FOUR

 

December 8, 1941

 

Nearly two months passed before the next part of my story, though what happened in those months I barely remember. There was a school play, maybe, and I have some recollection of failing a test. But I may be inventing that. When it comes to that period, I feel as though my mind is a cracked pot that has sat in a corner dripping water. A fog seems to have descended on the period just after my mother’s visit, just as one can vividly recall a nightmare but not the moment of falling asleep.

During the first morning class on the eighth of Decem­ber, there was a sudden commotion. The teacher, Mr. Lee, was late, and in the hall two other teachers ran from room to room, shouting at the students to get out. I was folding a paper airplane against the wall and thinking I would throw it out the window before Mr. Lee arrived, when Mr. Lo burst into the classroom.

“Go back to the dormitory!” He waved us out into the hall as I hid the airplane behind my back.

“Go back and pack your bags quickly and bring them out to the main entrance. You’re all going home. If your families don’t come to get you this morning, someone from the school will drive you.”

We swarmed around him and asked what was wrong. Our delay seemed to terrify him.

“Do as I said!” he shouted. He sounded angry, but looked pale and under-slept. “All of you, get your bags. If you see other boys in the building, tell them the same.”

I needed to find Leuk. I searched up and down the hallway and in every classroom. Other boys were racing past me to the dormitory, where I should have been by now.

As I was leaving for the dormitory, I ran into Mr. Lee.

“Chung-Man, what are you doing? Go get your things!”

“I can’t find Leuk,” I said. The students in the hallway were confused, some of the younger boys were crying, and the senior students were racing them back to the dormitory.

Mr. Lee fixed his eyes on me and took me by the shoulder. “He’s here and he’s heard the message. Don’t worry, just get your things.”

I hesitated again and looked past him down the hall. Then he shouted at me to go. I dropped the paper airplane and ran to the dormitory.

It didn’t take me long to shove all my things into my suitcase. But the stairs were already congested. Boys raced up and down, hauling luggage or running back upstairs to get it, looking for friends or brothers. One boy looked out the window and shouted that he saw cars pulling into the drive.

“Hey, I think your dad is here!” His friend ran over to see, and then other boys crowded around the windows.

“Get away from there!” Mr. Lee’s face ran with sweat in the overcast daylight. “If you’re ready, just go. Don’t worry about your belongings.”

And then it seemed every boy on the floor was panicking down the staircase, unbalanced and clumsy with suitcases and rucksacks. Someone grabbed me by the collar. It was Leuk, and he nodded at me, panting. Between us stood a younger boy of about seven who was holding his hand.

“Meet me at the entrance,” he said and ran downstairs with the boy at his side.

When I got outside, there were already a dozen cars lined up at the entrance, none of them ours. Leuk ran ahead of me with the boy still gripping his hand. He turned to the boy.

“Do you see your parents or your car?”

“I don’t know.” He started to cry.

“Where’s your teacher?” said Leuk.

The boy looked around and pointed to a man near the gates with several other younger boys lined up beside him. Leuk ran over with the boy and talked to the teacher. The teacher shook his head and pointed somewhere towards the school. Leuk said something and the teacher repeated the gesture, and Leuk started walking back towards me, still with the boy. He was wailing now, clutching his backpack and pulling on Leuk’s arm as if he were ringing a bell. I stared at the boy.

“Who is he?”

Leuk got angry at me. “I don’t know. I found him in the dormitory on the main floor, and he asked me to help him carry his bag.”

I asked the boy what his name was, but he was crying so hard I couldn’t understand him. His jacket was too big for him, and his right sleeve was laced with fresh snot. I forgot for a moment that I also had no idea what was happening. Cars kept piling into the driveway even as others raced out the gates. Then the sound of an explosion roared over the school grounds. It rolled upward from the harbour. The trees around me erupted with sparrows fleeing northward.

Adults who had been walking children to their cars now ran with them over the gravel towards the vehicles. The boys still inside threw their suitcases out the dormitory windows, and I thought with horror of the crush on the staircase. I looked away from the school doors. A car pulled up close to us, and a woman dressed as a maid or governess stepped out of it. She shouted at us. The boy cried out and ran towards her, his backpack swinging from his arm. Leuk ran with him. The woman grabbed the suitcase from my brother, threw it into the back seat, and helped the boy in. The last I saw of them was the woman leaning over and struggling with the handle as the driver swung the car over the gravel towards the gates.

I stood next to Leuk and watched the cars come and go. “Is Chow coming?”

More blasts tore through the air, and planes droned somewhere, far away but coming closer. We stared at the gates. Air sirens began to blare, rising and falling out of time with each other.

What I learned later was that Chow had left the house as soon as the radio announced news of the invasion. He had asked my mother which school to go to first; Wei-Ming was at the one across the valley from ours. Much later he told me he decided to get her first because he knew how brave the boys would be. When I asked my mother, she always looked away and said she didn’t remember everything about that day. Nobody ever told the same story. Perhaps no one remembered.

Fewer cars were arriving now, and only a small group of boys were left. Leuk and I stood with our bags and watched the gate and road. Nobody could tell us what was happening, and I began to think no one would come for us. My skin felt as though it had been immersed in freezing water. I looked at my brother and saw the same thing in his face.

Mr. Lee asked us if our car was coming.

“I don’t know,” said Leuk.

“It’s too late. I’ll take you both. The trams are still running.” He picked up my suitcase and ran with us to the gates. The school was in a normally quiet part of the neighborhood. Now I heard cars tearing down the streets, their tires screaming wildly against the slow, resigned chanting of the sirens.

We ran down the pavement to the tram stop on the main road. I was sweating and my backpack straps were pulling my jacket down. Mr. Lee was ahead of us and kept looking back to make sure we weren’t falling behind. Leuk turned to me and took my hand, pulling me down the slope.

We stood at the stop and waited as if we were going to the races, and I thought we must look absurd standing patiently while the tram stuck to its route. Mr. Lee looked at his watch.

“It comes every five minutes at this time of day. It should be here soon.”

A massive boom rolled over us from the harbour. Someone screamed in a nearby house, and planes droned louder in the distance. Machine guns fired somewhere far off, in long, explosive bursts like cracks tearing open in the earth.

Mr. Lee was pale and wiped his brow with a trembling hand. Just up the road, the tram bell rang lightly. He took some coins from his pocket and picked up our suitcases.

The tram arrived, moving pathetically at its usual steady pace. The driver waved us in while the few other passengers on board watched us anxiously. As the tram trundled down the hill, I watched the trees and buildings pass as I always had. I wanted to tell the driver to hurry up, to tell him we had to get home to our mother. But when I looked at him, he was sweating profusely at the wheel, a look of terror on his face. On the top of a nearby hill, I noticed one of the air-raid sirens, a spindly wooden tower dwarfed by the surrounding trees.

Mr. Lee stayed with us all the way to our stop. Leuk and I shouted our thanks to him and leapt off the tram steps onto the sidewalk. I caught a last glimpse of my teacher through the dirty glass, wiping his brow as the tram rattled forward. We ran up the street and found the gates open, and my mother waiting fearfully at the door.

Wei-Ming was already home. Once we were inside, my mother shut the doors. The house itself was silent as a tomb, and the noise from outside echoed through the halls. Warplanes roared overhead, and I listened to heavy trucks and police cars tearing over the streets. Leuk, Wei-Ming, and I stood close to our mother, motionless at the foot of the stairs.

Higher up the hill, from a wooden tower pinioned to the rock, a siren cast its long, declining cry across the valley.