me with both hands, the formal Chinese way.
“I’ve waited . . .” Again, the confusion. “I’ve waited a long time to return this, Mei-lin.” Briefly, his eyes closed.
“I’m very grateful.” I glanced at Anita, who was looking worried. “You’re tired,” I said to Paul. “We’ll go now. Thank you very much.”
“I am tired. Lately I’m often tired. But Mei-lin. You’ll come back?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It was an honor to meet you, sir,” Bill said.
Paul Gilder, his arm wrapped around the box, looked at Bill. “Mr. American Sailor.”
“Yes, sir?”
“If you’re keeping company with Mei-lin, be careful of the general.”
“The general, sir?”
“He’s a dangerous man. We thought . . . After Mei-lin went to Number 76 . . . Just keep an eye out.”
“Sir? Number 76?”
“Very brave. Mei-lin, you were very brave.” Paul nodded. Lily ran over and leaned into his knee. He looked at her in surprise, then smiled. “Lily.”
“Please,” Anita whispered.
Leaving Paul cradling the rosewood box, Bill and I followed Anita to the living room. She said, “I’m sorry. I was afraid he wouldn’t be much help.”
“He thought I was Mei-lin. Kai-rong’s sister. Do you know what he meant about her being brave?”
“I barely know her name. I told you on the phone, he’s never talked much about Shanghai.”
“Or the Shanghai Moon?”
“That, never. The first I heard of it, I was eleven. My Hebrew School teacher invited Zayde to come talk about the Shanghai ghetto. He said he would if I did research and could give the facts—how many refugees, from where, things like that.” She smiled. “I wasn’t very bookish, and he was trying to help. Anyway, I found a reference to the Shanghai Moon, and that it had been Great-Aunt Rosalie’s. I was a little girl with my head full of princesses, so I loved the idea of a romantic lost gem, but when I asked Zayde he just said it was gone.” She looked through the doorway at her grandfather and her daughter. “He said wherever it was, it was cursed, and he wished it had never existed. He said the important things about Shanghai were the Yiddish theaters and the coffeehouses, that people had bar mitzvahs and seders and lit Shabbos candles for ten years on the coast of China, and I should remember that and forget this nonsense about gems. That he didn’t want to hear about it again.” She paused. “It was the only time he was ever short-tempered with me.”
“So you don’t know what happened when it disappeared?”
“No. The only times I heard it mentioned were when Cousin Lao-li visited. Rosalie’s son. Even then they hardly ever spoke about it.”
“Do you see him often, Chen Lao-li?”
“More often now, since we moved here. He comes for holidays and the kids’ birthdays, things like that. I grew up in California, so when I was little I didn’t see him much. I wasn’t born yet when they came here, he and his cousin, but my big brother used to tease Zayde about how excited he’d been when he got the letter that they were coming. He flew to New York three days early, so if he got delayed he’d still be there to meet them.”
“I wonder why they didn’t ask him to sponsor them?” Bill said. “Instead of C. D. Zhang, whom one of them didn’t know and the other didn’t like.”
“They did, and he tried. But he wasn’t a close enough relative for the INS. So Zayde tracked down C. D. Zhang. I have the feeling they might not have contacted him at all if they didn’t have to.”
I asked, “When did Dr. Gilder come to this country?”
“In 1949. He was one of the last refugees to leave. Very few stayed, but Zayde had been planning to. My father used to say we all could have been Chinese.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Stay on? Well, I suppose he had less reason to, after Rosalie died.”
18
I stood in Anita’s living room stunned, as though I’d gotten a phone call full of bad news. Not my Rosalie! Oh, Lydia, get a grip! I demanded. You already knew she was gone.
Yes, but not so young! I found myself negotiating. Not so soon! Couldn’t she have had a life of happiness with Kai-rong first, and died a contented old lady?
“Are you all right?” Anita eyed me with concern.
“Yes, I’m sorry.” I drew a breath. “It’s just, I’ve been reading Rosalie’s letters at the Jewish Museum and I got very fond of her. I didn’t know she died so young.”
“I read the letters, too.