I want to be happy, she had said, a declaration she’d believed in, a chance she had given him, a hope he should live by.
He made a cup with his hands, gathered the water-drenched maple leaves, the sunbaked black mulch, the rusty shrapnel, and the broken twigs, and showered them onto her. The current of debris fell through his fingers like the passage of a spirit. When his hands were empty, he held them in the air, remembering the grit of the wood, the fine texture of the earth, and the wetness of his fingers.
All would wither, all would vaporize, and all would be buried in mud and in silence, but he remembered that at least during an endless whistle of the cold wind of life, a happy interlude, fleeting as it was, had happened, and he had been part of it.
84
AIYI
“See these?” Ying, holding a pair of binoculars with his right hand, looked up at the sky where six fighters circled. “They’re not Zero fighters. They’re bigger. They’re American B-29 Superfortresses. I have no doubt about that. Shit. Shit! Yes. Yes! They’re B-29s!”
He did a jig, tossing his head and shoulders as though a thousand fleas had crawled on him. His victory dance, which he did whenever he won loads of money at mah-jongg. Good thing his wound in his shoulder had healed. I was not interested in fighters, but I needed to ask him about finding Ernest. Since I saw the girls near the Old City God Temple, I had been dreaming about my daughter. Last time I saw Ernest, he was in the ghetto, the restricted area which outsiders couldn’t enter. Ying was resourceful. He could enter without causing suspicion.
“And that’s good news?” Little Star was scratching her head furiously, watching the fighters in the sky, so I beckoned her to come to me.
I couldn’t tell a Zero fighter from a B-29 at a distance. I only knew the Zeros, flying at a terrifying speed of more than 350 miles per hour, had the rising sun emblem emblazoned on their bodies and wings. They dominated the Shanghai sky, shooting down Chinese fighters as easily as a swatter flattening flies. For the past three years, fighters from the Nationalist air force had attempted air raids against the Zeros numerous times, but every single fighter from the air force was shot down without hitting a Zero.
“Remember the top-secret information I told you?” he said.
Little Star wouldn’t come so I brought the stool to her, sat down, and secured her between my legs. Pressing her head lower, I combed through her hair with my fingers, searching for lice and their plump eggs. How she got infested with lice after I’d just washed her hair with the kerosene, I had no idea. Now my head itched. “I don’t think you trusted me well enough to tell me that.”
“It has nothing to do with trust, and I still can’t tell you too much. I heard the Americans had bombed Tokyo once, but the aircraft crashed in the Zhejiang province. The distance to Tokyo had been an obstacle for the fighters. But the Americans are coming back with more pilots and B-29s! Do you know what this means? If we have the Americans help us, we can rout all the bastards and win this war!”
He had just said this when another fleet of aircraft soared in the sky, chasing the Superfortresses. They were much faster, catching up even as I watched; then they fired. Black smoke burst from a B-29. Ying tossed the binoculars into the satchel and cursed.
“Listen, Ying.” I caught two lice and crushed them expertly between my nails. Juice burst between my nails. “You’re recovering well. You’ll be out and about soon. Can you do something for me?”
He went into the bedroom and rolled underneath the bed, where he’d made a sound barrier with the sheets I’d stolen from the hotel.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Can you find someone for me? You know him. Ernest Reismann. He used to be my pianist.” A bunch of brown lice eggs, plump, appeared between my fingers. I positioned my thumbs around them and crushed them.
He came out and stood in front of me. The frown on his face made him look like an ill-tempered child. “Did Cheng mean anything to you? He’s only dead for a little more than a year, and you’re thinking about the foreigner?”
Little Star looked up at me, then Ying, and slipped out of my grip. Suddenly, there was nothing I could hold on to.
“Don’t you have any loyalty, little sister?” His tone told me the same old message—I, the little sister, the youngest, must obey.
I said quietly, “Do not talk to me like that.”
He growled.
“Do you remember once we flew a kite together, Ying? You, Cheng, and me. How old was I? Nine? Ten? You made a hawk, and I painted it in red. You were good at making kites, and Cheng was good at running. We went to a field of flowers. I thought they were sunflowers, but I was wrong, they were rapeseed flowers, with small blossoms, slim stems, and delicate petals. Oh, how beautiful the field looked, a rioting yellow, so sharp, like an ocean of paint. I sat in the field of rapeseed flowers, but you wanted me to fly the kite with you, and Cheng shouted at me to run ahead of him because he didn’t want to leave me out of sight. But I couldn’t catch up with him. He was too fast. Then the wind blew up my skirt, and I tumbled down the field and broke my leg. Remember that? I broke my leg.”