Night Angels(48)
“I’ll come to see you off, Lola. November ninth. I won’t forget.”
Grace was soaked, her hair sticking to her lovely face; her eyes glimmered with the indulgence and admiration that always made me feel special. And I wanted to ask if she liked Shanghai, ask her stories about her time in China and Istanbul. I swore I’d never look back on Vienna again, but I would remember her, her face, her stories, and how she’d danced with me in the treacherous storm.
It was pouring.
CHAPTER 29
FENGSHAN
In mid-October, he still had not received the green light for the immigration of the ten thousand Viennese. It concerned him. To confirm the lenient policy regarding visas for Jews, he telegraphed the Ministry, requesting a written statement to be sent to the consulate. When the telegram of the message arrived a few days later, Fengshan carefully filed it in a manila folder with other important letters from the ambassador and the Ministry.
One day, while Fengshan was listening to the radio, an exhilarated voice declared that the British and the French had agreed to hand the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia over to Germany, the outcome that the Czech consul had feared. It sickened Fengshan to hear that these two countries had sold out their ally Czechoslovakia, the country they had sworn to protect, laying bare their cowardice and duplicity.
Ambassador Chen didn’t appear to be concerned about the annexation of the Sudetenland. The European crisis was irrelevant to his primary goal to forge a solid relationship with Germany, he said, as he was in talks with Germany about aircraft. He had yet to secure a meeting with his German counterpart, but he was optimistic.
News about the Nationalist armies’ struggles was scant. When Fengshan managed to get ahold of his friends in China, reports of devastating losses and casualties kept him up all night. He prayed his tenacious countrymen would hold on. China would defend itself; China would prevail.
November arrived. One morning he awoke to snow, piling on the consulate’s marble triangular pediment, and the wintry storm whipped the chiseled face of Beethoven holding his score and tugged at the standards bearing swastikas and the banners that advertised operas and concerts at the Vienna State Opera.
A German newspaper printed a large headshot of Adolf Eichmann on the second page. It was reported that since the establishment of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, approximately thirty thousand Jews had legally departed Vienna after they had compliantly surrendered their properties and assets. Thirty thousand people ousted in three months.
It occurred to Fengshan that Eichmann must have a clear picture of how many visas he had issued. Since the dreadful evening when Eichmann ordered the death of the waiter, Fengshan had not come across him, but he was aware he would run into that man again—Vienna was a small city, after all.
One evening, he took Grace to the opera, something he had planned five months ago.
“Lola is leaving in three days,” she said, walking down the dimly lit aisle. “I love this theater.”
These days Grace was moody and melancholy, like the French songs she listened to on the radio, constantly talking about her friend’s departure. She was conflicted. On the one hand, she understood Lola must leave; on the other hand, she hadn’t quite figured out what to do without a friend.
Mr. Rosenburg, who had loved the opera, would leave, too, in three days. The end of the year, 1938, it appeared, would be the end of an era.
The phone rang.
“Good afternoon, Captain Heine.”
Fengshan looked at his watch. It was almost two o’clock. He had planned to meet the captain at Café Central. A few weeks ago, the captain had mentioned briefly that the police had caught some Viennese crossing the border to Switzerland with Chinese visas. They must be the friends of Dr. L?wenherz, Fengshan realized, and defended himself and his consulate—he had no control over how the visa holders chose their route to China. The captain, to his surprise, had agreed and further revealed that those Viennese had been permitted entry to Switzerland and that no one in the police force was told of the escapade. Fengshan had been glad—Heine had not wholly lost his conscience. A genuine friendship had sprouted between them, despite his irritation at the captain’s fallibility with women.
“I’m afraid we must cancel today’s meeting. There is a national emergency.”
“What’s going on?”
“You will hear it from the radio soon.” Captain Heine’s smooth voice was careful. “A seventeen-year-old Polish Jew walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot a German diplomat, Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath.”
The gravity of the event made Fengshan’s hair stand up. This would have an explosive effect. “How did this happen? Who is the foolish young man?”
“We do not yet know the perpetrator’s name; we are only told he’s a Polish Jew.”
It occurred to him that the crisis had been brewing for a while. The newspaper had mentioned that the Nazi government had expelled all Polish Jews in the country last month, forcing them to migrate to Poland; however, the Polish government had revoked the citizenship of the Poles who had lived outside Poland for more than five years. So hundreds of Poles were stranded at the border, stuck at a refugee camp at a border town called Zbaszyn, unable to return to Germany or enter Poland.
“It appears that the man was frustrated that his parents were trapped in a camp in Zbaszyn at the border of Poland. He acted alone and was arrested on the spot. The third secretary is currently in critical condition. All the police forces in Greater Germany are ordered to stand by.”