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Jack Wang

The Night of Broken Glass

Before the war, when we lived in Vienna, I made a habit of greeting my father when he came home from work. The Steiner School let out at three o’clock, which gave me time to walk the good half-mile from the Graben in the First District to our townhouse in the Third, change out of my uniform, ask the cook for something to eat, and read a Sanmao or Tintin comic, all before my father returned. My reward for standing at the door was usually little more than a nod or a grunt of approval. Still, I met him every day because I loved and respected him and felt it my duty.

One day in November my father came home with a deep-furrowed look. Now that the world was topsy-turvy, he often returned from the legation — or rather, since March, the Chinese Consulate General of the German province of Ostmark — with a harried expression, but that day his face was grave, almost ashen, and my greeting went unacknowledged. Reflexively, he asked our manservant for the day’s briefing. With eyes downcast, Old Chen reported that the American had visited again. My father remained calm, but the hat travelling from his hand to Old Chen’s hitched in mid-air. The American, whom I had never met, was an old high school classmate of my mother’s, apparently in Europe on business. When my father had proposed dinner, my mother had said, “He’s not so important. Not like one of your dignitaries,” in a tone that left me unsure who was being slighted. So I was surprised, as my father must have been, that the man had come calling for the second time that week.

Over dinner my parents said little. Curiously, my mother made no mention of her friend, and my father did not deign to ask. He did, however, make a show of reading the paper. At the end of the meal, in an overflow of irritation, my mother criticized the cook for the profiteroles. Too soggy, she said. The cook, an old hobbled woman they had brought with them from China, listened with head bowed before backing out of the room.

My father set down his paper. “Why do you ask her to make things she doesn’t know how to make?”

“Because I want to eat them.”

“But there’s no need to scold.”

My mother smiled, as if at a child’s fanciful idea. “You coddle them.”

“No, I consider them.”