"There is a war, girlie! A war!" He raised his hand and let it hover near her cheek. "We did not create the Designated Area for you to wander off to a friend"s home for tea and playtime."
"I . . . I . . ."
"Do you have any idea who I am, girlie?"
She looked down her feet. "No, sir."
"I am Ghoya, a.s.sistant director of the Bureau of Stateless Refugee Affairs. But everyone in Shanghai knows me by a different name."
Silence descended between them. Finally, Hannah felt compelled to ask. "Which name, sir?"
He dropped his arm to his side. His eyes lit up, and his face broke into a Cheshire catlike grin. "Here in Shanghai, I am King of the Jews!"
CHAPTER 10.
Charlie"s eyelids flickered a few times before opening. The rice wine combined with three drops of anaesthetic that Sunny scavenged from the bottom of a discarded bottle of ether had turned out to be more than enough to sedate the gaunt young man, who had been unconscious for almost four hours since his surgery. Sunny suspected that the raging infection contributed to his post-operative stupor.
Charlie"s face remained remarkably placid as his eyes focused and then shifted from Ernst to Sunny. Sunny knew that he must have been suffering intense pain from his wound, but he didn"t show it. Instead, he summoned a rubbery smile. "My leg," he croaked in English. "I can still feel it."
"Largely because it is still attached to the rest of you," Ernst said through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Sunny shot her friend a sharp look before turning back to Charlie. "We removed the bullet and drained a lot of pus from the site of the infection. We had to excise-to cut out-a fair bit of flesh around your thigh."
"You did not have to amputate," Charlie said in an almost detached tone.
"No." Sunny hesitated. "But we do not yet know how the wound will heal or, Charlie, if it will."
"I understand." Charlie shifted slightly.
Sunny lifted the gla.s.s syringe she had been clutching in her palm and held it up to the light. She tapped it with her fingernail, knocking the air bubbles to the top and expelling them. "A dose of painkiller," she explained as she pinched the skin over his shoulder and injected the morphine.
Charlie was stoic. "Today I still have two legs, which is more than I expected."
Ernst sucked heavily on his cigarette. "And really quite advantageous from the point of view of balance."
"Ernst, please," Sunny said.
Charlie waved off her concern with a chuckle. "Without Ernst, we would have little opportunity for laughter in our village."
"Marxists." Ernst rolled his eyes. "Never will you meet a more sanctimonious or humourless bunch. They will stamp out every last trace of irony and sarcasm long before they get around to addressing the cla.s.s system."
Charlie viewed his friend straight-faced. "That"s entirely possible."
Sunny wondered again where Charlie had learned his flawless English. She could tell from the few words he had uttered in Mandarin, together with his features and darker complexion, that he was not Shanghainese. She suspected that he came from somewhere much further north. Although his heritage remained a mystery, she could not shake the sense of familiarity she felt looking at him.
The curtains parted and Franz approached the bed wearing a lab coat that had begun to fray at the sleeve from repeated washings. "Ah, Charlie, good afternoon. No doubt Sunny already informed you. The operation went as well as it could, all things considered."
"Thank you. Both of you." Charlie struggled to raise his head and shoulders but, exhausted by the effort, flopped back down to the bed. He looked over to Ernst. "An hour or two, and I should be ready."
"Ready for what, Charlie?" Sunny asked.
"To go home."
Franz squinted at him. "Home? That is out of the question. You will not be leaving the hospital for weeks."
"I am afraid I must," Charlie said.
Franz folded his arms across his chest. "If you leave now, you will surely lose your leg. Provided you survive long enough for even that to happen."
"Dr. Adler, I have the highest regard for your medical opinion, but I can a.s.sure you that my life will be in even more danger if I remain here."
Ernst sighed. "Sadly, Franz, he might be correct."
"Besides . . ." Charlie yawned as the morphine took effect. "The sooner we leave, the better for your hospital."
"Our staff is capable of extreme discretion," Sunny said. "No one else need ever know that you are here."
"Trust me . . ." Charlie yawned again. "They will find out."
"Find out what?" Sunny grimaced. "None of us even know who you are."
Charlie"s eyes drifted shut. "They will," he murmured.
They watched him doze for a few moments before Franz motioned toward the door. "Maybe a good sleep will bring him to his senses."
Ernst and Sunny followed Franz through the ward and into the deserted staff room. An empty cup, dried tea leaves stuck to the bottom, stood on the table as testament to the last time a nurse or doctor had had an opportunity for a rest. As soon as Franz had closed the door behind them, he wheeled around to face Ernst. "Who is he?"
Ernst shrugged. "I told you-"
Franz stabbed a finger at him. "Nonsense. We need to know who we are dealing with here."
Sunny touched his elbow. "Please, Ernst."
Ernst looked at each of them in turn before pulling out another of his hand-rolled cigarettes and igniting it with the lighter that never seemed to leave his hand. "His name is Bao Chun. More precisely: General Bao Chun."
"The Boy General, of course!" Sunny almost slapped her forehead. "That"s why he looks so familiar." She could picture old newspaper articles and their grainy photographs of the young officer.
"He can"t even be thirty years old," Franz pointed out. "How is it possible that he"s already a general in the Chinese army?"
"There is no Chinese army per se," Ernst said. "There are the Kuomintang and the Communists. And despite the so-called Unified Front, the two sides expend far more energy, bullets and lives fighting each other than they do the j.a.panese."
"So Charlie and you are both Communists, then?" Franz asked.
"Me a Communist? Bite your tongue, Franz! I"m just a queer painter. A lapsed bohemian. Nothing more." His cheeks flushed. "Most nights I fall asleep on a dirt floor praying that I will wake up on my lumpy old bed in my studio in Vienna. Before the j.a.panese, the n.a.z.is and the Communists conspired to banish me to a village-not even-a camp, really-a thousand miles from the nearest whiff of civilization-" He stopped mid-tirade. The storm left his eyes and a more familiar devil-may-care expression settled on his face. "As for Charlie, he fights for the Communist army. Whether he is truly a Marxist at heart, I cannot say. But he is the exception to the infighting rule among the Chinese. He never wastes a bullet on the Kuomintang. He focuses all of his effort on the j.a.panese."
"Charlie is from the north, isn"t he?" Sunny asked.
"Manchuria. He was just a boy when the j.a.panese first invaded in "31. But according to his men-at least the ones who speak anything other than that rural mumbo-jumbo-he was born for the fight. Fearless. A natural leader and a brilliant tactician." He took another long drag on his cigarette. "The men worship him. Most Chinese divisions-entire armies, even-survive months at best on the front. Staggering losses. Not Charlie. He has kept his battalion together for five years. Even the j.a.panese fear him."
"Fear him?" Sunny said in disbelief. "The j.a.panese?"
Ernst pointed his cigarette at the windowless wall. "It"s so different out there. Once you get beyond the city, the countryside goes on forever. The j.a.panese cannot control Charlie or the other partisans. At most, they can contain them. Even in the regions that the j.a.panese have conquered, they only truly control the points and lines."
Franz grimaced. "What are those?"
"Just markings on a map-the cities and the railroads. The j.a.panese cannot police the whole countryside. It"s far too vast. All they will ever capture are their precious points and lines." He snorted. "And for those, they have killed millions. Millions!"
"Where is Charlie"s army based?" Sunny asked.
"We often hunker down in the little village where Shan is now. But Charlie"s army has no real base per se. It"s the reason for their success. Most of the time, they live behind enemy lines," Ernst explained. "They ambush j.a.panese patrols and sabotage the railway, disrupting transport and lines of communication, before retreating back into the forests and mountains. It"s a game of cat and mouse-lethal sometimes-but Charlie plays it very well. He is a legend among the partisans."
Franz turned to Sunny, his face suddenly pale with concern. "If the j.a.panese learned Charlie is here . . ."
"What"s that silly term Simon used to use?" Ernst snapped his fingers. "Public enemy number one."
"And we are sheltering him in our hospital," Franz said quietly. "Our Jewish hospital. Can you imagine what the n.a.z.is would do if they were to ever find out?"
"The n.a.z.is?" Ernst groaned. "When it comes to Charlie, those louts should be the least of your concern."
"On the contrary, Ernst," Franz said. "Last year, after you were already gone, the SS tried to persuade the j.a.panese to annihilate us Jews. The n.a.z.is argued that we were a security risk. They almost had the j.a.panese convinced. Certainly the local Kempeitai. If we are caught harbouring a hero of the Chinese army in our hospital, imagine how that would bolster the n.a.z.is" argument." He turned back to Sunny. "At the very least, the hospital would be finished."
Sunny"s heart ached for Franz. The weight of the responsibility of running the hospital since Simon"s departure had worn her husband down as much as the war itself. Grey hair and crow"s feet had appeared almost overnight. He was a changed man, and Sunny longed to see more of the old Franz, the one whose pa.s.sion extended beyond the walls of the hospital.
"This is precisely why refugees cannot partic.i.p.ate in any form of resistance," Franz continued. "We cannot afford to give the j.a.panese a reason or excuse to follow through on the n.a.z.is" plans for us."
"So you agree then, Franz," Ernst said. "Charlie must leave the hospital. Premature discharge or not."
Sunny saw the conflict in her husband"s troubled eyes. She wanted to rea.s.sure him somehow, but she shared his torn feelings: it would be best for everyone-except the patient himself-if Charlie left.
Franz ran a hand through his hair. "Charlie will never reach home alive. Not in his current condition." He squared his shoulders. "No. He has to stay. And, Ernst, you must find a way to persuade him."
Sunny left the hospital an hour later, telling Franz that she was off to the market to gather food and supplies. But this was only part of the truth.
Joey insisted on accompanying her, intending to track down one of his black market contacts who had "a line" (another phrase he had picked up from Simon) on a fresh supply of ether. Invariably, that meant his contact had stolen the anaesthetic from another woefully undersupplied civilian hospital. The refugee hospital had been victimized by similar thefts, and it sickened Sunny to think that she might be indirectly complicit in such activity. But she couldn"t stomach the thought of performing another emergency surgery while a patient stared up at her in ashen-faced agony, or the idea of her husband marginalized to the point of uselessness by a lack of basic medication. So she swallowed her misgivings and reluctantly endorsed Joey"s illicit trading.
Outside, the afternoon sun seemed confused about the date. Although it was still only spring, the sunshine beat down upon them as though trying to melt the pavement the way it would at the height of summer. Sweat beaded on Joey"s brow, and Sunny could feel her cotton dress becoming damp under her arms and around her neck. The heat intensified the stench of the rotting garbage that had been dumped on the sidewalks and the buckets that pa.s.sed for toilets in the decrepit lane houses.
Once they reached Chusan Road, the smells of espresso and baking came as a welcome relief. As they headed along the ghetto"s main street, they pa.s.sed cafes, a newspaper office and a dance hall. The theatre in the middle of the block still performed revues three nights a week in both German and Yiddish.
Sunny felt a surge of pride at the refugees" remarkable resilience. They faced constant, often deadly, threats: overcrowding, disease, starvation and hostility from two world powers. Yet, somehow, the refugees not only persevered but also managed to foster culture, the arts and a sense of community. Sunny, who had never met a German Jew until her first day volunteering at the refugee hospital, found it all quite beautiful. She had grown up largely in the Chinese world, where family meant everything but community mattered little. And while she had never before experienced anything close to the bickering and complaining that seemed normal among the refugees, neither had she ever witnessed such generosity and compa.s.sion between strangers connected only by their religion and language. When Sunny married into this eccentric society, they had accepted her as one of their own, as though she had been born to a kosher butcher in Munich or a cantor in Leipzig. As a Eurasian, Sunny had grown up feeling like a perpetual outsider, never fully accepted by either Shanghailanders or Shanghainese. The sense of belonging she had found among the refugees was unexpected and precious, and it heightened the protectiveness she felt toward them.
Sunny and Joey approached the guard posted at the ghetto"s exit, a beanstalk of a man with a yellow rag tied around his rolled-up sleeve. As Chinese citizens, they were exempt from the restrictions imposed on the refugees. The guard gave them only a cursory glance as they bypa.s.sed the queue of Jews waiting to leave the Designated Area.
As they walked away from the ghetto, Joey remarked, "The hospital doesn"t see many Chinese patients."
"We do from time to time," Sunny said.
"Not really."
"You know what the Shanghainese are like, Joey. Most would never go to a hospital in the first place, and those who do choose the Shanghai General or the Country Hospital. Most of the locals are not even aware that we run a hospital."
Joey stopped. "Charlie is not a local."
Sunny slowed, then came to a halt. "No, I suppose not."
"He"s from Manchuria."
Sunny turned to face him. "How do you know that?"
"I recognize him from the newspapers and magazines. He is a hero."
Sunny lunged toward Joey, then looked around anxiously, confirming that no one was within earshot. "You cannot tell anyone who he is," she hissed in a low voice, laying a cautionary hand on his shoulder. "Do you understand?"
Joey shrank from her touch. "I would never say anything except to you!" He squinted in indignation. "I haven"t even told Charlie that I recognize him."
"Of course. I"m sorry, Joey." But her chest pounded all the same. "We must prevent word from getting out. His life . . . the hospital . . . everything depends upon us protecting his ident.i.ty."
"None of the Jewish people will recognize him. And there are only a few Chinese who work at the hospital."
"What about the cleaning men? Or the coolies who do the carrying and lifting?"
Joey nodded, deep in thought. "We could cover Charlie"s face with a mask like we do during the flu outbreaks."
"That would only attract more attention," Sunny said. "But we should draw the curtains around his bed at all times, and keep the locals away from the ward."
Joey nodded briskly. "I will see to it as soon as I return."
Despite Joey"s cooperation, Sunny was shaken by his revelation. If he had recognized Charlie so easily, then others were bound to as well. She was so preoccupied that she almost forgot the primary reason she had left the ghetto with him. "Joey, why don"t I meet you at the market in an hour?" she said, remembering.
His face creased with suspicion. "Are you going somewhere else now?"
"To Frenchtown. I have to sell something."
"What?"
Sunny withdrew the bra.s.s watch from her pocket and held it up by its gold chain. "It was my father"s."
A few months earlier, the idea of p.a.w.ning Kingsley"s treasured pocket watch would have been unthinkable. Her father had been murdered by a j.a.panese sailor while trying to defend her from an attack on the street, and Sunny had resisted parting with any of his possessions. Until Franz and Hannah moved in with her, she had not touched his bedroom. Yang, the family"s long-time housekeeper, treated the room with equal reverence, entering only to clean and dust. They still kept everything in her father"s office as it had always been-from expired vials of insulin to stacks of old journals and the Audubon Society magazines he had prized. But the Adlers were broke. They had already poured their scant savings into maintaining the hospital and received no wages from it. Franz was unaware of the extent of their poverty: Sunny had been hocking her father"s possessions for the past two months without telling him. From time to time, she had even accepted money from Jia-Li, who constantly offered it. Sunny hoped the watch would bring a good price; she was ashamed to rely on her friend"s charity.
"I"ll come with you," Joey declared.