Night Angels(11)
“Good. Will you ask the consul general to help arrange a meeting between me and his superior, Ambassador Wilson, in Berlin? The American ambassador has just presented his credentials, and I was told that his schedule is full for the next six months. But if his consul general speaks on our behalf, the ambassador might agree to a meeting. Once I gain an audience, I’ll reason with him and persuade him to propose to the League to hold a meeting about the loan.”
“I’ll call him right away.”
“The meeting with Ambassador Wilson must happen expeditiously, Fengshan. In a month, the Japanese could decimate the entire population in South China. We need the loan from the League desperately.” The ambassador hung up the phone.
Fengshan looked at his watch. It was about nine. The American consulate might have opened. He dialed the number. The secretary indicated Consul General Wiley was not in the office yet.
When Fengshan put down the phone, it rang again.
Captain Heine’s smooth voice came through the receiver, asking him whether Grace had returned safely home.
Fengshan thanked him profusely, despite his reserved opinion of the captain. They had not exactly been friends, unlike him and Mr. Rosenburg. The captain was a fastidious man and a policeman who appeared to retain traditional Viennese pride and values. But he had turned in his baton that had been used to curb the Nazi violence and put on the armband with the swastika after the Anschluss, like much of the Viennese police force who had once sworn their oath to protect an independent Austria. Now that Austria was part of Germany, Captain Heine had become a member of the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo.
But had it not been for the captain, Fengshan would never have known Grace was detained or where to look for her.
“Don’t mention it, Herr Consul General. I look forward to your speech at the club.”
The captain’s interest in his event was yet another surprise—as far as he knew, the captain was only attached to two things: wine and women. Nonetheless, Fengshan thanked him again, hung up the phone, and looked at his watch. Four hours to the event. He had time. He rubbed his forehead, formulating his plans. His day was just beginning, and he already had his hands full. Opera tickets for Grace, Mr. Rosenburg’s phone call, Mr. Wiley, and the event. He would tend to them all, meticulously, in the order of urgency, gravity, and practicality.
The doorbell of the consulate buzzed. He went into the lobby, opened the heavy oak door, and greeted his staff in fluent German and Chinese.
It still amazed him that he was the consul general, working in Vienna, a city resplendent with stately fountains, palatial theaters, vast squares, and towering statues. A son of impoverished peasants, Fengshan had grown up fatherless, raised by an illiterate mother who couldn’t read or write her name and had wept at their empty hovel without a kitchen, unable to keep him fed. Barefoot and hungry, he had resolved to walk for miles each morning to a school hosted by Norwegian Lutheran missionaries with blue eyes and golden hair. They offered him free education and bowls of rice, and he sat on the bench listening raptly to the story of Jesus’s sacrifice and recited, “Mens sana in corpore sano.”
After he graduated from the missionary school, he entered college and took it as his responsibility to provide for his mother and sister by teaching at a high school during his free time. He wanted to build a secure future for his family, and he understood this acutely: as a man of humble birth, he must work diligently, with blood, sweat, intelligence, and fortitude, in order to achieve success. By chance, he heard the government was sponsoring two students for advanced education in Munich, Germany, a rare opportunity to study abroad, and the qualified students would be chosen from a state exam. Aware that the selection was highly competitive and that he must compete with five thousand well-off students nationwide, Fengshan came home from work, lit the late candles and studied until three o’clock in the morning for six months. He clinched the number one spot on the exam and became one of only two students from all of China to attend the University of Munich, where he received his PhD in political economics.
With his doctorate, Fengshan had been glad to offer his service as a secretary to the governor of Hunan province in China. But it broke his heart to see his country besieged by foreign powers and blighted with war indemnity and economic poverty. Resolved to fight for China’s survival, he took a gamble to join the foreign ministry, quit his secure secretary’s job, and worked tirelessly in Istanbul to establish a place for his government in the world of diplomacy.
His current position as the consul general in Vienna was a high point in his diplomatic career and a vital opportunity to fight for his country’s future. It was imperative that he do all he could to assist his superior and secure a meeting for the ambassador. Fengshan looked at his watch again.
CHAPTER 5
LOLA
I was expelled today.
And I was not the only one. A routine morning practice of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony turned out to be a trial, a contest of spit and slander, and in the end, there was nothing else to do other than pick up my case, join the miserable concertmaster and fellow string musicians, and march out of the room like I didn’t care.
But I did care. Was this expulsion temporary? Was this a stunning crush of my musical career? For months, rumors had been bouncing in the chamber that Jewish musicians had been banned from the conservatories in Berlin, and that many Jewish professionals and musicians in Germany had lost their jobs without cause. But we were Viennese. We had Chancellor Schuschnigg, and religion had not divided us. We, Jews and Christians, had marched on the street to support Schuschnigg’s policies when he defeated the Nazi Party and restored order; we had worn crosses and the Star of David to show our pledge to a Socialist regime; we had linked our arms, shouted for freedom and justice for all. It had only been four years ago.