“Thank you, Auntie,” I said, when she finally ran out of steam. “I’m grateful for your time, and I won’t take up any more of it. But I imagine you want to know why I’m asking.”
“Oh, it’s not my concern.” Her eyes were wide with innocence, but to head off a commiserating phone call to my mother about the difficulty of living with a daughter always in too much of a rush for common courtesy, I showed Mrs. Chan the photos. She shook her head, at both the jewelry and Wong Pan. “But I’ll call you without delay if I see him,” she promised, aglow at the prospect of striking a blow for justice.
I spent the rest of the morning working my way through Mrs. Chan’s list. I showed the photos and marveled at the variety of ways people had for saying no. I’d gotten simultaneously halfway through the list, halfway down the street, and nowhere when it was time to knock off and meet Mary for lunch.
I headed to our favorite Taiwanese tea shop and slipped onto a stool at a front table. I was a few minutes early, and Mary, being on duty, was likely to be late. I almost ordered black tea, but the old man at the next table swirled a pot of sweet-smelling osmanthus flower, releasing the fragrance. I ordered some of that and pulled the next of Rosalie Gilder’s letters from my bag.
28 April 1938
Dearest Mama,
I write to tell you how proud you must be of Paul. Not that his jokes and fidgets have been abandoned for sober respectability. Staying in his chair for an hour at dinner is still more than he can manage. It’s as difficult as ever to convince him to read any book not a dry scientific text; fortunately he is able to practice his English on such wonders from the ship’s library as Capacitative Resistors: Design and Use. And sharing a stateroom is turning out to be a matter of calling him back time and again to fold his clothes or mop up the lavatory.
But those are small irritations, and I’m ashamed to think how they once exasperated me. Among our fellow refugees we hear such tragic tales! A girl my age, Ursula Krause, from Berlin, goes to her uncle in Shanghai alone. Her father and brother were taken by the Gestapo, and she’s heard nothing since-except a smuggled note from her brother begging her to leave while she could. Mama, my blood runs cold! I, the family skeptic, have found myself saying a prayer for Ursula.
Oh, Mama, I don’t mean to upset you. Seeing what I’ve written, I nearly tore this letter to shreds. Please believe me: We’re well, and being brave, and having adventures! But to tell you about those adventures only, to write about the sparkling waves and the salt breeze-those things are true, of course they are, but so is the terrible reason we’re on this ship to see them.
Mama, I’ve just roused myself; I’ve been sitting for some time, wondering again whether to ball up this letter and throw it in the sea. But no. We are fine, but the world is not. If I can’t sit beside you and talk about this, I must lighten my heart by sharing my thoughts over time and distance.
Let me go on, then; I started out to tell you that Paul has lately discovered new talents, and I know this will bring you a smile. He’s become a model of patience and leadership-among the small children! It’s as if the Pied Piper were aboard. Everywhere, he’s trailed by a string of babies. He invents games for them, doctors their cuts and bruises, tells them fantastic stories to make them gape and laugh. To see the children happy eases their parents’ minds; and so Paul, by carrying on in his silly way, renders a great service. This is a magical thing, and I hope, Mama, it makes you as proud as it does me.
I’ll close now, as I see Mr. Chen Kai-rong approaching; we are to have tea and begin my lessons. I feel myself smiling. He wouldn’t be wrong to think it’s for the pleasure of seeing him; but it’s also for the idea of your smile when you read about Paul; and practice for the smile I’ll be wearing when I greet you and Uncle Horst in Shanghai!
Take care, Mama.
Your Rosalie
“ Lydia? Are you okay? Wake up.”
“What? Oh, Mary, I’m sorry!” I jumped from my stool and hugged my best and oldest friend.
“What are you reading?” Mary unslung her shoulder bag and pulled out a stool, her long braid swinging as she sat. When she was in uniform she’d complained about having to wear her hair stuffed under her cap. Since that was pretty much the only thing she didn’t like about being a cop, now that she’d made detective and was in plainclothes, life was good.
“It’s from my case. It’s kind of sad.” I gave her a brief rundown: Alice Fairchild, the Jewish refugees in Shanghai-which she’d never heard of either, just proving we went to school together-the excavation site, and the jewelry; and Rosalie Gilder, writing to her mother. “She was just a kid. Trying to be a grown-up and look out for her little brother, excited and scared and missing her mom. She keeps saying, ‘I can’t wait to see you again.’ But she never did.”
“God. That’s awful.”
“It was a long time ago. But it makes me feel like, how dare this Wong Pan guy steal her mother’s jewelry? Like he stole it from her.”
“What happened to her and her brother?”
“Alice Fairchild says it’s not clear. I guess a lot of people can’t be traced from after the war. But I’m starting to feel… protective. As though I knew her.”
A young Chinatown-cool waiter-blond-streaked hair, tight black pants-appeared. We ordered tea eggs, chicken skewers, and lemongrass soup.
“Enough of the sad past.” I folded Rosalie’s letter and stuffed it into my bag. “Tell me about your case.”
“Nothing much to tell. Guy was found shot in a hotel room. Wallet was gone. Registered as Wu Ming.”
“ ‘Anonymous’? Oh, great, a joker. Okay, show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
We traded pictures.
Our quarries looked alike, if by that you mean they were both middle-aged Chinese men. Hers was thinner and wore short hair; mine was pudgy and had short hair, too, but grayer.
“Yours is better-looking,” Mary said.
“Well, he’s alive.”
“I guess that’s an advantage in a man. Is he wanted for something? Here, I mean?”
“Not that I know of. In China, for running off with the cultural patrimony.”
“If he’s not wanted here, I can’t show his picture around for you, though. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’m not really looking for him anyway, just the jewelry.” Our soup arrived, and we put our work away. Mary gave me the past month in her life, filled me in on gossip my mother hadn’t gotten to, and asked about my family.
“My brothers are all thriving, in their own unique and bizarre ways,” I told her. “And I’ve been back less than twenty-four hours and my mother’s already driving me up the wall.”
Mary nodded her sympathy. “She told my mom yesterday that you’d taken a case with a guy who irritates you so you wouldn’t be thinking about Bill.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake! Why does she do that? You’d think she’d be happy.”
“She’s your mother. You’re not happy, she’s not happy, even if what makes you happy makes her unhappy. Why don’t you call him?”
“He doesn’t want me to.”
“So?”
“Listen, I’d love to sit and chat about my twisted professional and personal life, but I have jewelry to track down. And aren’t you on duty?”
“Oh, nice sidestep. Well, whenever you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
We gathered up our things and went out to show Chinatown photographs of men we didn’t know.
The day got old and so did my search. Yang Nuan-yi, as it turned out, had learned her husband’s Shanghainese dialect, but the only person she’d spoken it to lately was her husband. Old Wong at Harmony Jewelers recalled having a long conversation with a Fujianese yesterday, and just this morning threw two wealthy punks with that terrible Macao accent out of the shop for making a pass at his daughter, but all his other recent customers were Cantonese, or lo faan with no Chinese at all. White-haired Mr. Chen at Bright Hopes had a sharper nose than mine, and rounder eyes of a lighter shade of brown; he might be Eurasian, I thought, or from the western provinces. But he’d had no Shanghainese-or Mandarin-speaking customers in weeks, and I was beginning to think my smart idea wasn’t so smart after all, when I slipped the jewelry photos out of the envelope to show him anyway.