The Last Rose of Shanghai(87)

He went to the inn where they had met, holding some silly hope that she might be waiting. The proprietor said she had not set foot there since June last year; the room had been vacated.

He called her home. The line was no longer in use.

He thought to visit her at home. Just a glimpse.



The wooden gate was closed. Rain poured down on the massive stone lions with wavy manes, the twisting dragons with long serpentine whiskers, and the thick wall by the street. From behind the wall, the tops of ginkgo trees and elms hovered like a mirage. Her home. It didn’t take long to find it.

Holding an umbrella, he watched the compound across from him, waiting for her to come out. But the gate remained closed. Finally, he crossed the street.

A jeep went ahead of him and stopped in front of the compound, splashing water on his trousers. He stepped back and saw the gate yanked wide for the jeep; inside he could see Japanese soldiers wearing black kimonos and white tabi near a fountain in the courtyard.

The rain splattered on his umbrella, drenching the back of his silk suit. He went down the street and entered a shop nearby.

“What happened to the Shaos?” he asked.

The family had sold the home to a creditor a month ago, and the creditor had given it to the Japanese, the shopkeeper explained, fiddling with a stack of calendars.

“Where are the Shaos now?”

The shopkeeper shook his head. “Want some calendars?”

He bought ten calendars he had no use for and walked back to his four-door plum-hued Chrysler Imperial. The wiper swished dully; on the back seat, Golda was waiting.

He got in the car and closed his eyes. Had he really lost her, for good?





71


AIYI


Cheng was still the old Cheng I knew. He didn’t ask how I felt or what I liked or what I wanted to do. He gave me an apple because he wanted me to have it, ordered new dresses because he believed I needed them. He treated me the same way he treated his bird, feeding it with the hand holding a cigarette, unaware that the smoke might sicken the bird. He was not a man with attention for emotions or tears.

He said nothing when his mother, seated at a round dinner table, hinted at the blank bedsheet; he said nothing when she mentioned grandchildren and nannies. When she questioned him, he cleared his throat, straightened his tie, and reached for my hand under the table.

I knew what I had—a loyal man.

I didn’t ask to listen to music on the gramophone, didn’t read the magazines that would make him frown, didn’t hum, or sway my hips, or dance to the tunes in my head. He wouldn’t like all of that.

At night, I waited for him on our marital bed, naked, save for the silk robe he’d given me. He no longer frightened me, and all the wildness of him, his raw energy, his brawny arms, was no longer intimidating. I attached my body to him, ready for him. This was a good life: to eat, to play the game of pleasure, to go to sleep and do it again the next day.

Love would come later, Mother had said. I hoped she was right.





72


ERNEST


When he lost another round of mah-jongg, a game necessary to play for socializing, he asked his Chinese business partners where the home of Aiyi’s fiancé, Cheng, was. The men were happy to tell him, but they corrected him. He was no longer the fiancé; he was the husband.

So she was looked after, but he still wanted to see her. The next day, he went to Cheng’s house and knocked the ring through a lion’s head against the wooden gate. An old servant in a gray tunic opened it. Looking frightened, she screamed and slammed the gate in his face.

But he had found the right place—he’d seen the black Buick.



When he entered his office, Ernest stopped short, his heart skipping a few beats—on a chair by the wall, near the desk where he worked, sat Yamazaki in a full officer’s uniform; in his holster was the damned Mauser and a broadsword. It had been about eight months since the man had murdered Miriam. Grief and fury welled up inside him. If he had a gun, Yamazaki would be dead already.

“I’m delighted to meet you again, Mr. Reismann. Allow me to make a proper introduction,” the man said, bowing from his waist, his face revealing not a trace of the menace or brutality from the bakery. “I’m officer Koreshige Yamazaki. I’ve been in Shanghai since the beginning of 1937. I’ve been involved in a few vital missions for my emperor, and now I’m in charge of foreign business operations in Shanghai.”

Ernest held back his balled fists that he longed to ram into the man’s stomach. The murderer of his sister, now standing in his office as if nothing had happened, disguised as a man of civility. If he didn’t know better, he would think this was a different man. He must be more discerning. Yamazaki was, like Ernest’s Chinese partners said, a skillful Noh performer, capable of changing faces.

“Mr. Yamazaki.” He gritted his teeth.

Someone in the office cleared his throat, warning him. If he dared lay a finger on Yamazaki, they would all die. Golda. Sigmund. All his business associates, and perhaps even the refugees he helped in the Heime. Mr. Schmidt had said, repeatedly, that they were lucky to be released after being arrested.

Then there was a rumor that SS colonel Josef Meisinger from Nazi Germany, Japan’s ally, had recently visited the emperor of Japan and urged him to do something about the Jews in Shanghai, who he said were a scourge they’d tried to eliminate in Germany. Meisinger recommended isolating them in rooms sprayed with poisonous gas or using them for vivisection. The Japanese didn’t think it necessary to use the Jews for vivisection, as they had endless supplies of the Chinese, but they agreed the poisonous gas was an effective solution to stamp out the nest of rebels among the Chinese and perhaps even wipe out an entire province of troublemakers once and for all. As a result, many tanks of gas had been stashed in a warehouse of a German medical company in Shanghai.