The Shanghai Moon (37 page)

“My, I certainly was. However did you find me?”

“I have records from some of the Japanese internment camps. They’re not complete, but I’ve been trying to track down people who were young enough then to give me a chance of finding them now.”

I heard a chuckle. “You mean we old fossils who haven’t yet shuffled off this mortal coil.”

“Oh, I—”

“That’s all right, dear, it’s not news to me that I’m gaining on Methuselah.” A delicate coughing fit interrupted her. I heard another voice in the room, and waited. Joan Conrad returned. “I’m sorry, dear. Yes, thank you, Maria, please leave it here. Yes, I promise I’ll drink it all!” To me again: “Such a tyrant! But a wonderful girl, my Maria.”

“Your daughter?”

“Heavens, no. My caregiver. That’s the word they use now. I think it’s lovely, and she does give me such good care! But I’m sorry, you were asking about Shanghai, weren’t you? For your thesis. About the Japanese and the Germans.”

“And the camp.”

“Oh, but I was such a little girl when we went to the camp. I didn’t know anything about the Japanese except that they sent us there. The Germans, and the Chinese armies—why, they might as well have been on Mars. It was the Americans we were waiting for. Waiting and waiting.”

“That’s all part of what I want to know. How much the people in the camps knew about what was going on and how that was reflected in the camp society. First, can you verify for me which camp your family was in? It was you, your parents, and your sister, right?” I could have asked more directly, but I didn’t know how good Joan Conrad’s memory was, and I didn’t want to plant suggestions.

Apparently, though, her memory was fine. “They called
it Chapei camp. The buildings had been built as Great China University, but it hadn’t been that in years.”

Bingo! Keeping my voice level, I said, “Chapei, yes. That camp particularly interests me for my research because it’s one of the few where they held Germans.”

“Germans?”

“For example, a woman and child. A Frau Ulrich, wife of a German officer.”

“Oh, you mean poor Mrs. Ulrich! Goodness, I haven’t thought of her in years.” Another round of coughing broke into Joan Conrad’s reminiscences. “Excuse me, dear.”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes, of course. Mrs. Ulrich!” she marveled. “My, she was beautiful. But I think she was the only German I knew.”

“And her child, isn’t that right?”

“Did she have a child?” A note of doubt wavered in Joan Conrad’s voice. Maybe her memory wasn’t so perfect after all.

“The child died about a year after they’d come to the camp. A few months after Mrs. Ulrich herself.”

“Died. Yes, I suppose so. I think that’s right.” After a moment, in a steadier voice, Joan Conrad said, “Mrs. Ulrich was a friend of my mother’s, you know.” She continued in her cheerful vein; I guessed she was back on solid ground. “She lived in the next room. Oh, but they weren’t really rooms! The building we were in had been a dormitory, you see. Most families had individual rooms, but when we came those were occupied. We were put into the big lounge with some other families. The men were given asphalt boards
and old wood, and everyone hammered and sawed. They divided it like a rabbit warren, a room for each family and sometimes dividers inside those, too. Mrs. Ulrich was there without her husband, so my father and some of the others built her room. You could hear everything—people talking, babies crying. Even the men snoring! At the mission in Shanghai my sister and I . . .” Again, a hesitation. “We’d each had our own rooms there. But the camp, with everyone on top of each other! And the food was monotonous and didn’t taste good. At first it was an adventure, but then I wanted to go home.”

Joan Conrad’s description of Chapei Camp sounded just like Rosalie’s account of the Jewish refugees’ shelter. Displaced people, on top of each other, disoriented, frightened, and missing home: everyone’s story the same.

But not exactly the same. Sometimes there were surprises. Like the fact that Frau Ulrich, wife of the intended recipient of the Shanghai Moon, had lived in the same
room
as Alice Fairchild.

“Mrs. Conrad, can you remember anything about Mrs. Ulrich? I’m interested in her case.”

“Oh, I was so young . . . but I remember she was glamorous! The women I was used to were missionaries, very plain, you see. Mrs. Ulrich worked at keeping up appearances. She’d brought cosmetics to the camp, rouge and powder and all sorts of things missionary children didn’t see. She hadn’t packed very practically. As though she weren’t intending to be there long. Nobody was, of course not, but we weren’t allowed to bring much, so most people packed clothes and personal items, practical things.
But now that I think of it, Mrs. Ulrich had a number of suitcases. I don’t know how many, but more than one. We were only allowed one each, the Japanese made that rule. I remember because my sister and I had to both sit on my suitcase to close it again after I opened it to sneak my teddy bear in. But Mrs. Ulrich had more.”

“Maybe because she was German? Maybe the Japanese treated her better than they treated Americans, could that be?”

“You know, dear, I think you’re right. I do remember the guards bowed to her. Not that that kept them from ordering her around. And she certainly didn’t feel well treated. I was a bit frightened of her, actually, as I think about it. Oh, such times are coming back to me!”

“Why were you frightened?”

“She was angry. All the time, so angry. My mother was usually able to calm her with a word or a cup of tea, but she never stopped being angry even when she didn’t act it. Children sense that sort of thing.”

“Angry at who? The Japanese?”

“Whom, dear,” Joan Conrad said mildly. “At the graduate level there’s really no excuse for sloppy grammar and syntax.”

“Yes, my adviser is always telling me that. Whom was Mrs. Ulrich angry at?”

“With whom was she angry, you mean. Partly the Japanese, of course, the way all the adults were. She was also furious with her husband. I remember that! He wasn’t in the camp. I think she might have lost him, though I’m not sure. But, no, that must be wrong, because I can’t imagine
she’d speak so badly of him if he’d passed away! And she did harp on it. What a stupid, greedy man he was. She’d say that to anyone who’d listen. That it was his fault they were there at all—” She stopped. “They! She said ‘they’! ‘We,’ I mean. Oh, I can hear her, that soft German accent she had. Not one of the grating ones, but the other kind. ‘Vee vouldn’t be here iff he vassn’t so greedy.’ It would have been nice to listen to her if I hadn’t felt frightened. But she said ‘we’! If her husband wasn’t there, you must be right. She must have had a child, mustn’t she? Oh, my. And toys. In those suitcases, toys, yes, yes. The little wooden horse, I still have it, over there on the shelf with my teddy bear. From one of her suitcases.” Again, Joan Conrad’s voice faltered. “The wooden horse . . . And Alice, Alice has a top . . . In any case, if she had toys she must have had a child. But I don’t remember. I’m sorry, my dear. I was young . . . some of those memories . . .”

“I understand. The camps were difficult places, I know.”

“Harder for the adults than the children, though. Children are so resilient! We played marbles and tops in the dust. We made up games and had dolls that we brought with us or that our mothers made from sticks and rags. Even when we were ill, and we were ill most of the time. Dysentery, croup . . . That’s where my cough came from—and here it comes again.” I waited while she coughed; then she laughed. “That was well timed, wasn’t it?”

“You seem very comfortable with your memories of those days, Mrs. Conrad.”

“Oh, children adjust. It just became our life. It was hardest toward the end, when there wasn’t much to eat . . .
to this day I can’t bear sweet potatoes. I can’t get over the idea they have worms in them! The scariest part, I think, was that the adults were frightened. During roll call, when if you’d done something against the rules you’d get summoned for punishment. You never knew if you’d done anything until then, you see. Or the Japanese would order us to assemble when something had happened that made them angry, in the war, I mean, not the camp. Then someone would get punished, an American or English person would be beaten, because of where their country’s planes had dropped a bomb. Sometimes rations would get cut, or there’d be no water for a day or two. Of course, I didn’t know about those things then, I mean the reasons why these scary things happened. For us, for the children, it was just our life. And Alice always took care of me, so I was shielded more than most.” She paused. “Oh, dear. Is any of this what you wanted to know? Am I helping you at all?”

“Oh, very much. This is fascinating. May I ask you about something specific that’s come up in my research? Something curious?”

“Yes, of course.”

I took a breath and, trying for no change in my voice, asked, “Mrs. Conrad, have you ever heard of a gem called the Shanghai Moon?”

“The Shanghai Moon . . . That rings a faint bell, but no more. Is it something I should remember? Oh, dear.”

“Maybe not. It’s just something I’ve come across. It was a brooch, very valuable, and there was a rumor it was in Chapei Camp.”

“The Japanese had it, you mean?”

“No, actually, the story I read said a prisoner might have had it.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s possible. None of us had anything valuable. The Japanese took all that, you see. For safekeeping, they said, though of course it never came back.”

“What if someone had hidden it? Didn’t anyone conceal anything?”

“In the beginning, I think so. A widowed friend of my mother’s hid her wedding ring. But when her children got sick, she sold it to the camp commander for medicine. And another woman, alone and very beautiful . . . Miss Montgomery, she’d been a Sunday school teacher, yes, that was her name! One day she was gone, and I heard some adults say the Japanese had suddenly discovered she wasn’t American, but Swiss, and put her on a repatriation ship. The way they were talking, I knew something was odd, but I didn’t know what. Later I learned everyone thought she’d bought her way out of the camp. She had nothing valuable, though, and I couldn’t imagine what she’d sold.” Mrs. Conrad said that sadly, letting me know that now, she could.

“So the Shanghai Moon . . . ?” I said gently.

“No, dear, I don’t know about it. But I don’t think anyone in the camp had it. No matter how much they might have wanted to hold on to it when they arrived, after the first year, or the second, they would have given it and much more to get out.”

We talked some more, Joan Conrad offering whatever memories she had, me gently steering the conversation,
until I was finally convinced she had no further light to shed.

“Mrs. Conrad, I want to thank you very much. You’ve been an invaluable aid to my research. If I can ask you one more thing?”

“You
may,
dear. You certainly may.”

“Yes, thank you. Your sister, Alice. I’d like to speak to her, too. Can you tell me how to find her?”

“Oh, Alice lives in Zurich now. She’s a lawyer. But you may be lucky. She’s in the U.S. at the moment, in New York. Isn’t that where you said you were?”

“Yes, at Columbia.”

“Good for you! You must be quite bright, studying at such a prestigious university. All the more reason to take care with your language usage. Yes, Alice is staying at the Waldorf-Astoria. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’m not sure how much longer she’ll be there. She was up here yesterday, just for the day.”

Oh? When she said she was in Washington?

“She comes over every few months. She’s such a dear, but my goodness! I’ve told her she doesn’t have to make that costly long trip just to tell me to take my medicine! Maria will certainly do that!” She laughed. “But Alice has always taken such good care of me, since we were little. And now that I’m alone . . . Well, I do enjoy seeing her, so I suppose I don’t put my foot down the way I ought. In any case, try her at the Waldorf.”

“Thank you, I will. Could I—may I also have her address in Zurich? In case I miss her?”

“Of course you may.” She all but audibly beamed at my self-correction. “I’ll get it for you.” I heard the phone clunk down, and before long she was back. She read off an address and phone number in Zurich, both the same as on Alice’s card.

“Thank you. And I have just one more question.”

“Ask as many as you like. This has been so interesting. You know, when we came back, what with the horrible news from the concentration camps in Europe, and the prisoner of war camps in the Philippines and so on, no one wanted to listen to us talk about our war. Most people didn’t even know where Shanghai was. My parents never spoke about the camp, either. I suppose they didn’t want to bring up bad memories. And our family had other things to adjust to, after all. Alice and I had never been to America. We saw snow! And we were both sick when we got here. Then we got well and we started going to school and that was that. So I haven’t talked about it very much at all. So many memories! Even if most of them are muddled.” She stopped, coughed, then said, “Yes, I’m sorry, dear. You had another question?”

The needle on my guilt-o-meter had flown into the red zone, but I asked my question anyway. “After people died, what became of the things they’d brought with them? Mrs. Ulrich, for example. What would have happened to her suitcases?”

“Her suitcases?” A pause. “This won’t sound very nice, I’m afraid. I don’t remember about Mrs. Ulrich’s things specifically. But when people passed on, their things were . . . divided up. None of us had enough, you see.
Clothes, or shoes, blankets, toiletries, medicines. Hairbrushes or sewing kits. Even the suitcases themselves—people made furniture from them, and cribs for the babies. So that would have been what happened. When poor Mrs. Ulrich took ill she died very quickly, a matter of days, I think. My mother was probably in charge of deciding what to do with her things, and they were put to good use, I’ve no doubt about that.”

I thanked her, promising to call again if my research needed anything else, and hung up. It crossed my mind she might call Alice and gush about the nice young graduate student from New York who was so interested in Shanghai. Well, it couldn’t be helped. What possible rationale could I give for asking her to keep mum?