The Diplomat’s Daughter Page 21

  But before Leo could answer, they saw the distinguished figure of Norio Kato walking up the path from his car.

  Max sprang to open the door for him, apologizing for their behavior and welcoming him inside.

  “I thought it was safer if I didn’t call,” said Norio. “I’m sorry I startled you.”

  Leo looked out to the car, hoping Emi was with him, but only Norio and a chauffeur had made the journey.

  “I have a solution,” said Norio, when they were all sitting down. “It’s not Switzerland, but in many ways it could be safer. If you can leave with me, immediately, I will explain everything on the road. Right now, we need to get you to Italy. And in two days, you will be sailing to Shanghai.”

  CHAPTER 19

  LEO HARTMANN

  DECEMBER 1938

  Norio had explained to the Hartmanns how he had obtained visas for them to enter Shanghai—with the help of the Chinese consul-general in Vienna, Ho Feng-Shan—but the Hartmanns did not grasp the extent of what the consul-general had done until they boarded the ship. There the three words they heard more than any others during their first day at sea—the first of the thirty days it would take them to reach Shanghai—were Ho Feng-Shan.

  “You don’t need a visa to enter Shanghai, which is under Japanese rule, but you need a visa for another country to leave Austria,” Norio had informed them in the Benns’ house. “The Chinese, for now, are willing to grant these visas. And if you have boat tickets for immediate passage out of Europe, even better. The boats are few and only leave from Germany and Italy. They go via Japan and several other countries, a monthlong journey, but they are all booked for the next year. You can imagine why. And if a ticket can be bought, a round-trip must be purchased, for as chaotic as Asia is right now—Shanghai especially—these boat companies will not guarantee that they can deposit passengers there. It’s a disaster at best, but one worth trying. It helps if you lie to the boat companies and say the tickets are for Japanese diplomats. Then suddenly, doors open.” He reached into his coat pocket and handed Max three tickets for a boat called the Potsdam, leaving from Genoa. In his other hand were three visas for Shanghai. “They should have been stamped directly into your passports,” he explained, “but they should still work.”

  Hani had reached out for them, holding hers up to the lamp to read it over and over, as if she couldn’t believe it was real. Finally, she’d put it down and said, “Oh, Mr. Kato, I will never be able to repay you for this.” She broke down into tears, and Max had to keep her from hugging the esteemed diplomat, still dressed for a day at the office.

  “I know China and Japan are not on the best terms right now,” Max had said, reaching out to shake Norio’s hand. “So for you to go to the consulate for us—”

  “Yes, so kind,” Hani had said, interrupting her husband. “On top of the kindness your daughter has shown to Leo. Please let us repay you financially. You must accept at least double what you have paid. When our chauffeur is back in Vienna he will bring you the money. Our accounts have been frozen, but we have some means—”

  “Of course that is not necessary,” Norio had said, stopping her. “I did not do much. It was mostly the Chinese consul.” He’d pointed to Ho Feng-Shan’s name on the visas. “I have learned since obtaining these that he has already issued many visas for Jews this year, and hopefully will grant many more.”

  They could take few possessions with them, Norio had instructed. Their luggage—and their persons—would be searched for contraband many times, and they should not attempt to bring anything of value, although Hani would be allowed to bring her wedding ring and a watch. Norio had had all their travel documents processed in advance, getting around barriers with bribe after bribe, and he promised to try to get the family money when they reached China, either out of their frozen bank accounts or through his.

  Just an hour after Norio had arrived, the Hartmanns’ chauffeur was on his way back to Vienna while Norio’s driver ferried him and the Hartmanns to Innsbruck, where the family were to catch an express train to Genoa.

  The drive to Innsbruck took just under three hours and there was very little time for emotional goodbyes at the station, where the train stood ready to depart. But Leo lingered for a moment with Norio.

  “There will never be anyone in my life like your family, Mr. Kato,” he said. “If we don’t survive this ordeal, please tell Emi that she was very important to me. Tell her that there is no one else like her in the world, no one as interesting, as curious, as talented. I am quite embarrassed professing my love to her father like this, but I miss her very much already. She has made the last two years wonderful, when they could have been very difficult.”

  “I know she would echo your sentiments, Leo,” said Norio, bowing. “Now please, don’t miss your train, and make sure you take care of your parents. It’s always harder for the older generation to leave their country behind than it is for the young.”

  Leo nodded and ran onto the train, where Gestapo officers were already checking papers, clicking their black boots intimidatingly. They looked, and looked again, at the family’s visas and boat tickets, finally tossing them back into Max’s lap and moving on to the next passengers. It wasn’t until they were nearing the Italian border that the family started taking deep breaths, and when they crossed into Italy a cheer was heard throughout the train. They were out of Austria.

  On December 15, just thirty-five days after Max Hartmann had been beaten unconscious by the Sturmabteilung, the SA, the family was far enough out to sea that they could no longer make out European land.

  “Good riddance,” Hani had said to her son, hugging him and her husband on deck. “It wasn’t home anymore.”

  At dinner their first night on the Potsdam, they sat with a couple with two small children who told the Hartmanns to eat everything they could on the luxurious boat because Shanghai, they had heard, only had food for the Japanese.

  “You are here because of Ho Feng-Shan,” the wife said.

  “Yes,” said Hani, smiling at Leo. “And a few other benevolent men helped us, too. But the Chinese diplomat, he is issuing visas for Jews. Many, many, we heard.”

  “It was the tickets for this boat that were harder to get,” said the husband. “We are only here because the father of another family was killed by the SA the week before the boat was set to sail. There was a wife and two children, as well, so there was room on the boat for four. Their travel agent called us to inquire if we could pay for the tickets and leave at once since we were on the top of the waiting list.”

  “No!” said Hani, reaching for Leo’s hand.

  “Yes,” said the man, “we were very lucky.”

  The Hartmanns looked at the couple’s two young children, who did not seem to understand how they’d been granted passage, and excused themselves from the table.

  Leo and his parents went onto the deck, where they took out and studied the map Norio had drawn for them of the ship’s route. From Genoa, they would go to Port Said in Egypt, then sail through the Gulf of Suez, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea to the Indian Ocean, before docking in Bombay and again in Ceylon. From there it was the Orient: Singapore, Hong Kong, and Kobe, Japan, before heading south to Shanghai.

  “I used to feel far from home when I was across the city,” said Leo, watching the stream of white left by the boat as it churned slowly through the water.

  “I want to be far from home,” said Hani. “And I never want to return.”

  CHAPTER 20

  EMI KATO

  SEPTEMBER–NOVEMBER 1943

  She hadn’t thought of it before she let her mind wander back to Vienna, but Hani Hartmann looked quite a lot like Christian’s bereaved mother, Helene. They both had striking red hair—Helene’s straight and Hani’s a bit darker and curled—though Emi had never been sure if those curls, or the color, were natural or not. They had freckles that made intricate constellations on their arms and were both mothers to only one son. She hoped that Hani Hartman
n had not spent the last few months covering her freckles with tears, as Helene was likely still doing as she sat by her window looking out at Crystal City.

  There wasn’t, thought Emi, a soul with russet-colored freckles on the MS Gripsholm, except perhaps the captain, but Emi hadn’t seen him yet. He was busy navigating their immense vessel straight down the Atlantic coast toward South America.

  Emi turned around at the railing and looked at the people on the deck with her instead of out at the ocean. They were all ethnically Japanese. Emi realized that she wasn’t used to that kind of homogeneity anymore. Even in the internment camps, the populations had been mixed. Now she was headed back to a country that was filled with Emikos and Keikos; there would be no Christian Langes or Leo Hartmanns. How strange, she thought to herself, to have been involved only with foreign men. Chiyo’s gossip down in the cabin was still eating at her, but if she could blame anyone, she thought, it should be her father. She hadn’t asked to be dragged all over the world. There were no Japanese boys for her to fall in love with in Vienna, and in that city, you had to fall in love with someone. It was too beautiful to waste, especially for the young.

  Though the first night on board the Gripsholm went smoothly, despite the small cabin and the poor company, the water turned choppy as soon as dawn broke over the horizon on their second day at sea. The Swedish crew members came around to each little room handing the passengers big bars of chocolate, which they said had been reserved as a surprise for when they reached their halfway point in the voyage but were being handed out now instead, as they had rough days ahead. The passengers were advised not to eat the chocolate yet, to wait until the water was calm and there was less danger of seasickness, but Emi unwrapped hers and devoured every morsel in big, starving bites. She hoped the sugar would help settle her stomach, which was starting to feel like a mixing bowl. Emi was well-versed in seasickness from her many long boat trips, but some of the Nisei children, who had never traveled on a boat for such a distance or on one that size, did everything wrong, eating too much and staying in their cabins instead of going up to the deck to breathe the cold sea air.

  The weather turned worse on the third and fourth days, and all Emi could hear for forty-eight hours was the sound of bathroom doors opening and closing, waves splashing against the ship like slaps in the face, and the collective groan of over a thousand green-faced people trying not to be sick. When the boat finally settled, on their fifth day at sea, it smelled of vomit, cleaning fluid, and chocolate bars, as Emi was not the only one who failed to heed the crew’s warning.

  That night the dinner on board, which was eaten only by the hungry few, including the well-traveled Katos, was beef stew with the thick, Italian-style noodles that few of the Japanese were accustomed to eating. Emi wondered if they might all be sick again, but her stomach proved stronger than her confidence, which could not be said of Chiyo and Naoko. It took two weeks for them not to look green in the face.

  It was during the third week at sea that the monotony of being trapped on a ship set in for Emi and her mother. The mornings and afternoons started to run into each other, then the days were hard to tell apart and whenever someone mentioned the day of the week, Emi was always surprised. Everything was blue when the sun was out—the sky, the water, the décor of the ship—and at night everything was black. Blue and black, blue and black, a two-colored world floating past her. Emi started to come up to deck less, choosing instead to sleep and rest the days away. Lying in her narrow bed with too many metal coils sticking in her back and not enough blankets, she thought often of Christian and what they’d shared in Crystal City. She wondered if Leo had had any indiscretions since he’d left Vienna. Had he also been desperate to find some joy in a difficult time?

  The MS Gripsholm’s first stop on their eighty-three-day voyage was Rio de Janeiro, logistically a challenge for the understaffed Swedish crew, who had to bring on board nearly a hundred more people—Japanese who had been living in Brazil for years, sometimes generations—who would also be traded in India for American citizens. But despite that task, the crew informed the passengers the night before they docked in Brazil that they would be allowed to leave the ship, unsupervised, for several hours. And not only were they allowed to leave the ship and walk around the city, but they would all have time to go up Rio’s famed Sugarloaf Mountain by cable car, akin to flying for people who had spent more than a year behind fences.

  Emi, thrilled at the prospect, leaned against her mother and said, “Freedom.” Together they stayed on deck, well positioned as the sprawling metropolis came into view. They looked down at the craggy coastline, the low houses that seemed to go on forever behind the tall apartment blocks lining the sparkling shore, the dots of palm trees and the white boats, which looked so small below them, and heard each other’s breathing slow down.

  “Can you imagine?” said Keiko as the anchor dropped. “It took a world war, a year and a half of internment, and a long ride on a Swedish boat to allow us to see such a place.”

  “It’s very pretty,” said Emi, smiling and pressing her hips into the railing, as she was apt to do. “But I don’t think it was worth it.”

  “I don’t, either,” said Keiko, holding her daughter’s hand as she leaned out even farther.

  When they were in the slow-moving cable car with the vibrant city beneath them and Rio’s iconic mountains in front of them, Keiko said, “Let’s appreciate being in a country that isn’t at war. Let’s remember every minute of this.”

  “I’ll come back and see Rio under different circumstances one day,” said Emi when they stepped out of the cable car. “I’m sure of it.”

  “I don’t doubt my daughter’s will, ever,” said Keiko. “I learned that a long time ago. You’re a stubborn child, but that’s not a bad trait in a modern young woman, especially one these days.”

  “I don’t feel very modern,” said Emi. “Look at me, going back to Japan to do what?”

  “To stay alive. To help your parents stay alive,” said Keiko, sadly. “You’re still a modern woman, just one hindered by war. Trust me, you are far luckier than I was. I was taught that the only reason to better myself was so that I might marry a remarkable man. No one told me to be remarkable myself. But your father has been telling you to be since the day you were born. And you know what? I think it worked,” she said, looking at her daughter with pride.

  The boat did not drop anchor again for several weeks—weeks that Emi spent mostly with her eyes closed, letting herself dream about the past, knowing that it would be those memories that would make her future bearable.

  When the Gripsholm finally docked again, it was at South Africa’s Port Elizabeth in early October, but the weather tricked them into thinking it hadn’t been thirty-seven days since they left New York.

  This stop, the crew warned before the ship pulled into harbor, would be far less pleasant than Rio. They were told that here they were only allowed to walk onshore close to the dock.

  As the boat crept up the coast of Africa, slowing as Port Elizabeth came into view, the crew expressed surprise to see the port fully illuminated.

  “We were told we would be coming in dark,” one said to Emi as she stood back on the deck, this time having no desire to be at the front of the boat. “Maybe you’ll be let off for longer than we thought.”

  But it wasn’t to be. While the crew said they could stay on land for four hours as they took care of administrative duties, almost none of the passengers did once they confronted the WHITES ONLY signs dotting Port Elizabeth like the signs many had seen all over California after Pearl Harbor.

  “Are we considered white here?” Emi asked her mother as another mother pulled her child away from the large sign. Keiko didn’t answer. She sighed, told her daughter to stretch her arms and legs, enjoy stable land for a few minutes more, and then they were going back on board.

  Her mother was right, thought Emi. They had heard enough about such signs from the Issei and Nisei in Crystal City. They didn�
��t need to be subjected to them, too, even if they were meant for a different race.

  On the forty-fourth day, after the forty-fourth sunrise and the forty-fourth breakfast of weak tea, too-soft rice, and dried fish, India was supposed to be on the horizon. Emi, her mother, and the Kuriyamas stood on the deck together looking for a dark line to indicate land. Chiyo had not grown any friendlier to Emi as the trip wore on, using every moment they were alone together to bring up the expectations facing Japanese women in wartime, as if it were an honor to be deprived. But Keiko had pleaded with her daughter to remain civilized, since they were in such tight quarters. They were on a boat, Keiko reminded Emi, where rumors traveled fast. If Chiyo wanted to start talking about Norio Kato’s rude, promiscuous daughter on board, word would certainly get back to Norio Kato and the Foreign Ministry staff as soon as they docked in Yokohama. Out of respect for her parents, Emi was polite. She smiled at the women when she rolled out of her bed and let the Kuriyamas use the bathroom first both mornings and evenings. She spoke of nothing unpleasant, and even when she was privately burning with contempt for them, she always managed to make banal small talk. The result was that by the time they reached India, Chiyo’s harassment, while still biting, had been less constant.

  They saw nothing but blue sky and dark ocean all through the morning on what they called India day, but just before lunch was served, a young boy whose hair had clearly been cut with the aid of a soup bowl screamed “Riku—Riku ga mieta!” and everyone on the deck rushed to where he was standing to see if they, too, could see land. Emi squinted and tried to find a high perch so the midday sun wasn’t blocking her view. After a few seconds, she saw it. India. The word riku flew around the boat, drawing passengers up from below deck like a magnet.

  “If we weren’t prisoners, this would be much more exciting,” Chiyo said to Emi, and for the first time, she agreed with her.