Page 22

Lying on her mattress, Anyu listened to the wind sweeping over the roof.

The house was quiet. Esther and the rest of the family had gone to attend a party.

Outside, a car drove by; the loose windows clattered.

Winter in Shanghai arrived late; Harbin would have already been buried in snow and frost before October.

Today, she turned seventeen. Anyu thought of her mother, who had always remembered her birthday but could not celebrate it with food or gifts.

To console her, she would draw a bowl of noodles, a golden heap of delicious, twining noodles spiced with meat, red chili, and scallions.

Once, to her surprise, her mother had brought home half a roasted duck to celebrate her birthday.

How savory the duck was, with its thick, crispy skin; sweet, succulent meat; and rich, juicy fat.

Mother ate the head, saying it was her favorite, and Anyu devoured the rest, chewing on the aromatic bones, sucking her greasy fingers, giggling, basking in Mother’s loving gaze.

It was the first time Anyu had tasted a roasted duck.

She was alone now, without a mother, without a home.

She wondered if anyone would celebrate her birthday from now on, or bring her a roasted duck, or even remember her birthday.

Tears trickled down her cheeks, hot on her skin, then cold, lingering on her chin, dripping to her chest, a tide of sorrow in a free fall.

She had not thought of spending her birthday like this, the first birthday without Mother.

Would all her birthdays in the future slip away in the dark, silent and alone?

That was not what she had envisioned for herself, an orphan as she was.

She would rather live well, live better than a nameless, lonely orphan; she would rather be known, and be celebrated.

A groan came from downstairs. Surprised, she wiped off her tears and went down the staircase. No one was in the kitchen; light gleamed in the hallway. The workshop’s door was open; she leaned in. Near his workbench, Isaac knelt, searching for something on the floor, holding a lamp.

“Mr. Mandelburg?” She had thought Isaac was at the party with the rest of the family. “Are you all right? Why are you not at the party?”

“It’s not for me.” His head turned left and right, his hands fumbling. “I dropped a ring. Where could it be?”

She craned her neck, following the beam of light from his lamp. The floor was swept clean, and near his stool was a hide used to collect the shavings from metals. “There. Near the leg of the stool. Is that the ring you are looking for?”

“Where is it? Oh. Yes.” Isaac rose, holding the ring. “Thank you. Good night, Anyu.”

She didn’t want to return to the attic yet. She had been waiting for an opportunity like this. “What’s your real name, Mr. Mandelburg?”

He jerked his head toward her, the glare of his lamp blinding her. She held up her hand, squinting.

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Anyu.” His voice was calm.

“You use your uncle’s last name, don’t you? You are worried your identity could be discovered.”

He was silent.

“What is your real name? I won’t tell anyone, Mr. Mandelburg.”

He turned around and sat on the stool. “Well, I don’t know how you figured it out. My name is Isaac Umansky, son of the master jeweler Albert Umansky, who served as the court jeweler in the Winter Palace. I was the master jeweler and lead designer of the House of Umansky in St. Petersburg.”

“How does it feel to abandon the name that you spent your whole life building?”

“I’m grateful for this life I have, a quiet life, a life with family but no fame.

This is all I wish for,” he said. And no, he added, he rarely reminisced about the golden days of basking in admiration from eminent royal patrons, eccentric noblemen, and esteemed guests.

In fact, he had prayed the history of the Fabergé eggs would be buried in dust and hoped that his name, once the lead designer of a prominent design house, once glittering like the jewelry he had designed, would be meaningless, unrecognized.

“But what about your skills and your superior craft?” she insisted. “Would you let them fade and be lost eventually?”

He looked at his ring on his right hand and stroked the opaque gemstone with his finger. It almost seemed he was recalling something important.

“Would you rather not have a successor?”

Isaac let out a long sigh.

“Teach me, Mr. Mandelburg. I just want to be a jeweler. I have to become a jeweler.”

“Have to?”

“You’ve let me stay, but I can’t sell anything.

But I have the gift of a jeweler, as you said, and I love to draw.

You’ve seen my drawings. I was born to be a jeweler.

I want to learn metalsmithing skills and craft beautiful things that will last. I want to know all about gemstones and their qualities and learn how to set them.

I want to be the greatest jeweler in Shanghai. ”

He looked amused. “The greatest jeweler?”

“You’ve given me a life here. You can give me a career.” Then she added, “And through me, you can leave a lasting legacy.”

He looked at her, his gaze softening. “How’s your hand?”

“It’s fine.”

“Come in.”

She stared.

“You said you want to learn metalsmithing skills.”

He would train her! Grinning, she stepped inside the workshop for the first time since her arrival in this building, dazed, dazzled.

Deeply, she inhaled the overwhelming smell of precious metals, pungent chemicals, pickling acid, and the odor of soldering flux.

Her gaze fell on the drawings on the wall, the stack of envelopes, the tightly sealed jars that contained chunks of enamel, the array of tools, the anvil with a horn, the metal sheets, and the cabinets near the table.

She wanted to touch them, to weigh them in her hands; she wanted to know all their names and purposes.

“I can train you, but no one else must know. At least for the time being.”

She nodded.

“Sit at my workbench,” Isaac said and opened a drawer in his jeweler’s bench. “Can you hold a tool?”

“I can hold a tool.”

He handed her a hammer with a round end and a flat head. “Take this chasing hammer. A versatile tool. It’s good for decorating the surface of the metal without cutting it, but it also gives a gentle and firm blow.”

Anyu weighed it in her hand. It was light, fitting her hand perfectly. Then she put it down and picked up other instruments—a jeweler’s saw, a pair of pliers, drawplates, files, drill bits, soldering tools, forging tools, and a burnisher to polish the metal surfaces. Every tool had a purpose.

“Take some time to familiarize yourself with these, and eventually, you’ll find your favorite tools. Now, you said you want to make jewelry. What would you say is the most important principle in crafting a piece of fine jewelry?”

If she gave a wrong answer, would he change his mind about training her?

She studied these tools again, the marks on the ruler, the ring sizers, the block containing ball punchers in various sizes, the tweezer’s fine tips, the sack containing pliers with different heads, and the compartments where they all belonged.

The neatness, the orderliness. “Accuracy?”

“Precisely. Accuracy, exactness, precision. For a jeweler, this is an essential attitude. You begin with the design, the layout, the measurement, the thickness of the metal, the calculation in proportions, then you figure out the symmetry, the harmony, the beauty that captures people’s hearts.”

She nodded. Precision equaled beauty.

“If you don’t mind, draw an apple.”

She took a pencil from the desk and drew an apple measuring two centimeters in diameter on a sheet of easy-to-see-through tracing paper Isaac had given her.

“Good. Place the tracing paper on the metal sheet and try this jeweler’s saw.”

The jeweler’s saw, a steel frame, was anchored to a bench pin on the table, and a blade was inserted on one end. The workbench was too high and too far. She scooted over to get closer and lifted her elbows.

“Use the proper posture. Like this. Support the frame against your chest and saw the apple out of the metal.”

Following his direction, she leaned forward to keep the frame steady; positioning the saw frame vertically, she began to thread the blade and rotate the metal on the bench pin. When the apple was sawed out, Isaac gave her a file to polish the edges.

She stared at the apple critically. It was uneven on the edges; she could do better.

“You have a steady hand,” Isaac said, glancing at her missing pinkie.

“It doesn’t bother me,” she said. Only sometimes.

He nodded. “Now let’s hope you can bend wires with nine fingers.

Ideally, jewelers use their fingers to form shapes of wires, so you see, we need strong fingers.

The tools give you the leverage you need.

You’ll be more efficient when you’re comfortable with them.

Now I’ll make an S-hook. These are the basic steps. ”

She watched him as he measured the length of a wire, filed the end to a taper, used a pair of pliers to bend the tip to form a tiny crescent, and then bent half of the wire in the opposite direction.

Then he struck the apex of the curves with a planishing hammer, and there on the bench was a flat S shape, tapered at both ends.

It could be used as a clasp or a link in a whole chain if there were more S-hooks.

Anyu took a bundle of wires of the same length and width and immediately began to make the hooks, remembering all the steps of tapering and bending. She had finished twenty of them, with only a few skewed shapes, when Isaac spoke again.

“Good work. That should be enough for today. They’re coming home.”

She heard Uncle David’s, Samuel’s, and Esther’s voices in the showroom, the most disappointing sounds. “Mr. Mandelburg, what will I learn next time?”

“Metalworking basics. Cold connections, hot connections such as annealing, soldering, fusing, and pickling of three types of noble metals: silver, gold, and platinum.”

“After that?”

“Cuttlefish casting, if you’re interested. Have you heard of that?”

“No. Then?”

“Any serious metalsmiths need to learn the surface treatments such as repoussé and chasing and patina.”

“After that?”

“The specialists’ techniques of texturing and layering metals: inlay, filigree, reticulation, enameling, and perhaps etching.”

“May I come back tomorrow?”

He glanced at the door, and she was about to protest when she detected a smile on his face.