The Diplomat’s Daughter

by Karin Tanabe

“What was that?” asked Jack.

  “I didn’t want to die in Germany!” Christian screamed in his face.

  “And you were right!” Jack yelled back. “Everyone in your family has died but you! So don’t fucking die here instead.”

  Christian ran to a foxhole, fell belly down on the ground, then rolled himself up to sit against a mud wall. He thought about his last letter from Inge. He’d received it just before she sailed for Germany.

  In her small childish hand, she’d written, “Please don’t die, because you never finished telling me the story on the train and you promised you would. You promised.”

  Instead it was Inge who had likely died.

  Christian picked up his gun, aimed toward the distance, put his finger on the trigger, and let the bullets fly.

  CHAPTER 33

  EMI KATO

  JANUARY–MARCH 1945

  Act as normally as you can,” Evgeni had advised her after two weeks had gone by following Oskar’s death. “No one has come looking for you, so don’t go looking for them.”

  She had relayed the message to Kenji, who’d seemed thrilled to avoid her, returning to his life as an elementary school student instead of a for-hire butcher, even if it did mean much less to eat.

  Emi didn’t know what normal meant for her anymore. She had never developed a routine in Karuizawa; her days were entirely centered on survival. There was no leisure, no moments of real joy. Everything was clouded by a fear of starving and the terror of death. But this time she would listen to Evgeni; she would try to find normal again.

  Since the most habitual thing for Emi was to play the piano, she asked Claire if she might play at the Mampei Hotel in the afternoons.

  Claire’s husband was thrilled to have someone who could lift community spirits, so Emi was invited to play every Wednesday and Friday evening. At first, no one stopped much to listen, but by February, as the extreme cold settled on the town, coupled with an even greater food shortage, she started to see familiar faces in the lobby. She even saw Ernst and his mother late one night, although he didn’t make eye contact with her and Emi turned her face away in shame.

  By the beginning of March, feeling that luck had found her instead of the Germans, Emi had attained some calm again. So it shook her to the core when she heard a familiar voice behind her as she was finishing Saint-Saëns’s The Swan one snowy Friday evening.

  “It’s you. The prudish piano girl,” said Hans Drexel, the German consul, whispering behind her. “I see you in town sometimes and you never say hello. Did we scare you that much at our party so many months ago? You aren’t friendly anymore?”

  “You didn’t scare me at all,” said Emi, absolutely terrified. Drexel had never been at the farm when they’d been there—she knew he was far too high up for surveillance rounds—but it was very possible that he’d been told about the theft.

  Emi kept playing, her fingers moving without much thought behind them, as he sat down next to her. “Still playing French songs, too,” he said. “Now that’s a disappointment.”

  “It’s hard to play with company,” said Emi, sure she wouldn’t be able to keep her composure with his elbow touching her. “Even simple French songs.”

  “I’ll move if you play Handel for me,” said Drexel, his uniform wet on the cuffs from the weather outside. He put his hand on her arm and said, “It reminds me of home and it’s been a difficult month.”

  “I’m comfortable with Handel,” said Emi, ignoring his hand and starting to play one of Handel’s sonatinas, desperate for him to stand up.

  “You people don’t know anything here,” said Drexel, not moving. “I wonder if they keep the German citizens as cloistered from information as they do you Japanese?”

  “They—your government—probably do,” said Emi. “Isn’t that part of the propaganda of war?”

  “It’s for morale, not propaganda,” said Drexel sighing. “Which I could use. A heavy dose of morale is needed around here. Germany has been cut off at the throat this month. Berlin, bombed twice in February. Dresden, decimated. Even little Pforzheim. What is there in Dresden or Pforzheim that the Allies want to destroy? Nothing. They’re just operating under a campaign of terror.”

  Emi wanted to tell Drexel that if there was anyone operating a campaign of terror it was Germany. That she had seen it with her own eyes in Vienna, before war was even declared. But all she could hold on to was the word Pforzheim.

  “Pforzheim was bombed?” she said, stunned. “When?”

  “Pforzheim?” he said looking at her. “Weren’t you in Berlin?” she nodded her head yes, but pressed on about Pforzheim.

  “A week ago. February twenty-third, at night, of course. Like I said, the Allies are driven only by cruelty.” He motioned for Emi to keep playing.

  “I have a friend there,” she explained, looking at Drexel as she found her place in the song. “An important one. How would I find out if he survived the bombing?” Emi couldn’t let herself frame the question any other way. Of course Christian had made it, just like she would and just like Leo would. She stumbled on a note, her nerves taking over, and stared at Drexel.

  “You will never find out. Or perhaps when the war ends, but certainly not before then.”

  That weekend, Emi left the Moris and went to search the newspapers sold by a frail woman at a stand in town. She read them cover-to-cover, but as usual, they reported only Japanese victories, saying very little about Europe.

  She rushed home, noticing a trail of smoke coming out of sloping Mount Asama, one of her favorite sights in Karuizawa. She took it as a good omen. Christian could not be dead. She wouldn’t make it until the end of the war if she thought that way. His being alive, it was one of the things that kept the fight in her. She worried endlessly about Leo’s safety, but Christian, his life, was something she counted on. He had to be invincible in the face of war.

  She pushed the wooden front door open with her gloved hand, seeing that Jiro was awake in the living room. She sat by him and relayed what Drexel had said.

  “The government hides everything from us,” she said. “But he must be right. Why would he lie?”

  “About bombings by the Allies in Germany? In cities as important as Berlin?” said Jiro, his eyes closed, as they always seemed to be. “He wouldn’t.”

  CHAPTER 34

  LEO HARTMANN

  JULY–SEPTEMBER 1945

  What are you going to do?”

  “Hmm?” said Leo, looking out at the expanse of summer blue sky over the cramped neighborhood. Now that he had only one good eye, it seemed to have gotten stronger, even though his field of vision had been severely truncated.

  “About Agatha,” said Jin, waving down a rickshaw. Jin’s father had given them money for a ride back to the ghetto since Leo had forgotten his work shirt and Liwei wouldn’t let him inside in his dirty day clothes. Two rickshaw drivers saw Jin at the same time and the younger one pushed the other into the gutter full of night soil and trash to guarantee his fare. Leo took a step, to go help the man who had fallen, but Jin put out his hand and stopped him. “I’ll pay for one ride, not two,” he said as Leo climbed on after him.

  “I am sure I wouldn’t be alive without her,” said Leo, putting his hand over the scar on his face and his bad eye. “She took me straight to the hospital, stayed with me there for a month.”

  “But you wouldn’t have been almost dead if it weren’t for her. If you had listened to me and stayed inside instead of being so foolish.”

  “That was my choice,” said Leo. “You know that. Nursing me back to health was hers.”

  “Is that what you call it these days? I didn’t know you could get pregnant by nursing someone back to health,” said Jin grinning.

  “It worked, didn’t it?” said Leo, not letting Jin rattle him. “Look how healthy I am.”

  “The healthiest blind man in Shanghai,” said Jin, putting his hands behind his head. “Partially blind,” he corrected himself before Leo could. “I’m very h
appy for you. For her, too. She deserves something good in her life.”

  “She does,” said Leo, calming down.

  “Does she know how rich you were? Back in Vienna? Does she know about the money?” asked Jin, without looking at his friend.

  “I don’t think so,” said Leo, agitated by Jin’s questioning. “Besides, we might not ever see it again.”

  “Then she loves you for wonderful you,” Jin said. “As it should be.” After a few minutes he turned to Leo again. “But what if the baby is Pohl’s? Or another customer’s. Have you ever asked her?”

  “She was never with Pohl,” said Leo, sitting up straighter and looking angrily at Jin. “I stopped that from happening by offering up my skull instead. Besides, he’s been gone from Shanghai since last January.”

  “If you believe her, then I believe her,” said Jin, saying something in Chinese to the driver, who took an abrupt left on Jin’s command.

  “You’ve known her much longer than I have,” said Leo. “Do I have reason not to believe her? She’s only five months pregnant. Pohl has been gone for over a year.”

  “I’d believe her,” said Jin. “But I’d also make sure that baby has dark curly hair,” he said, pointing to Leo’s head.

  “Really?” said Leo, who hadn’t dared question Agatha about such an indiscreet thing. When Agatha had told him in April that she was a month pregnant, he had felt a fighting combination of panic and joy. He cared for—perhaps even loved—Agatha, did not want their nights—and especially their days—to end, but the voice from childhood whispering Emi Kato’s name had never gone silent. With the news of the baby, Leo had to silence it for good.

  “Do you love her?” asked Jin, smiling until his dimples showed. “Because I love her. So does every man who has ever patronized Liwei’s. Want me to marry her instead?”

  “No,” said Leo. “I’m marrying her.”

  “Despite the Japanese girl.”

  “Emi Kato,” said Leo, as they got to the bridge. He waited as Leo and the driver bowed to the Japanese guard, and then said, “She’s not just any Japanese girl.”

  “You can’t be dreaming of her still,” said Jin, scowling at the back of the Japanese guard and then leaning in the old rickshaw like he was the king of Shanghai. “It’s not a male trait. We aren’t faithful.”

  “That just goes to show that you don’t know Emi,” said Leo, trying to mimic his pose. “She inspires a lot more than faith.”

  “And Agatha?”

  “She inspires something else all together.”

  “Don’t I know it,” said Jin, letting out a low whistle.

  Leo closed his eyes and let the whir of the city buzz through his ears, appreciative that Jin was paying for their rickshaw, which he’d realized was making turns all over the city so they could avoid work a little longer. It was funny what felt like luxury to Leo now—not a chauffeured Mercedes, but a splintered wooden cart.

  They went over the bumps and holes of Shanghai, then called out to a group of young Chinese girls on a street corner playing catch with a half-dead fish.

  “That’s truly disgusting,” said Leo, looking at them.

  Jin yelled out in Chinese and one of the girls ran over and gave him the fish and he gave her the money to buy a live one. He threw the dead one at Leo’s feet and they both laughed and twisted away from it, until Leo kicked it into the gutter.

  As they made their way to the edge of Hongkew, Leo’s ears started to buzz, and he turned around to see if there was a truck behind him. All he could see were children in the street and Chinese women doing their washing. “The city gets louder every day!” he shouted to Jin.

  Jin looked behind them, too, and then stood up to see farther in front of them, holding Leo’s shoulder for balance. “But it shouldn’t be,” he said. “We’re almost out of Hongkew.”

  “What?” screamed Leo, barely able to hear him.

  Instead of repeating himself, Jin shook his head and yelled something to a man in an alley, but he couldn’t understand him, either.

  Leo looked at Jin worried, and before either could speak, they heard an even louder noise and both turned their eyes to the sky.

  “Is that noise not coming from the street?” Leo asked Jin.

  Jin yelled at the rickshaw puller to stop. “I’m not sure!” he shouted back. After a moment of peering around them again, he stopped and pointed to the sky. “Planes.”

  They saw the American planes at the same time. The heavy silver aircraft had been flying above the city for months, but always low and fast. This time they were coming in high but noticeably slower, which could mean only one thing.

  The rickshaw puller looked up too, dropped the handles of the cart, and started to run. Just as Leo and Jin slid to the ground, the siren went off. The planes were carrying bombs, and they were about to drop them on the city.

  Such a raid had been anticipated for months, and the Japanese had built trenches and foxholes around Shanghai, but there was no plan for the restricted area and there were no bomb shelters in Hongkew.

  “Where should we go?” Leo shouted at Jin, following the rickshaw puller out of instinct.

  “We don’t have time to get back to your house,” said Jin, looking around him as they ran. “And it’s no safer than where we are now.” He looked at Leo, who was frozen in the street, and screamed, “Just run! Start running! We can’t be uncovered like this.”

  They were near a crowded market and Leo pointed to it, but Jin shook his head.

  “Too many people!” he yelled, trying to be heard over the whine of planes’ engines. “They’ll all be trying to hide under the same tables. There won’t be enough room.”

  Leo saw children running from the market and took a step back. Jin spotted a concrete building where a restaurant was being built near the market and motioned for Leo to follow. They sprinted over, kicked in a back window, and crawled inside, the jagged glass cutting up their legs. The floor hadn’t been finished yet and they slipped on the dust and concrete fragments, trying to find something to hide under.

  As soon as they had righted themselves, they heard the first blast. Jin screamed, while Leo covered his ears and crouched down on the ground. “We have to get undercover!” Leo yelled.

  “The ground is soft enough for us to dig!” Jin shouted back, getting down.

  “We don’t have time,” said Leo, running over to a big wooden table and crawling under it. Jin joined him and they started digging with their hands and fragments of concrete blocks. When the bombs got louder, falling closer, the ground shook heavily at each explosion, and Jin yelled for them to stop.

  “Forget it! Get down! Lie down flat on your stomach. Cover your good eye with your hands!” he said, grabbing Leo and pushing him to the ground.

  Elbow to elbow, faces in the dirt, they waited in silence as the American bombs rained down.

  Leo started to pray under his breath, for his parents, for Jin’s family, for Agatha and the baby, until the explosions were so loud he couldn’t even think straight enough to pray. All he could do was pinch his eyes shut and wait to see if he was meant to die that day.

  He heard Jin breathing fast next to him and realized that suddenly it was quiet. The siren had stopped, along with the deafening blasts. The planes had passed over.

  Leo looked at Jin and they both moved their faces out of the dirt and listened. The city was eerily still. Leo finally heard someone crying softly and turned to see that they were not alone in the restaurant. A Chinese family had come in, too, and they all looked at each other, the young men under the table staring at the parents and children.

  “Is it over?” Jin asked Leo. “Are we alive?”

  Leo crept out and leaned against the table. “I don’t know if it’s over,” he said, “but we are definitely alive.”

  Jin spoke to the family in Chinese, his voice snapping them out of their terror, and all three of the children—shoeless and covered in dust—started to wail. That was the end of their quiet. At
the same moment, they became aware of ambulance sirens and screams outside.

  Jin and Leo climbed out the window they had come in through. Jin was out first and he stopped short. The stalls, the people in the open-air market, they saw, had been decimated. The air was full of dust, as the chaos of the downed buildings hadn’t settled yet. The people who were running around were covered in layers of debris, looking like they’d rolled in a fireplace.

  Leo grabbed Jin’s arm and they both ran toward what was left of the market, battling their way through piles of rubble. They tried to heave aside the pieces of broken concrete, but they were too heavy. Jin called out to the swarm of men gathering on the street to come help them. With their aid, they were able to shift several jagged slabs from atop the mound. As the largest slab fell to the side, they saw two crumpled bodies. Chinese bodies. Leo climbed up to another section, moved heavy rubble with the help of more men, and saw another dead face.

  “No one here has survived this!” he cried. He shoved aside another piece of concrete and the sight of a severed arm knocked the breath out of him. As the work proceeded, they uncovered more bodies, piled on top of others.

  “How do you know they’re all dead?” Jin said. “We have to lift every piece. What if there is someone alive at the bottom?”

  “But the person on the top is dead!” Leo yelled. “How can the others underneath be alive?”

  “Go inside and get more help. I’m not leaving!” Jin screamed, desperately trying to move the heavy rubble with his bleeding hands.

  Fire trucks and ambulances approached, their sirens blaring, and men were already starting to haul the dust-covered bodies of the dead out of the market in rickshaws. A team of medics arrived and ran inside, and Jin called out to them to help. Two broke off and came to dig through the rubble with them, but as Leo had thought, every body they found had had the life knocked out of them by the American bombs.

  “I can’t see one more dead child,” said Jin as the Chinese medics took more bodies away. There had been only two foreigners in the rubble; every other one, more than a hundred so far, were Chinese.