by Daniel Kalla
Franz’s approach to his own symptoms, like that of so many other doctors he knew, was to minimize or to ignore them. After all, he was almost forty-three years old. How could he possibly expect to possess the stamina he once had as a young surgeon? He considered telling Sunny, but he couldn’t bring himself to compound her worries.
Franz glanced around the open ward, the hospital’s only one, to see if anyone had witnessed his spell. The two nurses—the dependable and maternal head nurse, Berta Abeldt, and the sweet but skittish Miriam Weinstein—were busy tending to patients, oblivious to his struggles. None of the patients paid him any attention either. Franz had no concern that the man on the stretcher below him might have noticed. Herr Steinmann’s glassy and unfocused gaze suggested that he was still drifting somewhere between consciousness and coma. Franz was surprised that the seventy-year-old lawyer had even survived surgery.
Steinmann had stumbled into the hospital the night before, his skin the colour of slate and his belly as rigid as a board. In the operating theatre, Franz had a found a coin-sized hole where an ulcer had eaten through the stomach’s lining and leaked acid throughout the abdominal cavity. Surely only willpower and obstinacy had kept the old lawyer alive.
Franz had come to know Steinmann through the Refugee Council, a loosely organized association of representative refugees that helped support the ghetto’s three heime, or hostels, where the poorest Jewish families lived. Franz had felt an immediate kinship with the elegant and fastidious Berliner—no doubt because, as Esther had pointed out, Steinmann bore so many similarities to Franz’s father, who had died in Vienna shortly before the outbreak of war, not long after Franz, Hannah and Esther had fled the city. Not only did Steinman physically resemble Adler senior, he also shared his profession, his meticulousness and his dim view of all religions. Steinmann even possessed the same fatalistic sense of humour.
Franz’s dizziness passed and was replaced by elation. He was relieved, of course, that Herr Steinmann had survived the surgery and now had a legitimate chance of recovering, though it would be a long and challenging road. But there was more to Franz’s upbeat mood. In the past two weeks, he had rediscovered a sense of professional purpose. For months, the hospital had been hopelessly low on almost all supplies, including ether for general anesthesia. Without these resources, Franz had felt neutered—a surgeon with nothing to offer his patients but stopgaps and half measures. But a few weeks earlier, several Russian Jews had arrived at the hospital unannounced, bearing cartons full of supplies. The boxes were all marked in Cyrillic, but it hadn’t taken Franz long to dig through them and find five bottles of ether buried at the bottom of one.
Shanghai’s Russian Jewish community, which numbered over five thousand, still enjoyed rare personal and economic freedoms because of the neutrality pact between the Soviets and Japanese. The attack on Pearl Harbor had made it impossible for any British and American financial aid to reach Shanghai’s expatriate communities, so the Russian Jews were the only potential benefactors the refugees had left. The Russians had proved to be a fickle and unpredictable group, separated by tradition, language and, for the most part, culture from the other European Jews in the ghetto. Almost a year earlier, Franz had appeared before a group of Russian elders and appealed for medical supplies and financial aid. He had long since given up hope of their help, so he was shocked and delighted when the provisions materialized.
Franz gently smoothed the bandages down over his patient’s abdomen. “All things considered, the surgery went better than expected, Herr Steinmann,” he said, more to himself than to the unconscious patient. He was about to step over to the next bed when he heard a commotion somewhere down the hallway. His shoulders and neck tensed. More than the frantic voices, it was the sound of boots pounding the floor that set off his internal alarm. He would never mistake those footfalls for anything other than the harbinger of a raid.
Seconds later, the first soldier stormed down the corridor. A half dozen or so others followed after in their brimmed caps and khakis. The only two who didn’t have rifles slung over their shoulders carried bulky wicker boxes in their arms.
Steadying his breathing, Franz went out to meet them at the ward’s entry. They breezed past him without a word of explanation. On the ward, the soldiers split up. The two with the boxes headed straight for the small supply closet at the back. Franz followed after, but Berta reached the closet first. The head nurse filled the doorway, so Franz had to peer over her shoulder to watch the soldiers inside. They stood back to back, facing the shelves. Each man swept an arm along a shelf, knocking the bottles into the waiting boxes. Within seconds, they had emptied half of the cupboard.
Berta put her hands on her hips. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded. “You have no right to—”
The soldier nearest to her dropped his box, spun and punched Berta so hard in the chest that she toppled backwards. Franz caught her out of reflex, but her substantial weight almost knocked him off his own feet. He struggled to right the heavy woman in his arms. When she was finally supporting her own weight, he grabbed her by the shoulders and asked, “Are you all right, Berta?”
Face flushed and struggling for air, she buried her distress behind a stoic expression. “I only need a moment, Herr Doktor,” she gasped.
Just then, shouting from within the ward drew his attention. Franz looked over to see a white-haired patient, Frau Adelmann, waving her right arm desperately while her left limb lay stiff and unresponsive on the mattress. A stocky soldier was shrieking at her in Japanese while he yanked a blanket away from her body.
“I cannot get up,” Frau Adelmann cried. “I have suffered a stroke only last week.”
Undeterred, the soldier grabbed the sheet underneath her and jerked it off the bed, hauling Frau Adelmann along with it, until she rolled off and landed on the floor with a sickening thud. She screamed in pain, but it had no effect on the infantryman. He bunched up a corner of the sheet and dragged her along with it toward the hallway. All around the ward, soldiers were scaring, prodding and dumping patients out of their beds. Those who could walk were herded toward the exit in their gowns. Those who couldn’t, like Frau Adelmann, were being dragged out—in the case of one man, by his ankle.
When Franz spotted a soldier pulling the sheet out from underneath Herr Steinmann, he rushed over to him. He had managed only two or three strides before another soldier stuck out his leg, sending Franz sprawling to the ground. Just as he started to push himself up, a jolt of pain ripped through the right side of his chest. The soldier kicked him a second time, harder, and Franz heard his rib crack before he even felt the stab of pain. Air whooshed out of his lungs. Desperate for breath, he pushed himself up by the elbows. Then a boot slammed into his jaw, throwing him onto his side. The taste of blood filled his mouth, and he felt his jaw agonizingly snap out of place before clunking back in with a grinding crunch.
The soldier grabbed Franz by the collar of his shirt and started to pull. Breathless and in pain, Franz had no strength to resist. All he could do was pant for every molecule of oxygen as he was hauled along the floor and heaved out the front door onto the ground in front of the hospital.
He lay on his side on the cold, damp dirt and gasped for breath as patients accumulated around him. Some were seated on the ground, others curled in heaps, including Herr Steinmann. A few of the more robust patients stood up, leaning against one another for support. Out of the corner of his eye, Franz saw two soldiers nailing boards across the hospital’s entrance while the men carrying boxes walked down the short pathway to trucks at the curb. After a minute or two, a panicky voice asked from somewhere above him, “Herr Doktor Adler, please, can you hear me?”
He nodded to Miriam but regretted it immediately as pain shot up the side of his jaw and into his ear.
Berta knelt down beside him, looking remarkably composed. “Say something, Dr. Adler. Are you all right?”
“Yes,” he croaked. “The soldiers?”
“They
have left,” Berta said. “Can you stand?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“Let’s try, shall we,” she encouraged as she placed a hand gently under his shoulder and began to lift.
Franz managed to get to his knees and, holding on to Berta, rose shakily to his feet. He was terrified that an inopportune dizzy spell might topple him back to the ground, but thankfully none came, so he released Berta’s arm.
Miriam stared at him, panic-stricken. “What now, Herr Doktor? The hospital is closed. Finished.”
Finished. The word hurt Franz more than his injuries. He and Sunny had dedicated the past five years of their life to the refugee hospital. Somehow, the chronically undersupplied, decrepit old site had always defied the odds. Franz had saved Sunny’s life there after she had been attacked by a Japanese sailor. Sunny had nursed Hannah through a near-fatal bout of cholera. Together, they had rescued Esther and her baby from certain peril with an emergency Caesarean section. How many other lives had been saved inside the hospital? How many people had been allowed to die in dignity, their pain mitigated through medication and compassion? Too many to remember them all.
“The patients, Dr. Adler.” Berta sighed. “Where shall we take them?”
Franz looked around at the patients piled on the ground or standing in clusters, shivering in their light gowns. Earlier in the day, he had counted twenty-one. Some were recuperating, but others were in the throes of illness.
Berta was talking again, but Franz couldn’t concentrate on her words. His eyes fixed on the ramshackle grey building across the street, its front windows still boarded up more than five years after a Japanese aerial bombardment had blown them out. He raised his hand toward it but pain in his ribcage stopped him halfway. Instead, he motioned with his head. “There. We will take them there.”
“That old heim?” Berta asked.
“There are several rooms inside.”
“But they use every last bed and then some,” Miriam said with a wild shake of her head. “The families, they sleep in bunks on top of one another.”
“They will have to make space,” Franz said.
“And what about supplies? The Japanese—they took everything.”
“We’ve coped with our cupboards bare before, Berta.” But Franz doubted the head nurse believed his reassurance any more than he did.
Berta eyed him silently before she finally nodded. “It’s the only way. Ja. I’ll go gather some young men from the heim to help us carry the patients.”
Franz nodded. “See if you also can find some boards to carry them on.”
With a crisp nod, Berta marched off toward the heim, as composed as if she had never been attacked. Franz hobbled over to Herr Steinmann, who lay on the ground, his hips bent and rotated and his gown pulled halfway up his thigh, exposing veiny legs. His eyes were open and more focused than earlier. He appeared to be mouthing words, but Franz couldn’t make him out.
Splinting his own chest with his elbow, Franz carefully crouched down beside the man.
“The operation, Dr. Adler,” Steinmann breathed. “It’s over?”
“Yes, Herr Steinmann. It went well.”
“My back, it feels so wet and so cold.” His lips curled slightly, but Franz couldn’t tell if they formed a grimace or a smile. “Am I … am I still alive?”
Franz nodded. “You are, yes. The Japanese raided the hospital. They dragged us outside.”
Steinmann’s only response was to shut his eyes and mutter “I see.”
Franz looked over to the door of the hospital. It was nailed shut with at least four boards. Something caught his eye: a single sheet of paper that had been tacked onto the planks. He rose gingerly to his feet and shuffled over. Scanning past the Japanese writing, he read the German words printed at the bottom of the page: “By the decree of the Empire of Japan, these premises have been order closed. No one is permitted to enter. Anyone breaching this order will be considered as to be trespassing. Such trespassers will be treated with the heaviest and most immediate of responses.”
The proclamation was unsigned, but Franz had no doubt who had drafted it. He could think of only one person who could be behind such flowery, non-grammatical phrasing. The man who lorded over the ghetto, and the Jews inside it, like the raja of some remote Indian province. The same little tyrant who was responsible for the scars that criss-crossed Franz’s back. Ghoya.
CHAPTER 3
Hannah was eager to tell Herschel Zunder all about the baby, but she could barely squeeze a word in edgewise. “They are all such appeasers,” the boy cried.
“Who are?” Hannah asked.
“The ones who call themselves Zionist but aren’t willing to rock the boat. They would wait forever for a Jewish homeland rather than offend the British or any other goys who oppose us in Palestine.”
Hannah realized that Herschel was parroting the words of Rabbi Hiltmann, one of the most outspoken Zionists in Shanghai, but she held her tongue.
“Both sides of the Jordan River, like in the days of King David,” Herschel railed on. “Every last acre of Eretz Yisrael, just as the Torah promises. It’s the only way forward. Nowhere else will we be able to live in peace. The Nazis have proven it. The Japanese too.” He waved a finger at the crowded street, where clusters of Jewish refugees milled among the native Chinese on Tong Shan Road.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to Hannah, who had lived in Shanghai for more than five years. Her memories of Vienna had begun to blur and what she did remember—that visceral sense of alienation and terror of living under the heel of the Nazis—she wished she could forget. The Tong Shan street market, even in its current rundown state, was as good a reflection of the refugee life as any Hannah could imagine. The storefronts, once all Chinese, had been reclaimed by refugees and turned into doctors’ offices, a delicatessen, a pharmacy, a café and even the headquarters of a Yiddish newspaper. German Jews, many dressed in the same suits they had arrived in Shanghai wearing (and continued to wear regardless of the temperature or season), stood huddled in conversation or bartering with Chinese merchants, who hawked everything from rice and produce to street dentistry. Gaunt rickshaw drivers stood hunched over their empty carts, dejectedly soliciting anyone who passed, with dim hope of ever landing a fare.
Japanese soldiers in khakis and puttees, their distinctive lowerleg coverings, marched self-importantly through the streets. Hannah spotted one soldier at the end of the block berating a Chinese merchant for some perceived infraction. The infantryman shoved the merchant, who fell backwards into his cart, knocking it over and scattering heads of lettuce, or possibly cabbage, along the road. Hannah turned away with hardly a second thought. She had witnessed so much worse.
And yet, as familiar as the scene was, Hannah noticed subtle differences too. Despite the open businesses with their welcoming signs, few refugees were prospering. She could see men now wearing rags tied around their feet, their shoes destroyed from years of pounding the same broken pavement. Most people’s suits and dresses looked a size or two too large for them, despite having likely been already taken in, as her father’s suit had been. The Chinese had fared no better, particularly not the children, many of whom appeared emaciated. Hunger was a constant in the ghetto. Hannah knew that her family was among the luckier ones—Esther somehow managed to ensure that there was something on the table almost every dinner, if only a bowl of wet rice—but she couldn’t remember what it felt like to fall asleep with a full belly.
Herschel was carrying on about the kibbutzim and the need to cultivate land in Palestine, but Hannah tuned him out. She had heard this speech too many times already. She sighed heavily. “You sound like a scratched phonograph record. You’ve convinced me, Herschel. We need a homeland. I agree. But can’t we talk about something else?”
Herschel grimaced as though she had suggested they stop breathing for a while. “It’s so very important, Hannah. We need to convince the others. We need solidarity.”
“Solidarity, yes.” She n
odded distractedly. “Do you remember my friend Feng Wei? That girl from my neighbourhood?”
“Yes, I do,” Herschel said warily. He crossed him arms and then uncrossed them, tucking his hands into his pockets, seeming uncertain of what to do with them.
Hannah suppressed a grin. At fifteen, Herschel Zunder was as gangly as a baby giraffe and as graceless, not at all accustomed to his long limbs. Paradoxically, Herschel was also an old soul, as serious as a middle-aged rabbi with a solemn narrow face and a long forehead that was almost always creased in a frown. And when he wasn’t inveighing against the obstacles to Zionism, he could be remarkably shy and awkward.
Herschel squinted at her. “Why did you ask me about Feng Wei?”
“She had a baby.”
His mouth fell open. “A … a baby? But how?”
Hannah looked around to ensure nobody was in earshot before speaking in a low tone. “No one knew. Feng Wei hadn’t told anyone, not even her own family. She hid her stomach under baggy clothes. I don’t know what she would have done if I hadn’t found her crouched in the alley.”
Herschel gawked at her. “But that girl is no older than you or me, surely?”
Feeling sudden misgivings, Hannah grabbed his wrist. “You can’t tell a soul,” she implored. “Feng Wei didn’t keep the baby. No one in her family knows. Promise me, Herschel.”
Nodding, he looked down to her fingers wrapped around his wrist. She realized it was probably the first time she had ever touched him, but she liked the feeling of his slender arm in her hand, so she kept her fingers where they were. He reddened slightly before looking back up at her with a timid smile. “What will become of the baby?”