I didn’t believe him, yet thoughts were puddled in my mind. The pounding headache and fever stole my energy. What Ying said could be true.
When he returned one evening, he tied up the corners of the sheets and packed what little we had—the kerosene lamp, the two round tin containers that held strips of dried sweet potatoes, and the empty whiskey bottle, which we refilled with boiled water. He tossed the bundle onto my lap. Everything was packed. Little Star was dressed. The rickshaw would come to the alley and take us to a wharf at dawn the next day.
I had a terrible night. I dreamed of Ernest playing the piano—the rhythm, the energy, and the clarity. Oh, only he could play jazz like this; only he knew what music meant to me. But then it changed. Its legato sound drew out like a trail of tears, and it was unmistakable—it was the song of farewell. I awoke, perspiring, before dawn. Little Star was still sleeping, but perplexingly, the music lingered. I went out to the courtyard, to the dark alleyway, to the street, shivering and coughing, following the sound of the piano. One last time.
Each step shook my head and triggered a stabbing pain in my stomach. I kept walking, looking for Ernest sitting by a piano. But it was confusing; my vision was foggy. It seemed there were shadows of early scavengers picking at trash, rickshaw pullers huddling at the poles, and men holding flashlights, cutting the tires of a moored double-decker bus.
The music was still in the air, faint, like a shadow in fog, a leaf in a storm, and now it was familiar, energetic, just like the old times. Elation raced through me. Ernest must be nearby. I could tell because the music grew louder. And louder. And louder.
And all of a sudden the shadows on the street fled—the rickshaws, the men holding flashlights, the scavengers. I froze. What I heard was not the sound of the piano; it was the siren.
And on the edge of the black sky, where the dawn’s light had just squeezed through, a fleet of bombers, like bats, sailed through a bed of pale clouds and dove toward the Huangpu River, the art deco buildings, the Customs House, and the high-rises on the waterfront. American B-29s. Ying hadn’t lied—we must leave Shanghai. I should wake up Little Star before it was too late. But as I was about to turn, the bats roared over the high-rises and veered north.
The siren grew shrill. It came from the north, the Japanese military base.
Panic struck me. Ying had been lying after all. The American planes were not bombing us in Shanghai; they were targeting the Hongkou district, where Ernest was confined.
90
ERNEST
The base was only guarded by a few dozen soldiers, Ying had said, because the majority of the army had been transferred to central China. Once Ernest drove the tank out of the base, Ying would take it from him. He would not be shot, because the Japanese would be distracted and engaged with the incoming American bombers.
At first, it appeared just as Ying had said.
The siren shrieked the moment the fleet of American bombers appeared. Within seconds, harsh and stark lights glared on the military field, and the personnel in khaki and green uniforms—the fighter pilots carrying goggles, belts, and equipment, the soldiers holding rifles—raced across the vast field. The sound of engines revving echoed, shaking the ground.
But there were hundreds of Japanese troops, not dozens, and all acted in a chillingly orderly manner. Ernest crouched in a trench, camouflaged with a flat wooden board, outside the high wire fence of the base. He would enter the base by climbing through the trench, which had been dug for him beneath the fence.
The tank that he needed to steal, Ying had said, was a captured American M18 Hellcat, equipped with a seventy-six-millimeter main gun and a Browning heavy machine gun, a perfect weapon to destroy the warship. But Ernest saw two tanks on the field, one smaller than the other. Both had a star emblazoned on the hull. With all their power, the metal beasts had open tops, no protection of a cupola. He had no idea which one was the Hellcat.
He grew nervous. He needed to crawl through the trench, enter the base, and steal the tank near the crew of pilots and soldiers, then drive it out of the base. It was a mission suitable for a trained soldier, not him. He was not a fast runner and no good at combat; he didn’t know anything about American tanks.
His bottom grew wet from the damp soil; he slipped down, tempted to crawl back, return to his attic, and lie to Ying that something went wrong, that he had tried but failed.
Above the ground, the wire fence rattled; the ground shook. He remembered once he had been close to the barbed wire in an internment camp, trying to see Miss Margolis. That had been three years ago; he’d been twenty-one, determined, unshakable in his faith. It was with Aiyi’s help that he’d finally found Miss Margolis and saved the refugees. He smiled. This was for Aiyi then. Once he stole the tank, he would see her again.