Journey Across the Four Seas (8 page)

Rest, rest, rest, was the prescription. I slept most of the time, read some light novels, and got up only to go to the bathroom. After a week my body temperature dropped to normal. Without wasting a breath, I rushed back to the dorm to resume my life at the university.

I’d had the figure of a bamboo pole to begin with, and now the treatment was putting more stress on my body. My weight went down to ninety-two pounds, which made me as light as a kite when stretched over a height of five feet, two inches. Also, the least exertion winded me. The pneumothorax had deflated my left lung, leaving me only my right to live on. I became notorious for being a slow walker. Fortunately, I was a girl. A boy would be laughed at for moving about like a soft-legged crab, but a girl who minced her steps was lady-like.

In order to get as much rest as possible, I stopped going to Saturday night dances. My escort, Ngai, was one of the few who understood the reason. When he learned of my condition, he took to going on long walks every morning. Fresh air and exercise became his passion, and he vowed that Fei-Chi’s germs would never get him.

On the twenty-second of every month, I checked into the hospital in the morning and was back in the dorm in the evening. The follow-up treatments were nowhere as traumatic as the first. Aside from the breathlessness, there was no noticeable side effect. I was able to carry out my therapy in secrecy, in addition to maintaining my school grades throughout the year. My only regret was that my treatments prevented me from going to
Thailand
that summer.

*

I went on to third year, a crucial time in the four-year program. Normally, if a student were to flunk a course, she would be allowed to take a makeup exam. A junior, however, wasn’t entitled to this option. If she flunked one course, she would have to repeat all the courses of that entire year. Sensible or not, such was the university rule.

My major exam, economics, was to take place a day after the pneumothorax treatment. To minimize the loss of valuable study time, I brought along my books to study on the bus. This course had been the most difficult I’d ever taken. A large part of the problem could be attributed to the professor, Miss Archer from
Britain
. She was a dreadful teacher who knew only how to dictate notes to the class. She hardly even looked up to see whether we understood what she was reading. We nicknamed her "Machine gun" because she spat out the definitions so fast that we could hardly get them down on paper, let alone have time to think about them. Everyone in the class was dissatisfied with her teaching method, but we would never dream of protesting to a professor.

As soon as the doctor finished deflating my lung, I rushed back to the dorm. Renee was in the same position in which I’d left her in the morning—hunched over her desk, her nose buried in books. Had she asked, I would have told her that I’d been at the library. But she never even looked up. There was only one thing on her mind—study, study, study. Even if the dorm were to catch on fire, she’d be carried out with her bottom glued to her chair. Such was life during finals.

Without so much as getting a sip of water, I went straight to my desk. The whistling in my lungs and throbbing in my heart were just the usual side effects of the pneumothorax, and therefore not worth a second thought. Miss Archer’s definitions were much more worrisome. It wasn’t that I was slack during the semester and left my studying to the last minute. I’d reviewed the concepts many times, but my brain just couldn’t absorb them. Learning by rote had always come easily to me, and my teachers had praised me for being able to recite pages and pages of poetry. Miss Archer’s definitions, however, were like verses written in a nonsensical language. For instance, "Marginal Utility: the additional benefit received from each incremental unit of the good." Without any explanation or illustration, it was just a string of indigestible words.

Dinner came too soon. Neither Renee nor I was hungry, but we went down to the cafeteria anyway. The twenty-some residents of the women’s dorm were as quiet as a gathering of nuns on a retreat. Instead of talking and laughing, everyone was shoveling rice into her mouth. I sat down to the standard bowl of rice, soup, and dish of stir-fry. The fare wasn’t bad for cafeteria food, though not as good as over at the men’s dorm, which offered a menu of several choices of meat and vegetables. But that night the kitchen could have served us cow dung and we wouldn’t have noticed. Our bodies might be present but our minds were far, far away in the lofty realms of learning and logic—and panic.

I absent-mindedly scratched the back of my ear. A bump met my fingers. "What’s this behind my ear?" I said to Renee.

She lifted a swatch of my hair. "It looks like a rash. Oh, there’s more." My neck felt cool as she flipped up the skirt of my hair. "It’s all over your neck!" she exclaimed.

I finished up quickly and hurried back to my room. The reflection in the mirror startled me—Who’s that leper? I couldn’t believe it was I, and yet it couldn’t be anybody else. The red dots had advanced from behind my neck and merged into pink swollen blobs on my face. New blotches were still appearing and old ones were expanding in front of my very eyes. My face was like a world map, carved into islands and continents with a shrinking sea in between. Renee urged me to see the warden. I shrugged it off, remarking that a few itches couldn’t hurt anyone. The last thing I wanted was to have the warden pry into my health. Although my illness was no longer contagious, the school might not understand.

I sat on my hands to keep from scratching. But how could I resist? A swarm of bees attacking me couldn’t have felt worse. I was twisting and contorting my arms and body to reach all the itchy spots. Six pairs of hands wouldn’t have been enough. The rash was everywhere now—on my belly, back, armpits, even between my toes. I got up to look at myself in the mirror, but before I got there Renee had already told me, "You look like a pig!" Indeed, through the slits of my eyes I could see that the pink blobs had grown into one another to form an enormous pig’s head.

There was no use in pretending to study anymore. I crawled into bed, itching and aching all over. My head felt as if an axe had split it right down the middle. I turned toward the wall, away from the lamp that was still burning at Renee’s desk, and shed silent tears. Sleep was impossible that night. Long after Renee had shut down, my twitching and scratching went on.

The next morning my dorm mates were shocked to see my pig’s head. "What happened to you!" they exclaimed. At Great Hall the same question was thrown at me from left and right. To each I replied that I’d eaten something that didn’t agree with me. My classmates didn’t probe further, for they had their own skins to save. The ordeal ahead would tax their mental and physical capacity to the maximum.

We filed into Great Hall. I daresay there was no place in this world as solemn as this examination hall. Every detail was designed to remind us of the gravity of the occasion—the shiny waxed floor that dared anyone to scuff it, the desks and chairs lined up like headstones in a cemetery, and the high breezy ceiling that cast a chill in the air. No matter what season it was, you shivered the moment you stepped into Great Hall. And you would shiver even more when you saw Miss Archer licking her index finger and placing the test papers face down on each desk. The morning session was devoted to Part I: economic theory. Two others were to follow in the afternoon—economic history and economic policy. Each portion was to last three hours. The marathon began at eight in the morning and would go on till seven in the evening. It was as much a test in stamina as in knowledge.

When I took my place, my body was still itching and my head hurting. But the minute Miss Archer announced, "You may start now," all my discomforts were forgotten. I grasped the pen and scribbled away. Miss Archer’s definitions poured out of me. Much to my surprise, I’d retained more than I thought. There was only one problem—my fingers couldn’t move fast enough. The pen kept slipping out of my swollen fingers. My script looked like the slow, clumsy scrawl of a child learning to write. When the bell rang, I’d finished only three of the four questions.

After a short lunch break, we sat down for the second paper. Economic history was my forte, and therefore my hope for salvaging the morning’s damage. There were six essay questions. I browsed them over and found that there were no surprises. But the problem of my fingers remained. Getting them to hold a pen was as frustrating as trying to manipulate a bunch of bananas. The effort was so painstaking that my hand cramped up after two essays. Pausing to rest, I listened helplessly to the frenzied scratching of my classmates’ pens.

A wave of fatigue washed over me. The floor rolled under my feet. I held on to the desk to steady myself. When I looked up, the white wall was spinning toward me like a typhoon, the heavens and earth were tumbling round and round, and Miss Archer was swirling in the midst of it all. I closed my eyes and the last I remembered was the cool surface of the desk on my cheek.

The bell woke me. For a second or two, I didn’t know where I was. Around me echoed the scraping of chairs, the scuffling of shoes. My classmates were walking out of Great Hall. The open page of a notebook stared up at me, a half-finished sentence leading to a large empty space that should have been filled with my handwriting. I wanted desperately to pick up my pen and resume writing, but exam rules were strictly enforced. All pens must be down at the sound of the bell. Anyone who disobeyed would be disqualified. Tears welled up in me. I fought them back and stumbled out of the hall.

My head was still swimming when the class returned for Part III. During the break my classmates had avoided me as I’d avoided them. Nobody seemed to have noticed my blackout. Clenching my teeth, I picked up the pen and wrote as fast as my bloated fingers allowed. Having missed two-thirds of economic history, only a close to full mark in policy could save me.

I fell two points short of passing. It was a particularly bad year for economics majors. Out of my class of thirty, a third failed. The company was no consolation, especially when out of the three girls, I was the only one who flunked. Amy, a brilliant hybrid of Chinese and Japanese parents, led the class. The other girl, called Yolanda, became cockier than ever. Her nickname was "Number One Under the Sky," so you can imagine what a loudmouthed braggart she was.

I spent most of that summer closeted in Sam-Koo’s room. Brother Kin sent me money to visit him in
Thailand
, but again I couldn’t go because of the monthly treatments. It was just as well, for I couldn’t stand the thought of facing my horde of nosy relatives. Repeating a class was a tremendous shame, and I didn’t want to go around explaining the reason for my failure. Only Sam-Koo understood. Instead of beating me as Mother would for crying so much, she was tireless in consoling me. She did her best to put my misfortune in a philosophical light, but by the end of summer I still couldn’t see how a disaster could produce anything good.

TAPE THREE

SHOOTING AN ARROW AT THE SUN

1

I went on to the new school year. New, yet old for me, as I had to redo an entire year of coursework. It was a strange term in more ways than one. While my eyes were on my books, my ears were tuned to the radio. Japanese troops had gathered on the
Kowloon
border. Japanese intentions couldn’t be clearer, yet at the same time, people couldn’t believe that
Japan
would dare take a bite off the
British Empire
. The authorities in
Hong Kong
took measures to prepare for the worst. British garrisons conducted military exercises; the population was drilled to respond to air-raid sirens; and young men were urged to join the reserve. Many of my classmates registered. After a number of hours of training, they were issued guns and uniforms. They were full of militaristic zeal, swearing to defend their homes to the death.

I had the same dream night after night. I was running away from a dragon. It had many heads, each spitting fire in a different direction. I was on an open field with no place to hide. The more I tried to run, the more my feet felt tied to the ground. The dragon was closing in. I always woke up with a jerk.

On the night of
December 7, 1941
, I was preparing for mid-terms the next day. In the background was a radio broadcast of Japanese troop movement. Again, the newscaster sounded as if the Japanese were going to invade within twenty-four hours. Most people had learned not to run for shelter, for the newscaster had been making the same prediction every day for the last three months. I plugged my ears and buried my head in Miss Archer’s notes. War or no war, I couldn’t afford to flunk again. I studied deep into the night and managed to catch a few hours of sleep. The next morning, while Renee and I were getting dressed, the air-raid siren screamed over our heads. What a nuisance, we said to each other. Whoever timed this emergency drill must be brainless. Exams were starting in an hour, and we hadn’t had breakfast yet. While we were debating whether to evacuate, the dorm warden sauntered onto our floor.

"No need to panic, girls," the English matron said calmly. "It’s only a practice."

The drone of airplanes drew us out to the balcony. A group of us stood watching as three fighter planes flew over
Stonecutters
Island
, which was uninhabited and used only as a munitions storage. We couldn’t make out the flag on the planes, but there was no doubt in our minds that they were part of the exercise.

Pellets fell off the planes like bird droppings. How curious, I thought to myself. A boom shook my eardrums and flames shot up from the island. My dorm mates and I looked at each other in shock. This wasn’t a practice! The explosions were real, and the planes couldn’t be British. We ran back into the room and turned on the radio. Over the next several hours we heard one piece of bone-chilling news after another: Japanese planes had attacked
Pearl Harbor
and sank two British battleships in the Pacific. The
United States
and
Great Britain
had declared war on
Japan
.

What my friends and I witnessed was a turning point in world history. Up till then separate conflicts had been going on in Europe and
Asia
. The wars in one region had little to do with the other. However, the moment the Japanese crossed the line to attack the West, the two theaters merged into one war encompassing the entire globe. This day was truly the beginning of the Second World War.

Exams were canceled. The university’s administrators ordered the student body to return home. They also announced that students in their last year would be granted wartime diplomas. I cried when I heard the announcement. My peers were graduating that day while I was held back in third year.

With Mother in
Thailand
, Ngai and I had no home to go to. A classmate of Ngai had offered him shelter, but I wasn’t going to invite myself. I decided to go to Sam-Koo’s dorm at Yeung Jung. The buses had stopped running, so I walked to the school. People were dashing around on the street, looking fearful and lost. Storekeepers were busy pulling down their shutters and turning away frantic customers who had waited too long to stock up. When I arrived at the school an hour later, Sam-Koo was running around looking for something. In the panic of the bombing, she’d gathered all her valuables, including several hundred dollars Brother Kin had sent me, and stashed them away in a "safe" place. When I asked her where the cache was, she could only blink, then blink some more. No matter how hard her brain worked, she just couldn’t remember where the hiding place was. The more I pressed her, the more confused she became. Hours later, in a moment of lucidity, Sam-Koo remembered. She’d put the money in a paper bag and threw it in the wastepaper basket in her classroom. We ran to salvage the "trash," but it was too late. The school janitor had emptied the basket.

*

Japanese troops marched into
Kowloon
Peninsula
. Living on the island side, I could hear the exchange of gunfire with the British. The battle went on for several days. Then all was quiet. British troops were seen scrambling onto ferries and sampans to cross over to
Hong Kong
Island
. The peninsula had fallen.

Sam-Koo and I decided that two women shouldn’t be alone at such a dangerous time. I approached Ninth Uncle, Father’s eldest brother. He and his wife agreed to take us in. Their children were all in
Thailand
, so they had plenty of room for two. Sam-Koo and I stuffed our clothes in two canvas bags and walked halfway up
Victoria
Peak
to Uncle’s apartment. His unit was on the ground floor, giving him access to a basement dug deep into the mountainside. It was normally used for storage, but on the day I moved in, I discovered how useful a basement could be in times of war.

The bombardment started just after dark. The Japanese had placed a ring of cannons on top of the
Kowloon
mountains. From their high vantage point, they could lob shells down on the island with their eyes closed. Uncle, who seemed prepared for this, guided everyone by an oil lamp down to the basement. Sam-Koo and I grabbed a blanket and made ourselves a nest in a corner. As I was settling in, a pounding on the door startled me. Voices called out Uncle’s name. "It’s the neighbors," he said, and groped for the door. A throng of shadows filed in. I scooted closer to Sam-Koo to make space. Soon I was shoulder to shoulder, toe to toe with the other residents of the block.

Frightened but still curious, I peeked out of the window. Tongues of fire flashed at me from different directions. It was my dream come true. The ring of cannons was the many-headed dragon in my nightmare, and it was coming after me. The explosions were getting closer and closer. The building shook, windows rattled. I clamped my ears, certain that the next shot would hit me. But it skipped over me and fell on the other side. The explosions moved on, farther and farther away. Everyone in the basement let out a breath. But our relief was short-lived. The cannons were sweeping back, closer and closer, until we were at the center of their target again.

An earsplitting boom struck the building. My spirit flew out of my body. Around me Buddhists were yelling "Omitofu" and Christians were bellowing "Jesus, save me." I flung my arms over my head. Seconds passed, but the building didn’t collapse. The wall I was leaning on was standing erect as before. The explosions were receding again.

A desire to laugh seized me. How hilarious people sounded when they called to their gods. Although I’d attended a convent school and gone to temples with Sam-Koo, I hadn’t felt the need to enroll in either camp so far. If the building had collapsed, the Buddhists would die thinking that they would come back in another life, and the Christians would hope to go to heaven. As for me, what did I have to look forward to? The question sobered me. I realized I had no right to laugh at other people’s religion.

The murmur of prayers went on, rising and falling with the loudness of the explosions. I must have dozed off leaning against Sam-Koo’s shoulder. When I opened my eyes, the sun had risen. I could see that the floor was littered with people. Uncle was telling everyone to return to his apartment. As I followed him up, a gust of cold air blew away my grogginess. We rushed in to see where the wind was coming from. In the kitchen the sky stared at us where the wall used to be.

Night after night, residents of the neighborhood took shelter in the basement. When the shelling was light, we passed the time by telling stories. Squinting under the oil lamp, Ninth Uncle read to us from a book by a Chinese Nostradamus written several hundred years ago. It was a tattered paperback that he’d bought at a used bookstand in
Swatow
. It was full of pictures, like a comic book, and the text was written in an obscure classical language that few could understand. Ninth Uncle, who had been a titled scholar in his youth, deciphered the prophecies for us. One picture showed corpses strewn on both sides of a door. According to Uncle, this was a portrayal of two events that happened around the same time. One was the Chinese revolution that overthrew the Manchus in 1911, and the other was the First World War that started in 1914. The result, the death of thousands, was represented by the corpses lying inside and outside the Chinese door.

Another picture showed a man shooting an arrow at the sun. This, Uncle said, was the current Sino-Japanese war. The sun was the Japanese national emblem and the archer was
China
. "Who’s going to win?" we asked. We were all eager to find out the outcome of this chapter. Uncle read on while we waited anxiously. "We didn’t win or lose in this war," he finally said. A collective moan resounded. Everyone was disappointed that he didn’t proclaim
China
the winner. Only years later did I realize that his interpretation was right.
China
didn’t defeat
Japan
. It was American atomic bombs that brought the Japanese to their knees.

The last page depicted yet another war. This time a man was pushing a button. Can you imagine? Several hundred years ago, the author was foreseeing a push-button nuclear war. "Who’s going to win?" we asked eagerly again. Uncle, without consulting the book, made his own prediction—
China
, of course!

Another night, the men got into a heated discussion. The shelling had been going on for two weeks. Patience was running low, and tempers high. In the eerie glow of the lamp, people’s eyes had sunk into deeper and darker holes.

"Why haven’t the British sent more troops?" Uncle said to no one in particular.

"The British can’t even protect themselves," a male voice replied. "They have to fight the Germans on one side and the Japanese on the other.
Hong Kong
means nothing to them. Why would they waste money and lives on us?"

"We should surrender then," Uncle said. "Without reinforcement, the island is indefensible. Resistance is as futile as a grasshopper trying to stop the wheels of a carriage. We will be crushed, and many people will die for no reason."

"We should never surrender. They say Chinese troops are on their way. Any day now, we’ll see them marching across the border. They’ll whip the Japanese all the way back to
Tokyo
!"

Although I couldn’t see the speaker, I could tell that he was a young man. His patriotism set off a round of clucking and sighs.

"Only cowards surrender," the young man declared with bravado. "I’d rather die than kowtow to the enemy!"

"If you’re so brave, why are you hiding in here? Go out and fight the Japanese!"

"All right, that’s enough. Let’s not fight among ourselves," Uncle intervened.
         

A fresh voice said, "We have to fight the Japanese at all costs. Not because I’m brave, but because I’m afraid. Do you remember the tens of thousands they killed in
Nanking
? From that example alone, you can tell what the Japanese will do if they take over. The soldiers will prowl the streets looking for women. They’re capable of committing worse brutality than animals."

Shudders rippled through the cellar. We were silent for a long time.

*

On Christmas day, seventeen days after the Japanese attacked, the inevitable happened. The Japanese landed on
Hong Kong
Island
. Hours later, the government surrendered. Although it came as no surprise, the news was nonetheless shocking. The Japanese must have obtained intelligence from their spies, for they couldn’t have picked a better spot for landing. It was a beach at North Point, close to where I’d learned to swim. Only three hundred reservists were guarding the post. The volunteers were like children playing war against the professional soldiers. The bloodbath was terrible. Only one, wounded and left for dead, survived.

I was in tears all day. Many of the volunteers were my classmates. I cried for them—promising young men cut down before their lives could begin. But most of all, I cried for their mothers and fathers, lovers and spouses, who would carry on their lives on earth in torment. Having gone through my own loss, I sympathized deeply with them. My father died many years ago, yet never a day went by without my feeling a hole in my life.

*