Mohr Page 7

  “Who?”

  “Krecke. A surgeon from Munich. He used to come down here on Sundays to ski. We had met by chance a few weeks earlier, up on the Wallberg, as a matter of fact. Papa had given him some skiing pointers, told him about his plan to climb the Gross-Venediger. And now here he was at Papa’s bedside! He had heard about the accident from somebody in town and said he had treated lots of bad frostbite cases in the war. So, suddenly, there was hope. Krecke said he’d seen some amazing cases during the war. Do nothing except have patience and try to withstand the pain. As soon as he left, everything changed. We had a goal. We had hope. We knew the way, had a purpose. We began to arrange things right away. The feeling of despair lifted—when you’re young you can do almost anything. I got up early every morning, tended the goats and the chickens—we didn’t have Minna back then. There were ration cards in those days just after the war, but nothing to buy in the stores. Then breakfast. No, first I would light the fire upstairs, then we would have breakfast together, just like you and I do now.”

  Eva is sitting at the end of the bench, sleepily hugging her knees. There are so many details to recall, an enormous number of things to remember. One day she will write them down. But how to record time spent waiting? Waiting is what she recalls above all else. Like some slow-circling bird overhead, waiting, waiting for others who seemed to have never had to wait for anyone or for anything, ever. Why does she wait? Is it possible not to wait? To stop waiting? What is there to look forward to when the waiting is over? When night falls, waiting becomes something she does with her whole body. She looks up into the sky, the mountain peaks rise up, black tatters blotting the stars. There is no place she’d rather wait than right here, outside, on a summer night. What an unquiet thing she is; she has rehearsed all the words she plans to greet Mohr with when she sees him again. But now tomorrow seems too distant to think about. Does it come too late or too soon? She can’t decide. It doesn’t matter; she is still waiting. She nudges Eva, who rubs her eyes sleepily, and leads her upstairs to bed.

  Alone now in her own bed with the windows open to the night air, she tries to imagine life in Shanghai. Servants, skyscrapers, fishy smells from the river—crowded, muddy, and endless. Remember his little joke up on the roof? She must tell him he is wrong. The world does not resolve itself in twos, but in a lingering loneliness. She is waiting for it to end.

  Shanghai

  Wong announces a lady visitor.

  “Nah ee go lie dee?” Mohr asks, though he knows the answer. It’s early evening and he has just finished a telephone consultation, a young American journalist with stomach flu. Did he say he was from San Francisco? Lately Mohr has been daydreaming about America, thinking about Frieda Lawrence. Her last letter had come from Kiowa Ranch. So gross tut die Natur hier alles, she’d written. Nature does everything so BIG here! Their correspondence had resumed just two years ago, when he wrote asking for her consent to publish a selection of his letters from Lorenzo in a Shanghai literary journal. When they were printed he felt a twinge of regret. Lawrence had always disparaged literary magazines, said he had no use for semi-intimate backchat.

  Wong stands inside the door in a new tunic, all white, with a low collar. The sleeves are too short. His hands hang at his sides, overly large. He hasn’t been his cheerful self lately. “Ching tah dzin li,” Mohr tells him. “Show her in.”

  He lights a cigarette and looks in Zappe’s cage. The bird has been strangely quiet for the past day or so. He opens the door and the bird hops onto his index finger. His hands tremble as he lifts it to his shoulder, feels the sudden grip of little feet through his light summer shirt. A woman has come to see him. It isn’t something that happens often. He glances down at himself. White trousers, clean but rumpled. Shoes in need of polish. White shirt. Bow tie—the symbol of his Shanghai-side vita nuova.

  Why the sudden self-consciousness? What happened to the franker, simpler tramp? The spontaneous young man sitting atop the woodpile outside the house, wearing cavalry boots and playing the accordion with Käthe beside him? He had worn those boots for years after the war. They were the best boots he ever had. Somehow he’d managed to hold onto them as a prisoner of war in England. At first Käthe had seemed intimidated by the old farmhouse, and spent the first days there scrubbing the floor planks and taking down all the curtains, rotted and stinking. A city girl from Hamburg, she said she was tired of curtains, told him she wanted to see the slopes rising up behind the house, the cows grazing, the play of sunlight on the treetops. He’d lain half-awake all night, listening to the animals in their stalls. “Do you think they can get into the house?” she asked.

  “If we leave the doors open,” he teased.

  “I noticed hoof marks in the corridor,” Käthe said as he rolled onto her, lips sealing lips.

  Next morning he was outside, sitting on top of the woodpile, playing his new accordion and tapping his heels against well-seasoned oak and birch and ash. The war was over. By a miracle of good luck, they owned an old farmhouse, were alive, in love. He wanted to meet every farmer in the valley.

  When Käthe came outside, he showed her the notice he’d written.

  “What is it?”

  “An announcement.”

  She went back into the house. A few minutes later she was tramping toward him through the wet grass, carrying a loaf of bread, two apples, and a piece of cheese in the folds of her apron. She passed it all up and he handed her the notice to read. “We’ll print it up and send it out this week.”

  Zur Wolfsgrub, Post Rottach

  Am Tegernsee

  Dear friends and family

  We live in the Wolfsgrub, near Rottach, on the Tegernsee.

  We wish you all the best on all your coming birthdays, and every new

  year. Since we are unsure whether we will be able to make our wishes

  clear in advance of our departure, we would ask that you refrain from

  sending flowers to our funeral.

  Greetings always,

  Dr. Max Mohr

  Käthe Mohr, nee Westphal.

  “You can’t send this!” Käthe laughed.

  “Why not?” To live in an old farmhouse. To be alive. It was all so much more enchanting than he could ever have dreamed. “Europe is dead!” he shouted. “Long live the Europeans!” Then he jumped down, gave Käthe his hand, and they went back to bed for the rest of the morning.

  NURSE SIMSON APPEARS in the doorway. “Excuse me for not telephoning first,” she says.

  With the bird perched on his shoulder, Mohr invites her in, offers his hand. Wong is standing behind her. “Nice of you to come.”

  “What a pretty little bird,” she says, reaching up to stroke it. She is wearing a yellow cotton and silk dress, short-sleeved and slit up the sides. Her hair is bobbed short. She strikes him as a completely different person without her nurse’s uniform—a fashionable Shanghainese woman. “How are you feeling?” she asks.

  “Much better, thank you.” He returns Zappe to the cage and closes the door, reminded suddenly of the old folk song about the cuckoo bird who tries to persuade the cowherd that its life is so much finer than a man’s.

  She smiles, glances around the cluttered room. Mohr takes his accordion from the bookshelf.

  “Are you going to play, Dr. Mohr?”

  “Don’t call me doctor,” he says, slipping his arms through the straps.

  “What should I call you?”

  “Mohr. Just call me Mohr.”

  “And please, you must call me Agnes.”

  Mohr nods, puts his fingers on the keys, tests the action. “I haven’t played in a long time.” He unfastens the brass hooks. The bellows expand with a gasp. “I was just remembering an old song. It’s about a cuckoo and a cowherd. I used to sing it to my daughter.” He clears his throat, once, twice, and begins. Music fills the room. He is badly out of practice, but somehow his fingers manage to find the keys. He learned how to play from his father, who also taught him this song. He begins to sing as
Wong enters carrying a tray with tea and biscuits and sets it down, beaming. Mohr has played for Wong once or twice, but has never sung. He finishes, bows to polite applause.

  “I wish I understood the words,” Agnes says.

  “It’s about a cuckoo bird who claims to enjoy life better than the cowherd. It’s supposed to be funny.”

  Wong fills their teacups and then retreats.

  “Is the joke on the cowherd or the cuckoo?” Agnes asks.

  Mohr looks over at the birdcage. “What do you think, Zappe? Which of us enjoys life better?”

  Agnes glances at the cage and smiles. “It’s not such a silly question.”

  A sharp observation. Mohr is very happy to push beyond small talk. “I once had a good friend,” he begins after a brief silence. “We spent a lot of time together, first at my house in Bavaria and then in the south of France in the last months of his life.” He pauses to sip his tea. Agnes is sitting very properly, straight, legs crossed European fashion. Mohr puts down his cup and offers a cigarette. She nods politely as he lights it. “He would often say to me, ‘We don’t know one another.’ The closer we became as friends, the more he would insist on it. It was very strange. ‘I don’t know you and you don’t know me,’ he would say. ‘Let’s not pretend.’ I didn’t understand what he meant.”

  Slightly preoccupied, Mohr tilts his head, exhales a thick, pleasant stream. He leans forward, taps the ash into the ashtray.

  “That is very Chinese,” she says.

  “I knew nothing of China back then.” He smiles. “I know even less of China now.”

  Agnes smiles back. “That means you’re learning.”

  He holds the accordion in his lap, fingers the keys, cigarette dangling from his lips. Somewhat impertinently, he asks, “Which is your Chinese side? Mother or father?”

  She sips her tea before answering. “My mother. My father was English.”

  Mohr squeezes a few chords from the instrument. She seems disinclined to elaborate. “Two very different worlds,” he offers.

  “Yes, that’s true.” She hesitates and adds, “But in this city, one learns to overlook the differences.”

  “Do you ever feel caught? Between the differences, I mean?”

  She considers the question for a moment, then shakes her head. “No. I don’t feel caught. Do you?”

  Mohr laughs. “Me? I always feel caught.” He glances at Zappe’s cage, and squeezes another chord out of the instrument. The bird cocks its head. Mohr sets the accordion aside and falls quiet for a moment. Lawrence would have twisted the question in precisely that way—and not sweetly, but with a chiseled glare and a challenge to answer. “My friend used to say that he was a giraffe. And his fellow Englishmen, they were all well-behaved dogs. They were different animals.” He tamps his cigarette out in the ashtray. “In Germany today, people like me are the giraffes, and the well-behaved German dogs are all being told to chase giraffes.”

  Agnes puts out her cigarette as well, then stands up and smooths her dress. “You said you would show me your clinic.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  He leads her down the short corridor, gestures to the door on the left. “The waiting room. Wong sleeps there at night.” He produces a key, and stops short at the sound of a woman’s voice coming from behind the waiting-room door. Mohr shrugs and pushes open another door. “My examination room,” he announces, flipping on the light switch.

  Agnes steps to the center of the room, crosses her arms, nods approvingly. Mohr points out all the features of his modest little practice—the examination table, the glass instrument cabinet, the metal washbasin. The paint on the ceiling is chalking and beginning to flake in areas. On the wall hangs a silk scroll reproduction of Su Tung Po’s famous bamboo painting. He had bought it the very week he arrived. A Chinese lamp sits atop the instrument cabinet.

  “Very nice,” Agnes pronounces.

  They stand in the center of the room together, silently appraising. “The low-budget doctor of Shanghai,” Mohr jokes. “But look! A refrigerator. American.”

  “And medicine?”

  “Well, that’s another matter.” He glances at his watch in a sudden burst of inspiration. “Do you have time for a little outing?” Before she can respond, Mohr is moving toward the door. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll only be a minute.”

  Half an hour later they are sitting in the eighth-floor lounge of the Cathay Hotel. Mohr is dressed in a tuxedo, the one he bought for his forty-fifth birthday last year. He sat for an entire evening all alone in this brass-and-marble lounge, drinking champagne and reading The Sun Also Rises—also purchased as a birthday present for himself. “Have you read any Hemingway?” he asks, remembering the spell the book cast on him, and how, as he sat here reading it by Lalique chandelier-light with Mister Nelson’s Hot Shanghai Jazz Band playing in the background, he tried to imagine himself as one of those spoiled Americans, drinking and roaming the globe.

  Agnes shakes her head. “I have only heard of him. Is he good?”

  A waiter sets down two whiskey sodas with a lingering glance of disapproval at Agnes, who ignores him. They are sitting in large leather chairs, separated by a small table. “Yes. He is very good.”

  “My father loved Thomas Hardy. Do you know Thomas Hardy?”

  “The Mayor of Casterbridge. The Return of the Native.” Mohr recites the titles. By her smile he guesses that she has just telegraphed something about herself. He remembers Hardy’s characters very well—exploding out of convention to die, alone, in the wilderness. “Have you ever been to England?” he asks.

  “Never,” she says. “Have you?”

  “Once.” Mohr sips his whiskey, is about to elaborate, but then thinks better of it and changes his mind.

  “I would love to go there someday. To Nottingham, where my father was from.”

  Mohr perks up at the mention of Lawrence’s hometown. “Your father is from Nottingham?”

  “He was,” Agnes says. “He passed away ten years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.” Mohr would like to learn more, but is reluctant to ask, uncertain how he would respond himself to questions about Käthe and Eva. Once lines are crossed, there is no going back.

  Agnes seems to sense something of this as well, and with slightly affected cheer adds, “He always said he’d take me there someday. My mother was never interested. She said the English here were quite enough for her.”

  “You were close, you and your father?”

  “Very close,” she says with a slightly defiant glance around the room. “He was a special man.”

  Suddenly Mohr realizes what he has done. He downs his whiskey and stands up. “Come.” He offers his arm. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  They make their way to the lift together, striding arm in arm. The room seems stifling, precisely the sort of oppressive elegance he has always avoided. Going down, he begins to apologize, but she cuts him off. “It’s all right.” She pats his arm as if he is the one who needs consoling. How stupid he feels, horrible and stupid, as they push through the heavy revolving glass doors and out into the humid night. It is early evening, and Nanking Road is teeming.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “You have no idea how little it bothers me.” She shrugs, but he can see that she is not telling the truth. “Not too long ago I wouldn’t have even been allowed in there with my father.”

  Mohr’s discomfort grows as they start walking in the direction of the river. How could he not have realized? He should have known immediately. That look from the waiter.

  A minute later, they arrive on the Bund. To the left, the enormous Sassoon House and Jardine Matheson buildings, hulking, American-style skyscrapers. The brightly lit jetties along the water’s edge are as busy at night as during the day, ferrying passengers and goods from ships anchored in the middle of the Whangpoo. They stand together at the railing along the promenade, taking in the view. Points o
f light float in a wide, slick blackness. A smell of diesel and coal hangs permanently in the air. The warships anchored out in the middle of the river seem to multiply daily. Just the day before, he had watched from the steps of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank as a Japanese military transport ship docked at the wharf. Shiretoko. Coolie porters unloaded, supervised by Japanese troops. He counted the Japanese flags flying from ships up and down the river. Dozens and dozens. He had been at the bank to cash the check from Nagy and cable half of it to Käthe. The cashier, an Englishman named Mr. Arnold, had said that all money transfers to Germany were going through without any problems. “The money will get there, Dr. Mohr. You can rest assured.”

  Standing now beside this pretty woman with his foot up on the railing, he dreams of pushing the horizon back as far as it will be pushed. He feels her presence next to him, a strong soul, natural and yet unfamiliar. He would like to ask more about her father, what had brought him to this city, and about her mother. In his mind he has a clear picture of mother and daughter, their apartment on Avenue Joffre, Agnes stepping out with friends, chi-pao evening dresses slit to the hips, rickshawing and taxiing to visit acquaintances across the Settlement and French Town, restaurants and nightclubs, passports and visas and telex addresses in London and Hong Kong and Singapore. He wishes for some way to assemble it all, integrate and bring everything together, but no sooner has the thought occurred to him than he feels stupid for having it. Assemble what? He reaches for his cigarettes. His bucolic idylls, mountain adventures, his middle European sitten? The dizzy skyscrapers behind him clattering and clanging with teletypes and telephones and radios? How can anything be assembled from descriptions and anecdotes—from atmospheres? What is there to bring together? What has he lost that he wants to recover?