The Black Isle (29 page)

The sirens in the city eventually died down at four in the morning.

At dawn, the shore remained covered with jellyfish. No miracle had occurred overnight; no servant of nature had arrived to sweep them back into the sea and return the sand to its virgin state. Alas, what nature wrought was far less generous. The morning sky was darkened with a scrim—not fog this time but flies. Millions of them, from God only knew where. The jelly carcasses had browned with heat and rot, and their stomachs had ballooned, gas-filled and taut. The flies hovered over them, waiting and buzzing, buzzing and waiting, hungry for their day’s feeding to begin.

A single jellyfish had made it to the bottommost step behind the house, tentacles shriveled in midreach. Its belly plumped like an over-yeasted loaf that was still rising, the skin stretched close to breaking point. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. When this sac finally burst with a dull poof, I was thrown back by the shocking stink. Perhaps this first explosion was a signal that the rest should follow; across the beach, ripened jellies began popping, one by one, some flatly, others in piercing bangs. Flies and then flocks of gulls invited themselves to the feast, lured in by the putrid swill.

Kenneth came out and joined me, grimacing at the ruined shore. I imagined his mind whirring away on its ominous implications.

“Come on, it’s time to leave.” He tapped me gently on the arm, then grabbed it, refusing to let go when he saw the blackening bruise above my elbow. “Does he always do that?”

I freed my arm from him and said nothing. The personal had to remain personal.

“And you let him?”

He didn’t wait for my answer but walked away with a small, judgmental smirk.

Kenneth drove Mr. Wee’s Bentley with the steadiness of an experienced chauffeur, one who knew that speeding was the surest way to unsettle his passengers. He kept below the speed limit.

Nobody said a word. I was still humiliated by Daniel’s brutish behavior in bed and my response to it, and Daniel remained skeptical of Kenneth’s every move. As for our chauffeur, we watched him pause at the crossroads just outside the city, pondering for a moment whether to take the shortcut that would plunge us into the devastation or the long detour, along the southern perimeter. Throwing a quick glance at Daniel in the rearview mirror, he chose the latter.

“Don’t worry, Dan,” he said softly. “I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

“I’m
not
worried.”

The detour took us down narrow lanes that zigzagged through military barracks, then funneled us out alongside the port. Soldiers, mostly swarthy South Indians, were racing around helter-skelter, directing traffic, running along with sandbags and rolls of barbwire, seemingly without supervision. We smelled the burning fuel long before we saw the fat plumes of black smoke rising from the harbor and the wrecks of two titanic vessels, still blazing, turned on their sides like gargantuan steel whales.

“They got the
Prince
,” Kenneth said, dismayed. “They’ve actually done it.”

I leaned forward for a better look. So these were the glorious battleships, the HMS
Crown Prince
and the HMS
Resilience
, that were said to be guarding the Isle. A nauseating wave of pinpricks rushed through me and I reached for Daniel’s hands—they were ice cold and of no comfort. Then our eyes met. His were swollen with tears.

Mr. Wee stood at the mansion door, as if he’d been waiting there all night. Perhaps it was a trick of light, but his hair had grown whiter since the previous afternoon. As we pulled up, Mr. Wee made a beeline for the car—and Kenneth’s window.

“They got Pearl Harbor. The same time they hit us, they hit America.”

“Daddy!” Daniel bounded out of the backseat and into his father’s arms, almost knocking the air out of the old man with his embrace.

Kenneth turned back to me. “I can take you to Chinatown now, if you like.”

I gave him a frozen nod and, filled with dread, slumped low in the seat.

As we pulled down the driveway, I heard Daniel’s footsteps running after us. “Cassandra! Where’s he taking you?”

“Let her go, Daniel,” I heard his father say, steadying him back into the fold.

I didn’t look back.

High Street was the busiest street on the Isle, but today there were almost no cars. I was embarrassed to be sitting alone in the back, with Kenneth playing my chauffeur, but he rebuffed all my requests to join him in front. Clearly, he didn’t care what people thought.

I finally broke into his silence. “Is your family in Chinatown, too?”

“Perhaps.” His jaw tensed. “They used to be. I haven’t exactly kept abreast of their news. I haven’t been the best of sons.”

“So you haven’t seen them since coming back?”

“Can’t say I have, no.”

“Then where do you stay?”

“Rooming house. Anonymous. Suits me well.”

I wanted to ask if Mr. Wee paid for these accommodations, if his generosity had divided Kenneth’s loyalties as it had divided mine, but I knew it was not my business.

“Are you worried about your relatives?” he asked. The gentleness of his tone surprised me.

“A bit.” I laughed nervously. “Well, a bit more than a bit.”

“I’m the same,” he murmured. “You and I are just the same.”

He stopped the car on Spring Street, which, except for pockets that had been reduced to rubble, looked eerily like its old self. Youngsters, darting from sidewalk to sidewalk, called for their parents and grandparents, and the street echoed with the wails of the filial, sounding as if they were all seeking the same few people: Papa, Mama, Ah Gong, Ah Ma.

A cross-junction away, our old eight-story tower block loomed, painted black to blend in with the night. In broad daylight, however, it looked to be the most inviting target. Yet for all its great height and funereal hue, it appeared to have survived. The neighborhood Pearl River cinema was not so lucky; its octagonal roof had caved in like an old pumpkin. The protruding ticket booth fared better, if one discounted its shattered window. The hand-painted banner for the current feature, a Cantonese-dubbed Abbott and Costello comedy, was singed but still fluttering.

I wanted Kenneth to drive us one block farther to the black tower and then go in with me to search for Li and Father, but the route was blocked by ambulances and rescue wagons. This was as far as the car could go.

People who a day ago had no inkling disaster would strike so swiftly sat dazed on the sidelines, their features made alien by grief. I knew that as soon as they noticed our car, we’d be overrun.

Sure enough, a band of women spotted us from a sheltered walkway and were now rushing toward us, waving their arms as if trying to hail a cab.

“You better go,” I told Kenneth as I jumped out of the car. “Find your family.”

He took a deep breath, then stretched his hand out the window. I shook it quickly. “Good luck, Cassandra,” he said. It was the first time he’d spoken my name without it sounding sarcastic.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said, wondering if that were true.

“I certainly hope so, and in one piece.”

I felt bereft as soon as the Bentley made a U-turn and sped away. I could have used Kenneth’s company, even his odd, acerbic humor, while I searched for Father and Li. Why in the world did I let him go?

Looking around, I realized that this otherworldly landscape was in fact very familiar indeed. Kenneth had deposited me on the Spring Street traffic island, where I’d spent many an afternoon as a child. The stone bench was still here, as was the stump on which Mr. Singh the traffic man used to perch. I could have sat down and wept.

But I walked on. This was no time for nostalgia. All around me, I heard small, sharp explosions coming from the nearby high-rises. Sniper fire? From the erratic way they went off, with no enemy in sight, I began to suspect they were just gas cylinders blowing out windows. Still, every bang made me jump. Father’s tower block seemed impossibly far away, and my legs were trembling so much I couldn’t take more than a few limp steps at a time. Bit by bit, I told myself. I’d seen worse. I’d fought worse.

I approached the raggedy trio of women who’d tried to run to our car and called out to them in Cantonese, this being the lingo of the working class. “I’m looking for my family!” I gave them Father’s name and Li’s. “Do you know them? Have you seen them? You have to help me.”

They stared at me;
they
were the ones who needed assistance. The middle one had a foot-long gash across her shoulder, with blood seeping down her pale blue tunic. She was nearly unconscious, and the agony was dangerously absent from her broad, rustic features. Her two younger companions—daughters?—propped her up, whimpering as much from her weight as from fear.

“Why did you let that car go?” one of the girls shrieked in Mandarin that came straight from the icy steppes of the North. “Why?”

“Please, help us,” the other one moaned. “A wall fell on top of our mama.”

Before I could reply, the rumbling beneath our feet started again, and the women began to scurry away. I gazed skyward. The planes were returning, but they were smaller, spryer ones this time: two flying specks tilted toward the area like birds of prey.

I saw something else. High up on the roof of the black tower, a man’s silhouette poked into view. He’d emerged from a crouching position to stand at full height. In his hand was a small object, an object he was pointing at the planes. A pistol! I felt certain it was Li; such quixotic stupidity was just like him. The first shot rang out, followed by echoes that reverberated through the concrete valley. All the way down the street, I could hear the shooter’s deranged yodels, the mocking hoots of a madman. No, this couldn’t be Li; this fool was much crazier than my brother. Or so I hoped.

And then the planes were upon us, zooming over Spring Street, clacking like the world’s noisiest lawnmowers, so primitive-looking it was a wonder they could even fly. I knew I should have run, but I was riveted to the spot, like a spectator waiting for the movie to unfold. I had to make sure it wasn’t Li who was demanding his close-up.

High above the black tower, the gunman fired at the planes—four, five, six times. I was watching a child spit at a storm. This chap wasn’t just mad; he was suicidal. I kept expecting him to crumple into a heap. But the enemy paid him no heed. Protruding barrels at the rear of both aircraft locked into place, and suddenly the ground around me was dancing—sand, gravel, stone, leaping into the air like fountains of dust. The earsplitting cracks of the gunfire came afterward. Crouching to take cover, I saw that the ambulance by me was riddled with holes: It had been the target.

The planes whizzed by and we were given a moment’s reprieve. Frantic civilians emerged from nearby buildings to push by me, hundreds of them, racing toward the city’s colonial core with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The poor frightened souls; they still believed the Brits could save them.

And it was on the backs of these terrified runners that I saw the dark shadows announcing the reemergence of both planes.

This time, the gunman on the roof got what he wanted. The first plane came for him. Having run out of bullets, the rebel stood fast, screaming taunts. The jet responded with a torrent of its own. The man’s body twisted as if each hit was a quick tug of a puppeteer’s string; his silhouette crumbled from view.

The other plane dived low, as if to scoop up the fleeing crowds. The wind from the passing plane pulled at me, even as I hugged the ground. Seconds later, the people running ahead began dancing themselves—puffs of red smeared their backs just before they fell, their flesh hitting the asphalt in sickening wet thuds.

Even over the din, I heard mad giggles from the sky. I thought it was my imagination at first, but I’d made no such mistake:

“Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!”

An eerie silence took hold as the planes vanished from view. I stood up again, hypnotized with disbelief. The street’s population was doubling before my eyes. The ghost halves of the newly dead bloomed into view and began stumbling around their former shells. Some wailed, piercing the hush, but most were simply too stunned.

A hand grabbed me and pulled me toward a dust-covered row of shops.

“Are you crazy?” It was one of the girls with the injured mother. “I’m surprised you’re still alive, standing there like that!”

She dragged me into a debris-laced watch repair shop, its glass window bashed in by looters. The display cases were shattered and empty; yet we were surrounded by a cacophony of ticks and tocks, as if the shadows of the missing timepieces were still here, declaring their presence. It didn’t take long to realize that the ticking was coming from a row of grandfather clocks in the middle of the shop, evidently too bulky to steal. Behind this row, the girls’ mother was lying on the floor, in a spot cleared of broken glass. Her eyes were open but registered little. The other daughter held her hand and sobbed. The girls, I discovered with a jolt, were identical twins.

“We just arrived from Hebei Province,” the first sister told me, finally releasing my arm. “We don’t know anyone, and we don’t speak a word of English. Please, miss, you have to help us! Mama needs the hospital.”

There was no telephone—it had been taken. I went behind the shop counter and rummaged through the drawers. All empty.

“Have you checked the storeroom?” I asked. Both girls shook their heads.

I dashed to the back of the shop, where a door was ajar. Inside the tiny space were a desk and a chair and multiple upturned boxes spilling order slips and other documents. Wedged behind the desk and the wall was an ancient, rusted bicycle. Pegasus brand. Nobody had thought of stealing this. I eased it out and wheeled it into the shop, its wheels squeaking as they rolled.

“Where are you going?”

“To get help.”

“But the planes may return.”

I was moved by her concern for my safety, as her own mother lay dying. She was right. I could hear a bomber circling back.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Our family’s name is Liu. I’m Liu Shanling.” She shook my hand. “My sister’s name is Shanmin.”