Nightfall Over Shanghai

by Daniel Kalla

  “If von Puttkamer comes back?”

  “When he comes back.”

  Franz nodded. “As you can tell from Berta’s loose lips, the rumours have already spread through the ghetto. This morning, a group of youths from the synagogue followed me to work. My own bodyguards, apparently.”

  She shook her head. “A gaggle of unarmed boys won’t be able to protect you from them.”

  “I’ll be more careful,” he muttered.

  “How, Franz? By hiding inside all day long, like Simon has to?”

  “That might be a little extreme. We will think of something. Until then, I’ll keep the boys from the synagogue close.”

  There was a knock at the door. Sunny opened it to find Father Diego standing beside Lieutenant Lewis, dressed again as Brother Dominic, except this time he wore the hood of his brown habit down. Although he looked slightly more robust than he had on the day of his arrival, his complexion was still wan, despite his enthusiastic grin. “I am checking out today, Sunny,” he said in his flat Midwestern accent. “I wanted to stop by to thank you again. For saving my life and all.”

  “I only removed fragments of shrapnel,” Sunny said. “Anyone with a scalpel and forceps could have done the same for you.”

  “Well, I for one echo the sentiment of my young Franciscan friend.” Diego turned to Franz. “Your wife’s humility is absolutely impenetrable. Does she ever take credit for anything?”

  Franz shot her a cautious but tender glance. “Precious little, Father.”

  Ignoring the other two, Sunny summoned a smile for the lieutenant. “How do you feel on your feet, Donald?”

  “Kind of like I just pulled my plane out of a barrel roll and a pitchback.” The young pilot laughed self-consciously. “I can’t really complain, though. A lot of the guys back in the squadron would kill to be in my shoes. After all, I’m on my way to live at a cathouse.”

  Diego cast Lewis a look that was more amused affection than disapproval. “You will not be living there, Donald. Only a temporary stopover.”

  “How much longer before you’ll get Donald out of Shanghai, Father?” Sunny asked.

  “Days. A week or two at the most.”

  Lewis grinned again. “I’m sure I can hold out there a week or two. As long as my wife doesn’t find out. I think she’d almost prefer it if I were put in a Jap POW camp. Rosemary’s got a real jealous streak.”

  “No doubt Rosemary would prefer most to have you home, and we will get you there,” Father Diego promised.

  “For as long as you stay in Shanghai, I can look after your wounds and dressings,” Sunny said.

  Lewis grimaced. “You’re going to come to visit me at a brothel?”

  Sunny laughed softly. “I know the Comfort Home well. My best friend works there.”

  The incredulity on the lieutenant’s face intensified. “Your best friend is a …?”

  Sunny didn’t flinch. “She is one of the most amazing people you will ever meet.”

  Diego grinned. “One does meet the most extraordinary people only in the most extraordinary of places.”

  “Yes, I suppose,” Sunny said, then turned back to the pilot. “But Jia-Li has been through so much of late. She is not herself these days.”

  “What happened to her?” Lewis asked.

  “That is a very long story,” Sunny said as she turned for the door. “And it’s time for us to leave.”

  “Us?” Franz folded his arms across his chest. “Sunny, you’re not planning to go with them?”

  “I have to speak to Jia-Li and Chih-Nii.”

  “But, darling, what if …”

  “The lieutenant and I are discovered en route,” Diego finished Franz’s sentence.

  “You’re not coming with us. No way, no how.” Lewis shook his head adamantly. “It’s a terrible idea, Sunny. I would never fly wing to wing on a midday sortie into enemy territory.”

  ***

  In the end, they reached a compromise: Sunny rode in a separate rickshaw from Hongkew to Frenchtown. Lewis and Diego were already waiting in the Comfort Home’s sumptuous sitting room. Chih-Nii stepped through the doorway in a shimmering black cheongsam with a pink fringe. Sunny couldn’t help but be reminded of the dancing hippopotami in the Disney movie Fantasia, which she had seen only weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor had cut Shanghai off from its supply of Hollywood films. But the expression on Chih-Nii’s rouged face looked anything but amused. “You are certainly not the first two clergymen to darken the Comfort Home’s doors,” the madam announced. “I hope you are not both planning to stay.”

  Diego raised his hands. “I would be honoured to remain here, madam. To teach and to learn. But alas, my commitments elsewhere are manifold.”

  “I am not exactly sure what you could teach us, Father,” Chih-Nii grunted.

  “To welcome God into your heart, I would hope.”

  “I am not convinced God could afford my prices.” Chih-Nii smiled thinly. “But I have little doubt there is much you could learn here.” She turned to Sunny. “Ah, there’s my exotic buttercup. The one who delivers me no end of complications. Why, Soon Yi, if I didn’t love you so …”

  “Our friend won’t be staying long,” Sunny said sheepishly, aware of the magnitude of the favour she was asking.

  Chih-Nii interlocked her fingers. “A week or two at the most is what I have been promised.”

  “If that.” The priest stepped forward. “I am Father Diego. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Chih-Nii ignored his outstretched hand. Unperturbed, Diego indicated the lieutenant. “Allow me to introduce Brother Dominic.”

  Lewis bowed his head. “I am most grateful for your hospitality, ma’am.”

  Chih-Nii sized the lieutenant up with a calculating eye and then snorted. “My own brother would look more convincing as a man of the cloth. And he’s addicted to the pipe.”

  Just then, Jia-Li coasted into the room, a cigarette holder dangling from her lips. “Ah, newcomers,” she said in English. “Tell me, are you clients or fugitives—or perhaps both?”

  “Careful,” Chih-Nii snapped in Mandarin.

  “I always am, Mama,” Jia-Li replied airily as she drifted over to greet Sunny with a hug that left the scent of jasmine and tobacco in its wake. “Sister, I’ve missed you.”

  “Me too, băo bèi.”

  “Is it true? Franz is home with you?” Jia-Li giggled. “That ridiculous little tyrant really did release him? Even without sampling our special soup?”

  “It’s all true.” Sunny was bursting to tell her best friend of Franz’s run-in with the Nazis and how he had tried to hide it from her, but she realized now wasn’t the time. “Jia-Li, this is Don—Brother Dominic.”

  Jia-Li floated over to Lewis and wrapped him in a quick hug. He winced in pain but then smiled shyly, appearing as rattled as most men were when first encountering Jia-Li. “Ah, our American pilot. A true war hero,” she gushed in English as she released him. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Chih-Nii snarled in Mandarin. “Ears are everywhere. Are you trying to get us killed?”

  “Never, Mama.” Jia-Li reached out to stroke the madam’s face.

  Chih-Nii batted her hand away. “Take them downstairs,” she ordered.

  “It would be my great honour.” Jia-Li bowed theatrically and turned to lead them out of the room.

  Sunny was about to follow Diego and Lewis out when Chih-Nii grabbed her by the elbow. “A quick word, little one?”

  After the others had disappeared down the hallway, Chih-Nii interlocked her fingers and rested her arms across her protruding belly. “I am deeply concerned.”

  “The priest swears it will only be a matter of days—”

  “That is an entirely separate concern.” Chih-Nii cut her off with a terse wave. “I am speaking now of our mutual friend.”

  “You don’t think Jia-Li is on the pipe again, do you?” Sunny asked. Despite Jia-Li’s erratic behaviour, her pupils hadn’t appeare
d constricted.

  “Perhaps yes, perhaps no.” Chih-Nii’s shrug was difficult to read. “What I do know is that she is becoming reckless. Dangerously so.”

  “Like the way she was talking about the Brother’s true identity?”

  “In English too!” Chih-Nii shook her head, disgusted. “That is merely the tip of the iceberg.”

  “What else?”

  “There was an incident.”

  The hairs on Sunny’s neck bristled. “What sort of incident, Mama?”

  Chih-Nii considered the question for a moment, then her lips twisted into a placating smile. “Ah, but that’s all in the past now. Suffice it to say, I am no longer convinced we can trust our golden orchid or her judgment.”

  CHAPTER 19

  June 9 1944

  As Franz held Joey in his arms, he surveyed the people gathered on Ward Road. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a Jewish crowd looking as jubilant. The news of the Allies’ D-Day landings had spread from neighbour to neighbour. It was all anyone in the ghetto seemed to be discussing. People clustered around radios, hanging on every word from the banned Voice of America broadcasts, which described the beachheads the Americans, British and Canadians had secured in Normandy. Franz had never heard of any of these places, but it sounded to him as though every square inch of captured sand had come at a bloody cost. The reports reminded him of the gut-wrenching tales of slaughter that he had heard as a teenager in Vienna from traumatized veterans of the Great War.

  The collective sense of optimism was contagious. Franz felt a lightness in his step that he hadn’t experienced in ages. It had to do with more than just D-Day. Since returning home, the episodes of dizziness had subsided in frequency to one every few days and had become milder in nature. Moreover, a month had passed without a von Puttkamer sighting, though the young volunteers—many of whom came from the ranks of the Jewish boxing club—still shadowed him on the streets. Franz had even begun to wonder if Ghoya’s threat about being dispatched from Shanghai had been nothing more than another one of his groundless threats. Despite Franz’s wariness, hope was germinating.

  Sunny pointed at a group of young Jewish women across the street. Their faces were pink and vibrant, and they talked animatedly, giggling among themselves while their children ran up and down the sidewalk chasing a soccer ball made of tightly wadded old newspapers and string. Another cluster of women stood at the far end of the block. Across from them, a group of teenagers from the school formed a small circle. Among them was Hannah, whose back was turned to them.

  Sunny rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “The way people are carrying on, you would think that Berlin had already fallen.”

  Franz shrugged his shoulders as much as he could with Joey asleep in his arms. “Remember when Paris fell to the Nazis and England was teetering? It all seemed so hopeless then.”

  “Has it really changed that much?” Sunny asked. “The Germans still hold Paris and, aside from a few beaches in Normandy, the rest of France.”

  “True, but now Hitler’s precious Festung Europa—Fortress Europe—has been breached. People have reason to celebrate. They deserve that much, Sunny.”

  She reached for his elbow and gave it an encouraging squeeze. “As do you.”

  “Even if Germany does eventually fall, there is still Japan,” Franz pointed out. “Who knows how long they could hang on for?”

  She offered him a small rueful smile. “Whether the Japanese admit it or not, the war is lost for them too. Everyone says so.”

  Franz chuckled. “By everyone, you mean a bunch of refugee gossips?”

  “The radio announcers say so too,” Sunny said. “How can one little island empire—no matter how ferocious or vicious—hold off the rest of the world? It’s not possible, Franz.”

  “Let’s hope not,” he said.

  Joey squirmed in Franz’s arms and mewled. Franz repositioned the baby across his chest, gently swaying him to and fro. Joey found his fingers and began to suck noisily on them. He stared up contentedly at Franz.

  “You see,” Sunny cooed. “He loves you.”

  “Just because he stopped crying?”

  “No, silly, the way he’s looking at you. He knows you’re his father.”

  The idea felt foreign to Franz, as though he were trying on someone else’s clothes. Franz wanted to experience that same overwhelming connection to Joey as he had with Hannah in her first months—that sense that nothing else in the world mattered—but he still had too many doubts. “It’s all happened so suddenly, Sunny.”

  She laughed. “That tends to happen with babies.”

  “You know what I mean, darling. I … we had no warning.”

  Her lips tightened. “We’ve discussed this, Franz.”

  “Discussed, yes,” Franz said. “We haven’t necessarily agreed.”

  Sunny stiffened. The last remnant of her smile vanished and her eyes creased into a squint. “So you’re still not willing to accept him into our family?”

  “It’s not so much the issue … a matter of … accepting.” Franz stumbled over the words.

  “Then what is the matter?”

  “I am not convinced our home is the best place for him—that we should keep him—under the current circumstances.”

  Sunny reached out and grabbed Joey out of Franz’s arms, startling the baby and dropping his blanket in the process. Franz bent down to pick it up off the filthy sidewalk. He stood up and offered it to her, but she had already turned her back on him. “How can you talk this way?” she demanded.

  “I am only trying to be realistic.” He swirled a hand in the air. “This celebration, it’s not real. Nothing has changed. We are still prisoners of war.”

  “Not forever, we won’t be,” she said as she hugged Joey ferociously.

  “Perhaps. Until then, every day it’s a struggle to find food. Even rice. And, if you’re right about Japan’s defeat, it will surely only get worse before the war ends. Perhaps much worse. Especially in the ghetto. They will not leave quietly.”

  “So you would have me just give Joey away, would you?” she asked, still facing away from him.

  Franz reached for her shoulder but stopped himself, knowing she would only shrug it off. “Not forever. No, darling. I’m only suggesting we find him a safe home until our situation here stabilizes. Perhaps one of your cousins’ families—the one who lives in Frenchtown, maybe—could take him in? Then when the Japanese are gone …”

  Sunny spun back to face him, her eyes red and burning but her expression steadfast. She snatched the blanket from his hand and swaddled it around Joey. “So you have decided, then?” she asked calmly.

  Franz shook his hands in frustration. “When have I ever had any say in the matter?”

  “From the very first day.”

  He shook his head. “No, Sunny. This is exactly like when you joined the Underground.”

  “How can you say that, Franz? How can you compare that to adopting a child? Is that really how you see it?”

  “Only in the sense that you made both decisions without involving me.” And before he stopped himself, he blurted, “Remember how it turned out with the Underground.”

  Sunny’s mouth fell open and her eyes clouded with hurt. She stared at him. “Joey is my son,” she finally said. “I will never ever abandon him. If he has to leave our home, then so must I.”

  “When did I say you should abandon him? I am merely suggesting—”

  Sunny pivoted and walked off without waiting for Franz to finish.

  Franz stood helplessly on the street corner, watching his wife go, feeling acutely alone. A noise from behind him drew his attention. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed movement at the far end of the street. The crowd of people began to disperse. A number of them called out to their children, who dutifully abandoned their game to join their parents. Two soldiers made their way through the crowd. Ghoya walked between them.

  Franz tasted acid. The blood drained from his cheeks. He wond
ered if he might swoon again, but his fear kept him upright. He glanced over and noticed that Hannah had broken free of her friends and was moving toward him protectively. He waved her off with a small, frantic hand gesture. She stopped where she was, her face taut with worry.

  Ghoya’s crazed grin was like a dagger to his chest. “Ah, Dr. Adler, we have been looking for you high and low,” the little man declared as he and his entourage approached. “Yes, yes. High and low. You were not at the hospital or your home, only the other Jewess and her wild brat.” He looked skyward in mock sympathy for Esther’s plight. “I knew you couldn’t be far. Not far at all.”

  Franz didn’t reply, just lowered his chin and dropped his gaze to the pavement.

  “The time has come, Dr. Adler,” Ghoya announced.

  Franz’s limbs felt wooden. He didn’t dare glance in his daughter’s direction. “May I go home and put a bag together before I leave, sir?”

  “I am not a savage. You will have plenty of time to say your goodbyes. You will not be leaving until the morning.”

  “Am I going back to the Country Hospital, sir?” Franz asked, daring to hope.

  “The Country Hospital?” Ghoya echoed in surprise before turning to his subordinates and making a joke in Japanese that evoked only a cackle of his own. “No, no, no. Not the Country Hospital. I believe I was very clear with you in my office. Was I not? You will not be staying in Shanghai.”

  “May I ask where I will be sent?”

  “Of course you may, Dr. Adler,” Ghoya said, his tone friendly again. “Ichi-Go.”

  The word meant nothing to Franz. He couldn’t help but steal a glimpse at Hannah, who stood frozen, appearing more crestfallen than frightened. “Where is Ichi-Go, sir?” he finally asked.

  “Ichi-Go is not a place, Dr. Adler. No, no. Not a place at all.”

  Bewildered and almost beyond caring, Franz just stared blankly at Ghoya.

  “Operation Ichi-Go is the future of the great imperial Empire of Japan. And with it, all of Asia.”