The Hua Shan Hospital Murders (14 page)

“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?”

“It seems I’ve become one at this late juncture in my life.”

“Well, I’d be careful, because I wouldn’t bet a single yuan on your chances of ever tracking down whoever it is you think Old Silas had in his house during what you people so egotistically call the Second World War.” The man took a final look at the young waitress-in-training’s chest, then left without saying another word to Robert.

Robert had one last contact before he was left with no other option but a frontal assault upon the Chinese bureaucracy: an elderly woman who had been one of the Chinese street urchins saved by the Darfuns in the mid-thirties. Her name had cost him a small fortune and forced him into some hasty and probably ill-advised dealings in the antique markets. Finding her had taken all his wits. When they finally met face-to-face – him kneeling on the wet pavement because she was a seller of five-spiced eggs – he was disappointed by her information.

Sitting on her little bamboo stool, she stirred her pot slowly, allowing the ancient eggs to take in the five secret ingredients that she had added that morning to the boiling water. The smell coming from the pot reminded Robert of something that grew between your toes. He smiled at her. She smiled back. Only a single tooth remained in her mouth. He asked his question.

She took a moment to look at him then responded that she didn’t know the names. “Those Jewish children all looked alike. Now that I am older I can be honest. I can’t tell one of you white people from another. It amazes me that you can.” She stirred the pot. The toe-cheese smell almost overwhelmed Robert.

Then she added one piece of information that caught Robert completely off guard.

“Only the men,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I’m not following you.”

“Silas only dealt with the men from the ghetto. He never did business with women. Never.”

“But–”

“Never with women. And only with the men when they proved they were in desperate need.
Usually because they were sick or something.”

“Listen, I think my mother was pregnant and needed food. Could that be a reason that Silas would take a girl into his house?”

“No. He would have taken in the mother.”

That shocked Robert. “Did he take in pregnant women?”

“When he could. But there were few pregnant women. Lack of food makes conception difficult.”

“What happened to the children he took in?”

“Their parents all came for them at the end. Silas educated the girls. That’s why they were there.”

“They weren’t used by him. Used in his factories or whatever he did?”

She smiled at him sadly. “No. He was a trader, Mr.
Cowens. He had no use for young girls.”

* * *

Fong allowed his now bloodied hands to touch the large piece of glass that still hung down from the top of the window frame. He saw his image buried in the glass. Him standing in the room looking out; his image, perfect, stuck in the shard of glass looking in.

He watched his image smile.

Then he turned to Lily, “Do you remember the riddle you told me?”

“Yes. You solved it, Fong,” answered Lily.

“I did.” Fong looked to the men. “Are you good at riddles?” Wu Fan-zi and Chen couldn’t have been more surprised if Fong had asked them if they could ballroom dance. Neither man moved.

“Fine,” said Fong, “solve the riddle Lily told me.
A man and his son are in a terrible car accident. The father is killed instantly but the boy survives and is rushed to the emergency room of a small hospital. He is quickly prepped and raced into an operating room. The surgeon in the room takes one look at the boy and screams, ‘This is my son!’ Since the boy’s father died in the car crash, how could the surgeon also be the boy’s father?”

Chen and Wu Fan–zi were both silent.

Fong said, “The surgeon isn’t the boy’s father.
She’s the boy’s mother.”

Wu Fan–zi and Chen each gave a yeah–but–so–what kind of nod.

“But that’s not the real riddle, is it?”

“It’s not, Fong?” asked Lily.

“No. The real riddle is why is it that people can’t solve that simple little riddle. Why is that Lily, do you think?”

“They presuppose that a doctor . . .”

“. . . must be male.” Fong completed his wife’s statement. “Just like we presuppose an American must be white.”

Suddenly there was energy in the room. Wu Fanzi’s eyes shone.

“You mean . . .?”

“What if the American we’re looking for is Asian – Chinese.”

“He could pass as a garbage collector and get the fetuses that he uses.”

“He wouldn’t have been questioned in our hotel sweeps.”

“He could go in and out of hospitals and put nasty notes on receptionists’ desks without being noticed.”

“And he wouldn’t stand out in the video of the crowd outside the Hua Shan Hospital.”

Fong picked up the phone. “I want as many of the Hua Shan Hospital workers as you can find to view the VHS tape. Be sure to get the receptionist who found the note. I want them to ID every face on that tape. Got it?” Fong put his hand over the phone and turned to the people in the room. “At the very least we should be able to eliminate some faces – maybe we’ll even get lucky. That would be a first in this case.” He spoke into the phone again, “Use the biggest auditorium you can find and do it fast. I want a report in two hours.” Fong hung up and turned back to the room. “Okay, that’s part one but he didn’t show up on our money transfer checks either.” The others readied themselves. “Check my thinking,”
Fong began to pace. “We know the bomber is a foreigner – probably an American – perhaps a Chinese–American.”

Lily, Wu Fan–zi, and Chen nodded.

“We know that what he does costs big money.”

“That first blast could have cost well in excess of ten thousand US dollars,” said Wu Fan–zi.

“That’s the reason we’ve been chasing down big bank transfers.”

“Maybe he brought the money with him.”

“He wouldn’t dare, Chen. Knowing what he’s going to do he wouldn’t chance breaking our currency restrictions. Our bomber must make his money inside China.”

A silence followed as each considered this new possibility.

“But how would he make that kind of money in Shanghai?” asked Lily.

“Drugs?” Chen suggested.

“Women,” Lily chimed in but gave up on the idea before it was even out of her mouth.

Fong turned toward the shattered window facing the new Pudong Industrial Area across the Huangpo River. “What’s hanging on our apartment on the left side of the window, Lily?”

“The fresco . . . He’s trading in antiques?”

“Why not? If he bought from locals and sold to tourists the profits could be astounding. And it’s not hard to get antiques, is it, Lily?”

“No, Fong, it’s not.”

“So, we’re looking for a Chinese-American who has been dealing in antiques. How hard can he be to find?” asked Lily.

“Very hard if he’s smart,” said Fong.

“And I think he’s smart,” added Captain Chen.

Fong whirled quickly, “I want every smuggler in Shanghai rounded up, Chen – all of them – now!”

Six hours after Fong ordered the round-up of smugglers, Robert Cowens was standing on the crowded sidewalk outside of the new apartment block on Hu Qin Road. The building didn’t give a hint of what had been demolished in 1985 to make way for it – the Beth Aharon Synagogue. Robert ignored the curious looks he was getting from the Chinese passersby. He was desperate. His three years of searching had led to tantalizing bits and pieces but nothing substantial. Nothing that changes one’s life – no proof of the need for revenge.

The Beth Aharon Synagogue was one of the last stray pieces of information that Robert had been able to track down. It had been built by Silas Darfun in 1927. But it was what had been in the synagogue during the war that infuriated Robert. Silas Darfun had paid huge bribes to the Nazis to lift, intact, the famous Mir Yeshiva from Europe. All four hundred Jewish scholars had been moved to Shanghai where they spent the war in Silas’s Beth Aharon Synagogue continuing their studies.