The Far Side of the Sky

by Daniel Kalla

  “I never suggested that,” Clara shot back. “I was merely pointing out that the situation is less volatile than immediately following the invasion. Life goes on. Would you not agree that one needs to at least try to make the best of one’s circumstances?”

  Before Esther could answer, Reuben piped up, “Speaking of weddings, say, Adler, did you hear about Dr. Huang? Word is that the fool has gone and proposed to Miss Mah!”

  Franz went cold. “Wen-Cheng and Sunny?”

  Reuben nodded. “Can you imagine what he would be getting himself into by marrying that woman? To be led around by a rope for the rest of his days, no doubt.”

  Franz was too stunned to respond, but Simon grabbed him by the arm and ushered him away with a quick excuse.

  “She doesn’t love him, Franz,” Simon said when they were out of earshot of the others.

  Franz stopped dead. “You knew about this too?”

  Simon dug his hands in his pockets and shrugged.

  Franz squinted at Simon. “And you chose not to tell me?”

  “Sunny swore me to secrecy.”

  Franz let the anger with Simon cover his hurt. “So instead you betrayed me!”

  “Listen, Franz, Sunny hasn’t said yes to him.”

  “But has she told him no?”

  Simon shook his head slightly.

  Franz’s chest ached. “When did this happen?”

  “Right before Pearl Harbor.”

  “Almost a month ago?” Franz groaned.

  “I know you’re upset. But after all, Doc, you’re engaged, yourself.”

  “Only to protect my family. Sunny understands that too.” Franz tapped his chest. “She never even mentioned Wen-Cheng’s intentions toward her.”

  “Doesn’t that make you think that she plans to turn him down?”

  “I need a few moments to myself. Will you please accompany Hannah and Essie home?” Franz turned and trudged away without waiting for his friend’s response.

  As Franz wandered home alone, he began to calm down. Still, he could not shake the sting of Sunny’s deception and, worse still, the sense of foolishness he felt for believing his own romantic fantasies.

  As Franz neared his building, he saw Heng Zhou struggling with the sack of rice slung over his shoulder as he tried to open the front door. Franz hurried over. “Let me help you,” he said.

  “No.” Heng stumbled back a few steps. “I need the exercise, my friend.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes, yes. Thank you, though.” Stooped below the weight of his load, Heng appeared to have aged years in the past month. “It has been too long since we last had tea. I do not suppose you would have time for a cup now?”

  In no hurry to face Simon and Esther, and the inevitable discussion about Sunny, Franz nodded. “A cup of tea would be very welcome, my friend.”

  The old man lumbered up the single flight of stairs, tottering at times. Franz wondered again where Heng managed to find rice in such quantity and how he and his mostly absent son could go through so much of it.

  Inside the flat, Heng headed straight for the closet and delicately lowered the sack to the floor, then pulled the closet curtain closed. He went to the kitchen and placed a rusting kettle on top of the element. “I suppose I should consider myself fortunate,” he remarked as he raised the can of jasmine tea. “I never expected to live through a second invasion.”

  “It is not as bad as Nanking, is it?”

  “Nothing could be.”

  “Did Ernst ever show you his paintings of Nanking?”

  Heng shook his head. “I would not have wanted to see them had he offered. Shan assures me they are painfully accurate.” He pulled two cups off the shelf and spooned tea leaves into a small ceramic pot. “He is talented, your friend Ernst.”

  “Maybe even a genius,” Franz sighed. “At the very least, he is certainly temperamental and difficult enough to be a genius.”

  Heng stared past Franz out the window. “He cares about my son. He is good to him. For me, that is what matters.”

  The kettle whistled. Heng poured the boiling water into the pot and replaced the lid. “Shall we sit?”

  Heng carried the teapot while Franz took the cups over to the table. “Children have endless capacity to surprise their parents,” Heng said, lowering himself into a chair. “Have you not noticed the same in your daughter?”

  “I suppose so, yes,” Franz said. “Hannah’s tenacity amazes me. All the setbacks and misfortunes fate throws in her path only make her that much more determined.”

  Heng smiled sadly. “Neither of my children turned out as I had envisioned.”

  “How so?”

  “When Chang Jen was a little girl, she loved insects—ants, earwigs, moths, even spiders.” Heng paused a moment, lost in thought. “We had to keep insect zoos in the home. Chang Jen would divert herself for hours sketching and handling them, or simply observing. I expected her to become an entomologist, a biologist or a scientist of some kind.” He chuckled to himself. “All those ists, but I never dreamed fervent Communist would be her choice. Of course, there are some unavoidable analogies between Communism and the insect world. Worker bees, colonies of ants and so forth.”

  “And Shan?” Franz asked.

  “He was the protective one. Always keeping an eye out for his little sister and his mother. That is why what happened in Nanking was that much worse for him.”

  “What could he have possibly done?”

  “Nothing, of course, but guilt is rarely rational.” Heng rubbed his watering eyes again with a handkerchief. “I am the only one who could have made a difference. Had we left for Canada a few weeks earlier, we would still be together now.”

  “But the timing was so random, my friend. Surely you see that?”

  Heng shrugged. “When Shan was a boy, I worried he might grow up to be a policeman or a soldier or some such dangerous profession. I never expected him to wind up as an engineer or become as … as sensitive as he is.”

  A vehicle roared down a street, drawing Heng’s attention. He listened for a moment before turning back to Franz. “Please do not misunderstand me. I do not mean to condemn Shan’s inclination. While Chang Jen was born a Communist, Shan was destined—”

  The whine of tires skidding around the corner cut Heng off in mid-sentence. He sprang from the chair and dashed for the window. Pressing his forehead against the glass, he peered out to the street below. Heng jerked his head back as though shot at. “Leave here, Franz. Now!”

  “What is it?”

  The vehicle screeched to a halt. Boots pounded the pavement. Heng went white. “The Kempeitai!” he breathed. Franz’s heart thumped in his throat.

  “Go!” Heng swung his hand wildly at the door. “They’ve come for me! Go, Franz!”

  “For you? How do—”

  Heng gestured wildly toward the closet. “Inside the sack! My shortwave transmitter!”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I have been reporting on Japanese troop movements. They must have tracked my signal.” He clutched his chest. “I am a spy!” Franz was dumbfounded.

  A pane of glass shattered below, launching a chill up Franz’s spine. A vision of Karl’s hanging corpse flashed into his mind. “Go, Franz!” Heng cried again.

  Franz bolted for the door. As he grabbed hold of the knob, Heng called to him, “Don’t let them find my son!”

  “I won’t!” Franz blurted. He dashed out the door and into the stairwell.

  Feet thundered on the stairs below as Franz shot up the staircase and lunged the last few steps onto the landing. He thrust open the door to his apartment, lunged inside and slammed it shut behind him.

  Across the room, Esther yelped in surprise and grabbed for Hannah, pulling the girl tightly against her. Simon gaped at him. “Franz, what the—”

  Franz silenced him with a rigid forefinger to his lips. “Essie,” he whispered. “Take Hannah to the bedroom. Close the door. Under the bed, both of yo
u. Now!”

  Eyes like saucers, Esther nodded. Hannah grabbed her aunt’s hand and they hurried off together.

  Banging, stomping and shrieks leaked through the floorboards from the Zhous’ apartment below. Barely breathing, Franz stood motionless and listened to the commotion. After a few minutes, the noises died away and he heard the sound of boots in the stairwell again.

  Simon rushed to the window. Franz followed. With heads almost touching, they looked out to the street. A military transport truck was parked on the sidewalk between two police cars. Several Kempeitai men patrolled the street.

  Two officers stormed out of the building, dragging Heng roughly between them. Their prisoner hung limply in their arms. His shoes scuffed the ground as they hauled him toward the truck. Franz wondered if Heng was even conscious; for his friend’s sake, he hoped not.

  Another policeman followed them, coils of copper wire in his arms, along with a speaker, transmitter components and the empty rice sack.

  “Oh, Heng, why?” Franz muttered to the window.

  CHAPTER 38

  Sunny knelt at the bedside as she ran her fingers up and down the wrist of the young patient, Frieda Schnepp, in search of her radial artery. The woman’s skin felt like parchment paper, but Sunny finally sensed a faint pulse.

  “Sunny!” Dr. Feinstein called. She glanced up to see Max standing at the foot of the bed. “I just reviewed the slide. Definitely cholera. Her stool is loaded with the bacteria.”

  Sunny didn’t need Max’s microscope to know that cholera was the culprit. Frau Schnepp, the twenty-three-year-old mother of two, had walked in on her own steam four hours earlier complaining of diarrhea and now lay in a coma from extreme dehydration. She was the hospital’s third such patient in forty-eight hours, but even without the others, Sunny would have diagnosed her with cholera. Nothing else could sap someone’s fluids so rapidly or completely. The oral rehydration formula had run through Schnepp as though poured through a sieve. Even after the woman had slipped into a coma, she continued to ooze odourless rice water–like fluid.

  Sunny ran her fingers higher up Frau Schnepp’s arm until she felt a flattened vein slide under her fingers. She pierced the skin with the needle and had to jiggle it at several angles before the tip found the vein and the first drop of blood formed at its end.

  Sunny reached behind her for the rubber tubing and attached the bottle of Ringer’s lactate. Two nights before, forty-eight bottles of the intravenous fluid had materialized on the hospital’s doorsteps. Without the anonymous donation, Frau Schnepp would certainly die. Even with the fluid, Sunny wondered if she could possibly hang on.

  As the solution ran into the woman’s arm, Sunny stood up and stretched her back. There was nothing left to do. Either the cholera or the fluid would prevail, and soon.

  Sunny turned to Max. “I thought cholera didn’t strike in wintertime.”

  He tilted his head from side to side. “Normally, no. But cholera loves water, and this has been a wet and, thanks to the Nazis of the Pacific, a particularly miserable winter.”

  Sunny had worked through two previous cholera outbreaks. She cringed at the memories of the victims, especially the children, who were most susceptible and often died. “Dr. Feinstein, if this takes hold in the community …”

  Max closed his eyes and shook his head. “God help us.”

  Sunny glimpsed the clock again and realized Franz was already two hours late for surgery. With the supply of ether refreshed, he had scheduled two surgeries, a hernia repair and a hysterectomy, for the afternoon. She had never known Franz to be so late. Still, Sunny thought it would be easier not to see him. In the operating room, she sometimes melted at the incidental brush of their shoulders or the feel of his breath on her cheek. In bed at night, she could not stem the recurring fantasy of Franz slipping under the covers beside her. The image was enough to set her skin afire.

  Sunny looked over and noticed that Frau Schnepp’s intravenous bottle had run halfway through. She prepared a fresh bottle, acutely aware how rapidly a cholera outbreak would exhaust their replenished supplies.

  Franz called out from behind her. “May I speak to you outside, please, Miss Mah?”

  Relieved, Sunny hurried across the room and followed him out to the hallway.

  Max joined them from the other direction. “Ah, Franz, have you heard about the cholera?” He gestured to Schnepp’s bed. “All the cases have come from the same heim. On Ward Road.”

  “I know the place,” Franz muttered. “Esther and Hannah volunteer in the kitchen.”

  Max shook his head. “Four hundred people live there. Imagine if the cholera spreads.”

  Franz glanced at his watch. “Listen, Max, can we discuss this after surgery?”

  “I will be here.” Max shrugged. “And with luck so too will poor Mrs. Schnepp.”

  Sunny followed Franz outside. Franz stopped halfway down the pathway leading to the street. He glanced over either shoulder and then spoke in a hushed voice. “My friend, Ernst, the artist—”

  “Yes, I met him once.”

  “Has he come by the hospital today?”

  “I haven’t seen him, no.”

  Franz kicked at the ground and mumbled something unintelligible. “What is it, Franz?” she asked.

  “My neighbour, Heng Zhou, was just dragged away by the Kempeitai. Just before they came, he actually admitted to me that he is a spy.” He exhaled. “His son, Shan, is a close friend of Ernst’s. I am worried the police might have already arrested them too.”

  Sunny brought a hand to her cheek. “What makes you think so, Franz?”

  “I went to Ernst’s flat. It had been ransacked. They even ripped the walls away in places.”

  “Then surely the men were not home?”

  “Perhaps, but I cannot find them anywhere. What if the Kempeitai already have them?”

  “Or perhaps they are in hiding.” Sunny laid her hand on his wrist. “I am sorry about your friends, Franz.”

  Franz pulled his arm free of her grip. “Our surgical patients are waiting.”

  His cool tone stung Sunny more than his physical withdrawal. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  Franz started for the entrance, but Sunny hesitated, wondering what had suddenly changed between them.

  In the operating room, Franz allowed Sunny to perform the hernia surgery with complete independence. He barely uttered a word as he held back retractors and cut sutures for her. Afterward, Franz excused himself to step outside for fresh air.

  Sunny followed him back out to the pathway. “Franz, have I done something to offend you?”

  “How so?”

  “You seem so … so distant.”

  He eyed her stone-faced. “Were you planning to ever tell me about Wen-Cheng’s proposal?”

  “Yes … yes, I was going to …” she bumbled, feeling her face heat.

  “Wen-Cheng proposed two days before Pearl Harbor. Everything has been so chaotic since. I have had no time to discuss it with him, let alone you.”

  “What is there to discuss?”

  She squared her shoulders, feeling her own indignation rise. “When do you intend to marry Lotte?” He shook his head. “I do not.”

  She gaped. “You … you are still engaged to her, surely?”

  “I have made up my mind, Sunny. I intend to—” He stopped and his gaze darted over her shoulder.

  Sunny looked behind her to see two men rapidly approaching. She recognized one of them as Ernst Muhler. She suspected the other man was Shan Zhou, but no one spoke a word as Franz shepherded them inside the hospital and into the staff room.

  As soon as Franz closed the door, Shan stared at him with fear in his eyes. “What happened to my father, Dr. Adler?”

  “They came for him. They found his radio.” Franz swallowed. “I am so sorry.”

  Shan’s face fell but he said nothing. Ernst placed an arm around his shoulders, pulled him closer and ran a hand tenderly over his cheek, but the young man remained unr
esponsive.

  “They have been to your apartment too,” Franz said.

  Ernst nodded. “We escaped out the back just as they arrived.”

  “They tore it apart,” Franz said. “Were they looking for another shortwave transmitter like Heng’s?”

  “I suspect they were looking for the rest of my paintings,” Ernst sighed.

  “Paintings?” Franz jerked his head as though slapped. “Not the Nanking series? Scheisse, Ernst! You swore you were going to destroy those.”

  Ernst held a hand out. “How could I burn my work? Only the Nazis treat art that way.”

  “What Nanking paintings?” Sunny asked.

  Franz turned to her, his face pale with worry. “Ernst painted a series he called The Rape of Nanking. You can imagine how the Japanese might view such artwork.”

  “No, I can’t,” Sunny mumbled.

  “Between Shan’s father and Ernst’s canvases …” Franz massaged his temples. “They’re going to search everywhere for you two.”

  Ernst sighed heavily. “We have no right to endanger you or your hospital. We will go.”

  “Go where precisely?” Franz asked.

  “To the countryside,” Shan spoke up in a monotone. “Free China. The villages and mountains where the Communists and Nationalists are organized.”

  “Is that not hundreds of miles west?” Franz asked. “How would you possibly get there?”

  Shan and Ernst glanced at one another and shared a helpless shrug. “We will fumble our way somehow,” Ernst said. “We should go now, Shan.”

  Franz stared hard at Ernst, then broke into a small smile. “You and I have a long history of endangering each other. Why stop now?”

  Ernst grinned. “I’m nothing if not consistent in my recklessness.”

  Franz frowned. “They’re bound to come here looking for you. We will need to hide you.”

  Sunny motioned to the door. “Why not keep them on the ward, Franz?”

  Franz’s brow furrowed. “You mean out in the open?”

  “Yes.” She smiled faintly. “With the other cholera patients.”