The Last Rose of Shanghai(111)

“What is it?” I asked.

I didn’t hear Ying’s reply, for his voice was swallowed by the noise of a bomber emerging in the sky and from the warship on the river as its machine guns blasted. Ying shouted again, “Ernest, Aiyi, you need to get out of here before the bombing starts. I’ll take care of this.”

I tried to get up, but my feet were weak and painful. “Ying, let’s all go together.”

“I can’t, Aiyi. Go; go with Ernest. I must destroy the warship.” He steered the gun motor on the tank and fired at the warship. A detonation boomed somewhere. A fountain of sparks and water bloomed; the sky roared with a downpour, soaking us from head to toe. Ying laughed hysterically—the tank’s shell had struck the warship. One of the three funnels, like a smoky finger, slowly bent.

But sparks flashed from another gun turret on the warship. The American fighter that could end the war wobbled in the sky like a kite, leaving behind a trail of smoke. The Japanese warship had shot the fighter.

“Damn it!” Ying fired another shell. “Aiyi! Go now before it’s too late! Go!”

I crawled to Ernest. “Let’s go, Ernest.”

He had slipped to the ground, and his voice was so feeble I could barely hear it. “Aiyi, I did all I could, and now I don’t have anything left in me. You must get out of here while you can. I’ve seen you for the last time. I can die happy. Go. Go before it’s too late.”

I wept. “You can’t. You have to come with me, Ernest.”

“Promise me. You’ll look after our child. Is it a boy or a girl? I wish I could see the child. It would be lovely. My child. How lovely.”

“Our child . . . I gave her away, Ernest. I’m sorry. I don’t know where she is. You can’t stay here. You must go with me. You must find her for me.”

He grabbed my arm. “You gave her away?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You must help me. You have to get up. Get up, Ernest. I can’t walk. I don’t want to die here. I need to find our daughter. Please, please.”

Gunfire spluttered near me. I looked up. Something dark floated toward me—an American bomber. It grew bigger and bigger, and I could see the black goggles against the window.

Ernest screamed, and the next thing I knew he was on his feet and I was in his arms.

Something exploded; a wave of heat rushed toward us. Ernest, screaming, just ran and ran, toward the bridge.

I looked back. My brother. He was a spy, he could drive a tank, he could destroy a cruiser, he could kill, he could do anything, and he could, no doubt, escape from a fallen bomber. But I couldn’t see him, or the mountain of rubble that had trapped me, or the two tanks. For the land had become a massive field of fumes and flames, a sizzling pyre of wood and metal, a painted field of yellow earth with rapeseed flowers, where a blazing fragment, like a scrap of crimson cloth, shot up in the air like the red kite that we used to fly.

Tears poured out of me.

When Ernest stopped, I saw we had crossed the bridge. Absolutely exhausted, we dropped to the ground and leaned against a fallen house. Throngs of people, whom I had helped evacuate, crouched nearby—the bald old man, the girl in a short dress, and the blonde woman among them. Some families, holding one another, roamed to the park nearby.

I felt cold. My hair was scorched and almost burned to the scalp in places. My arms were bare and so was my chest. And my foot. Some rusty wire had pierced through it, and it was stuck at an awkward angle. Had Ernest not carried me, I would never have been able to get out alive. “We’ll find her, Aiyi. For as long as I live, we’ll keep searching until we find our daughter.”

What more could I say? I still felt guilty, but I was not hopeless. Despite the war, despite all my losses, despite everything, I was the lucky one. I had been loved and was still loved, and I was ready to love again. I embraced him, skin to skin, and I saw what he saw, I felt what he felt, I wanted what he wanted.

When the winds of life had sent him to me years ago, I had not asked the reason why; now there was no need to ask. I threaded my fingers into his, and together we stared at the mountain of fire that had swallowed my brother. Above it, in the smoky sky, the Zero fighters and the noisy American bombers had vanished. In the distance, the gun turrets of the cursed cruiser were finally smoldering, and the river lapped, its yellow foam writhing in the moaning wind.





92


FALL 1980


THE PEACE HOTEL

“Because you’re the person I wanted to meet the moment I got the call from my niece, because you’re the person for whom I’ve been searching for decades—because you are my daughter,” I say. I look at this woman, whose pictures I have gazed upon countless times with a magnifier, her bright black eyes—that used to be blue when she was a newborn—piercing me like headlights in fog.

When I saw her eyes in the pictures that Phoenix gave me, it was a surprise, but I knew it was common for babies to change their eye color. Now she’s sitting right across from me, a grown woman, and I can see the lips that were Ernest’s, the fine crease under her eyes, and the jet-lagged look on her face. “You look so much like your father, with his lips, the shape of his eyes, and brown hair. If you study Ernest’s photos, you’ll see how much you resemble him.”

She rubs her arms as if cold. “Well, Ms. Shao, I wish you were right, and I’d love to be the daughter you’re looking for, but I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I was born on August 23, 1945. After World War II.”