The Last Rose of Shanghai(96)

Winter came early.

Holding a chopstick with his freezing fingers, Ernest pressed his thumb down against the taro in his hand and slid the chopstick forward; the black peel slid off easily. Now and then, he stopped to shake off the numbness of his fingers, freezing in the winter chill. When he finished scraping, he placed the taro inside a bamboo basket near his foot. Taro, which looked like a potato but with black skin and fuzzy hair, had flesh pale like a stone. He had never seen a taro until now. It had taken him many tries to become skillful at scraping it with a chopstick. Who would have known a stick like this could be so versatile?

He was paid two sweet potatoes for his scraping job; sweet potatoes were peasant food, but taros, for the Japanese, were more expensive. That was how he survived in the area, the ghetto. It was not so bad; most people had no taros to peel. This penury, this confinement, as he came to reconcile himself to it, wasn’t bad either. It was his punishment, his chance to see his failure, an opportunity to atone.

The sound of engines revving resonated in the distance. He looked up. At the end of the street lined with shanties, near the military base, a fleet of Japanese soldiers wearing green winter jackets was riding in armored vehicles. They were leaving the base or maybe engaging in another training in the outskirts. He didn’t know what was happening with the war, who’d won or who’d lost. The Japanese were still buying taros; that was all he needed to know.

Old Liang, his landlord and his employer, bent to collect the peeled taros in the basket. He would cut them up later and sell them in the market; the peels would be swept up by Old Liang’s wife, cleaned, sorted, and cooked for dinner. Nothing was wasted. “Look, look. Your qizi is here.” Your wife is here.

Ernest looked up. Across the street, Golda, in a red trench coat that was turning black, walked quickly toward him. He was not surprised Old Liang would mistake Golda for his wife. Since his relocation to the ghetto, Golda had sat regularly on his bamboo cot, covered herself with the straw mattress, talked, burst into tears, and talked more. When tired, she wrapped her arms around him, hanging onto him.

He didn’t have the heart to untangle her. But when she wanted more, he gently pushed her away. Marriage hardly seemed to make sense. They were prisoners, penniless, without a future.

No. Not qizi. Ernest shook his head. He couldn’t get the pronunciation right, especially the letter q. Aiyi could have corrected him, but Old Liang couldn’t speak English; neither did he understand the term for a female friend. But he was kind, and so was his aging wife, who had given birth to thirteen children and lost ten. In fact, most of the Chinese, the original residents in the ghetto who remained in the area, were kind.

“Ernest.” Golda was panting. “You have to come. Mr. Schmidt is vomiting.”

The old man had suffered an intense toothache and couldn’t eat for days. He had fallen sick, either dysentery or typhoid.

“Let’s go.” Ernest went down the Ward Road, where he heard a whisper of prayers from the shelter for the yeshiva students. He didn’t give it a second glance. Once he had stepped inside a synagogue to seek solace; now he had no interest in seeing the students or hearing prayers.

When he reached the two-story wooden building where Mr. Schmidt lived, Ernest ducked his head under the low entryway and went to the old man’s cot. The room, filled with about fifty refugees, was cold and dim without a kerosene lamp, noisy with groans and murmurs. In the corner, behind a curtain, a woman was shrieking in labor, some voices asking her to push. Near the curtain, a boy in a tattered shirt recited in a halting voice some verses in Hebrew. Ernest had an impulse to pat the boy’s shoulder and tell him to save his energy.

“Mr. Schmidt, do you feel like eating some sweet potatoes today?” Ernest took a good look at the old man. He stank with vomit, and by the light through the doorway, his skin looked yellow like rinsed potatoes.

“Ernest? Oh, Ernest. It’s good to see you. I feel like crap.” His voice was a wisp.

“What happened to your face?” It had two deep cuts.

“I think a rat bit me. It got a bad deal biting my old bones.”

Ernest put his hand on the old man’s forehead. It was burning hot. “You need to go to the hospital.” He would need Goya’s permission. There was a hospital outside the area.

“Five went there yesterday and died there. Why bother? I’d rather stay here.”

Golda sobbed, leaning against him. Ernest placed his arm around her.

“Well now, at least you two are getting married. Isn’t that marvelous?” Mr. Schmidt said, coughing.

Ernest glanced at Golda and stood. “You’ll feel better, Mr. Schmidt. I’ll check on you again. I’ll take you to the hospital, if you change your mind. Let me know.” Then he took Golda’s hand and walked toward the door. “We need to take him to the General Hospital. I’ll go see Goya.”

She stopped him. “I want you to marry me, Ernest. I told him we’re getting married.”

Ernest sighed.

“I’m afraid of getting sick and dying, Ernest, and I don’t want to die a lonely woman. I want to be happy; I want to live some before I die.”

“You won’t die.”

She burst into tears. “Look around this place of filth. When was the last time you had a good meal with soy milk and bread? We have no food, no clean water, no privacy. Everyone is sick with typhoid or dysentery or scarlet fever. We’ve been here for months. When will this end?”