The Last Rose of Shanghai(64)
He reached out, but it sailed over his head. The truck turned a corner and disappeared.
Groaning in pain, Ernest searched for the scarf, barging through the throng, and finally found it in the hand of a young man. He snatched it from him, stuffed it inside his messenger bag, and limped away, glad the man didn’t attack him. He was exhausted; he would not be able to fight him off.
The street seemed endless ahead of him. He passed an elderly man carrying a bolt of silk on his back, two scrawny youngsters loading crates of guns into a truck, and a uniformed Japanese soldier driving a knife into a man with a burned skin patch. Ernest didn’t stop, didn’t look into their eyes, and kept shambling. He just wanted to go to his apartment where Miriam slept—and he prayed to God that she’d done as he’d told her.
A motorcycle rammed into a store near him, and a group of men, their faces covered by black cloth, dashed inside a Rolex shop. Inside a trading company selling malt liquor and tobacco, a mob smashed the drawers with hammers; in a bank, the Japanese soldiers were holding a group of businessmen at gunpoint, shouting that all the assets and bank accounts of the enemy aliens were property of the empire.
At last, in a quiet corner, he slid down, unable to muster an ounce of strength to take a single step more.
The clock on the Customs House struck. Five o’clock. From the blustery street came the loudspeaker, announcing a curfew starting at seven Tokyo time, now Shanghai time. Men and women would be shot if caught after the curfew.
Gulping for air heavy with gasoline, blood, and fumes, he thought of the bloody faces of the hostage businessmen in the bank and the foreigners sent to camps. All the Europeans and Americans with wealth and the protection of their countries were now prisoners, and he, a man without a country, without a job, and without a friend, had fallen through the cracks. In a world shooting bullets and bolts, he was alone, stateless, and it was up to him to live, survive, and thrive.
49
AIYI
I turned to the window, my ears filled with Cheng’s rant.
“Can you drive faster? Use your horn! Are those people blind? Can’t they see my car?” He had refused to turn back, and I had stopped begging. There was no devastating explosion as far as I could hear. Ernest must be safe. I would find him as soon as I got away.
Finally, the giant gray stone lions appeared in the distance, and Cheng locked his viselike hand on my arm as we came to the courtyard. He shouted for Sinmay. A few minutes later, Sinmay showed up on the stone staircase to his study, a building near the reception room, his long gray robe crawling with shining worms of sunlight falling through the oak. “What’s going on?”
Half of Shanghai was bombed and burned, but he appeared unperturbed as if watching the fire lit up in a stove. The foreigners in the Settlement didn’t care about us, Sinmay had said bitterly when his reporters described that the Europeans and Americans, drinking their beverages in the coffeehouses, had praised the sophisticated weaponry of the Japanese as they bombarded the Chinese area. And now the Settlement was on fire, and he sat in his study with his legs up. How strange we humans were. We built a barbed wire fence between ourselves and turned away from the suffering of others, but we forgot the immunity to pain was delusional. For though salt and sugar we might be, we all had blood in the veins and a heart in the chest, and we all died when hit by a bomb.
“I’m going to my room.” I tried to shake off Cheng.
His grip tightened. “We need to talk, Sinmay.”
“Come in.” Sinmay frowned.
I had an inkling of what he wanted to talk about. Cheng, a proud man, would not forgive me for what I had told him in the car. Perhaps he wanted to revoke our engagement, which must be approved by Sinmay, the authority of the house. Relief washed over me. This would be the most ideal solution. Cheng’s dignity would be saved, and I would be free.
Elated, I stepped inside my brother’s dim study, stuffy without the flow of air; the sunlight made an attempt to squeeze through the intricate lattices of the door but was not able to pierce through. Inside, Peiyu sat on a redwood chair beside a black table, a teacup in hand. Behind her, a nanny was carrying the baby bundled in thick layers of coats.
“You’re bleeding, Aiyi.” Peiyu put down the teacup. “And your dress!”
“It’s not my blood.”
“What’s going on?” Sinmay went to sit behind a cedar desk covered with scrolls.
“You won’t believe it. Aiyi went to see the pianist and almost got herself killed.” Cheng let me stand like a criminal. The gears of his fiery temper yanked into motion, each tooth sharpened, rolling on twenty-one years of practice.
“The foreigner on the magazine?”
“You should hear what she said in the car! Never mind, older brother. May I have your permission to have her live with me? It’s for her safety.”
I was shocked. “I can’t live in your home, Cheng. Actually, I’ve long waited to tell you this: I would like to call off our wedding.”
The soft cooing of the nanny rocking the baby ceased; the footfalls of Cheng’s pacing vanished.
“Call off the wedding? But we already sent the invitations!” Peiyu’s voice was incredulous.
Sinmay shot to his feet, sending the rosewood chair flying across the room. “Are you out of your mind?”
I cringed. His disapproval was to be expected, but I had not imagined this spectacle.