“Consul Ho,” said a child’s voice, and he turned to look.
“Lord have mercy,” he exclaimed, one of the first English expressions he had learned as a child from the Norwegians who had schooled him, and which still erupted from him fairly regularly.
It was Lilith-Sylvia Doron. He knew her family; twice he had visited their home for dinner. “What are you doing out here by yourself, Sylvia?”
“I was with some girls from my class. I got separated.” She looked ready to cry, and with good reason, he thought. The Doron family was Jewish, and this parade was a terrifying show of Nazi force.
She was shaking. He slipped his hand through hers. “Come,” he said. “I take you home.”
He sensibly led her away from the military marchers and the crowds shouting Sieg Heil, and down quieter streets also lined with bare-limbed trees, the houses stern and silent with their curtains drawn. Consul Ho could feel the eyes on him as he walked the girl down the street.
When he rang her parents’ doorbell and they opened up, they started to cry.
“Now, come,” he said reasonably, “she’s safe and sound. If you are really frightened, I will stay a little while. I am a diplomat! I am the Consul General. No one will harm you while I am here.”
And with that he sat down in the parlor, not far from the welcoming fire, and chatted with Sylvia, and her brother, Karl, and their parents. It was not until evening that Herr and Frau Doron said they felt safe, and that it would be all right if he went home. “Remember,” he said before he left. “We are friends. Any problem, come to me.”
In the months that followed, actions against Jews became frequent and public. He saw SS men waiting outside synagogues, where they grabbed Jewish men emerging from services, shoved them into trucks, and then forced them to use their prayer shawls to scrub the urinals in the SS barracks. Ho Feng-Shan found it childish and hateful.
In midsummer, people started lining up at the Chinese Consulate. Soon the line stretched all the way down the driveway. People stood there for hours.
Jews.
“Shenmo shi?” he hissed to Guomei, his secretary, when he came in. What is it?
“Visas,” she said. “They want visas.”
“What do you mean? What sort of visas?”
She shrugged.
He went in his office with its striped wallpaper and reassuringly heavy desk, thinking maybe he could shut out the noise and the line of people. He knew that the Nazis would not let Jews out of the country unless they had a visa to enter someplace else, and since no country would take them, they were trapped.
He saw he had left the door half-open, and when he got up to close it, he heard a familiar voice, asking for him, being told to wait, asking again.
He put his head out. “Sylvia?”
“Consul Ho!” She broke away from Guomei and ran toward him.
“What are you doing here?”
“You have to help! You said to come to you, remember-”
“Sit down, child,” he said kindly, and slipped into Chinese to ask the secretary to bring tea. “It’s clear you’ve had a fright. Now.” He fixed his eyes on her. He was known for his serene, calming gaze. Maybe it was because he himself was filled with trust, for had not life always been good to him, despite such difficult beginnings? Had not God always treated him kindly? So he was kind in return. “Tell me what’s happened.”
“They arrested Karl!”
“What! Where is he?”
“They put him on a train to Dachau.”
Dachau. Ho Feng-Shan felt the chill in his intestines.
“They won’t let him out unless he has a visa to go somewhere else. Can you give him one for Shanghai? Please!”
He felt his brows knit. “The Chinese Consulate does not issue any visas for Shanghai,” he said. “You do not need a visa to go there. No one does. There is no such thing as a Shanghai visa.”
Tears streamed down her face. He realized she would always be a child to him, even though she stood before him now on the edge of growing up. He would do anything to help her.
His mind ranged over Karl’s case. It was true that no one needed a visa or even any form of identification to enter Shanghai. All arrivals were welcome, no matter where they came from or how they got there.
“Give him one anyway,” she said through her tears.
“We can certainly try, no? Guomei!” he called imperiously. “Bring me a visa form.” And then, to her answering stream of Chinese, he said, “How would I know? Bring whatever you think a visa form should look like.”
Twenty minutes later they had a reasonable facsimile of a visa form, and an official-looking series of stamps to make it seem authentic. “You see?” said Ho. “The very first Shanghai visa.” He signed with a flourish, and then dictated a stern letter to the Commandant at Dachau advising him to release Karl Doron immediately so that he could leave Austria under this visa, with his entire family included. Etcetera. In the name of the Republic of China. Consul General. And so on.
To his intense embarrassment, Sylvia clung to his arm and sobbed, choked with gratitude, and he dried her tears and scolded her a little, telling her to be strong. “Take care of Karl’s envelope. Here is another visa for your family, just in case. Put them inside your jacket. Yes, that’s a good girl. Now, Sylvia-don’t wait. Pack quickly and get out, just as soon as you get Karl back again. Hurry.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She moved to the door.
“And Sylvia? God be with you and your family.” He meant it. He felt sure the Lutherans would have wanted him to help.
He watched from the tall window, half-hidden behind its heavy velvet curtain, as she ran out the front door and pushed past the line of people winding out toward the gate. He sensed a murmur go through the crowd at her appearance, a frisson of hope.
“Guomei?” he called over his shoulder. “About that visa form.” He followed the line with his eyes, estimating the numbers. “I want you to produce as many as you can. Hire an assistant. We’re going to need one hundred blank forms, right away. Another hundred by the end of the day Wednesday.”
“You could just turn them away,” she said.
“No,” he said, without explanation. Ho Feng-Shan had been privileged to see God’s goodness; he could not expect everybody to understand.
He had been born of peasant stock. Though he was given the optimistic name Feng-Shan, meaning a phoenix that rises from the mountain, in truth he was the poorest of the poor. His father died when he was seven and his mother could no longer care for him. She gave him to the Norwegian Lutheran Mission over his screaming protests, asking of them only that they feed him. They did that and more, educating him in English and in their ways. He believed in God and Christ, after his years with them. They did not have to explain it to him, he saw it; they redeemed him. Raised him and nurtured him and handed him an education, all in the name of doing God’s work. Now, as a diplomat, he did the same for others.
And so it was that Ho Feng-Shan said yes to the person at the head of the line, the one after that, and the one after that. He sat at his desk all day, signing visas until his hand ached. Each visa was good for a whole family-why not, they were his visas, he was inventing them. One paper per family was more economical, and yet still the line stretched every day, as far as he could see. How many Jews could there be in Vienna? Yes, you’re welcome, good luck, bon voyage, now please step aside so the next person can come in.
The Ambassador in Berlin heard what he was doing and excoriated Consul Ho for his impudence. He ordered him to stop at once. The Consul put the angry cables in a drawer and ignored them.
Then he arrived in the morning to find Guomei reading even more cables, her sensible skirt clinging to the swell of her hips, her red lips parted in fear. “He says stop or you’ll be arrested,” she said. For the first time, she looked scared.