Shanghai Shadows (12 page)

He joined the flow of the crowd, and Beehive walked on briskly, bought a newspaper at the corner, and perched on a limestone bench, waiting for the right time to go back to the Bund and catch the tram.

Liu's sharp elbow dug into my waist to draw my attention to a half Asian, half western man the size of a brown bear. His slitted eyes followed Beehive's every step.

Liu darted into the path so suddenly that the bear toppled like a giant tree. “So sorry, so sorry,” Liu said, bustling around the man and helping him to his feet. Meanwhile, Beehive disappeared in the crowd, and the man went lumbering up the path in pursuit. Suddenly Japanese soldiers began chasing the man, guns drawn.

“Run, missy!”

Liu and I took off in the opposite direction and hid behind a wide tree trunk until the soldiers were out of sight. Gasping for breath, I asked, “What was
that
all about?”

“I smell trouble, missy.”

The clock tower said ten forty-five. Somehow I needed to find enough money to get on that streetcar before Beehive did. I gave Liu the universal sign for money—rubbing my thumb across my fingers—and he returned my message with his own universal sign, inside-out pockets.

“Why couldn't you have stolen somebody's wallet
now
, when I need the money?” I hissed.

“Ah, not mix business with pleasure!”

But the little conniver did have a plan. We dashed up to the Bund, where he checked out every rickshaw boy until his eyes landed on one carrying a featherweight passenger. Liu trotted alongside the rickshaw, pressing his case, until the older boy lowered the shafts almost to the ground, and Liu took them up in a handoff so smooth that the passenger barely noticed. The relieved boy sank to the ground along the seawall next to another napping rickshaw puller.

Liu was remarkably strong. He trotted along bearing the passenger, a small, elaborately dressed Chinese woman, to the Jardine Matheson building, where I imagined she'd be meeting a Japanese businessman for fun and profit. I was breathless by the time I reached the office building, just as the woman pointed an elegant boot out of the rickshaw and scornfully rained four coins into Liu's cupped palm. She straightened her peacock blue Chinese dress slit to the knee, patted her stiff hair, and vanished into the lobby of the building.

Liu proudly dropped two coins in my hand, pocketed one, and saved the other as the rickshaw boy's commission on the rental of the vehicle, which he, of course, was renting from someone else.

I got on the southbound tram at the British Consulate, two stops before the Cathay Hotel, and headed for the back row. Only because I knew to look for it did I see the brown tip of the package under the seat. A Chinese amah auntie stretched out, resting her legs on the length of the seat. I smiled and squatted down in front of her, and she didn't seem at all interested in why this redheaded foreigner was rummaging around under the seat of a streetcar.

The flat package slid out easily. Its crisscrossed string tie was gone, but it was taped up so neatly that you'd never guess it had been opened and something had been removed, or replaced.
What
? And for which side? Who was enemy? Who was friend? Curiosity gnawed away at me.

The tram stopped. People got off and on, and Beehive came up behind me.

“Give it. That's mine.” She tugged at the package.

“No, mine. It's a gift from my sweetheart.” I locked the package to my chest with both arms. She'd need a crowbar to separate me from it. She started pummeling me and swearing in German, in English, until the amah saw profit in the fight and got in on my side, since I apparently had the goods. She swung her powerful legs around and used them to shove Beehive back a few feet, causing her to fall in the lap of an ancient Chinese grandfather. The tram came to a stop; its doors creaked open. I quickly dropped my last coin into the amah's hand and ran out to. the street to wait for Liu. Victory!

In a few minutes Liu caught up with me. Now all I had to do was get the package home to Erich, and my mission would be complete. Liu and I loped down the street like a couple of horses after the race is run. Oh, how I'd miss the pumping excitement, laced with a hint of fear, once we were sealed in the tomb of Hongkew. And Liu. I'd miss him, too.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1943

“So, Erich? Beehive
was
a double agent?”

“So, Ilse? Dovid
is
your boyfriend?”

“None of your business,” I huffed. “I want to know what happened with Beehive.”

“They keep me in the dark,” Erich admitted. “Gerhardt and Rolf don't completely trust me. Or anyone. This much I know. There was a man watching you
and
Beehive.”

“Yeah, we saw him. Liu tripped him in the park to get him off Beehive's trail.”

“He what?” Erich pounded the table; forks jumped. “Not smart. Do you realize what could have happened to you?”

“Like what?” But I didn't want to hear.

“The Japanese Kempetai picked the man up and dragged him through the park. This morning his broken body was tossed out of Bridge House Prison.”

“Alive?” I asked tremulously.

“Dead.”

“Oh! Which side was he on?”

“Ours, the good guys.”

“My God, Erich.”

“Right, if there is such a thing as God in this hellhole.”

“Shhh, here comes Mother.” My hands shook as Mother's weary footsteps echoed in the hall. I opened the door, and she brushed past me, looking as worn down as a rickshaw puller and entirely defeated. She collapsed on her bed with her wrist over her forehead. “We have a place to move to on Houshan Road.”

Erich and I bombarded her with questions. How many rooms? Plumbing? How many flights up? Windows? Neighbors?

Mother's voice was thin and wobbly. “One room, half the size of this one. No closets. Third floor walk-up. Plumbing.”

“What kind of plumbing?” I asked. “Western toilets? Because I will not squat on the floor of a Chinese toilet.”

“It has a western water closet on each floor,” Mother said almost in a whisper, which made me wonder what she wasn't telling us.

The dead man's shattered body—I knew that's what Erich was thinking about, me too, but we couldn't let on to Mother, so we jabbered about the apartment in Hongkew.

Erich, the practical one, asked, “How much?”

“Too much. We can't afford it. All the way home I've thought about what we can sell. My winter coat, also your father's. Summer's coming. And my mother's silver kiddush cup should fetch some good money.”

“Oh, Mother, no!”

Her voice gathered strength and turned hard. “We will sell everything we can except your bicycle, Erich, which you need for work, and The Violin.”

I sighed. “The apartment, has it got a stove?” Mother shook her head. “Heating?” No, again. “Is it sunny?”

Mother exploded. “Sunshine? You want
sunshine
? And maybe also sour cream for your potatoes?”

We hadn't tasted sour cream since Vienna.

“Forget the sour cream. Even a plain boiled potato would be a miracle,” Erich grumbled. “I hate the Japanese. Hate them with all my mortal being.”

Mother snorted, a most unladylike sound for her. “Such a waste of energy. Use it to find boxes. We move on Friday morning.”

“So soon, Mother?” I cried. “We have a whole week left on the outside.”

“You think we make our own decisions these days? The Chinese family living there now on Houshan Road, they're moving in here on Friday afternoon. A mother, a father, six children, and a grandfather. Hah!” Mother suddenly burst into brittle-edged laughter mixed with tears. “Look at this place. To them it will be a palace.”

It didn't take long to learn that there were worse places than our new apartment in Hongkew. Our school started a community service project to cheer us as we faced life in the ghetto. We adopted one of the “homes,” the barracks that were room and board for the poorest souls among us westerners. Each pair of girls got a mop, a bucket of soapy water, a scrub brush, and a supply of rags to clean the walls and floors and windows on the inside. At the same time, the boys would wash the outside windows and whitewash the exterior walls of the rundown shell of a building.

The men who lived in the home were gone for the morning, working, or more likely scrounging for work, so the dormitory and dining room were empty for our whirlwind spic-and-span operation. Six pairs of us marched into the building like soldiers, with our mops over our shoulders as rifles and our buckets as drums. Tanya and I were a team. Our bucket clattered to the linoleum floor and echoed through the cavernous dormitory, where sixty beds were lined up along the walls with about a foot between them. There wasn't so much as a shelf over each bed to hold a person's treasures or a nail to hang a change of clothes on. The sheets were nubby canvas, the blankets scratchy gray wool, and we counted only three pllows in the whole room.

As hard as I scrubbed, my mind kept drifting to the bearlike man in the park. I imagined his massive heap of broken bones, his battered face, in the street outside Bridge House. And then, God forgive me, I wondered who'd gotten the man's coat and hat, his leather shoes …

Tanya and I must have changed the wash water a hundred times. We were on our hands and knees on either side of the twelfth bed, scrubbing the floor under it. Tanya whispered to me in the dark shadows under the bed, “Pray we never come to this, Ilse.”

“Never!” I vowed. My back ached, and I rose up on my knees for a mighty stretch. That's when I noticed some charcoal sketches tacked to the wall over the next bed. The corners of the drawings were curled, and when I flattened the first one, the work was unmistakable.

“Tanya, come here!”

“What?” She slid across the floor on her knees, retying the kerchief that held her curls back. “What's so important?”

“This is where Dovid lives.” I pointed to the sketches. “I've seen drawings like these. This one on top? His village in Poland. And this one is Kobe, Japan.”

Tanya sank to her knees again. “Your Dovid lives in this hovel?”

“We have to get out of here before he comes back. He'll be so embarrassed.” I spread my palm to the dismal room the color of oatmeal, the depressing rows of gray beds, the walls blank and dingy except for the relief of these sketches.

Tanya nodded. “Anyway, I can't scrub one more millimeter of floor. Already my skin's peeling.”

We wrung out our rags, grabbed our pail and mop, and headed for the door, but not fast enough. Men were beginning to stream into the building for lunch, and suddenly, there was Dovid.

“Hide!” I whispered to Tanya, and we ducked behind a reception desk, hoping Dovid wouldn't notice our mop and bucket sticking out of the cave. I crawled out just far enough to watch him march down the row and flop on his own bed. Rusty springs creaked in protest. He kicked off each shoe and caught it, stuffing both under his head for a pillow. The whole picture was so desolate, so lonely, that I wanted to run right over and comfort him, take him home with me. But that would have hurt him worse. I reached behind me for Tanya to follow, and we silently crawled to the exit, to the surprise of the boys whitewashing outside.

The following afternoon I met Dovid at Mr. Bauman's café to tell him where we'd be living in Hongkew.

“Very close to me,” he said with some glee in his eyes. “I live in the Kinchow Road Home.” To my surprise he asked, “Want to see my castle?”

“I haven't much time. We're packing to move tomorrow.” Excuses. But he looked so disappointed. “Okay, if we hurry.”

We ran through the streets and stopped in front of the ramshackle building, improved only slightly by the whitewashing.

“Do not fall over in shock,” Dovid said. “It was never rebuilt since the bombing in 1937.”

“Ah, but that's only the outside,” I assured him, faking optimism.

“Inside it is worse. You will see.” He led me into the dormitory I'd scrubbed only yesterday. Since it was late in the day, men and boys of all ages sprawled on their cots, staring at the ceiling. Such odor from so many bodies in one room! I tried not to breathe through my nose. The snores of some of the men bounced off the bare walls. I thought of Mother's rule: Unless you're feverish and half delirious, you are not to fritter away precious time sleeping during the day. Yet what else had these men to do?

“You must guess which place is mine,” Dovid said playfully.

I lied. “They're all alike. How could I pick yours out?” I pretended to scan the empty cots with their grim gray blankets until I came to the charcoal sketches tacked to the wall above his bed, the bottom corners curled up as if struggling for release. The work was so obviously Dovid's, with bold lines defining space on the page, and the spidery lines and black smudges, and then the startlingly precise detail captured in intricate pencil strokes.

“They're breathtaking, Dovid.” We sat on his bed; where else was there to sit?

The blanket was woolly, itchy on the back of my legs. Some of the men stared at us. An awkward silence fell between us, and it passed through my mind that Mother wouldn't approve of my sitting on a gentleman's bed, even with at least twelve chaperones watching our every move. I slid to my feet. “I really have to get home. There's so much to do before we move tomorrow.”

“Yes, I understand,” Dovid murmured. Our footsteps resounded in the dormitory, and one of the men flipped over on his cot and shouted, “Have a heart. Can't you see I'm trying to get some sleep?”

Outside, Dovid took my hand as we crossed an intersection. My hand was sweaty, and his felt dry as ash, but we fit together neatly, as though I'd been born with my hand in his.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

1943