The Language of Threads

by Gail Tsukiyama

  Mrs. Finch looked relieved. “Now that’s good news. An end to this occupation!”

  “And we’ll be back together again,” Ji Shen added.

  “I’m afraid there won’t be much to go back to.” Mrs. Finch looked wistful.

  “My mending business is doing well. We’ll start all over,” Pei said. “You’ll be out of here before you know it. . . .” She felt a sudden emptiness swallow the rest of her words.

  “Until then, what a treat!” Mrs. Finch cradled the tea and canned goods against her chest. “And just wait until I get you on the dance floor,” she teased Ji Shen.

  “I can’t wait,” Ji Shen responded. Neither of them mentioned the Victrola.

  “Please, stay inside today if you can,” Pei said.

  Mrs. Finch nodded. She put down her goods, then reached through the barbed wire and took their hands. “Promise me you’ll always take care of each other.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Ji Shen said.

  Pei held tightly onto Mrs. Finch’s hand; she didn’t want to let go. “We’ll be back next month. Just make sure you drink the tea every day, and try to rest.”

  “You both have meant more to me than I can say.” Mrs. Finch gave Pei’s hand one last squeeze.

  The finality of Mrs. Finch’s mood and words alarmed Pei. “You took us in when no one else would.”

  Mrs. Finch laughed. “And never regretted it for a moment.” Then she looked at them long and hard. “Just remember that life is made up of change. We can’t run away from it.”

  “You’ll be able to move right into the boardinghouse with us,” Ji Shen said.

  Pei swallowed. “We’ll take it a month at a time,” she said softly.

  “Yes, a month at a time,” Mrs. Finch repeated.

  Mrs. Finch stood longer than usual watching them climb up the dirt path. When Pei looked back, she was still standing by the fence, gazing up at them as if they were a sky full of stars.

  Mrs. Finch

  Since the beginning of the year, Mrs. Finch had been making one excuse after another to her friends: “I’m fine, I just ate something that disagreed with me,” or “You go on ahead and start the game, I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  It didn’t take long before Isabel Tate realized her illness was serious and persuaded her to go to the hospital for a checkup.

  The pills they’d given her for her heart did little good. Most of the useful medicines were confiscated or destroyed by the Japanese. “We can calm diarrhea, bandage a cut, or give you aspirin for a headache.” The young British camp doctor shook his head sorrowfully. “But we have little else to offer you. Even our monthly supply of calamine lotion, alcohol, and bandages lasts barely two weeks.”

  “No need to apologize.” Mrs. Finch tried to smile and put the doctor at ease. “I’ll try to accept each day as a gift.”

  She thought of how lovely it been just that morning, how clear and in focus the colors of the sea and mountains appeared to her. They seemed close enough to touch. How could she be dying when everything felt so alive and real?

  “If you don’t strain yourself and get plenty of rest, who can tell, you may even see the end of this war!” The doctor took her trembling hand in his.

  Mrs. Finch ate less and less each day; she felt as if a tight band were pressing against her chest, making it hard to swallow. The only time she made any real effort to eat was after a visit with Pei and Ji Shen. Mrs. Finch could almost see her own deterioration in Pei’s dark eyes, and in the edge of fear that traced her voice as she pleaded with her to take care. Caroline had wanted to tell the girls that life was coming to an end for her, that even her love for them couldn’t stop her tired heart from failing. So many times the words lingered on the tip of her tongue, before she would swallow them back down again. They had enough to worry about.

  So Mrs. Finch lived her life carefully, taking nothing for granted. She wondered why wisdom came so late in life, when there was so little time left to enjoy the gifts of knowledge and acceptance. She’d had a good marriage and a full life. Her one wish was for a few more years to spend with Pei and Ji Shen. But for the most part, it had been a grand life and she had lived each day on her own terms.

  Mrs. Finch shared her peas and sausages with Mrs. Tate and a few other women she played gin rummy with every Wednesday afternoon. The food was a welcome supplement to their three daily meals of rice, turnips, shallots, and weak tea. They had so successfully created a regular schedule for themselves that their routine in camp wasn’t much different from their lives in free Hong Kong. After three and a half years at Stanley Camp, the British Empire remained alive and well behind the barbed-wire fence. During that time, fewer than a hundred and thirty prisoners out of three thousand had died, mainly of untreated illnesses. The rest of the sick and worn prisoners bickered among themselves and dreamed of soft beds and proper bathing facilities of their own.

  “I’d die to have some tender asparagus tips right now!” Mrs. Tate said, wiping her forehead with a handkerchief.

  Lately, they had found that talking about the food they missed offered a strangely satisfying substitute for actually eating it.

  Louise Powell put down her cards, pulled at the front of her dress, and fanned herself. “A rare, juicy piece of beefsteak, smothered with onions, is what I’d want.”

  Mrs. Finch laughed. “A well-done chop with some hot mustard on the side and a baked potato drowned in sour cream. Bread pudding for dessert.”

  “And an ice-cold gin and tonic!” Mrs. Tate added.

  “Why not champagne?” Mrs. Powell suggested.

  Mrs. Tate threw down her cards. “Yes, why not? I do love a bit of the bubbly!”

  Mrs. Finch laughed again, glad for a sweet moment in these increasingly difficult days when she’d felt herself losing control of her body. Lately, she’d found just the act of breathing more difficult; it was accompanied by a grasping discomfort in her neck and shoulders. Each day Mrs. Finch needed to rest for longer periods. The heat of summer pulled her down. Lying on the uncomfortable cot, she was reminded of her own mother’s slowing down by a wicked spell of rheumatism. “My limbs are turning against me,” she’d said over and over.

  “Well, that’s enough for me,” Mrs. Finch said, pushing herself up from the makeshift table they’d put together of scrap board.

  “Are you all right, Caroline?” Isabel stared hard at her. She knew the entire story, but respected her friend’s wish to do things her way. She rose from her chair. “Have you been taking the aspirin they gave you at the infirmary?”

  “I’m fine.” Mrs. Finch smiled reassuringly, sucking in the warm air and trying to catch her breath. “Please, go on with the game; I’ll just have a little rest and return in a bit.”

  She held herself steady and moved with assurance, turning back once to see Isabel’s worried gaze follow her down the short hall into their cramped bedroom.

  Mrs. Finch lay down on the soft cot, thumping hard against the wood frame, her bones sharp against the sagging canvas. She longed for her own bed on Conduit Road and the soft feather pillows of her London childhood. She couldn’t imagine that there was much left of the life she’d once known.

  “Gin!” she faintly heard Mrs. Powell’s cheerful voice pipe up.

  “Not again, Louise!” Isabel’s watery voice floated from the other side of the room.

  Mrs. Finch smiled, closed her eyes against the rapid beating of her heart. Quick flashes of memory flickered through her mind—the glass figurines, warm bread pudding, Howard’s white shirts, the Victrola spinning round and round, Pei clutching the cloth bag. It seemed so strange to think that one could experience so many different lives in a lifetime. Mrs. Finch opened her eyes, felt a gripping pain in her chest that gradually lessened as she lay still. She suddenly heard Howard’s hearty laughter, his voice saying, “You’re thinking too hard, old girl.”

  Thinking of tall, kind Howard with each throbbing beat . . . thinking of Pei and Ji Shen’s smiling faces o
n the other side of the barbed wire fence . . . thinking how everything felt as if it were slowing down, condensing into a dark, cool vacuum—then simply stopping.

  Goddess of the Sea

  Pei and Ji Shen hurried down the path toward Stanley Camp. The already-warm July morning left them hot and sweaty, but the sea air felt less sticky than the hot, crowded streets of Central and Wan Chai. Pei inhaled and tried to relax. For weeks after their last visit, she’d felt uneasy, worried that she’d forgotten to say something more to Mrs. Finch when they parted last month. She couldn’t forget the sight of her standing at the fence and gazing up at them as they left.

  “It’s cooler here.” Ji Shen’s voice roused Pei from her thoughts.

  Pei smiled. “Yes, the weather should be much more bearable now for Mrs. Finch.”

  She craned her neck to see as they waited by the fence. As always, a crowd had gathered to buy and barter from the boy hawkers.

  Pei stepped away from the crowd and waited.

  “Where is she?” Ji Shen asked.

  Pei’s stomach clenched. “I don’t know. She should be here by now.” She searched the now familiar faces of the prisoners. “Have you seen Mrs. Finch?” she asked.

  Their eyes avoided hers. One man mumbled something about Mrs. Tate coming to talk with them. Pei’s heart raced and she felt Ji Shen lean closer.

  “Do you think she’s all right?” Ji Shen asked.

  “I hope so. Maybe she just needs to rest.”

  Pei strained to see if anyone was coming from the redbrick building where Mrs. Finch lived. In the distance Mrs. Tate rounded the corner and hurried toward them. As she drew closer, the look on her face told Pei the terrible answer to Ji Shen’s question.

  “I’m sorry, girls.” Mrs. Tate swallowed, her voice breaking, a Chinese word or two, mixed with her English, emerging in staccato. “Caroline passed away. Almost a month ago. There was nothing the doctor here could do for her. It was heart failure. Caroline was a pillar of strength. She accepted her fate and went peacefully. I’m so sorry. I know how close you were to her.”

  “A month ago,” Ji Shen echoed.

  Pei took hold of Ji Shen’s arm, her own legs weak at the news. “Where is she now?” Pei heard herself ask, enunciating each English word clearly.

  Mrs. Tate pointed at the cemetery on the other side of the grounds. “They let several of us go along to say a few words before they buried her.”

  Pei bit her lip to hold back her tears. It’s not fair, she thought. Mrs. Finch had made it so far. The occupation was almost over. It was rumored on the street that the Japanese were losing the war. Signs of their defeat were everywhere. Japanese soldiers no longer waited on street corners to harass the Chinese. The Hong Kong News, once a means for the Japanese to boast of their victories, now sounded shallow and whiny. News of German defeats peppered the columns, even if Japanese troops supposedly remained victorious. For the past month, Chinese people had relaxed; now they lingered freely in the streets to bargain and socialize.

  Surely it would be only a matter of months before all the prisoners were released. All Pei’s hope evaporated in the heat. Mrs. Finch deserved so much more than a quick prison burial.

  “Do you think we might go there?” Pei asked. Her throat suddenly felt so raw and dry, it hurt to swallow.

  Mrs. Tate smiled tiredly. “I don’t think it would be very wise. There are guards everywhere. Perhaps you can see her grave from outside the fence?”

  Pei felt Ji Shen pull on her sleeve.

  “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. Caroline was a lovely person.” Mrs. Tate’s fingers touched the fence. “She thought the world of you both.”

  “We thought the world of her,” Pei whispered, then turned away, unable to say another word.

  She and Ji Shen walked across the hilly path to the cemetery in a daze. Neither of them spoke. Pei wanted to say something to make Ji Shen feel better, but she couldn’t find the right words. Mrs. Finch’s sudden absence left a sharp emptiness inside her that she hadn’t felt since Lin’s death. Why did everyone she loved leave her without saying good-bye? As a child, she’d lost her mother and her sister Li, then lovely Lin, and now Mrs. Finch. Pei felt a burning behind her eyes, and the tears streamed slowly down her cheeks.

  As they approached the low-walled cemetery, Pei led Ji Shen boldly forward, daring the Japanese guards at the prison to stop them. She was tired of being afraid, of keeping invisible, of dodging soldiers in dark, dank alleys. But even if the soldiers saw them on the outskirts of the cemetery, leaning over the barbed wire fence to look for the grave of Mrs. Finch, no one came to disturb them. There were rows and rows of unmarked graves, and Pei couldn’t help but wonder how many families would never know what had happened to their loved ones. Then, in the third row right, she saw the name Caroline Finch, scrawled in black letters on a piece of broken board. Pei supposed that Mrs. Tate had quickly marked the grave before she and the others were herded back to the camp. “Thank you,” she heard herself say into the air.

  The mounded earth was higher than the bone-dry dirt of the other graves. Pei turned around and saw the ocean, a view she knew Mrs. Finch would have appreciated. “Not a bad place to close my tired eyes,” she heard Mrs. Finch say. At least Tin Hau, the goddess of the sea, would protect her here. A cooling seasalted wind blew in their direction as Pei and Ji Shen kowtowed three times from the other side of the fence. Then they remained silent, staring. Ji Shen stood stiff and stoic, but Pei kicked at the dirt in front of her and fought back more tears.

  Chapter Ten

  1945

  Pei

  After Mrs. Finch’s death in July, Ji Shen withdrew even further, while Pei began to notice something new and more disturbing in her behavior. It was as if Ji Shen had become a hostile stranger. When Ji Shen was at the boardinghouse, she spoke very little, but stared off into the distance as if in a trance. Her heavy silence made Pei feel uneasy, and though Pei hated to admit it, she was almost relieved when Ji Shen went out.

  Usually, Ji Shen left the boardinghouse early in the morning and returned at dinnertime, bringing with her a variety of canned vegetables and meats, which she shared with all the sisters. She gave little explanation other than “I was out with friends.” When Pei pressed further, she grew snappish: “Why can’t you believe that I was out with Quan and my other friends? There’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m not a baby anymore!”

  At almost twenty, Ji Shen was indeed no longer a child, though Pei thought she acted like one. Pei felt her own anger simmering just below the surface, but she held her tongue and took comfort in the thought that at least the Japanese had grown conspicuous by their absence in the past months. A sense of spirit had returned to the Chinese as rumors of Japanese surrender continued to spread through the streets.

  During the first days of August, Ji Shen came home to the boardinghouse with a man Pei had never seen before. As Ji Shen rushed up to the sitting room for the purse she’d forgotten, he stood waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Who is he?” Pei asked.

  Ji Shen avoided her eyes. “Just a friend.”

  “Won’t you ask your friend up?”

  Ji Shen grabbed her bag. “We’re in a hurry,” she answered, looking flushed. “He’s very busy. Maybe another time. I promise.” Ji Shen smiled nervously, then hurried out of the sitting room and down the stairs.

  Pei glanced out the sitting room window and glimpsed Ji Shen’s friend. He was older and well-dressed, with neatly combed hair and a dark mustache. He turned back once, so that Pei saw his narrow eyes squint against the sun. Then he walked quickly down the street, while Ji Shen ran behind him in order to keep up.

  On a sudden impulse, Pei ran down the stairs and found herself following Ji Shen and her friend toward Central. The crowds thickened as she pushed her way down the street in pursuit. It was obvious from the way Ji Shen was behaving that something was terribly wrong. Everything about her seemed secretive and volatile. Ji Shen
was either out or feeling ill and sequestering herself in their room, refusing to talk. When she did return home—always late in the evening—she paced like a trapped and desperate animal.

  Now, even though she knew it was wrong to follow Ji Shen and the man, Pei couldn’t stop. She had to know what was going on, and she had a strong suspicion that Ji Shen’s friend had everything to do with her difficult behavior and Quan’s absence from their lives.

  A crowd of people had just emerged from the King’s Theatre when Pei reached Queen’s Road in Central. She quickly glanced at the faces that swarmed and buzzed around her, hoping Ji Shen was one of them. Pei remembered reading that the Japanese had restored the theaters to full use not long after the occupation began; they ran mostly Japanese propaganda movies. Many of the wealthier Chinese families had wasted no time in reclaiming this small detail of their former lifestyle.

  “Pei!”

  Pei turned her head toward the male voice that unexpectedly called out her name.

  “Pei, is that you?” The voice again, closer, until she felt someone’s hand touch her arm. “It’s me, Ho Yung.”

  Pei stepped back, away from his touch, in order to see his face more clearly. In the bright sunlight, Ho Yung’s dark eyes looked so much like Lin’s. Next to him stood a young woman and another couple, who seemed impatient to leave.

  “Ho Yung?”

  “Yes—Lin’s brother, remember?”

  “Yes . . . of course,” Pei stammered. How could she ever forget Ho Yung? After Lin’s death, he had comforted her and arranged for their safe passage to Hong Kong. Pei could still see him standing on the dock waving to them as she and Ji Shen boarded the ferry. In the six years since she’d seen him at Lane Crawford’s, he had aged. Still, there were the unmistakable characteristics that he and Lin shared—the thin lips and dark, round eyes. She swallowed and tried to find the right words to say to him.