Since the most habitual thing for Emi was to play the piano, she asked Claire if she might play at the Mampei Hotel in the afternoons.
Claire’s husband was thrilled to have someone who could lift community spirits, so Emi was invited to play every Wednesday and Friday evening. At first, no one stopped much to listen, but by February, as the extreme cold settled on the town, coupled with an even greater food shortage, she started to see familiar faces in the lobby. She even saw Ernst and his mother late one night, although he didn’t make eye contact with her and Emi turned her face away in shame.
By the beginning of March, feeling that luck had found her instead of the Germans, Emi had attained some calm again. So it shook her to the core when she heard a familiar voice behind her as she was finishing Saint-Sa?ns’s The Swan one snowy Friday evening.
“It’s you. The prudish piano girl,” said Hans Drexel, the German consul, whispering behind her. “I see you in town sometimes and you never say hello. Did we scare you that much at our party so many months ago? You aren’t friendly anymore?”
“You didn’t scare me at all,” said Emi, absolutely terrified. Drexel had never been at the farm when they’d been there—she knew he was far too high up for surveillance rounds—but it was very possible that he’d been told about the theft.
Emi kept playing, her fingers moving without much thought behind them, as he sat down next to her. “Still playing French songs, too,” he said. “Now that’s a disappointment.”
“It’s hard to play with company,” said Emi, sure she wouldn’t be able to keep her composure with his elbow touching her. “Even simple French songs.”
“I’ll move if you play Handel for me,” said Drexel, his uniform wet on the cuffs from the weather outside. He put his hand on her arm and said, “It reminds me of home and it’s been a difficult month.”
“I’m comfortable with Handel,” said Emi, ignoring his hand and starting to play one of Handel’s sonatinas, desperate for him to stand up.
“You people don’t know anything here,” said Drexel, not moving. “I wonder if they keep the German citizens as cloistered from information as they do you Japanese?”
“They—your government—probably do,” said Emi. “Isn’t that part of the propaganda of war?”
“It’s for morale, not propaganda,” said Drexel sighing. “Which I could use. A heavy dose of morale is needed around here. Germany has been cut off at the throat this month. Berlin, bombed twice in February. Dresden, decimated. Even little Pforzheim. What is there in Dresden or Pforzheim that the Allies want to destroy? Nothing. They’re just operating under a campaign of terror.”
Emi wanted to tell Drexel that if there was anyone operating a campaign of terror it was Germany. That she had seen it with her own eyes in Vienna, before war was even declared. But all she could hold on to was the word Pforzheim.
“Pforzheim was bombed?” she said, stunned. “When?”
“Pforzheim?” he said looking at her. “Weren’t you in Berlin?” she nodded her head yes, but pressed on about Pforzheim.
“A week ago. February twenty-third, at night, of course. Like I said, the Allies are driven only by cruelty.” He motioned for Emi to keep playing.
“I have a friend there,” she explained, looking at Drexel as she found her place in the song. “An important one. How would I find out if he survived the bombing?” Emi couldn’t let herself frame the question any other way. Of course Christian had made it, just like she would and just like Leo would. She stumbled on a note, her nerves taking over, and stared at Drexel.
“You will never find out. Or perhaps when the war ends, but certainly not before then.”
That weekend, Emi left the Moris and went to search the newspapers sold by a frail woman at a stand in town. She read them cover-to-cover, but as usual, they reported only Japanese victories, saying very little about Europe.
She rushed home, noticing a trail of smoke coming out of sloping Mount Asama, one of her favorite sights in Karuizawa. She took it as a good omen. Christian could not be dead. She wouldn’t make it until the end of the war if she thought that way. His being alive, it was one of the things that kept the fight in her. She worried endlessly about Leo’s safety, but Christian, his life, was something she counted on. He had to be invincible in the face of war.
She pushed the wooden front door open with her gloved hand, seeing that Jiro was awake in the living room. She sat by him and relayed what Drexel had said.
“The government hides everything from us,” she said. “But he must be right. Why would he lie?”
“About bombings by the Allies in Germany? In cities as important as Berlin?” said Jiro, his eyes closed, as they always seemed to be. “He wouldn’t.”
CHAPTER 34
LEO HARTMANN
JULY–SEPTEMBER 1945
What are you going to do?”
“Hmm?” said Leo, looking out at the expanse of summer blue sky over the cramped neighborhood. Now that he had only one good eye, it seemed to have gotten stronger, even though his field of vision had been severely truncated.
“About Agatha,” said Jin, waving down a rickshaw. Jin’s father had given them money for a ride back to the ghetto since Leo had forgotten his work shirt and Liwei wouldn’t let him inside in his dirty day clothes. Two rickshaw drivers saw Jin at the same time and the younger one pushed the other into the gutter full of night soil and trash to guarantee his fare. Leo took a step, to go help the man who had fallen, but Jin put out his hand and stopped him. “I’ll pay for one ride, not two,” he said as Leo climbed on after him.
“I am sure I wouldn’t be alive without her,” said Leo, putting his hand over the scar on his face and his bad eye. “She took me straight to the hospital, stayed with me there for a month.”
“But you wouldn’t have been almost dead if it weren’t for her. If you had listened to me and stayed inside instead of being so foolish.”
“That was my choice,” said Leo. “You know that. Nursing me back to health was hers.”
“Is that what you call it these days? I didn’t know you could get pregnant by nursing someone back to health,” said Jin grinning.
“It worked, didn’t it?” said Leo, not letting Jin rattle him. “Look how healthy I am.”
“The healthiest blind man in Shanghai,” said Jin, putting his hands behind his head. “Partially blind,” he corrected himself before Leo could. “I’m very happy for you. For her, too. She deserves something good in her life.”
“She does,” said Leo, calming down.
“Does she know how rich you were? Back in Vienna? Does she know about the money?” asked Jin, without looking at his friend.
“I don’t think so,” said Leo, agitated by Jin’s questioning. “Besides, we might not ever see it again.”