The Last Rose of Shanghai(71)

Later, he kissed my forearm, my knuckles, and my shoulder, his stubble pricking me, a happy ache of a seedling breaking out for the warmth of the sun. Lying on my stomach, I turned to him, my hair damp, my head a roaring engine newly greased.

“I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine.” His fingers were playing with my earlobe.

I took his finger and bit it. Just hard enough so he could feel me. “Chinese people don’t talk about love.”

“Why not?”

“Because we think love is fleeting, fickle, and simply frivolous. Life, however, is a mysterious well of infinity and profundity. So we talk about life and fate. We also believe life is a cycle of chances, karma, and reincarnation.” I climbed on top of him, my stomach on his stomach, my palms to his palms, my body taking flight on the rise and fall of his breath. “There’s karma between lovers, too; we call it yuan. It’s like a predestined chance or like a divine coin of happiness for lovers. You earn them by making good choices in this life, and you’d be paid in the next life.”

“How do you say that? Yang?”

“No, yuan.”

“Got it. Yang.”

I laughed. “I was so worried about you. I thought you were sent to a camp.”

“Everyone is worried about that. I’m hoping for the best. I’m stateless, so maybe the Japanese will leave me alone. You’ve lost weight. You’re so thin. Tell me what you were doing.”

I told him all: the fight with Cheng and my family and the lockup in my own room. And he told me of the messenger bag, the album, and the ten thousand American dollars. Him purchasing a bakery and more. He was no longer a penniless refugee. He was a businessman with assets.

I nodded. He had a sharp mind and a poise that seemed to sharpen at moments of distress. Given opportunities, he could build an empire.

“Sassoon took some pictures of me. I wonder if that album has my photos,” I said. No more secrets from him. I reached out and cupped his face, watching the blue glaze in his eyes, ready to kiss him and placate him.

A flicker. He would never get over the fact that I took off my clothes in front of Sassoon. But he held my hand. “I burned it. It’s gone.”

“You did the right thing.” I was sore, my legs weak, but I was alive, fresh, and fiery. “Can we do it again?”





55


ERNEST


He loved the smell of her, the shape of her hands, the way she put on her high heels, crossing her legs, her back curved, the arc of grace and seduction. He ran his hands over her taut calf and played on her skin, a sonatina of beauty and harmony. He could live like this, watch her put on her shoes, and make love to her every day for the rest of his life.

It was a punishment to let her out of sight, which he never wanted to happen again, but he had to run the bakery. Still, he made plans with her. He would like to move into the apartment he had bought, but that wouldn’t be safe for him. Perhaps she could move into the apartment she had rented for him? She shook her head. She would be a mistress in Chinese people’s eyes, and she was reluctant to dishonor her family’s name.

So she had no choice but to stay in this inn, where she’d registered with a pseudonym. He came to see her every day but left at night before the curfew. She negotiated a good rate, and he paid it. For three months.

In the bakery, it was a different world.



Rumors swirled every day, shifty and chilly like gusts of wind through a dark winding alley: The Japanese had placed Mr. Komor, the organizer of the Jewish charity group that helped him get settled upon his arrival, under house arrest. The Embankment Building was shuttered. A Japanese soldier had flipped a refugee into the Huangpu River when he was too slow moving out of the way on the street.

The wistful Mr. Schmidt sang his lament as they rolled the dough. “Moses said, ‘I’m a stranger in a strange land.’ Indeed. We’re all strangers in a strange world!”

A familiar fear that had possessed Ernest in Berlin returned. The muscles in his hand started to contract, and his hand wouldn’t stop trembling. He put on gloves, just to be safe, and when people came to his bakery, he offered a seat for them to sit, a warm loaf of bread to eat, a glass of soy milk to drink, and smiles to make them feel better. After all, he was in a better situation than them; he was a lover, a business owner.

Often Ernest thought of his parents, so one day he visited a synagogue, the Ohel Rachel, built by the great-uncle of Sir Sassoon. He didn’t know what he wished to see, entering the majestic entryway with rusticated pillars. Passing scores of white-robed yeshiva students, who had arrived from Europe with forged passports last year, Ernest sat by a round window near the ark that held the Torah; in front of him were empty chairs, tables, and candles, solitary, like something left behind. He heard some prayers from the students but couldn’t join, unfamiliar with what they were praying. Then he sneezed. Embarrassed, he stood up and left.

He visited the synagogue again a few days later. The sanctuary was walled, windows sealed by tar paper, and dim, yet he felt relaxed this time. He breathed in the air, etched by the plumes of pale daylight running through the door; he could hear the beats of winged small flies, the rush of the breeze, and the faint prayer like a distant voice. The place felt vast, endless, full of unfathomable codes, like a great pensive mind.

He put his hand on the chair in front of him. Its armrest was damp from incessant rain and smoothed by many hands before him and would be smoothed again by many after him. He wondered if this was what his parents felt when they came to temple—to feel the togetherness, to feel the pulse of life, to become part of a tradition that bound generations past and generations to come. He was not a religious man, but he was still a Jew.