“Why do you say that?”
“Because their husbands die, and then so many more of them are available.” Hiroyoshi broke out laughing and beckoned to Agatha, who was waiting by the dance floor. She came over at once.
“This one is my favorite,” he said, patting her curvaceous backside. “Agatha from Germany. She won’t marry me. I keep asking, but she just says no.”
“Yes, of course I know Agatha,” said Leo, removing Hiroyoshi’s hand from her body. “Every man in here notices Agatha as soon as they walk in.”
“Fine, fine,” the businessman said, waving his hand to excuse her. “Go back to doing whatever it is you do. Whatever it is, you do it beautifully. I will come and rediscover you later.
“You like her?” he asked Leo.
“Of course. What’s not to like? Though to be honest with you, after nearly three years of watching her, it might be even more than like.”
Hiroyoshi drained his glass with one long gulp and squinted at Leo, as if he were trying to keep him in focus.
“Why did you come here? To Shanghai?”
“So that the Nazis wouldn’t kill me or my parents.”
“A good reason,” said Hiroyoshi as a waiter came and replaced his drink. “They truly do hate the Jews. It’s strange to hate that much. Tiresome. I didn’t come here for any such reason. I came here to make money. For adventure. To escape custom. In Japan, my parents kept threatening me with a wife. All these years later and I still don’t have a wife.”
“That’s . . . depressing,” said Leo, laughing.
“The city is depressing now, but I still love it. I should probably stop proposing to Agatha if I don’t want a wife. She might say yes one day, and then what?”
“Then you’d have a lovely wife,” said Leo. “No, lovely isn’t strong enough a word. An intoxicating wife. But please don’t marry her.”
“She’s the prettiest one here—a face like a doll and round in all the right places. Though it’s the thighs that I’d really like to get my hands on.” Hiroyoshi looked around him at the buffed wooden floors and circle of dark green lacquered tables. “I love this place,” he declared. “Every day I am thankful that the Kempeitai hasn’t shut Liwei down.”
“Why would they shut him down?” asked Leo. “Some of them come here, too.”
“A surprising turn of events,” said Hiroyoshi. “I thought they just raped the women and didn’t bother paying them. They’ll all be shot when the war is over. Or at least they deserve to be.”
Leo nodded and stood up to leave, but Hiroyoshi protested. His hair, worn long and impractical, was falling around his face in two halves, like a theater curtain. His face had grown more chiseled over the years, since, like everyone in Shanghai, he didn’t have enough to eat, but his exterior was always polished. He looked to Leo as if he were floating above the war, regarding it as nothing but a small nuisance.
“Stay and sit with me. Tell me about the life of the young and persecuted,” he said, tapping his gold ring on the table.
“I can’t,” said Leo. “If I’m not back in the restricted area in the next hour, I won’t eat again until noon tomorrow.”
“You picked the wrong time to be a Jew,” Hiroyoshi said, lighting a cigar. He handed his glass and the last sip of his whiskey to Leo. “For you, because during a war, it’s the young men who suffer most of all.”
He drank it down and thanked Hiroyoshi, heading to the kitchen to finish off the night. As usual, he took the long way around the room, so he could see Agatha from all angles before he disappeared with the rest of the low-level staff in the back.
Leo was doing a last round of dishes, laughing with Jin about the customers and getting ready to leave, when he heard a collective silence spread through the room. He looked at the front door and plunged his hands back in the hot soapy water to keep from dropping the bowl he was holding. Two men, in German officer’s uniforms, had just walked in. He glanced at the back door, prepared to run out, but Jin stopped him from moving.
“Do not say one single word,” said Jin, passing behind Leo and greeting them at the door. One stopped to speak to Jin, pointing out the table he wanted, but the other, the more handsome one, went straight to Agatha, kissing her cheek as if he knew her well, or wanted to.
“He does know her,” said Jin when he’d returned from seating them and taking their drink orders. Leo looked at him with a worried, searching expression, no longer desperate to leave the room.
“How?” he whispered.
“In 1942,” said Jin, turning his face toward the back of the kitchen, “when there were a few German military men in town, that man that just kissed Agatha, Felix Pohl, used to come in regularly. You were working here then. You never saw him?”
Leo shook his head no, afraid to speak.
“Lucky you,” said Jin, turning away, but Leo grabbed his shoulder, desperate for more of an explanation.
“You’re a glutton for punishment,” said Jin, his voice as quiet as Leo’s. “Pohl came in many times last year, often with several high-ranking officers. I don’t know why they were in Shanghai—maybe meetings with the Japanese—but they stayed a month at least.” Jin, who had heard all of Leo’s stories about Vienna, tried to calm him then told him to go back to washing dishes. “They are spending the war in Japan. Pohl and the other officer.”
“In Japan?” said Leo, thinking of how terrified Emi had been every time she saw an SS officer.
“Yes, Japan. Their ally.” Jin placed his finger to his lips and put Leo’s hands back in the dishwater. “Just stay calm and quiet. When they’re a little drunker and more oblivious, slip out the back. It should only take a few minutes at the rate they’re going. You’ll make it back before curfew.”
Leo focused his energy on the sink and only dared glance out to the main room a few times to see the two officers dancing. The other officer danced with several different women, but Pohl only with Agatha, his hungry hands all over her.
After just a few minutes, Agatha’s thin red dress, one of her most low-cut, was wrinkled all over the backside from Pohl reaching for her and Leo saw, out of the corner of his eye, that she was imploring the German to sit back down. “You came in here drunk,” she said in German. “You must take a rest. Please.”
Pohl, a big man, both tall and wide, his thick brown hair slicked back, leaned into her neck and whispered, too low for Leo to hear.
“Of course, I’m happy to see you,” Agatha responded. She was smiling, but Leo could tell that she was anything but happy.
“Aren’t you worried about Agatha?” Leo finally said to Jin, abandoning the dishes and forgetting the curfew that was threatening him in Hongkew.