by Daniel Kalla
“Our Imperial Army is fighting on many fronts,” Ghoya continued. “Eventually, we will win. Yes, yes, we will. But the cost of victory is high. There are many wounded men. We do not have enough field doctors to care for them all.”
The hospital’s closure made sudden sense to Franz. “Mr. Ghoya, are you asking me to work for the Japanese army?”
Ghoya jumped to his feet and stormed around the desk. He stopped so close that Franz picked up on the odour of schnitzel on his breath. “Asking?” he cried as he raised his open palm, ready to strike. “The King of the Jews does not ask anything of you. He tells you!”
Seconds passed in tense silence. Ghoya’s hand still hovered over Franz’s head, but when he finally spoke, his tone had calmed. “You will begin immediately.”
Franz’s mind raced. “I would be honoured to work for the Imperial Army, sir.”
Ghoya eyed him skeptically. “Is that so?”
“In my humble opinion, there is an even larger opportunity here.”
“What would that be?”
“We already have an operating room,” Franz pointed out. “And I have such able assistants. Would it not be even more beneficial if we were to care for your wounded in our little hospital?”
Ghoya scoffed. “The same hospital that could not tend to our honourable officers’ wounds?”
“Yes, but—”
“But nothing,” Ghoya screamed and flicked his wrist. The sharp slap surprised Franz more than it hurt him. “You will work for us. Under the supervision of a proper Japanese surgeon. Yes, yes. You will!”
Franz lowered his gaze. “As you wish, Mr. Ghoya.”
Ghoya turned and sauntered back to his desk, dropping into his chair. He casually reached for a form and began to fill in the blanks. “My men will come for you later today,” he said.
“Today?” Franz sputtered. “Sir, my family …”
“Are they a distraction to you?” Ghoya flashed another of his crazed grins. “Perhaps it would be best if I relocated them elsewhere?”
The internment camps—or worse! The light-headedness struck again without warning, and Franz reached out to grab hold of the edge of the desk, his legs feeling as though they might buckle.
Still smiling, Ghoya studied Franz’s fingers on the desk. “You disagree, Dr. Adler?”
“No.” Franz fought off the spell. He pulled his hand from the desk, though his legs still felt rubbery. “My family is fine. They can take care of themselves. No need to relocate them.”
“We shall see.” Ghoya laughed. “Yes, yes. We shall.”
Franz’s dizziness abated but dread took its place. He couldn’t leave his family so vulnerable. “Mr. Ghoya, I will dedicate myself to caring for the injured soldiers, but the hospital …”
“The hospital again?” Ghoya rolled his eyes and glanced from side to side, as though conferring with imaginary colleagues. “It’s all this Jew ever thinks about.”
“With or without me, refugees will continue to become sick or injured.”
“They probably will, yes.”
“And that burden will now fall to you, Mr. Ghoya. The King of the Jews. There will be no one else.”
“That is life, Dr. Adler. People get sick. People die. Yes, yes. They die all the time.”
“And if the cholera returns?” Franz asked. “Then someone will have to control the infection before it spreads through the homes of the Designated Area. What if it spreads beyond? And sickens your own soldiers? And even reaches this office?”
Ghoya sat up straighter. “What are you suggesting, Dr. Adler?”
“My wife, Sunny, is an educated nurse. For basic illnesses, she is almost as competent as I am.” In many respects, Franz considered her to be a more capable doctor than himself, but he was desperate not to encourage Ghoya to enlist her as well.
“Your wife? The mongrel woman?” Ghoya squinted. “She could manage this hospital of yours?”
His heart felt incredibly heavy. “Yes, yes she can.”
CHAPTER 6
Sunny had always lived in Shanghai. She had hardly ventured beyond the city’s borders, leaving Shanghai only for short trips as an adult and twice as a child, when she and her father had visited Hong Kong. Growing up, she had watched, with more than a little pride, as her cosmopolitan city became known as the Paris of the East while most other metropolises withered under the shadow of the Great Depression. Shanghai’s skyline had glimmered with new art deco skyscrapers that lined grand avenues such as the riverside Bund and Nanking Road. Celebrities, entrepreneurs and intelligentsia flocked to the city, which vibrated with an around-the-clock vitality that people often compared to New York. However, Sunny also knew too well the city’s seedy and dangerous underbelly: the drugs, gambling and prostitution; the rampant crime, both petty and violent; and the simmering pot of conflicting politics and cultures that constantly threatened to boil over. Still, the city had been in its glory in the late 1930s, hitting a zenith that few people, and certainly not Sunny, had recognized at the time.
Now, after six years of war and almost three of complete occupation, Sunny saw Shanghai as a battered shell of its former self: a hobbled old woman, sadder for all the memories of the beautiful star she had once been. Sunny’s dilemma had once been deciding what to eat among the abundance of international restaurants or where to go in a city that boasted more shops, parks, theatres and clubs than any other in Asia. But nowadays, simply finding food for her family or a safe route to navigate her day had become a challenge.
There were few places in Shanghai that had been untouched, or undamaged, by years of war. That was what made the Comfort Home so striking in comparison. The renowned brothel was located in the heart of the French Concession, or Frenchtown, in what had once been one of the city’s most desirable neighbourhoods. As Sunny walked down the meandering pathway toward the grand, mustard-coloured Spanish villa, which perched on a slight slope, she saw that the grounds were as meticulously maintained as ever. Although the wildflowers had yet to bloom, the magnolias and gingko trees appeared more robust than most of the people on the street around her. The premises were unmarked, but anyone native to the city, not to mention most Japanese officers and many international businessmen before them, would have recognized the Comfort Home for the exclusive bordello it was.
Sunny hurried down to the end of the pathway, where a towering Chinese guard, at least six foot five and weighing over three hundred pounds, stood at the base of the ornate mahogany staircase, arms at his side, wearing a black suit and tie. She threw her arms around his massive chest in a very non-traditional embrace. Sunny had known Ushi since she was a teenager and had come to think of him as a guardian angel to her best friend, Jia-Li. They exchanged a few pleasantries, though Ushi was predictably unforthcoming. Sunny had never heard him utter a complaining or regretful word but she always sensed, behind his stoicism, a sadness that extended beyond his unrequited love for Jia-Li.
Ushi led Sunny up the staircase, through the imposing foyer and into the drawing room, which was furnished with baroque pieces and matching millwork, and smelled of leather and wood polish. Sunny could imagine its original owners, an aristocratic French couple—their sombre portraits still hung on the walls—entertaining elite Shanghailanders here, serving brandy and port after supper, the cigar smoke curling up to the ceiling. The owner, a major in the French army, had lost the family home as a gambling debt to the Green Gang, which had converted the mansion into the city’s most successful brothel.
Sunny only had to wait a short while before Jia-Li swept into the room wearing a navy sequined cheongsam cut with a slit almost to the top of her thigh, exposing a glimpse of garter. Her purple eyeshadow and fire-engine-red lipstick had been applied thicker than Sunny had ever before seen. The whole ensemble was too much for Sunny, who at times like these couldn’t help but wish her friend had chosen almost any other lifestyle. Despite her years of employment as a prostitute and intermittent drug abuser, Jia-Li was still the most gorgeous p
erson Sunny had ever laid eyes on, and had the charisma to match. Even as Jia-Li neared the age of thirty, with her porcelain skin, magnetic eyes and commanding smile, her presence was arresting.
Jia-Li grabbed Sunny by the shoulders and kissed her lightly on either cheek, leaving behind the scent of cinnamon and tobacco. “What brings you to my humble home, Sister?” she asked in an airy tone.
Home. The word grated. Sunny appreciated that Jia-Li had nowhere else to turn. She had lost her apartment and her husband four months earlier. Jia-Li and Charlie—the same wounded Resistance leader Ernst had secreted into the city—had fallen in love and hastily married, but Charlie’s stay ended tragically when he was discovered and became a Japanese target. Jia-Li had survived, but her apartment had been destroyed and her husband killed in an explosion that he had triggered to facilitate her escape. Still, Sunny cringed at the idea of her best friend considering the brothel home. Jia-Li was supposed to have returned solely to be sheltered with the other fugitives in the basement hideaway, but she had insisted on returning to the life of an escort, over the protests of Sunny and even the madam, Chih-Nii, who normally prized profit over all else.
“I wanted to see you. It’s been too long, băo bèi.” Sunny used her best friend’s Chinese nickname, which meant “precious.” Something in her friend’s demeanour discouraged Sunny from blurting out news of the baby, even though she wanted to.
“Yes, visit, lovely,” Jia-Li said in the carefree manner that she had adopted in recent months. She grabbed Sunny by the hand and led her over to the chaise longue. They sat down, still holding hands, while Jia-Li casually draped her right leg over her left knee, exposing even more of her thigh. Her eyes held a faraway look, but Sunny was relieved to not see any constriction of her pupils, which would have suggested that her friend had fallen back onto the opium pipe.
“What is new, băo bèi?” Sunny asked.
“New? Nothing is ever new.” Jia-Li laughed heartily. “The one advantage to this life of mine is that every day is exactly like the previous one, xiăo hè.” She used Sunny’s nickname—“little lotus.”
Sunny squeezed her friend’s hand. “Honestly, băo bèi?”
“I am fine, Auntie,” Jia-Li teased.
But Sunny saw through the cheery pretense. She had walked with Jia-Li through the Old City in the hours following her husband’s death, her anguish so intense that the memory of it still chilled Sunny. Such heartbreak didn’t mend in a matter of months, if ever. But Sunny also knew her friend too well to press her. Instead, she just gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Good.”
“And you, xiăo hè? How is that dashing husband of yours and the rest of the brood? What of all those lost Jews you single-handedly keep alive and well?” Laughing, she tossed a hand skyward. “Honestly, how you manage it all.”
“They shut our hospital.”
“Of course they did, the Rìběn guĭzi.” Jia-Li used the Shanghainese pejorative—meaning “Japanese devils”—for the city’s occupiers.
“Franz is devastated, băo bèi.”
“Well, what did he expect?”
Sunny frowned. “Expect?”
“If Franz thought it would end any other way, then I’m afraid he’s a fool,” Jia-Li said dismissively.
“Is that not a little harsh?”
“It’s the truth, Sister. Nothing more, nothing less.” Her tone was devoid of sympathy. “Shanghai is like a garden that has been deprived of water and sunlight. Everything inside it eventually wilts and dies. Why would Franz think his precious little hospital would fare any differently?”
Sunny pulled her hand free of Jia-Li’s. “It wasn’t only his hospital.”
Jia-Li threw an arm around Sunny’s shoulder and pulled her in close, cheek to cheek, as though consoling her from a hurt that someone else had levelled. “I know, xiăo hè. It was your hospital too.” Sunny began to protest but Jia-Li continued. “And the other doctors and nurses. The Jewish refugees, also. But, surely you must see that it was inevitable? The Rìběn guĭzi would never allow something so … so constructive to survive.”
“No. I suppose not.”
They sat in silence, faces touching, for a few moments. “There’s something else, băo bèi.”
Jia-Li pulled her head back and arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“A baby.”
Jia-Li’s expression was opaque. “You are pregnant?”
“No. A girl in the neighbourhood. A friend of Hannah’s.” As Sunny described the birth, she realized how much she already missed the baby in the hour since she had left him.
“You’re planning to keep this child, aren’t you?” Jia-Li said quietly.
Sunny felt her face heating. “Only until I can find a suitable orphanage or another home to—”
“Who do you think you are fooling, Sister?” Jia-Li snapped. “You are planning to raise him as your own. I see it in your eyes.”
Sunny knew it was hopeless to try to hide it from her friend. She leaned in to embrace her, but Jia-Li stood up quickly.
Sunny looked up at her. “You would be his auntie, băo bèi. If …”
“If what?”
“Franz doesn’t want us to keep him.”
“He told you so?”
“Not in so many words, no. But I can tell.”
“No matter.” Jia-Li folded her arms across her chest. “Franz will not be able to resist you. He never can.”
Sunny didn’t know how to interpret her friend’s detached tone, but she was bursting inside and needed to share it with someone. “I want to name him Joey.” She had thought immediately of the young Chinese man who had assisted Simon in setting up the hospital and had helped in innumerable other ways before being killed during a raid by the local Nazis.
“Why not?” Jia-Li said. “The other Joey was completely devoted to you.”
“Such a good man he was,” Sunny murmured. “Well, hardly much more than a boy, really.”
“Good, bad, it doesn’t really matter. He is dead. That’s all you can say about him now,” Jia-Li cried with sudden ferocity.
Sunny jumped to her feet. “That’s not fair, băo bèi. Not to Joey, or to his memory.”
“Joey was just another country orphan. One of millions.” Jia-Li waved away the objection. “He died for you, trying to protect that hospital for Jews that neither of you had any business being involved in. And for what, in the end? To have some other unwanted baby named after him?”
Sunny bristled at the words but said nothing. Normally, Jia-Li had an endless capacity to share in Sunny’s happiness, regardless of her own circumstances. Sunny had never seen such bitterness in her friend, not even during the worst of her opium withdrawals.
They stared at each for a moment, then Jia-Li’s whole face seemed to transform into a loving smile. “Oh, xiăo hè, you know I would love to chat longer, but duty calls.”
Disoriented by her best friend’s volatility and hurtful words, Sunny simply nodded. “Yes, I should let you go.”
Jia-Li wrapped Sunny in another embrace, planting kisses on each of her cheeks. “We will talk more soon, no? Best wishes for you and little darling Joey.”
Dazed, Sunny followed Jia-Li out of the room and into the corridor. At the far end, an older Japanese officer stood flanked by two younger soldiers. Sunny’s heart leapt into her throat at the sight of the white bands encircling their upper arms, marking them as Kempeitai officers. She froze, terrified that they might somehow know that Jia-Li had been Charlie’s wife, which would mean certain execution.
But rather than hiding her face or turning away, Jia-Li squealed in delight and cried “Bà!”—”Daddy!”—as she raced toward the senior officer.
Sunny spun away, unable to watch. How could Jia-Li even feign affection for those Kempeitai monsters after all they had done to her and Charlie?
As Sunny reached the front door, a familiar singsong voice called to her from behind. She inhaled an overpowering floral perfume as she turned to face the fleshy fo
rm of Chih-Nii, who was powdered and rouged, and wore an impossibly bright and ostentatiously flowing gown. Chih-Nii looked like the epitome of a pulp fiction madam, a role she inhabited deliberately and with gusto. Sunny knew that behind the facade was of one of Shanghai’s most shrewd business people, a person who encouraged others to make the mistake of underestimating her.
“Ah, Soon Yi. My exotic little buttercup.” The madam gave Sunny a quick once-over, then shook her head in exaggerated disappointment. “Oh, how you could have thrived in Chih-Nii’s garden.”
Sunny hugged the other woman, feeling her generous form through her silk dress. “How are you, Mama?” she asked.
“I do what I can to get by,” Chih-Nii said happily as she picked at a flake of lipstick at the corner of her mouth. “The Comfort Home is needed more than ever now. War or not, people have to live.”
“Yes, they do,” Sunny said, thinking of little Joey at home.
“You were visiting my special flower?”
“Yes.”
Chih-Nii tilted her head. “And?”
“Jia-Li is not right. Not right at all.”
“Not at all,” Chih-Nii agreed.
“It’s not the opium pipe again, is it, Mama?”
Chih-Nii sighed. “If only it were as simple as the pipe. We could fix that, like we have done many times before.”
Sunny nodded. “But not a broken heart?”
Chih-Nii considered it, then shook her head. “It’s not a broken heart either. Those heal too.”
“What is it, then?”
“She can hide it from almost everyone, can’t she? Behind all that cheerful bluster. But Mama sees right through it.” The madam’s voice caught in her throat. “My special flower has died inside.”
CHAPTER 7
Franz had heard his wife speak Mandarin and Shanghainese often enough that he could tell one language from the other based on her inflection alone, but never before had he heard her sing in Chinese. Sunny was pacing back and forth in front of the couch, cradling the baby, who fussed gently in her arms. She sang a soothing, unfamiliar lullaby in a tinkling melody that Franz always associated with Chinese music.