Shanghai Shadows Read Online Free Page B

star.”
    â€œI never heard of him.”
    Erich hugged Mother. “You must have heard of a song from the movie. ‘Jeepers Creepers’.”
    We bombarded Father at the door when he came home. “Please, please? For my birthday?” I begged.
    â€œJakob, there is a song in this movie called ‘Jeepers Creepers’. Even in America I never heard this word.”
    â€œIt’s teenage slang,” I proudly announced. “Erich and I will need to know such things when we get to the United States.”
    â€œIf,” Mother corrected me. “First we go home to Vienna.”
    Erich worked on Father, who was a softer touch than Mother. “It’s a musical, Father.” Erich hummed the opening bars of something by Mozart.
    Father was hooked. “This film is an opera? What could it hurt, Frieda?” Father actually winked at her. Maybe they were glad to ship us out of the apartment so they could have a few hours alone.
    Mother blushed and sighed, and it was settled. “Be careful of pickpockets,” she cautioned.
    All through my special birthday meal—two inches of brisket in with the vegetables, joy of joys!—Erich and I kept singing “Jeepers Creepers.” By the time I blew out the match masquerading as a candle on a wedge of Mr. Schmaltzer’s devil’s food cake, Mother was humming the song, and just before Erich and I left for the movie, Father was plucking the melody on The Violin.

CHAPTER FOUR
    1941
    We’d weathered two miserable winters already. Our coats were worn limp as bedsheets, our shoe leather thinned to cardboard. Supper was no more than a few tired vegetables and a cup of rice, shared four ways. Mother was never hungry, or so she said, but her hollow eyes watched each bite Erich and I put in our mouths. If it hadn’t been for the odd package that would come from Molly O’Toole, we’d have withered away. Every minute we were cold and damp, longing for spring. Then the rains came, and Tanya and I dumped bucketfuls of water out of our shoes at the door of the Kadoorie School, where we Jewish students tried to learn with steam rising from our soggy clothes.
    Erich and I thought about staying warm and dry, and filling our bellies constantly. Tanya seemed to be thriving and shared treats with us every Friday night—sometimes half a melon, or baby bok choy that she handed to Mother upright, like a pale green bouquet.
    Mother had three English students, who paid almost nothing. Mr. Shulweiss from downstairs was at least eighty years old and as dense as a rutabaga. Sputtering through the ABC’s was his greatest accomplishment. He’d rub his elbows and pat his bald spot and treat us to three or four honking nose blows, then struggle to his feet for a trip down the hall to the water closet at around m-n-o . Though we’d miss the money, Mother politely released him from the torture, after which she said, “Ilse, I will give you an American expression you can add to your collection: ‘You cannot teach an old dog new tricks.’”
    Mrs. Mogelevsky, Tanya’s mother, was her second student. She had dancing brown eyes and a small, heart-shaped face framed by a mass of brunette hair. Whereas Mother was lumpy here and there, Mrs. Mogelevsky had curves you couldn’t help noticing. She made Erich very nervous. In the Ukraine she’d been a seamstress to rich ladies who’d sneered at anything less than the most elegant fabrics. Here in Shanghai, she had a knack for transforming any old cloth into stylish frocks that clung to her.
    Mother loved teaching Mrs. Mogelevsky, who began each lesson with a sentence like a prayer: “I vant learn. I make English sewing business.”
    The third student was Dovid Ruzevich, who was a year or two older than Erich. The first time I opened the door to this boy, late in 1941, something odd happened to me—it was like touching the top of a radio and feeling