The Last Rose of Shanghai(107)

“Well, she suffered from malnutrition. And I can tell you the year is wrong. It wasn’t 1946. It should be before 1946, or before the summer of 1945.”

“How can you tell?”

“I lost my foot in 1945. Besides, my Little Star suffered terrible burns during the aerial raid. She barely survived.”

“Could you talk about the raid, Ms. Shao? I was going to ask you that. The Japanese surrendered after the atomic bombs, but I heard there was a massive bombing by the Americans in the summer of 1945 in Shanghai in an effort to end the war. A great fire engulfed the city. Many people perished.”

I pick up a transparent prawn dumpling, but it slips from my hand and falls to the floor. “I was sick that day. My memory is foggy, and I still can’t figure out how everything happened. Yes, the entire district was in flames. And Little Star . . . I had stupidly left the front gate open the morning of the raid, and she had wandered out when the bomb hit. When I found her, she was burned beyond recognition. I nursed her back to life.”

“What about your birth daughter then? You said you were looking for her. Did you find her?”

I need to be careful; I can’t afford to mess this up. “Let me ask you something. Have you heard of the Doolittle pilots?”

“The eighty pilots who bombed Tokyo after Pearl Harbor?”

“Yes, eighty pilots. I heard two drowned. Eight were captured by Japanese and became war prisoners, and the rest died. Jacob DeShazer, a bombardier, was among the captured. He endured repeated tortures in prison camp, thought he was going to die, and vowed that if he survived he’d become a preacher and return to Japan to preach. He was rescued after the war, so he returned to Tokyo and handed out missionary flyers at the Shibuya train station to spread God’s word. A Japanese took a flyer, read it, and contacted DeShazer, saying he’d like to follow his path to become an evangelist. Do you know who that Japanese man was?”

“Who?”

“His name was Mitsuo Fuchida, the lead bomber aviator of the Imperial Japanese Navy that attacked Pearl Harbor.”

She rubs her temple. “I haven’t heard anything like this. A story of karma, I believe? But does this have anything to do with you, Mr. Reismann, and your daughter? I’m confused. The interviewees said Mr. Reismann died, so I believe you wish to preserve his memory by making the documentary. Is that right?”

“That’s part of it, Ms. Sorebi. Karma, yes. My mother believed in that, and so do I. Who would have known the niece I saved during the war would save me in the end?”

“Could you be more specific?”

“I never gave up on finding my daughter, Ms. Sorebi. It was also Ernest’s last wish. He lost all his family members during the war, as you know. But I couldn’t find her, after all these years of searching. My niece helped me. She hired private investigators and followed every trail we had, flying all over the world to find my daughter. One day, she was on a flight from Hong Kong to Sydney on Cathay Pacific, flipping the pages of the in-flight magazine, when she saw information about an exhibit on Shanghai Jews. She took a chance, went to LA, and saw Ernest’s profile in the special exhibit—and your biography and your name.”

She looks more confused.

I need to drink some water in order to continue, but I don’t want to lose a minute. “Yes, I can tell you all about my daughter: She grew up with two sisters. All brunettes. She blended right in with her new family in the Texas suburb with her brown hair. When she was fourteen, her parents died in a car crash. A relative let slip that she was adopted. She became a foster child.

“She studied law at college but dropped out. She ended up with no bachelor’s degree but a mound of student loans. She married her high school sweetheart but later divorced. No kids. Then she remarried a salesman at Sears. He had an affair and broke her heart. She divorced again. She has a darling boy, a nine-year-old who loves horseback riding. He wrote his teacher Mr. Morton as Mr. Moron all over the school’s hallway, and he was suspended. She was unable to make a mortgage payment and lost her house. She decided to move out of Texas and went to LA, where she became a documentarian. She took an offer from a museum to make an exhibit for Shanghai Jews and highlighted Ernest Reismann.”

Ms. Sorebi leans over. “Holy shit! How did you know all this about me, Ms. Shao?”





89


AIYI


Ying was up to something. All day long he fiddled with the transceiver under the bed. At night he disappeared. When I mentioned Ernest, he replied irritably that he had been looking for him but was unable to find him. Many refugees had caught dysentery or infection and died. It was likely Ernest had died too. “You know how filthy the area is,” he said in a grave voice.

I didn’t believe him, yet thoughts were puddled in my mind. The pounding headache and fever stole my energy. What Ying said could be true.

When he returned one evening, he tied up the corners of the sheets and packed what little we had—the kerosene lamp, the two round tin containers that held strips of dried sweet potatoes, and the empty whiskey bottle, which we refilled with boiled water. He tossed the bundle onto my lap. Everything was packed. Little Star was dressed. The rickshaw would come to the alley and take us to a wharf at dawn the next day.



I had a terrible night. I dreamed of Ernest playing the piano—the rhythm, the energy, and the clarity. Oh, only he could play jazz like this; only he knew what music meant to me. But then it changed. Its legato sound drew out like a trail of tears, and it was unmistakable—it was the song of farewell. I awoke, perspiring, before dawn. Little Star was still sleeping, but perplexingly, the music lingered. I went out to the courtyard, to the dark alleyway, to the street, shivering and coughing, following the sound of the piano. One last time.