—
Frank’s uncle and aunt—her uncle and aunt, as she thought of them now—were all doting chatter, a blizzard of Mandarin, when they met her at the station in Wuhu. She had only met them once before in Shanghai, yet her uncle waved on tiptoe, glasses glinting, and her aunt looped an arm through hers as if they were sisters. In the car—a chauffeured Lincoln Zephyr, sleek as a beetle—they sat one to each side in the back seat and plied her with food, steamed bread as white as snow and hard-boiled eggs crazed with black tea and soy.
The Yeungs dealt in Chinese medicine. This explained the family fortune, a brother at either end of a trans-Pacific enterprise. Though Alice wanted nothing more than to be alone, she didn’t protest when her in-laws took her to an apothecary filled with desiccated jars and dark ring-pulled drawers and showed her off to their employees.
It wasn’t until bedtime that Alice was finally left to unpack. At the bottom of her suitcase, she found a clothbound book she didn’t recognize, a stowaway. She turned to the title page:
LUCRETIUS
ON THE NATURE OF THINGS
(DE RERUM NATURA)
TRANSLATED
BY
T.E. WALLACE
M.A., FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
She shouldn’t have been surprised. Before they were married at First United, they had argued over a church wedding. For her parents, church was a salve for toiling ignobly in a distant country, her father for so many years in a cannery that his cutting hand was now a frozen claw. For Frank, though, church was just a way of aping respectability. He was no heathen; he didn’t need to be saved. He was always looking for his own way and seemed to find it in a bookstore in the International Settlement. More than once in the past year, he had tried to describe De rerum natura with a wild-eyed air of discovery. Alice herself was a woman of no great piety. If she used to go to church in Vancouver, it was largely for her parents’ sakes. Even so, she couldn’t abide the things Frank said. What did he mean there was no God? God was as plain to her as her very existence. Irritated anew, she put the book back and shut her suitcase. Out of habit, she got to her knees and prayed.
—
The next day she received the first of his telegrams. That was the deal, a telegram every day. To save on coding, his telegrams were short, sometimes just a single Chinese character: home. That was enough to let her breathe again.
At the end of the week, she walked to a nearby hotel, closeted herself in a booth, slipped in a bronze token, and sat under slatted light for a few timed minutes.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
Despite the bitter concoctions her in-laws insisted she drink, she felt rundown—and thirsty, always thirsty—but she didn’t want to rouse the doctor in him. “Fine.”
“Got our first from the frontlines.”
She knew from XGOA, the government radio station in Nanking, that the Chinese had launched a massive assault on the Japanese Marine Headquarters in Hongkew. “And?”
From the silence, she could tell it had been worse than he’d imagined.
“I thought the nurses were brave.”
Not for the first time, she wondered if he didn’t feel something for one of the nurses. Under the wingspan of their wimples, the sisters could be startlingly beautiful. She had hoped her absence would tug at him, bring him to her sooner rather than later, but now she sensed some still greater devotion being forged in the crucible of the operating room.
If she were still in Shanghai, they would have been strolling arm in arm to Avenue Joffre for zakuski, little plates of smoked salmon, salted herring, pickled tomatoes, and the like, which went down well with warming shots of vodka, especially in winter. She could have said something affectionate like, “I miss Tkachenko.” Instead she complained that Wuhu was provincial: no Little Moscow here. Before she could finish, a woman came on to tell them their time was up. Now was the moment to soften, to say something effusive, but all she managed was “Bye, dear. Talk to you next week.”
—
At first there were hopes the war would be short. The goal was to drive the enemy out in one fell swoop. In the Japanese stronghold of Yangtzepoo downtown, where crossroads were staunchly defended by sandbag trenches, gun nests, and brambles of barbed wire, the Chinese managed despite a lack of cover to claw all the way down to Broadway, the last street before the river, but were finally stopped by the high walls of the wharf. The Japanese, nearly driven into the sea, held out long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
No, the war would not be short.
Incensed that China was putting up a fight, the Japanese bombed the city. Air-raid sirens became a daily, sometimes hourly occurrence. If Alice could sleep at night, it was only because she knew the French Concession went largely unscathed; only the Chinese districts lay in smouldering ruin. Still, she kept urging Frank to leave.
“Might be safer now to stay put.”
He had a point. Even the South Station had been bombed, much to her disbelief. Women and children mostly, trying to flee as she had. But the soundness of his logic only made her angry. What he should have wanted above all else was to come to her. To them.
Once, a fellow doctor had tried to take Frank to the Shanghai Club, famed for its forty-foot-long bar where patrons sat in order of rank, taipans at the end with the best view of the Bund, but nowhere along its length was there a place for someone like him. “He’s a doctor! He’s Canadian!” his colleague had argued, to no avail; Frank was turned away and came home burning. His staying behind in Shanghai had something to do with being Chinese, which almost made her sympathetic. But it seemed like foolish pride to stick it out at any cost.
—
A month passed and her belly grew. She found herself capsized in bed, crabwalking in and out of chairs. The fitful limbs that stretched her belly made her think of an insect trapped in spider’s silk, so she started calling the baby “Bug.” She tried to entice Frank to leave with details of what he was missing—“You need to see this. It’s really amazing”—and those were the moments when he seemed closest to coming.
Alice was surprised that in her state her body keened for Frank’s. Every summer when he came back from Toronto, they would frequent the pool at Kitsilano Beach—the largest saltwater pool in the world. They weren’t barred from entering, but they got their share of looks. Frank always insisted on going. Not only that, he would make a point to swim the pool’s length, all two hundred yards, in just a few breaths, then rise from the pool like Johnny Weissmuller himself, slicking his hair in both hands. Sometimes, after stealing kisses all day, he would whisper, “I can’t wait anymore,” but despite being drunk from too much sun and feeling him through his woollen bathing shorts, she always insisted on waiting. Now those summers seemed like lost time.
—
September dragged into October. With each passing week, Frank seemed to grow more morose. Their weekly phone conversations were blighted by ever longer stretches of silence, precious, expensive seconds they couldn’t afford to fritter away. “What’s the matter, Frank?” she would ask, trying to bring him back, but she knew: the carnage was taking its toll. She asked Frank’s uncle to speak to his brother and wrote her parents asking the same. If Frank wouldn’t leave as a husband and father, maybe he would leave as a son.
In early November, an unexpected landing at Hangchow Bay, twenty miles from Shanghai. For weeks, the Japanese had been pushing down from the north from the Yangtze River; now they were also coming from the south. The objective was clear: outflank the city. The pincer was poised. Frank had to get out.
“Sister Marguerite thinks I should leave.”
“Don’t you think you should leave?”
Only the slightest pause before he said, “Yes, it’s time,” wearily.
Alice soared. “Thank God.”
For some reason the line went cold. Strange that he should seem low at the prospect of reunion. “What’s the matter, darling? You seem blue.”
At first he coul
dn’t say. Then in a faltering voice: “I wanted to win. I wanted to beat the damn Japs.”
—
Alice discovered newfound energy for her daily circuit around Mirror Lake, over the bridges and under the willows for a good half mile. “Daddy’s coming, Bug, Daddy’s coming,” she would coo, cradling her belly. She wished Frank were only a train ride away, but rail was still too dangerous, so his plan was to catch a ride to Taihu Lake and cross by boat, then hitch a ride or walk the rest of the way. From the west side of the lake, Wuhu was only a hundred miles.
Only three days after Frank set off, Shanghai fell, more quickly than expected, but Alice felt triumphant: he had made it out in time. All that was left was to conquer whatever distance remained. Every day she did the math, the number of miles he must have been travelling. The hardest part was no longer receiving telegrams. After a steady diet, it was painful to go without, but Frank had warned her not to expect them.
Four, five, six days passed. Each one brought rising hopes in the morning, creeping doubts at night. After a week she gave in to dread and called the hospital. With the indubitability of a head nurse, Sister Marguerite said she had last seen Frank five days ago. In fact, it was in the log.
“Was there an emergency?” Alice asked.
“My dear,” Sister Marguerite replied, “it’s all an emergency.”
Two days. Frank had stayed two more days without telling her. At first in her confusion she felt relieved. The hands of time whirled back a full forty-eight hours, making it more likely that he was still en route. Then darker thoughts invaded. What could possibly have kept him and why didn’t he say? Suddenly her husband seemed someone wholly unknown to her. More painful still was the possibility, now distinct, that he’d been caught up in the chaotic Chinese retreat. With the enemy in pursuit, the troops had broken rank. At Taihu Lake, it was every man for himself. In the struggle for passage, young and old alike got pushed under. She had thought Frank had escaped all that. Now all she could picture was him stupidly saving others before saving himself.
Every day from dawn till dusk, she sat outside, scanning the street, waiting for the first glimpse, the ecstatic moment, but it never came. Another week passed without any sign. By this point the Japanese had started marching toward Nanking. She had thought that the war would end with the fall of Shanghai, but the Japanese were not only pressing on but taking their pound of flesh. Throughout the countryside, villages were being torched. When she heard that men were being bound in groups, doused with gasoline, and set ablaze, she had to steady herself. In hindsight, it was obvious that Frank should have stayed put. After the city fell, thousands stretched their arms through the iron fence of the French Concession, so many they had to be held off with tanks. Everyone desperate to get in, and she had made him get out. In the small hours of night, Alice would curse herself, then Frank, then curse herself for cursing him. At unbidden moments, she fell to her knees, bartered with God. Sometimes she prayed it was all an elaborate ruse. That a letter would soon explain how he had taken a ship to France with one of the sisters, now defrocked. Anything to know he was still alive.
—
The Army kept falling back. The so-called “Chinese Hindenburg Line” was supposed to hold out for six months; it fell in two weeks. The Generalissimo took to the airwaves to announce that the government was moving to Chungking. That’s when her uncle released his employees. The Japanese were not only closing in on Nanking but also making a break for Wuhu to cut off any retreat. Everyone had to leave.
“We have a family compound upriver,” her uncle explained.
“What about Frank?” Alice blurted.
He touched a pensive hand to his glasses. “You two go first. I’ll wait another day.”
Her aunt made as if to speak but checked herself. It wasn’t for her to object; it was for Alice to decline. But she couldn’t bring herself to pull up the lifeline, to feign refusal.
When she went to pack, she found it again, the book Frank had given her, rearing up like an apparition. She ran a hand down its grainy cloth cover and pressed her nose to the open pages, inhaling the scent of paper and glue. Then she filled her suitcase and laid the book on top.
At dusk they made their way down to the Clearwater River, less a river than a turbid, slow-moving stream. At the sight of the rickety-looking skiff, Alice wavered, afraid it would tip under her weight. But with help from her aunt aboard and her uncle ashore, she managed to sidle in. The skiff swayed, then steadied.
“See you soon!” her uncle cried, too brightly.
A young ferryman punted them upriver. For a while the only sounds were the drip and plash of his pole, but after darkness fell the sounds were obscured by a drone. At first it sounded like bees in a glade; then it took on a whirring mechanical edge. Sure enough, a constellation of black stars slid fiendishly across the sky. Then came whistling, flashes, thunderous claps. Downriver, fireballs ripped through the dark. Alice looked away, stricken by guilt, but her aunt was resolute: “He’ll be fine. He knows what to do.”
At first light, her aunt pounded on the gate of the family compound. “Lao Ch’ang! K’uai tien k’ai men!” she shouted. Moments later, a wizened man appeared at the door and lead them through the inner gate. The compound was a quadrangle with mulberry trees in the courtyard. After a sleepless night, Alice collapsed in one of the side rooms.
In the afternoon, she went back down to the river to look for her uncle. She brought Frank’s book as a kind of talisman, but when the day stalled, she started leafing through. The book began with an invocation of Venus: “Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men…” When the first stanzas proved elusive, she riffled ahead until she saw a passage underlined in pencil:
…for behold whenever
The sun’s light and the rays, let in, pour down
Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see
The many mites in many a manner mixed
Amid a void in the very light of the rays,
And battling on, as in eternal strife,
And in battalions contending without halt,
In meetings, partings, harried up and down.
The commonplace of dust. What did this mean and why did Frank care? He never mentioned giving her the book, never asked if she read it, but now his markings seemed to speak, to hold the key to why he had stayed. Her last glimpse of Frank had not been of him hovering over the boy and holding back the crowd at the South Station. Instead, it came after the platform had thinned, as the train began to creak, when Frank ran up to her car and leapt to kiss her window, which startled her and made her snort. All the way to Wuhu, she had studied the smear of his lips, wishing she could reach through the glass and somehow preserve that scintilla of him. That’s how she felt now, studying his markings, that Frank was near yet unreachable.
Intermittent traffic on the river. Sampans laden with bundles, children, chicken coops. But no sign of anyone she knew.
—
In the morning she awoke to commotion in the courtyard. From her bed she heard a man’s voice—her uncle’s—describing how he had cowered all night, waiting for the bombs to stop. He would have gotten here sooner if not for the Army commandeering everything.
As soon as she opened her door, he said, “I left word with the neighbours. Frank will know where to go.”
She had hoped Frank would be here too. Still, she was buoyed by the sight of her uncle.
“He’s coming. I feel it,” she said.
Far from dashing her hopes, her uncle bolstered them: on his trip upriver, he heard that a Chinese general had disguised himself as a peasant in order to evade the Japanese. Maybe Frank had done something like that, she thought. Or maybe he had sprained his knee or twisted an ankle and knew better than to push it. Maybe he was holed up somewhere, nursing himself, biding his time. Anything was possible.
All day, she sat on the banks of the river, half-hidden in saw-grass. Again, she brought Frank’s book, and when time dragged she studied his markings. Many
converged around the idea that the universe was made of atoms—indivisible, indestructible. That much she could accept. But no sooner did she start to nod along than she found herself unsettled. “So from the body if mind and spirit be withdrawn, / Total collapse of all must follow…” The passage went on in that vein, and despite the prettified language, she sensed its meaning, and it troubled her, she who had grown up not only in the Church but in Chinatown, with all its talk of ghosts. One morning aboard the Empress of Japan, Alice had run into two “grandfathers” from Chinatown. Both were pressing shabby hats to their heads, afraid they would blow away, and one had a face so mottled with age it might have been splattered with ink. Both were travelling steerage but had somehow managed to find her. “Kung-hsi! Kung-hsi!” they cried, pleased that the “little dumpling” of Chinatown had finally gotten married. Now here were men who knew the ravages of time and distance, who had only seen their wives a few times in decades, on those rare occasions when they went back to China. Men for whom a mere six years would have been a mercy. Most of these men were now too poor or too ashamed of their poverty to move back to China, but the Great Depression came bearing an unexpected gift: a ticket home in exchange for the promise never to come back, which was cheaper for the powers that be than offering relief. And this made the old men happy. They were going home to die. Their ghosts wouldn’t be doomed to wander Gold Mountain forever.
The Journey Prize Stories 29 Page 10