He was not lying; he still loved me. But why bother to say that?
“I looked for you, Aiyi.”
He was going to ask me about our daughter, and he was going to lash out at me, at my selfishness. But he had no right. He had let me go, and he had never come to my home. “You said it was over.”
The soldier swung a rifle on his shoulder to point toward us and shouted at Ernest to stay back. He didn’t seem to hear. “I’m sorry.”
What did it even mean? Sorry that he had loved me, sorry that he had forsaken me? I had lost my business, fought my family, ruined my life for him. And he kicked me away, pregnant with his child. Now my child was gone, my home was lost, and my life had fallen apart. I wished I never had fallen for him, never had hired him, never had met him.
“Goodbye, Ernest.”
78
ERNEST
He watched her leave as the soldier thrust him back to the designated area. He wanted to call out and ask her: What happened? Why was she not with Cheng? And would she forgive him? But he couldn’t speak. He had left her when he was wealthy, and now he was destitute and imprisoned; it would be pointless to ask for her hand. Still, he was grateful to see her face, grateful that he had wandered off to the boundary of the district, with no hope and no purpose, when he stared at the maid’s dress. There she was. It was almost like a disjointed dream, a vision from a distant sky, a colored picture above a dusty street.
She had changed, but who wouldn’t? She hated him, but what else would he expect? He still loved her. He would always love her.
Winter came early.
Holding a chopstick with his freezing fingers, Ernest pressed his thumb down against the taro in his hand and slid the chopstick forward; the black peel slid off easily. Now and then, he stopped to shake off the numbness of his fingers, freezing in the winter chill. When he finished scraping, he placed the taro inside a bamboo basket near his foot. Taro, which looked like a potato but with black skin and fuzzy hair, had flesh pale like a stone. He had never seen a taro until now. It had taken him many tries to become skillful at scraping it with a chopstick. Who would have known a stick like this could be so versatile?
He was paid two sweet potatoes for his scraping job; sweet potatoes were peasant food, but taros, for the Japanese, were more expensive. That was how he survived in the area, the ghetto. It was not so bad; most people had no taros to peel. This penury, this confinement, as he came to reconcile himself to it, wasn’t bad either. It was his punishment, his chance to see his failure, an opportunity to atone.
The sound of engines revving resonated in the distance. He looked up. At the end of the street lined with shanties, near the military base, a fleet of Japanese soldiers wearing green winter jackets was riding in armored vehicles. They were leaving the base or maybe engaging in another training in the outskirts. He didn’t know what was happening with the war, who’d won or who’d lost. The Japanese were still buying taros; that was all he needed to know.
Old Liang, his landlord and his employer, bent to collect the peeled taros in the basket. He would cut them up later and sell them in the market; the peels would be swept up by Old Liang’s wife, cleaned, sorted, and cooked for dinner. Nothing was wasted. “Look, look. Your qizi is here.” Your wife is here.
Ernest looked up. Across the street, Golda, in a red trench coat that was turning black, walked quickly toward him. He was not surprised Old Liang would mistake Golda for his wife. Since his relocation to the ghetto, Golda had sat regularly on his bamboo cot, covered herself with the straw mattress, talked, burst into tears, and talked more. When tired, she wrapped her arms around him, hanging onto him.
He didn’t have the heart to untangle her. But when she wanted more, he gently pushed her away. Marriage hardly seemed to make sense. They were prisoners, penniless, without a future.
No. Not qizi. Ernest shook his head. He couldn’t get the pronunciation right, especially the letter q. Aiyi could have corrected him, but Old Liang couldn’t speak English; neither did he understand the term for a female friend. But he was kind, and so was his aging wife, who had given birth to thirteen children and lost ten. In fact, most of the Chinese, the original residents in the ghetto who remained in the area, were kind.
“Ernest.” Golda was panting. “You have to come. Mr. Schmidt is vomiting.”
The old man had suffered an intense toothache and couldn’t eat for days. He had fallen sick, either dysentery or typhoid.
“Let’s go.” Ernest went down the Ward Road, where he heard a whisper of prayers from the shelter for the yeshiva students. He didn’t give it a second glance. Once he had stepped inside a synagogue to seek solace; now he had no interest in seeing the students or hearing prayers.