The Last Rose of Shanghai(31)
Such an early betrothal was like carrying a precious jade ball that required care and attention; with each step, the weight increased. I was not allowed to glance at other men, not allowed to play mah-jongg with other boys my age. Shopping was done with Cheng’s supervision, parties were attended with his accompaniment, and going to the movies required his approval.
It also became clear that Cheng and I were not made for each other. He was overbearing and controlling, often hanging around the racecourse and gambling tables, and I was, as he described, spoiled, selfish, and unable to stay away from the gramophone, jazz, and movie theaters. At least he was fastidious about clothes, so in all our finery we stood together like two carefully pruned trees in a garden, side by side but never intertwined.
As a child, I had adored Cheng, a playmate with whom I fought to ride wooden horses, did tugs-of-war, and played mah-jongg for five pennies. But my adoration of Cheng wore off in St. Mary’s Hall. By the time I invested in the nightclub, the connection between us had become tenuous. He made a sport of criticizing me, and I criticized him for doubting me. We only kissed a few times, a chore. When he demanded, I also sat on his lap, and my young body responded with fear and pleasure while he explored. But we had never shared a bed.
I supposed a marriage to him was like the expensive bird’s nest soup, the opaque netlike thing that had the texture of jellyfish and was sweetened with hard rock sugar, a delicacy, overpriced, but I had accepted it because Mother had chosen it for me. And never in my dreams did I think I would doubt this marriage because of another man, a foreigner.
22
ERNEST
Out of her office, into the hallway, and onto the stage, he felt dazed, his heart pounding with the sensation of holding her, his mind throbbing with the light of utter bliss. She was the magnet to his thunderbolt, the starburst to his gloominess, and the music to his silence, and unthinkable as it was, the converse was also true.
Only when he heard the voices of the customers did he realize the trap he had spread under Aiyi’s feet. She would need to explain to Cheng. It was not his intention to cause a rift between her and Cheng, but all the same Ernest wouldn’t mind having her, and he wouldn’t mind getting in a fight for her.
He began to play her favorite song, “The Last Rose of Shanghai,” ignoring the surprised looks of Mr. Li and the band. This was his confession. His pledge—he was hers.
The next day, in his apartment, Ernest wrote a letter to his parents and enclosed in the envelope a bill of two American dollars, which he had exchanged in a bank near the waterfront. He underlined his address in Shanghai and asked when they would arrive before sealing the envelope. He had finally located the German post office, so he would send out the letter today.
He missed them. His father, Tevye Reismann, was a man of earth. His face and hands, having been baked in the sun for years, were the shade of dirt; his jackets and trousers were an earthen brown, and when he took off his coat in the parlor, he freed legions of clods of earth. He smelled of earth, even after five cigarettes. An archaeologist, he devoted all his attention to the digs, excavating relics and uncovering runes and often taking months-long trips overseas. He was a taciturn man, rarely wore a tallit except on the Sabbath, and was more attracted to graves and stones than politics and religion. All men are made of earth: kings and pharaohs, rabbis and priests, he often said.
His mother, well, she was something else. Her face was a theater of cosmetics with yellow and blue eye shadows, red rouge, and purple or black lipstick, her clothes a whirlwind of colors—emerald green, sea blue, acorn brown, or royal purple. A daughter of a jeweler, she taught theater and was fluent in German, Yiddish, French, and Italian. An extrovert, she could talk up a storm with strangers while shopping for gefilte fish. On High Holidays, she ordered his siblings to the synagogue to sit through hour-long services, but only on High Holidays, for she was too busy with her social commitments. She was like her name: Chava. Life.
A strict mother, she interrogated him about whom he socialized with and ordered him to practice the piano daily. She held high hopes for him. One day, he would win international prizes and become a world-renowned pianist, she believed.
That was before the Kristallnacht, before his father’s arrest. At their last Passover, a day after his father had been released from three months’ incarceration, looking anxious and haggard, she had observed with one piece of matzah and a deep, reflective reading of the Haggadah. Her usual dramatic voice was stretched tight with tension, and her long black hair, which she often styled in a French braid, was messy. Her head was hung low, her back stiff, her eyes an ocean of sadness.
When she arrived in Shanghai, she would be her extrovert self again. She would without a doubt tell him what to do, too. He wondered if he had said too much about Aiyi in his letter. His mother would definitely discourage him from socializing with her—he could imagine her shock: “A Gentile! A Chinese! Why would you see someone like that?” “You can do better than that, Ernest.” “For the love of God, Ernest, can you stop seeing her?” On and on.
But he was not a religious man. He preferred pilsner over schnapps and believed shaving was more hygienic than growing facial hair. He ate chicken that was not kosher and always thought nonkosher food tasted better. He became a bar mitzvah, but after the party he kept the money and forgot both baruchas of the Torah. He didn’t care that Aiyi was not Jewish. She wore a dress of finery and aloofness, but she was truer than any woman he had ever met.