by Daniel Kalla
Esther opened her mouth to speak but instead just nodded.
Sunny hankered for fresh air. Joey would need to nap soon, and a stroll in the pram would help him get to sleep. Sunny realized she was destined to end up back on Broadway, heading toward the Garden Bridge, as she had for the past three days. She could still picture the configuration of the Japanese vessels in the harbour from yesterday’s walk, but they would have changed positions overnight: the ships moved constantly, never mooring in one spot for too long.
A series of light, rapid knocks drew Sunny’s attention.
“Are you expecting someone?” Esther whispered to her.
When the door rattled softly again, Sunny could tell from the tentative sound that it wasn’t the authorities. She opened the door to find a Chinese boy, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old, standing at the threshold. He looked vaguely familiar and, for a horrible moment, she wondered if he could be a relative of Feng Wei’s come to reclaim Joey. But then she recognized him as one of the young boys she had met in the sitting room at the Comfort Home.
“Mama beckons you,” the boy said in Shanghainese without greeting.
“Why? What does Chih-Nii want?”
“Your help.”
“My help? With what?”
“There has been an incident,” the boy said, turning to leave.
***
The rickshaw driver dropped Sunny and the boy, who had been no more forthcoming during the ride, outside the Comfort Home. Ushi was waiting at the curb. The colossal guard whisked her down the garden pathway and through the mansion’s entrance. Rather than escorting her to the sitting room, he led her up the curved staircase to the second floor, where Sunny had never been, and down the hall to the third bedroom on the right. He knocked four times and then the door opened a crack. Sunny had to turn sideways to slip through the opening, Chih-Nii pulling the door closed as soon as she had entered the room.
Sunny’s chest was drumming even before she saw the naked man sprawled on the four-poster bed. He lay on his back, head turned sharply to the right, a sheet twisted around his legs up to his upper thighs. Everything above that was exposed.
“He was still alive when I sent for you, buttercup,” Chih-Nii said in dull voice.
Sunny glanced at the madam, who still stood by the door with arms folded. Her gaze fell back to the body on the bed, a middle-aged man with a small paunch. “Who is he?” Sunny asked.
“A client.”
“I assumed as much.”
“Of Jia-Li’s.”
Sunny too had surmised that. “What happened to him?”
“Some kind of heart condition, apparently.” Chih-Nii sounded skeptical.
“You said he was still alive when you found him.”
Chih-Nii brought her fingers to her neck. “He still had a heartbeat, but he wasn’t breathing.”
Sunny moved closer to the bed. The man stared placidly out the window as if lost in a daydream. She knew he was dead, but she went through the motions of running the back of her hand over his still warm brow and feeling his neck and chest for any sign of life. Her breath caught in her throat when she noticed the trace of blood at the crook of his elbow. She pretended to check his pulse there as she rubbed away a small scab.
“And?” Chih-Nii demanded.
Sunny swallowed. “Even a pathologist couldn’t tell what he died of just by looking at him.”
Chih-Nii smiled as if letting Sunny in on a private joke, but the expression didn’t last. “This could cause us no end of grief,” she groaned.
“Has no one ever died at the Comfort Home before?”
“It happens,” Chih-Nii said. “Hearts have been known to give out in the throes of passion.”
“So what’s different about this man?”
“He was an important man. A major.” Chih-Nii pointed to the bundle of clothes that lay carefully folded on the chaise longue in the corner. Two white armbands rested on top of the pile. “In the Kempeitai.”
The officer’s death was certain to draw the full scrutiny of the dreaded military police. Sunny didn’t want to consider what could happen if they suspected that his death wasn’t of natural causes.
Chih-Nii locked eyes with Sunny. “This is not the first.”
“Of Jia-Li’s clients?”
Chih-Nii nodded gravely. “About two months ago. Another officer. He barely survived.”
“May I speak with her, Mama?”
Chih-Nii hesitated and then motioned toward the door. Sunny followed the madam out of the room, down the stairs and into the office. Then Chih-Nii stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her, leaving Sunny alone with her friend.
Jia-Li sat behind Chih-Nii’s mahogany desk wearing a black silk nightgown, her hair pulled back in a band. She doodled on a piece of paper as Sunny sat down across from her. Sunny glanced at her drawing: a bouquet of flowers, probably peonies, her friend’s favourite. Jia-Li looked up with a faintly amused smile. “I am more than a little jealous of your friend, xiăo hè.”
“Which friend?”
“Ernst. An artist of his skill. To create something from nothing. What a gift that must be.”
Sunny reached across the desk and laid her hand on top of Jia-Li’s. “Are you all right, băo bèi?”
“Always. Why shouldn’t I be?”
Despite her carefree words, Sunny noticed the slight tremor in her friend’s hand. “Your client. The major.”
“Ah, the poor man.” Jia-Li shrugged. “It can’t be helped.”
“We both know it’s not so.”
“Not to be indelicate, Sister, but I had worried about the major in bed.” Her gaze returned to the sketch on the desk. “His level of exertion. Many of them are … exuberant with me. But this one, with his grunting and gasping. And the sweating! As if he had just run up the side of a mountain. I imagine his heart just wasn’t up to the challenge.”
“His heart wasn’t the issue.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because he didn’t die of natural causes.”
Jia-Li looked up, her eyes steely. “Who dies of natural causes in a snake pit?”
“I saw the needle mark at his elbow. Heroin.”
Jia-Li smiled. “You must be confused. Where would the major have got his hands on opium’s brighter and bolder little sister?”
Sunny squeezed Jia-Li’s hand so tightly that her fingers ached. “You can’t continue this. It’s suicide, băo bèi.”
“No, xiăo hè.” Jia-Li’s smile vanished. She stared at Sunny, her gaze unwavering. “It’s their karma. And my duty. Nothing else.”
CHAPTER 25
The glare was blinding. The throb between Franz’s ears intensified. It took him a moment to make out the upside-down face of Captain Suzuki hovering above him. The familiar scent of iodine drifted to Franz’s nose and he finally gained his bearings. He was shocked to find himself lying on the operating table where he had spent most of the last week working. He reached up toward the source of the pain on his scalp but a hand grabbed his arm before he could touch his head.
“Hold still,” Suzuki barked as the hand gently guided Franz’s arm back to his side. “Your skull is not broken.”
“That is … good,” Franz rasped.
The hand squeezed his arm reassuringly before letting go. “How do you feel, Dr. Adler?” Helen asked just as her face came into view.
“A slight headache but otherwise fine, thank you.” He decided not to mention his intense nausea and vertigo. “How did I get here?”
“Like every other patient,” Suzuki grunted. “You were carried in on a stretcher.”
“I must have fainted.”
“I think so, yes,” Helen said.
“Medical students, certainly, but I can think of few trained doctors who faint at the sight of blood,” Suzuki said.
The image of the crazed major beating the patient over the head with the handle of his cane came back to Franz. “The circumstances were not ent
irely usual,” he said.
“What is usual anymore?” Suzuki asked rhetorically.
Franz felt a pinch and then saw a thread of catgut slither across his nose. “How many stitches?” he asked.
“Nine so far,” Suzuki said. “You will require several more. The laceration is deep. I must close it in layers.”
Franz saw double, two sets of side-by-side scissors’ teeth as Helen cut the suture right above his nose. Suzuki leaned away from the light, and Franz had to close his eyes against the painful glare. “Is the boy …?”
Suzuki shook his head once. “The private should never have turned back during the charge.”
“He went back to pick up his eyeglasses,” Franz said.
“Glasses are of little use when one is charging a tommy gun.”
Arguing further was as senseless as the fighting itself, but Franz wanted to keep Suzuki distracted, so he said, “The major, his limp?”
“What about it?” Suzuki asked.
“A battle wound?”
“Hmm,” Suzuki said as he ran another stitch. “I am told it happened in the Philippines. His pelvis was shattered and the sciatic nerve destroyed.”
“So now he is forced to command a field hospital? Behind the front lines?”
“Major Okada is a decorated war hero. He has been deployed all over the Pacific. This assignment …”
“Is humiliating for him?” Helen suggested.
“Your words, Mrs. Thompson, not mine,” Suzuki said. “However, I do not believe Major Okada is accustomed to overseeing medical personnel.”
“Or the wounded,” Helen added pointedly.
“True,” Suzuki agreed.
“And you, Captain?” Franz asked as he felt another poke from the suture needle.
“I am a surgeon, not a commander.”
“Were you in the army before the war?”
“Before the war, I was in San Francisco.”
Franz started to lift his head but the tug of a stitch held him back. “Hold still,” Suzuki snapped.
“How … how did you possibly end up here?” Franz asked.
Suzuki went quiet. Then he laughed in a low rumble. “This question from an Austrian Jew who works in a Japanese field hospital in the middle of China?”
Franz laughed too. “I suppose it cannot be any stranger than my journey.”
Suzuki ran in three or four more stitches before he spoke again. “A wedding,” he finally said.
“A wedding?” Franz asked.
“My son was getting married. In Nagasaki, where his wife’s family lives. My wife and I came back to attend the wedding.”
“And the war broke out?”
“Japan has been at war with China for over ten years.” Suzuki sighed. “But while we were in Nagasaki, Pearl Harbor was bombed. America declared war.”
“So you enlisted?”
“I was bound by duty,” Suzuki said, his inflection suggesting it should have been obvious to Franz.
“Did your son enlist as well?”
A sharp poke made Franz wince and he felt the needle deflect off his skull. “Enough chitchat,” Suzuki snarled. “This is not a bridge club.”
Suzuki sewed the last of the stitches in cold silence, then dropped the utensils onto a tray. The worst of Franz’s giddiness had passed, and he started to push himself upright. Helen’s arm slipped behind his back and helped raise him up to sitting. His head pounded, but he willed himself to remain upright while the room spun around him.
Suzuki eyes narrowed. “What good are you to me, Dr. Adler?”
Taken aback, Franz said, “I … I work as hard as I can, Captain.”
“What will happen the next time?” Suzuki pressed. “When you pass out into an open wound, halfway through surgery? Who will take care of the patient? And who will save you?”
“As I said, Captain, it was an exceptional circumstance. I was not expecting—”
“What kind of fool do you take me for?” Suzuki scoffed.
“I don’t understand.”
“I cannot count all the times I have seen you near the point of collapse. That first day at the Country Hospital, you would have smashed your head open then too, had Mrs. Thompson not been there to catch you.”
Franz looked over to Helen, the surprise on her face evident. “You saw that, Captain Suzuki?” he asked.
“I was willing to turn a blind eye.” Suzuki shook his head. “No more. I cannot put our patients in jeopardy.”
“As a child, I used to have epilepsy,” Franz hurriedly launched into the lie. “When I become overly fatigued, sometimes I have these epileptic drop attacks—”
“Nonsense,” Suzuki snapped.
Helen glanced over to Franz, her eyes questioning, but she said nothing.
“This is obviously syncope, not epilepsy,” the captain continued. “Drop attacks from the collapse of the circulatory system.”
Franz’s stomach tightened as he again visualized Okada’s attack on the private, and wondered if it was his standard response to any failure in the line of duty. “Are you going to inform the major?”
Instead of answering, Suzuki said, “Lie down.”
Franz complied, relieved to be reclining again. Suzuki readied his stethoscope, then slipped a blood pressure cuff around Franz’s upper arm and inflated it. After measuring Franz’s pressure, he instructed Franz to sit up again. He took further readings with Franz sitting and then standing. The captain pulled his stethoscope from his ears. “Orthostatic hypotension,” he pronounced. “Your systolic blood pressure drops by twenty-five millimetres when you shift from lying to sitting and another fifteen when you stand up. Are you not terribly dizzy each time you rise?”
“Sometimes, yes,” Franz said, feeling stupid for having never considered the diagnosis.
“How long has this been going on?” Suzuki asked.
“The last six months or so.”
“Is it always so persistent? Or does it come and go?”
Franz considered. “It comes and goes. When I was travelling here from Shanghai, when I was not performing surgery—standing on my feet for such long periods—the episodes almost disappeared.”
Suzuki frowned. “What were they feeding you on the journey?”
Franz thought back to the unpalatable meals. “They often brought me dried salty fish, sometimes twice a day. I do not know the name for it, but the smell was terrible.”
“Kusaya,” Suzuki said, nodding to himself. “Yes, indeed. It is made with brine and loaded with salt. That must be it.”
Franz flushed with relief and embarrassment. “Are you suggesting that I might simply be suffering from salt deficiency?”
“For your sake, it had better be the cause.” Suzuki turned away. “I will instruct the cook. You will start back on kusaya twice per day.” He marched out of the operating room without another word.
Helen stood over the tray preparing bandages. “You lied to me about your drop attacks?” she asked almost casually.
“I’m sorry, Helen. I was embarrassed—and afraid. I had no idea what was going on. It was easier to bury my head in the sand.”
“Is that so?”
“I haven’t told anyone. I feel like such an imbecile. After all, I am supposed to be a doctor.”
She looked over and eyed him for a cool moment before a smile crept onto her face. “Yes, but only a surgeon.”
Franz chuckled. “Not much of a doctor, I grant you.”
“Sit down,” Helen said.
As Helen gently cleaned blood away from his hair, Franz remarked, “The captain behaved oddly when I asked about his son, didn’t you think?” She nodded. “Has he ever mentioned him to you?”
“In all the months I’ve known Captain Suzuki, this is the only time I’ve ever heard him discuss his family. In English or Japanese.”
“And Major Okada?” Franz said, lowering his voice. “What he did to that man in the tent.”
Helen stiffened slightly. “I warned you about the maj
or.”
“Have there been other incidents?”
“I have only heard rumours. But I have seen it in his eyes. The fanaticism. I knew he was dangerous.”
“We live in the golden age for fanatics, as my friend Ernst would tell you.”
Helen finished cleaning the wound and gently swept his hair down over his forehead. She lifted a roll of white bandage and began to wind the cloth around his head.
“Is this really necessary?” Franz groaned. “I will look even more foolish than how I already feel.”
“I don’t tell you where or how to make your incisions, doctor. You need to trust me with the bandaging.”
Franz sat as still as he could while Helen continued to wind the wrap. She softly hummed a tune that was unfamiliar to Franz, but he sensed a trace of hurt in her otherwise placid expression. “Helen, I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she asked.
“For upsetting you earlier.” He coughed into his fist. “About your husband.”
She laughed softly. “How could you have possibly known?”
“It wasn’t considerate of me to carry on about my troubles as though you had none of your own.”
Her face softened with an understanding smile. “You never have to apologize for worrying over your family.”
“Still …”
Helen nodded. “You know, I was the one who convinced Michael to move to Shanghai.”
“He was reluctant?”
“It was 1938. Michael thought it foolhardy to accept a posting in Asia when the Japanese were sabre-rattling.” She sighed. “I wanted to be nearer to my father. And I convinced Michael that they would never dare touch British interests in the Far East.”
“I thought the very same when I first arrived here,” Franz said. “That was also in 1938. In December.”
“That was not the only thing I was wrong about.” Helen closed her eyes and looked down. “I never dreamed that Michael would run off with Marjorie Wilson either. After all, she and her husband, Hamish, were our best friends in Shanghai.”