CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

1944

Erich carried my suitcase as far as the Hongkew gate. For the sake of anyone who might be observing us, he said (lots louder than he needed to), “I doubt if you’ll make much of a tutor, but at least Hangchow’s a nice city to visit. Have a good trip.” He stepped closer and gave me a brotherly kiss on the forehead, colliding with my hat. Under its wide shade he whispered, “Be careful. Don’t trust anybody. Come back safely.”

I wanted a simple declaration such as, “I love you, my sister.” His eyes said what I wanted to hear, at least that’s what I read in his worried expression as he gently pushed me toward the Hongkew gate.

I showed my yellow-striped Ilse Shpann pass to the Pao Chia guard, careful to keep my Margaret Loeffler passport tucked into my purse. I hailed a rickshaw boy, who tossed my suitcase in at my feet. As he was lifting the shafts of the rickshaw, I looked back at my brother behind the bars and barbed wire, and prayed that I’d do everything just right on this mission and be home with my family by dark.

Not easy buying the ticket at the train station. Slipping my money under the window, I shouted, “Hangchow.” The Chinese man in the ticket cage clicked his abacus anxiously while a Japanese guard grunted orders. The guard asked to see my passport and moved his dark-dot eyes back and forth half a dozen times from my face to the picture. He was suspicious, probably because it just wasn’t common for western girls to travel, much less alone.

“Purpose of trip?” he demanded.

I explained, but he couldn’t understand either my German or my English. My hands shook as I smoothed Madame Liang’s letter under the window. “Don’t trust anybody.” What if he kept it? He and the timid ticket seller discussed the English letter, half in Chinese, half in Japanese. Then the guard demanded to see what was in my suitcase, but there was nowhere to set it down. Standing on one foot like a flamingo, I hoisted my other leg up as a shelf, but human beings aren’t meant to totter on one leg. The suitcase wobbled as I offered up various items for the guard’s inspection. We never got to the underwear. I’d have been mortified if we had. And he never asked me to open the flowered makeup case.

A long line formed behind me, with people looking over my shoulder to see what the delay was, or to see what foreign treasures I harbored in my suitcase. Eventually the guard appeared to be satisfied and passed Madame Liang’s letter back to me, so the ticket man was free to snap up my money. His fingers flew on the abacus, and he slid my change and my ticket back under the window. Completely frazzled, I ran to the tracks.

The conductor folded his arms across his chest and shook his head, refusing to let me on the train. We argued in our two languages. I had no idea what was happening, since I’d never ridden a Chinese train before. Maybe he was telling me that foreigners were supposed to ride in a different compartment. I started to run to the next entrance, my suitcase banging against my thigh; but he followed me, blowing his whistle and shouting something in high-pitched Chinese. He barred the next entrance. The train whistle was already blowing, and then I realized what the situation was—he expected a bribe! I dug two coins out of my purse, and like magic, a step stool came down and the entrance was no longer blocked.

I climbed aboard as the train began chugging out of the station, and I sank into the last seat in the last row, with my suitcase on my lap. My new shoes stuck to the floor, glued with God knows what. There were as many birds on that train as people, some caged, some not. Some of the people should have been. My informal survey during the first few minutes of the trip was that 50 percent of all Chinese train travelers smoked, and the other 50 percent batted away the dense cloud of smoke so they could see the cans to spit their tobacco into. Some just spit on the floor. Shuddering, I slid the suitcase under my seat anyway.

I assured myself that the smoke and flying tobacco wouldn’t reach me there in the back row. The window slid down only three inches, just enough to let a black tornado of coal exhaust billow into the car until I had to shut my window or else swallow mouthfuls of the stuff, which was like liquid tar. A Chinese train in May is very hot, especially with the window closed, and I had 252 kilometers to cover and stupidly hadn’t remembered to bring a Thermos of water.

I felt very white and foreign and schoolmarmish in my pert suit and straw hat. The other passengers and birds ogled me with curiosity. One woman offered to sell me a cigarette stub; another wanted me to make an offer on a half-dead goose. Two men asked to use my suitcase as a makeshift mah-jongg table. I was pretty good at deciphering Chinese by then, but I pretended not to understand the request. What if these men were spies, or thieves, or just careless travelers? What if they got off at any of the dozens of stops and took the suitcase with them? I pictured running after them, holding my hat on my head, yelling, “Hey, that’s mine!” What if I never got it back before the train took off again? I’d have no idea where I was. I could be lost for days, plus I’d have to suffer Erich’s disappointment and the wrath of Gerhardt and Rolf and Madame Liang.

So I kicked the suitcase farther under my seat and opened a book that the Underground had supplied me with for Spring Jade’s enlightenment. It was The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann, who was an exile like me. Thick and satisfying, bound in fragrant leather, the book took me out of the chaos of a Chinese hard-seat train into a serene sanatorium in Germany, before the war.

The train rumbled along, and I was swimming in the beautiful German words of Thomas Mann when suddenly a line from Madame Liang’s letter flashed through my mind: “Others have failed before you.” I’d thought that meant other tutors for the imagined Spring Jade, but now I saw a darker meaning. The warning sent shivers through me despite the stifling train and the press of steamy bodies all around me. And the birds with unflinching stares.

Others carrying information had failed before me. Where were they now? Dead or alive? I thought of the huge man in the park on Beehive day—and his heap of broken bones outside Bridge House. I glanced around at the riders parading up and down the aisle, trading seats for no apparent reason, spitting seeds on the floor, squatting at the back of the car the way Chinese do for hours at a time.

Terror began seeping into my toes and slowly crept up my legs, up my chest, until my neck was hot and a steel band tightened around my head. Pounding, pounding, in counter-rhythm to the clacking of steel wheels on the track. My heart ticked like an overwound clock.

Relief. Get the aspirin before my head, before my heart explodes. Everyone on the train’s watching me. My head’s throbbing enough that all of them can see it expand and contract like a balloon. Just waiting for me to pop! Then they’ll come and take everything. I will shatter, a hundred kilometers away from my family, and nothing of me will be left to identify.

Aspirin. I had to get to the aspirin before I burst. But the bottle was buried in my suitcase, far back under my seat, stuck to the floor, miles away, out of reach. I’d have to get down on the floor, tacky with spittle and stringy wet tobacco, to slide the valise out.

They’ll all see me, even the blind man across the aisle. They’ll watch me hunt for the aspirin bottle, jumble with the cap. They’ll know what I’m hiding. They’ll snatch the bottle out of my hand. They’ll read the back of the label. The band’s tightening around my head … I’m choking … can’t move … can’t breathe …

A Chinese amah came over to me and pressed a cool, wet rag to my forehead. She spoke soothing words in a dialect I’d never heard, then switched to Mandarin and said, “Foreigners, they breathe shallow; watch me.” She pressed my hand to her stomach to show me the Chinese way to breathe. “Now you.” My chest rose, and cool air flowed all the way down to my toes.

In a few minutes the amah saw that my panic had subsided. She patted my arm, took back her dirty rag, rejoined the noisy travelers at the front of the car, and left me alone. My heart slowly shrank and nested back in my chest, and an odd calm flooded me.

Two hours passed, and the train slowed down for the Hangchow station. Getting off, I waved to the amah through the window, but she’d apparently forgotten about me and didn’t wave back.

No one was there at the station to meet me.