The Black Isle (6 page)

After the peacock room, everything felt even more inferior. The cafeteria floor was covered in cheap third-class linoleum to catch the spills from clumsy third-class hands. The silverware was third class, lightweight and malleable; when our aluminum forks scraped the bottoms of our aluminum trays, they made the harsh squawks of dying parrots. Everybody huddled over their food like ragamuffins guarding their rations. There were teachers, clerks, and shopkeepers among us, yet they were all behaving so disgracefully, as if third class was a state of mind and not simply a ticket price.

Li nibbled at his undercooked yam, prodded the congealed fat around the overboiled pork, and told Father he felt sick. His complexion was green, as if his blood vessels had been eclipsed by those foul wallpaper vines.

The following morning, I skipped lunch and smuggled my unsupervised self back to the swimming pool. The girl, Rachel, was already doing her laps. Odell sat in a lounge chair, as if he’d been expecting me for some time. As promised, he walked me through the ship—the ballroom, the hairdressing studio, the squash court and gymnasium, and the wood-paneled galley where first-class dinners were prepared, with its army of gas rings and railcars of humming iceboxes. He told me the names of everything in English. Parquet, pommel horse, aperitif—how grand those words felt on my tongue!

In the depopulated shopping arcade, elaborate cut glass panels unfolded across two facing walls like parallel comic strips. The tableaux were vivid with monsters and men whose near nakedness made me blush.

“They’re Greek,” explained my guide. “The weather’s very warm there.”

He went on to narrate the two tales inscribed in those panels. In one, a young hero named Perseus went on a quest to slay Medusa, a deadly Gorgon with snakes for hair who turned men to stone at a glance. Aided by special gifts—sword, shield, and flying sandals—Perseus emerged triumphant, Medusa’s head wriggling in his hand. In the other panel, another hero, Theseus, faced off against the Minotaur in its labyrinth. Also aided by a gift—a ball of string—Theseus survived and laid rest his beast.

The pictures were luridly exotic—Medusa’s head dripped blood—but I was struck by a glaring imperfection. “Isn’t it cheating,” I asked, “if the heroes had outside help?”

Odell laughed. “Have you tried slaying a Gorgon? You need all the assistance you can get.” He pursed his lips. “Actually, you remind me of another Greek character, a stubborn young girl who never wanted any help. Pandora.”

“Was she a hero, too?”

“To some.” Odell twitched his brows dramatically. “To others she’s a
villain
.”

He followed this with the story of Pandora and the infernal box she opened, a parable whose old-fashioned moralizing provoked my deepest yawns.

“Tired, are you, Pandora?”

He flicked a switch and a series of sconces fired up along the walls, hissing and flickering uncertainly. I realized that until then, we’d been standing in near darkness. We were in the first-class lobby, surrounded by clusters of empty settees and ashtrays set on kingly pedestals. Nobody was manning the welcome desk and we passed right through. At the mouth of a corridor lined with numbered rooms, Odell paused.

“Feel free to use any room here you like. You’ll find they’re much more comfortable than the ones in steerage.”

I ambled down the hallway and chose a room at random. Room 88. It felt like a lucky number. As Odell promised, it was unlocked. The room was easily four times the size of our pathetic cabin. A double bed, big windows, frilly drapes—everything done in genteel pink and cream. I looked back to thank Odell but he was gone.

I hadn’t thought I was tired but no sooner had I collapsed into bed than I submitted to slumber. When I woke, the sky was dark. My stomach rumbled. Dinnertime.

The peacock salon was not empty. I stopped at the doorway, wondering if I’d be caught in this forbidden zone. A long-legged blonde in a shimmering gown danced a somber tango by herself in the silence, by the stage where no musician had yet been installed. But she was fully absorbed and seemed not to mind my presence.

I sauntered in, trying to decide which of the hundred tables I should sit at.

“Pandora.” Odell was sitting by a trompe l’oeil window at a table for two. The Mediterranean countryside, bursting with butterflies and olive trees, spread out along his arm. “You look lovely tonight.” I blushed and walked nimbly over to join him. He tilted his head at the dancer. “Don’t worry about her.”

He pushed his steaming bowl of meat and rice, apparently untouched, toward me and handed me his fork with a flourish. I promptly forgot all my manners and started into the food. The rice was fluffy, the sauce tangy, the cubes of beef so pinkly tender they practically melted on my tongue. Even with my childish palate, trained on Ah Ying’s salt-lashed casseroles, I knew what I was tasting would be hard to surpass.

“Beef Stroganoff,” he said. “The chef’s specialty. He cooked for the Russian imperial family during the old days. I can tell you like it.”

He watched my unladylike gorging with his sad eyes, and I grew self-conscious.

“I shouldn’t be stealing your food.” I pushed the plate back toward him, but the meal was already half gone.

“Nonsense. There’s plenty more where this came from. It’s a pleasure to watch you eat. One of these days you should join my wife and me at the Metropole for tea. We’re there the last Sunday of every month, without fail. The Metropole’s famous for its high tea. You remind me a great deal of my wife, actually. Pei-Pei. That’s her name.”

My cheeks prickled again. “Your wife’s Chinese?”

“Very much so.”

“Do you have children?”

He shook his head, regretfully.

“Why not?”

“It’s difficult when I live in one place and my wife lives in another.”

“Why don’t you stay with her on the Black Isle?”

“There’s no place on the Black Isle for someone like me. You’ll see what I mean. It’s not like Shanghai over there. It’s a jungle. People are less open-minded.”

“Then why doesn’t your wife live with you in Shanghai?”

“Do you always ask this many questions, Pandora?”

“Stop calling me Pandora.” I put down my fork.

“Have you noticed something unusual, Pandora?” He smiled, pointing to his lips.

I covered my mouth: we’d conducted our entire conversation in English.

In the company of my good teacher, I had absorbed this new knowledge like a thirsty sponge. But here’s the truth. This was due less to talent than to
empathy
, and it would be much later before I’d come to understand—or rather, accept—the difference.

Both Li and Father were seasick again, taking turns at the bucket out in the corridor. Between the two of them, the door creaked open and clanked shut all through the night. I was tempted to tell them about the rooms in first class, but I held my mouth shut.

When I woke in the morning, Father and Li were gone. I instantly regretted my secrecy.

“They’re in the Isolation Ward,” said an old widow who shared a cabin with her middle-aged daughter. “It’s at the tail end of the ship, down several very dark, very steep flights of stairs. My girl’s there, too. Best you wait here and keep me company. Come, come.” She handed me one of her knitting needles, which I was to hold still while she tied endless loops around the other. I flung it down and fled.

The Isolation Ward? I had to find Odell.

A crew member intercepted me on the promenade. A stocky Chinese sailor so tanned he looked almost Indian.

“I have to meet my friend at the swimming pool,” I told him.

“Rubbish, the swimming pool is closed.”

“No, it’s not. That girl Rachel swims there every day.”

The sailor’s lip quivered. “Rachel? You saw Rachel?”

The sailor didn’t wait for me to answer. He grabbed the collar of my blouse and dragged me through a set of doors marked
CREW ONLY
and then down a long corridor rattling with noisy generators. The ship seemed to pitch more dramatically in that tight space. At the end of the way was a frosted glass door with the word
ENGINEER
painted in gold. It opened even before the sailor could knock. A lank, sinewy European in a crumpled, unbuttoned shirt stood on the threshold, his white hair in a mess.

“What is it now?”

“This one says she saw the girl. In the pool.”

The European’s pale blue eyes widened for a split second; then he nodded, almost subliminally, as if deciding on the terms of some internal pact. He unfurled his wrinkly hand in the direction of my face and I flinched, but all he did was flatten his palm against my forehead in a grandfatherly way. “No fever.”

He placed his thumbs below each of my eyes and gently pulled down my lower lids. “Normal.”

Squatting down until our gazes were level, he addressed me in halting Mandarin: “Where your people?”

“In the I-Ward, Mr. Rosen,” said the sailor.

“In that case, they’ll be back in their cabin shortly. The I-Ward is overcrowded. Too many first-time travelers. The Chinese can be very imaginative when it comes to ailments.” He shook his head, dispersing white hair across his balding pate. “This one’s probably no different. Take her back to her room to wait and make sure she doesn’t wander off again.”

The sailor pulled me gently out of the engineer’s office.

I resisted. I knew I had to register my outrage before it was too late. But where I found the courage for my outburst, I do not know:

“How come Rachel can go there but not me?” I shouted.

The engineer responded in a voice heavy with regret. “Rachel does whatever she pleases. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell the others about my daughter.”

With that, he shut his door. I heard a record squeal on—minor-key piano music full of clashing chords. But I had questions. Rachel was his
daughter
? He looked so old.

The sailor’s hand gripped mine as he walked me back, so I wouldn’t “wander off” as the engineer had so insultingly put it. Reaching third class, he slavishly repeated his overlord’s demand: “Don’t go around spreading rumors about the girl, you hear? Just stay in your room and be good.”

“Why?”

“Because we cannot afford chaos on board.”

“Why?”

“Are you playing games with me or do you really have no horse sense? Couldn’t you tell that Rachel isn’t like us?”

“Because she’s a European?”

The sailor sank down to his haunches and looked into my eyes. “No. Because she drowned in that pool ten years ago.”

So Rachel was a ghost! My flesh tingled with this secret, special knowledge. So Sister Yeung wasn’t the only one. Like that dead amah, Rachel hadn’t scared me or harmed me, and I remained untouched, unchanged. The only unhappy consequence of my sighting was that it had rendered the sailor and me into two very different animals, with nothing more in common. My maritime guardian sat on the lone chair in our cabin, staring out the porthole, halfheartedly whistling “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and playing with a loose thread on his shirt. I sensed he was now afraid of me, as if seeing ghosts instantly gave me some strange power. I couldn’t wait to hear what Odell might make of the news, since he, too, had clearly seen the little swimmer.

Finally the door clicked open and the sailor popped up from his perch. Father lurched back, startled to see a strange man in the cabin; I watched his guard go up. I was relieved to see Li, but he was still green-faced. He darted to the bunk, pushing me aside.

The sailor was only too happy to leave. He shot me a look of caution—
Don’t tell
—then slipped out the door.

Father waited till he was gone before uttering a word. “I didn’t want to wake you this morning. I took Li to the sick bay. The doctor says he has anemia.” Father’s face creased up. “Not enough nutrition. And there’s nothing they can do about it until we get to shore.”

“They have beef Stroganoff,” I offered, “in first class.”

“Will you stop?” Father was suddenly livid, his rage incommensurate with my words. His eyes flared. “I’ve no patience for your lies!”

“But I ate there!”

The back of Father’s hand came crashing across my face.

Father, who’d never scolded or struck any of us. Only four days in, and this journey was already changing us. My gentle father was turning into a brute, my athletic brother into a weakling, and I was left to fend for myself in this upside-down world.

I
was the island, not this treacherous ship. I was the one floating by my lonesome in the vast ocean. My face burned from the slap, and again from my tears.

“Your brother is sick and here you are gleefully making up stories.” Father sat on the rickety chair and gazed out the porthole, just as the sailor had done. Was I so repellent that neither of them could bear to look at me? After a while, he glanced at me, surprised I was still standing where he’d left me. “All right. All right. Stop crying, will you?” He beckoned me over and pulled out a fraying handkerchief. When he daubed my cheeks with it, I smelled orange peel and naphthalene, the comforting scents of our old Shanghai. “Aiyah, I only have one handkerchief. Look how you’ve ruined it.”

I sucked back my tears, but this only produced jagged, hiccuplike sobs. Father clucked his tongue. “What am I to do with you?” We both turned to Li, who seemed to be asleep but not restfully so. Greenish veins were winding down his temples like tendrils. His lips were tinged blue. “What am I to do?”

I felt his despair. We should have stayed in China; we could have found a less drastic solution.

Suddenly and roughly, he grabbed my wrist. Another first. I relaxed, expecting an apologetic caress or at least an avuncular handshake. Instead, he snatched a paring knife from the nightstand and brought its tip perilously close to my open and vulnerable palm.

“Father…,” I pleaded. Hadn’t he hurt me enough?

“Don’t make this any harder for me. We have to do this for the greater good.”

He plunged the sharp blade into the fleshy ball of my palm and I shrieked in pain. Clamping me between his knees, he held me still—the man possessed more animal strength than I’d ever given him credit for. The blood streamed down my arm in two crimson ribbons, making his grip slippery, but this only tightened his resolve. He rose from the chair, and it fell back against the wall with a crack. Clutching my hand, he dragged me toward the lower bunk.