The next day, in his apartment, Ernest wrote a letter to his parents and enclosed in the envelope a bill of two American dollars, which he had exchanged in a bank near the waterfront. He underlined his address in Shanghai and asked when they would arrive before sealing the envelope. He had finally located the German post office, so he would send out the letter today.
He missed them. His father, Tevye Reismann, was a man of earth. His face and hands, having been baked in the sun for years, were the shade of dirt; his jackets and trousers were an earthen brown, and when he took off his coat in the parlor, he freed legions of clods of earth. He smelled of earth, even after five cigarettes. An archaeologist, he devoted all his attention to the digs, excavating relics and uncovering runes and often taking months-long trips overseas. He was a taciturn man, rarely wore a tallit except on the Sabbath, and was more attracted to graves and stones than politics and religion. All men are made of earth: kings and pharaohs, rabbis and priests, he often said.
His mother, well, she was something else. Her face was a theater of cosmetics with yellow and blue eye shadows, red rouge, and purple or black lipstick, her clothes a whirlwind of colors—emerald green, sea blue, acorn brown, or royal purple. A daughter of a jeweler, she taught theater and was fluent in German, Yiddish, French, and Italian. An extrovert, she could talk up a storm with strangers while shopping for gefilte fish. On High Holidays, she ordered his siblings to the synagogue to sit through hour-long services, but only on High Holidays, for she was too busy with her social commitments. She was like her name: Chava. Life.
A strict mother, she interrogated him about whom he socialized with and ordered him to practice the piano daily. She held high hopes for him. One day, he would win international prizes and become a world-renowned pianist, she believed.
That was before the Kristallnacht, before his father’s arrest. At their last Passover, a day after his father had been released from three months’ incarceration, looking anxious and haggard, she had observed with one piece of matzah and a deep, reflective reading of the Haggadah. Her usual dramatic voice was stretched tight with tension, and her long black hair, which she often styled in a French braid, was messy. Her head was hung low, her back stiff, her eyes an ocean of sadness.
When she arrived in Shanghai, she would be her extrovert self again. She would without a doubt tell him what to do, too. He wondered if he had said too much about Aiyi in his letter. His mother would definitely discourage him from socializing with her—he could imagine her shock: “A Gentile! A Chinese! Why would you see someone like that?” “You can do better than that, Ernest.” “For the love of God, Ernest, can you stop seeing her?” On and on.
But he was not a religious man. He preferred pilsner over schnapps and believed shaving was more hygienic than growing facial hair. He ate chicken that was not kosher and always thought nonkosher food tasted better. He became a bar mitzvah, but after the party he kept the money and forgot both baruchas of the Torah. He didn’t care that Aiyi was not Jewish. She wore a dress of finery and aloofness, but she was truer than any woman he had ever met.
23
AIYI
The next morning after kissing Ernest, I finally put on loose trousers and a long tunic and went to the reception hall to talk to Peiyu. My eyes were swollen from crying, my hair messy; in the calmest voice I could muster, I told her about Cheng in the car.
Peiyu was eating sweetened lotus seed soup with dried chrysanthemum blossoms. She had given birth to a baby girl in the spring. For several months, she had stayed in bed, and today was the first day she succeeded in making the longest march from her bedroom to the reception hall.
“I see. Cheng must be angry. What did you do wrong?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
She spooned some soup into her mouth. Each time after she gave birth she had the lotus seed soup for six months and then complained about her waist. “So he stopped when you told him. What’s the matter? He didn’t force himself on you. Nothing happened. He’s a young man, and young men have urges, they have needs; they’re different from women. Besides, your wedding is next spring. I’ve had the invitations printed. They’re in the drawer. Would you include a note and your personal seal with each? Have you tried this soup?”
I was speechless. Had I overreacted?
Another spoonful of soup. “He’s waited long enough.”
I couldn’t argue with that. We would have wedded years ago had it not been for the sudden deaths of my parents, the sudden war, the sudden occupation, the not-so-sudden dwindling wealth of my family, and the must-not-be-so-sudden process of finding an auspicious date for marriage, which included considerations of our birth dates and our animals and the signs of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches.