Ten Green Bottles

CHAPTER 25

TEN GREEN BOTTLES 1940–1941

We are not even allowed the luxury of mourning our loss. With Mama gone, we no longer have an anchor and feel as though we have been suddenly thrust into a hostile environment where we must each find our own direction. I have summoned my courage again and tried to cast the thoughts of depression away. When I hear Viennese music, it conjures up old memories and I want to weep. It would be easy to sink into despair, but I am determined not to give in. Although I miss Mama terribly every day, there remains a force within me that drives me forward. After all, Poldi and I are young and healthy, and our lives still lie before us. Here we are, having outwitted our formidable enemies, and together, we have concluded, we will find a way to survive.

Shortly after Mama’s death, with united determination, we set out to look for a way to make a living. Opportunities exist for those who are willing to gamble all they have and who are prepared to plunge without hesitation into the heart of this mysterious city. Jobs are scarce for foreigners, and so a whole spectrum of businesses has begun to sprout around us, owned and operated by refugees. Like them, we have decided it is prudent to put down roots to get us through the time we are here.

Necessity is compelling us to become resourceful, so we immigrants are adapting to the new environment and melding into the cosmopolitan milieu of French Town. We make use of whatever knowledge or skills we have to provide a livelihood. Some cook familiar foods and sell them quite successfully as most of us have not got used to the Chinese cuisine. Others sew affordable European-style clothing in lightweight fabrics, more suitable to this extreme climate than the things we brought from home.

Various possibilities have been discussed for each of us. Using the money we were able to bring back from Harbin, before long everyone in the family has found a suitable enterprise to pursue. Stella and Walter have recently opened a coffee house called Café de Paris where people can congregate as they did at home. Willi and Fritz are selling shoes in another little place, and Erna still teaches needlepoint at the convent, where she can keep Lily close to her.

As for us, Poldi and I have reasoned that a bar would be a good idea. I have some related experience and Poldi has already made some inquiries. He has found that he can negotiate credit terms with some companies that import beer and whiskey from America and vodka from Russia. He has spoken to distributors who provide all kinds of liquor throughout Shanghai, a product that is in constant demand and ready supply. After considerable discussion we have concluded that we could make such an enterprise profitable, but when we set about to rent some space, we discover we really don’t have enough money to start on our own. Through those Poldi has met in the liquor trade he has come across a possible way for us to overcome this obstacle. We are told that there is an establishment, a small but reasonably successful bar where the owner is looking for a business partner. We head out to the address we are given.

“Are you sure this is right?” I ask Poldi as we meander into an unsavoury district, looking at numbers on the doors, careful not to collide with any of the seedy-looking pedestrians.

“Well, Nini, you have to expect this kind of place,” he says, sidestepping a drunk hunched over on the sidewalk. He takes my hand and we persevere.

When we locate the destination we read the sign above the door, “Marco’s Bar,” and when we go inside we find the owner sitting at one of the barstools within the dark interior. Marco is a heavy-set Bulgarian Jew with an easygoing disposition. He puts out his large right hand in greeting and slides his bulky body off the seat.

Marco shows us around the place, proudly pointing out all the facilities, including the counter with stools as well as booths. In one corner is a small piano where an entertainer plays each night. In the back is a fully stocked store room and washroom facilities; the liquor licence is displayed on the wall behind the cash register, and brightly coloured prints of the Moulin Rouge in Paris are hung randomly throughout. We agree to buy in with whatever cash we have and make up the rest in worked hours. As we shake hands with Marco, his deep-throated laugh rumbles through his corpulent frame. We agree that this will be a good deal for us all, joining in with his mirth and hugging one another.

We have rented a more comfortable apartment, just one bedroom and adjoining sitting room but we have our own bathroom. The rooms are clean and neatly furnished. It is all that we need. We have become a part of Shanghai, settling here, staying mostly with other European refugees whose faces are becoming more familiar when we pass in the street and meet in the coffee houses. We greet one another in our own language, not mingling much with the Chinese, not accepted by the higher classes of Sephardic Jews or other foreigners, but content within our own world.

By the spring of 1940 the partnership with Marco has come into effect. Even if we are here for just another year or so, we reason, we will earn a reasonably good income. We can put something aside for the future and who knows, we might go to America or England, somewhere civilized, when this seemingly interminable war comes to an end.

For now, there is nothing but Shanghai, a rowdy open port that welcomes ships of all nationalities and the thirsty sailors who man them. During the day a frenzy of commercial activity thrives, but when darkness slips over the city, another side of Shanghai emerges, a sordid kaleidoscope of blurring faces in search of amusement of all sorts. Garish neon lights blink their messages in colours that blare like trumpets, aglow with fluorescent pink, green, and red, a symphony that throbs with raw energy until sunrise.

On the crowded sidewalks we make our way to the bar each evening, passing very young, frail-limbed Chinese girls, their juvenile faces painted thickly in brazen make-up. They sell themselves for the price of a meal or an opium fix and beckon to the uniformed men who carouse on the streets. Their lives are short and horrid, but they are part of the expendable war equipment. Like the ammunition and machinery, they will be used up and discarded as a necessary sacrifice to the war. These are some of the many casualties that will never appear in the lists of wounded or dead.

Our route crosses a street called Blood Alley. Its cobblestones are stained with red and brown blotches of dried blood that has been spilled and has coalesced into a pattern of grisly remembrance. The street itself aches from the skirmishes it has borne. Every night there is some eruption of violence outside or inside the bar. Inevitably one customer insults another’s homeland and a brawl erupts. Broken bottles, bloodied fists and faces, screams and threats are the nightly fare. Nearly a year has passed since we started this venture with Marco, and now even these events become routine.

There is a melancholy loneliness among the servicemen that surfaces in their drunken haze. After the fighting, when anger and physical tension have been released, they break into song. Slurred masculine voices penetrate the grey smoky air with tunes of their boyhoods. The British have a favourite that we soon learn to recognize. Arms wound around one another’s shoulders, swaying in rhythm and whiskey-soaked nostalgia, they begin,

Ten green bottles hanging on the wall,

And if one green bottle should accidentally fall,

There’ll be nine green bottles hanging on the wall.

Even the burliest man in a state of inebriation and homesick longing finds himself weeping as the words are sung. For me, the simple words of the song capture the essence of everything that is lost, broken, destroyed. From their words and soulful singing, it seems to me that the sailors are conjuring memories of things they miss, being stuck as we are in this sordid refuge. Surely they remember the innocence of youth, surely they are thinking of friends who have fallen in battle, of their families back home, gathering at holidays, of home-cooking, girlfriends or wives who are becoming vague memories of tenderness, too far away and long ago to seem real any more. I picture the connection between the words and the impact of the feelings. My imagination transforms the men and their song into a graphic lament where each link to home smashes to bits like the bottles of the song, tipping, crashing, and splintering into millions of sharp-edged fragments of green glass.

Nine green bottles hanging on the wall,

And if one green bottle should accidentally fall,

There’ll be eight green bottles hanging on the wall.

The last verse is sung in the slow cadence of a dirge,

One green bottle hanging on the wall,

And if this green bottle should accidentally fall,

There’ll be nothing left but the smell upon the wall.

One particularly steamy summer night I am drawn into the mood of the sailors’ sodden tunes. The air in the bar is the usual stale smoky mixture, bitter with the odour of ale, whiskey, and sweat. The heat drains my energy. Lethargy and remorse draw me into a sullen mood and I am uncomfortably hot and sticky as I feel my dress clinging to my body in the damp heat, perspiration trickling down my back. The sombre melody of the refrain echoes in my mind. The clinking notes of the piano fill the air, and the words of the song seem to symbolize my personal struggle. I question my own limitations. How many “bottles” remain in my life? How many more traumas can I endure before I tumble into the final abyss? It is so clear to me at this moment that the song represents my own life. In my mind I go over the words again and again, imagining the jagged glass as my own pile of disappointments and painful separations, losses, and alienation. Smashed, I think, like the glass of Kristallnacht.

I long for Vienna, ache for Mama’s arms to cradle me as if I were a baby again. I want the life that I had, the friends, the gaiety and youth that are gone. I sink with the song, drown with the emptiness of our routine, despise the Nazis for what they have done, detest the smells of the Chinese and the omnipresent Japanese soldiers with their rifles and swaggering ways. This is not an evening when Poldi can charm or cajole me into better spirits and he knows enough not even to try.

For many hours I stand behind the counter. The men drink with dedicated purpose, pouring the strong liquor down their throats until they finally fall into the state of forgetfulness they are seeking. Behind the counter the wall is mirrored and lined to the ceiling with glass shelves filled with bottles of every kind, vodka, whiskey, brandy, Scotch, Vermouth, imported wine, and an assortment of sweet liqueurs. There are casks and bottles of beer stacked by the wall.

I am at the cash drawer, methodically counting the crumpled bills and stacking them in order of denomination. Suddenly, an enormous rat leaps over my fingers. In terror, I start screaming and cannot stop. I am convulsing and nausea overcomes me. Still I can’t stop the shrill siren that emanates from my throat.

My head reverberates with the relentless refrain of the song. The tune drones on and on, counting down the diminishing numbers of imagined bottles, crashing to bits. Panic and delirium engulf me and I have the sensation of being pulled down into a morass where liquor bottles and faces hover disjointedly all around me. Everything sounds muffled and jumbled together.

Marco has been sitting in one of the booths. When I begin screaming, he is so alarmed that he has tried to jump up, but now finds himself stuck, his wide body jammed into the space. His face is red with embarrassment and he is exasperated as he tries to extricate himself. Others are laughing at him, but I am still screaming. I am vaguely aware of Poldi and some others talking to me, trying to settle me down, but the song fills my mind and the memory of the rat’s tail brushing against my skin won’t let me go.

“Nini, Nini, please be calm,” Poldi whispers into my ear, his arms around me. He leads me to the last booth, near the back of the bar. I sit down, finally quiet but still shuddering. Poldi leaves me for a moment then quickly returns. “Here, Liebling,” he says gently. “This will help you feel better.” He gives me a sip of brandy that streams through my blood and warms my icy veins. He stays with me, insisting that I finish the glass. An hour passes before I stop shivering.

He asks Marco to finish closing up the bar and takes me home to bed where I huddle under the covers, trembling like a child, praying for sleep to soothe my unsettled mind. “Nini,” he says, “get some rest. The rat didn’t hurt you. You know there are rats in Shanghai. It’s at sea level, after all. Just close your eyes and go to sleep and in the morning you will see that things are all right again.”

He kisses my forehead and tucks the blanket tight to my body. Drowsy from the effect of the liquor, I pull his arm and ask, “Did you check for bedbugs?” Every night since we’ve been married I have asked the same question and every night he assures me that he has sprayed to kill anything crawling or squirming in the sheets.

“Yes, Nini. Everything is clean and safe. Good night now, and pleasant dreams. In the morning, things will be better,” he says again.

I often awaken abruptly through the night from horrific dreams, wet with cold sweat, my heart racing wildly, my fingers clenched so tightly that my nails have dug red crescents into my palms. Terrible visions drift in my brain of huge hairy rats grown to human size, nibbling at our hands and feet, slowly devouring us as we sleep. Sometimes the dreams are of the Nazis, terrifying in their brutality, slaughtering babies and beating elderly women. Other times the nightmares are of the new horror, the Chinese or Japanese at our door, their narrow glaring eyes condemning our intrusion into their lives.

Violins are playing in the distance, dreamily lilting from scratchy gramophone recordings and my mind floats away in feverish surrender. I can’t be certain whether I am drunk, hallucinating, or really hearing the sounds of people playing music outside the window. In our crowded little cells, we displaced Viennese refugees languish in nostalgic homesickness, trying in vain to grasp any fragments of the lost past. Waltzes of Strauss, strains of Mozart, Haydn, and Schubert often fill the hot and humid Shanghai nights. In my mind the familiar melodies merge with frightening images and I struggle again to distinguish reality from fantasy. It would be so easy to retreat into madness. Many have given up the fight, but somehow I battle against the undertow. Unable to surrender to a peaceful slumber, I roll and turn, restless and uneasy throughout the long black night. When the morning sun finally forces its way through the tattered curtains we have hung by the window, I have once more discovered the renewed strength to face the harsh reality of the path placed before us. I am still intact. There are still more “green bottles” remaining in my life.