by Daniel Kalla
“Which others?” Hannah demanded.
“You need not worry over this,” Franz said.
Hannah placed her hands on her hips. “I’m not a child, Papa.” But her tone was sympathetic, not petulant. “You don’t have to protect me this way anymore.”
Sunny eased her body out of Franz’s embrace. She wiped her eyes with a sleeve and then turned to Hannah with a small smile. “Simon was staying with Yang. Along with Charlie—the man who was at our home last spring.”
“The man you operated on in the bedroom?” Hannah asked, looking more grown up than Sunny had ever seen her. “Do the Japanese want to arrest them?”
“I think so,” Sunny said. “Yes.”
“Can they not stay with us?”
“No, Liebchen.” Franz shook his head. “It would be far too dangerous. For them and for us. Trust me. Ours will be one of the first homes that is searched.”
“So what can be done?” Hannah asked.
Franz’s eyes clouded with puzzlement. “The first step is to find them.”
* * *
Sunny insisted on returning home with Franz to break the news to Esther. Leaves rustled at their feet in the mild autumn breeze as they silently hurried along. Despite her preoccupation with Yang, Sunny could not shake the sense that Franz was upset with her. Did he somehow know about her contact with the Underground? He offered nothing, and she was too frightened to broach the subject.
They stepped inside their home to find Esther on the couch, cradling the sleeping Jakob in her arms. The sight of mother and son, both so contented, made something inside Sunny break. She had to swallow back a sob.
The moment Esther looked up at them the smile slid from her lips. “Was ist los? Something has happened.”
Franz looked down. “The Japanese are raiding the ghetto.”
Esther twitched and then caught herself. Jakob stirred without waking. She rose to her feet and lowered him carefully onto the sofa. As soon as he was settled, she rushed over to them. “And Simon?” she breathed.
“They haven’t caught him, Essie,” Sunny said.
“How could you know?”
Franz described what Hannah had witnessed outside Yang’s apartment.
“Mein Gott, that poor woman,” Esther said. “But where would Simon go?”
Franz closed his eyes and shook his head. “There are many places one could hide in the ghetto, Essie.”
Esther nodded. It was clear that she was struggling to fight off the tears. But her lips quivered, and she covered her face with her hands.
“Essie, we will find Simon,” Franz reassured her.
A soft choking sob emerged from behind her hands. “What if they find him first?”
They fell into a mournful silence. After a few moments, the phone rang. Telephone service had become so sporadic that Sunny had almost forgotten they still had one.
Franz took a step toward it, but Esther darted out in front of him and grabbed the receiver. “Hier bei Adler!” she said sharply. Then her tone softened and she brought a hand to her cheek. “Simon! Gottze dank! It really is you. Oh, my Simon. Where are you?” She listened and then said, “You are telling the truth? Please, God. You really are safe?” She paused again. “Of course, of course. When can I see you?” Another pause, then, “Yes, yes. They are right here. Promise me, Simon. You will be more careful than ever. I could not bear . . .” Her voice faltered.
Sunny and Franz shared an uncomfortable glance.
“I love you, too. More than you can know.” Esther pulled the receiver from her ear and held it out toward them.
Sunny stepped forward and took the receiver. “Simon! Where are you? Are you safe?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Charlie too. Another family took us in.”
Simon had helped so many refugee families in the city through his work with the CFA that Sunny imagined they would have lined up to shelter him. “Which family?”
He hesitated. “Best not to say over the phone.”
“Of course not,” she said.
“Don’t worry. We are well taken care of.” He chuckled. “I already miss Yang’s cooking, though.”
A lump formed in her throat. “Simon, they have her.”
“Oh no.” Simon exhaled so heavily that the receiver whistled in her ear. “She wouldn’t leave with us, Sunny. As soon as we heard the trucks, we got out of there. Yang insisted on staying. Maybe they found our clothes or . . . I don’t know.”
“Or perhaps Yang panicked?” Sunny suggested, desperate for a more benign explanation. “Maybe that was the only reason they took her? You know how the Japanese terrify her.”
“That could explain it,” Simon said hopefully. “Maybe they just took her in for questioning.”
But Simon’s words rang hollow. There was no routine questioning when it came to the Japanese. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Sunny sniffed. “Even if they didn’t find anything in her apartment, what difference will it make to Yang now that they have her?”
Simon’s voice softened. “She’s a tougher bird than you give her credit for, Sunny.”
Sunny swallowed with difficulty. “You will not be able to stay in the ghetto, Simon. Not for much longer.”
“Yeah, the Japs are sweeping the place.”
“There was a bomb at the wharf. The Japanese are looking for subversives. Raiding the whole ghetto. We need to move you soon.” Sunny glanced over at Franz; he held up one finger. “Within a day.”
“Charlie and I will be ready anytime.”
“How will we reach you?” she asked.
“I’ll call you in an hour or two.”
“And if there is no telephone service?”
“I’ll send someone to carry a message back to us.”
Sunny didn’t like the idea of including anyone else in the plan, but there was no other option. “All right.”
“Listen, Sunny, if something goes wrong . . . You and Franz will take care of Essie and Jakob for me, won’t you?”
Sunny looked over at Esther, who was hanging on her every word. “Of course. All will be fine. Telephone us again in two hours, Simon. We will have details then. Goodbye.”
As soon as Sunny hung up, Franz motioned to the couch where Jakob was sleeping. “Perhaps we should move as well. At the very least we need to find somewhere for Essie, Jakob and Hannah to stay.”
“Why, Franz?” Sunny asked. “We have nothing to hide.”
“True, but . . .” Franz refused to meet her eyes. “Who knows where they might take Yang.”
Sunny cringed as she imagined Yang being tortured by some vicious interrogator. I should have never asked her to shelter Simon and Charlie. It’s all my fault.
“Surely she would not tell them about us?” Esther murmured.
“I wouldn’t blame her if she did.” Franz continued to stare at the ground. “Last year, after they took me to Bridge House . . . I would have told them anything to make it stop.”
The door rattled with three slow knocks. There was a pause, followed by four taps. Esther rushed over to Jakob and swept him up protectively in her arms, but Sunny raced over to answer the door. It was a secret signal, dating back to her childhood when she and Jia-Li had lived three doors apart and would sneak over to each other’s houses without their parents’ approval.
Jia-Li stood at the threshold in a black suit and matching hat, her eyes smouldering. “Everyone is gone,” she gasped as she stepped inside. “And their flat was a disaster.”
Sunny hugged her best friend. “Charlie and Simon are safe,” she sobbed. “But they took Yang.”
“Oh, that poor woman.” Jia-Li moaned softly. “I’m so sorry, xiăo hè. Do you know where they took her?”
Sunny wriggled out of her friend’s embrace. She did not want to consider Yang’s plight another moment, let alone discuss
it. “Simon and Charlie will not be able to stay much longer where they are. We wondered if you might take one of them into your—”
“I will take them both!” Jia-Li cried.
Franz shook his head. “It would be better to separate them.”
“And Charlie should stay with you,” Sunny said.
Jia-Li just nodded, but Sunny could sense her friend’s eagerness to help.
“Do you think Simon could go back to the basement of the Comfort Home?” Franz asked.
“Chih-Nii was not pleased with what happened the last time. The raid.” Jia-Li sucked air in through her teeth. “Not pleased at all. She is trying to get rid of the last two who are still with us. I will talk to her, but . . .”
“What about Ernst?” Franz suggested.
“Never, Franz!” Esther cried. “Ernst lives among Nazis!”
Franz nodded. “Which is precisely why the Japanese would not look there.”
“He has a point,” Sunny said. “For the short term, Simon might be safest living there.”
Esther shook her head wildly. “What if they find him? That would be worse than the Japanese.” She paused, then spoke softly: “What they did to my Karl . . .”
Chapter 28
Sunny stared out the window, which was cloudy with grease streaks and grime. A massive swastika flapped from a pole mounted on top of the building across the street. This neighbourhood in the International Settlement had always been a German enclave, but it no longer matched Sunny’s childhood recollections. She used to happily anticipate attending the Oktoberfest street celebrations with her father, the air rich with festive accordion music and the smell of grilled sausages, pretzels and beer. Now, she sensed only menace from the uniformed Nazis who roamed the streets. And the neighbourhood’s palpable military presence only heightened her concern for Yang.
Ernst sat calmly across the table from her. Without asking, he filled her teacup and then lit another cigarette for himself. “My home is always open to Simon.” He waved a hand. “However, as you can see, my work has a habit of spilling out everywhere. Hardly leaves much of the Lebensraum that the Nazis so covet.”
On the other side of the room, a narrow corridor led, Sunny assumed, to the water closet and possibly a bedroom. She wondered if the rest of the apartment was as cluttered as the room she was in, which was littered with canvases, most of them unfinished. A stained armchair occupied the far corner, while the table and two chairs where she and Ernst now sat filled the rest of the space. The odour of oil paint mingled with that of yeast and flour drifting up from the bakery below.
“Space is the least of Simon’s concerns right now,” Sunny pointed out.
Ernst jerked a thumb to one of the nearest canvases. It depicted a mountainous landscape foregrounded by a field of colourful wildflowers. “He will also have to cope with me painting the rubbish that I pass off for art these days.”
“It’s lovely, Ernst.”
“It’s soulless Scheisse.” He snorted. “Some talented Hitler Youth could have painted one almost as well. Perhaps even the Führer himself could have pulled it off. No wonder the fools lap it up so.”
“What will Simon care, Ernst?” Sunny forced a smile. “He is not an art critic. He will be happy to be here.”
“And I will be happy for the company,” Ernst said. “Please reassure Simon that I’m no longer in the habit of dragging stray men home with me. I hardly even drink anymore. I have become a disgrace to hedonism. I blame the Communists and their dreary asceticism. Regardless, living with me, the biggest threat poor Simon might face is deadly boredom.”
Sunny reached out and patted Ernst’s wrist. “You still haven’t heard from Shan?”
“Not for six months. How could I?” Ernst sighed. “Besides, even if I could reach him, I doubt Shan would want anything to do with me after the way I abandoned him.”
“He would understand,” Sunny said reassuringly, although she was again thinking again of her amah. How could Yang ever forgive Sunny for putting her in harm’s way?
“Shan has so many admirable qualities, but he can be . . . hard-headed.” Ernst shooed his romantic concerns away with a roll of his eyes. “Enough of this bleak gabble. It’s decided, then. Simon will live here.”
“We have to find a way to get him here,” Sunny murmured.
Ernst inhaled again, then stubbed out his cigarette in an empty paint tin. He studied her carefully before he nodded to himself. “Something else is troubling you, Sunny.”
“I am so worried for Yang.”
Ernst leaned into the table, his gaze disconcerting in its intensity. “Of course you are, but there is more to it, isn’t there?”
Sunny hesitated. She hardly knew Ernst well enough to pour her heart out to him—and it was neither the time nor the place—but she was bursting to tell someone. And who would understand a secret identity better than a homosexual artist living not just under an alias but behind enemy lines? “It’s Franz,” she finally said.
“What about him?”
“He has become so distant lately. He doesn’t trust me anymore.”
Ernst raised an eyebrow. “Does he have cause for suspicion?”
“No! Not in that sense. Never.” She glanced around the room as if someone might have crept in without her noticing, and then lowered her voice to a hush. “Ernst, I . . . I got involved with the Underground.”
“The Underground?” He frowned, then his face lit up with sudden understanding. “You haven’t told Franz, have you?”
“You know how he views people in the ghetto who participate in subversive activities.”
“Tell me.”
“He thinks it is terribly selfish. That it risks the security of all the refugees. And I’ve been doing it behind his back.” She shook her head.
“So why did you volunteer?”
Sunny told him weakly about her sense of powerlessness and desire to help, her sense of duty. She didn’t touch on her guilt over the execution of Irma and the teenagers, or her wish to avenge her father’s murder. Nor did she mention her growing regret over the decision to get involved.
Ernst lit another cigarette before he spoke. “I have known your husband for a very long time. Yes, he can be agonizingly proud and exhaustingly stubborn, but what never fails to astound me is his almost boundless capacity for understanding.”
“You think I should tell him?”
“I think you think that you should tell him.”
Sunny laughed in spite of herself. “You are wiser than you let on, Ernst.”
“I’m a complete fool, actually. But sometimes even fools recognize the obvious.”
As Sunny finished her tea and Ernst smoked, their conversation turned back to the logistics of relocating Charlie and Simon. “So Charlie and Jia-Li will live together?”
“Yes. If we can get him out of the ghetto and to Jia-Li’s.”
Ernst chuckled. “Can you imagine it, Sunny? It will take a hatchet to cut through the romantic tension in that apartment. I have no idea who either of them thinks they are fooling. It’s like watching two teenagers—”
A rap at the door cut Ernst off. Sunny hopped to her feet, spilling the last of her tea. “Are you expecting someone?” she whispered.
Ernst shook his head. He pointed to the corridor and mouthed the word “bedroom.”
Sunny took a shaky step forward as she saw the doorknob turn and the door fly open.
Baron von Puttkamer marched into the room as though he owned it, followed by his Korean bodyguard, who assumed a post by the door. “Ah, so you are home after all, Gustav,” the tall European bellowed.
“Of course, I . . .” Ernst sputtered.
The baron assessed the cramped quarters with a sweep of his eyes. “I thought your art was selling better than these accommodations would suggest.”
“I am as fr
ugal as your average Jew,” Ernst quipped.
Smiling, von Puttkamer turned his attention to Sunny. She feared that he would remember her from the spring day when they had met on the streets of the ghetto, but his eyes didn’t register a flicker of recognition. He bowed his head and held out his hand. “A pleasure, Fräulein.”
Ernst inclined his head in Sunny’s direction without meeting her gaze. “A new friend, Baron. She is posing for a painting I have in mind.” He cleared his throat, feigning embarrassment, as though the baron had caught them in flagrante delicto. “She will be leaving shortly.”
“That’s hardly necessary, Gustav.” Von Puttkamer waved his hand. “The lady doesn’t speak German, does she?”
Ernst shook his head. “She barely understands English. Our communication is more . . . physical in nature.”
Still smirking, von Puttkamer said, “Really, Gustav? You and that miserable half-breed? You’re an eligible artist. Surely you could do better.” He shook his head. “These mixed bloods are the kind of perversity we are striving to wipe off the map.”
Sunny’s skin crawled, but she pretended not to follow a word of his German. Instead, mustering a bored expression, she collected the dishes from the table and carried them over to the countertop in the galley kitchen.
Von Puttkamer moved across the room to study a painting that rested against the wall. “Do you like it, Baron?” Ernst asked over his shoulder.
Von Puttkamer shrugged. “The craftsmanship is fine.”
“Praise does not come much fainter than that.”
“It is hardly original, Gustav. Walk the art district of Cologne and you will find a hundred like it.”
“Fortunately for me, Cologne is a good long walk from Shanghai.”
“You are touchy, Klimper. So like an artist.” Von Puttkamer laughed. “I’m not questioning your talent. After all, two of your paintings hang in my home. I merely wonder whether you are truly inspired by the theme. I sense you can do much more with your gift than this.”
“You give me more credit than I am due, Baron.”