by S. J. Rozan
“Choice? We are Jews, sir-we have no choice! The countries we leave hound us, steal from us, throw us behind bars. We’re ordered into exile and would gladly go, but no place will have us-except Shanghai!” I swept my hand toward the boys. “These children leave home, family, and friends for an unknown place where the language, the streets, the very food will be wholly new to them. Yet they laugh and play. And you dare take them to task for it!”
Finally reining in the runaway horse that is my temper, I felt myself redden up to my scalp and was appalled at my effrontery.
The gentleman regarded me, his face grave. He asked if there were truly no other place for us. “I’d thought Shanghai was a transit port,” he said. “A stop on the way to someplace more hospitable.”
Surprised by the catch in my throat as I spoke, I told him “hospitable” was not a sentiment the world felt toward Jews.
He kept his gaze on me for another brief time. Then he turned to the boys, who’d been watching in part fear, part fascination. He bowed-at which they took a step back, as though afraid of what might happen next!-and requested that I convey his apologies. I told them in German they might continue their game but must take care not to disturb their fellow passengers, and I shooed them off.
The gentleman turned again to me, and again, he smiled. “I am Chen Kai-rong. Chen is my family name, and so, if we’re to be friends, you must call me Kai-rong. I’d be honored if you’d take tea with me.”
And that, Mama, is how I’ve come to know about Chinese tea!
I receded to my deck chair. Mr. Chen Kai-rong settled himself also and spoke to a steward. As we awaited our tea he glanced at my book. I’d been reading Thomas Hardy, to improve my English; he asked whether the author was a favorite of mine. When I told him Mr. Hardy was rather dark for my taste, he agreed, and asked what writer in that language I enjoyed.
And Mama, now you’ll laugh, because what popped from my mouth was “William Shakespeare.” All the times you despaired of me, devouring Wilkie Collins while King Lear gathered dust, and now to a stranger on the deck of a ship I tell such a fib! But this gentleman holds himself with such grace, Mama, his English is so good and his manners so refined! I wanted him to think well of me.
I then asked if there was an English author he particularly admired, and he responded with P. G. Wodehouse. Do you know this writer, Mama? I don’t, and I told him so. His answer: “Well, I commend him to you. I think you’ll find him compatible.” Later, I sought out the works of Mr. Wodehouse in the ship’s library, but they are not carried.
Our tea tray arrived, bare of milk, sugar, or lemon. The accompanying cakes were entirely unfamiliar. Mr. Chen Kai-rong instructed me to swirl the teacup to release the scent, as we do with wine. I found the tea’s golden color and sweet fragrance appealing, and discovered it to be delicious, though I was less successful in enjoying the cakes.
“Never mind,” he said. “At least now the very food of China isn’t wholly new to you.” At that I couldn’t contain a smile, though I tried to conceal it. He continued, “I confess to a weakness for linzer torte, myself. Tell me, Miss Gilder, are all Jews as firm in their opinions and as outspoken as yourself? If so, Shanghai can look forward to some excitement.”
“We are indeed firm in our opinions,” I replied. “Though I think you and Shanghai will find most of my fellow refugees more capable of holding their tongues than I. Please accept my apology; I had no right to speak to you that way. But if we are to continue speaking, and even, as you hinted, to be friends, and if I’m to call you Kai-rong, you must call me Rosalie.”
He nodded gravely, as though I had proposed terms for a political treaty. “Well, Rosalie,” said he, “it seems I’m indebted to those young hooligans. If they hadn’t tried to trample me, I’d not have discovered the pleasure of your company. To my regret, though, I now have an appointment to keep.” He stood and bowed in farewell.
“Please wait, sir,” I said before he could take two steps. My boldness makes me blush, thinking of it now, but Mama, the half hour we’d spent over tea was the only half hour since the train pulled out of Salzburg that I haven’t been afraid. Can you understand that? I’ve been trying so hard to be brave, to look after Paul and be responsible, and really, Mama, I’ve been managing, please don’t think I haven’t. But this brief time spent with someone who is neither a frightened refugee, nor in the business of frightening refugees-I’d nearly forgotten what it was to converse, to speak of things beyond fear and loneliness and the horrors of our situation. So I called after Mr. Chen Kai-rong, and when he quickly turned back to me, I had to have something to say! I blurted, “Sir? My young brother and I go to China alone, with no more knowledge than we could glean from a children’s poetry book. If you’d care to educate me about your country, so I’m not a total dunce when we arrive, I should like that very much.”
He smiled. “I think, Rosalie, you stand no chance of being a dunce. But I’d be honored to talk with you about my country. Will you take tea with me again tomorrow afternoon? I can arrange for a group of rowdy children with dangerous toys, if that will entice you.”
“I need no enticing,” I told him, and the deal was struck.
So, Mama, soon I’ll be what the British call an “old China hand.” I’m looking forward to my education, but more than that, to another half hour with someone in whose presence I can forget that I’m afraid.
Stay well, Mama, and come soon!
Your Rosalie
As I slipped the printout onto my bedside table, I could almost feel the salt wind. I wondered what kind of tea Rosalie and Chen Kai-rong had been drinking: Osmanthus flower? Chrysanthemum? And did the Italian liner stock these teas for the Chinese passengers, or had Chen Kai-rong brought his own tea aboard? Maybe he’d found a favorite shop in Europe where he bought his Chinese tea, and now he was taking it home.
I fell asleep and dreamed of oceans.
3
“You slept well,” said my mother: a declaration, not a question.
She’s a restless sleeper herself. It was entirely possible she’d seen light under my door at 2:00 A.M. and was ostentatiously pretending she hadn’t. Rather than get into that, I poured myself tea and called my best and oldest friend, Mary.
“ Lydia! Are you back?”
“Almost completely. You have time for lunch today?”
“I’m on the eight to four, but I’ll make time. My vic won’t be any deader after lunch.”
“You have a homicide?” I was surprised. Mary Kee is a Fifth Precinct detective. She does, or, as she says, undoes, extortion, robbery, and assault, but the precincts usually hand off homicides to the NYPD’s specialized squads.
“Not exactly. An Asian John Doe in a Times Square hotel. Bad teeth, no money, no papers, so they think he might be an illegal. Midtown Homicide asked for someone from down here to help ID him. My captain doesn’t like it, but he couldn’t say no.”
“Why doesn’t he like it?”
“He thinks the special-squad guys are divas. Especially Midtown Homicide. They don’t play well with others.”
“Sibling rivalry in the NYPD? I’m shocked and appalled. Well, bring along the John Doe’s photo. Maybe I know him.”
“Oh, sure. Lydia, you’ve been away so long I’m surprised you still know your way around.”
“For Pete’s sake, it was one month! You sound like my mother.”
“What? I take it back. See you later.”
I did my dishes and got dressed for a day of gumshoeing. As an afterthought, I slipped into my bag the Rosalie Gilder letters I’d printed out last night but hadn’t read. Then I headed out to see if I still knew my way around.
Rushing Chinese people and strolling tourists crowded the hot, bright sidewalks. I worked my way past open storefronts where ice-filled boxes displayed dozens of kinds of fish, past piled vegetable stands and restaurants with chickens glistening in the window. When I hit six lanes of snarled and honking traffic, I’d reached Canal Street.
&
nbsp; Canal, running east-west through lower Manhattan, was once Chinatown ’s border, but those days are gone. On the immigrant flood waters of the last two decades, Chinatown has spread north through what was once Little Italy and east through the formerly Jewish tenements of the Lower East Side. It’s lapping at the blocks west, too, merging with Tribeca and SoHo in a jagged scramble of the newly come and the ultra hip.
I surveyed the glittering windows of the jewelry row along Canal. As Alice Fairchild had said, they don’t go in much for antiques here. Chinese people value antiquities, but we generally like to know where things have spent the last, oh, five hundred years. Buying old things from strangers carries a risk: Unless you know what happened to the original owner and you’re sure he or she didn’t mind giving up the piece, you’re in danger of acquiring some bad luck along with it.
Westerners don’t seem to feel that way, and some of the Forty-seventh Street shops carry beautiful antiques. But a Shanghai bureaucrat on the lam might want to steer clear of the yarmulkes and black coats uptown and offer his ill-gotten goods to someone who spoke his language.
Literally.
Newcomers from other parts of China notwithstanding, a lot of Chinatown is still Cantonese. Including most of these jewelers. Wong Pan was from Shanghai, and a government official. He’d speak Shanghainese by upbringing and Mandarin by necessity. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be willing to do business with Cantonese jewelers, and in written Chinese he’d be able to, but I’d bet he’d try his own people first.
So how would he find them? Most likely, by the shoe-leather method. He’d go from store to store, asking which dialect the proprietor spoke. The real question was, how was I going to find them in a way that would cancel out his two-day lead?
I headed east on Canal, to Golden Dreams.
“Ling Wan-ju!” Mrs. Chan, my mother’s friend-and-rival, smiled from her perch behind a case of jade bracelets. In the corner, incense smoke twisted up from General Gung’s altar.
“Hello, Auntie.” Greeting her in Cantonese, I took both her plump hands in mine. “How are you?”
“For an old lady, I’m well, thank you. You look lovely! California must have agreed with you. I can understand why you extended your trip.”
Mrs. Chan and my mother sewed side by side at Mr. Leng’s factory the whole time I was growing up. If my mother was going to complain to anyone about my being away, it would be Mrs. Chan. Of course, the way she put it probably had to do with how invaluable I was to my cousins, and how much more my help was needed, even after the wedding, than we’d expected when I made my plans.
“I had a good time, Auntie, but I’m glad to be home.” I knew that would get back to my mother, and I wanted it to. No point in her staying up all night worrying that I might relocate. “Auntie, I need your help. Professionally.”
Mrs. Chan’s cheeks crinkled when she smiled. “Of course!” She sat up straighter. Out of loyalty, most of my mother’s friends disapprove of my profession, but Mrs. Chan is different. She watches lots of TV cop shows and likes the idea that I’m fighting crime.
“Auntie, I need to find jewelers who speak Mandarin or Shanghainese. Do you know any?”
“Oh, I don’t know if I can help. I’m so busy here in the store, I have no time to waste gossiping with other jewelers.” Having established her bona fides, she went straight on. “Of course, Mr. Lee, at Canal Diamonds, is from Beijing. And Old Wong at Harmony Jewelers, he speaks a dozen dialects-anything for a sale, that old man. Yang Nuanyi’s husband is Shanghainese, so maybe she’s learned his dialect. Or maybe not. If I were married to him I’d be happy for an excuse not to talk to him. Mr. Chen at Bright Hopes is from Shanghai, but he’s been here many years.” She kept that up for a full five minutes. I made a list, excluding the editorials.
“Thank you, Auntie,” I said, when she finally ran out of steam. “I’m grateful for your time, and I won’t take up any more of it. But I imagine you want to know why I’m asking.”
“Oh, it’s not my concern.” Her eyes were wide with innocence, but to head off a commiserating phone call to my mother about the difficulty of living with a daughter always in too much of a rush for common courtesy, I showed Mrs. Chan the photos. She shook her head, at both the jewelry and Wong Pan. “But I’ll call you without delay if I see him,” she promised, aglow at the prospect of striking a blow for justice.
I spent the rest of the morning working my way through Mrs. Chan’s list. I showed the photos and marveled at the variety of ways people had for saying no. I’d gotten simultaneously halfway through the list, halfway down the street, and nowhere when it was time to knock off and meet Mary for lunch.
I headed to our favorite Taiwanese tea shop and slipped onto a stool at a front table. I was a few minutes early, and Mary, being on duty, was likely to be late. I almost ordered black tea, but the old man at the next table swirled a pot of sweet-smelling osmanthus flower, releasing the fragrance. I ordered some of that and pulled the next of Rosalie Gilder’s letters from my bag.
28 April 1938
Dearest Mama,
I write to tell you how proud you must be of Paul. Not that his jokes and fidgets have been abandoned for sober respectability. Staying in his chair for an hour at dinner is still more than he can manage. It’s as difficult as ever to convince him to read any book not a dry scientific text; fortunately he is able to practice his English on such wonders from the ship’s library as Capacitative Resistors: Design and Use. And sharing a stateroom is turning out to be a matter of calling him back time and again to fold his clothes or mop up the lavatory.
But those are small irritations, and I’m ashamed to think how they once exasperated me. Among our fellow refugees we hear such tragic tales! A girl my age, Ursula Krause, from Berlin, goes to her uncle in Shanghai alone. Her father and brother were taken by the Gestapo, and she’s heard nothing since-except a smuggled note from her brother begging her to leave while she could. Mama, my blood runs cold! I, the family skeptic, have found myself saying a prayer for Ursula.
Oh, Mama, I don’t mean to upset you. Seeing what I’ve written, I nearly tore this letter to shreds. Please believe me: We’re well, and being brave, and having adventures! But to tell you about those adventures only, to write about the sparkling waves and the salt breeze-those things are true, of course they are, but so is the terrible reason we’re on this ship to see them.
Mama, I’ve just roused myself; I’ve been sitting for some time, wondering again whether to ball up this letter and throw it in the sea. But no. We are fine, but the world is not. If I can’t sit beside you and talk about this, I must lighten my heart by sharing my thoughts over time and distance.
Let me go on, then; I started out to tell you that Paul has lately discovered new talents, and I know this will bring you a smile. He’s become a model of patience and leadership-among the small children! It’s as if the Pied Piper were aboard. Everywhere, he’s trailed by a string of babies. He invents games for them, doctors their cuts and bruises, tells them fantastic stories to make them gape and laugh. To see the children happy eases their parents’ minds; and so Paul, by carrying on in his silly way, renders a great service. This is a magical thing, and I hope, Mama, it makes you as proud as it does me.
I’ll close now, as I see Mr. Chen Kai-rong approaching; we are to have tea and begin my lessons. I feel myself smiling. He wouldn’t be wrong to think it’s for the pleasure of seeing him; but it’s also for the idea of your smile when you read about Paul; and practice for the smile I’ll be wearing when I greet you and Uncle Horst in Shanghai!
Take care, Mama.
Your Rosalie
“ Lydia? Are you okay? Wake up.”
“What? Oh, Mary, I’m sorry!” I jumped from my stool and hugged my best and oldest friend.
“What are you reading?” Mary unslung her shoulder bag and pulled out a stool, her long braid swinging as she sat. When she was in uniform she’d complained about having to wear her hair stuffed under her cap. Sinc
e that was pretty much the only thing she didn’t like about being a cop, now that she’d made detective and was in plainclothes, life was good.
“It’s from my case. It’s kind of sad.” I gave her a brief rundown: Alice Fairchild, the Jewish refugees in Shanghai-which she’d never heard of either, just proving we went to school together-the excavation site, and the jewelry; and Rosalie Gilder, writing to her mother. “She was just a kid. Trying to be a grown-up and look out for her little brother, excited and scared and missing her mom. She keeps saying, ‘I can’t wait to see you again.’ But she never did.”
“God. That’s awful.”
“It was a long time ago. But it makes me feel like, how dare this Wong Pan guy steal her mother’s jewelry? Like he stole it from her.”
“What happened to her and her brother?”
“Alice Fairchild says it’s not clear. I guess a lot of people can’t be traced from after the war. But I’m starting to feel… protective. As though I knew her.”
A young Chinatown-cool waiter-blond-streaked hair, tight black pants-appeared. We ordered tea eggs, chicken skewers, and lemongrass soup.
“Enough of the sad past.” I folded Rosalie’s letter and stuffed it into my bag. “Tell me about your case.”
“Nothing much to tell. Guy was found shot in a hotel room. Wallet was gone. Registered as Wu Ming.”
“ ‘Anonymous’? Oh, great, a joker. Okay, show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
We traded pictures.
Our quarries looked alike, if by that you mean they were both middle-aged Chinese men. Hers was thinner and wore short hair; mine was pudgy and had short hair, too, but grayer.
“Yours is better-looking,” Mary said.
“Well, he’s alive.”
“I guess that’s an advantage in a man. Is he wanted for something? Here, I mean?”
“Not that I know of. In China, for running off with the cultural patrimony.”
“If he’s not wanted here, I can’t show his picture around for you, though. Sorry.”