Night in Shanghai (34 page)

She had once again left the diamonds in Xi’an.

The next day at noon, Thomas came back to the
tingzijian
to change his clothes, and found Lin Ming frantically dressing.

“Where’s Song?” Lin said.

“She went down the street to the
laohuzao
.” Tiger stove shops, the name used for the local bathhouses, was in his tiny vocabulary, even though he patronized them only when he could afford it, making do in leaner times with a bowl and pitcher. “Half an hour is all she needs. Then she wants us all to have lunch at Sun Ya and—” He stopped short as he saw Lin was stuffing all his belongings into a cloth sack. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

“Leaving Shanghai?”

“Leaving China.” He pulled the bag’s drawstring tight with a sick finality. “The Plan is dead. Hitler threatened Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang crumpled. A hundred thousand doomed, just like that. They will die.”

“And their children.”

Lin straightened up, silent.

“But—leave China?”

“I’m next on the list. Kung just cabled me.”

“What list?”

“The men I sent out from Shanghai, An and Vespa? With the dollars and the gold bars? Dead, both of them. Intercepted. The Japs want everyone dead who was involved in this.”

“What about people here in Shanghai?” Thomas heard his voice rise in fear. “Could An and Vespa have talked?”

“No. They were professionals. Moreover, I heard they were killed by snipers. I know what you are thinking—David and his family. Believe me, if the Japanese knew their names, they would already be dead. It turns out An and Vespa died months ago, almost as soon as they arrived in Chongqing. The Epsteins are safe.”

“Then perhaps you—”

“No.” Lin’s face was stretched tight over his cheekbones with worry, and for a moment he looked like his father. “I worked on the Plan for two months. Everybody in Tengchong County knows who I am.”

“I suppose also, with all the press in the last few days . . .”

Their eyes met, and a spark of satisfaction jumped between them. Thomas had called on Mr. Pao, and Lin had approached the Chinese-language newspapers and magazines, which resulted in an avalanche of Fugu Plan exposés. Not a single Jew would now be willing to leave Shanghai for Japanese Manchuria.

Thomas exhaled. “Where will you go?”

“Hong Kong.”

“Today?”
It was usually impossible to buy anything on the day of departure except first-class tickets, and sometimes not even those.

“Kung went through my father. The old man still owns the Da Da shipping line. They serve the Subei ports, not Hong Kong, but I have a transfer from Haimen.”

“When do you leave?”

“One hour.” Lin stuck out his hand, a last American gesture.

Thomas ignored it and embraced him instead. “I’ll walk with you.”

“No. You attract attention.”

Thomas tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry. He was losing his bedrock. “Are you coming back?”

“Naturally. This is my home! But as long as the brown dwarf bandits are here, I cannot visit except in secret. Remember that.”

Thomas drew an X over his heart. “What about your sister?”

“I will stop at the
laohuzao
.”

They stood in silence for a moment at the top of the ladder. “Thank you,” said Lin.

“Don’t even start,” said Thomas, which made Lin laugh.

“All right,” said Lin, “Then say good-bye in Chinese.
Zai jian
. Means,
see you again.”

“See you again,” Thomas managed, as he watched his friend go down the ladder.

Admiral Morioka was writing a top-secret cable in his office at Naval Headquarters when an aide tapped on the door and announced Major General Shibatei Yoshieki.

Quickly Morioka secreted the cable in a drawer. Yoshieki was chief of espionage at Japanese Army Headquarters, a man who knew China well—he had been born here—but some matters were still between Morioka and Tokyo, and not for his eyes.

No sooner had the aide clicked the door shut behind him than Yoshieki burst out, “It’s dead. They killed the Fugu Plan.”

“Pressure from the Western powers?” said Morioka. He had been bracing for diplomatic trouble ever since the Shanghai press came out with attacks on the plan.

Yoshieki nodded. “How did the press even get the details of the plan?” he said.

“Do not waste any time on that.” Morioka fingered the knob on his desk drawer, knowing that today’s secret cables, concerning the terms of the new military alliance with Germany, were infinitely more important than this Fugu Plan—which he had disliked anyway. The Jews in Shanghai were his, and he wanted them left alone. Even if the Nazis were now his allies. “If you will excuse me?”

Yoshieki bowed, clicked his heels, and left.

N
INETEEN FORTY AND
forty-one passed, two years that were hard on Anya Petrova. The Dark World was an occupied city, which no longer attracted international men looking for a sweetheart on whom to spend money the way it once did. The first few years after the Japanese takeover in the fall of ’37 had not been so bad, but once all Europe was at war, it seemed the only people in Shanghai with money to spend were Japanese.

In the summer of 1941 she and her friend Li Lan began seeing high-placed Japanese, in secret, since anyone consorting with the conquerors was automatically in danger. They traveled separately to the Japanese sector in Zhabei and met their clients in private spaces, never entering or leaving with them. But the men, military officers, were polite, certainly better than the Nazis, who had been making their presence felt in Shanghai for many months. Next to them, her Japanese escorts seemed desirable.

Anya had her opinions, but her friend Li Lan had a whole different range of motivations—and she had to be twice as careful as Anya, since she slept with Japanese men for another, much riskier reason: she worked for the resistance.

On November 15, 1941, at a Zhabei jazz club, the two of them sat on the floor, on the tatami mats favored by the invaders. Their private room was separated from the club by a sliding rice-paper wall, which kept out prying eyes but not the strains of the jazz quintet from Osaka. Li Lan’s date was Major General Shibatei Yoshieki, the Japanese Army’s spy chief. He had brought along the top-ranking Japanese in Shanghai, Admiral Tadashi Morioka. Yoshieki knew Morioka loved jazz, so he booked this restaurant and asked Li Lan to bring along the gray-eyed, black-haired Anya as a companion for his friend.

Morioka seemed to have scant interest in her, although he listened intently to the music. He mostly spoke to Yoshieki in Japanese, leaving Anya out.

But not Li Lan. Her Japanese was fluent. Her grandmother was Japanese, and she had grown up in the north, speaking the language at home, a fact she concealed with great care. If Yoshieki and Morioka had any idea she understood them and had come here to mentally record every word they exchanged, they would see her put to death at once. Anya accordingly sparkled with just enough womanly conversation to cover her friend and allow her to follow their discussion, which rose in a heated crescendo before leveling off.

So when Li Lan touched her leg lightly under the table and said, in English, “Please excuse us to restroom,” Anya knew she wanted to say something about the intense volley of Japanese they had just heard. Yoshieki and Morioka barely noticed their rise from the table.

The Chinese girl closed the bathroom door and leaned close. “They were talking about someone you were with. Thomas Greene. Remember? It’s him, isn’t it?

“What?” Anya knew he was still in Shanghai, playing with a Jewish violinist. “Why would they speak of him?”

Li Lan moved right up to her ear and dropped her voice further. “Something is about to happen. It is something Morioka has known about for a while, and Yoshieki just found out, that is why they were talking. I don’t know what it is, but it is big, and very bad for Americans. Yoshieki asked Morioka if he was going to warn Thomas Greene before it was too late. Morioka became angry at him, and said of course not, the operation is top secret.”

Anya’s mouth opened in surprise. She kept her voice as soft as Li Lan’s. “Could they possibly be planning to attack the International Settlement? But then America would retaliate—”

“I don’t know what they are preparing,” said Li Lan. “Only that it’s about Americans. So if you can find a safe way, and you want him to live, you had better tell him.”

Anya squeezed her hand in thanks. They shared a deep breath, reapplied their lipstick, retraced their steps to the sliding screen, and sat again, smiling.

That year, Alonzo and Keiko decided to host an American-style Thanksgiving in their flat, and Thomas went to Hongkou to invite the Epstein family, and explain the holiday.

“You came so far in this war, started life over in a new land,” he said. “It’s something like it was for those first settlers who arrived in America. To survive was their victory; it was enough. They might have starved, but the Indians helped them. So at the harvest they had food, and everyone sat down together, and gave thanks. And that’s why we eat together on this holiday.”

“So this is your people coming to America,” David said.

“Yes,” said Thomas.

“But you were slaves, is it not?”

“Well, it’s about the other people, I suppose. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Because we are all in Shanghai now, and you three have your freedom.” His gaze gathered in David and Margit and Leo, now a solemn boy of five. “So please, come to Thanksgiving.”

They did come, and when they first climbed the stairs and walked into Alonzo’s apartment, they were made speechless, not by the dining table, which was loaded with all Keiko’s best dishes and a whole fragrant roast chicken, that being as close as they could come to a turkey, but by the large windows, framed with curtains, showing all the lights in the houses up and down the lane. To the Epsteins, after years in their little room, the simple glass panes were a fairyland of light. They stood there gazing out, laughing and exclaiming in their own language, which pleased Thomas.

He had played with David all through 1940 and 1941, and had long since accepted the Viennese as his brother. He still worried about the family’s safety, though so far the only restriction the Japanese had placed on the Jews was to require all the refugees—they now numbered more than 25,000—to live in Hongkou, where almost all of them were living anyway. The Nazis tried to organize a boycott of businesses employing Jews, but no one paid much attention to it, and if, in the end, a few Aryans ceased to patronize these companies, their absence was hardly felt. Shanghai’s Jews were surviving, even thriving. At the same time, their relatives back in Europe were going silent, their letters suddenly ceasing. If the long arm of Berlin managed to reach Shanghai, Thomas knew the same thing would happen here.

But now he had more immediate worries—Anya’s warning.

He had not seen her in over two years, when she fell into step beside him the evening before, as he left the Majestic Hotel. “Anya?”

“Let us walk like old friends. Do not make a fuss.” And she dropped her voice, and told him what she had learned.

“And you don’t know what Japan is going to do?”

“No. Only that the Americans are in danger. They argued about Morioka warning you.”

“I can see the buildup, all of us can. But no one knows what it means.”

“It means you should leave,” she said.

“I wish I could.” He took her hand as they walked, a simple gesture from the past, instantly retrieved. “I can’t. I don’t have the fare. And my friends don’t either, and I can’t leave them anyway.” He stayed for Song too, but he would not mention that now.

“I understand.” That was all she said, and when they reached the next intersection, she turned away, as if walking next to him had been a random accident.

He remembered how he had taken a few steps forward through the crowd before he realized Anya had vanished. Now, standing by the window before Thanksgiving dinner, he sent gratitude to her too, since she had taken a risk to warn him. Never mind that he could not act on it.

When the feast was laid out, they pulled their chairs around the table, linked hands for a prayer, and began the happy passing of platters.

In addition to roast chicken, Keiko had made rice and eggplant braised in miso, and hot and sour Korean-style cabbage. When they were finished and David was tamping and puffing on his pipe, Alonzo took out a guitar and started to play a circular twelve-bar blues, a direct, unconscious pattern. Thomas sat back in the chair, listening, giving thanks for the music in addition to everything else. Alonzo caught his eye and sent him the smile of the older friend, knowing, accepting, lighting the long path of the years ahead with his benediction:
It’s all right
.
Somehow it will work, and one day you’ll be as old as I
.

After a few minutes Ernest unlatched his case and lifted his tenor from its worn velvet bed, dampened the reed, and mouthed it; then he began to blow atop Alonzo, crying, complaining in short bursts like comments on the guitar lines. Finally Charles took up his alto and joined in, first shadowing his brother in their trademark thirds and later playing off him in their own call-and-response.

Everyone in the room pulsed together, Leo in his mother’s lap, Thomas on the chair, Keiko—any sense of separate nationhood had dropped away. This was Shanghai, itself an eclectic improvisation, a loop like this twelve-bar blues, playing again and again, bringing all possibilities to life.

At last David rose and unsnapped his violin case. Thomas felt pride burst out of him, for David had always said he would never improvise, that it terrified him. He looked unsure as he fit his beloved instrument to his chin, and the first few bars he played straight, the way he knew how to do it.

Alonzo shook his head. “Turn the beat around,” he said, and used the next measure to emphasize the displacement of accents onto the weak beats.

David understood instantly, and began again, adding the Gypsy plaintiveness for which he was so gifted. After a while he began to grasp their hesitations and use of space, and he left more emptiness as he answered their lines with his.