“I will not stop,” Ho said calmly. “They will have to drag me away.” He sat. “You have a fresh stack of forms? Ah, good. Thank you. Now send the first one in.”
That summer David watched Margit playing with Leo in their locked room, wondering how long she could keep him inside where it was safe. It was no life for a small boy. He agonized constantly about whether they should leave, and how to get them out, even though he had nowhere for them to go. His parents were dead. Her parents were still here in Vienna, old and infirm. They refused to leave, but urged David to get Margit and Leo out. Her dear cousin Hannah was also desperate to get out with her husband and children.
David and Margit spent hours in bed, planning it out: each would take no more than one small valise, with a third bag devoted to things for Leo. Margit packed the boy’s hand-crocheted blankets and miniature satin-trimmed nightshirts, while David lay awake long after she and Leo were asleep and blinked painfully at the ceiling, trying to figure out how it could be done. He had enough money for steerage, now euphemistically called Tourist Class, and a little extra; they would need every last schilling to get started in their new land, wherever that was.
And therein lay the trouble, for no land would take them. He had been to almost every embassy and consulate in Vienna. Think. Find a way. He lay for a long time and no answer came to him, except that he must venture out again the next day, to wait in another line.
It was then, standing in line at the Mexican Embassy, that he heard Ho Feng-Shan at the Chinese Consulate was making up phony visas for a free port that required none, and giving them out as fast as he could write them. David left the Mexico line and ran to the Chinese Consulate, arriving there at midday with nothing but his violin case, which he carried everywhere with him. After one look at the line, he considered going home first to get food, but he saw people coming from all directions, hurrying to the queue, joining it, tailing it longer and longer, so he stepped in quickly and took his place, just inside the gate, before the line spilled out of the consulate grounds.
There followed a long day and cold night, one in which he could not dare to sleep, or even sit on the ground for a few minutes, lest he drift off and lose his place, his violin, or both. Instead he stayed upright, stamping, moving, clapping through the hours. He knew Margit would be beside herself with worry, but there was nothing he could do about that; now, with many hundreds in line behind him, he would not leave.
Around eight the next morning, as he stood bleary-eyed, a shiver of excitement swept up the long snake-coil of people stretching down the block: Ho Feng-Shan was coming. And David yawned and popped his ears and then he could hear it too, the approaching automobile.
As it turned in to the long driveway, the square black vehicle with silver running boards was instantly surrounded by people waving, tapping the windows, calling out to the mild-faced Asian man in the back seat. The car ground to a stop, idling, spitting exhaust. The force of the crowd pushed David right up to the car, against the window. He saw that the man in the back kept a serene gaze, despite the chaos outside the car. Be patient. I will take care of you, all of you.
Ho Feng-Shan must have sensed him there, because he turned at that moment and met David’s eyes. They joined in a bubble of shared silence amid the din of shouts and pleas and cries.
Wordlessly, David raised his violin case to display it through the window. This is who I am. Help me.
To his amazement, the Consul on the other side of the glass took a paper from a stack on the seat beside him, signed it, and then cranked the window open a few inches to thrust it out.
David stared, dumbfounded, frozen.
The Consul gave the paper a shake. Take it.
So David did, and at that moment the crowd parted in front of the vehicle and the driver inched forward. David looked at the paper. It was a family visa for Shanghai, stamped, signed, the ink still wet, only one line left blank, the one where he would write their names, David and Margit Epstein and Leo. They would sail right away, get on a ship out of Genoa, and trust God to protect them at sea.
Our freedom our freedom our freedom. He tucked the precious paper inside his shirt and pressed his violin case against it all the way home. As soon as he inserted his key in the door, he heard her glad shriek, and his heart twisted again at the thought of all she had suffered through the night, not knowing what had happened, imagining every possible reason why he’d failed to come home-the door creaked open to her face, swollen with tears, happy now, praising God, and then going mute at something too good to be true, a dream fulfilled from nowhere, out of the air.
“Pack, Liebchen. We are going to Shanghai.” He threw the bolt behind him, pressed the visa into her hands, and fell exhausted, shoes, suspenders and all, across the bed.
She tucked a pillow under his head, covered him with their big woolen wedding blanket, and let him sleep while she dried her tears and prayed her thanks to God.
A humble silence fell over the little group around the table. David’s and Margit’s eyes were locked in gratitude, while Leo slept in his mother’s lap. All of them felt the grace of God, suspended in the room with the last words of the story. “I too am grateful to Consul Ho,” Thomas said at last. “That you are here, well and healthy.”
At this Margit got up, handed Leo to David, and went out with a short excuse, as if going to use the alley outhouse, except that as she brushed past him to the door, Thomas saw her eyes welling.
“It’s her cousin Hannah,” David said softly after she was gone. “We write letter after letter, and there is never any reply. No news from anyone in Vienna. The children are just a little older than Leo. We don’t know if they are alive or dead.” He looked down at his own son, safe in his trembling arms, and held him tighter.
“I’m so sorry,” Thomas said. And they sat together in silence until Margit came back, and he thanked them, and embraced them from the deeper well of all they had told him.
In the tingzijian he found the light on and Lin awake, leaning against the wall in the corner where he had made his pallet. Before Thomas could even speak, he looked up and said, “I finally reached Duke Kung. He is a busy man.”
“Clearly.”
“But he left a meeting to talk to me.”
“He was worried. He cares about you.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Stop talking like that. Look at all you do. You brought jazz here. You got everyone dancing.”
“You did, you and your men, just like Buck Clayton and Teddy Weatherford before you. Not me. But that’s finished now. Night in Shanghai is dead.”
“We’re not, and we are still with you, in case you hadn’t noticed. So is Kung. He seems to think of you as a son.”
“No surprise, I guess. It’s as clear as looking into water that I needed another father.” It was the first spark of the old, wry Lin that Thomas had seen since the day they pulled him out of the Hollywood.
Encouraged, he lowered himself to the floor beside his friend, leveling their eyes. “All of us you brought here-we never had this before. I’m not talking about the money. Respect. I would say it’s something true of every musician you brought here, that he yearned for that all his life. And this is the one place we all found it, because of you. You saved us that way. Even when we go back to America, back to the bottom, we’ll know.”
Lin nodded.
“And now, you are helping the Jews-including Margit’s cousin-”