Night Angels(64)

“We can’t give up after one failed meeting. We must do all we can to continue cultivating our relationship with Germany and ensure that we will receive the weapons we need.”

“But—”

“Have you halted the visa issuance as I’ve instructed?”

He paused. “With all due respect, Ambassador Chen, the telegram from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated a lenient policy—”

“Leave the Ministry to me! I’ll speak to the vice minister personally. You do what I say! Stop the visa issuance! Is that clear?” The ambassador hung up.

Fengshan’s heart raced faster. His superior had given him an ultimatum. If he continued to issue visas, neglecting his order, the ambassador could take it as an affront, and he would face potential censure or demotion. Would he risk his career for the visas?

He looked at the stacks of application forms on the desk, each sorted and marked by dates. He riffled through them, his fingertips smudged from the fountain pen, making a faint trail on the corners of the forms. He was used to these German names: Grebenschikoff, Girone, Goldstaub, Raubvogel, Reismann, Schultzman. These applications were not simply papers; they were people’s lives. Each name was a life, each life with history, each life pleading for a future.

He opened his cigar box, lit a cigar, and looked out. Outside, as usual, there was a queue of people, rubbing their hands, hunching their backs, their feet stamping the snow.

He walked out of his office. In the lobby, the vice consul was collecting the fees and writing the receipts in his sluggish motion. As part of his duty, the vice consul also collected the remittances and submitted them to the embassy at the end of each month. If he followed the ambassador’s order now, the remittances to the embassy would stop, but if he didn’t relay the order to his subordinate, the remittances would continue to be submitted to the embassy, and the ambassador would know Fengshan had disobeyed his order.

Fengshan passed Vice Consul Zhou, said nothing, and went into the elevator.



Grace was in the dining room, setting the table.

“Look what I made for you.” She placed a bowl of sliced pork in brown sauce and garlic before him, which she had never attempted since their arrival in Vienna.

“Hunan garlic pork.” Holding a pair of chopsticks, Fengshan took a bite. The result was surprisingly palatable. He had not had decent Chinese food, sautéed with savory soy sauce and garlic in the style of his hometown cooking, for ages. But sadly, he could hardly stomach anything.

“Is something wrong, my love?”

“I had a conversation with Ambassador Chen.” He spread the rice to soak up the sauce and ate. Food would keep him focused, and he should not waste any. His countrymen were starving.

“Any good news from China?”

“No.” His friends from China had sent telegrams about the war a few days ago. Despite the fact that Chongqing, the new capital of his government, had been bombed into a pile of rubble, to his greatest relief, his government had not surrendered.

“Something is bothering you, my love.”

He wouldn’t have continued with an explanation in the past, but Grace had changed. “The ambassador ordered me to halt the visa issuance.”

She sat across from him. “Halt the visas? Why? I heard people in the slum were trying to apply to our consulate. If you stop, where will they get a visa? Do you remember Lola is in a slum? I wish you could see it. It’s horrifying.”

Grace had just confirmed what he needed to know.

“I asked Frau Maxa to find a boat ticket to Shanghai for Lola, my love. I’m afraid Lola’s mental condition has declined. She might be hallucinating. She must leave Vienna.”

“What did Frau Maxa say?”

“She said many people were looking for ocean-liner tickets. The prices are ridiculously high and there are few tickets available.”

“I’ll tell her to keep looking.”

“There are many people confined in the slum, my love, sleeping on the floor. It’s freezing out there! If you stop issuing visas . . .” Her beautiful eyes stared at him, anticipating.

“This is delicious.”

She kissed his forehead. “I’ll leave you alone. You think about it.”

He nodded, grateful for Grace’s understanding. Holding chopsticks, he slowly chewed his food, thinking about the ambassador’s order.



When he went down to the crowded lobby, he heard a man in a black coat recounting his nightmarish experience in the Mauthausen camp to the applicants around him. Fengshan stopped to listen. The man, apparently named Herr Eisner, seemed to have been released from the camp a few days ago. He said he was tasked with transporting blocks of stones from the top of the quarry to the foot of the hill. Each day he carried on his shoulder a large block of stone that weighed about one hundred pounds and trudged down the 186 crumbling steps made of clay, ice, and rocks, the Stairs of Death, with his fellow prisoners following close behind and the whip from the kapos nearby. He had to take absolute care not to stumble on the frozen stairs or fall off the cliff or knock into people ahead of him. Once a man behind him dropped his block, and the huge rock rolled over his foot and crushed five men ahead of him. Herr Eisner lost two toes—he took off his boot to show them—but he said he was more fortunate than the man who dropped the rock, who became a “parachutist.”