Franz had not slept a full night through since proposing to Lotte Weczel. But he did not hold Lotte or their engagement responsible for his insomnia. He blamed Hitler. The flood of disastrous news from Europe, where the Nazis stood poised to dominate the continent and beyond, cut into his sleep like a neighbour’s howling dog.
But Franz had yet to shake the doubt that had possessed him since sliding the ring onto her finger two months earlier. Even Lotte seemed excessively reserved in accepting his proposal. Franz sensed a dutifulness on her part that matched his own.
Still, his fondness for Lotte had steadily grown. On warmer evenings, they would stroll for miles through the French Concession chatting about music, religion, architecture and, of course, Hannah. Despite their warm companionship, they never achieved true intimacy. The only time Franz had seen Lotte lower her guard was once, in the early fall at their favourite café, when they ran into a childhood friend of hers, a Swiss national named Bernard Leudenberger.
“A pleasure, Dr. Adler,” the narrow-framed banker said before turning to Lotte with a wide smile that belied his otherwise sombre appearance. “Always a delight to run into you, Charlotte.”
“It has been a while.” Lotte fought back a grin. “How is the family, Bernard?”
“Still very Swiss. You know Father.” He sighed good-naturedly. “And your aunt and uncle, are they well? Does Clara still rule Shanghai with an iron fist?”
Lotte burst out laughing. “You exaggerate, Bernard. Clara tries to help. She is very involved with schooling for local Jewish children.” She motioned to Franz but kept her focus on Bernard. “She helped Franz’s daughter secure a spot at the Shanghai Jewish school.”
“Of course.” Bernard held her gaze for a moment. “And your music, Charlotte?”
She looked away and cleared her throat. “I only teach now, Bernard.”
“That is truly a pity.” Bernard looked over to Franz. “Have you ever heard her play Brahms, Dr. Adler? The sound of an angel weeping.”
Franz had never seen Lotte act as relaxed or laugh so freely. He hoped that one day she would open up around him as she had with her childhood friend, but in the months since bumping into Bernard, he had not glimpsed that side of her again.
Clara Reuben, of course, was elated over Franz and Lotte’s engagement. More importantly, Hannah was happy. Franz could not tell, though, whether she was pleased for her own sake or for his. But Lotte was not the wife he would have chosen under different circumstances. Sunny. A year and a half had passed since their only kiss. The world had been upended in that time span, and yet his feelings had not budged.
A few days after that kiss, he had broached the subject again as they stood on the pathway outside the hospital. But Sunny did not waver. “We cannot just give in to our emotions, Franz.”
“The world is already awash in sacrifice and tragedy,” he said. “How can we turn our backs on a sliver of potential happiness?”
“We must, Franz,” she said softly.
The urge to touch her face smothered his objectivity. “Why must we?” Sunny viewed him with glistening eyes. She looked so beautiful that his chest ached. “What would happen to Lotte?” she asked. “Down deep, Lotte is strong. She will be all right.”
“And what would become of your job at the Country Hospital?” “There are other jobs.”
“But there are no other schools for Hannah, are there?” she said. “There are just too many other lives to consider, Franz.”
In the eighteen months since, Sunny’s words had proven prophetic. Under Clara’s continued sponsorship, Hannah had thrived at the Jewish school. And Franz’s job at the Country Hospital had remained secure. He might have tolerated his fate better, perhaps even been contented, had he not had to face Sunny so often at both hospitals. He was constantly reminded how much he was missing in not sharing a life with her.
With the thoughts tumbling around in his head, he gave up on sleep. Just before five o’clock, he headed outside for a stroll to try to settle his mind. Franz even considered lugging the Kodak Brownie camera along but decided against it.
Over the past year, Franz had started to enjoy photographing buildings in Shanghai, as he had once done in Vienna. On his first trip, through the French Concession, he did not snap a single shot. Despite the neighbourhood’s charm and grandeur, none of the architecture piqued his interest. On his next outing, he wandered through Little Vienna and found himself standing outside the heim on Ward Road. The building was the largest of Shanghai’s heime, the hostels, literally “homes,” that the CFA ran for the thousands of refugees who could not afford their own housing. The walls of the faded brown structure were crumbling and its windows boarded, but something about the decrepit building moved Franz. He spent a full roll of his precious film photographing the heim, and returned three more times to capture it in different lighting.
However, his camera would have been of no use in the pre-dawn darkness.
A damp night chill still hung in the air, but Shanghai was beginning to stir. Trucks rattled down Avenue Joffre. The little old vendor down the street had opened his newspaper stand, muttering to himself as he laid out his English, French and Russian magazines. The wind carried the scent of yeast from a nearby bakery.
Without a specific destination in mind, Franz headed east toward the water. As he approached the riverfront, he heard an unfamiliar rumbling. The ghostly glow of ships moving in the harbour’s morning fog wasn’t unusual, but Franz sensed something was different.
Moments after he reached the Bund, the sky above the Whangpoo lit as though someone had launched New Year’s fireworks early. Gunfire crackled. The pavement below his feet vibrated from a thundering explosion.
A few hundred feet offshore, three ships raced across the water. Smoke billowed from the Idzumo’s stack as the Japanese flagship and a second vessel chased a river gunboat, which was trying to outrun the other ships. In the light of the shell bursts, Franz spotted a Union Jack flying from the gunboat’s platform. Though hopelessly outmatched, the sailors continued to fire back at the two ships trying to run it down.
Franz hardly breathed. The sky flashed with another round of explosions and gunfire. A sulphuric smell filled his nostrils. Amid the ground-shaking booms and flashes, it took Franz a moment to digest the implication of what he was witnessing. Japan and Britain are at war!
Horrified, Franz watched as thick black smoke streamed from the British gunboat. Flames lapped at its side. Soon, the Japanese ships overtook the wounded vessel that, even while sinking, continued to return gunfire. Franz saw British sailors leaping from its burning hull into the murky river. The gunboat began to list to the portside, but the Japanese ships kept shelling the boat. Then they turned their machine guns on the sailors bobbing in the dark waters of the Whangpoo. Franz’s pulse pounded at the heartless slaughter.
This is how they treat their enemies? Cold fear crawled over him. Oh my God, Hannah!
Franz wheeled and ran back toward home.
The naval battle had shaken the city awake. Several people, some half-dressed in nightwear, stumbled through the streets in bewildered anxiety.
At the entrance to his building, he almost collided with Heng Zhou, fully dressed and heading off in the opposite direction. “Where are you going, Heng?”
“To Mr. Muhler’s home to find Shan!” Heng said without slowing. “They have attacked Pearl Harbor!”
“Pearl Harbor? Where is that?” Franz called after him, but Heng was already gone.
Franz rushed inside the building and raced up the stairs. He burst into the apartment to find Hannah and Esther in their nightgowns sitting on the sofa, holding hands. They stared at the wireless as though it were a movie screen. In her stiffened left hand, Hannah held Schweizer Fräulein. Franz had not seen the doll in a long time.
Over the speaker, the tinny voice of the CBS commentator crackled with emotion. “Huge black clouds of burning oil still obscure the massive naval base at Pearl Harbor. It is too early to assess the damage or to know how many lives have been lost in this unprovoked attack. What is clear is that the Japanese have drawn America into this global conflict. And they have done so with a terrible first blow …”
Esther turned down the volume. “Those Hawaiian Islands are American soil, Franz. The Japanese have just attacked America.”
Franz hung his head. “I was just at the waterfront, Essie. I saw them sink a British ship!”
Hannah turned to her father. “Papa, will the Japanese take over all of Shanghai now?”
Franz hesitated a moment. “I think so, liebchen, yes.”
“They are on the side of the Nazis, aren’t they?” Hannah’s voice cracked with worry. “What will happen to us, Papa?”
“We will be all right,” he said, trying to sound convincing. “The Japanese have controlled Hongkew for over four years, and they have never bothered with the German Jews there. There is no reason to think it will be any different now.”
Hannah chewed on her lip. “And my school?”
“It will work out,” he muttered.
Hannah clutched her doll even tighter to her chest as she struggled to maintain her composure. Months from her twelfth birthday and on the cusp of adolescence, Hannah had sprouted in the past year. But she was still only a child. “Will we really be all right, Papa?” she asked in a small voice.
The windows shook again with the sound of artillery fire. “Everything will be …” But Franz’s words petered out.
Esther threw an arm around Hannah and pulled her into a tight hug. “The family is together. We are survivors, Hannah. And we have survived worse than this.”
Staring off at the flashes of light outside the window, Hannah said nothing.
Franz turned the volume back up on the wireless. The bleak news drifted in from halfway across the Pacific. “Pearl Harbor was not the only site of Japanese aggression,” the announcer declared. “They have launched simultaneous assaults on the Wake Islands, Guam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. The safety of the many American expatriates living in the Far East is uncertain at this time.”
Esther glanced over to Franz. “Simon …” she murmured.
She had already lost her husband to one enemy. Franz could not fathom the depth of her worry. “There are thousands of Americans in Shanghai,” he said. “Think of how the Japanese treated the Chinese in Hongkew after the original invasion.”
Esther’s face blanched. “Oh, mein Gott,” she croaked.
“Essie, I only mean that the Japanese didn’t arrest them all.”
“We have all seen how the Japanese treat the locals,” she whispered.
“Simon will be all right,” Franz insisted. “He is a survivor too.”
The gunfire and explosions finally quelled after dawn broke. The Adlers maintained their vigil beside the wireless. Hoping to hear news on Shanghai, Franz fiddled with the dial, then tuned in to the most popular local English-language station. The British announcer sounded as confused and frightened as the Adlers felt. “We are told that Japanese marines are storming building after building along the Bund,” the reporter spat out over the static. “The Rising Sun already flies in place of the Union Jack in front of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank! Good Lord, the Jewel of the Bund has fallen to the enemy!”
A series of rapid knocks rattled the door. Hannah jumped in surprise. Esther and Franz shared worried glances before Franz rose to his feet and padded to the door. “Yes? Who is it?”
“Shan Zhou.”
Franz opened the door to him. Shan’s face was grey. “It’s Ernst,” he said without stepping inside.
“What about Ernst? Is he all right?”
“He will not listen to me.” Shan beckoned Franz out with a frantic wave. “You have to see for yourself. Come with me. Please.”
Franz shook his head. “I cannot leave my family. Not with an invasion going on.”
“The streets are safe,” Shan said. “The Japanese will not enter the French Concession. Not as long as Vichy France still controls Frenchtown.”
Franz saw Shan’s point. Japan was unlikely to go to war with the puppet Vichy regime controlled by her ally, Germany. But Franz was not swayed. “Not now, Shan. Perhaps later.”
Shan looked down at his own hands. “Ernst is going to get himself into trouble. Probably killed.” He looked back up with pleading eyes. “He might listen to you.”
“Ernst doesn’t listen to anyone.”
“Please, Dr. Adler, you must try.”
“Where is he?”
“At home.”
“Franz, you had better go,” Esther piped up. “Hannah and I will be all right.”
Franz hesitated. “You will stay and watch over them?” he asked Shan.
In response, Shan stepped inside, clasped his hands behind his back and took up a post by the door.
Franz strode over to the couch. He hugged his sister-in-law and then embraced his daughter for a long moment, kissing her on the forehead. He freed her from his grip and stared into her eyes. “Your aunt is right, liebchen. We are going to be all right. Do you understand?”
She cracked a brave smile. “Yes, Papa.”
Outside, for a confused moment Franz wondered if it had snowed, then realized that the streets had been papered with leaflets dropped from the sky. He scooped up a page and saw it was written in English, Chinese and French. “Be advised,” the terse announcement read, “the Imperial Japanese Army will occupy the International Settlement at 1000 hours this eighth day of December. Any persons in uniforms of other nationalities or bearing arms will be treated as hostile. Any persons suspected of resistance will be shot on sight.”
Franz looked at his watch: 9:05. He took off in a sprint, slipping occasionally on the leaflets. He arrived within five minutes at Ernst’s apartment just off Avenue Joffre. It filled the top floor of a building that housed a furrier and a Russian restaurant on the main floor.
Unshaven, Ernst wore a black housecoat and pyjama bottoms. “Shan sent you,” he grunted from the doorway.
“Yes.” Franz stepped inside.
As usual, the smell of borscht and something less palatable from the restaurant below pervaded the loft-like space. Along one wall, easels held up various-sized canvases. Franz didn’t even pay attention to the images until he had crossed half the floor. The sudden recognition froze him in mid-stride. “Ernst, you can’t!” Franz instantly understood why the artist had always insisted on advance notice so that he could store his latest work out of sight.
Ernst flapped his hand toward the paintings. “Two years I’ve been working on nothing else. And now, a week before the debut, that coward, Lawrence Solomon, telephones to say he is cancelling my show.”
Franz couldn’t peel his eyes off the largest of the oils. In the painting, a Chinese woman who was naked from the waist down lay on the ground with her legs splayed open. She had been impaled through the vagina by a steel standard. The pool of bright blood between her legs was the same red as that of the Rising Sun flag that hung off the standard. Eyes open and face contorted with helplessness, the staked woman held a desperate hand out to the viewer.
Several other paintings—depicting acts of murder, torture and rape—stood on either side of the central canvas. The images never explicitly revealed the perpetrators, but Ernst conveyed them via symbols such as the Rising Sun and samurai swords.
Franz grabbed his head in his hands. “My God, Ernst! If the Japanese see these, do you have any idea what they will do?”
Hands on his hips, Ernst shook his head. “The world needs to see what they have done! If not Solomon, I will find another dealer and gallery willing to show them.”
Franz gestured to the windows. “The Japanese are here now. They control all of Shanghai.”
“So what would you have me do?” Ernst asked calmly. “Should I just abandon my convictions? Toss away my principles because it is convenient?”
“Convenient?” Franz groaned. “Are you trying to be a martyr?”
A wry smile crossed Ernst’s face. “Why not? Martyrdom is invariably beneficial to an artist’s reputation. Taking the very-long-term view, it would be good for my career too.”
A cold rush filled Franz. He recognized that, behind the sarcasm, Ernst was not bluffing. “And Shan?”
Ernst’s face creased with suspicion. “What about him?”
“Are you prepared to sacrifice him for your art also?”
“How so?”
“Do you not think that the Japanese will track down your source and muse?”
Ernst opened his mouth but said nothing. His eyes clouded with uncertainty.
Franz shook a finger at the orgy of violence portrayed on the canvases. “This is how they treated Shan’s family in Nanking in 1937. What do you imagine they will do to him now, if they associate him with this … this embarrassment?”
Ernst paled. “I suppose I never thought about it in those terms.” “Well, you had better start.”
“Perhaps it’s best if I hide these paintings until—” “Not hide, Ernst. You must destroy them!”