The woman stares back, uncomprehending.
“Wong!” he calls, and stands back up.
Wong appears almost instantly.
“Catchee car, Wong.”
“Car bottom-side, Master.”
He slips the stethoscope from his neck, goes to the sink, and begins to scrub. Speechless and cold, the woman holds her baby in her lap. He glances at her, then down at his stained white coat, his cracked and spotted brown leather shoes. The pipes chatter when he shuts off the water. He wrings his hands—once, twice—over the basin, dries them with a clean towel. The woman is watching. Without really looking, she is watching; in watching, she is telling him she knows there is nothing he can do. Nothing. He drops the towel into the laundry bin. It isn’t the small, measured movement of the herbalists he has observed in the old Chinese City, rich with age and patience, but just the crumple, crumple, snip, snip of modern medical practice, so big and powerless it makes him want to whistle.
THE COUNTRY HOSPITAL is for foreigners only, but 1937 has been a good year for epidemics and overcrowding is forcing an uneasy egalitarianism on all Shanghai hospitals. In early June, the Country Hospital began admitting Chinese cases of scarlatina, meningitis, and diphtheria. Seventy-six at last count. As of a day ago, seventeen have died. Over at the Chinese-only Shantung Road hospital, 2,412 cholera cases have been admitted since the first of the month. As of yesterday, 735 have died. Mohr can’t help taking note of these numbers. Statistics have never interested him much, but life in the International Settlement is nothing but numbers: commerce, nationalities, frightened people.
The car makes its way through morning traffic. Mother holds her baby tightly, pressing herself into the farthest corner of the backseat. Mohr sits silently, taking in the view. Rickshaw traffic, roadside commerce. Tea, rice, sugarcane, watermelon and sunflower seeds, candy, fruits, vegetables, full-course meals bubbling on kerosene stoves, ear cleaners (who keep him supplied with a steady stream of patients with infections), astrologers, letter writers, tailors, beggars, monks, cripples. Red silk banners hang from every shop front, billboards and neon lights in every direction. The war in the north has not altered the pace of the city. Every morning he scans the headlines in the North China Daily News. He would like to meet the mordant White Russian cartoonist who signs his name “Sapajou.”
Cigarette smoke curls up between his fingers. He glances again at the young mother and her baby and suddenly recalls a dream he had had the night before about Wolfsgrub. Very detailed. He flew over Tibet, swooped down over the forest edge, and landed. Everything was very still. He stood on the hill looking down at the house. The meadow was plowed. Everything as it always was—and very, very distinct. Eva wasn’t there. She was in school. The sofa stood before the front door, the old green one. Käthe had just finished cleaning. She was wearing a kerchief, and the dog was lazing on the ground. Sunshine, plowed earth on the high, steep fields, and blue delphinium, row upon row of them, top-heavy, in full bloom. His shoes grew heavier and heavier as he walked downhill. Käthe was dusting the sofa and looked up but didn’t see him. His guilt became overwhelming as he drew closer. He told himself that now everything would be good again. He’d come from Tibet, run back home. Wutzi growled. As he took Käthe in his arms and saw her blue eyes shining, he woke up. Wong was standing there with the morning paper and tea and warm milk. His clothes were laid out; the bath water was running. Outside, the sound of an argument on the street, some rickshaw pullers from Yates Road, moving in on the ones who are regularly encamped here . . .
WONG OPENS THE car door. The mother glances nervously across the vast plateau of backseat, unsure, then steps from the car, clutching her bundle. Mohr leads her past the two Sikh policemen standing guard at the front entrance to the nursing station on the first floor. After a brief flurry over what to do, he watches as the young woman and her baby are taken through the doors and into the isolation ward. She glances over her shoulder just as the doors begin to close. He smiles, offers a halfhearted wave, feeling that, perhaps, his skills of dissociation have been developed a little too far.
Then upstairs to Nagy’s office. The Hungarian pediatrician manages the staff of part-time doctors who work at the hospital. It has been two weeks since Mohr has received any salary. Nagy is in his office. “Good morning,” he says without looking up. A compact man in his midfifties, bureaucratic in the old-school manner. His upper lip, though always clean-shaven, seems to bear the shadow of a large Balkan mustache. If he has never worn one, perhaps he should start. As Mohr waits for Nagy to finish writing, his eyes wander to the wall of photographs that have interested him from the first day he called here. They are arranged in four rows of five, in identical black-lacquer frames. Dead trees. Nothing else. Just dead, leafless trees. As Nagy finishes the note, he begins talking about a refrigeration crisis and the problem of evaporating ether. Then, suddenly, he breaks off, opens a drawer in his desk, and takes out a book. “Your novel,” he beams. “Die Freundschaft von Ladiz. Would you do me the honor of signing it?”
Mohr is too surprised to answer.
“I got it at Kelly and Walsh. They ordered it directly from Zurich.” Nagy smiles, offers the book.
Mohr flushes, red heat in his cheeks, his ears. He turns the book over, reads the description on the back cover: A mountain-climbing adventure, a story of heroism and friendship. Then he shakes his head and places the book facedown on the edge of the table. “No.” He shakes his head again. “Thank you, but no.”
Nagy is taken aback. “But I thought you would be pleased to know that your books are still available.” A nervous smile. “Personally, I would find it an honor to have my work banned by the Nazis.”
Mohr glances at the book once again, then at Nagy. “I don’t know,” he stammers. A rising anger, a familiar and unwelcome lack of clarity. He fingers the handle of his medical bag, feeling unsteady and somehow trapped, regards Nagy for a moment longer. Then, with sinking calm, he mutters, “I’m sorry,” and strides out of the office without another word—down the corridor, down the crowded, narrow staircase, through the front doors, and out into the full heat of day. “Shantung Road hospital,” he tells Wong as he climbs into the backseat.
Driving through the crowded city, the big Ford V8 feels excessive, big enough to house an entire Chinese family. He has always felt conscious of taking up too much space here, rushing about, tactless and not quite welcome. It is hot. He lowers the window, takes the little ivory fan from the side pocket of his medical bag, begins to fan himself. Beautiful little objects, fans. In one of his first letters home he drew a picture of one for Eva, with pagodas and dragons and promises to take her out to find one for herself the moment she arrived—of paper or bamboo or ivory, painted and carved and decorated and hanging in roadside stalls all over the city. And moonstones—because anything that falls to earth from the moon brings good luck, little Eva. And noodles. And bean sprouts. He smiles at the thought of Eva using chopsticks. It is something he still can’t do himself, in spite of several attempts, and Wong eager to demonstrate. “No b’long plopper, Doctor. No can do.” Food dribbling down his chin, he persisted until the front of his shirt was completely ruined. Wong laughed and shook his head. “Doctor no b’long Shanghai side.”
He is right. Doctor no b’long Shanghai side. Mohr’s temper subsides as he flicks the little fan back and forth near his cheek, takes in the tree-lined elegance of Avenue Foch. Dr. Mohr no b’long.
THE LESTER HOSPITAL for Chinese, generally referred to as the Shantung Road hospital, is one of the oldest in Shanghai. Twice a week, Mohr treats a steady flow of outpatients in the “chit clinic,” where, upon presentation of a signed note, free treatment is given to the Chinese employees of foreign-owned firms whose contributions support the hospital. “The