Shanghai Shadows

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Shanghai Shadows

Lois Ruby

For

Hannah Miriam Ruby
,

who has brought it

all full circle

Prologue

There's a lot to learn from a lying, cheating, knife-wielding pickpocket like Liu, and believe me, I soaked up all that he had to teach me. My brother, Erich,
should
have been my guide to this mysterious country, since he's two years older; but the truth is, he always expected the worst possible thing to happen, and he was never disappointed. He got me into a lot of trouble, while Liu rescued me more times than I could count. Liu had a talent for conning his way through the streets. If survival was an art here, he was the Michelangelo of Shanghai.

I was just his apprentice. I came to China as a proper Austrian girl, with all my pleases and thank-yous in place. Such a good girl, I'd never have dared steal so much as an orange from our own pantry. Now I wouldn't recognize myself if I met me in Vienna. Besides barely casting a shadow, with sunken cheeks and sandpaper skin, I've bribed, stolen, cheated, sabotaged, sneaked, and lied. Liu's been a terrific teacher.

He might have been my age, or as old as Erich. It was hard to tell because he was small and wiry but with the smarts of somebody who'd been around forever. Living on the streets your whole life will do that for you.

I didn't live on the streets. I lived in a proper house when we first got to Shanghai. Well, not so proper compared to our beautiful home in Vienna. But we were Jews, and Hitler was … Hitler. What choice did we have? We could leave our home or die, which was no choice at all if you have half a brain. There were hushed rumors that our borders would be closed, that we'd be trapped like rabbits in a cage, that the Nazis were rounding up our people and sending them to labor camps in Germany, where they worked themselves into the grave. So Father got our family out of Austria while we could still escape.

Of course, I wanted to go to America. Mother had lived in America years before. Dreamily she'd tell us, “There, oranges hang so low that you can pluck them off a tree while lying on the grass.” Better yet, in America people went to the cinema every day.

Well, America didn't want us. Shanghai was the only port that would take us in, thousands of us. Who would have dreamed that I'd have my eleventh birthday in China?

Naturally, I was sad to leave Vienna and my friends, especially my best friend, Grete, and our dog, Pookie. But I was a hopeless optimist, so I told them all, “Be happy for me. We're not just leaving Austria. We're sailing to the Far East. To Shanghai, China!” Grete and my other friends gave me sympathetic looks—
Poor Ilse, going to a place where people didn't even use knives and forks!

But I was an adventurer—or at least I could be if I ever wriggled out of Mother's clutches. Leaving Vienna, I believed that anything was possible in a huge, bustling, exotic place like China. Anything.

CHAPTER ONE

August 1939

“I'm boiled alive,” I complained as we filed off the ship that had carried us from Genoa, Italy. Everyone was grumbling in a dozen languages. My hair whipped my head in the fierce, hot wind off the sea. “Erich, aren't you dying in that wool suit?”

“No, I'm comfortable.” My brother jammed his hat down to keep it from flying off, but I saw the band of sweat around it.

“You're just too stubborn to admit it.” Or to admit that he was nervous about our first steps in China.

He tapped my shoulder. “I'm as cool as that man,” he said, pointing to a half-naked rickshaw puller.

Mother poked Father's arm. “Oh, Jakob, what have we come to, men pulling carts as if they were beasts of burden?”

“The man's called a coolie,” Erich explained.

Mother gave him half her attention while toggling on her toes to read signs. None were in German, but Mother read English, since she'd lived in America for a time.

“It's how he feeds his family.” Erich glanced nervously at Father. We all wondered how Father would feed
us
. He looked away, hugging The Violin's case upright like a dance partner. His hands were stained with the black dye that was bleeding off the leather case. Erich and I thought of The Violin as the fifth member of our family. Father loved it more than he loved the rest of us put together.

I held my skirt at my knees so it wouldn't balloon around me like a parachute. Not that I'd have cared, but Mother whispered, “Remember at all times, Ilse, you are a Viennese lady.”

Erich and I snickered, and he doffed his hat behind Mother's back.

A lady, ha! In Vienna I'd preferred climbing our tree to sitting in the parlor with my knees clamped together, balancing a teacup, with Mother and her deadly dull lady friends.

Now my dress was soaked and sticking to my back and chafing at my neck and wrists. How could sun be so unforgiving? At home and all through the sea voyage of the
Conte Verde
Mother had kept me out of sunlight, since I'm a redhead and freckle something terrible. Two weeks here, and I'd be as spotted as a giraffe.

The man just ahead of us in the processing line used his shirtsleeve to mop up the sweat rolling down his face. That's when I first noticed a small Chinese boy zigzagging through the crowd as if he were tracking down something he'd lost. Spotting the man with the coat flung over his shoulder, the boy grinned and went into action.

“Shoeshine, boss?” He dropped to one knee, whipped a rag out of his pocket and jerked it back and forth across the man's shoes.

Erich pointed to an angry-looking red scar on the boy's leg. “Looks like someone carved an X into his leg.”

The boy looked up and raised one eyebrow like a tailor measuring me for a new coat, then seemed to dismiss me and returned to the man's shoes.

“Poor thing,” I whispered to Erich. “He looks like he hasn't eaten in a week!”

“Poor thing? Look what he's doing.”

He'd tied the man's shoelaces together and then jumped to his feet in one quick move. When the man stooped to untie the laces, the boy lifted the man's wallet and backed away into the crowd.

“The little crook,” I cried, though I have to admit to a heart-fluttering. Only twenty minutes in China, and something daring, something criminal, had happened right before my eyes.

Still, I was a law-respecting Austrian, so I said, “Mother, did you see what happened?”

“Shhh,” Mother replied. “Your father is next in line.”

“Well, I'm telling that policeman over there.” Erich tried to stop me, but I'm as stubborn as he is. Since I didn't know a word of Chinese, I pantomimed the whole thing. Nodding with understanding, the policeman chased the boy and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and barked something to him.

The boy immediately slipped a bill out of the stolen wallet, stuffed it into the policeman's pocket, and disappeared back into the crowd.

“Did you see that, Erich?”

“He's a professional,” Erich said with admiration. “The police are in on it. That's how people do business here, with bribes.”

“That's terrible,” I muttered.

“So? Is it any worse than how we got out of Austria?” Leave it to my brother—so serious, so wise. In Vienna he'd run around with a group of schoolboys who gathered in our front parlor and boasted like big shots. They were going to cross over into Germany, and steal into Hitler's headquarters while all the guards were snoring or wooing, and do unspeakable things, murderous things. They'd be national heroes and save us all. How they talked and talked! Father thought it was healthy for young men to have such ideas. “Not good to be so helpless,” he said, which is how he and Mother felt while waiting for our exit papers.

After all the Jewish schools were closed down and the Nazis began boarding up our shops one by one, Erich and his friends had long hours to fritter away. The boys sat on their haunches, ready to spring into action. But there was no action, just talk, and now the rest of those boys were still in Vienna, while we stood in line in far-off China. Were we lucky, or were they?

Mother seemed unaware of the spectacle all around us as she peered over Father's shoulder. He was presenting our papers to the immigration man and pressing The Violin case to his chest so as not to get separated from it in the crowd.

“Shpann family?” an Austrian resettlement man barked. We elbowed our way toward him, bundles and all, and he led us from the dock through the clogged streets to a more civilized neighborhood. Such a long walk! Halfway, Mother took off her shoes and padded along in her stockings, with her pointy heels hooked through the straps of her pocket-book. I glanced behind me to gauge how far we'd come and saw the pickpocket following us. Why? Because we looked prosperous? I hung my pocketbook around my neck for safekeeping and gave him a half smile to say,
I know what you did
.

“Get away!” our guide yelled, clapping his hands. The boy scurried off. “Watch out for these bandits,” the guide warned us. “This one, Liu, he's the worst of the lot. Come along, people.”

We stopped abruptly in front of a beautiful three-story building. “It looks like our house at home,” I whispered to Mother. She pressed her gloves to her heart, and I saw her mind arranging furniture, setting a vase of flowers in the front window, replacing the brocade drapes with white sheers. The front door was painted a shiny red, with a brass pineapple knocker at its center.

“Lovely,” Mother said, “and so big.”

The refugee man cleared his throat. “Yes, well, seven families share this house. One kitchen,” he added quietly. “Your rooms are in the back, third floor. Very sunny. Southern exposure.”