Part 13 (2/2)

”What did she say, Sunny?” he asked.

Still embracing Yang, Sunny turned to Franz with a smile. ”She will take Charlie in, too.”

”Into her home?” Franz asked. ”Here in the ghetto?”

”Yes,” Sunny said.

Franz pointed to the bedroom door. ”Yang, do you understand who that man is in there?”

She nodded without meeting his eyes.

”And you are still willing to take him in?”

”I am.” They were the first English words Franz had ever heard Yang speak.

III.

CHAPTER 21.

September 23, 1943 Sunny could see Yang's entire apartment from the doorway. She couldn't imagine how Charlie, Simon and Yang had shared these cramped quarters for the past four months, especially considering that neither man could leave the apartment's confines without risking all of their lives.

Still, Sunny had not seen her old amah so energized since before her father's murder, almost five years earlier. Yang had flourished in her new role as protector of the two fugitives. She guarded them with the same fierce care with which she had once swaddled Sunny. Simon had commented that Yang was like a mother, a cop and a grade-school teacher all rolled up into one tiny terrifying package.

The smell of rice and fish wafted over to Sunny. Yang glanced over from the single burner where she tended to a small pot. ”No one saw you enter, Soon Yi?” she demanded.

This was typical. Yang had never been particularly trusting, but of late she was suspicious of everyone, and for good reason. The Kempeitai had ramped up their raids and roundups of locals, often responding to allegations that were imagined or exaggerated. Neighbours were directing suspicion to one another to deflect it from themselves, and Shanghai was infested with informants, some motivated by better rice rations for their hungry families, others driven by opportunism or even spite. Sunny had heard of a woman who, after having felt slighted at a family gathering, had falsely charged her younger brothers with spying. If the rumour were to be believed, all four had been executed. Becoming an informant was as easy as finding an English-speaking j.a.panese soldier. Sunny knew the risk of exposure was greater than ever.

”I was careful, Yang.” Sunny smiled. ”No one saw me.”

Simon hurried over and crushed her in a hug. His face was still gaunt, but somehow Yang had not allowed either him or Charlie to lose any more weight under her watch. ”Essie? Where is she?” were the first words out of Simon's mouth.

”Jakob is napping,” Sunny said. ”They will visit as soon as he wakes.”

Yang had stipulated that Simon's wife and son could visit only on Thursday afternoons, when her elderly neighbours headed out to a friend's home for their weekly game of mah-jong. She worried that the sounds of the mother and baby would seep through the flimsy walls and draw the attention of the old couple, despite their being relatively deaf. Simon and Esther had accepted her condition, since the situation was still preferable to the open-ended separation they had endured during his time at the Comfort Home.

Sunny held up the two English-language books that she had managed to find in the past week. She knew the men would lap up the dog-eared works, especially Charlie, who loved the hard-boiled style of American crime novels.

Simon eagerly accepted the books and studied their covers. ”Das.h.i.+ell Hammett, Charlie!” he called over his shoulder. ”We hit the mother lode this week.”

Charlie made his way toward her on the old wooden crutches he had borrowed from the hospital, his pant leg pinned up to his thigh. His agility had improved remarkably. Now he was almost graceful. ”I hope Sam Spade returns in this one,” he said.

Charlie had accepted the loss of his leg without a word of complaint or self-pity. Still, for him, as for everyone else living in the ghetto, the last four months had been anything but easy. A week after the amputation surgery, he developed a pulmonary embolus from a blood clot that had formed in the veins in his other leg and eventually lodged in his lungs. No one expected him to survive. One evening, as Jia-Li and Sunny sat at his bedside listening to him struggle for breath, out of nowhere the previously taciturn general had suddenly announced, ”My father killed her.”

”Killed who?” Jia-Li asked.

”My mother,” he whispered.

Sunny wondered if Charlie had slipped back into a delirium. ”Your parents aren't here, Charlie,” she said softly.

”No, no,” he said. ”In Harbin. My home in Manchuria. I was only six.”

Jia-Li leaned closer. ”Your father murdered her?”

”He beat Mother all the time. She would tell my sister and me that she was clumsy and fell.” He paused to try to catch his breath. ”But we used to hear the shouts and the beatings from our bed. My sister, Dao-Ming, she is older than me, but I still remember her crying into my shoulder.”

”How wretched,” Jia-Li murmured.

”One day we woke up and Mother was gone. 'Died in a fall,' Father told us. But we knew better,” Charlie grunted. ”The next day he left us at the orphanage run by the Methodists.”

”Ah,” Sunny said. ”Is that where you learned to speak English so well?”

Charlie nodded. ”They were kind, those missionaries. Every night, the old English reverend, Dr. Woodard, used to read to us. Milton, Shakespeare and always from his old leather-covered Bible.” He chuckled weakly. ”Dr. Woodard told us we had to learn to speak properly, since G.o.d only understood the King's English.”

Jia-Li smiled. ”Sounds like a better home than your father's.”

Charlie stared off into s.p.a.ce. He gulped for air, never seeming to swallow enough. ”Once I was thirteen, I left the orphanage to track him down. It was how I learned to fight. How I ended up in the army. Even after the j.a.panese invaded . . . I only wanted to find him . . . to restore Mother's honour.” He shut his eyes. ”I will never get that opportunity now.”

Jia-Li pressed her forehead to his. ”Stay with us, Charlie. Please. Do not waste any more time hunting the ghost of your father.”

Within hours, Charlie had slipped into a coma that Sunny a.s.sumed would prove fatal, but later that day he somehow fought back to consciousness. Within another week, he was breathing more easily, though he had never regained his previous lung capacity. A few turns around the flat could wind him now.

Charlie had never since mentioned his childhood or his desire for revenge on his father. Lately, he had begun to focus his energy on returning to the countryside. Now, he leaned on one crutch and sc.r.a.ped the floor with the other. ”The time has come for me to return to my men,” he declared quietly.

Yang glanced over her shoulder at him from the stove but said nothing.

”And how do you plan to get there?” Sunny asked.

”Perhaps with the a.s.sistance of Jia-Li's . . . employers.”

Sunny knew that Jia-Li would do anything for Charlie but also that it would break her friend's heart to see him go. She had never admitted to her feelings, but she was transformed in Charlie's presence. Jia-Li never flirted with him, which was unusual in itself, but it was her awkward self-consciousness around Charlie that told Sunny how hard her friend had fallen. She had even broken off her relations.h.i.+p with the Russian poet.

”No offence, Charlie,” Simon said. ”But how much help can you be in the field on one leg and half a working lung?”

Charlie shrugged. ”Only time will tell, my friend.”

Simon rolled his eyes. ”No, I am pretty sure the first pothole you overlook will tell.”

Charlie only laughed. ”Until then, I might be of some use.”

”Listen, pal, there are people fighting this war from the inside, too.”

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