What a cash-business he had.
You bet, you wanted a coat you went to Morty, period.
But not pants.
Nah, never. Morty’s pants were fercached.
Pants can’t be fercached.
Why not?
’Cause they can’t, people yes, God sure, your procrastinate, usually, but not pants.
Why not?
He asks again.
Again I ask.
’Cause pal o’ mine, it makes no sense – pants can’t be fercached and that’s that.
Listen to him, the dentist’s the expert.
In this yes.
Want to take a peek at a crown in my mouth?
Thanks no, it’s your play and I got a hard on for this one.
Why should this hand be different from all other hands?
The rummy player’s fir cushes.
Don’t start.
An unexpected silence descended on the room. Robert looked up from his shot. He knew what he’d see – someone much nearer to the end than the other elderly men must have entered. Such quiet always greeted the cold breath of near-death.
“Cancer,” his father said a little too loud.
The man’s clothes hung from his frame like limp things on a line. Robert couldn’t place the man’s face, but then again, near the end so many looked alike.
“Cancer,” his father repeated. “What ball are we on?”
“We’re not up to potting the balls in order yet, Dad.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I meant have I sunk a red ball!”
“Yeah. You can shoot any coloured ball you want.”
He hadn’t but who cared? Robert watched the slow shamble of the cancer man through the over-airconditioned room. The man went to the door at the far end and was pulling on it when it needed to be pushed. Robert put down his cue and opened the door for the cancer man. The man smiled at him – the word rictus popped into Robert’s head. Robert forced a smile to his lips.
“Cancer,” his father repeated as Robert returned to the table. He was about to respond when his father added, “I wish that fucking Silas Darfun had had cancer.”
Robert’s father was proud of being a professional. He was not a merchant and seldom used profanity – but the real new information was the weirdly named Silas Darfun.
“Silas who?” Robert prompted.
“Darfun – Silas Darfun. The Sephardic Jew from Iraq. You know, in Shanghai.”
Robert hadn’t been born when the family was in Shanghai but he let that pass. Again Robert wondered if his father had forgotten to take his insulin shot.
“In Shanghai?” he prompted again.
“Yeah, Robert, where else but Shanghai?”
Robert’s parents had gotten out of Austria in August of 1937 but they’d been refused visas to Australia, the United States, England, Canada, and New Zealand. Only China had granted them an entry visa. They’d made their way overland to the Middle Kingdom where they lived out the war in the relative security of Japanese-controlled Shanghai.
True, his informants had told him that it got tense after Pearl Harbor when the German ambassador arrived with Berlin’s plans for the Final Solution for the Jews of Shanghai. In February 1943 an “isolation area for Jews” was set up. In the next three months over a thousand Jewish families were moved from their 811 apartments into a sectioned-off part of the city that was less than two square kilometres. Their apartments and their 307 businesses went to the occupying forces of Japan. Things quickly got bad in the “isolation area.” Many people were reduced to begging to live. Some managed to land backbreaking work in the local Chinese mill. Children headed out daily to the markets on Shan Yin Lu or Li Yang Lu hoping to find discarded vegetables and foodstuffs. Things continued to degenerate in the isolation area as 1943 neared its end. But the Germans’ extermination plans were resisted by the Japanese who owed much to the Jewish bankers who had financed their successful invasion of Russia in 1904. In fact, the German final solution for Shanghai’s Jews never came to pass. The isolation area lasted for 561 days ending with the German defeat by the Allies. Just over three hundred of the ghetto dwellers had died of disease and hunger. But to be fair, Robert’s research had also revealed that many people in Shanghai at that time died of the same two maladies.
Robert had found out that it wasn’t the deaths that caused so much hurt and anxiety in the Jewish community. It was something, in its own way, far more sinister. It had cost a lot of money, but Robert had bought access to records that showed that seven of the ghettoed Jewish women had applied for and were permitted to become prostitutes servicing the occupying Japanese forces – and at least ten Jewish children had been sold.
One of these children was Robert’s mad mother’s first-born, Rivkah.
“She sold our first-born, Rivkah,” his father said, “to this Silas Darfun. She was pregnant. She needed food to nourish the baby inside her. She had been told that Silas Darfun treated children well and that they would be returned when the war was over. That’s what she was led to believe.
“When we were finally released from the ghetto we went to get Rivkah back. We couldn’t get past the security guards around the Darfun mansion. Your mother waited day and night for weeks outside that gate to get a chance to talk to the great man.”
“It made her the way she was, Robert. Even the birth of you boys only momentarily rescued her. Then back she’d go. It poisoned her. She never trusted anyone ever again. No trust – no love.” He raised his arms in the ancient gesture of “What’s to do?”
No trust – no love – so simple. So true. So true in Robert’s life.
His father had done the best he could to give Robert and his two brothers a caring home, but Robert was aware at a very early age that his mother’s volatile temper could erupt at any time. Robert never brought friends home. He often awakened to his mother’s screaming accusations at phantoms in the darkened hallways of their house.
“So that’s what that was all about,” Robert thought. “Why do old Europeans keep so many secrets?” He stepped forward and took the pool cue out of his father’s hands.
“Are we finished? There are still balls-”
“No, we’re not finished. Did you ever see Rivkah again, Dad?”
“Who knows? Your mother claimed she saw her the day before we were to board the ship to leave Shanghai. A tiny, filthy white girl was asleep in the garbage at the end of a stinking alley. Your mother raced to her, calling her name. The girl bit your mother’s hand – drew blood – then ran away. So fast. So very fast. I refused to chase after her. Your mother never never forgave me for that. We boarded the ship the next day.”
“And the baby Mom was carrying?”
“Born dead. God’s a swell guy, Robbie. A real swell guy. Like fucking Silas Darfun.”
“What happened to this Silas Darfun?”
“I don’t know. May he rot in hell with fucking cancer.”
“You seek the records of those Jew children?”
“I do,” said Robert eyeing the man across the table more seriously now than before.
The man stood up and Robert leapt to his feet. “You are a rich man, Mr. Cowens. You may even be a smart man. But you have one great disadvantage in your search.”
“And that would be?”
“You are a white man in an Asian country. And the documents you seek are now State property. They are controlled by men of my colour, not yours. I wish you well in your search.” He began to move then stopped. “Are you a betting man, Mr. Cowens?”
“Are you?”
He raised his shoulders, almost Yiddisha, and said in answer to Robert’s question, “I’m Chinese, so naturally I am a betting man. I asked if you were a betting man?”