Part 14 (2/2)

”This is correct,” the old man said, his face unreadable. ”Tanaka keeps his office at Bridge House, where he can hear the screams from the prisoners below.”

Sunny felt embarra.s.sed but said nothing.

”Have you yourself been to their offices?” the old man demanded.

”Only Colonel Kubota's,” she blurted and immediately regretted it. She felt as if she had betrayed a friend.

The old man grunted. ”We need you to speak to your husband. To learn as much as you can about each of these offices.”

She s.h.i.+fted in her seat. ”What sort of information?”

”The precise locations. Which floor. Which side of the building. Where their desks are situated. How many guards are posted inside and out.” His tired gaze fell to the ground. ”Anything you can possibly find out will be of use.”

”My husband-” Sunny began to say but caught herself.

Wen-Cheng laid a hand on her wrist. ”Her husband is not involved.”

The old man nodded, looking as though he had lost his capacity for surprise. ”Surely a clever wife can learn anything that her husband knows.”

CHAPTER 22.

”Warum bin ich lila, Herr Doktor Adler?” Frau Engelmann demanded from her back. Lying on the stretcher, she held her arms outstretched above her and rolled her wrists left and right to show him that her skin had acquired a violet hue.

Franz stifled a laugh. ”You have Dr. Feinstein to thank for that, Frau Engelmann. Of course, you also have him to thank for saving your life.”

At the mention of his name, Max Feinstein crossed over from the other side of the ward. ”You had two choices, Frau Engelmann,” he said without a trace of sympathy. ”Be purple or be dead.”

”What is the cause of this?” she said, studying her arms with wonder.

”This has been a terrible summer for malaria,” Franz said. ”The humidity, the flooding, the crowding and all those mosquitoes . . .”

The woman nodded sombrely. Her expression, never naturally cheerful, turned grave. ”I lost my niece only last week to malaria. Aleha ha-sholem. G.o.d rest the dear soul.”

”G.o.d?” Max shook his head and sighed. ”He seems to be on sabbatical these days.”

”Dr. Feinstein!” Frau Engelmann scolded.

Franz held out a hand. ”We used to get quinine, our anti-malaria remedy, through the Dutch East Indies but-”

”Ach, that was before the j.a.panese decided to pillage the Far East-before the n.a.z.is could get there,” Max grunted. ”I tried violet bis.m.u.th because it bears a chemical resemblance to quinine. It's a poor stand-in. Nowhere near as effective. And anyone who takes it will turn one shade or other of purple from head to toe.”

The woman laughed humourlessly. ”On balance, Dr. Feinstein, I would rather be purple than be dead.”

Max let out a snort, as if doubting the wisdom of her choice. Without another word, he turned away.

Frau Engelmann stared up at Franz. ”Will the doctor be all right?”

Franz considered it. ”I wish I could answer that.”

”I heard about Dr. Feinstein's daughter and her poor children . . .” Her voice dropped to a hush. ”They never made it out, did they?”

”No.”

Max had not heard a word from his daughter in three years. Although Max had never said as much, the internist had clearly resigned himself to the fact that his only daughter and her family was already lost. Max and his devoted wife, Sarah, never spoke of their daughter in front of him, but Franz found it difficult to spend time with the couple, especially at their home. Photographs of the family papered their walls, and their daughter's absence was a spectre in the room.

Frau Engelmann's face creased with concern again. ”Dr. Adler, do you believe the . . . the rumours?”

”Who knows what to believe anymore?” Franz still tried to convince himself that the persistent whispers among the refugees about ma.s.s murders in Eastern Europe were nothing more than hysteria and fear mongering. But it was no use. Last year he had spoken with a man named Aaron Grodenzki, a Polish Jew who had escaped from the concentration camp at Chemno. Franz had met the man only once, and the Pole did all the talking. He could still picture Grodenzki struggling to grasp his coffee cup with his damaged hands; frostbite had spared only one finger. He could hear Grodenzki's mechanical description of SS men cramming trucks full of men, women and children-including Grodenzki's own parents and sister-then redirecting the exhaust back inside and running the vehicles until the screams died away. Grodenzki's empty eyes, more than his words, had convinced Franz that he was telling the truth. His last doubts vanished two weeks later when Grodenzki leapt to his death from the twentieth floor of the Park Hotel.

Franz turned from the bedside. ”I will check in on you later, Frau Engelmann.”

His thoughts wandered to his own family. Few days pa.s.sed when the loss of his father and brother did not cross his mind. But it was almost a relief not to have left any relatives behind to suffer as Max's presumably had.

As Franz headed down Ward Road, the bright suns.h.i.+ne lifted his mood. The late August heat wave had abated and the monsoon season had come and gone. Three weeks before, a typhoon had pounded Shanghai, flooding the streets and causing mayhem for those with ground-floor apartments, like the Adlers. Water had pooled ankle deep inside, but they had managed to dry out their home over a few days. Still, Sunny's antique rugs, a cherished inheritance from her father, had been ruined and, despite the windows being kept open, the sewage-stained water all around gave off a smell strong enough to quell Franz's appet.i.te.

The Adlers had weathered other storms, too. The j.a.panese still had not connected Charlie to the refugee hospital but, in the early summer, the donations of medical supplies had ceased as abruptly as they had begun. Only an impa.s.sioned plea from Franz to the leaders of the Russian Jewish community-with Joey translating almost in pantomime-had persuaded the Russians to continue funding the refugee hospital, albeit at a bare-bones level. The availability of medication was more sporadic than ever, and sometimes the hospital ran only by candlelight. But it had remained open for the summer, and with the help of Max's violet bis.m.u.th concoction, they had already saved numerous lives during the malaria outbreak.

Franz's concerns over his daughter's mood had lessened, too. He was pleased to see glimmers of her old joie de vivre. Esther's spirits had also improved. Now that she had weekly contact with Simon, she had truly become a fawning Jewish mother-fussing over Hannah and the adults almost as much as she did Jakob. Esther had reason to take joy in her son. At seven months old, Jakob had a smile for everyone and possessed an infectious tinkling laugh.

Franz was pulled from his thoughts by the sight of two men approaching from across the street. They wore red, white and green armbands and were locked in a lively conversation, their hands as busy as their lips. Franz knew that, up until a few weeks earlier, the Italian government had been allied with the j.a.panese. However, after the Italian defeat in Europe, overnight her citizens had gone from welcome guests to hostile aliens in Shanghai. The Italians were facing the same threat of internment that had befallen the local British, Dutch, American and Canadian nationals.

Italy's sudden switch of allegiance typified the confusing and contradictory nature of recent war developments. Franz had no access to a wireless at home. He had turned down the offer of a free radio from a grateful engineer from Potsdam whose appendix he had removed. The penalty for possessing unauthorized radios was steep, and Franz wasn't willing to gamble on Hannah's or Jakob's safety. Despite the danger, many refugees, including some of the nurses and doctors at the hospital, did conceal wirelesses, and Franz sometimes dropped in on their homes to catch up on war news. The reports were inconsistent and changed by the hour. Depending on the weather, the signal from Allied stations such as the BBC or CBS was often too weak to pick up, so they were often forced to listen to the j.a.panese-censored or even local German broadcasts, which invariably told a very different story. Regardless of the source, though, the facts were inescapable: the Allies were steadily gaining ground in Europe and the Pacific. With each success-the Soviet recapture of Kharkiv, the sinking of the German battles.h.i.+p Tirpitz or the fall of the Solomon Islands-the optimism among the refugees grew. But Franz's own hope was tempered by the steadily worsening conditions in the ghetto. Franz feared that the refugee community might not be able to sustain itself until an Allied victory, if it ever came.

The two Italians waved to him, and Franz reciprocated. As he rounded the corner, he ran into Hannah and Ernst walking arm in arm. He was surprised by the sight: of late, she steadfastly avoided physical contact with her father in public.

”Papa!” Hannah's face beamed. ”Onkel Ernst just bought me a strudel at Kaplan's. The absolute best in the world.”

”Wunderbar.” Franz tried, unsuccessfully, to remember when he'd last tasted strudel. Still, he fed off Hannah's contentment. ”It's good you have such a rich uncle.”

Ernst stuck out his lower lip. ”The worse I paint, the better the n.a.z.is pay me. If I produce much more of this schlock, they just might make me Fuhrer like they did with that crazy little third-rate painter.”

Hannah giggled. ”Stop it, Onkel Ernst. Someone might hear.”

Ernst rolled his eyes. ”Let them.”

Hannah slid her arm free of Ernst. ”I must go meet my friend.”

”Would this friend be Freddy, by chance?” Ernst asked.

”We have homework,” Hannah mumbled. She spun away just as the colour crept into her cheeks. ”Thank you again, Onkel Ernst. Bye-bye, Papa,” she called over her shoulder.

Ernst watched her hurry off. ”You do realize that your daughter is in love.”

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