The Last Rose of Shanghai(102)

People lowered their heads and walked around, laying balls of mud on Mr. Schmidt as the rain pattered down. Rage rose in Ernest’s chest, consuming him. He knelt on the ground, steeled his fingers, and thrust deep into the muddy earth. He began to dig, dig, and dig. His nails broke, his knees chafed; the coldness of the mud made him shiver, and the rotten odor made him gag, but still he dug. He wanted to make the grave decent, deeper, for a man was not a plant, not mud, not a bunch of bones and flesh. A man was an honorable being. A man should cry, but also laugh; should suffer, but also forgive; should dream, but also remember. Above all, a man should be given a chance to make things right again. If only he could make things right again.

On the bus back, Ernest rested his head in his hands, the mud working into his matted hair. He wept, but he didn’t know what saddened him more: Mr. Schmidt’s death, or the loss of Aiyi, or the lost opportunity to care for his child.



When he looked up again, the bus had stopped. Everyone had left, including Golda. He wobbled out. It was still raining. Above his head, a Zero fighter’s engines boomed.

Rain soaking his thin jacket, he shuffled back to his attic room, his head pounding in agony. When he reached the attic, he held the doorframe to stop the pain in his head. Golda was scouring their tin pot. It slipped from her hand and fell on the floor. She let out a frustrated cry.

All the bluster and blame. What was the point? She was his wife, and he was obligated to treat her properly. He picked up the pot and handed it to her.

She burst into tears, always so theatrical.

“It’s all right,” he said.

She hit him with her fists. A thousand streaks of defiance, of remorse, of anger, of devastation seemed to burst in her eyes, but she didn’t utter a word. She just hit and hit. A punch on the chest, a swipe on the nose, and a cut of her long nails scything his neck. He took them all, resisting the pain in his head. When she was done, he put the tin pot on the stove.



That evening, he had many hot, webbed dreams, and he sweated, drowning in waves of perspiration. The pain in his head, his chest, and his limbs became unbearable, and he moaned, delirious. Golda’s voice drifted, and then Old Liang’s.

“It’s sweet wormwood; it’ll get rid of the fever.” Something bitter poured down his throat. But this was it, he sensed it. His time had come.

When he woke up, the attic was quiet. Golda was lying next to him, her skin pale save for the rashes on her neck and face. Her eyes closed, she looked peaceful.

She was gone.

He would never figure out what took her life. Maybe it was scarlet fever, maybe typhoid, maybe something else. For the second time in two days, he took the funeral bus to the burial ground, Golda inside Mr. Schmidt’s casket. After she was lifted out, he covered her with the straw mattress that had belonged to both of them.

He squatted beside her, bowed his head low, and wept. He had done his best to make her happy, to be the husband she’d wanted; it hadn’t been enough, but that was all he could do.

Leah. His parents. Miriam. Mr. Schmidt. Golda. A litany of death. A tune of life lived and lost.

She had made him a better man. Her beauty had been his banner in riches and his food in poverty, her dramatic flair had outshone his bleak self, and her neediness was a bowl that demanded hard work and constant attention to fill. But she had been true to herself, a mirror of veracity he trusted.

I want to be happy, she had said, a declaration she’d believed in, a chance she had given him, a hope he should live by.

He made a cup with his hands, gathered the water-drenched maple leaves, the sunbaked black mulch, the rusty shrapnel, and the broken twigs, and showered them onto her. The current of debris fell through his fingers like the passage of a spirit. When his hands were empty, he held them in the air, remembering the grit of the wood, the fine texture of the earth, and the wetness of his fingers.

All would wither, all would vaporize, and all would be buried in mud and in silence, but he remembered that at least during an endless whistle of the cold wind of life, a happy interlude, fleeting as it was, had happened, and he had been part of it.





84


AIYI


“See these?” Ying, holding a pair of binoculars with his right hand, looked up at the sky where six fighters circled. “They’re not Zero fighters. They’re bigger. They’re American B-29 Superfortresses. I have no doubt about that. Shit. Shit! Yes. Yes! They’re B-29s!”

He did a jig, tossing his head and shoulders as though a thousand fleas had crawled on him. His victory dance, which he did whenever he won loads of money at mah-jongg. Good thing his wound in his shoulder had healed. I was not interested in fighters, but I needed to ask him about finding Ernest. Since I saw the girls near the Old City God Temple, I had been dreaming about my daughter. Last time I saw Ernest, he was in the ghetto, the restricted area which outsiders couldn’t enter. Ying was resourceful. He could enter without causing suspicion.

“And that’s good news?” Little Star was scratching her head furiously, watching the fighters in the sky, so I beckoned her to come to me.

I couldn’t tell a Zero fighter from a B-29 at a distance. I only knew the Zeros, flying at a terrifying speed of more than 350 miles per hour, had the rising sun emblem emblazoned on their bodies and wings. They dominated the Shanghai sky, shooting down Chinese fighters as easily as a swatter flattening flies. For the past three years, fighters from the Nationalist air force had attempted air raids against the Zeros numerous times, but every single fighter from the air force was shot down without hitting a Zero.