it did feel weird to say “Joel’s body.”
“Oh, Lydia, thank you! This will mean so much to Ruth! If there’s ever anything I can do for you—”
“Just let me know when the funeral is. I’d like to be there.”
“Of course! We can plan now for tomorrow. I’ll call you. Now I’d better go. So many people have been calling, people who need to travel in—cousins from Seattle, his old partner in Florida, his college roommate in Zurich. I have to let them all—”
“Leah? Who’s in Zurich?”
“Joel’s college roommate.”
“The roommate’s in Zurich?”
“He’s lived there for years. David Rosenberg. He publishes a business magazine.”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“Yes, of course. But the police already talked to him.”
“I’m sure.” Three calls, Joel made the morning he died. Alice, me, and first, his college roommate. Mulgrew had said that. He hadn’t said the roommate was in Zurich.
I called the number Leah gave me, but David Rosenberg, as it turned out, had already left for New York.
“He wanted to be with Ruth,” Rosenberg’s wife explained, in accented English. “His plane will land eight at the morning. No, no, that is my time. In New York it will be night.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
I called Leah. “If you hear from him, will you ask him to call me?”
“Yes. And if not, the funeral’s tomorrow at ten.” She gave me the details.
“I’ll be there. But that’s not a nice thing, to bother Mr. Rosenberg at the funeral.”
“You’ll come back to the house afterward. You can talk then.”
All right. Joel’s friend in Zurich; that sounded like movement. Feeling a little less stuck, I went back to Rosalie.
24 May 1938
Dearest Mama,
I admit to an odd feeling of satisfaction today. I set off to sell Grandmother Gilder’s ring, and returned unsuccessful. But the very reason for my failure is the main source of my gratification.
This afternoon I approached three of Shanghai’s finest jewelers. Each made an offer, but I did not like their prices. They were low, Mama, they were the offers of men taking advantage of a young woman in need. And so, thanking each, I turned on my heel. With every abandoned transaction I found, to my surprise, a growing sense that life here might not be beyond my control after all.
Do you understand that, Mama? Until today disorientation and uncertainty have made me progressively more passive, deflated, and defeated, in ways I’ve not always recognized. But dealing, in German and English, with these arrogant men, and scorning their offers (politely, always politely!) began to restore me to myself.
Which sense was then magnified by the adventure that ended my day! As I left the third jeweler’s shop, the sky darkened and a torrential downpour swept in—that happens often here, as though the very air, impatient of the thick dampness, is trying to throw it into the gutters. Waiting beneath a colonnade for the sky to lighten, I noticed a foreign-language bookstore. What choice had I but to enter? I discovered shelves of volumes in English and German, as well as French, Spanish, Polish, and Russian. There was no question of a purchase—where would I keep anything, I whose home is a cot behind a bedsheet? and with what would I buy it, I who am selling a treasure?—but it cheered me to be in the presence of so many books. I was searching for the works of P. G. Wodehouse when voices erupted. A Chinese in military uniform was upbraiding the clerk in English. The clerk’s helpless “Bitte?” made it clear he didn’t speak the language, but the officer seemed to take his befuddlement as a deliberate affront. The officer’s rudeness was unfortunate, for his broad shoulders and erect bearing cut a handsome figure.
Before I was aware of myself I’d offered my help. The clerk accepted gratefully, but the officer disdainfully inquired whether I was employed in this establishment. I apologized for intruding and began to walk away.
“Wait!” he ordered. Now, Mama, you know how well I respond to orders, but I told myself he was a military man, so perhaps it was natural to him. And as I didn’t like to leave the poor clerk to be abused again, I turned.
The officer, bowing stiffly, introduced himself as one General Zhang. It seemed a young lady of the general’s acquaintance had expressed a desire to improve her English. “This fool’s idiocy has made me lose my temper. I should not have permitted myself the indulgence.”
On that poor excuse for an apology I would have given him a cold good-bye, but the