The Far Side of the Sky Page 17

  “I do, Dr. Reuben.”

  “Are you interested in the position as described, Dr. Adler?”

  Franz was not, but he also realized he could not afford to turn down the financial security the job might offer his family. “Yes, I am. Thank you, Dr. Reuben.”

  “Excellent,” Reuben said with a wisp of a smile. “I have to visit my clinic now. I will meet you here tomorrow morning at six-thirty.” He turned to leave. “Oh, and Dr. Adler, if you don’t mind, the nurses are terribly busy. Would you please remove Mr. Fife’s colostomy bag and clean him up?”

  CHAPTER 19

  “I will never get used to this,” Wen-Cheng commented as he and Sunny strolled down Rue Montauban toward the North Gate of the Old Chinese City.

  Sunny’s stomach flipped, assuming Wen-Cheng was referring to their ill-defined relationship. “Used to what?” she asked.

  “Visiting a ‘Chinatown’ in my own country.” He pointed toward the maze of buildings ahead of them. The once-walled Old Chinese City was the original site of Shanghai but had since become an open market, largely run to overcharge Shanghailanders and Western tourists who came seeking a glimpse of “authentic” Chinese life.

  “Yet you find it perfectly natural that two Chinese people should converse in English in their native country,” Sunny teased.

  Wen-Cheng laughed. “I realize that Shanghai is not and never will be truly Chinese. I am not a rabid nationalist, but I do find the whole idea of this Chinatown a little condescending.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “Because the Old City is still beautiful in its way. Besides, you can find some of the best tea in China here.”

  They entered through the gate and continued past the Tsung Woo Day temple. As they walked the long street toward the centre of the Old City, they passed numerous sidewalk shops selling everything from ivory, sandalwood, jade and porcelain to Chinese medicines. The pitches and calls from merchants filled the air, accompanied by the scratchy chords of Chinese music that emanated from gramophones inside the shops. Some artisans stood out front of the stores, sweating over workbenches as they fashioned jewellery, sewed fans or engraved grains of rice.

  Happy childhood memories flooded back to Sunny, and she smiled to herself. Wen-Cheng raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

  “I used to love to come here, especially in summer.”

  “Me too,” he agreed. “When the blue canopies are all up like one long tent.”

  “And the street turns into a bazaar with the jugglers, musicians and magicians. My father used to bring my best friend, Jia-Li, and me here. He would let us each choose one toy to buy from the toy makers. There were too many options. It was the hardest choice imaginable.”

  “Perhaps for a child.” Wen-Cheng nodded knowingly. “I can think of harder ones now.”

  Sunny broke off the eye contact. “Are we having tea?” She pointed ahead, where the famous Woo Sing Ding tea house sat on stone pillars in the middle of a man-made lake. The elegant two-floor, eighteenth-century building—connected to land on either side by distinctive zigzag bridges—was one of the most identifiable and visited tourist sites in Shanghai.

  “I thought we could walk the gardens first. Unless, of course, you prefer tea now?”

  They circled the picturesque tea house and headed toward the entrance to Yuyuan Garden. The market’s noise died away as they stepped inside. The walled gardens consisted of reflecting pools, rockeries and lacquered pavilions that were connected by bridges and walkways. The tranquility of the place always put Sunny in a pensive, almost spiritual, mood. With no one in sight, they stopped on the terrace of a pavilion overlooking a pond.

  Across the water stood the garden’s celebrated rockery that jutted twenty feet up the north wall, resembling a choir cut of stone figures.

  Wen-Cheng pointed to it. “Five hundred years ago, they dragged those rocks here from thousands of miles away. It is supposed to recall the peaks, caves and gorges of southern China.”

  “It must be beautiful there.” Sunny sighed. “I have never been.”

  “I have. I don’t remember any caves or gorges.” He shrugged. “Did you know that these gardens were built in the sixteenth century by a highranking official in the Ming dynasty, just so his father could have a quiet place to meditate?”

  “I would do the same for my father,” Sunny blurted.

  Wen-Cheng’s brown eyes shone. “He is a lucky man, your father.”

  “Not necessarily.” She broke free of his gaze. “A more dutiful daughter would not dream of coming here with you.”

  “Now you sound like a traditional country girl with bound feet,” he said laughingly. “I thought you possessed more of your American mother’s ‘free spirit.’”

  “My mother came to China as a Christian missionary,” she snapped. “I doubt she would have accepted our circumstances any more than my father might.”

  He held up his hands. “Sunny, I meant no offence.”

  Sunny accepted his apology with a small smile. For the next few minutes, they stared wordlessly into the green pond below, watching the carp skim under the water’s surface. Wen-Cheng finally broke the silence. “How are things at that refugee hospital?”

  “They manage somehow.”

  “Are you running low on any provisions?”

  “We are running low on everything, I am sure. Keeping the apothecary supplied is always a challenge, particularly for the sulpha antibiotics.”

  Wen-Cheng squinted, deep in thought. “I know where I can borrow some more medications and dressings for you.”

  “Borrow?” Sunny frowned. “You are not risking trouble to get us these supplies?”

  Wen-Cheng shook his head. “I want to do this. For you, Sunny. I know how much it means to you.” He tilted his head. “There is something I do not quite understand, though.”

  She braced for another intimate inquiry. “Oh?”

  “There is so much poverty and need here among the local Chinese. The coolies, the beggars, the sampan families … Why do you choose to work at a Jewish refugee hospital?”

  She shrugged. “They are in need too, Wen-Cheng.”

  “I realize,” he said. “Why them in particular? Why cross the bridge every day and face the taunts and threats from the Rìben guazi—” he used the Shanghainese pejorative for “Japanese devils”—”for people you do not know and have no connection to?”

  She hesitated a moment. “The hospital is so basic and the need so great. And I speak their language. I love my work at the Country Hospital, but I am one of many nurses there. At the refugee hospital, sometimes I am the only nurse on duty. It feels good to make a little difference.”

  “It seems to me that you make a big difference.”

  “There is more to it, Wen-Cheng. Those refugees … they don’t belong here.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “Shanghai already has an established Jewish population.”

  “Yes, but the German refugees are not like the other Jews. They don’t call Shanghai home. They don’t even have a home. They’re outcasts.” Her voice dropped to near a whisper. “I know a little about how it feels not to belong.”

  Wen-Cheng stared at her for a long moment. He reached out and laid his hands on her shoulders. Sunny did not resist as he pulled her closer. His warm breath tickled her face as his lips skittered across her cheek. She hungered for the taste of his mouth and the feel of his body pressed against her, but just as his lips touched hers, the cold reality of their circumstances doused her arousal. She stepped back and wriggled free of his grip.

  Wen-Cheng looked down at his hands as though he had dropped something. “Sunny?”

  “We can’t!”

  His hands fell to his side. “I love you, and I thought …”

  “None of that matters,” Sunny said, her voice catching in her throat. “Not when you are still married.”

  “I am trying, Sunny, but it’s not easy,” he said. “My wife’s family has been friends with mine for g
enerations. My father and her father—”

  Enough! She had heard the same rationalization too many times before. Frustrated and disappointed with herself for letting things reach this point again, she wheeled and ran off.

  Sunny did not slow down until she reached the gates of the Old City. Burying her cold hands in her coat pockets, she marched along Rue du Consulat and turned north at the Bund. Awash with a contradictory mix of regret and self-reproach, she strode along the riverside promenade, ignoring the Whangpoo’s swarming boat traffic on one side of her and the Bund’s rumbling automobile congestion on the other.

  Sunny finally calmed as she neared the neo-classical Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, which was nicknamed the “Jewel of the Bund.” She slowed to watch several Chinese men and women rub the manes of the sculpted bronze lions that guarded its columned entrance in the belief that the contact would bring them luck. Though cynical of such superstition, Sunny was half-tempted to rub the lions herself. But luck was not the issue. What she needed was more restraint and a far less entangled relationship.

  Sunny was still mulling over the conversation with Wen-Cheng when she arrived at the doors of the refugee hospital. As soon as she stepped inside, Simon called to her gleefully, “Today’s the day, Sunny!”

  “Has the ether arrived?” she asked.

  “The whole shebang—mask, medicine, everything!” Simon laughed as he caught up to her in the hallway. “You should see Dr. Adler. He’s like a kid in a candy store.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Simon squinted at her. “Sunny, what is it?” She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Sunny, it’s me.” He tapped his chest with both hands. “The nosy Jew from the Bronx. I can tell something is eating at you.”

  She considered unloading her romantic quandary on Simon, but it felt too fresh and raw to broach. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “A bad sleep? That’s why you look like you’ve just seen a ghost?”

  “Can we please just go see Dr. Adler?”

  They found Franz and Max Feinstein standing inside the newly built operating room. The room had the same plain walls and cement floor as the rest of the old, converted schoolhouse, but it boasted a new steel gurney and a rolling light with multiple bulbs. A heavy-set, middle-aged man lay on the stretcher with a sheet pulled up to his shoulders. Someone had laid out a tray of shiny new surgical tools on the adjacent table.

  Max looked uncomfortable in his white gown and surgical cap, while Franz appeared relaxed and authoritative in his. He beamed at Sunny and Simon. “Oh, wonderful, Miss Mah.” He turned to the patient with a wave of his hand. “We can begin now, Mr. Kornfeld.”

  Sunny had never seen Franz as enthused. “Certainly, Dr. Adler. I will go scrub and gown straight away.”

  Franz nodded. “Miss Mah, it has been a while since Dr. Feinstein was last in the operating theatre—”

  “Decades!” Max corrected, clutching his head in hands.

  Laughing, Franz pointed to the mask and bottle marked “ether” lying on the far end of the table. “I was hoping you might provide the anaesthesia. Have you ever done so?”

  “Yes.” Her heart skipped a beat. Sunny had been trained to administer the anaesthetic gas, but at the Country Hospital the junior doctors always assumed the role of anaesthetist.

  Sunny gowned and scrubbed at the sink outside the operating room. By the time she returned, Max and Franz were both masked and gloved and the patient draped for surgery. They had been joined by another nurse, Berta Abeldt, who was large-boned, with a ruddy complexion and friendly eyes.

  Franz turned to the patient. “Are you ready to begin, Mr. Kornfeld?”

  “I was ready a year ago,” Kornfeld moaned.

  Franz looked at Sunny and nodded; the mask over his mouth couldn’t conceal his broad smile. She gently applied the pear-shaped fabric mask over Kornfeld’s nose and mouth. She held the can of ether five or six inches from the mask and carefully tipped the spout. The liquid dropped in a steady patter onto the fabric. As soon as the sweet acrid smell of the anaesthetic vapour reached her nose, she righted the can.

  Kornfeld’s eyes remained wide open, but his cheeks began to flush. Sunny dribbled more ether onto the mask. “Deep breaths, Mr. Kornfeld,” she encouraged.

  The patient’s eyelids fluttered and then slowly drifted shut. She counted to ten and then ran her finger across his eyelashes without eliciting a blink. “He is asleep, Dr. Adler.”

  “Good work, Miss Mah!” Franz turned to the scrub nurse. “Scalpel please, Mrs. Abeldt.”

  Berta passed Franz the scalpel. He applied the blade to the crease of Kornfeld’s groin and, with the precision of a watchmaker, sliced steadily along the skin.

  Peering over Franz’s shoulder, Max chuckled. “It must feel good to be operating again, does it not, Dr. Adler?”

  Franz glanced over at Sunny with another barely contained smile. “Like returning home after a long, hard journey.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Franz sat alone at the kitchen table, a cup of jasmine tea in front of him. Esther had gone to the market, Hannah was visiting Natasha upstairs and Ernst, as usual, was absent without explanation. Franz was enjoying the rare solitude. As much as he loved his family, the four of them were living in a space not much larger than his old bedroom. Privacy had become a rare and precious commodity.

  Franz was still basking in the afterglow of performing his first surgery in Shanghai. The procedure could not have been more straightforward, but it felt so natural to have his hands busy with the work he loved. The renewed sense of purpose revitalized him. Even with the refugee hospital’s rudimentary facilities, Franz envisioned being able to perform multiple operations; perhaps nothing as complex or challenging as his procedures at the Vienna General Hospital, but he would work as a surgeon again. It meant the world to him, particularly in light of the demeaning role he had fallen into at the Country Hospital.

  Only three days into his new job as Samuel Reuben’s assistant, he dreaded the thought of a fourth. To have landed a medical position with a steady, albeit modest, income within weeks of landing in Shanghai was more than he had expected. However, between his wounded pride and Reuben’s determination to turn him into a kowtowing orderly, Franz found it impossible to feel as grateful for their good fortune as his sister-in-law seemed to be.

  Esther concealed most of her bereavement behind her usual poise. However, the day before at the refugee hospital, Franz had stumbled upon a rare display of her devastation. Esther had accompanied him to work to help prepare patients’ meals after the regular cook, Mrs. Beer-man, had fallen ill with a head cold. After finishing rounds, Franz headed into the small kitchen to collect her. As he stepped through the doorway, he spotted Simon and Esther beside the sink. Her back turned to Franz, Esther stood clutching her face, her body trembling with sobs. Simon had one hand lightly draped over her shoulder while he murmured words of encouragement. Franz heard Simon say, “And what about your niece? Seems to me you’re as close to a mother as Hannah will ever know.”

  Esther wiped at her eyes and mumbled something that Franz could not catch.

  Simon chuckled. “Ah, it’s nothing. I bawl like a hungry newborn when my Yankees are losing.”

  Esther laughed through her tears. Simon looked over and made eye contact with Franz. Smiling grimly, he silently reassured Franz that he had the situation under control. Franz backed out of the room without Esther ever having been aware of his presence.

  A succession of raps on the door pulled Franz from the memory. He was surprised to find Ensign Luigi Comparelli standing at the threshold. With a warm greeting, Franz led the ensign into the apartment. “I assumed you and the Conte Biancamano would be well on your way back home by now.”

  “Not for another week.” Luigi swept his hand through the air. “We only just returned from a cruise to Hong Kong.” “How did you find us, Luigi?”

  “Ah, Dr. Adler, I am a terrific, how do you say … detective!” He see
med proud of himself for producing the word. “I went to see the Jewish organization at the port, where they pick up the new arrivals. I spoke to an American gentleman, who was most helpful.” He grinned, amused. “That man … he loves to talk even more than most Italians.” “Simon, of course.” Franz chuckled.

  Luigi looked around the room. “Where is the beautiful little principéssa?”

  “Upstairs playing at a friend’s apartment. Shall I go get her?”

  Luigi waved his hand in front of him. “No, please, do not disturb her. I have little time.” He frowned. “I miss her, your daughter. The ship’s pool is not the same without little Hannah. Is she doing all right in Shanghai, you know, with her …”

  Luigi’s concern touched Franz. “She is a tough one. We still have to find her a school in the new year, but she has embraced Shanghai as a whole new adventure.”

  “Buòno. I think she will go far, that one.”

  “I hope so, Luigi. Do you have time for tea?”

  “No, grazie. I need to get back to the ship.” Luigi dug inside his coat pocket, withdrawing a small envelope. A sheepish expression crossed his face as he held it out for Franz. “A telegram for you, Dr. Adler.”

  “For me?” Franz frowned. “From where?”

  “It came through the shipping line’s central office.” Luigi cleared his throat. “I believe it is from Vienna.”

  Franz could tell from the ensign’s body language alone that it contained bleak news. “Thank you, Luigi,” he muttered, “for going to such effort to bring this to me.”

  “It was my pleasure, really.” Luigi edged toward the door. “Please give Mrs. Adler and Mr. Muhler my best wishes. The signóra, she is well? Not so sad anymore?”

  “Mrs. Adler is doing better, thank you,” Franz said distractedly.

  Luigi smiled again. “And, of course, a big hug for my principéssa.”