The Last Rose of Shanghai(100)

ERNEST


He awoke on his bed, her image vivid in his mind. She smiled, her eyes two crescent moons. Take my hand, she said, her slender fingers stretching, fine filigrees of spinning gold. Are you happy? Will you forgive me? he wanted to ask, drinking in her smile, her blooming heat; instead, all he said was I’ve missed you, oh, how I’ve missed you. She lowered her head to kiss him, but the moment he felt her lips, her face diminished and dissolved in the dim fog.

He sat up on the edge of the bed, sweating, his chest bare. The summer air in the room was stifling, torrid; the heat clung to him like cobwebs. He grabbed a towel hanging on the headboard and slung it across his neck. The bamboo mattress had stuck to his back, leaving a groove beneath his shoulder blades, and sweat trickled from his neck to his lower abdomen. But the dream, so real, so vivid, still enveloped him, making him hard.

A streak of light pierced through the crack of the wooden boards used as a wall. He stared, tracing it, pale like the skin on her calf. Once upon a time she’d lived with him from sunrise to sunset; but now she only came to meet him before sunrise. He lowered his head and put on his loafers. They were worn and damp from humidity, lumpy from overuse. His toes wiggled against the leather; it felt as if he had stepped inside a lump of wet clay.

Coughing, he tried to stand up, but a pain stabbed his head. He sat down again. He had been running a fever for two days. Not a surprise since everyone was sick with something. He would shake it off. He cupped his mouth and coughed quietly so he wouldn’t wake Golda sleeping behind him.

After the wedding, Golda had pawned a gold ring, the last of her jewelry. Gold was worth a great deal these days because of inflation, and she was able to purchase a few more luxuries: a small table, a tin pot to cook meals, and a bamboo mattress to keep cool in the summer. And they had rented this small attic room, their new home.

Married life had been good for him, and he had settled in, like a beetle in a dark corner. Golda gave him a mezuzah from the yeshiva students; he nailed it on the doorpost below the attic roof. She swept the floor and he wiped the table; she stewed the cabbage and he took out the trash. He made love to her on the small table as she asked, on the bed while she was on hands and knees; he listened as she talked about her favorite play, Tevye the Dairyman and His Daughters, and her passion for acting.

He was thankful for the marriage, for Golda, who had not only given him the joy of living but also a purpose. He was resolved to be a good husband. When he came across a stalled jeep loaded with beer and jars of radishes, he had stolen them, shared radishes with Old Liang, and then drank the beer with Golda on their bed. Lehayim, she said as she raised the bottle of beer before kissing him with her beer-flavored lips.

“You’re up.” Golda sat up from the bed and yawned, her flaming hair cascading to cover her pale, freckled face. She murmured, asking if he was going to the cobbler’s, where he had found a job as a helper. He received twenty fabi as his weekly wage, with which he bought a loaf of bread in a shop owned by Goya. Bread was Golda’s favorite, and they made it last for the entire week.

A torrent of coughs overtook her. He rubbed her back. She was sick, too, her face flushed. The rashes on her back had spread to her neck, but the skin around her lips was pale. He bent over and kissed Golda’s forehead. His apology for his dream.

He would never forget Aiyi and her face, which illuminated the house of his yearning like a warm candle in a cold night. But he was now a married man. A yearning for the past was a betrayal of the present. It was true that he would never forget Aiyi, their heart-throbbing moments, and their impulsive plans, but life had rent them apart, and he and Aiyi were now two distant stars, emitting their own light and running on their own courses.





82


AIYI


“Look, Aunt. What are they doing?” Little Star asked as we walked down a street in the Old City. It had been a week since I visited the hotel, and I had sold the gramophone near Ciro’s. To sell the cigarette packets, I had come to the Old City God Temple, where many gamblers, before starting their games in the gambling houses nearby, were usually generous.

I followed her gaze. Along the dilapidated city wall, a group of children dressed in black tunics were all tied together by a rope around their waists. They looked to be no more than ten, with long hair, bare feet, and stagnant eyes; obediently they stood in front of a man with a long braid who inspected them, lifting their chins, unbuttoning their tunics and peering inside. Finally, the man handed a coin to the old man holding the rope, who untied a girl in the cluster and pushed her to him.

The worthless girls near the Old City God Temple, abandoned by their families, sold and used at a young age. I had seen them before and had barely given them a thought. Now a shiver ran through me. My Little Star. Had she not been saved by me, she would be one of those girls along the wall. But a stab of pain pierced me as I thought of my daughter. She should be eighteen months old, barely walking, barely talking, a mouth to feed. Also nothing of value. Who would keep her, a girl of mixed blood?

I burst into tears. I could hear her soft cries, and I could see her wrapped in a bundle, staring at me with Ernest’s eyes. “Let’s go, Little Star. Let’s go home.”

“Why are you crying, Aunt?”

“I’m scared.”

“Why?”

The child I didn’t have a chance to hold. Had I kept her, I would have grown to love her, protect her, feed her just like Little Star. Where was she?