Jenni Foley – Pufferfish

Transcription

Pufferfish by Jenni Foley
Five facts about the pufferfish, also known as the fugu in Japanese:
1. One pufferfish contains the poison tetrodotoxin that is hundreds of times more
poisonous than cyanide.
2. There is enough toxin in one pufferfish’s liver to kill five men.
3. Its ovaries, roe and kidneys are just as deadly as the liver.
4. One milligram of the Pufferfish’s tetrodotoxin is enough to cause torturous death
within less than 60 minutes of being consumed.
5. After the toxic organs are carefully removed, it is possible to eat this very delicious
fish raw or cooked.
Just as it’s possible to find pleasure in an otherwise deadly fish, Japanese government
thought it possible to gain an advantage from someone they thought to be an enemy—
as long as great care was taken. The Japanese were allies of the Nazis, yet they also
allowed thousands of European refugees to escape persecution at the hands of the
Nazis and to enter Shanghai which they occupied during World War II. Japanese
diplomats in Eastern Europe issued visas to Jewish Europeans as a direct response to the
Fugu Plan, while others facilitated their safe passage from certain death out of
compassion.
Commonword Diversity Writing for Children Prize 2014 Shortlisted Entry
Chapter 1
The Bund, Shanghai
(February 25, 1943)
The wide-eyed winter moon gazed across at the two small figures on the other side of the
Huangpu River. Hundreds of junks dozed and glowed in the moon’s stare, nodding and
bobbing as the wind blew in from the cold East China Sea. The river rippled and twisted like
a weary festival dragon through Shanghai and passed the sleeping Bund.
Tomas and Lukas huddled together, looking up at the notice.
‘We found it. This is it, Lukas. This is what they don’t want us to know.’
‘Read it, Tomas!’
Each time Tomas opened his mouth to read, the bitter wind rebuked him; and so
he’d shut it again each time. His tiny teeth chattered inside his frozen jaw.
Tomas kept his hands warm inside his cavernous pockets and rubbed the thickest
part of his scrawny legs to warm them. Lukas looked up at his brother, breathing heavily,
and studied him in the way that a novice studies his master, eyes intent and squinting. His
body imitated Tomas’s every movement—bony fingers dived into his pockets and rubbed at
his legs as if he was summoning a genie from inside Aladdin’s lamp. Their thin braces held up
the threadbare woolen breeches that they’d long outgrown; hand knitted stockings draped
around the boys’ stick legs that poked out of the top of almost worn-out boots. They rubbed
the soles of their boots against the stone pavement so that their toes would not become
solid blocks of ice. There was no room inside Lukas’s boots to wiggle a single toe; and,
poking out of the toe-end of one of Tomas’s boots was a throbbing ice block. No matter
what they did, they couldn’t shield themselves from the raw night air. Without coats, fat
scarves and gloves, without proper sealed boots, neither could keep warm nor protected
from the ferocious weather.
‘I’m so cold? Are you as cold as me, Tomas?’ A quavering voice snuck passed Lukas’s
lips.
Tomas nodded and half smiled.
Lukas took his tiny hands from his pockets and cupped them to his mouth to stop
the cold air leaping down into his sick lungs. He coughed a few times. His cough hacked at
the air like an axe splitting firewood. The wind carried the hacking sound across the
Huangpu River and it died, or perhaps it took refuge somewhere, in the freezing night.
At the sound of the cough, fear grew in Tomas and his dark eyes blackened. He took
his hands out of his pockets and encased tiny Lukas in his arms. Tomas was almost twice
Lukas’s age and at least twice as big and strong. He hugged him tight, drawing him as close
as he could so that he could protect him from the wind and from the Shanghai night. He
looked down at his pale shivering brother, closed his eyes momentarily so that he could stop
seeing what he didn’t want to see; Tomas shook his head.
He sighed.
‘I wish you hadn’t come. You shouldn’t to be outside in this freezing weather. Listen
to your cough? It’s much worse.’
‘It’s the same as always. Toma.’
‘And, if Mama and Papa find out, Luka, I’ll get the hiding of my life. And you might
too.’
Lukas’s eyes, too big for his shrunken face, widened. ‘I’ll tell them I made you bring
me and everything will be alright, don’t worry, Tomas.’
‘You won’t need to tell them anything. They won’t find out…’ Instead of a defiant
broadcast, Tomas’s rasp trailed off into nothing at all into the night.
A difficult silence grew between the two brothers for a few moments. Both boys
faced the notice. Lukas knew what Tomas was thinking and he, at the very same time, knew
the thoughts burning in Lukas.
‘Toma…’ His scratchy voice rubbed against the air just as his rough trousers chafed
his skin. ‘You know we came to read the notice. We have to know what it says. Tonight.’
Lukas’s words tugged at his older brother. He waited for some reassurance that that was
why they had come to the Bund on a bitterly cold night. ‘So…’
‘So?’
‘What does it say?’
Tomas didn’t open his mouth. He bit down hard to make sure not a sound escaped.
He regretted disobeying his parents, but not because he was standing looking at the notice.
He didn’t regret disobeying his parents for having an insatiable hunger for things that only
adults talked. He didn’t regret possessing a thirst to understand things he didn’t yet
understand. He wanted to be the one to read the notice. He stood in the freezing cold
watching his little brother get colder and sicker and it was his fault.
Standing in front of the notice, he had only questions. Not one answer. Why could
he have not waited till daylight? Why did he have to be so impatient? Why did he take Lukas
into the terrible cold? Why did he hunger and thirst to know what he didn’t know?
Why was Shanghai so cold at night?
Chapter 2
The bedsit on the second floor; noodle shop on the group floor
Since Tomas and Lukas and their Mama and Papa had disembarked at the Shanghai docks at
the end of summer, the brothers were confined to their cramped bedsit at night. They were
not permitted to go out after dark. There were good reasons for this: Lukas was sick; Mama
and Papa worked long hours into the night; and so Lukas had become Tomas’s charge for
much of the day and the night.
Their home was a cramped bedsit on the second floor of a rickety wooden building,
stained by the years that passed since it was built. It could almost be described as handsome
on the outside, but was worn out and stripped almost bare on the inside. In the bedsit stood
two small beds and a small table that rested close to the floor. It was the only beautiful thing
in the room—on first glance—made of slatted wood smoothed and splinter-free from
hundreds of years of wear. Mama and Papa shared one bed while Tomas and Lukas shared
the other. Most of the floor was hidden. Obscuring what lay beneath were small travelling
trunks, fabric bags and string-secured boxes packed with precious belongings that had
travelled with them for the last two and half years, since leaving their home in Vilnius in the
terrible summer of 1940.
Each of the floors above the ground floor housed two or three families and a bath.
Tomas and Lukas and their mother and father lived on the top floor with two other families,
the Grabowskis and Kaliszs, and a Rabbi. Their parents would sometimes engage in
conversation with the Rabbi, but the boys never did, except to mutter something—perhaps
‘Shalom’ or even ‘Hello—almost silently or to nod their heads and press themselves against
the wall to let him pass. With the other families, they shared a bath, a little English and a
little Yiddish from time to time. They knew only the family names and the faces of the folk
on the floor below but, every day, would mouth ‘Hello’, uncertain of any other way to act.
The first and second floors were cold and bare.
The ground floor was a different floor altogether. It had become familiar, and the
most wonderful place they could ever hope to live above. The ground floor was occupied
and consumed by a noodle shop. A noodle shop that only existed in dreams.
In the waking hours they Lukas and Tomas daydream about it and at night they
could fill their mouths in their dreams. They longed to eat the slippery noodles bathed in a
steaming heady, savoury soup and garnished with colourful exotic delicacies they’d never
before seen. As often as they possibly could, they would stop in the entrance to the back
door. There they would lick their lips and say how hungry it made them feel—‘I’m hungrier
than I knew’—and that it smelled like nothing else on earth—‘That smells like paradise.’
Tomas once said, ‘One day when we’re rich, let’s order every single thing on the menu and
eat till we’re stuffed as full as a pickpocket’s purse, and then do it all over again.’ It made
Lukas laugh. At other times they would stand at the front of the shop and examine the
Chinese diners, hoping that one day it might be them perched behind the fogged up glass.
With every blink, they studied the fine art of noodle eating by the best noodle eaters they’d
ever seen—the only ones they’d ever seen. Every one of them would raise their brimming
bowl of noodles right up to their chin and balance it for a while on one open palm. Then with
the other hand, they would deftly shovel drenched, dripping noodles into their bulging
mouths as each noodle slapped one or both stuffed cheeks before being devoured—
vanishing into satisfied bellies. It seemed that Tomas and Lukas could hear every loud slap
and slurp over the clatter of the kitchen and the chatter of the noodle shop diners. Every
round face glistened with satisfaction behind the window, each unaware of the two darkeyed Blue Hats* standing on the street outside, watching every mouthful with hungry
anticipation. On one occasion, the brothers stood in the back doorway and bravely leant
forward to peer in at the magic being brewed, unaware of a Chinese kitchen hand standing
behind them. “Nong haw. Hia vɛ tɕʰɪˑ.ku.lə va?” (Translate into phonetic English—‘Have you
eaten?’) He stood with a small bowl of noodles. Unsure of what to do, the two froze,
muttered the Shanghaiese words of greeting, “Nong haw,” and then bolted into the
alleyway. And then when there was no sign of the kitchen hand, they snuck back up the
stairs to the cold, hungry bedsit.
* ‘Blue hats’ is the English translation for the Mandarin word for ‘Jew’ at that time.
Chapter 3
Adult business
February 24, 1943
Tomas had woken early and heard whispers through a tiny crack where the door had not
closed properly. He got out of bed careful not to rouse Lukas and crept cautiously over to
the door. He put his ear up against the cold timber of the door and began to listen to the
whispering on the other side. Outside, on the second floor landing, he could just make out
the murmuring voices of his Mama and Papa, the Grabowskis and the Rabbi. Tomas knew
that they sometimes gathered on the second floor landing, sometimes to talk privately and
at other times to schmooze and to gossip—all of which was adult business.
‘Heime! Heime! Refugees’ quarters for us! Worse than now! In a ghetto!’ Mr
Grabowski barked with his quietest possible voice.
Tomas could not make out all of his words.
‘Oh, oy vey. It’s in all the newspapers from here to Manila. The proclamation was
printed in the Shanghai Herald yesterday.’ The Rabbi kept his ire to a whisper.
‘What has happened?’ My mother and father only read newspapers that were days,
if not weeks old.
‘Heime! It’s outrageous! We didn’t expect this!’ Mrs Grabowski’s voice sounded like
it could shatter.
‘And there’s a sign posted somewhere on the Bund, they say. I’ve heard it says that
all Jews must go into a ghetto. We will have to leave our homes and our jobs. And once
we’re there, we won’t be permitted to leave again. That’s what the papers are all saying as
well.’
‘Oh, oy vey. How will we live? We have just found regular jobs now after so long
without them.’ Mama sounded panic-stricken.
‘My dear woman, we will not leave. I for one will not live again in fear.’ Mr
Grabowski’s low voice filled the stairwell.
‘And poor little Lukas’s lungs are not strong enough to survive the stress of all this.
People get so sick in the slums. Oh oy vey.’ Tomas could hear Mama sniffing back tears. He
itched to open the door and comfort her.
‘A heim worse than this?’ The Grabowskis had not seen living quarters worse than
their bedsit on the first floor. Tomas’s family had.
‘Oy vey! We will not let this happen to us.’ The rabbi’s hoarse whisper was loud
enough to wake Lukas. Tomas struggled to hear all of the conversation but what little he
could hear scared him. It made so little sense. He heard heime over and over.
‘This will only make us stronger Bubalah*.’ Papa had been silent as Tomas listened
and he willed him to say something that would make it all seem better. ‘What does the
notice say exactly, Rabbi?’
‘Well, I haven’t read it myself. It only went up yesterday. I would go today except
that it’s the Sabbath. It’s no doubt what has been written in the newspaper.’ His voice
softened.
‘You know what the newspapers are like, Rabbi. They exaggerate everything. And
without seeing the sign for yourself… Surely, if this is true, we will be told personally. How
many Jews can there be living in Shanghai? Please just let’s keep our voices down, so that
we don’t worry the children; and let’s try to keep our hopes up.’
The whispering was about to stop. Tomas turned slowly away from the door, and
prepared to creep back to bed. There behind him was Lukas.
‘What are you doing? Luka, what did you hear?’ Tomas was alarmed.
‘Nothing! What does heime mean?’
‘I don’t know what heime means. It’s not important, otherwise they’d tell, wouldn’t
they. Get into bed! Hurry!’ He kept his irritation to a whisper and jostled Lukas into their
bed.
They scuttled under the covers and pretended to sleep. Under the covers, their
hearts pounded so fast and loudly, they were sure their Mama and Papa could hear the
beating. Both their faces were hot and red. Tomas and Lukas closed their eyes tightly and
prayed that their parents would not know they had been eaves dropping. They were afraid
of being punished for listening to adult business.
Lukas slept while Tomas lay awake planning his excursion to the Bund to read the
notice for himself. He had to know about the adults’ business. He thought he was old
enough to know about such things and to not be protected. Anger welled up in him as he
thought about what he had heard: the ghetto, the heime, the slums, another move. He
wanted to be included in conversations about adult business, but once again he was treated
like a child.
After all, at almost thirteen, he was grown up enough to have the responsibility of
looking after his younger brother now. Why could he not be trusted enough to take part in
adult conversations, at least to listen if not to speak?
Tomas’ eyelids fluttered. As he dozed back into a deep sleep his thoughts left adult
business and the notice and turned to delicious slippery steamy noodles that would fill his
stomach and warm his heart.
* Bubalah is a Yiddish term of endearment that could be translated into English to mean
‘sweetheart’.
Chapter 4
The notice on the Bund
The next night, Tomas crawled out of bed and dressed himself in silent slow motion, so that
he wouldn’t wake his sleeping brother. He made not one sound.
Tomas closed the door behind him, careful to mute the grating of the rusty lock,
knowing that the smallest noise could be heard from inside any of the three rooms on the
second floor. He stopped for a moment as he remembered his coat, hat and gloves, but
didn’t turn back to collect them as he would risk waking the Grabowskis, the Kalisz’s or the
rabbi with the slightest sound of the bolt sliding inside its rusty latch. He left Lukas to sleep.
Tomas tiptoed passed the rabbi’s room and the communal bath on the left, the
Grabowski’s on the right and the Kalisz’s at the end of the corridor. He crept down two
flights of stairs and at the very bottom stopped and turned.
Had he heard a faint coughing?
Tomas snuck passed the back door of the ground floor noodle shop still belching out
smells that made his mouth dribble and his stomach groan with longing. He stopped for a
moment to catch his breath. Tomas then turned again.
Lukas emerged out of the misted darkness and coughed a few times. No coat. No
hat. No gloves.
‘What are you doing here? Would you stop following, just for once?’
‘I’m coming too—to look at it.’ He coughed again.
‘No, you’re not. We’re going home.’ Tomas took Lukas’s little hand and tugged him
in the direction of home.
‘We’ll never know what it’s all about if we don’t go.’ Lukas could read his big
brother’s thoughts. ‘Please let me come. I won’t be any trouble.’
‘You’re always trouble. Nothing but trouble.’
Lukas stood still as Tomas tried to continue on back towards home. He released
another spasm of barking coughs, as tears became puddles in his eyes. Tomas looked back at
his brother and then moved close enough to him to see the tears that glistened in the
meager moonlight. He frowned knowing that what he was about to say would summon
inevitable regret. ‘Okay then, little brother. But you can’t breathe a word of this.’
Tomas and Lukas stepped back out into the darkness.
The dim light of the moon illuminated so little of the alley that the two were
confused at first about where they were. Tomas again grabbed Lukas’ hand to lead him away
from the dead end of the alley. Lukas’ half-frozen face smiled.
They continued on towards the Huangpu River and the Bund, passing piles of
stinking food scraps that spilled out into the dark narrow alleyway. Steam and smoke from
the back of restaurants and factories made it hard to see where the alley met the wide
street in the distance. They zigzagged together through the alley until they reached the wide
footpaths of Szechuan Road.
They couldn’t read the Chinese shop signs but knew this street well, having been
there many times on their own exploring and with their parents on shopping days. They
knew the tailor’s shop where their Papa made beautiful suits at night and sometimes during
the day. Papa and the other Jewish tailors were there, three flights of stairs above the boys,
working long hours till just after dawn. Tomas and Lukas looked up and saw the light in the
room through a crack in the curtains. They quickly passed, heads down, and continued for a
few blocks until the road intersected the Bund, stopping every now and then for Lukas to
catch his breath and to look for where the sign might be.
During the day, Chinese, Blue Hats and Europeans scurried about their business
along the broad heaving pavement of the Bund next to the Huangpu River. Whenever Tomas
and Lukas were on the footpath of this wide boulevard, the people had been joined by cars,
bicycles, trucks, trolleys and rickshaws all pushing and shoving each other in the sunlight.
Japanese soldiers dotted amongst them all, usually standing, watching. But at this time of
the night in the winter, especially so soon after the New Year, the Bund was empty,
unnervingly so.
There they stood, on the other side of the wide Huangpu, Tomas and Lukas shivering
and breathless. In that moment, the moon, low in the dark sky with not a star for extra light,
shone directly on the notice.
‘We found it. This is it. Adult business.’
‘Read it to me, Tomas!’
Tomas’s arms wrapped around Lukas. He looked up and each time his brother drew
breath, Lukas’s hopes rose. But each time Tomas said nothing, hope faded. Tomas’s words
were frozen somewhere between his thoughts and their utterance.
‘Read the notice and then we can go home. Come on.’
Still no words came out.
‘Tomas, what does it say?’ Lukas’s lungs rattled as he tried to take in breath. His
cough was like the bark of a tenacious dog and his skinny neck poked forward out of his
unbleached shirt collar like, his head bobbing keenly. He could not read a word in front of
him but he studied it as he coughed hoping the meaning would jump out at him and he
could go home.
‘It’s okay, Luka, just breathe calmly, and I’ll read the notice and then we’ll go home.’
In the light of the moon, Tomas squinted at the notice trying to make sense of the
dark words pasted to the towering brick wall. The words were written in bold English type—
they were black and unbending against the grubbied white paper. He couldn’t understand
the meaning of every word in front of him but he could nevertheless read it aloud and make
Lukas believe that it was all clear to him.
‘This is what the adults don’t want us to know, Luka. Are you sure you want to hear
it?’
Lukas nodded firmly holding in a cough with his hands.
Tomas stumbled over the words on the notice. ‘It says: Proclamation concerning
restrictions of residence and business of stateless refugees.
Number one. Due to military necessity, stateless refugees shall be restricted to east of
Chaoufoong Road; west of Yangtzepoo Creek; north of East Seward Road; and south of the
boundary of the International Settlement. Number two. Persons other than these refugees
shall not move into the area without the permission of the Japanese authorities. Number
three. Persons who violate this decree or obstruct its reinforcement shall be punished by
death by the Japanese authorities. By order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial
Japanese Navy. 1
Truncated version of proclamation published in the Shanghai Herald on 18th
February, 1943.
1
Chapter 5
The Bund, Shanghai
Very early February 26, 1943
‘I don’t understand the notice.’ Little Lukas’s voice had almost disappeared.
‘Let’s go home.’ Tomas’s voice was emptied of hope; filled with disappointment. He
clutched one of Lukas’s shivering hands and turned away from the notice. He took just one
step to head home, then stopped abruptly.
A stubborn barrier stood root-firm in front of Tomas. Lukas took cover behind him
not knowing what had stopped their journey home.
Neither Tomas nor Lukas had seen a Japanese soldier up so close. They had dodged
them in the street having heard tales that made them fear a close encounter. Tonight in the
dim shrouded moonlight, Tomas stood staring up at a Japanese soldier. Every muscle in his
body went into fearful spasm recalling the many gruesome stories he had heard since
arriving in Shanghai.
Lukas tugged at his brother’s breeches. Tomas’s hand grabbed Lukas’s tight to stop
him drawing attention to himself.
‘Futari-tachi, nande kono jikan ni koko de shiteru no? Futari? E?’
Tomas shook his head.
In stilted English-Japanese the soldier asked the same question, ‘What-su are you
tsoo doing-u, here-u? Tell me! Ima! Now!’
WORD COUNT: 3997 words

Jenni Foley – Pufferfish

Transcription

Similar documents

Tomas VOREL

Sales sheet - Hedlund Literary Agency

Space and Frequency

Blah Blah - Buddy Magazine

I Believe in Unicorns

Green_Flights