He knew that he wasn’t able to attract clients with outdoor space, as Del Monte’s was two floors and had an expansive garden, while his club was on the ground floor and had very few windows. But his wife had decorated it nicely enough—in red silk that had been tattered and resewn, dotted with high-gloss tables that Liwei kept shiny with animal fat. Plus, he told Leo when he first set foot inside, drunks appreciated the lack of light at Liwei’s when the sun started to rise.
On his first night, Leo had been asked to dance by one of the girls, a stunning German named Agatha, even though he couldn’t pay her. From her, he found out that almost all the money the girls made went to keep their gaggle of relatives alive. The men in the Russian families had a much more difficult time finding work than the pretty young women, so everyone pulled together to keep the women employed, the mothers making their daughters’ décolletés lower so they all might be able to eat for a week.
“But I don’t have a mother anymore,” said Agatha, her body close to Leo’s. “So I have to sew my own décolletés.”
“You do a fine job,” said Leo, trying his best to keep his eyes on her face.
Some of the women, Jin had explained after Leo returned wide-eyed from his dance with Agatha, turned to prostitution, others prayed for a client who turned into a husband, but most just saved their money and dished it out for their malnourished parents at the end of the night.
“They may look like tramps, but they’re family to me at this point,” said Jin, when he and Leo were left sweeping the club after closing on Leo’s first night.
“But pretty little German Agatha doesn’t look like a tramp,” said Jin, watching Leo watch her. “At least not yet.” Jin explained that while Agatha was German, she was in the minority. The Russians dominated Liwei’s. The White Russians had come in large numbers in the twenties, at the end of the Russian civil war, but they had been living as stateless since they made the voyage to Asia. With only League of Nations–issued passports, finding work was even harder. Meanwhile the French lived as if they were at a never-ending party before the war, as they benefited from extraterritoriality, which excluded them from Chinese laws. The Russians were not so lucky. But his father was always happy to assist a beautiful Russian woman in need.
The work at Liwei’s was exhausting, but Leo learned that it was not without its perks. The scantily clad female employees adored him and Jin, and he was allowed to dance with Agatha at least once every night. Leo was also entitled to all the alcohol that was leftover in the customers’ glasses. He sometimes abused the privilege, letting himself get drunk in ways he never had in Vienna.
“It’s what men do in Shanghai,” Liwei and Jin had advised him during his first week, both drinking down a combination of whatever was left that night, which Liwei called “bartender’s choice.”
When Leo’s sense wasn’t clouded by the Shanghai way of life, he would pour the dregs into bottles and bring them back for the men in his building. He didn’t trade the booze for anything in particular, but if a family found themselves with a little extra food one night, and the slop of alcohol they were drinking had come from Leo, that food might find its way to the Hartmanns’ table.
*
Finally making his way through the crowded street to his parents, Leo rearranged the load in his arms yet again as his father spotted them. He waved them over. “Here it is, Leo,” he called, pointing to the concrete building behind him. It had been painted gray but now the paint was peeling off like a suntan. “Hurry, please!”
Leo stepped over another pile of human waste and coughed from the smell of something burning in the street. As the Jews had begun to move into the restricted area in February, a wave of typhoid had accompanied them, and the Hartmanns had already attended the funeral of a child killed by it.
Once Leo and Jin reached the house, Max nodded toward the stairs. “We’re at the top,” he said. “Five flights up. Attic dwellers.” His voice was cheerful, but his forehead was dripping with sweat, despite the cold.
“How many families live in this building?” Leo asked as they climbed.
“Ten,” said Max. “We know three of them.” He rattled off the names and followed Leo, Jin, and his wife up the stairs, the laborers already ahead of them.
Leo dropped the bedding on the floor outside their new apartment’s door, opened it, and looked inside, trying not to let his heart drop at the sight. The room was large enough, but the windows had all been covered with black paint, leaving a dim electric light as the only source of illumination. The Hartmanns had sold almost all their furniture and had only their mattresses, one small table, and three chairs. There was a sink with cold water, an electric burner, and unlike in their last apartment, only one bathroom on the ground floor for the whole building to use.
“At least, all the way up here, we’ll be safe from harm,” Max declared when the laborers had gone. He was about to close the door to give them some rare privacy when a large Western woman in Chinese farm pants suddenly walked in. She was holding a knife.
Max took a step back, but the woman laughed and explained to him in German that she always carried a knife with her around the building, as she was suspicious of everyone in Shanghai, Jewish or not.
Her name was Eliza Behnisch and she was the first overweight person Leo had seen in Shanghai. She came from Berlin, she told the family as she sat uninvited on one of their chairs. She lived on the ground floor with her ailing husband, and she was taking it upon herself, despite her bad back and worse vision, to meet with all the new tenants to tell them how life worked in the ghetto.
“You’d better learn the rules of this place quickly or you’ll find yourself on a concrete floor in prison,” she warned the Hartmanns.
“Yes, Mrs. Behnisch, we wouldn’t want that,” said Max politely. “What are the rules, if you don’t mind elaborating?”
“First, Mr. Hartmann, you have to get used to living like rats. Then when you’re used to that, the rules won’t seem so bad. There’s a curfew, and it’s enforced by the Pao Chia, a group of Jewish men who the Japanese have hired to act as the police. They must have very short memories of their own oppression because they can be real asses,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Also, us Jews have to wear buttons letting the world know we’re Jewish. It’s stupid because almost all the citizens of the Allied countries are in the internment camps, but we have to wear them anyway. The buttons are issued by a Japanese officer named Kano Ghoya. He likes to be referred to as king of the Jews. He has a small mustache like Hitler and is as sadistic as they come. He hits people. Spits in their faces. Even women. You’ll see, Mrs. Hartmann. Pretty as you are, you’ll still be spat on.”
Leo translated what she’d said into English for Jin.
“I’ve met him, and she’s right,” Jin said. “Avoid him, his sadism, and his saliva.”
“If you are caught outside the ghetto without a pass, you’ll be thrown in jail, and the jails are full of disease, so that’s on par with a death sentence,” their new neighbor continued. “You need a pass to leave the ghetto to go to school or work outside it, and Ghoya issues the passes.”