The Distant Land of My Father (9 page)

When we got home, my father met us at the door. It was only four o’clock, and it was unusual for him to be home so early. His expression was grim, his mouth a straight line. When my mother got out of the car, he said only, “It’s Chapei.” Then he looked at me and said, “You might as well see this,” and he took my hand and led me up the outside stairs to the verandah, then to the north side of the house, where he put his hands on my shoulders and faced me toward Chapei across Soochow Creek.

The sky was a Halloween orange, darker than sunset and tinged with black, with low clouds that were blacker still. The air smelled of smoke, and there was a sound I’d never heard before. The closest thing was thunder, but this was faster and staccato sharp, an aggressive rapping that I wanted to stop.

“It’s started,” my father said. “That’s the sound of shelling. Things won’t be the same for a while now.”

We watched in silence as it grew dark. By dusk the whole sky over Chapei was black smoke, and when we finally went inside, I stayed close to my parents out of fear, as though no place was safe. In the den, my father switched on the radio, and its miniature cathedral shape made me think of Mass.
Keep us safe,
I thought. My parents were listening to the news: the first shots had been fired at Yokohama Bridge, on the northern border of the International Settlement, leading to an exchange of fire between the outposts of the two militaries. Across the Whangpoo at Pootung, Japanese marines were disembarking from their cruisers under covering fire from gunboats.

The next morning, the clouds over Chapei were still black. The sound of shelling had become a backdrop that seemed to be everywhere and to come from all directions. It made my head hurt. There were other sounds, too, which my father said was cannon fire and the playback of shelling from ships, and firing from the gunboats in the Whangpoo, all of it making the French doors that opened onto the verandah shudder.

My parents had been invited to a wedding reception that afternoon. The bride was the daughter of my father’s first employer in Shanghai, a man who ran the Asiatic American Underwriters, and there was to be a garden reception at the Cercle Sportif in the French Concession. It was clear that my mother had no wish to go, but it was equally clear that my father had no intention of staying home. He’d been at home more than usual that week, acquiescing to my mother’s nervousness. By Saturday he was feeling cooped up and he made a deal with my mother: they would go to the reception, but only for a short time, just to make an appearance. And they would take me with them, so that my mother wouldn’t worry.

We left at two. My father wanted something from his office, and he told Mei Wah to drive to the Bund before going to the French Concession. But as we neared the city, the roads became packed with people. Mei Wah inched his way through the crowds and it took almost half an hour to reach Yuen Ming Yuen Road, where my father hurried into his office while my mother and Mei Wah and I waited in the car, the motor running. My mother tried to play “I spy” with me, but she couldn’t stay interested, and we had to keep starting over.

We heard planes overhead, and although I’d heard the sound earlier in the day when Chinese Northrups had flown low over the Settlement, the noise was more frightening now because it was so much closer. I leaned forward and saw the planes through the front windshield. My mother’s expression became more anxious and she glanced at my father’s office but said nothing. Then the shelling grew louder, and the planes nearer still, and I heard Mei Wah curse under his breath. My mother looked around frantically, as though trapped, and she spoke in Mandarin to Mei Wah, who only shrugged in answer.

And then a terrible sound shook the whole car, an explosion louder than anything I’d ever heard or imagined. My father hurried out a moment later, threw himself into the front seat, and told Mei Wah to get away from the Bund as quickly as possible.

But nothing was quick that afternoon. Downtown was packed and steaming, and our car barely moved. I looked behind us at the Garden Bridge and saw the stream of refugees still coming from across Soochow Creek. There was no end to them. When we neared the intersection of Nanking Road, my mother gasped and my father barked at Mei Wah again and I stared hard. I could not understand what I was seeing.

Nothing was identifiable. The front of the Cathay was gone, completely shattered, and the roof and walls of the Palace Hotel had been destroyed as well. The street was full of craters and littered with glass and metal and plaster, and everything was covered by smoke. The whole place was strewn with something I couldn’t name, and there were people running everywhere—Municipal Police, Volunteers, the fire brigade, the Chinese Red Cross. There was a terrible smell of something burning, which I thought must be the cars on fire, the tires maybe.

And then I looked harder at one of the cars, and I saw that there had been a person inside. The corpse was black and burned, and I understood that there had been people in all of the burning cars around us, and I knew without knowing that what I smelled was burning flesh. I stared harder at the debris, unable to look away, and I saw bodies everywhere, some whole, some in parts. A man in a white flannel suit lay in the crosswalk, minus his head. The bloody body of a child was a few feet away. Torsos. Arms. Legs. Heads, hands, feet, as though someone had thrown an armful of broken dolls from a window high above.

My mother began to weep; my father said nothing. I sat very still, staring, mute.

There was a second explosion then, from the direction of the French Concession. My mother screamed and held me close, but there was no need. I was clinging to her as tightly as I could. I felt her breath catch, and she said, “Oh, Joseph, please,” as though he somehow had the power to save us.

We made our way through the city streets to the French Concession. On Race Course Road, a few blocks from the Great World, I finally looked outside again and saw something dark running in the gutters. It was too dark to be water and it was not quite mud. I remembered my father showing me a dye factory once, a place where he’d had to appraise some equipment, and I thought another bomb must have hit the factory. My mother was staring outside, too, and I started to say, “Look, it’s paint,” because I couldn’t remember the word
dye.
But my mother choked and curled over and I understood that I was seeing blood.

And then we reached the Great World.

Through gray smoke, I saw a street full of bodies, even more than at Nanking Road, many of them torn into pieces. A Chinese policeman who had been directing traffic hung from his crow’s nest. The body of a man in a tuxedo lay below in the street, and near him was a pretty Chinese woman in a blue cheongsam, her legs blown off, her right arm torn. On the curb, just outside the car window, was a woman’s charred hand, the manicured nails painted bright red, a gold wedding ring on the finger, and near it was a baby’s foot in a pink bootie. The air was filled with cries and moans and screams, and blood was everywhere.

Cars waiting for the traffic light to turn green, their passengers trapped inside them, were completely burned. The French police had just arrived, and their hands and arms were already bloody from sorting the living from the dead. The smell was hideous. My mother took off her wrap and held it to my face to lessen the stench, but it did no good, and I was sick on the floor of the car.

We were within two miles of the Cercle Sportif, much closer to the wedding than to home. My father told Mei Wah to take us there so that he could find out what had happened. It would, he thought, be safe.

Mei Wah drove down Tibet Road to Avenue Joffre, then down Route Père Robert to Route Cardinal Mercier. When we turned into the driveway of the Cercle Sportif, the day became even stranger. Here, everything was orderly and elegant. Chauffeurs wearing clean white gloves watched over long rows of parked cars. Mei Wah opened our doors and my mother and I slowly got out of the car and followed my father across the lawn.

Inside the club, there were hundreds of guests, Chinese, European, British, and American. The women wore brightly colored dresses of silk and brocade and satin and lace. The Western men were in tuxedos, the Chinese men in long gowns made of dark blue silk. Paper lanterns hung everywhere, their soft light making the ballroom seem fragile and enchanted. I hardly moved. I was afraid that if I moved too quickly, everything might disappear.

A waiter offered my parents champagne, and there were nougats and Perugina chocolates that I usually coveted. A sixteen-course Chinese dinner was just being served, and a Chinese woman in a pale gold cheongsam commented to my father that the wine was warmed just enough. I watched my father stumble in conversation with her about the groom and his family and how she knew them until he finally asked, “Do you know what’s happened?”

She frowned. “There is a rumor of trouble near the Bund,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like much to worry about.”

My father opened his mouth as if to speak. Then he closed it and just looked around him for a moment. He looked at my mother, who seemed barely able to stand. “I can’t stay here,” he said. She nodded and he picked me up and the three of us went to the car.

The roads had become even more crowded with refugees and cars. I thought the world was made of smoke now. It was all I could see over the Bund, and it was all I could smell. My father sat in the front seat and fooled with the Motorola radio, trying to hear the news, but everything was static. He finally snapped it off and slumped back in his seat. “We’ll find out soon enough,” he said. “I suppose we can wait.”

Finally, an hour later, we were home. My mother took me upstairs while my father went into the den to turn on the radio. Some time later, he came to my room to tell my mother what he’d learned. It had all been an accident: Chinese pilots trying to hit the Japanese
Idzumo
had dropped four two-thousand-pound bombs over the city. Two had fallen into the Whangpoo, raising a huge wall of water that had washed across the Bund and over any cars unlucky enough to be there just then. The third had fallen through the roof of the Palace Hotel, and the fourth had landed in front of the entrance to the Cathay. Hundreds of people had died instantly; hundreds more were wounded.

And then, my father continued, fifteen minutes after those first bombs, a disabled Chinese plane had accidentally dropped two more bombs over the Great World. The first had detonated the second, and another thousand people had been killed, mostly Chinese refugees. The news reports were calling that a record: the largest number of people killed by a single bomb in the history of aerial warfare.

Late that Saturday night, long after my mother had put me to bed, my father came to my room, something he did often at the end of his evening. He would sit on the edge of my bed and pat my back and hum. I usually pretended I was sleeping. I was afraid that if he thought he’d woken me, he would leave so that I would go back to sleep.

That night he sat down and let his breath out, a long, tired sound.

“I have to give you something,” I said suddenly, my voice startling him. I crawled out of bed and went to the window. I could feel him watching me as I pushed the screen open and found the yen, which felt cool and damp. I closed my fingers over it and wished for courage. I walked back to him, took his hand, and placed the yen in his open palm, then closed his fingers over it. I climbed back into bed and said, “Now you can look.”

He opened his hand and held the yen up to the dim light that came in through the window. Then he looked at me.

“Where did this come from?”

“I took it that day. In your office.”

He looked confused. “Any reason?”

“I just wanted it,” I said. “But then everything bad started happening. Maybe”—my voice caught with guilt—”maybe that’s why. Because I took it.” I took a breath.
“Teh-nung,”
I started, and I tried again.
“Teh-nung vachee,”
I’m sorry.

He started to smile but stopped when he looked at me. “No,” he said. “Some things happened because of some mistakes I made. Not you. Nothing that’s happened has been your fault, Anna. It’s just”—he faltered—”it’s a bad time.”

I took a breath and willed myself to believe him. “What’s going to happen next?”

My father looked toward the hallway. “Your mother’s afraid,” he said, and he paused and looked at me carefully. “She wants to go home. To
her
home.”

I nodded.

“You know that?”

I nodded again and hoped he would say more. “Sort of.”

“To Los Angeles,” he said.

“The City of Angels,” I prompted, glad that I had it right for him.

He smiled gently. “Yep,” he said. “That’s about it. That’s the deal, I suppose. The City of Angels.”

“Are we going to do that?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Shanghai’s our home, right? What would we do anyplace else?”

I shrugged.

“We’ll have to see,” and he stood and slipped the yen into his pocket. “Everything’s all right, Anna. You know that, don’t you?”

I forced a smile, and he patted the pocket that held the yen and whispered,
“Hsiehhsieh,”
thank you. Then he leaned close and kissed my forehead as though we’d made a pact.