Pinto was not surprised that Albert never responded. At first he thought that he didn’t care about Pinto and his passport problems, and hence he resented the brother-in-law he had never met. But then he figured Albert might have died, or was gravely ill; perhaps Sarajevo was burnt to the ground and everyone was winnowed around the world; perhaps he was now a refugee as well; perhaps he had made the journey to Palestine. Only for the anniversary of the Archduke’s killing could Pinto find the city’s name in the Shanghai papers he read in English, Russian, German, or French. He tried to tell Lenka about his witnessing the assassination, but she had no idea what he was talking about. She was too young, and her own misfortune—the war, the revolution, the escape via Siberia—was like a long-lasting storm, something that just came abruptly, destroyed her life, tossed her around, and finally deposited her, with a Nansen passport but sans family and money, on top of a building in Shanghai, two feet from the edge, ten stories above a river of refugees.

  If Pinto were to roll over into the abyss and vanish, Rahela would find herself unprotected, with nothing between herself and the edge, and she could fall down too. Not so long ago, he’d had nightmares in which he would be prostrate on the rim of a void—sometimes there would be a churning sea below, sometimes just la gran eskuridad—untroubled by the danger, because he knew, in his dream, that he would avoid it since he could fly. So that he would let himself roll over the edge only to discover that he couldn’t fly at all, whereupon he would be dropping for a long time, waking up just before he hit whatever was at the end of the fall. The last dream of that kind had not ended when his body hit the bottom, but when he felt an immense cold penetrating him, moving in, passing beyond his heart, beyond the marrow of his bones, beyond his soul, which in his dream was a small rag ball. After he had woken up, the cold stayed inside him, and he shivered, even if it was an August night in Shanghai, when the air is like molasses, when there was nothing within his reach that was not hot to the touch and coated with humidity. Now that cold was seeping into Rahela’s heart and bones as well, and she didn’t even know it, there was nothing he could do, except not let her roll over the edge. As long as I live, you’ll never be cold again, Alija Đerzelez said to the hanuma. But Alija was a hero, and I am a nothing and a nobody.

  O Lord, what are we going to do tomorrow? There was some money left in his pocket, but all their scarce belongings were left in the shikumen. When he decided to pack, he realized they had no suitcases. They’d arrived in Shanghai four years before with nothing; it had taken six years to cross the desert and make their way to the coast, trekking along with refugee caravans, begging for food in villages and hamlets, relying on the kindness of people whose language they could not speak. Rahela picked up some Gansu dialect, as they’d spent a winter in a remote hovel with two Chinese families, and a summer in a village outside Lanzhou. They spoke a different language in the shikumens of Shanghai, but it didn’t take her long to pick that up too. She was a smart girl, but burdened with all that she had already seen in her life. And now the Japanese were shelling Chapei, and they were following the flow of refugees again.

  Pinto only had a jute bag on his back when they arrived in Shanghai four years before. He had that same bag now; they hadn’t needed suitcases as there was no chance of leaving Shanghai. There was no country to go to, no passport to get there. They couldn’t sleep in the rain on a roof for another night. Neither was there another place in Shanghai they could go to tomorrow; the shikumen could be on fire for all they knew. Maybe they could go and stay with Lu and his family, but his wife wouldn’t like that. Having a lover is one thing; having your lover stay at your home accompanied by his daughter and a Russian woman is another thing altogether. There are mansions in this town that are big enough to house all these displaced people, but they will be shot if they try to jump those walls. There is always a place for a refugee, yet they don’t let them into such a place. Until there is somewhere to go to, or, who knows, even return to, all you can do is stay alive. Which might be hard here, in the cold drizzle, on top of a crowded building. Nothing ever gets dry in Shanghai. He has worn damp clothes since 1928; he’s been coughing for years. Death is always growing inside you, like a nail growing on your soul. The fire in Chapei seemed to be receiving more nourishment, the flames and smoke blooming toward the sky. Who can he ask for help? Who in this city is a friend? Where can they go?

  The effortless, joyous way in which Osman took care of him was what he recalled more than anything from their honeymoon time in Tashkent. Buenu komu il pan, Osman was. He made tea for him in the morning, and wouldn’t let him drink it too soon so as not to burn his tongue, because, he would say, blowing to cool off the tea, he had plans with his tongue for later. He would kiss the scar on his cheek, invisible to others under Pinto’s scraggly beard. He patched Pinto’s pants and inspected the seams of his shirt and coat for lice. En kada dado un marafet. He would tell him stories about Sarajevo, about the funny and sad people he knew at Hadži-Šaban’s, about the great Gazihusrevbeg and the man he loved, lived, and was buried with, and then he would slip from the past into the future in which the two of them were back and strolling in the Čaršija like a proper couple but pretending to be friends, and a wake of rumor behind them. The only thing Osman demanded in return from Pinto was that he scratch his back, gently, just before they fell asleep, and Pinto would oblige. And after Osman turned on his back in his sleep, Pinto’s hand would end up on his chest, and if he tried to remove it, Osman would grab it and keep it there, and Pinto would feel the tapping of the heart, as if it were sending secret messages from its hiding place. If a man is liked by his fellow man, he is liked by God. When Pinto cried in bed in the morning because morphine made him desperate and despondent, Osman would stroke his hair, and sing to him that beautiful song: Bejturan se uz ružu savija, vilu ljubi Đerzelez Alija. And sometimes, he would just rip the blanket off him and force him to get up on his feet. Once, after Pinto had not eaten for days because he was going through withdrawal, Osman force-fed him, like a goddamn goose, and held his jaw shut to prevent him from spitting it out. Back then, he hated him for that, but now it all had a different meaning. Where is Osman now? Where is my beloved?

  Carefully, so as not to awake Rahela, Pinto sat up with his feet dangling over the edge. What was on fire in Chapei was the North Station, and then also another, bigger building not far from it. The flames now streamed along the sides of the building, climbing toward the sky. Possibly the Commercial Press, or the Oriental Library, chock-full of paper, burning with celerity and bright flames. On this side of Soochow Creek, the lit oval of the racecourse was indifferent to the fire. Down on the street, the pavement on each side was thick with bodies and their bundles, loaded rickshaws moving through the murky mizzle. If he were to jump, the layer of bodies would soften the impact, as if he were landing on potatoes. Let us go down and confound their speech, so that nobody shall understand one another.

  Once upon a time, Rabin Danon had busied himself with interpreting dreams. Once upon a time, in Sarajevo, now a dream unto itself. People would reveal their dream to Rabin Danon, and he would tell them what it meant, and then they would go around telling everyone else about what it meant, as if spreading gossip, until all of Bilave agreed on the right interpretation. A cock meant that a male child was coming; a hen meant joy in an abundant garden. A broken egg meant some gain. Also, nuts, cucumbers, glass, anything that can be broken meant gain—there were a lot of dreams about gain, because no one had enough of anything. He who in his dream entered a big city would have all of his wishes fulfilled. The old Papučo once dreamed that he was swimming in a vat of oil, and soon everyone in il hanizitju knew that he, just like anyone else who had ever dreamed of oil before him, was indeed hoping for the light of the Atora to burn forever. Those who dreamed of leaving their city, however, would soon die and leave this world. And if you dream that you are sitting on the roof, Rabin Danon claimed—and everyone in Bilave and all the way down to Mejtaš must have believed it—you were bound to attain a high position in life. But if in your dream you fell from the roof, you would lose your house, or your job, or experience some other kind of loss. There had been a time when Pinto’s dreams were full of kissing. Once, when he was but a boy, he was touching Binjoki’s pata, and woke up all messy and sticky down there. What does that mean, Rabin Danon? Pinto had grown convinced that the good Rabin had been making it all up as he went along, but once people took it all to be truth, it became so, and no one ever dared dispute it. There was God’s word, and there were Rabin’s stories, and both were what they were, no more, no less. Rabin’s beard was enormous; the story went that one of his many daughters disappeared and could not be found for days, until she was discovered sleeping on his chest, under his beard, where she lived off the crumbs and morsels stuck in his thick hair.

  Remember the future! Padri Avram used to say, with his finger of importance pointing up. The only memory that matters is of the world that is yet to come. Back then, Pinto had no idea what Padri was talking about. But in this Shanghai life, the possibility that his dreams might contain his future would keep him awake for nights on end. What if time didn’t only flow forward but also backward? What if the past and the future streamed, creating, in opposite directions, a whirl in time that was neither past nor future, not even present? What if Osman had somehow been caught in that whirl and was not stuck in this shapeless time? If Osman was there, in that time whirl, Pinto would dive into it within a breath.

  Presently, he had no doubt that if he fell asleep on the edge of the roof he would plunge; there was also a possibility of his dropping down even awake. So many people were on the roof, all the bodies touching other bodies, that if someone pushed any of those huddling in the middle, the luckless ones on the edge would spill over and down like sand. Our people, Padri Avram used to say, are like dust and like stars. When they go down, they go down to the very dust. When they go up, they reach the stars. What will happen to all these people, to any of us? You look into any of those faces and you can’t know what happened to them before, let alone what will happen to them in the future, but you do know that it was not good and it will not be good. Let us not worry, it will not be good, Osman used to say in the trenches, and the soldats for some reason found it funny. It was past midnight, yet the refugee stream kept moving in the street, as if someone was assembling them up in a factory in Hongkou and sending them down here for storage in a nightmare.

  Rahela, fidgeting, kneed him in the buttocks; he stiffened to resist her push. She turned over to throw her arm across Lenka’s midriff, raised it again to drop her hand on the scar on Lenka’s cheek. Lenka did not move, or react. Pinto thought she might be dead; if she was, there was nothing that could be done now, other than maybe wake up Rahela, and everyone on the roof. And do what then, exactly? Where would he take her dead body? There was little space for the living in this town, where people stepped daily over the dead, even on Nanking Road or the Bund—particularly on Nanking Road and the Bund. Pinto once saw an entire family dead, mother, father, and a baby still leaning against a wall; they fell asleep and never woke up. The endless dream. The meaning of life is not to be dead; you live so as not to die. That’s it. Ask any soldier or refugee, anyone who has lived through a war, or any of those children still alive and begging for a handful of rice on Nanking Road. Ask Lenka. All we want from life is to keep living. It’s that simple. Only the rich ponder a reason to live. Everyone else who is alive just wants to live. There is no meaning to it, any more than there is meaning to time. There is just life. When there is no life, there is no meaning. A thunderous series of shells dropped around the North Station, dust clouds assuming evanescent shapes against the screen of the flames. Now, what was the meaning of that?

  Lenka wasn’t dead at all, flinching as she was at the sound of explosions. Carefully, she lifted Rahela’s hand and brought it down to her chest to hold it there. Rahela liked to touch Lenka’s scar, which was much bigger and fresher than Pinto’s. When Lenka first moved in with them, Rahela kept away. Lenka’s presence exposed the absence of Rahela’s mother, of whom Pinto had told Rahela stories—some true, some made up—featuring her birth, her mother’s death, Pinto’s escape from Turkestan, crossing the desert with her on his back, and making it to Shanghai. From the pebble with the wheel he’d found in the cave, he made a necklace for Rahela, which became the solid evidence that the improbable journey had taken place—there was nothing else he could show for it. He never told Rahela that he was not her real father; or that he had never in his life touched Klara Isakovna. He told her stories about Osman, her true father, the one who made shade for his daughter before he vanished. Pinto told her how beautiful and brave her mother had been, and how they had escaped the Bolsheviks, and how she had lost her life giving Rahela hers, and how she would’ve survived in some other time or place and would’ve been an amazing woman, and how Osman sacrificed his life to save them all, and how so much luck was required just to be and stay in the world. In any case, Lenka didn’t quite fit into any of that mythology. To Rahela, Lenka looked slight, hurt, alone, devoid of power. Rahela kept away at first, contemptuous of Lenka’s need for help, of her vulnerability, evident in the scar on her face. But then, slowly, carefully, she started approaching her. Eventually, Rahela asked her if she could touch the scar, and Lenka granted her access. Then Rahela grew so fond of her that she gave her the necklace with the pebble wheel. Lenka recognized it as the Samsara wheel, and was so touched she cried; she refused to take it, because Pinto had told her where and how he had found it. Rahela was a kind child, too good and kind for this world.

  Now, like a brick from an oven, Rahela was warming up his back; her body generated heat, a little furnace of life. It was supposed to be the other way around; he was supposed to be the one who kept her warm and not hungry. She hadn’t eaten much since they’d left their place. Pinto had only managed to shove a couple of buns, so old as to feel wooden, into his jute bag on the way out. He had forced Rahela, and Lenka too, to chew on them as they moved through the tributary alleys flowing into Haining Road, where they merged with the refugees heading across the Soochow Creek—Chinese, Russian, all sorts of the poor that lived in Hongkou and Chapei. Were Lu and his family among them? Lu was not poor, but the Japanese shells hitting Hongkou didn’t care about the difference. Pinto and Lenka were grasping each of Rahela’s hands, and her narrow, moist hand would every once in a while slip out of his, only for him to clasp it stronger. They were taken up by the stream, and had no idea where it was going, except away from the gunfire and explosions, to where the rich foreigners lived and the Japanese would not dare to bomb. The collective stench was incredible, for body secretions were triggered by people’s aggregated fear and now all the sweat, shit, and who knows what was flowing out, greasing the streets for everyone to scurry in the same little-step rhythm like millipedes, humming and grunting and shouting and crying. People’s bodies are full of noise, but everyone keeps it inside until they can no longer hold it in. Osman had once told him about Kasim, one of his characters from Hadži-Šaban’s, who could never shut up: he muttered to himself ceaselessly, even while sleeping, shouting and crying and whimpering when drunk, a mill of noise inside his head never slowing down. Because you hear so many voices, do not imagine that there are many gods in Heaven.

  Only when they had stopped at the Soochow Creek bridge would he realize that Rahela had been whining and that he was hurting her. He loosened his grip, then stroked and put his lips on her hand, eliciting a modest smile. Lenka was tired too, her feet were painful and cold, the scar patch on her cheek and chin now red. If they were to die right there, the refugee river would just carry them on, eventually dumping their corpses on some Shanghai street whose name he had never known. But they didn’t die, and the mass funneled to cross the bridge, so that the surge coming from behind pressed them forth. He dug in his heels to protect Rahela from being crushed, as did Lenka. The child was sandwiched between them, her head pressed against his solar plexus, while he and Lenka were nose to nose. Attending to Lenka’s burn, he had seen her scar from close-up, the peeling skin and the raw flesh, changing the bandage as she recovered, until it looked like a relief map of some strange, painful country, what with its hills, vales, rivers stretching beyond the mountain chain of her small left ear.

  Finally, they moved again slowly, shuffling their feet inch by inch until they entered the bridge and crept across, whereupon the space opened and the mass somewhat dispersed, and now they could stop and breathe the foul air in and out. Rahela was crying because her hand hurt so much from Pinto’s squeezing, and because she was frazzled and scared. Pinto’s face was coated with sweat and drizzle, his collar cutting into the back of his neck. Gospody, Lenka said. My zhivy. Before them rose the racecourse, vast like a ship.

  Are we going to the racecourse? Rahela asked. Maybe we could all sleep there, with the horses? Maybe we can find something to eat.

  They would not let us inside, Pinto said. They don’t care what happens outside.

  The child had been a refugee all of her life, and endured displacement without complaining. It made Pinto sad that she was so accustomed to marching aimlessly, always hungry and thirsty. The crowd thinned as people tried to disperse once they crossed the bridge. Pinto decided they should follow Bubbling Well Road, though he could not think of where to go or where they might end. A Sikh policeman stood in the middle of the street absurdly directing traffic while the crowd went around him like a creek around a rock, the stuck cars honked, and the rickshaws squeezed through. A single file of racing ponies with blankets on their backs was going somewhere, as the Volunteer Corps pushed people to part them for the ponies’ passage. The ponies were anxious, snorting and neighing, terrified of the ruckus. A woman carried her wailing children and belongings in two rattan baskets hanging on a pole across her shoulders. A ruddy-faced volunteer, not older than twenty or so, shoved her with his rifle, and she tottered back, trying to keep the balance until she toppled over and the kids spilled with the belongings. A couple of ponies reared but were quickly tugged down. A Chinese man rushed through the space left open by the Volunteer Corps, grabbed a blanket from one of the ponies and ran off. Pinto could see the ruddy-faced boy raising his rifle to shoot at the thief, but someone stepped in front of him and the moment was gone. That edepsiz was going to kill someone, Pinto thought, and he couldn’t wait to do so.