The unique “Pummerin” sound, deep and solemn, filled the room; he prayed for a voice that would steady him and strengthen him and prayed for the child he had lost. He was a man, a father, a husband, after all, and this was a loss he grieved and must atone for. And sadly, in a world where the earth cracked open, where the countries disintegrated, where the families were torn apart, he was not the only man with grief. If he stopped now, there would be hundreds more men with broken hearts.
He leaned over the visa forms and carefully arranged them in a stack.
A man’s heart was a church; its site might not be seen at the darkest hour of the frostiest night but must be fought for.
The next morning, he was working at his desk when Vice Consul Zhou handed him a slip with the Chinese characters for love and peace on it and said that a boy in line had asked to deliver this to him. A clever tactic to get his attention—Fengshan smiled and asked the boy to come in.
He was thirteen years old, wearing a wool cap, applying for his family of eight members. He had been waiting patiently outside for a week but lost hope, so he thought of this trick. His father had been sent to a camp three times, each time he was released on the visas Fengshan had issued, but now had been arrested again. The visa must be received in two days, or his father, who was too sick to walk, would be sent to a camp again. Speaking in formal German, the teenager was full of youthful gumption but had the manners of an adult.
Fengshan told him to come back tomorrow for the visas. Hardship and tragedy could rob a boy of his childhood; he knew that well, having grown up fatherless.
The next day, he gathered the visas he had approved and gave them to the vice consul to distribute. But a few minutes later, the vice consul returned with the papers.
The boy hadn’t shown up.
Frowning, Fengshan put on his coat and gloves and went out of the apartment building. Under the leaden sky of December, flocks of snowflakes cartwheeled down on the empty street. There was not a single visa seeker outside.
CHAPTER 57
GRACE
On a late afternoon in December, I was discharged. The previous morning Fengshan had come to complete the paperwork, paid the fees, and helped me pack. He had also rented a wheelchair for my convenience. But after a two-hour wait on the day of discharge, it still hadn’t been delivered—it seemed that with the war going on, a wheelchair was the last thing the nurses and doctors cared about. Fengshan looked at his watch and said he needed to return to the office to wrap up for the year before it would close for three weeks. He would return later to help me.
When my wheelchair arrived, Vice Consul Zhou came to assist me instead. The consul general was busy with work, he said, and wheeled me out of the hospital while I, wrapped in a blanket, held the bag filled with my gowns, toiletries, and medicine, my mind sedated with morphine.
“Could we wait for him?” This felt like abandonment—me, a mutilated woman, helpless in a wheelchair, and my husband unwilling to miss an hour of work.
“He’s working, Mrs. Consul General,” he said again.
“Is he so busy that he couldn’t leave his desk?”
“On the contrary, he’s not busy at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“For some reason, the visa applicants have stopped coming. The consul general believes something disastrous is holding them back, a mass arrest or something similar. But to be sure, he wants to wait in the office so he won’t miss anyone.”
Outside, the wind was bone-chilling, the sky the tone of iron, and black snow piled on the side of the street. This was not the weather to venture out, or ride in a car alone, or weep in a wheelchair holding a bag of toiletries.
I held the blanket around me, hunching my back to avoid tearing the tender muscles of my stomach, and inched forward into the consulate’s car, a slow, joyless movement. And when I sat in the back seat, I was exhausted, out of breath.
When the car turned toward the Stadtpark and the familiar cardboard sign of the consulate appeared, I could see the bend where I’d fallen, and I could feel the wet trickle down my thighs. My hand went to my soft stomach. But how foolish I was. My body was hollow now.
In front of the apartment building, the car stopped. There were no queues of visa seekers holding folders and briefcases, the butcher’s shop was closed, and at the front step of the Laundromat, a woman, her head covered by a black cloth, was carrying a basket of laundry. With the noise of the washing machines drumming in my ears, I struggled to get out of the car and into the wheelchair; then I entered my apartment building.
Fengshan, his fountain pen in hand, was sitting at his desk. He explained that he had been ready to pick me up at the hospital, but then a man, desperate, had knocked on his car’s window and thrown the application forms into the car. So he had decided to take care of them.
Nothing could stop him. Not Eichmann’s intimidation, not the demolition of his consulate, not the loss of his unborn child or the mutilation of his wife.
“There you are. How are you feeling, Grace?”
“I’m still alive, for better or for worse.” And he was still signing visas. The world hadn’t changed, but it would never be the same.
“Look.” He paced the room. “I believe people still need visas, but for some reason, they were prevented from getting close to the building. I wondered if they were intimidated, so I’ve been watching the street. I haven’t seen anyone suspicious.”
By that, I assumed that he meant the man who had attacked me. “They’ve ruined my life. What else do they want?”
His look was sympathetic, and his eyes grew brighter. He felt my pain, of course he did—it was our child that we had lost, but that was not enough. Why couldn’t he come to help me get discharged? Did his visa application forms matter more than I did?
I wheeled to my bedroom.
Such a small room. Empty. And cold. Nothing belonged to me, the comforter, the curtains, the bed. Just as in all the places I had stayed in before. In a slow and agonizing motion that I wished never to repeat, I got out of the wheelchair and sat on the edge of the bed. To the right was the solitary bay window to the street, and to the left, a small courtyard embedded with dead nettles and ice. Outside, the snow fell, piling on the cobblestones and crumbly earth, reaching the windowsill, a sea of shadows.
It was December, the month I liked the least, the end of the year, a time of family, of friendship, of warmth.
A few days later, Fengshan sent Monto to stay with a friend of his for Christmas, so I wouldn’t be burdened with caring for him during my recovery. But I would have liked to take care of him; Fengshan should have known that. But what was the point of arguing?
I was such an invalid, unable to get up for a cup of water, or go to the bathroom, or even fetch a handkerchief. A single cough racked my body; a slight push tore the severed muscles in my lower abdomen. To alleviate the pain, I was hooked on morphine.
All day, I floated in the painless void, sleepless and dreamless. When I awoke, I stared at the baby clothes I had salvaged before the building was demolished. Rose pink. Warm yellow. Powder blue. All colorful, crumpled, discarded, meaningless. Like all my efforts. Saving Lola’s family, saving Lola, getting pregnant.
Yet it didn’t have to be this way. In another world, I could have been a mother, I could have been the strong woman I had hoped to be, and I could have been a beloved wife and a good friend.