Shanghai Shadows by Lois Ruby Page A

also.”
    â€œDovid?” I asked. “Your people?”
    He shook his head, and Mother said, “No one knows.”
    I sank into a chair. “Can’t anyone else escape?” I asked in a whisper.
    Father pulled his hand away from Mother’s. “There’s no way to get out now.”
    I looked from face to face. All three of them were stricken with grief. My head throbbed, but I didn’t how to feel. And then Father said, “Last month many Jews were sent … to camps.”
    My breath was sucked out of me. “To Chelmno?” I gasped.
    â€œWe don’t know where they are.” Mother clasped Father’s hand again.
    He said, “The Nazis want to erase Jews from the face of the earth. My God, Frieda, what are our people going to do?”
    Stalling for time, I said, “They’ll do what we did, Father.” I turned to Dovid. “We took an Italian liner here. Can’t they do that?”
    I watched anger, maybe disgust, cross Dovid’s face. He saw me as a spoiled brat, jabbering on about our sea voyage.
    Father shook his head. “No ships, not since Italy entered the war. Those Jews are trapped in Europe, Daughter. Dead.”
    â€œNo!” I shouted. “Oh, I’ll never see Grete again.”
    Mother’s hand flew across my face in a sharp crack. “Selfish child. You, it’s always you! Think about Grete and her family. Think about Dovid’s family.”
    My cheek stung more from the embarrassment of being slapped in front of Dovid than from the slap itself. I ran into my closet, slammed the door, buried my face in my pillow. Father’s words echoed in my head. “ Those Jews … trapped … dead .”
    I heard the murmur of voices in the other room, then a chair scraping across the wood floor. In a minute a slice of light brightened my room and Mother knelt across my bed with her arms outstretched.
    I followed her out and splashed water on my face. My eyes were probably bloodshot, my cheeks all stretched and raw from crying. Dovid was still rooted in his chair. I sat down in Erich’s place at the table and asked, “What about your people, Dovid?” My voice echoed tinny in my own ears.
    Dovid splayed his beautiful fingers on our table and began. His English had improved so much—a tribute to Mother and to his own hard work.
    â€œI am alive today because of soccer. Soccer and Sugihara. The ball game you know. Sugihara I will have to tell, but later.”
    Father asked, in German, “Where is your home, Dovid?”
    Dovid kept reaching for English vocabulary to tell us: “A small village sixty kilometers from Kraków. For five generations my mother’s and father’s families live in that village.”
    A hundred questions tumbled out. Some he’d already answered on other visits, but now it seemed important to get every single detail. “You left when? How old were you? How did you get out? How long did it take? Where did you go?”
    He went on with his story. “Nearly two years ago I leave, summer, nineteen forty. I am sixteen then.”
    Perfect. A boy should be a few years older than his girlfriend . Quick, I asked another question so he wouldn’t see me blushing over that thought. “You went to school? That’s where you learned to draw?”
    â€œDrawing, before I can read a word. But school, different. It is nineteen thirty-nine. Already the Jewish school is closed, but the soccer team at Saint Ignatz Catholic School is happy to let me play. The coach says, ‘You are a good goalie, for a Jew.’”
    â€œThe nerve!”
    â€œDaughter, be quiet and listen,” Father said.
    â€œOne day Germans come by. How do you say it, the way they walk?”
    â€œGoose-stepping,” Mother supplied.
    â€œYes. We are playing a game. We freeze, all of us statues on the field, watching.”
    My heart seized.
    â€œOur coach blows his