The Far Side of the Sky

by Daniel Kalla

  Reuben’s oxfords clicked angrily away on the polished floor. The noise stopped for a moment, and Franz heard him say, “The same applies to you, Nurse Mah. If you assist in the care of Nazis in any way, then you will no longer work here either! Am I clear?”

  Franz looked over his shoulder and saw Reuben disappear around the corner. Sunny hurried to him. “Are you all right, Franz?”

  He nodded. “You heard all of it?”

  “Most of it,” she said sheepishly. “I did not intend to eavesdrop. I was just—”

  “That man!” His voice cracked with anger. “What will you do now?”

  He rubbed his temples. “I have no idea, Sunny.”

  “What choice do you have? You cannot operate without proper equipment.”

  Franz saw her point. Reuben had inadvertently just offered him an easy way out of his dilemma. By rights, his conscience should have been appeased.

  Sunny’s brow furrowed. “This is not over, is it?”

  “Dr. Reuben is not the sole keeper of surgical tools in Shanghai, Sunny. I know people at the Shanghai General and other hospitals.”

  “But if Dr. Reuben finds out that you went ahead and operated on the patient …”

  “I might be searching elsewhere for another intern’s job.” “And how will you provide for your family?”

  More than just his salary was at stake. Franz thought of Clara Reuben’s ultimatum concerning Hannah’s position at the Jewish School, but he kept it to himself.

  “Can you afford to risk so much for one patient?” Sunny asked.

  Why did the Schwartzmanns have to come to me?

  He ran his hands through his hair, resisting the urge to pull out clumps. “I am a doctor, Sunny. God knows, right now I wish I wasn’t. I took an oath. I cannot turn my back on a patient because it suits me. I just cannot.”

  Her face lit with a sympathetic smile. She laid her hand softly on his shoulder. Her touch stirred him so much more than any of Lotte’s kisses. “My father …” she said. “My father would have felt the same.”

  “I knew you would understand.”

  “So when are we going to perform her surgery?”

  “No, Sunny! I will find someone else to assist me. I am hazarding enough already. I will not risk your job too.”

  Her smile held steadfast. “Everything you just said about your sense of duty and obligation applies to me also, Dr. Adler. What kind of nurse would I be if I backed away now?”

  Franz didn’t have an answer. Partly because she had a point, but mainly because at that moment it took every inch of restraint not to wrap his arms around her.

  CHAPTER 27

  Franz and Heng’s late afternoon teas had evolved into a weekly routine. They always met in Heng’s flat, where an appealing blend of jasmine, lavender and incense permeated the room. Though it was the exact same size as the Adlers’ apartment, one floor above, the Zhous kept their home so uncluttered that it seemed far more spacious to Franz.

  Franz and Heng sat, as usual, on the low wooden chairs in the same spot where Shan’s mattress lay at night. Franz had long ago sniffed out his favourite cafés in Frenchtown for his daily espresso—one of the few luxuries he allowed himself—but he drank only tea with Heng, and always the same jasmine blend.

  Their visits reminded Franz of his weekly ritual with Karl at Café Altman. His little brother would have liked Heng. Unassuming, gentle and erudite, the former professor possessed many of the same traits as Karl, even a fatalistic sense of humour. But Franz doubted that his brother, the lawyer, would have ever embraced Communism the way the older man had. Heng had surprised Franz with the admission only a few months before, and he immediately swore Franz to secrecy. Not even Esther knew.

  Heng now sipped his tea in silence, mulling over the loaded question Franz had just posed. Finally, he said, “I studied languages, not ethics, Franz.”

  “Surely you must have an opinion.”

  Heng lowered his cup. “While I am not familiar with the wording of your Hippocratic oath, I doubt it requires a physician to put his own family in jeopardy for the sake of a patient.”

  Franz shook his head. “It’s not just that.”

  “What else then, my friend?”

  “Perhaps Dr. Reuben is right. Maybe pride is driving me more than any sense of obligation or duty.”

  Heng studied Franz for a silent moment. “You said you have performed this operation before, correct?”

  “I have, yes.”

  “I assume that regardless of the outcome you will need to be discreet about your involvement.”

  Franz grimaced. “Operating on a Nazi’s wife? I can’t imagine anything I would less want to call attention to.”

  Heng nodded. “Then I think it’s safe for us to assume that, in this instance, you are not driven by pride.”

  Franz stared down at the tea leaves at the bottom of his teacup. “I do not like to see any person suffer.”

  “Perhaps that is all there is to it?”

  Franz sighed. “Isn’t it still selfish of me to compromise my family’s well-being for the sake of a patient? Especially this woman.” “Because of whom her husband is?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, he represents the very worst in the world today.” Heng tilted his head. “It seems to me he faces stiff competition for that honour.”

  “Ah.” Franz nodded. “The extremists, like the rabid Nazis who would kill us Jews with their own hands, have always been around. But the complicit moderates! They are the ones who empower the fanatics. People like this diplomat who are too educated to believe Hitler’s nonsense about a superior race but happy to benefit from his hostile policies. They have turned a blind eye and allowed the fanatics to spread their poison and terrorize people at will. Ultimately, men like Schwartzmann have done the most damage.”

  Heng tapped his chin. “You mean through wilful neglect?”

  “Exactly so! A wilful neglect of common decency.” Franz raised his shoulders. “Why would I risk so much to help this man? It’s not a sacrifice that I’m eager to make. You understand?”

  “I understand a little about difficult choices.” Heng removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “And sacrifices that affect more than one’s own self.” He wiped his glasses on a cloth handkerchief. “I have never told you what became of my daughter, Chang Jen.”

  Franz shifted in his seat. “I knew that you and your son escaped Nanking. What I … um … had heard about the bloodshed there, I always assumed …”

  “My wife, Lien, yes.” Heng put his glasses back on and adjusted their position. “Not my daughter, though. Chang Jen died two years before the Japanese invaded Nanking. It broke my poor wife’s heart and her spirit. I doubt she would have lasted much longer even if the Japanese had never invaded.”

  At a loss for words, Franz simply nodded.

  “Shan and Lien were never political. I sympathized with the socialists but only in an academic’s impotent way. But Chang Jen, ah, she was different.” He smiled to himself. “When she was still just a child, no more than twelve or thirteen, she read a translation of Marx’s Das Kapital. It changed her. She devoured everything by socialist writers she could get her hands on. And her passion only deepened as she grew up.” His grin faded. “I warned her that Nanking—the capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist China—was a terribly dangerous place to be a Communist. I begged her to go to the countryside, where the Communists at least congregated in the relative protection of the hills and villages. Chang Jen insisted on being at the forefront. “To spread the word within the heart of the enemy,” as she used to say. She became an editor at the most popular—and therefore dangerous—underground newspaper in Nanking: Xin Zhìxù. The New Order.”

  Heng was silent for a long moment. “The Japanese were bearing down on China like a hungry dragon, but the generalissimo never concerned himself with that threat. No. While leaving our borders unprotected, Chiang and the Kuomintang concentrated on rooting out every last Communist sympat
hizer.

  “It was a hot August afternoon—1935. Most of the others from the newspaper had gone to the river to cool off.” Heng chuckled again, a soft hollow sound. “Not Chang Jen. She was far too dedicated for such frivolities. There were only three others present when the Kuomintang soldiers raided.” He held out his small hands. “There were no formalities such as a trial of any kind. They took all four prisoners out to the local quarry …” He dropped his hands. “They were dead before sundown.”

  Franz thought of Karl again. “Oh, Heng … I’m so very sorry.”

  “My wife … Lien was devastated. Shan reacted with anger.” He stared intently into his cup as though looking through a window into the past. “The terrible irony is that we were only a week away from leaving Nanking when Chang Jen was killed. Since she refused to leave Nanking on her own, I had decided to relocate the whole family. Through an acquaintance in Canada, I had found a position at the University of British Columbia.” He paused to collect himself. “After my daughter died, we never left. I joined the Communist Party, primarily in Chang Jen’s honour. I threw myself into the movement, willing to do whatever was required to destabilize Chiang’s government. I even wrote for The New Order.”

  “Such a terrible waste,” Franz muttered.

  “Nowadays, I am not even sure why I still belong to the party. I don’t really believe in it anymore after Stalin negotiated the non-aggression pact with Hitler. It would have broken Chang Jen’s heart to have seen the Soviets betray proletariats everywhere by conspiring with the Nazis.” Heng looked up from his teacup as though snapping free of a trance. “Pardon me, Franz. I truly have become an old man the way I ramble on sometimes.”

  “It is more than understandable.”

  “There is a point to all of this,” Heng said. “My daughter was born a revolutionary. She no more chose Communism than she chose to be Chinese. However, Chang Jen understood the risk of distributing a radical newspaper right under the generalissimo’s nose. She once told me that it was a sacrifice she was willing to make. But the sacrifice went far beyond her. My wife, Shan … and even me to a lesser degree. We all paid too.” He tapped a knobby forefinger to his temple. “Do you understand?”

  “I see.” Franz nodded. “I cannot make this decision without consulting my family.”

  Heng reached for his cup, sipped from it and made a face. He laughed softly. “Please, my good friend, don’t ever again permit me to chatter on until my tea goes cold.”

  Franz trudged back to his apartment, weighed down by pity for his wise friend. He opened the door to find Esther and Simon sitting beside each other on the couch, howling with laughter. Neither of them seemed to even notice him enter.

  Simon choked out the end of his story. As best as Franz could tell, it involved a disagreement between a German refugee and a rickshaw driver that was held in a mishmash of languages. “No chargee, du ganef!” Simon repeated three times, impersonating the distraught refugee’s shrill cry, in half pidgin English and half Yiddish, of “Don’t cheat me, you thief!”

  Esther was laughing so hard that she clutched her sides. “Stop, Simon. Please.”

  Franz’s mood lightened at the sight of them so happy and carefree. The American had that effect on Esther. He wore his love for her as prominently as his favourite fedora. Esther was harder to read. While she seemed to revel in Simon’s company, she never spoke of him in a romantic sense. And a year and a half after her husband’s murder, sometimes late in the evening Franz would still hear the quiet sobs coming from the room she shared with Hannah. In her waking hours, however, Esther never dwelled on the past. She had established a full life for herself in Shanghai, frantic with work and social engagements. Aside from managing the Adlers’ home, she walked Hannah to school, volunteered for the CFA and even ran a small business reselling clothes and jewellery on consignment. She seemed to know everyone in the neighbourhood and most refugees by name. The peddlers called to her so often from the street below that the Russian and Jewish boys in the neighbourhood had taken to jokingly crying out, “Mrs. Esther, Mrs. Esther!” in mock Chinese accents.

  Esther wiped away her tears of laughter. Simon looked over to Franz with a broad smile. “Hi ya, Franz. How goes it?”

  Franz shrugged. “I need to speak with you two.”

  Simon and Esther shared an uneasy glance, as though caught by a teacher while up to no good. “What is it, Franz?” Esther said.

  He stood in front of them with his arms at his side. “It concerns a patient.”

  Esther tilted her head in surprise. “At the refugee hospital?”

  Franz nodded. “Essie, do you remember on the Conte Biancamano I told you I had run into a man who turned out to be a German diplomat?”

  “The fellow you originally mistook for Jewish?” she asked. “He is the patient?”

  “His wife,” Franz said. “She requires surgery.”

  Simon’s jaw fell and he straightened in his seat. “You plan to operate on a German official’s wife at our hospital?”

  “Even worse.” Franz went on to tell them about Edda Schwartzmann’s cancer and Samuel Reuben’s threat to fire him if he operated on her anywhere.

  Simon and Esther traded concerned looks but said nothing.

  “Forget the issue of whether, as a Jew, I’m betraying my people by helping this Nazi.” Franz gazed at Simon. “I have no right to use the hospital you and the CFA built, for such a purpose.” He turned to his sister-in-law. “And Essie, if Reuben is serious—and I am certain he is—it is not fair of me to risk Hannah’s future and yours this way.”

  Esther stared at Franz with the same measured calm she had shown so often in their final days in Vienna. “Franz, you are certain that no Gentile surgeon can offer this woman the same treatment?”

  Franz shook his head. “Those surgeons are the ones who sent her to me.”

  Esther shrugged. “Then the answer is simple. You must operate.”

  Franz was stunned by the casualness of her response, but Simon nodded his support. “Look, I don’t like this one little bit either,” he said.

  “But Essie’s right. You can’t just turn your back on the woman.”

  “What if Reuben or other Jews in the community find out that I operated on her?”

  Esther’s expression remained placid. “You mentioned that her husband could pass for Jewish. How about his wife?”

  Franz had a mental image of the emaciated, jaundiced woman. “She just looks ill.”

  Esther held up a hand, palm upward. “So where is it written that she has to register at the hospital as the wife of a Nazi diplomat?”

  “Brilliant, Essie! It just might work!” Franz exclaimed. “She could be admitted under any name. Nobody checks. And no one, except those of us in the operating room, even needs to know her real diagnosis!”

  Simon nodded his silent endorsement, while Esther offered a tight smile. But Franz’s relief was short-lived. An icy chill crept down his neck. So much would be at stake.

  CHAPTER 28

  APRIL 21, 1940, SHANGHAI

  Sunny’s fingers tingled and her back ached. She had hunched over the operating table for more than four hours—longer than any other surgery she had assisted—while Franz calmly excised Edda Schwartzmann’s cancerous bile duct, along with the head of the pancreas and sections of her stomach and duodenum. Sunny marvelled at his craftsmanship. With the touch of a magician, he merged all the fragmented organs back into some semblance of workable order, before sewing her abdomen closed.

  Edda coughed twice on the operating table as she began to rouse. Free of the heavy surgical gown, Sunny stretched her throbbing lower back.

  “Now you look like a real surgeon,” Franz said as he stretched too. He turned to the other nurse. “Berta, before we move her to the ward, will you please check and, if necessary, change the dressing on Mrs. Schwar—” He cleared his throat—”Mrs. Silberstein’s abdomen.”

  It was the second time that Sunny had heard Franz stumble over
the patient’s name, but Berta seemed oblivious to both slip-ups. “Certainly, Dr. Adler. I will ensure Mrs. Silberstein doesn’t bleed through the dressing.”

  “And please, give her morphine injections as required for the pain.”

  “Of course I will, Dr. Adler.” Berta’s tone bordered on offended.

  “I’m sorry, Berta.” Franz grinned contritely. “You always have everything under control. A surgery of this length—with all that ether floating about—numbs the mind. Mine, at least.”

  Appeased, the nurse unfolded her plump arms and smiled. “Certainly, Dr. Adler.”

  Aside from Sunny, the other volunteer nurses at the refugee hospital were all middle-aged or older, married German refugees. They chattered relentlessly about Franz, referring to him behind his back as “Herr Doktor Attraktiv.” They were forever hypothetically marrying him off to unattached friends, sisters or nieces. Sunny’s name came up from time to time, but none of the other nurses were aware of how deep her feelings ran. While Simon had a hunch, only Jia-Li recognized how hard Sunny had fallen for the surgeon. The previous day over lunch, Jia-Li had pressed Sunny about him.

  “I still do not see the problem, xiao hè.” Jia-Li exhaled a puff of smoke. “This doctor is not married, is he?”

  Sunny shook her head. “But he has been involved with another woman for the past year.”

  Jia-Li arched an eyebrow. “A year, and yet he has not proposed to her?” “Not that I am aware of.”

  Jia-Li brought the cigarette holder to her lips. “Sunny, if there is one thing I understand better than you, it is how men think. Trust me, if your widowed doctor loved this woman, he would have asked her to marry him by now.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Without a doubt.” Jia-Li laid her hand on top of Sunny’s. “But he needs to hear how you feel.”

  Sunny pulled her hand free and waved it vehemently. “No! I can’t.”

  “I know you too well.” Jia-Li laughed out another stream of smoke. “Most women would have let him know long ago through gestures and tone of voice. Not you. You keep it all in. I would wager that the good doctor doesn’t have an inkling of your feelings for him.”