by Daniel Kalla
Jia-Li bit her lip. “And Simon?”
“Ernst is still sheltering him in Germantown. Over two years now.”
Jia-Li laughed airily. “Could you imagine those two together day and night? Like Frick and Frack!”
“There’s three of them now. Ernst has a monkey.”
“A monkey! What does Ernst need a monkey for?” Jia-Li rolled her eyes. “He practically is one himself.”
Sunny clutched Jia-Li’s wrist. “Oh, Sister, I meant to tell you. Hannah is so grateful for the birthday present you sent her.”
“She likes the scent?”
“Loves it. She wears it all the time. She can’t stop talking about it.”
“It was nothing. Mama will let the Comfort Home run out of water before we ever run out of fragrance.”
“Fifteen years old, băo bèi. Hard to believe. Hannah was such a little girl when I first met her. Now she’s almost a woman.” Sunny sighed. “She is still dating that Freddy boy, though.”
Jia-Li raised an eyebrow. “You don’t approve?”
“He could charm a lion from his kill, that one. But I don’t trust him at all. Neither does Franz.”
Jia-Li blew out a ring of smoke that floated lazily skyward. “I’ve known a boy or two like that myself. It rarely ends well with those types.”
Sunny knew it was true. Jia-Li’s first boyfriend had got her hooked on opium and led her into the life of prostitution before abandoning her at roughly the same age Hannah was now. “There’s another sweet boy, Herschel, who still calls after Hannah. He won’t give up. It breaks my heart to see him suffer so. But Hannah only has eyes for Freddy.”
“Typical,” Jia-Li huffed her disapproval. “And Franz? How is the dashing doctor?”
“He’s fine.” Sunny couldn’t fight back the grin. “Franz is such a wonderful father. After all, he raised Hannah single-handedly. But you should see him with Joey. So caring, so loving, so … so paternal.”
“Ah, xiăo hè, where did you find a man like that? Some people have all the luck.” She said it laughingly, without a trace of jealousy.
“And you, băo bèi? What is new?”
Jia-Li puffed out another smoke ring. “That is the beauty of the Comfort Home. Every day is exactly like the previous one.”
Sunny didn’t believe that her friend felt as nonchalant as she sounded, but she didn’t press the point. Instead, she asked, “You saw Father Diego?”
“I did,” Jia-Li said. “A dangerously charming man, that one. Such a waste that he’s a priest.”
“Sometimes, I still wonder if he really is.”
Jia-Li laughed. “Oh, I’m certain he is.”
“How can you tell?”
“The way he listens,” Jia-Li said. “With his whole being. He invites confession.”
“I suppose so. Yes.”
Jia-Li looked away. “I told him, xiăo hè,” she said quietly. “All about Charlie.”
Sunny couldn’t remember the last time she had heard her friend mention her husband’s name. Any time Sunny had tried to talk about him, Jia-Li had clammed up or immediately changed the subject. “Everything?”
“Everything. Nothing.” Jia-Li swallowed. “Only that each day without him is worse than the one before.”
Sunny leaned forward and touched her forehead to Jia-Li’s. “I cannot even imagine, Sister.”
They sat together quietly. Then, as if a spell had broken, Jia-Li pulled away and took another drag from her cigarette. Charlie’s memory vanished. “Priest or not, he doesn’t come here on Church business,” Jia-Li said. “Chih-Nii helps him out from time to time. Stashes a few more of his airmen in the hideaway. But he pays for the favour. After all, nothing is ever free with Mama. Not even patriotism.”
“How much more of that business can there be left?” Sunny asked. “People say the war will end soon.”
“People say all kinds of things. It doesn’t make them true. Besides, the war hasn’t been bad for Mama’s business. And she will no doubt capitalize on peacetime too.”
“And you?”
“I don’t think much will change in my life either, except perhaps I’ll see different uniforms crumpled at the foot of my bed.”
Saddened by the thought, Sunny stroked Jia-Li’s arm. “It would be the perfect time for you to get out of here, băo bèi. To forget this life and to come live with us. To be a dedicated auntie for Joey. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”
“It sounds like bliss,” Jia-Li said with a faraway smile. “And where would we all live together?”
Sunny shook her head. “When the war ends, it will be the end of the ghetto too. We will find somewhere bigger and better.” She paused. “Of course, I still have to convince Franz that we should stay in Shanghai.”
“Where does he want to go? America?”
“Simon wants us to go to America with him and Esther. To live in the Bronx, wherever that is.”
“And Franz?”
“He’s not certain. But he doesn’t want to stay here.”
“America, then? Or perhaps Australia? Even Canada?”
“I suppose. He’s even talking about Palestine.”
“Palestine?” Jia-Li gaped at her. “What would possess him to go there, of all places?”
“There’s a rabbi in the ghetto who is most vocal about creating a Jewish state in Palestine. He’s very persuasive. Franz has become intrigued.”
“What, then? You just move the refugee hospital from here to Jerusalem?”
“Who knows what will happen to us, let alone the hospital.”
Jia-Li scooped Joey up, perching him on her knee. “You can’t just up and drag Joey away to some awful desert.” She affected her English accent again. “I simply will not have it.”
“I don’t want to go either. I hear the British won’t even allow any more Jewish settlers into Palestine. Apparently, the local Arab population is hostile. It could amount to leaving one war zone for another.” Sunny shook her head. “Besides, you and I are both rooted here as deeply as the poplars and elms of Frenchtown.”
CHAPTER 41
The bedroom was already muggy, and the calendar had only just flipped over to May. Franz suspected that the stifling heat of another Shanghai summer wasn’t far away.
Sunny stirred beside him and stretched. “Is he still asleep?” she asked, her whisper evolving into a yawn.
Her leg was draped over his, so Franz had to stretch his neck to see Joey in the crib at the foot of the bed. The child kept so quiet that Franz wasn’t certain. “I think so, yes.”
Sunny ran her fingers lightly across Franz’s chest. “It’s such a lovely treat when he sleeps in.”
Franz kissed the top of her head, drinking in the soapy fragrance of her lustrous hair. He wondered how she always smelled so fresh when they only had the luxury of a proper bath once or twice a month. “If only we could sleep in.” Franz sighed.
Her hand rested delicately on his lower belly, two fingers digging tantalizingly below the string of his pyjama bottoms. “Why can’t we?”
“We have surgery. Frau Ingelmann. She and her two hernias are waiting for us.”
Sunny’s hand slipped deeper into his pyjamas. “Her hernias have been waiting four years. What is another hour?”
Franz felt himself hardening at Sunny’s touch. Frau Ingelmann would have to wait. He reached out and gently stroked her thigh, running his hand up under the thin fabric of her nightgown until it reached the warmth between her legs. She moaned quietly at his light caress. Pulling her nightgown up, she rolled on top of him. Effortlessly, she slid his pyjamas down. With one thrust, he was inside her.
After they had made love a second time, they lay sweating in each other’s arms, giggling at their early morning exuberance. Sunny ran her hand through Franz’s damp hair. “Mmm,” he murmured. “Your fingertips feel wonderful.”
She continued to massage his scalp gently. “Franz, I have been meaning to tell you. I ran into Father Diego yesterday.”
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br /> His lifted his head up and away from her hand. “The spy? Where would you see him?”
“I bumped into him outside the Comfort Home while I was visiting Jia-Li.”
“What did he want?”
“Nothing,” she said, her tone slightly defensive. “But he went to pains to warn me about the air raids.”
Franz wrapped the sheet across their chests. “What about them?”
As Sunny explained how the transmitter—and the ghetto by proximity—would be a target for the American planes, Franz’s thoughts drifted back to the field hospital. With a sickening lump in the pit of his stomach, he pictured Helen keeling forward in mid-stride.
“Could you imagine, Sunny? If we were to survive the war, only to die at the hands of our liberators?”
“Father Diego says we have to remain vigilant.”
“Vigilance won’t defuse a bomb.”
“No, but we need to be prepared. We cannot wait for the useless air sirens to sound. We have to head for the shelters as soon as we hear the first sounds of the planes.”
He exhaled heavily. “Do you really trust those shallow bomb shelters the Japanese have dug?”
She pointed at the ceiling. “More than I trust the walls and roof of this decrepit building.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Arms intertwined, they lapsed into an intimate silence. Franz thought of the meeting he had arranged for today with Rabbi Hiltmann. He knew the rabbi wanted a commitment about Palestine. He turned his head to Sunny and saw that she was staring back at him. “Darling, if we do survive until we are liberated …”
“Yes?” she said.
“We will need a fresh start.”
“You mean in Palestine, don’t you?”
“There could be opportunities for us both there. To work side by side as surgeons.”
“After the war, I will be a nurse again, not a surgeon. And I will be happy for it. Besides, there will be peace and security right here in Shanghai.”
“We can’t know that for certain. After all, the countryside is full of Communist rebels.”
“That is the countryside. Not the city. Oh, Franz, how can we take Joey and Hannah away from their home and toss them right back into harm’s way?”
“Darling.” He reached for her cheek. “There are thousands of others like us already over there. Pioneers. You can’t simply assume we will be putting anyone in harm’s way.”
She jerked her face away from his hand and sat up, her legs hanging over the side of the bed, her back to him. “Can you assume that we won’t be?”
***
“Did you hear about the crematoria?” Rabbi Hiltmann demanded as soon as Franz reached him. The older man stood at the front of the Ohel Moishe Synagogue polishing the wooden bimah, the platform from which he read from the Torah, with a yellow rag. “The ones at the camp they called Auschwitz?”
The Adlers had never kept a wireless in their flat. Lately, Franz even avoided listening to broadcasts on the radios that their friends and colleagues hid inside their homes. He didn’t want to hear any more about the extermination camps. His chest ached at the thought of all the friends and neighbours he’d left behind in Vienna. How many of them had ended up in those crematoria? “I’ve heard some rumours, yes.”
“Rumours? Rumours are what you hear about the door-to-door salesman and the neighbour’s wife. These are truths. Unimaginable, unbearably awful truths. Attested to by soldiers, newsmen and survivors, those poor souls who were lucky enough—or perhaps not, after what they have seen—to outlast their tormentors.”
Franz nodded contritely. “It was a poor choice of words,” he said, hoping to steer Hiltmann away from the subject.
“There were five crematoria in Auschwitz alone. I am told they were capable of burning five thousand bodies a day.” Hiltmann scrubbed hard at an imaginary blemish on the polished wood. “More than a million people every year. Incinerated in one camp alone.”
The magnitude of the murder was beyond Franz’s comprehension.
“And the children’s shoes?” Hiltmann attacked the bimah again with his rag. “Warehouses full of shoes. Can you imagine all those children? The monsters, they kept the shoes. Why? To give away to the Aryan boys and girls? Or maybe to keep as some kind of deranged trophy?”
Franz thought of the adorable Friedmann twins, Sarah and Rosa, who had lived in his building in Vienna. They had been such good friends of Hannah’s. Franz had tried to talk their father into bringing his family to Shanghai, but Herr Friedmann was determined “to wait out the Nazis.” Franz wondered if the twins’ shoes were somewhere in those piles. But he just said, “The Nazis will be done soon. Everyone says so. Then the Allies will be able to bring those responsible to justice.”
“Justice? Justice? How will justice help the millions who died in the gas chambers? What good will it be to all those children?”
Franz dropped his chin to his chest. “Nothing can help them.”
“You are wrong, Dr. Adler.” Hiltmann shook his rag angrily at Franz. “There is one, and only one, thing that will help all those lost souls.”
“What is that, Rabbi?”
“If something good were to come from their deaths.”
“You honestly believe that?”
“In my heart and soul.” Hiltmann nodded slowly. “It is our duty as survivors to create a place where their memory will be preserved and honoured. Where their remaining family members—what few there might be left—can live and prosper.”
“In Palestine?”
“In Eretz Yisrael!”
Franz’s faith wasn’t strong enough to believe that anything could help the dead, but the living were a different story. “A haven for Jews the world over.”
“Exactly.” Hiltmann shook his rag like it was a flag. “So you will come with us, then?”
Franz paused, remembering his conversation with Sunny. “I’m considering it, Rabbi.”
“Good, Dr. Adler. We will need skilled doctors—surgeons, no less—most of all.”
“My wife is more skeptical.”
“Why? What would be stopping her?”
“There’s my daughter. And we have a new baby to—”
“Hannah and the baby are the most important of all. Far more important than you or me. We have a whole generation of Jews to replace.” Hiltmann stared at him intently. “You must make Sunny see this.”
“Make her see?” Franz uttered a half-hearted laugh. “You don’t know my wife like I do, Rabbi. Besides, Sunny has never left China.”
“Then it’s time she did.”
“She worries about the children.”
The rabbi stared at him unsympathetically. “Are you familiar with the old Yiddish proverb ‘Better to die upright than to live on your knees’?”
“I’ve heard it before, yes.”
“Well, the Nazis have proven that we Jews can no longer live on our knees, even if we try to.”
An excited voice interrupted them. “Rabbi! Rabbi!” A bearded young man waved his arms as he rushed down the aisle toward them.
“What is it, Saul?” Hiltmann asked, annoyed.
“He’s dead, Rabbi,” Saul cried.
“Who is dead?”
“Hitler!”
Franz’s head swam as if he were about to relive one of his drop attacks, but his legs held firm.
Hiltmann rested a hand on the bimah. “Are you certain, boy?”
“Yes,” Saul cried. “The Nazis announced it themselves.”
“How?” The rabbi demanded. “How did that farseenisch die?”
“They haven’t said,” Saul said happily. “Only that he is dead and Berlin has fallen.”
Franz felt a lightness in his chest and a tingling in his fingers and toes. “Have the Nazis surrendered?” he asked.
Saul shook his head. “They have a new chancellor. Some admiral named Dönitz.”
Franz struggled to absorb the news. “Hitler is really gone?”
“Yes.” S
aul laughed. “Everyone is saying so on the wireless. Even the Germans.”
Hiltmann pulled his hand from the bimah. “Danken got,” he finally said in Yiddish. “May they dump his body in an unmarked grave beneath a mountain of shoes.”
***
Franz wandered down Ward Road at dusk, lost in a fog of emotion. Hitler was dead. Berlin had fallen. But the Japanese were fighting on, and the ghetto might be bombed at any time by the Americans. And what about the millions of Jews who had been murdered in that one camp alone?
Franz hadn’t even noticed the sedan rumbling along behind him until he rounded a corner and it turned to follow him. Looking over his shoulder, he froze as he recognized the car he had seen earlier, parked outside the apartment and also the hospital. Suddenly it came to a stop, tires crunching, and the back door flew open. Franz glanced around him. He would have called for help but, aside from a coolie resting against his rickshaw at the end of the block, the side street was empty.
His pulse pounded in his ears as he considered dashing for Muirhead Road. A pair of boots had already emerged from the car. Franz doubted he could outrun them all, but nevertheless he turned and raced into the narrow alleyway behind him. Looking back over his shoulder to see whether the men were following, he did not see the wall that seemed to come out of nowhere. Slamming into it, Franz toppled backwards to the ground. Before he could regain his bearings, a huge hand wrapped around his arm and hoisted him to his feet. Franz caught a whiff of soy as he looked up into the face of von Puttkamer’s Korean bodyguard.
The tall man spun Franz around effortlessly and dragged him back toward the sedan, which was now blocking the lane’s entrance. Franz was still gasping as he was shoved through the back door of the sedan and fell into the empty seat across from von Puttkamer.
“Ah, Dr. Adler,” the baron said pleasantly as the door slammed shut. “We have much to discuss.”
CHAPTER 42
Sunny slung the sack of rice over her shoulder while Hannah pushed the pram beside her, navigating Chusan Road’s crowded sidewalk. Hannah enjoyed steering her baby brother in his carriage, even though its wheels often stuck and it had a tendency to veer to the right. Joey never seemed to notice the bumpy ride. He still wasn’t talking, but as he sat in the pram, his keen eyes drank in the commotion around him.