The Black Isle

by Sandi Tan

  Our eyes scanned the sea. Even without speaking, we both knew what the other was thinking, fearing: A tsunami was upon us, a towering wave that would vomit from the bottom of the world creatures far worse than jellyfish…

  I grabbed Daniel. “It’s coming!”

  But not from the water.

  High above, piercing the fog and the gray clouds, were flying metal crosses, appearing one by one until they formed a V. As the planes passed over our heads, the red circles on the base of their wings stared down upon us like blood-filled eyes.

  We became a single statue, frozen, unable to run. And in this moment, I felt something I never thought I’d feel: This wasn’t how I wanted to die, clinging to a rich man’s son, my own adventure barely begun.

  We stood paralyzed until we glimpsed the tailfins of those soaring sharks. They were headed to the city—we’d been spared, at least for now. I unglued my beau and staggered inside on jellied legs. If he called after me, I did not hear him.

  The house continued rattling with after-echoes. Every screw, every nail, every cup seemed to be bobbing, vibrating, alive. The Victrola needle jumped from groove to groove, striking random notes on the vinyl like a broken talking doll, yowling to be put out of its pain. The moment I flicked it off, a pencil shimmied off the dining table, hit the floor, and split into two.

  When the rumbling finally ceased, I slumped into a chair.

  Daniel appeared at the door. He looked at me with the forlorn expression of a child who’d done wrong yet didn’t know what the wrong was. My face must have softened because he darted over and locked me in a tight embrace.

  Caught in this awkward huddle, we both began sobbing, producing a weird harmony. In the distance, the bombs began falling, with long-tail squeals that lashed deep into our ears. We cried harder to camouflage the blasts. Six, seven, eight. What were they hitting? City hall, the esplanade, the tram depot? Nine, ten, eleven. Chinatown: Were Li and Father hit? Was everybody dead?

  Air-raid sirens sounded in the distance, tragically late and tinny as the whines of desperate mosquitoes. The blitz, it seemed, was suddenly over.

  A boom, this time much closer, shook us. Then another. Somebody was pounding on the front door. Were they already on the ground?

  “Who’s there?” Daniel shouted, his voice wobbly.

  “It’s me,” came the unmistakable purr of Kenneth Kee.

  Daniel instantly pulled himself away from me. The banging on the door began anew.

  “I’ll handle him,” I said.

  “Stop that, damn you!” Daniel cried at the door.

  I let our visitor in. A mournful chorus of sirens trailed in behind him.

  Kenneth looked as he always did—immaculately dressed, not a hair out of place, a manner informed by a reserve of reserve. From him came no hellos, no hugs, just a cold, unemotional order: “Put on the wireless.”

  I looked at him. “There’s no wireless here.”

  “Then we have to settle for hearing the news firsthand.” He went to the window and stared out. Together we heard a big blast followed by impotent antiaircraft fire, then sirens—round after round of sirens wailing from the city. Kenneth had on a strange sort of smile. I wasn’t even sure he knew what he was feeling.

  “That, my friends,” he said, “is the sound of the British Empire, dying.”

  “What are you doing here, Kenny?”

  “Your father told me to make sure you two were all right.”

  “Daddy? He sent us here in the first place. How did you get here anyway?”

  “I drove.”

  “You drove?”

  “I taught myself. At Oxford.”

  “Well, we’re perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves. We don’t need you.”

  Kenneth took a deep breath and slipped out the door wordlessly, but before I could chastise Daniel for his harsh words, he was back. Cradled in his arms were a kerosene lamp, a bale of blackout fabric, and a warm bottle of champagne.

  “Let’s keep calm till the morning,” said Kenneth, carefully avoiding Daniel’s eyes. “I’ll take you both home then. In the meantime, let’s not turn on any lights. And use this to cover the windows.” He handed me the blackout material.

  “What about food?” I said. “I’m afraid we may not have enough for three.”

  “She’s right,” Daniel jumped in.

  Kenneth smiled lightly. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t need anything.”

  “You don’t sweat, you don’t eat. What are you, Kenneth Kee?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “A ghost.”

  None of us slept that night. The champagne hadn’t helped; the sugar from it was buzzing through our veins. From our bed, Daniel and I could hear Kenneth prowling around the house, checking and rechecking all the doors and windows. He had taken it upon himself to be our watchman, and he did the job with more verve than mere duty.

  “I know him. He’s doing this on purpose,” Daniel said. “To keep us awake.”

  But it wasn’t Kenneth who was keeping me up. I couldn’t stop thinking about Li and Father. Were they still alive after those bombs? I feared that their vigilante pride had put them on the roof of some Chinatown high-rise where escape would have been impossible. And then there were the ground troops. The amphibious Japs would soon find their way ashore, probably under the cover of night. An island, after all, is open in every direction, and we were trapped in a house, mere feet from the open strait…

  With the house sealed shut, the air had become sticky and stale. I had grown so accustomed to sleeping in air-conditioned rooms that I found the humidity unbearable. Daniel and I had taken off our clothes and stripped the covers and still it was no use. I moved to the edge of the bed, fleeing the monsoonal warmth of our anxious bodies.

  “Don’t run away.” Daniel rolled toward me and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me back into the inferno.

  “It’s too hot…”

  He held me even tighter and pressed me facedown on the mattress, lifting my sweat-drenched hair to kiss the moist nape of my neck. “Don’t let him affect us.”

  “What?”

  “He barged in here, acting like a hero. Like we’re helpless without him.”

  “I’m sure he’s just doing what your father asked him to.”

  “That’s the trouble—my father. Nobody asked Kenny to come back, yet ever since he’s been back, he’s been at those bloody meetings, behaving like such a great son. He’s why I sit in—in case my father’s friends think he really is his son. And I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I won’t let him steal you from me as well.”

  His kissing grew more fevered, and when I tried to pull away from the heat of his lips, he gripped my arms with a new fierceness and pushed my legs apart with his knees. “Don’t you…,” he hissed into my ear. Before he could complete the thought, he had forced his way into me.

  I was ashamed of my moans—Kenneth was just beyond the door, and I didn’t doubt he had ears as sharp as his tongue—but Daniel did all he could to make me submit, and as loudly as possible. Biting my neck till I cried out, he plunged into me with such ferocity that the wooden bed squealed with every thrust.

  “Say my name.”

  “Please, be gentle…”

  “Isn’t this what you always wanted? Say my name!”

  I refused. He dug his fingers into my jaw and pulled my chin closer to his ear.

  “Why won’t you say my name? Say my name.” He twisted my arm. “Come on, scream out my name…”

  The sirens in the city eventually died down at four in the morning.

  At dawn, the shore remained covered with jellyfish. No miracle had occurred overnight; no servant of nature had arrived to sweep them back into the sea and return the sand to its virgin state. Alas, what nature wrought was far less generous. The morning sky was darkened with a scrim—not fog this time but flies. Millions of them, from God only knew where. The jelly carcasses had browned with heat and rot, and their stomachs had ballooned, gas-fill
ed and taut. The flies hovered over them, waiting and buzzing, buzzing and waiting, hungry for their day’s feeding to begin.

  A single jellyfish had made it to the bottommost step behind the house, tentacles shriveled in midreach. Its belly plumped like an over-yeasted loaf that was still rising, the skin stretched close to breaking point. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. When this sac finally burst with a dull poof, I was thrown back by the shocking stink. Perhaps this first explosion was a signal that the rest should follow; across the beach, ripened jellies began popping, one by one, some flatly, others in piercing bangs. Flies and then flocks of gulls invited themselves to the feast, lured in by the putrid swill.

  Kenneth came out and joined me, grimacing at the ruined shore. I imagined his mind whirring away on its ominous implications.

  “Come on, it’s time to leave.” He tapped me gently on the arm, then grabbed it, refusing to let go when he saw the blackening bruise above my elbow. “Does he always do that?”

  I freed my arm from him and said nothing. The personal had to remain personal.

  “And you let him?”

  He didn’t wait for my answer but walked away with a small, judgmental smirk.

  Kenneth drove Mr. Wee’s Bentley with the steadiness of an experienced chauffeur, one who knew that speeding was the surest way to unsettle his passengers. He kept below the speed limit.

  Nobody said a word. I was still humiliated by Daniel’s brutish behavior in bed and my response to it, and Daniel remained skeptical of Kenneth’s every move. As for our chauffeur, we watched him pause at the crossroads just outside the city, pondering for a moment whether to take the shortcut that would plunge us into the devastation or the long detour, along the southern perimeter. Throwing a quick glance at Daniel in the rearview mirror, he chose the latter.

  “Don’t worry, Dan,” he said softly. “I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  The detour took us down narrow lanes that zigzagged through military barracks, then funneled us out alongside the port. Soldiers, mostly swarthy South Indians, were racing around helter-skelter, directing traffic, running along with sandbags and rolls of barbwire, seemingly without supervision. We smelled the burning fuel long before we saw the fat plumes of black smoke rising from the harbor and the wrecks of two titanic vessels, still blazing, turned on their sides like gargantuan steel whales.

  “They got the Prince,” Kenneth said, dismayed. “They’ve actually done it.”

  I leaned forward for a better look. So these were the glorious battleships, the HMS Crown Prince and the HMS Resilience, that were said to be guarding the Isle. A nauseating wave of pinpricks rushed through me and I reached for Daniel’s hands—they were ice cold and of no comfort. Then our eyes met. His were swollen with tears.

  Mr. Wee stood at the mansion door, as if he’d been waiting there all night. Perhaps it was a trick of light, but his hair had grown whiter since the previous afternoon. As we pulled up, Mr. Wee made a beeline for the car—and Kenneth’s window.

  “They got Pearl Harbor. The same time they hit us, they hit America.”

  “Daddy!” Daniel bounded out of the backseat and into his father’s arms, almost knocking the air out of the old man with his embrace.

  Kenneth turned back to me. “I can take you to Chinatown now, if you like.”

  I gave him a frozen nod and, filled with dread, slumped low in the seat.

  As we pulled down the driveway, I heard Daniel’s footsteps running after us. “Cassandra! Where’s he taking you?”

  “Let her go, Daniel,” I heard his father say, steadying him back into the fold.

  I didn’t look back.

  High Street was the busiest street on the Isle, but today there were almost no cars. I was embarrassed to be sitting alone in the back, with Kenneth playing my chauffeur, but he rebuffed all my requests to join him in front. Clearly, he didn’t care what people thought.

  I finally broke into his silence. “Is your family in Chinatown, too?”

  “Perhaps.” His jaw tensed. “They used to be. I haven’t exactly kept abreast of their news. I haven’t been the best of sons.”

  “So you haven’t seen them since coming back?”

  “Can’t say I have, no.”

  “Then where do you stay?”

  “Rooming house. Anonymous. Suits me well.”

  I wanted to ask if Mr. Wee paid for these accommodations, if his generosity had divided Kenneth’s loyalties as it had divided mine, but I knew it was not my business.

  “Are you worried about your relatives?” he asked. The gentleness of his tone surprised me.

  “A bit.” I laughed nervously. “Well, a bit more than a bit.”

  “I’m the same,” he murmured. “You and I are just the same.”

  He stopped the car on Spring Street, which, except for pockets that had been reduced to rubble, looked eerily like its old self. Youngsters, darting from sidewalk to sidewalk, called for their parents and grandparents, and the street echoed with the wails of the filial, sounding as if they were all seeking the same few people: Papa, Mama, Ah Gong, Ah Ma.

  A cross-junction away, our old eight-story tower block loomed, painted black to blend in with the night. In broad daylight, however, it looked to be the most inviting target. Yet for all its great height and funereal hue, it appeared to have survived. The neighborhood Pearl River cinema was not so lucky; its octagonal roof had caved in like an old pumpkin. The protruding ticket booth fared better, if one discounted its shattered window. The hand-painted banner for the current feature, a Cantonese-dubbed Abbott and Costello comedy, was singed but still fluttering.

  I wanted Kenneth to drive us one block farther to the black tower and then go in with me to search for Li and Father, but the route was blocked by ambulances and rescue wagons. This was as far as the car could go.

  People who a day ago had no inkling disaster would strike so swiftly sat dazed on the sidelines, their features made alien by grief. I knew that as soon as they noticed our car, we’d be overrun.

  Sure enough, a band of women spotted us from a sheltered walkway and were now rushing toward us, waving their arms as if trying to hail a cab.

  “You better go,” I told Kenneth as I jumped out of the car. “Find your family.”

  He took a deep breath, then stretched his hand out the window. I shook it quickly. “Good luck, Cassandra,” he said. It was the first time he’d spoken my name without it sounding sarcastic.

  “I’ll see you soon,” I said, wondering if that were true.

  “I certainly hope so, and in one piece.”

  I felt bereft as soon as the Bentley made a U-turn and sped away. I could have used Kenneth’s company, even his odd, acerbic humor, while I searched for Father and Li. Why in the world did I let him go?

  Looking around, I realized that this otherworldly landscape was in fact very familiar indeed. Kenneth had deposited me on the Spring Street traffic island, where I’d spent many an afternoon as a child. The stone bench was still here, as was the stump on which Mr. Singh the traffic man used to perch. I could have sat down and wept.

  But I walked on. This was no time for nostalgia. All around me, I heard small, sharp explosions coming from the nearby high-rises. Sniper fire? From the erratic way they went off, with no enemy in sight, I began to suspect they were just gas cylinders blowing out windows. Still, every bang made me jump. Father’s tower block seemed impossibly far away, and my legs were trembling so much I couldn’t take more than a few limp steps at a time. Bit by bit, I told myself. I’d seen worse. I’d fought worse.

  I approached the raggedy trio of women who’d tried to run to our car and called out to them in Cantonese, this being the lingo of the working class. “I’m looking for my family!” I gave them Father’s name and Li’s. “Do you know them? Have you seen them? You have to help me.”

  They stared at me; they were the ones who needed assistance. The middle one had a foot-long gash across her
shoulder, with blood seeping down her pale blue tunic. She was nearly unconscious, and the agony was dangerously absent from her broad, rustic features. Her two younger companions—daughters?—propped her up, whimpering as much from her weight as from fear.

  “Why did you let that car go?” one of the girls shrieked in Mandarin that came straight from the icy steppes of the North. “Why?”

  “Please, help us,” the other one moaned. “A wall fell on top of our mama.”

  Before I could reply, the rumbling beneath our feet started again, and the women began to scurry away. I gazed skyward. The planes were returning, but they were smaller, spryer ones this time: two flying specks tilted toward the area like birds of prey.

  I saw something else. High up on the roof of the black tower, a man’s silhouette poked into view. He’d emerged from a crouching position to stand at full height. In his hand was a small object, an object he was pointing at the planes. A pistol! I felt certain it was Li; such quixotic stupidity was just like him. The first shot rang out, followed by echoes that reverberated through the concrete valley. All the way down the street, I could hear the shooter’s deranged yodels, the mocking hoots of a madman. No, this couldn’t be Li; this fool was much crazier than my brother. Or so I hoped.

  And then the planes were upon us, zooming over Spring Street, clacking like the world’s noisiest lawnmowers, so primitive-looking it was a wonder they could even fly. I knew I should have run, but I was riveted to the spot, like a spectator waiting for the movie to unfold. I had to make sure it wasn’t Li who was demanding his close-up.

  High above the black tower, the gunman fired at the planes—four, five, six times. I was watching a child spit at a storm. This chap wasn’t just mad; he was suicidal. I kept expecting him to crumple into a heap. But the enemy paid him no heed. Protruding barrels at the rear of both aircraft locked into place, and suddenly the ground around me was dancing—sand, gravel, stone, leaping into the air like fountains of dust. The earsplitting cracks of the gunfire came afterward. Crouching to take cover, I saw that the ambulance by me was riddled with holes: It had been the target.