by Daniel Kalla
“Precisely,” Franz said. “Remember how much Hermann helped us? He sacrificed his life for us. What would have happened to all of us had I ignored my oath when he first approached me?”
“It’s completely different,” Sunny snapped. “Hermann was a victim of circumstance. Tanaka was evil. He took pleasure in your suffering. If he had survived, he might have wiped out the entire community.”
Franz rolled over to face her. “I understand what you are saying. I love you even more for trying. But nothing will change the fact that I deliberately killed a patient. For a doctor, it is unconscionable.”
“You don’t have to view it that way, Franz.”
He kissed her, letting his lips linger on hers before he sat up, his legs swung over the edge of the bed.
“If there is one silver lining to all of this, darling,” Franz pointed out as he slipped on his trousers, “at least the Underground achieved its objective without involving you.”
“Have they?” she said distantly. “We saved Colonel Kubota’s life. They are not going to be pleased.”
“No, I suppose not.” Franz felt torn: Kubota had not even wanted to survive the assassination attempt.
“What if they come for the colonel?” Sunny asked.
“At the hospital?”
She nodded.
“The Japanese have posted guards.” Franz finished buttoning his shirt. “I am far more concerned about your safety.”
“Wen-Cheng said he will not let anything happen to me.”
“It’s not his role to protect you.”
She laughed emptily. “Oh, Franz, you are not still jealous?”
“I only wish I could do more for you.”
Sunny stared at him for a moment and then, eyes reddening with tears, she rolled away.
He studied the supple curve of her spine and resisted the urge to touch it, to run kisses down its length. Instead, he turned for the door.
* * *
Franz spotted few other refugees on the street, but soldiers were everywhere, patrolling the roads in armoured vehicles and occupying intersections with machine guns. In the wake of the assassinations, fear of retribution had swept the community, and with good reason. Ghoya had closed the checkpoints and revoked all exit passes. Overnight, people had been dragged away; raids were still happening. A firing squad had gunned down a pair of innocent spinsters who had panicked and tried to flee their home during a random raid. The Jewish community’s mood was painfully reminiscent of Vienna in the days following Kristallnacht.
Keeping his head low and eyes to the ground, Franz hurried the three blocks over to Seymour Road, but he hesitated out front of the Ohel Moishe Synagogue.
Franz had always admired the red and brown brick temple. It had been built by Russian Jews in the early 1920s, before they abandoned Hongkew for Frenchtown. As always, its distinctive row of columned arches caught his eye. He had long wished to photograph it, but film was scarce and the risk of drawing Japanese suspicion with a camera was too great.
Franz had often accompanied Hannah and Esther to the temple on Saturdays and High Holidays. He enjoyed the ritual, but he had never been religious. As he stood staring at the carved wooden door, Franz realized that, for the first time in his adult life, he had come to a house of worship in search of guidance.
Franz dug inside his coat and extracted a yarmulke. Adjusting the skullcap on his head, he pulled open the doors and stepped inside a cavernous room that was filled with rows of benches and ringed by an upper balcony. At the front of the room stood the ornately gilded doors of the ark of the Torah. The faint fragrance of melted wax drifted to Franz. He scanned the room but saw no one. He wandered toward the bimah, the decorative table on which the sacred scrolls of the Torah would be unrolled for readings. As Franz reached the first row of benches, he heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Rabbi Hiltmann walking toward him in a black suit and yarmulke.
“Good morning, Dr. Adler.” The rabbi chuckled. “You do realize that today is not Saturday?”
Franz smiled uncomfortably. “I do, yes, Rabbi. I was hoping to speak to you.”
The rabbi eyed him for a moment and then motioned toward the benches beside them. “Come, sit with me.”
Franz took a seat beside the rabbi, feeling out of place and suddenly regretting his decision to come. Embarrassed, he studied the Torah’s ark before them.
“So? What can I do for you, Dr. Adler?”
“I need . . .” Franz coughed into his hand. “I was hoping for your opinion, I suppose.”
“Not medical, I hope,” the rabbi joked.
“I did something, Rabbi.” Franz could feel the flush crossing his cheeks. “Something I am ashamed of. A sin.”
“I am not a priest.” Hiltmann smiled good-naturedly. “You understand we rabbis are not paid to take confessions.”
Franz’s face heated further. “I need your advice.”
“Ah, advice. Of that I have loads to give.” The rabbi laughed again. “After all, I am a Jew, am I not? So tell me.”
“I broke one of the commandments,” Franz said.
“Oh? Which one?”
“Thou shall not commit murder.”
The rabbi turned slowly toward him. “You . . . you killed someone, Dr. Adler?”
“I did.”
Hiltmann did not move, waiting for an explanation.
“He was a patient, Rabbi,” Franz continued. “A Japanese colonel, the head of the military police . . .”
The rabbi folded his arms across his chest and listened as Franz described what had happened in the operating room. Even after he had finished, the rabbi said nothing. Franz finally broke the silence. “Well, Rabbi?”
Hiltmann shrugged. “I am not a policeman. I am not a judge. You alone have to live with what you did. What else can I tell you?”
“You are a spiritual man, a rabbi,” Franz said, taken aback. “It’s a sin what I have done, surely. How would this appear in the eyes of God?”
“I try not to speak for God.” The rabbi sighed. “I am, however, fond of reading his teachings and the Talmud’s interpretation of them.”
“So you must have at least a theological opinion, no?”
“This Japanese colonel.” The rabbi looked at him gravely. “He is the one who would have handed us over to the Nazis last year?”
“Yes.”
Hiltmann nodded slowly. “Before the operation, you said he threatened to harm the Jews again?”
“I believe so, yes. But he was not specific. He only said that he would ‘put an end to it.’”
“Or, perhaps, an end to all of us?”
Franz shook his head. “Perhaps, but he was critically ill at the time. Who knows what he might have done had he survived.”
The rabbi tilted his head. “Let me ask you, Dr. Adler, did you act out of spite or vengeance?”
Franz considered the question carefully. He thought back to the week of torture he had endured in Bridge House at Tanaka’s hands. More than the humiliation and agonizing pain, Franz remembered how deeply he had hated Tanaka when he had threatened Sunny. Given the opportunity, at that moment, he would have strangled Tanaka with his bare hands. But that incident never crossed his mind inside the operating room.
“It is a difficult question for you to answer, Dr. Adler?” Hiltmann prompted.
“No,” Franz said firmly. “I was not thinking about revenge. I was only thinking about my family.”
“Hmm.” The rabbi stroked his silvery beard. “In Leviticus, the Torah commands: tëlëkh räkhiyl B’ameykhä—”
“I do not speak Hebrew, Rabbi.”
“As a Jew, you really should,” Hiltmann said, sounding exactly like Rabbi Finkler, the perpetually disappointed cleric of Franz’s youth. “It means ‘Nor shall you stand idly by while your neighbour’s life is at stak
e.’”
“But how can I know that my neighbour’s life was truly at stake?”
“The Talmud is also clear on this issue,” the rabbi said. “In the six hundred and thirteen mitzvoth, or commandments, a faithful Jew is required to save a person who is being pursued. Even if it means killing the pursuer. The Torah further commands that one should not take pity on the aggressor. He is to be killed before he has a chance to kill the one he pursues.” He pulled his hand away from his beard. “You understand? The Torah is endorsing a preventive strike under such circumstances.”
“I see,” Franz mumbled.
The rabbi shrugged again. “That is only what I know from my reading, Dr. Adler. I am not your judge.”
Franz nodded. “God is.”
“Always, I suppose.” The rabbi’s eyes lit up with amusement. “But, Dr. Adler, in this particular instance I was thinking of you, not God.”
* * *
As Franz headed back to the hospital, he felt only a small degree of consolation. Regardless of what the Torah commanded, his bible was still the surgical textbook. And nowhere inside it could he find justification for his actions.
A Japanese soldier was guarding the entrance to the ward with a rifle across his chest. Inside, people walked on eggshells. No one was speaking. Nurses and patients exchanged nervous looks. Franz headed toward the bed in the far corner, which was shielded from the rest of the ward by curtains.
At Franz’s approach, the young soldier guarding the bed stood at attention and raised his rifle. Franz touched his lab coat. “I am the colonel’s doctor.”
The soldier eyed him with indifference until Kubota’s voice croaked out from behind the curtains. The young man relaxed his shoulders and lowered his weapon.
Franz stepped through a gap in the curtains. The colonel was covered up to his neck by a blanket, his face pale and eyes sunken.
“How are you . . . feeling . . . today, Colonel?” Franz stammered.
“I am alive.” Kubota’s voice was weak and his tone inscrutable.
Embarrassed, Franz lowered his gaze. “Are you in much pain?”
Kubota shook his head slightly. “The injections help.”
“Colonel, the bullet damaged your colon. We had no choice but to fashion a colostomy. To bring a loop of bowel out to the wall of your abdomen.”
“So I will evacuate into this bag from now on.”
“Only temporarily,” Franz said. “Once the swelling recedes and the wound heals—in a few months—I will be able to reattach the two ends of the bowel again.”
“A few months,” Kubota echoed hollowly.
“Colonel, I couldn’t just let you . . .” Franz looked up and met the military man’s despondent gaze. “I am sorry, Colonel. I truly am.”
“You saved my life, Dr. Adler.” Kubota stated it as though reporting the weather outside. “You have a duty as a doctor. I am a soldier. I understand duty. I had no right to ask you to do otherwise.”
Franz nodded. “I was hoping that, in time, you might feel differently.”
As Kubota gazed into the distance, he seemed to be fighting pain. “I never was so fortunate to find a wife, Dr. Adler. My parents are long dead, and my brother was a captain. He went down with his ship at Guadalcanal.”
“You have friends,” Franz said. “And so many admirers among my community.”
“Shanghai,” Kubota said dreamily. “I was always so contented here. When I arrived on my first posting, I felt as though I had found a home. The city was so full of wanderers and adventurers from around the world. I belonged, Dr. Adler. You understand?”
“I have no doubt you did.”
“I was saddened when war came to Shanghai, but I understood the need for it. But once we went to war with the Allies, everything changed. It was difficult to watch my Shanghailander friends suffer so.” Kubota paused. “Then the Germans came to me with their barbarous plans for your people.”
“What you did for us, Colonel, was heroic.”
Kubota shook his head. “To have not intervened would have been dishonourable.”
“Still, it took great courage.”
“My choice was never the sacrifice you make it out to be, Dr. Adler. By that point, my fate had already been sealed. My superiors had lost patience with my divided loyalties.” Visibly tiring, Kubota stopped for a few breaths. “Truth be told, I wanted to go.”
“To leave Shanghai?”
“The Shanghai I knew—the place I still think of as home—that city is long dead.” He looked at Franz wistfully. “And yet, somehow, I live on.”
Chapter 39
Sunny pressed the towel to the surgical wound on the man’s abdomen. “Will it ever heal, Frau Adler?” Herr Hirsch asked, his tone plaintive.
“A little time and patience do wonders for healing, Herr Hirsch.” She sounded to herself like the old matron she had worked for at the Country Hospital. The woman had a gift for silencing even the most demanding of patients.
“If only God will grant me enough time to be patient.”
“You are over the worst of—”
A sudden commotion cut her off mid-sentence. Sunny heard something crash to the floor and someone shouting in Japanese. She dropped the towel and raced over to Kubota’s bed.
The young Japanese soldier who always stood at the foot of the bed was motioning wildly with the barrel of his rifle toward the bed. The colonel was propped up on a pillow, eyes open but absolutely still, his lips dark blue.
Sunny thrust her hand up to Kubota’s mouth but didn’t feel so much as a flutter of air against her palm. She placed her fingers on his neck. A pulse still beat weakly beneath them. Sunny saw that his pupils were the size of pinholes. She doubted he could still be conscious, but she sensed awareness behind his glassy eyes. His expression verged on serene.
As she stood there, helpless, Sunny felt his pulse drain away beneath her hand.
Even the guard could see what was happening. He shrieked at her in Japanese, demanding action. Sunny only shook her head. A lump formed in her throat as she pulled her hand from Kubota’s neck and lifted the sheet over his head. The guard let his rifle fall to his side, its muzzle dangling toward the ground, as he gaped in disbelief.
Sunny turned to see Berta standing at the door to the ward. The other nurse absorbed the scene immediately. “How did this happen?” she asked. “I checked on him just a few minutes ago. He was stable.”
Sunny hurried over to her. “Did you give him painkillers?”
Berta shook her head. “No, but Dr. Huang did. When he changed the dressings.”
“Wen-Cheng?” Sunny gasped and then covered her shock with a small cough. “Dr. Huang changed the colonel’s dressing?”
“And administered morphine, yes.” Berta lowered her voice to a whisper. “There is something else.”
“Yes, Berta?”
She cleared her throat. “The morphine.”
“What about it?”
“You must understand. I am not accusing Dr. Huang.”
“Tell me, Berta.”
“After Dr. Huang prepared the colonel’s injection, the other morphine pills—our last ones . . . they went missing.”
Sunny managed to maintain a neutral expression. “You think Wen-Cheng took them?”
Berta held up her hands helplessly. “Who else could have?”
“Perhaps Dr. Huang needed them for patients outside the hospital?” But Sunny already knew what he had done with them. “I will speak with him.”
* * *
Sunny assumed that Wen-Cheng would have left the hospital long before, so she was surprised to find him sitting alone at the table in the staff room, smoking a cigarette and staring at the wall.
She sat down across from him. “The colonel is dead.”
Wen-Cheng showed no response. His gaze was fixed som
ewhere beyond her.
“He didn’t die from his injury,” she continued.
“What then?” Wen-Cheng asked mechanically.
“Morphine toxicity.”
“How can you be certain?”
“I was with him, Wen-Cheng. He stopped breathing. His pupils were constricted. I have seen more than enough opium and morphine poisonings to recognize the signs.”
Wen-Cheng avoided her eyes. “Accidental narcotic poisoning is a common occurrence on surgical wards.”
“This was no accident.”
“You do not believe so?”
Sunny shook a finger at him. “You poisoned the colonel!”
Wen-Cheng smoked in silence for several tense seconds. Finally, he met her eyes. “And it’s fortunate for you that I did.”
Sunny leapt to her feet. “How can you say that?” She struggled to keep her voice low. “He was a good man. The one decent Japanese officer I have ever known.”
“Maybe so, but they wanted him dead.”
“You mean that bitter old man did.”
“More than just him,” Wen-Cheng said. “Besides, he is a very important man, Soon Yi. A person not to be crossed.”
“I haven’t crossed him!”
“Nor did you do as he requested.”
She hung her head. “No.”
“I meant what I told you, Soon Yi,” he said quietly. “I will do whatever is necessary to protect you.”
“What does that have to do with Colonel Kubota?”
“The others. They don’t know that the targets were brought to our hospital for treatment.” He paused. “Their targets.”
Sunny nodded, suddenly understanding. “If the Underground learned that we operated on Kubota. That we saved his life . . .”
“They would come for him.” Wen-Cheng shook his head. “For you too, I’m afraid.”
“I see.”
“Decent man or not, I do not regret what I did, Soon Yi.”
Sunny realized that Wen-Cheng had poisoned the colonel to protect her. Guilt pressed down on her shoulders as acutely as it had after she had witnessed the deaths of those teenaged boys and Irma, which felt like so long ago now. “Is it over now?” she asked.