to Tokyo after one of her father’s assignments, she felt a certain calming of heart, and she had come to realize she enjoyed the periods between assignments as much as the assignments themselves. Japan would always be home. But now home felt anything but calming.
“Are you thinking of him?” asked her mother, breaking into her reverie.
“Of Christian? No,” said Emi. “I was, earlier, when I was downstairs with that woman. I can’t say I like her much. She’s very rude.”
“I didn’t mean Christian,” said Keiko. “I was speaking of Leo. You once said that you would never be on a boat again and not think of Leo Hartmann.”
“Did I say that?” Emi asked. She remembered her voyage from Vienna back to Tokyo, crying in her mother’s arms. That long journey was haunted by Leo. “Well, he was—is—someone who gets inside your head.”
“Or your heart,” said Keiko, patting her shoulder and leaving her daughter alone with her memories.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 15
EMI KATO
SEPTEMBER 1937
Emi’s peripatetic adolescence crossed with Leo Hartmann’s stable one in Vienna in September 1937, two years after she and her parents had arrived in Austria. In 1937, the country was run by an extremely conservative government, which it had been since 1932. But that fall, the city started to feel different. Emi’s father said it had the beginnings of a tornado about to strike, with the city changing color, just like the sky does before a storm. When Emi had arrived in 1935, she was aware of the country’s Austrofascist regime—her father never allowed her to arrive in a country without a solid grasp of its history and politics—but she also knew that the Jews were not being violently persecuted like they were in Germany. Some German Jews—prominent actors and musicians—were even seeking refuge in Vienna. In those early days, when she was discovering the city, she could not have imagined how the tide would turn just two years later.
It was a very hot September in 1937, and on her walk to her school, the Gymnasium bei St. Canisius, Emi was sweating in her short-sleeved cotton blouse paired with the requisite long navy blue skirt issued by the prestigious Catholic school. As she was switching from an all-girl institution to a coeducational one for her two last years, on her insistence, her mother had brought her to a conservative Austrian seamstress to fit her uniform and now the skirt fell down her slender hips perfectly, though no one would have called the cut flattering.
On her walk that day, she noticed that there was already a small rip in the shoulder of her new blouse. She would ask her amah to repair it when she got home, but until then she couldn’t help but stick her finger in it, which made it bigger and bigger, so that half her left shoulder was visible by the time she entered the centuries-old school building.
It was in this state that Emi encountered Leo Hartmann for the first time.
Two years later, when she’d packed her clothes to leave Vienna, she had put the white school shirt in layers of tissue paper at the top of her trunk, the hole still there, unrepaired.
Emi was in the music room practicing the piano as she was told she could when she interviewed for her position in the eleventh-grade class. When she came to tour the school with her parents, she had sat with the music teacher, who, after listening to her play two notoriously difficult Brahms pieces, had given her permission to use the piano for as long as the school stayed open in the afternoons. Emi immediately took her up on her offer. Three days a week she had to travel outside the inner city to piano classes with a renowned conservatory teacher, but on days when she didn’t, the thought of practicing away from her apartment, especially away from her mother, who made her play every song twice as many times as she would have liked, was too tempting to pass up.
Leo thought he could hear piano music when he turned the corner away from his chemistry classroom, where he’d stayed late to clean up a glass tube that had shattered on the floor. It wasn’t his fault that the tube had fallen, but he was the one tasked with sweeping up the tiny shards. When the music grew louder, he continued toward it, wondering if his mind was deceiving him. The building had soaring stone ceilings and wide marble floors, and the combination often caused strange sounds to echo through the halls, especially on hot days when the thick walls seemed to shift. When Leo reached the door of the music room, he was happy to discover that it wasn’t just an effect of the wind that he’d heard. He leaned against the door and listened. His mother played the piano quite well, but he recognized instantly that she didn’t play nearly as well as whoever was playing here. When the music ended, he opened the door slowly and looked at the slight girl with long black hair sitting on the piano bench.
“I’m sorry,” Leo said in German when she smiled at him.
“Did I startle you?” Emi replied, looking at him with interest.
Leo shook his head no.
“Really? Because you should see the expression on your face,” she said, her amusement apparent. “You look as if I were a cat playing the piano.”
“Do I?” Leo started to laugh. “I’m sorry. How embarrassing,” he said, walking into the music room. “I was just surprised to see you. You weren’t whom I was expecting. Not that I know whom I was expecting.” He paused to think about it and admitted, “Just not you.”
“Let’s hope I’m a pleasant surprise,” said Emi, standing up. She noticed that her skirt had turned sideways, and without embarrassment, pulled the button around to the front. “Did you enjoy the piece? Chopin, Opus Ten, Étude number three. In E major,” she added.
“I know the piece,” said Leo. “I only heard the end, but you played it very well. It pulled me all the way here from the chemistry room.”
“Good!” Emi smiled at him and then sat down again and pressed on a few of the black keys quietly as he looked at her.
“Are you a student here?” he asked, after he had offered her his hand and introduced himself.
“I am,” said Emi, “but I just started today. Which is why you haven’t seen me before. My name is Emiko Kato. Emi Kato. If you had seen me, I think you’d remember . . . being that I’m not Austrian. I stick out a little bit.”
“Do you?” he said neutrally. “Either way, you sound Austrian.”
“That’s wonderful to hear,” said Emi. “I’ve worked very hard to keep up my German. My parents will be thrilled when I tell them.”
“Did you not grow up in Austria?” Leo asked, resting his arm on the piano. Emi looked at it, stocky even under his neatly pressed white school shirt. He had an athlete’s build, thick and muscular but without making him look inelegant. And he was the perfect height to look her square in the eye, just a few inches under six feet, as tall as she was. She was sure that most peo
ple first noticed his eyes, wide and green and bright, but she looked back down at his arm, feeling a sudden urge to place her hands on top of it and keep them there for a while. She realized, when she was inspecting the curl of his brown hair, that she hadn’t answered his question.
“No,” she said suddenly. “I’m not from Vienna. I’ve only been here two years. My father is in the Japanese Foreign Service. We’re Japanese. You might have guessed that already, or you might be thinking that all Orientals look the same and that perhaps I’m Chinese or Korean.”
She raised her eyebrows and Leo shook his head no.
“My father is the consul general at the consulate here,” Emi went on. “Prior to Vienna we were posted in Berlin for four years, and we were in London for a few before that. I’ve tried not to let my German slip away. I like speaking it.”
“I’d say you succeeded,” Leo said, looking at the sheet music in front of her. He flipped through a few pages, then stopped suddenly.
“What are you doing right now?” he asked, sitting down beside her with such animation he almost bumped her off the bench. “You must come to my house and play the piano for my parents. Will you? They are classical music enthusiasts, especially interested in the piano. It’s an obsession of theirs. My mother plays, she has all her life, but nowhere near as well as you. They’ll be your biggest fans. Will you come? Please? You can call your mother and tell her where you are as soon as we’re home. And my father’s driver will see you back to your apartment. Do you live near the school?”
“I live on Berggasse. Right near Sigmund Freud,” said Emi. Besides her home in Tokyo, it was the most beautiful place she’d ever lived, big and light with four large bedrooms, though they only needed two. Her mother had pointed out that a two-bedroom apartment wouldn’t have enough living spaces for entertaining on a diplomat’s level. They were on the third floor of a soft limestone building and the elevator to reach it was an ornate moving cage of wrought iron. Emi often took trips on it, up and down, just to amuse herself.
“Now he’s an interesting man,” said Leo. “Freud. My parents have known him for years. But you don’t need any psychoanalysis today, do you? You should come play for my parents instead. It will be much more fun. I’ll come, too, of course. I won’t just kick you off with some strange driver to be taken around the city. He’s Hungarian on top of it. A very solemn fellow who’s missing a finger on his right hand,” said Leo, lifting up his hand and hiding one of his fingers. “But he’s a good driver.”
Leo made a steering motion with his fingers on a fake wheel, his dark hair flopping forward. “Please say yes.”
“If you would like me to, I will,” Emi answered, delighted. Having started school later than the rest, she’d worried she would find it hard to make friends. And in her new school, she knew, she was the only non-Austrian and would indeed stick out.
Leo slung Emi’s bag across his shoulders and showed her the shortcut to the front of the building through the chapel. It was still as hot outside as it had been when Emi walked to school that morning, but they didn’t have far to go. Leo’s nine-fingered chauffeur was waiting outside the front door in his black driver’s suit and matching brimmed hat. He opened the door of the expensive car for Emi and they got in on either side. Leo made small talk with him as they pulled away from the school. Then he turned and made a clownish frown at Emi. “You’ll see,” he whispered, “a very solemn man.” And it was true. The only words the driver uttered the rest of the ride home were a string of expletives when a young woman tried to cross illegally in front of the shiny black Mercedes, its long, elegant frame curved like a slide over the wheels.
“This is quite a car,” said Emi, leaning back into the beige leather seat.
“It’s a little too much for a ride from school,” said Leo. “But my father insists. He is almost as passionate about cars as he is about music. Race cars, chauffeured cars, boxcars, all of them.”
“Boxcars?” asked Emi, confused.
“Don’t worry about boxcars,” said Leo. “They’re not very relevant to your lifestyle.”
When they arrived at Leo’s, Emi quickly understood that the Hartmann family did not own just a floor of a townhouse apartment like the one her family was living in on Berggasse Strasse, but the entire building. This did not much surprise her after the chauffeured Mercedes.
Leo’s glamorous mother greeted them at the door and managed to hide most of her surprise when she saw her son emerge from the car with a teenage Japanese girl with a hole in her blouse.
“This is Emi,” Leo explained, as Emi moved her hair over her shoulder to cover the hole. “She just started at the school today. Her father is a diplomat from Japan—the consul general. I barged in on Emi playing a Chopin piece in the music room this afternoon. The very same one you’ve been playing for years. Étude number something. The sad one.”
“Étude number three!” exclaimed Hani Hartmann. She clasped her hands, diamond rings on four out of her ten fingers, and started to hum the melody, reaching out for her son’s hands and doing a few waltz steps, though the piece wasn’t a waltz. Emi liked the way her curls bounced around her face, just like Leo’s, though hers were a dark red and very coiffed.
“She speaks perfect German,” said Leo. “Don’t let appearances fool you. But we Hartmanns would never be so mindless as to be surprised by a foreigner speaking German, would we?” he said, winking at Emi.
Looking from son to mother, Emi was sure she had never met two more charming people in all of her life. The Hartmanns, she could tell from the start, were going to be wonderful.
“Of course she speaks perfect German,” said Hani, ushering Emi into her house. “A diplomat’s daughter. Such a pleasure for the afternoon. I am of course Hani Hartmann, Leo’s mother,” she went on, kissing Emi on both cheeks and squeezing her thin shoulders as if they’d been acquainted for years. “And you are most welcome in our home. Come with us, right here and up the stairs,” she said as Emi and Leo followed her up the marble staircase into the expansive foyer, the ceiling as high as the two-centuries-old ones in the school classrooms.
“The piano is just through there,” said Hani in a happy singsong voice as they made their way along the hall. She gestured down another long hallway, the walls expertly hung with ornate oil paintings. “But you must both be hungry—thirsty? Let me just ask Zsofia to prepare you something appropriate to eat in this unseasonably hot weather. It’s just too warm to eat cooked food.”
“Zsofia. Also Hungarian,” Leo whispered to Emi. She turned to look at him and he executed another silly frown, which made her lips twitch.
“What Emi needs to do is call home and tell her family where she is,” said Leo, gesturing to the phone in the hallway. “You don’t want me to have kidnapped her, do you?”
When Emi had told her amah where she was and assured her that she was safe, relaying the Hartmanns’ phone number and address and promising to be home for dinner, Leo asked her if she was ready to play for his mother.
“Mein Froschi!” said Hani. “How rude! She hasn’t even eaten or had a drink of water. Come to the sitting room, both of you, and have some refreshments first.”
“Froschi?” Emi asked, curiously, wondering why his mother had called him a little frog.
“Leo!” Mrs. Hartmann clarified, laughing and putting her hands over her small mouth, unable to hide her smile, all red lipstick and white teeth. “Of course, Leo. Forgive me,” she said, turning to her son. “I call him Froschi,” she explained to Emi, “but he told me I was forbidden to use that embarrassing name in front of his friends. What a bad mother I am,” she said, putting her freckled arm around her son affectionately.
“Please excuse her,” said Leo, not seeming a bit embarrassed. “She has an affliction, you see. She still thinks I’m five years old and that this handsome, manly body is just an evolutionary mistake.”
“Mein lieber Froschi,” Hani said, laughing and kissing him again, leaving a trace of red lipstick on hi
s left cheek. “Froschi, as in frog,” she explained. “When he was a baby he was always smiling and sticking out his little pink tongue as if he was trying to catch a fly. Exactly like a frog. Despite that, he was the cutest little baby. Just rolls of fat and a head. But that name, I’m afraid it stuck.”
“I like it. It’s a good nickname,” Emi said, happy that Leo was no longer just rolls of fat and a head. “And I’d love to play now. I’m sure your piano is better than the one at school.”
“Perhaps a little,” said Hani, poker-faced. She led Emi through the long, dark hall to the piano, which was in a separate music room with a sweeping view over the Ringstrasse. Hani opened the lid and gestured to Emi to join her.
The Hartmanns’ piano wasn’t just nicer than the piano at school, it was one of the nicest pianos in the world: a hand-painted, rosewood turn-of-the-century Steinway, which Emi knew were made only on commission in the company’s Hamburg factory.
She sat down on the polished bench, wanting to embrace the keys, to breathe in the piano and the memory of all the hands that had ever played it, but she managed to just rest her fingers on it carefully and smile up at the Hartmanns as if it were an everyday occurrence for her to play such an instrument.
She took a deep breath and launched into the piece, quickly forgetting the opulence of her surroundings and focusing only on the notes, simple and unfussy, but some of her favorite ever written. She played the étude with more emotion than she had felt in months, transported by her company, the instrument, and the happy afternoon. Above her hung a Fragonard painting, but she wouldn’t know that until weeks afterward, when Leo’s father, Max Hartmann, took her on a tour of the apartment, explaining each of his paintings with a curator’s eye.