Chapter 17 Safe Harbor
SAFE HARBOR
Thirty-three years ago …
It has been four days since you and Mami fled the city on a rented junk boat, with only a few pieces of luggage.
Baba said he’d be with you in a couple of weeks, meaning he’s due to appear soon.
That’s your hope, anyway. Every so often you touch the tiger charm bracelet he gave you, and think of him fervently.
But hope is only the ghost of a promise; it has no substance, no weight.
Somewhere to the south of your tiny refuge, Hong Kong is currently surrendering to Japan this very afternoon. The history textbooks will refer to this day as Black Christmas.
Soon, troops will move in to establish martial law and subjugate the population.
Soon, thousands of men will die in prisons and POW camps, while thousands of women will face rape and sexual slavery.
Thousands more will starve because there is no food coming into the ports, while many will die screaming from torture.
I cannot help most of them, and my heart bleeds for this.
The darkest hours of your city are here, and they will last for three years, eight months. The legacy of pain they leave behind will last even longer. It is everything your parents feared would happen, and more.
You do not know that, though. Not yet.
In the present, you are walking with Mami through the empty places of her ancestral island home. It is late afternoon, and you have nearly completed a circle of the island, inspecting all its various houses and buildings. Such as they are.
Her arm brushes yours and, in a rare moment of emotional anxiety, you think about reaching out to take her hand. Better not, though. She’ll only pull away, which will spoil the peace. Better to enjoy the beautiful sea and the warm earth underfoot.
The little white cat you saw yesterday is here again, padding quietly along the ground. It darts into the grass, disappearing once more from sight.
“The salt fields are old, very old,” Mami says, pausing to shade her eyes from the glittering sunlight.
She once walked this exact path as a little girl, nearly every day; she thinks of that now, though she says nothing to you about it.
“Hakka clans first came to these islands almost four hundred years ago. They settled on Yim Tin Tsai, an island to the north, and then they came here. Yim Tin Tsai also mined salt, but our fields were always richer.” She is smiling, a rare sight.
“Over here”—she points to a spot some two hundred yards off—“the settlers found large strips of flat land, which shallow-flood in the high tide. They built big salt pans and water gates.”
You look as directed. Remnants of panning equipment are dotted across the furrowed earth. The mangroves press in on all sides, yet none of them have grown in the salt fields. The ghosts have kept it all functional, but the fields somehow look sad anyway, when not in use.
“I can’t imagine it busy with people.”
“Neither can I, anymore.” She scrapes back loose hair, reties it absently. “This island was wealthy, once. In my great-great-grandmother’s day, the salt we sifted sold like gold.”
“Really?” That does perk your ears up. “What changed?”
“Even when my great-grandmother was a girl, salt prices were falling. By the time I was a child, we were as poor as the other islands.” She starts walking again. “No point worrying about it. We won’t be farming salt with just the two of us.”
There are a few other islands that you can see, on a clear day if you squint.
Shek Ham Chau is halfway between Sharp Island and Shelter Island.
Kau Sai Chau is quite big, and also visible from the right vantage point.
The seas between are dark and choppy, though, and you wouldn’t try to reach them with anything less than a very solid boat.
In some ways, any of those places might have been nicer to live, and free of ghosts.
But Mami doesn’t own any land or housing on those places.
She cannot just settle you both in an occupied area.
Besides, she prefers—and you agree with her—to stay as far under the radar of any Japanese armies as possible.
Together, you walk around the island for the next few hours.
It is not big, and much of it you don’t need.
The farming areas are small, and filled with weeds, but you only require a smallish patch to feed two women, if it comes to staying.
Since it’s the wrong time of year to plant anything, you have till end of winter—a good two months—to prepare the ground for crops. Or so Mami says.
Mami has bought a lot of dried food and rations, which are already stored back at the house; that will tide you over for a while.
She tells you that there’s also fishing, and fruit: peaches, plums, pomelos, persimmons, lychees, dragonfruit, and cherries.
Some of those are on your island already. All will grow here, if cultivated.
Most importantly, the only freshwater well on the island is still functional. It is not far from your house, though still enough of a trek to make baths awkward if you haven’t planned adequately for the day.
“I thought we weren’t going to plant crops, or harvest trees,” you interject, looking at the overgrown earth. “Baba will be here any day now, and we have enough food to last till then.”
“I suspect your Baba may decide we should stay on longer,” Mami says, rubbing a blade of grass between thumb and finger. She wonders if she sounds evasive, hopes she doesn’t. “If he cannot buy a good enough boat, how far can we really travel? And where is safe? Oh, I don’t know. Everything is so…”
She sighs, leaving her sentence unfinished. She is thinking of her lost loved ones, again, and all that happened with the storm. The memories eat at her.
“What do you mean, we might stay on longer?” Your voice is an unwelcome intrusion to her reverie. “I thought we were only staying till the conflict ended.”
“Till the…” She gives a half sob, half laugh, trying to bury her annoyance at your endless questions. “Aiyah, and what happens with the city occupied? What if it stays Japanese territory forever? Your father did not think of that one. I suppose he thought the British would win!”
“Will they not? I mean, the British are so strong, and the Americans too.”
“Westerners certainly think they are strong,” she says, pure scorn. “Even if they win later, the city will fall first. It will be like Nanjing, and Shanghai. Little girls and old grandmothers are not safe. The soldiers have lost all respect and honor.”
“Even in Nanjing, the violence stopped eventually.” You try not to think of little girls and grandmothers at the mercy of rapacious soldiers. “Maybe we can go back when things are quieter.”
She shrugs, as if to condemn the insanity of that hopeful prediction. You have never met anyone then or since who could imbue so much meaning into a simple lift of the shoulders. Then she says, “Go back to what? Ruin and poverty?”
There’s no solution to her question. You can only wait, and hope that Baba will turn up eventually; he must.
You don’t have an easy way of leaving, if he doesn’t. There are only a handful of small fishing boats on the island, and none of them big enough to take both of you plus all your luggage.
“How long do you think it will be before we hear from Baba?” Daring to voice the question that has hung over you both.
“That man? Hmph. When he shows up, I’ll let you know.” She stalks off ahead, arms stiff at her side.
You follow sullenly, trailing after.
To your surprise, ghosts are waiting at the house when you both arrive home.
At least five of them, though it is hard to keep track.
Some seem to fade in and out of existence.
Two are mostly corporeal. All of them look like villagers.
Their clothes are sodden and dripping, leaving puddles as they wander around.
One of them, a Western man wearing Jesuit robes, shuffles up to you and begins muttering a Latin prayer. There were Christians on these islands, usually traveling missionaries. He must have been such a person.
Just an accident, whispers a young farmer, with bulging and bloodshot eyes. Rivulets of water run from his mouth when he speaks.
“Who—who are they?” you ask, unsettled and nervous. “Are they all villagers?”
“It’s the typhoon victims,” Mami says, steering you roughly toward the house. “I wondered if … when … they would show.”
“Oh,” you say, numbly. “What are they talking about?”
“The night they died. Ghosts repeat themselves often.” She dabs her eye quickly, as if embarrassed anyone should see a hint of emotion. “The typhoon killed so many, and wrecked all the farmland. A terrible tragedy.”
We did nothing! An old lady steps in front of you. Her chest and head are smashed, brains dripping down the back of her skull. Snapped ribs protrude from her belly, the sight making your stomach flip.
“Get in the house, and I will speak to them.” Mami says, giving you a firm push. When you hesitate, she adds, “We each find different ways to confront our dead. Please, daughter.”
She should know better than to let the ghosts gather like this, and you are no child anymore to be ordered around. But beneath Mami’s command you hear a plea that crackles with painful need, and out of respect, you reluctantly do as she asks.
Mami stands in the waving grass and whispers to the gathered spirits, arms outstretched in placatory tones. They flicker and flash and mill around her, seeming to listen.
It’s an uncomfortable sight. You sit in the front room, peering out of the window, watching her and reflecting. Ghosts as a general hazard you are very used to. You try to tell yourself that these ghosts are really not so different from the ones you grew up with.
But try as you might, you can’t extend that same sense of openness to the ghosts of Shek Ham Chau, and you’re not sure why.