Part 4 (1/2)

Us.h.i.+ placed his palms against the top shelf of the rack and pressed upward. The entire rack popped off the wall with a click, but not a single bottle s.h.i.+fted as he laid the frame on an angle against the other wall. He grabbed one of the screws that stuck out from the exposed wall and pulled. A short section of the wall slid toward them: a false front.

Us.h.i.+ pressed a finger to his lips and nodded toward the opening. Franz turned sideways and sidled through the gap, with Esther following. After they had taken a few steps, he heard Us.h.i.+ slide the wall back into place behind them.

Franz expected to step into the kind of torch-lit dungeons familiar to his imagination from the radio dramas and B movies of his youth, but instead he emerged from the short pa.s.sageway into a s.p.a.cious room furnished with a table, chairs and even a basic kitchenette. Two floor lamps lit the room. The staticky sound of a BBC broadcast floated softly from an upright wireless that stood in a corner. Another Chinese guard, imposing though not quite matching Us.h.i.+'s stature, stood facing the pa.s.sageway. His arms were folded across his chest, his face expressionless. ”You wait,” he grunted.

Jakob whimpered in Esther's arms. She rocked him, trying to hush her son. ”Papa is coming,” she soothed.

After a moment, a door swung open and Simon rushed out. He crossed the floor in a few eager strides and flung his arms around his wife and baby, kissing them both repeatedly.

”I am so, so sorry, darling,” Esther murmured when he finally released her.

”Not a reason in the world to be sorry, gorgeous.” Simon stroked her cheek. ”I am so happy you came.”

Franz took a step back, feeling like an intruder, but Simon turned to him with a grateful smile and an extended hand. ”Thanks, Franz.”

”Your grat.i.tude is misplaced.” Franz shook his friend's hand self-consciously. ”If I had any say in the matter, none of us would be here.”

Still beaming, Simon slipped Jakob out of Esther's arms and held him overhead. ”How about you, little fella? You wanted to come visit your tate, didn't you?” He studied the baby thoughtfully. ”He has your eyes, Essie. Lucky little guy.”

Esther ran her hand through Simon's hair, which had been shorn into a crewcut. She frowned as she a.s.sessed his outfit. The blue b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt he wore billowed around him, and his black slacks were at least three inches too short. ”I must bring you clothes.”

”Not necessary, Essie.” Simon chuckled and plucked at his loose s.h.i.+rt. ”We don't get out much around here.”

”And food?”

”They treat us well. A lot better than we deserve. They're risking a lot to protect us.”

”Who is 'us'?”

The guard glared at Simon and shook his head once.

”Best if I don't say too much,” Simon said.

Esther nestled her head into the crook of Simon's neck. ”If only there was a way that we could all be together.”

”Soon, Essie. Soon.”

Franz took Jakob from Simon's arms. The infant cried as Franz repositioned him against his shoulder, prompting a flood of memories of pacing miles with baby Hannah as she fussed away night after night with colic.

Simon glanced at his son with concern. ”Is he hungry?”

Esther wrapped her arms around her husband and pulled him into a tight hug. ”He can wait a few minutes.”

Esther and Simon swayed silently in each other's embrace, while Franz bounced Jakob and tried to distract him. The baby suckled on his finger for a moment and then cried even louder. Jakob's howls were just then joined by an urgent pounding that came from down the pa.s.sageway: two rapid knocks, followed by a brief pause and then two more rapid knocks.

The guard snapped to attention. He shot up a hand to silence the others. ”A raid! The Kempeitai!” he spat in a hushed tone as he launched into motion.

Franz glanced helplessly at Simon. His friend's face was calm but his eyes held an unfamiliar tinge of terror.

The guard reached for the radio and flicked it off before dousing one of the lamps. When he turned back to the others, he held a hunting knife. He waved the blade at the baby. ”Shut him up,” he growled in a low voice.

Esther grabbed Jakob from Franz. She turned away, pulled at the top of her dress and fumbled with her slip. She jerked Jakob to her chest just as the guard extinguished the other lamp, throwing the room into darkness.

Jakob's howls died away. All Franz could hear was the sound of the baby nursing and the clipped breathing of the others in the room. He had a terrible thought that the j.a.panese might have secretly followed them to the Comfort Home: that would explain why they had not raided the Adlers' home or the hospital. Did we just lead the Kempeitai to Simon's hiding place? The fear weighed on his chest like piled bricks.

The ceiling shook from the stomping of boots overhead. Then a m.u.f.fled voice barked orders from somewhere on the side of the wine cellar. Even through the walls, there was no mistaking the j.a.panese inflection.

The sound grew louder as the voice rose in pitch, exasperated. Franz expected to hear the false front sc.r.a.ping open at any moment. Bracing himself for another arrest, he thought with dread about his days at Bridge House. He considered storming into the pa.s.sageway to confront the soldiers. Could bullets be any worse than another visit to the torture chamber?

The seconds crawled past.

Esther panted in fear, and Simon stroked her hair to try to calm her. The shouting on the other side of the wall only escalated.

A single gunshot cracked through the silence. Esther gasped. Franz stiffened.

Two or three more agonizing minutes pa.s.sed. In the electrified quiet, Jakob's suckling seemed to rise to the intensity of a jackhammer in Franz's ears.

More stomping came from the other side of the false front. Barely breathing, Franz listened intensely. But hard as he tried, he could not tell whether the footsteps were moving toward or away from the hiding place.

II.

CHAPTER 8.

May 28, 1943, Hongkew, Shanghai As he surveyed the oppressive little room, Franz suppressed a sigh. The walls were blistered and the smoke-stained ceiling peeled at the corners. Even at midday, little natural light penetrated the single window. The oily stench of the neighbours' cooking saturated the room all day long.

Still, it was home now.

To comply with the j.a.panese Proclamation concerning refugee Jews, the Adlers, including Esther and her baby, had been forced to trade homes-temporarily, they faintly hoped-with a j.a.panese family who lived in the heart of Hongkew. Like most of the refugee families, they fared poorly in the exchange: trading Sunny's charming colonial-style house in Frenchtown for this dingy apartment that lay within the borders of what the authorities referred to as the ”Designated Area for Stateless Refugees,” though most Jews who lived inside spoke of it-albeit in whispers or sotto voce-as ”the ghetto.”

Franz knew his family was luckier than most. Their flat had indoor plumbing. Most of the other alleyway apartments-the unique Shanghai phenomenon known as longtangs-possessed only commodes or waste buckets, which were emptied every morning by ”night soil men,” who carried away loads of human waste on bamboo poles across their shoulders.

Until now, Sunny had never lived anywhere but her family's home. Franz had to admire her: rather than mope or complain, she focused her energy on converting the one-bedroom flat into home. She had scavenged an old bamboo table and chairs from somewhere and patched up an abandoned couch whose springs had torn through its upholstery. She decorated the walls with Franz's black-and-white photographs of some of Shanghai's most iconic buildings and transformed the last of her mother's old dresses into curtains. But she was fighting a losing battle. The flat was too small and too dismal to be much more than a functional shelter.

Esther and Jakob slept on a mattress laid every night in the main room, while Franz and Sunny slept in the bedroom and Hannah bedded down in the shallow loft. Esther did the cooking and helped where she could, but her baby and her worry over her husband drained much of her energy.

Esther had not seen Simon in three months-not since the evening they had huddled tensely in the Comfort Home's bas.e.m.e.nt hideaway, fearing the worst while the walls shook with the stomps and shouts of Kempeitai men. Almost an hour had pa.s.sed before Us.h.i.+ freed them from the hiding place. No one knew whether the j.a.panese had followed them to the brothel or raided it coincidentally, but Chih-Nii was apoplectic-even Sunny didn't know the terms of the deal Jia-Li had struck with the madam so that Chih-Nii would not toss Simon out on the street. Esther and Franz had to swear on their lives to never return to the Comfort Home.

In the months since, Jia-Li had functioned as a go-between, delivering weekly letters between Simon and Esther. Despite Simon's upbeat tone-his letters were peppered with humorous anecdotes about living one floor below the busiest brothel in Shanghai-Esther remained convinced that the Kempeitai would soon track him down.

Franz felt for his Esther but, of late, his daughter was monopolizing his thoughts. No one had coped better with the family's arrival in Shanghai, four years earlier, than Hannah. She had embraced the experience of living in the exotic city and its many cultures as one great adventure. However, now her beloved Shanghai Jewish School had been forced to close, and in the past two months, her mood had plummeted. It had only worsened after their move, to the point where even Jakob's presence no longer cheered her up.

With those thoughts weighing on him, Franz climbed the rickety ladder to the cramped loft s.p.a.ce. ”It's time for breakfast, Hannah-chen. The others have already left.”

Hannah lay on her mattress with a book propped up on her chest. ”I'm not hungry, Papa,” she said without even looking up. ”Besides, I can't face another bowl of that watery rice pudding.”

”Breakfast is not a luxury, Hannah. You must eat. Do you realize how fortunate we are not to have to go hungry?”