The Distant Land of My Father Read online

  And then a terrible sound shook the whole car, an explosion louder than anything I’d ever heard or imagined. My father hurried out a moment later, threw himself into the front seat, and told Mei Wah to get away from the Bund as quickly as possible.

  But nothing was quick that afternoon. Downtown was packed and steaming, and our car barely moved. I looked behind us at the Garden Bridge and saw the stream of refugees still coming from across Soochow Creek. There was no end to them. When we neared the intersection of Nanking Road, my mother gasped and my father barked at Mei Wah again and I stared hard. I could not understand what I was seeing.

  Nothing was identifiable. The front of the Cathay was gone, completely shattered, and the roof and walls of the Palace Hotel had been destroyed as well. The street was full of craters and littered with glass and metal and plaster, and everything was covered by smoke. The whole place was strewn with something I couldn’t name, and there were people running everywhere—Municipal Police, Volunteers, the fire brigade, the Chinese Red Cross. There was a terrible smell of something burning, which I thought must be the cars on fire, the tires maybe.

  And then I looked harder at one of the cars, and I saw that there had been a person inside. The corpse was black and burned, and I understood that there had been people in all of the burning cars around us, and I knew without knowing that what I smelled was burning flesh. I stared harder at the debris, unable to look away, and I saw bodies everywhere, some whole, some in parts. A man in a white flannel suit lay in the crosswalk, minus his head. The bloody body of a child was a few feet away. Torsos. Arms. Legs. Heads, hands, feet, as though someone had thrown an armful of broken dolls from a window high above.

  My mother began to weep; my father said nothing. I sat very still, staring, mute.

  There was a second explosion then, from the direction of the French Concession. My mother screamed and held me close, but there was no need. I was clinging to her as tightly as I could. I felt her breath catch, and she said, “Oh, Joseph, please,” as though he somehow had the power to save us.

  We made our way through the city streets to the French Concession. On Race Course Road, a few blocks from the Great World, I finally looked outside again and saw something dark running in the gutters. It was too dark to be water and it was not quite mud. I remembered my father showing me a dye factory once, a place where he’d had to appraise some equipment, and I thought another bomb must have hit the factory. My mother was staring outside, too, and I started to say, “Look, it’s paint,” because I couldn’t remember the word dye. But my mother choked and curled over and I understood that I was seeing blood.

  And then we reached the Great World.

  Through gray smoke, I saw a street full of bodies, even more than at Nanking Road, many of them torn into pieces. A Chinese policeman who had been directing traffic hung from his crow’s nest. The body of a man in a tuxedo lay below in the street, and near him was a pretty Chinese woman in a blue cheongsam, her legs blown off, her right arm torn. On the curb, just outside the car window, was a woman’s charred hand, the manicured nails painted bright red, a gold wedding ring on the finger, and near it was a baby’s foot in a pink bootie. The air was filled with cries and moans and screams, and blood was everywhere.

  Cars waiting for the traffic light to turn green, their passengers trapped inside them, were completely burned. The French police had just arrived, and their hands and arms were already bloody from sorting the living from the dead. The smell was hideous. My mother took off her wrap and held it to my face to lessen the stench, but it did no good, and I was sick on the floor of the car.

  We were within two miles of the Cercle Sportif, much closer to the wedding than to home. My father told Mei Wah to take us there so that he could find out what had happened. It would, he thought, be safe.

  Mei Wah drove down Tibet Road to Avenue Joffre, then down Route Père Robert to Route Cardinal Mercier. When we turned into the driveway of the Cercle Sportif, the day became even stranger. Here, everything was orderly and elegant. Chauffeurs wearing clean white gloves watched over long rows of parked cars. Mei Wah opened our doors and my mother and I slowly got out of the car and followed my father across the lawn.

  Inside the club, there were hundreds of guests, Chinese, European, British, and American. The women wore brightly colored dresses of silk and brocade and satin and lace. The Western men were in tuxedos, the Chinese men in long gowns made of dark blue silk. Paper lanterns hung everywhere, their soft light making the ballroom seem fragile and enchanted. I hardly moved. I was afraid that if I moved too quickly, everything might disappear.

  A waiter offered my parents champagne, and there were nougats and Perugina chocolates that I usually coveted. A sixteen-course Chinese dinner was just being served, and a Chinese woman in a pale gold cheongsam commented to my father that the wine was warmed just enough. I watched my father stumble in conversation with her about the groom and his family and how she knew them until he finally asked, “Do you know what’s happened?”

  She frowned. “There is a rumor of trouble near the Bund,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like much to worry about.”

  My father opened his mouth as if to speak. Then he closed it and just looked around him for a moment. He looked at my mother, who seemed barely able to stand. “I can’t stay here,” he said. She nodded and he picked me up and the three of us went to the car.

  The roads had become even more crowded with refugees and cars. I thought the world was made of smoke now. It was all I could see over the Bund, and it was all I could smell. My father sat in the front seat and fooled with the Motorola radio, trying to hear the news, but everything was static. He finally snapped it off and slumped back in his seat. “We’ll find out soon enough,” he said. “I suppose we can wait.”

  Finally, an hour later, we were home. My mother took me upstairs while my father went into the den to turn on the radio. Some time later, he came to my room to tell my mother what he’d learned. It had all been an accident: Chinese pilots trying to hit the Japanese Idzumo had dropped four two-thousand-pound bombs over the city. Two had fallen into the Whangpoo, raising a huge wall of water that had washed across the Bund and over any cars unlucky enough to be there just then. The third had fallen through the roof of the Palace Hotel, and the fourth had landed in front of the entrance to the Cathay. Hundreds of people had died instantly; hundreds more were wounded.

  And then, my father continued, fifteen minutes after those first bombs, a disabled Chinese plane had accidentally dropped two more bombs over the Great World. The first had detonated the second, and another thousand people had been killed, mostly Chinese refugees. The news reports were calling that a record: the largest number of people killed by a single bomb in the history of aerial warfare.

  Late that Saturday night, long after my mother had put me to bed, my father came to my room, something he did often at the end of his evening. He would sit on the edge of my bed and pat my back and hum. I usually pretended I was sleeping. I was afraid that if he thought he’d woken me, he would leave so that I would go back to sleep.

  That night he sat down and let his breath out, a long, tired sound.

  “I have to give you something,” I said suddenly, my voice startling him. I crawled out of bed and went to the window. I could feel him watching me as I pushed the screen open and found the yen, which felt cool and damp. I closed my fingers over it and wished for courage. I walked back to him, took his hand, and placed the yen in his open palm, then closed his fingers over it. I climbed back into bed and said, “Now you can look.”

  He opened his hand and held the yen up to the dim light that came in through the window. Then he looked at me.

  “Where did this come from?”

  “I took it that day. In your office.”

  He looked confused. “Any reason?”

  “I just wanted it,” I said. “But then everything bad started happening. Maybe”—my voice caught with guilt—”maybe that’s why. Because I took it.
” I took a breath. “Teh-nung,” I started, and I tried again. “Teh-nung vachee,” I’m sorry.

  He started to smile but stopped when he looked at me. “No,” he said. “Some things happened because of some mistakes I made. Not you. Nothing that’s happened has been your fault, Anna. It’s just”—he faltered—”it’s a bad time.”

  I took a breath and willed myself to believe him. “What’s going to happen next?”

  My father looked toward the hallway. “Your mother’s afraid,” he said, and he paused and looked at me carefully. “She wants to go home. To her home.”

  I nodded.

  “You know that?”

  I nodded again and hoped he would say more. “Sort of.”

  “To Los Angeles,” he said.

  “The City of Angels,” I prompted, glad that I had it right for him.

  He smiled gently. “Yep,” he said. “That’s about it. That’s the deal, I suppose. The City of Angels.”

  “Are we going to do that?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Shanghai’s our home, right? What would we do anyplace else?”

  I shrugged.

  “We’ll have to see,” and he stood and slipped the yen into his pocket. “Everything’s all right, Anna. You know that, don’t you?”

  I forced a smile, and he patted the pocket that held the yen and whispered, “Hsiehhsieh,” thank you. Then he leaned close and kissed my forehead as though we’d made a pact.

  We had, in a way, and when he turned and left my room, I hurt inside, but I also felt proud of myself. I had managed to do what I’d wanted most: I had managed not to cry, and when he told me that everything was all right, I had pretended to believe him.

  the wounded

  THERE WAS HEAVY RAIN AND WIND that Saturday night and all day Sunday, too, as though this was the way weather was now. The sounds of the storm were constant: the rain dripped evenly from the tile roof onto the pebbled path below my room, the wind shoved the poplars roughly against the window screens. But it wasn’t just the weather. Everything seemed different. I was allowed to stay up later, and no one bothered about what I ate. Chu Shih rarely left the kitchen. He sat at the table whistling softly through his teeth while he read Shên Pao, Shanghai’s leading daily Chinese newspaper, or Damei wanbao, the Chinese edition of the American Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury. Or he cleaned, scrubbing the kitchen counters, the pots and pans, the floor, as though if things were just clean enough, our lives would return to normal. He refused to leave the kitchen except to sleep, and when he heard my mother’s footsteps, he watched the door intently, waiting to see what news she would have, or what she might need. He seemed to think that anything could happen.

  My father turned on the radio in the den whenever he was within earshot, and my mother snapped it off as soon as he was out of range. She said there was more than enough evidence of the Battle of Shanghai around us without having to hear about it all day. I thought she was right. The sky was dark and filled with smoke that made my eyes sting, and when the wind blew, it brought the fumes of the Japanese funeral pyres from across Soochow Creek. The pounding of the guns of the Japanese warships moored in the Whangpoo shelling the city and of the bombs and anti-aircraft guns over Chapei was there all the time. The terrifying boom! when I stood with my father that Friday night on the verandah soon became routine, a dull thud in the background that frightened me only when I remembered what it was.

  On Sunday night there was a knock at our front door just after my mother had turned out my lights and left my room. It was after ten, late for visitors, and Jeannie, my father’s German shepherd, barked loudly. I lay in my bed on sheets that were damp from the humidity, and I listened hard to my father’s muted voice from downstairs as he told Jeannie to hush. I heard the door open, and then I heard him say something else, and I heard alarm in his voice. He called for my mother, who said, “What is it, Joe?” and I glimpsed her hurrying along the upstairs hallway, tying the sash of her white satin robe. When she reached the entryway, I heard her say, “Oh, no,” almost as though she’d been hurt, and then she said, “Mac, what’s happened to you?”

  I got out of bed and tiptoed to my doorway. From there I could just see the top of the front door and a neat triangle of the entry, where Dr. McLain, our neighbor and my father’s friend and physician, stood staring at my parents as if in disbelief. He was filthy. His dark hair was unwashed and in disarray, and his suit was rumpled and dirty. My mother hurried toward the kitchen, calling for Chu Shih, while my father led Dr. McLain into the living room. I crept onto the landing at the top of the stairs and leaned against the staircase railing, holding it tight to keep myself still. I leaned back when I heard my mother’s footsteps coming from the kitchen. She carried a tray that held a bottle of Scotch and three glasses. A linen towel was draped over her arm.

  Dr. McLain sat on the edge of the leather ottoman near the doorway. I saw my mother lean toward him and I saw him take a glass of Scotch and the towel she offered, which he used to wipe his face. Then my mother sat down where I couldn’t see her. I guessed she and my father were sitting on the divan.

  Dr. McLain sat forward and held his head in his hands, and even from my perch some distance away, I could see that he was exhausted. My father asked a question I couldn’t hear, and Dr. McLain shook his head, then he sat up straighter, his arms braced at his sides, as though holding himself up. He took a breath and he began to talk.

  “It was unbelievable,” he started. “You’ve no idea, no concept . . .” He paused, as if he was waiting for someone to finish his sentence.

  “Go on,” my father said quietly, not with encouragement, but with a grim okay-let’s-hear-it tone in his voice. I inched down two more stairs, though I risked being caught, and I leaned forward so that I could hear.

  Dr. McLain said he had been at home when the bombs had dropped yesterday afternoon, the day that was already being called Bloody Saturday. He had driven to St. Marie’s Hospital as soon as he’d understood what had happened, not waiting to be called, just knowing he would be needed.

  “At the hospital, the Sisters told the survivors to wait wherever there was space,” he said. “They filled up the hallways, the men’s out-patient ward, the reception areas, even the courtyard. All the time we worked, they were screaming, but not just from pain. They were screaming for attention. They understood that we weren’t going to waste any time on the ones we thought wouldn’t make it. They were the ones we just—” Dr. McLain coughed, and there was a long pause. When he continued, his voice was anguished. “They were the ones that we injected with morphine, then asked them to wait in the hallway of the outpatient ward. ‘Be seated here, please, until someone can see you. Yes, you’ll have to wait a while longer.’ Wait for what? To die. And it worked. Just a while ago, as I was finally leaving the hospital, I forced myself to look into that hallway. There was no one left.”

  Our house was quiet for a long moment, then my mother murmured something I couldn’t hear. I saw my father stand next to Dr. McLain and refill his empty glass with Scotch. When my father sat down, Dr. McLain went on.

  “On my way over here,” he said, “I was thinking about medical school, about a lecture on amputations, and how I thought, I’ll never do this, what a waste of time. I could be studying.” He took a long drink. “I have no idea how many arms and legs and hands and feet I amputated today. It was like a factory: remove an arm on this girl, a leg on this young man, another arm on the old woman in the corner, the right foot of the baby against the wall. There was no end to it.”

  I suddenly felt sick and afraid, and I tried to take a breath, but I ended up choking. My mother heard and called my name, and I hurried to the safety of my room, my curiosity overpowered by fear of getting caught. My mother called my name again and I said nothing, and they left me alone.

  I lay in my bed, my heart pounding, and my room seemed alive. Outside, a sudden gust of wind whooshed the trees into the window hard, as though something much
stronger than I was trying to get inside. I tried to think of good things, which was what my mother told me to do when I was afraid. I thought of Mass, a place that made me feel safe. I tried to imagine being in the Cathedral, but the images of church mixed with those of the hospital, and the people in the pews were missing arms and legs and hands and feet. Dr. McLain was picking up pieces of people and trying to stitch them back together with twine.

  I tried to think of other things. I practiced my times tables, something I hadn’t been taught yet but knew I would be eventually. I did the answers in my head, counting on fingers under the sheets. Four times four was sixteen. Five times five was twenty-five. Six times six was thirty-six. It was the highest I’d gone, and I kept going up to eight times eight, then started again. Finally I heard Dr. McLain leaving. I listened to the murmur of my parents’ voices downstairs, and then I heard their steps on the stairs. They stood at my doorway for a moment as I pretended to sleep. Then they turned and walked down the hall together in silence.

  Still I stayed awake, still the wind blew at the trees outside, still I was terrified if I closed my eyes. When I could stand it no more, I took the extra blanket from the foot of my bed and crept down the stairs and through the house to the kitchen. Standing at the door to Chu Shih’s room, I knocked softly and heard a rustling. Chu Shih muttered something, and finally the door opened.

  I whispered, “I’m afraid.”

  He did not hesitate but simply took my hand and led me into the dim softness of his room, where he wrapped the blanket around me and picked me up and laid me on his bed. He spoke to me in a Mandarin whose gentle tone I understood, if not its words. And then he lay on the floor next to the bed, and I fell asleep to the solid, even sound of his breath.