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Icy rains engulfed the city, and the chilly, damp air slipped through the velvet curtains and wooden shutters and hung around the lamps like cobwebs. But there was no snow, unlike in Harbin, and there was no need to wear parkas or scarves.

Her pinkie had healed completely, and Anyu could hold a pencil and draw without feeling pain.

During the day, she put on a black leather glove and stood at the counter with Esther, where Esther worked her charm selling earrings and necklaces.

With the Chinese spring festival approaching, business picked up; many foreigners and locals browsed the jewelry in the glass cases.

Not wishing to let his uncle know, Isaac trained Anyu at midnight or hours before dawn, when people were sleeping.

He gave her small tasks, making hooks for necklaces and simple bands for rings and earrings.

He also demonstrated various techniques such as drilling, chasing, filing metal, cuttlefish casting, and lost-wax casting.

To avoid making noise, he skipped forging on the horn-shaped anvil.

What Isaac said about metalsmithing requiring strong hands was no exaggeration.

Her grip was strong with her exercise, but she grew tired while texturizing metal using roller printing, reticulation, and etching techniques.

And soldering required careful heat maneuvering.

A few times, she burned herself with the blowtorch and drops of melted solder fell on a metal plate.

Wire riveting and tube riveting required firm insertion of her fingers, and very soon the tip of her fingers roughened and grew painful and then calloused.

“More,” she said when she finished small tasks Isaac gave her—woven chains, a pendant with a locket, a ring with a crown setting.

In two weeks, she crafted bails for necklaces, chains, clasps, and closures, hinges for boxes, and all the small findings.

In four weeks, Anyu mastered the basics of metalworking: chasing, casting, stone setting, and fusing and soldering with the brass blowtorch.

In five weeks, she memorized the steps of filigree, the most beloved ornamental openwork, commonly seen in Edwardian jewelry.

Time-consuming but rewarding, it required a strong hand to manipulate the wires, stretching, pulling, and twisting them into the desired shape, then mix flux in a mortar, and finally solder.

Occasionally, her fingers would lose the grip of the metal sheet while polishing, and the pickling acid burned her eyes, but nothing could describe her joy when she succeeded in making a bezel setting for a pendant or a pronged setting for a ring.

No matter the freezing rain, or the chilly air, or the numbed fingers, or the growing soreness of her muscles, Anyu came to the workshop the moment she was called.

Then the inevitable happened.

One evening, Anyu was making a bezel setting for a sapphire pendant when she heard a cough. Uncle David and Samuel were standing next to her. She put down the bezel pusher. She had been so absorbed in her work that she hadn’t noticed their presence, and she was sitting on Samuel’s stool.

“Isaac! What is this? Why is this girl here?” Uncle David looked exasperated, his gray beard shaking. Samuel came over. Anyu hesitated, but stood up.

Isaac put down his jeweler’s saw. “Uncle, she has my permission to be here.”

“What?”

“I truly believe she will be a fine jeweler.”

“How long has this been happening? Two months? Three months?”

Three months and sixteen days. Anyu could feel the weight of Isaac’s stress on her shoulders. Isaac revered his uncle greatly, but Anyu didn’t feel the old man deserved it. It was not fair to chastise Isaac, the master jeweler who crafted all the jewelry and supported this household.

The uncle shouted, “Isaac, I don’t know what’s in your mind. You brought a stranger to our jewelry shop, and now you’re training her. You have a great responsibility as the master jeweler and lead designer. How do you plan to run the House of Mandelburg?”

“Uncle, I assure you I am doing all I can to bring more business to the shop.”

“Are you? Every day passes by; we pay the rent and taxes and daily expenses. The jewelry sales have been dismal. The shop can’t sustain itself, Isaac.

You’ve made some connections through Mrs. Brown, and I was looking forward to seeing you build your clientele in Shanghai.

The last thing you should do is waste your time on someone unrelated to us. ”

“Uncle, allow me to explain—”

“What is there to explain about training a girl, an outsider, and giving away your family’s legacy?”

Isaac took a deep breath. After a moment, he said, “She’s one of us now, Uncle.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She has learned all the techniques of a jeweler. She’ll refine the techniques and help in the workshop, if it’s agreeable to you, Uncle.”

“I can’t believe it, Isaac. Your father would be rolling in his grave!” Uncle David stormed out; Samuel paced in the workshop, folding his arms.

She is one of us now.

Anyu gripped the handle of the bezel pusher, elated. After the loss of her finger, after nights of training, she had made it—she would be a jeweler.

Every day, Anyu came to the workshop after the shop’s closing.

All she wanted was to work, setting stones, sawing the metal sheets, soldering, and pickling to remove oxidation and flux.

In this small room clustered with cabinets and tools, with the metallic clinks and whirs, she felt the calmness, this encompassing monotone rhythm of assurance—the same thing she had felt in the dank apartment she had shared with Mother.

There was nowhere else she’d rather be; this workshop was her home.

She liked to be near Isaac, sharing the tools, breathing in the same pungent air of metal and chemicals.

When she held the chasing hammer passed from his hands, she thought of how it felt to feel Isaac’s hands, to touch him.

Her face grew warm with these thoughts, her heart racing.

Isaac was different from Confucius, yet she liked them both.

She remembered Mother wanted a marriage for her and thought that she could imagine marrying Isaac or Confucius someday—if she would ever see him again.

One day in April, Anyu had just closed the shop with Esther and was ready to go to the workshop when she heard a knock on the window outside.

Confucius. She put down the rag, wiped her hands, and told Esther she’d be right back.

Esther gave her a look. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” she said, but she didn’t press further.

Smiling, Anyu opened the door to the street.

By the dim shop lights and the taillights of the passing cars, she could see Confucius standing by his bicycle.

She had been worried that she’d never see him again, and she was glad he came.

But she didn’t want him to talk to Esther.

“Confucius, you can’t stay here. Let’s take a walk. Where have you been?”

“Working.” He handed her a paper bag and pushed his bicycle forward. “Chestnuts. Do you like them? I haven’t seen you for a few months. You’ve been working hard, haven’t you?”

“I’m a jeweler.” She walked beside him. It was cold at night; there were few pedestrians around. The chestnut was warm, creamy, sweet; she loved it. She had never eaten roasted chestnuts before.

“A jeweler?”

“I’ve been in training, Confucius! Isaac is a master jeweler.”

“The old Russian?” Isaac and his family might be stateless, but to the Chinese, they were still Russians because of where they came from.

“He’s not that old.”

“He’s a foreigner.”

“What do you have against foreigners?”

“Nothing. I’m surprised he’d train you, that’s all. Will you make a lot of money?” They passed an alley where a few figures were smoking, their cigarettes flickering.

“Maybe.” She nearly tripped over a pothole she didn’t see, and he reached out to steady her. But he lost his balance, and his bicycle fell to the ground. When Anyu reached to pull it up, she bumped her head onto Confucius’s. “Ouch.” They rubbed their heads at the same time.

Then in unison, they said, “Sorry.”

They looked at each other and laughed. And then, feeling strangely excited and happy, Anyu looked away.

Confucius pulled up his bicycle and they started to walk again.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, staring straight ahead.

Anyu liked the streets of Shanghai at night, the warm glow of the lanterns swaying under the eaves, the neon lights blinking through the shadows, and the peaceful stillness, with their soft footfalls and the faint clatter of horse-drawn carriages blending into the city’s symphony.

It seemed all the day’s discontent had been erased, replaced by an unvoiced intimacy, an indulgent desire.

“Now, this is a sign,” Confucius said, imitating the voice of an old scholar.

“What sign?” She glanced at him, the silhouette of his profile, the strands of his long hair bouncing on his shoulder. Warmth spread through her limbs.

“The world is going to end.”

“What?”

“In two thousand years.”

She giggled. “The chestnuts taste great.”

“Glad you like them. What else would you like to eat?” he asked. And movies. Would she like to go to the movies? He liked The Gold Rush , which he had watched five times. Charlie Chaplin was a great English actor, he said.

She felt a strange excitement, enveloped by the night that echoed with the city’s music. When Confucius’s hand accidentally brushed hers, her heart raced, filled with anticipation. “I’ve never been to the movies.”

“Movie tomorrow, then?”

“But where did you get money for the food and movie tickets? I heard you no longer work at the teahouse.”

“Oh, I was offered a new job, and I got this.” Confucius rang the bell of his bicycle, a new vehicle that he had acquired, the newest model, which she had not noticed earlier.

He had been hired to make trouble in a bicycle shop, start a brawl, and then steal the bicycle, he said.

The shop owner broke his nose, and he had a cut on his neck—he showed her the bandage.

Anyu stopped walking, dismayed. “You were hired to get in a fight, and you beat people up?”

He shrugged.

“Confucius, I don’t like to see people get hurt.”

“It’s Shanghai. Everyone gets hurt, except the foreigners. But don’t worry. We were disguised as Japanese.”

“Why?”

“The Japanese want to stir up Chinese people’s anti-Japanese sentiment so they can have an excuse to say their citizens were attacked and they needed to protect them, then they’ll find a foothold in Shanghai.

A trick they’ve been doing in Nanjing. But who cares?

I got a new bicycle and was paid handsomely. ”

All her thoughts of going to the movies evaporated. Anyu stuffed the chestnut bag into his hand. “I’m going back. Don’t come to the shop again, Confucius. I don’t want to see you.”

“Wait, wait. Why?”

“You’re a criminal, you have no morals. I’m a jeweler. I don’t want to be associated with you.”

She walked fast, didn’t look back, didn’t answer Confucius’s call.

The night wind was picking up, sweeping through her thin tunic.

She shivered, turning a corner. In front of a shop with two lanterns, a man was speaking in a low voice to a porter carrying a girl with bound feet on his shoulders.

He handed him a few bills, and they went to an alley behind the shop.

Anyu looked away, hurrying toward the Mandelburgs’ shop.

She had meant it then, to never see Confucius again, convinced that his character and profession conflicted with hers.

Many years later, when they did meet again, neither of them was the same as they had been, and she wondered how her life would have turned out had she not left Confucius that night.