The Far Side of the Sky (54 page)

Jia-Li laughed. “Oh, dear sweet Soon Yi, if only it were so simple.”

“After all you have done for us and the risks you have taken …” Sunny’s voice cracked. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you,
bao bèi.”

Jia-Li shrugged. “It’s what sisters do.”

Sunny kissed Jia-Li’s cheek again. “You are the best friend in the world,” she whispered into her ear.

Esther and Simon arrived minutes after Jia-Li’s departure. Simon had
somehow scrounged up a bottle of pre-war Chianti, and a tin of pineapple juice for Hannah. They gathered in the sitting room with their glasses, Hannah stealing the occasional sip of wine from her father’s.

Franz had reset Simon’s broken nose, but it was still swollen, and most of his face had turned yellowish blue from the bruising. Despite his injuries, Simon seemed more ebullient than ever. “How lucky am I?” He glanced adoringly to Esther. “And for the cherry on top, you hear the latest war news?”

“You mean the bombing of Hamburg?” Franz said.

Simon nodded enthusiastically. “The largest bombing on German soil yet.”

“Women and children live in Hamburg too,” Esther pointed out.

“This war is brutal on all civilians, no question,” Simon said. “But the Allies desperately need some successes. And it’s not only Hamburg. The Brits pushed the Germans back in North Africa at El Alamain. The tide is turning. I feel it in my bones.”

Esther laughed good-naturedly. “Oh, darling, your optimism knows no bounds.”

“Meantime, we are still at the whim of the Japanese,” Franz sighed. “And might be so forever.”

“Think of all the odds we have already beaten.” Simon stood up and raised his glass. “I want to toast the Jews of Shanghai, who have more lives than your average cat.”

Hannah turned to Esther, confused. “Average cat?”

“It’s an old saying that cats have nine lives,” Esther explained, and then looked up at her husband. “Don’t tempt fate, darling.”

Simon laughed as he took hold of Esther’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “You got to figure that fate must be sick and tired of dumping on us Jews.”

Sunny rose and tapped her glass to theirs. “To Shanghai Jews!”

Simon winked at her. “Including you, Sunny. Not entirely sure why you would want membership in our tribe, but no one deserves it more than you.”

Hannah hopped to her feet. “To Sunny and the rest of the Shanghai Jews.” She giggled and clinked glasses with the others.

Franz scanned the room. “I would like to make another toast. To the most precious gift in the world.” He raised his glass high above his head. “To family!”

Everyone tapped glasses again. Sunny’s face glowed as Franz blew her a kiss.

“Speaking of families—” Simon began. Esther grabbed his sleeve. “Simon, not yet!”

Simon turned to her with a huge grin. “Essie, it’s the perfect time.”

“Time for what, Tante Essie?” Hannah asked.

Sunny’s heart fluttered in anticipation. “Esther, you’re not …”

Esther nodded shyly. “I am pregnant.”

“When?”

“I only found out last week. When the men were still in prison.”

“Congratulations!
Mazel tov!
” Sunny threw her arms around Esther and spun her around, spilling their wine.

“I am going to have a baby cousin!” Hannah cried as she joined in on the hug.

“Yes,
mazel tov
to both of you!” Franz buffeted Simon’s shoulder with his good hand and then turned quizzically to Esther. “I don’t understand …”

Esther shrugged. “Karl and I never could. And now, at thirty-six, here in Shanghai—of all places—surrounded by the enemy …” She grabbed Simon’s free hand, bringing it to her chest. “We’re going to have a baby. God help us, an American baby!”

They all laughed and hugged again.

Hannah went into the kitchen to help Yang serve dinner. Esther turned to Franz and Sunny. “I—” she glanced at Simon with a raw smile—
“We
are so happy. But is it really fair?”

“Is what fair?” Franz asked.

“To bring a baby into this place. All this terrible uncertainty.” Esther frowned. “After that Kempeitai colonel warned us that things were about
to change for us. What if they intend to put us in camps or ghettos like in Europe? Our security still hangs only by a thread here.”

“Esther, this is a blessing,” Franz said. “A wonderful new life in spite of all the misery and loss. My brother would be—” he swallowed—”Karl would be so happy for you. For all of us. I
know
it.”

Simon wrapped an arm around Esther’s waist and pulled her close. “Franz is right, darling. This is a blessing. The very best thing that could happen to us.”

Sunny’s eyes began to fill. Feeling Franz’s hand around her waist, she turned and gazed at him. “A baby, Franz! Maybe, one day we …” “Oh, Sunny, I hope so.” His eyes misted too.

She leaned back in his arms and kissed him on the lips, dizzy from the wine and her unbridled happiness.

“For the first time in so long,” Franz said, “I hope for tomorrow.”

By the early 1940s, no city better epitomized the microcosm of a world at war than Shanghai. Governed for more than a hundred years by multiple sovereignties, Shanghai had become the fifth-largest city in the world, the planet’s third most powerful financial centre, and home to arguably the largest and most diverse collection of expatriates, refugees, gamblers, gangsters, prostitutes, political exiles and other colourful figures to be found anywhere.

Aside from millions of Chinese refugees, two other large communities found a haven in Shanghai: the White Russians who had fled the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution and the Jews who had escaped Nazi Germany. No other city harboured close to as many German and Austrian Jewish refugees as Shanghai.

By the late 1930s, Hitler had stripped German and Austrian Jews of their careers, homes, possessions and even their dignity, but it would be another few years before the Nazis launched into systemic genocide. The Nazis allowed—in fact encouraged—Jewish emigration provided Jews possessed legitimate visas. But after the Evian Conference of 1938, most refugee quotas were exhausted and the rest of the world effectively shut their borders to these desperate Jews. However, Shanghai—a city militarily divided between the Japanese and the Western powers—had almost nonexistent passport control. In the two years leading up to the launch of the Second World War, almost twenty thousand German-speaking Jews found sanctuary in the city.

The novel tells the story of wartorn Shanghai through the eyes of two characters—Dr. Franz Adler, a secular Austrian Jew, and Soon Yi Mah, a native Eurasian nurse—caught up in a whirlwind of events in a unique time and place. While my protagonists are fictional, I endeavoured to stay as faithful as possible to the history, culture and geography of Second World War Shanghai.

Escaping Europe was no guarantee of survival for this subset of Jewish Diaspora who ended up in Shanghai. Exotic and alien, the city could also be uncaring, hostile and lethal to these refugees. However, the German Jewish culture described in this novel existed, from the shops, restaurants, theatres and synagogues to the refugee hospital that plays such a pivotal role in the story. Most Jews in Shanghai survived the Second World War. The city continued to boast a thriving Jewish community up until the late 1940s, when Mao Zedong expelled all foreigners. But that fascinating and complex history is for another novel.

Many of the minor characters in the novel, including the Nazis and Japanese officials, are true historical figures. All the events I have dramatized, from the hostile divide before Pearl Harbor to the Nazis’ murderous plans for the refugees (championed by the Gestapo colonel Josef Meisinger), are based on fact.

The only point where the story deviates from the known record concerns Adolf Eichmann’s secret visit to Shanghai. However, since Eichmann played such an ignominious role in the lives of Vienna’s Jews—of course, of all Europe’s Jewry—I believed it vital to have him face the relatively small group of Jews who escaped his clutches.

Before I researched this novel, I was oblivious to the essential role Shanghai played in the Second World War, particularly in terms of Jewish survival. I believe it is an often-neglected piece of history that is well worth knowing. And I have tried to capture a glimmer of those refugees’ very real, and yet entirely surreal, circumstances.

While this story does not reflect my own history, it does parallel my family’s desperate struggle to escape the Holocaust in Europe. I’m comforted to know that my father, who (as a Jewish teenager in Budapest) survived the Second World War largely due to his wits, had the chance to read the manuscript before he died. I am so thankful for the love and support of my family. My wife, Cheryl, my mother, Judy, and my two daughters, Chelsea and Ashley, help to keep me even-keeled through the ups and downs of writing, medicine and life.

I’m so grateful to Kit Schindell, an invaluable freelance editor whose insights and feedback always improve my work. I would like to thank Nancy Stairs for her constructive and unfailingly candid critiques. And I want to acknowledge my agents, Henry Morrison and Danny Baror, for their guidance and wisdom.

I consider myself fortunate to be working with the world-class team at HarperCollins Canada and such esteemed professionals as Iris Tupholme, Leo MacDonald and Noelle Zitzer. I am thrilled to collaborate with Lorissa Sengara, a terrific editor who has helped me so well to focus and hone this novel.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the people who lived and died in Shanghai during the Second World War. As I researched this novel, I was struck time and time again by the dignity, bravery and sense of community among the indigenous Chinese and the transplanted German Jews—two oppressed peoples who lived side by side with remarkable tolerance and mutual respect, in an age of neither.