The Black Isle (37 page)

His terror slowly faded and he gave me the subtlest of nods. When he took my arm in his hands, his grip was unexpectedly firm, as though he feared I might change my mind and back away. Together, we looked at the new blood blooming like a mushroom cap on the surface of my skin. Before long, it would spill down to my elbow.

He pressed his mouth to the slit, first licking around the wound so no drop would be lost. A grimace of distaste flashed across his face, but it was his body that craved the stuff, and the body quickly won: A familiar look of concentration overtook him, driven by a primal need for sustenance, escape, transfiguration. His inhibitions fell away. He began not only to drink, but also to suck.

I leaned back against the table for support. For five harrowing minutes, I feared he would never stop.

Afterward, I wrapped the antiseptic cloth over my wound and pressed it tight to stem the flow. I could feel my blood pulsing just beneath the surface, now in the habit of bursting free. Li slumped onto the floor, panting, his teeth and gums lurid red. He seemed even more exhausted than before, and I was terrified I might have made things worse. Quietly, he raised his hand to tell me to stop worrying. And what I saw gave me hope: His hand had stopped trembling.

“I’m a monster,” he whispered.

“No, no, you’re not.” I joined him on the floor and rested my head on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault. You can’t help what you have.”

He thought for a moment. “What if it
is
my fault?”

“What do you mean?”

He said nothing. I prodded him with a gentle kiss on his cheek. Finally he spoke, again in Shanghainese. “I have a confession to make.”

I felt a numbness beginning in my wound, reaching all the way to my heart.

“Remember our seventh birthday? Remember the old man in the park?”

I nodded slowly.

“I knew he would be there. Which was why I insisted on going. The night before, I prayed and begged to whoever or
whatever
was out there. To this day, I’m still not clear who or
what
I prayed to, but when I saw the old man, I knew he had heard me.

“I prayed for freedom. Escape. Mother favored me, but I hated it. I hated that we were subjected to all her fears, that she was instilling terror in us so we’d become like her and keep her company in her living tomb. But as a child, what power did I have besides prayer?”

He began to weep. Once again we were revealed to be synchronous, through and through, in our childhood desire for freedom—especially in our preternatural ruthlessness. I kissed his shoulder.

“As long as I could escape,” he said, “I didn’t care what they wanted in exchange. And so, in the park, I gave the old man my health.”

“When he asked you to kill the kitten.”

He winced at the memory. “I have nobody to blame for my illness but myself. I try to fight it by keeping busy, but it doesn’t do a thing. My hunger never goes away.”

His confession appeared to comfort him. When I looked at his face again, the ruddiness of life had returned. My blood had nourished him, and for this I was supremely grateful. Whatever happened in that park happened a long time ago, in another universe. Whether it was a supernatural pact he’d made or just pure happenstance, at least I’d made him stronger again.

“You look better. Do you feel better?”

“Much.” He looked me in the eye. “Thanks.”

“We’ll survive this, Li. We’ll outlive this war together, I promise you that.”

I embraced him, and then, just as I was about to be engulfed in waves of sentiment, when I feared letting go of him would mean losing him as I’d lost Father, I forced myself to release him and stand up. I didn’t dare risk staying too long. It tore at my heart that I couldn’t just bring him home and nurse him back to proper health.

Li remained on the floor, his face crumpled to see me go.

His hand disappeared into the left pocket of his khaki shorts. It emerged with his weathered talisman, the gold toffee disk, which he held out on his palm. In these circumstances, it shone like an old friend.

“Take this away from me. Too often, I’ve been tempted to break this open and eat it. It came from that old man, you know, so I suspect it would end our pact, once and for all. But I fear it. I truly, truly fear it because I don’t know what it is.”

He forced it into my hand, and I knew I couldn’t reject it. I closed my fingers around the tiny little thing. Hardened over the years, it now felt less like a sweet than a coin—one-way fare for the boatman across the Styx. But its wrapper was sticky, reminding me that, for all of Li’s elaborate fears, it was probably nothing more than a harmless lump of sugar.

“I have to go,” I said, and kissed him on the forehead. “But I’ll come back.”

“You promise?”

“I’ll do everything I can for you. Please know that.”

As I walked away, I passed a wall of wood screens and, in the corner of my eye, caught somebody’s gaze in a mirror. There was a grim, sallow woman staring at me. When I looked again, I realized the phantom was me.

THE BLACK ISLE WAS FROG-MARCHED INTO THE FUTURE
. Our clocks were set forward two hours, to match Tokyo’s. Even today, I sometimes find myself wondering where my two missing hours went.

Those lost hours, however, were a drop in the proverbial ocean compared to the three years I served as Taro’s “wife.” I spent 1943 and 1944 as his property. I existed solely on his terms. But having read enough testimony from that grisly period, I should not complain. A mock marriage was preferable to death.

As with any other evolving couple, our marital quibbles had shifted from such quotidian concerns as food, clothing, and sex to questions of fate, history, and the future—of which my “husband” held many strong and misguided opinions.

Our war of ideas reached its peak in 1945. Only in hindsight does it seem I’d been mad to even think the man was worth reasoning with. But this was my first real taste of marriage, not counting my engagement to Daniel, and so I did what I thought any sensible wife should try to do—hold my own.

Let me paint a quick picture of our domestic life. Two adults at the dinner table, talking. What passed for conversation between man and wife in the year 1945 went something like this:

“Your people were blind to the oppression!” says the husband. “Isn’t it telling that the finest buildings on the Black Isle are the Supreme Court and Shahbandar Prison?”

“The British also built roads and schools,” the wife retorts. “What has
your
great nation done for us? I’m not saying that the Brits were gods. But life has only gotten worse since your occupation.”

A year or two earlier, the husband would have slapped her for that remark. Not anymore. It was, in its way, love.

“It depends on one’s definition of progress, doesn’t it?” He collects his thoughts, preparing another lecture. “According to the Western model, perhaps we are failing. But the Japanese ideal of harmony is built on the notion that there is darkness in the world, that the truth is more often than not made up of shadows. The sublime quality of a Japanese home—which you have yet to appreciate—is built on the mystery of shadows. Shifting darkness and shifting light. We thrive in dark places: Our food looks better, our art looks better, and above all, our skin looks better. Westerners, on the other hand, are like children who are afraid of the dark. To them, shadows represent what’s unknown—and perhaps unknowable—and they genuinely fear it. They cannot imagine how one might tame the darkness by contemplating and
accepting
it.

“That’s why, while the Americans and the British are busy trying to eradicate what they perceive to be shadows in the world, we yellow skins, who have lived amidst the darkness, will rise up. By the end of this century, Japan will topple the West.” Husband shoots wife a withering smile: “By AD 2000. Mark my words.”

By early 1945, Taro trusted me enough to allow me monthly visits to Li. During these furtive reunions in the old opium warehouse, I always brought out my knife and fed my starving brother.

Each month, even as my driver kept to his regimented route, I took in how the city was changing—and how it wasn’t. Instead of seizing upon the building frenzy that had transformed the Isle before their arrival, the Turnipheads brought all construction to a halt. No matter how glowingly Taro spoke of progress, order, and triumph, ruins stayed ruins; looted shops and restaurants remained shuttered and bare, like the pitiful crumbs of Pompeii. They had saved the best buildings for homes and offices: the Balmoral Hotel, the Teutonic Club, even the old St. Anne’s compound.

Wonder World had become a fortified brothel where servicemen went to seek comfort. Reels of barbwire curled atop its red walls to discourage its courtesans from even fantasizing about escape. The higher-ranked Turnipheads frequented what was once known as the Millionaire’s Club in the Flower District of Chinatown, which offered kimono-clad consorts of a more specialized order: girls not just younger and more pliant, but who were trained in serving opium to those so inclined. On the nights Taro failed to come home, I felt pangs of jealous fear knowing he was probably there, possibly auditioning my replacement. Whenever I was driven past the club’s Italianate façade, I would close my eyes and think of wasps.

The rest of the city regressed. The major thoroughfares were clogged with soothsayers, interpreting dreams in Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Malay, Tamil, and in the most enterprising of cases, Japanese. On old Edinburgh Bridge, black-market touts hawked bottles of soy sauce and cans of baked beans, and no one ever came to chase them away as the British once did. The Isle was a shambles.

But no matter what anyone was selling or yelling, whenever a Turniphead soldier approached, everyone was expected to bow low, no matter how young, stupid, and drunk the soldier might be, nor how long he maliciously lingered. Disobedience carried a heavy price. Once, en route to Li, I watched an old woman being assaulted by a soldier who could have passed for her grandson. She lay limp on the pavement as he kicked her head, again and again. A small crowd gathered but nobody dared to help her. On my way home, I saw her body twisted by the side of the road. Nobody had dared to move her either. Her soul stood by her corpse, shaking with rage and swearing in the foulest Cantonese at all who passed.

Still, the occupation’s most unexpected outcome had been the mass confiscation of air conditioners. All across the city, I saw gaping holes and shadowy stains in office buildings where cooling units once sat. No doubt this had been done to break the spirits of those accustomed to chilled rooms, but where those thousands of units disappeared to remained a mystery.

When I arrived to visit Li in February 1945, he was not at his desk. The sight of his empty stool sent my pulse racing. I had been so accustomed to our routine—
all
routines—that any small variation had the power to derail me. Surprises never meant good news during wartime. Yet I had no choice but to wait for him in his cubicle. When he finally appeared, he wore a look of bewilderment. His khaki uniform was spattered with dark red dots.

“My friend Samy,” he began. “They took his arm…”

“What are you talking about?”

“They cut off his damn arm! We were carrying our fleas to them in the back. One of the rats escaped and bit him on the finger. Usually they don’t care about this kind of thing—I mean, look at me.” He brandished the old puncture marks on his hands. “But for some reason, they grabbed Samy and…they just sawed off his entire arm, with no warning! I saw the whole thing. It was…I don’t know…so quick.”

Li slumped onto his stool, still in a daze. I, too, felt queasy.

“This happened in the back of the hall?”

“Yeah, deep down there, where there’s a whole warren of rooms.”

“And where’s your friend now?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “He fainted from the pain. The worst part is I was so shocked I couldn’t move. So I saw everything. The blood…the muscle, the bone…I was afraid I was going to be next but my legs refused to move. Finally, they just kicked me out of the room and closed the door.”

It sounded at once logical and nightmarishly excessive. They—whoever “they” were—must have feared that the rat carried some kind of infectious disease. But even that could not explain their drastic measures.

I whispered, in Shanghainese, “Who do you mean by
they
?”

Li’s eyes darted around nervously even though no one was remotely close. He replied in Shanghainese, “The ones in white, of course.”

“Doctors?”

He refused to elaborate. Then he added with a shudder, “It’s cold in those back rooms. Very, very cold.” He took one glance at my left arm and gave me a look of incredible sorrow. “I don’t think I have the stomach to drink today.”

Taro was barely in the door when I began pelting him with questions.

“Who are the men in white? What do they do?”

“Calm down. I won’t entertain a madwoman, let alone a mad wife.”

He undid his laces, removed his boots, and nestled them at the foot of the stairs. After putting on his slippers, he went to pour himself a glass of Armagnac, deliberately moving at a snail’s pace. I waited as he strolled over to the icebox and, with a smile, dropped three cubes into his tumbler. Finally, as he settled into his favorite chair, he gave his drink a little shake and took a long sip.

“By the way,
this
is supposed to be your job: boots, slippers, drink. I must be the most liberal, most browbeaten husband around. My mother would be ashamed of me.”

“And she should be, seeing that I was meant to be somebody else’s wife.”

A flicker of rage crossed his face. “Now what was it you wanted, Momoko?”

“What do the men in white do, at the warehouse?”

“Which warehouse? You have to be more specific.”

“You
know
, the
one
.”

“I told you a long time ago. They’re scientists.”

“In what field, exactly?”