Letters Across the Sea

by Genevieve Graham

  The editor turned over the first page and set it facedown on his desk. From his deadpan expression, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. He turned over the second page, and when he was finished, he set all three pages to the side and looked up at me with narrowed eyes.

  “I’m very impressed, Miss Ryan,” he said. “Have you been keeping all that talent to yourself because you secretly love writing recipes and church notices? Or has Mr. Collins been keeping you too busy with other things?”

  I felt heat roar into my face. “No, sir. I would love to write different stories.”

  “You can do more like this?”

  “Yes, sir. I can write anything.”

  “Excellent to hear, Miss Ryan.” He looked at Ian. “Well, Mr. Collins?”

  “I’d love to read more by her,” he said.

  “As would I. Right. This will run tomorrow, if that’s all right with you,” he said, then he tapped a finger on his desk. “I’m interested in the immigration angle, and how you’ve brought history right into the present. Could you work on another piece similar to this? ‘Where Toronto’s From’ or something like that.”

  “I would be happy to.” I beamed, despite the fact that I had no idea what I would write.

  Back in the newsroom, I floated to my desk with happiness. Ian offered to take me out for a celebratory lunch, but once again I apologized, telling him I had some personal errands to run. Grabbing my handbag, I trotted outside and made a beeline to City Hall, where I asked for recent immigration records and the clerk put my request in a queue. I dashed to the bank to withdraw some money, then I stopped in at Eaton’s to spend it. On my way back to the office, I retrieved the records the clerk had collected for me, then I carried them back to the office along with a large, brown paper package, which I tucked under my desk. All afternoon, I kept peeking at the package, humming with excitement as I researched the latest government statistics on immigration. Finally, five o’clock rolled around, and I practically sprinted toward Palermo’s, where I knew Mr. Rabinowitz would be.

  “What’s this?” he asked when I handed him the package.

  “Open it,” I said, struggling to contain my excitement.

  He carefully opened the paper, not wanting to tear it even a little, and deep wrinkles cut into his forehead as he concentrated. I took the wrapping from him as he uncovered the bundle of dark material. Confused, he held it up, watching it unfold then take its shape as a thick, black wool overcoat.

  “Very nice,” he said, smiling. “A gift for your father?”

  I shook my head. “It’s for you, Mr. Rabinowitz.”

  He stared, uncomprehending, then quickly folded up the coat and held it out toward me. “No, no. This is too much.”

  I put my hands on his. “I hope you will accept it in the spirit it’s given. It’s actually a thank-you gift. My editor loved your story.”

  He frowned, confused.

  “Yesterday, do you remember that we spoke about your life in Poland?” I pulled out a copy of the story. “My editor wants it to run in tomorrow’s paper. I hope you don’t mind.”

  He took the paper, and I held the coat as he read. “Why, I never saw nothing like this in my life,” he said softly.

  “Is it all right?”

  He didn’t say anything more as he read, and I bit my lip to calm my nerves.

  When he looked up, the faded white of his eyes shone, but his expression was clearer than I’d ever seen.

  “I remember now,” he said, the words slow and gentle. “Ava. My dear Ava. She was so beautiful, so kind. I loved her very much. The cancer took her from me.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “In this terrible world of war and poverty, it’s easy to end up alone. You have to remember the good things in life, dear. When you find someone you love and they love you in return, that’s a miracle.”

  Memories stirred within me, and I felt again the wonder of being in Max’s arms. Of his lips finding mine. I’d tried so hard to forget, knowing it never should have happened, but now the longing in Mr. Rabinowitz’s expression made me want to bring that memory back. To keep it close for the times I felt lost.

  He looked at the paper again, shaking his head slightly. “But this story, it’s our story. Ava’s and mine. I forgot so much. I thought it was all gone.” His cold fingers touched my cheek. “Thank you, Molly. For asking me about my life, and for writing it down. It hurts some, remembering she’s gone, but it’s good to have this.”

  I blinked back my own tears, then held out the coat. “Will you put it on? Just to see if it fits?”

  He examined it closely, his thumbs rubbing the sturdy seams, and I knew he could feel the good quality of the heavy wool. He slipped off his old, ragged coat, and I helped him into the new one. All at once he looked taller. Stronger.

  “I don’t know how this is a thank-you gift,” he said, his voice gravelly with emotion. “You’ve given me two wonderful gifts today, sheyne meydel. I may forget a lot of things, but I promise I will never forget this kindness.”

  The next day, I flipped through the paper and stopped at page ten, seeing my name printed right above my story about Mr. Rabinowitz, and pride spread through me in a glow. I’d done it; I’d finally broken through. I had earned my place and changed my life again. But even more than that, today I had been given the greatest gift. I would never forget the smile Mr. Rabinowitz had given me in that moment, shining with gratitude. After all the years of wanting to make a difference through my writing, I finally had.

  thirteen MAX

  Max dropped his arm over his eyes, shielding them from the dim light within the Sham Shui Po barracks, but that didn’t stop his temples from throbbing. Most of the men of D Company, his company within C Force, had left the barracks for the day, leaving only the hush of a few men sleeping or writing letters. Max had overdone it yesterday with that bottle of Johnnie Walker scotch, but he hadn’t been able to resist it for only $1.85. Arnie and David had sat across the table from him, downing ten-cent bottles of beer all afternoon, nodding while Max loudly aired out his complaints.

  “It’s been nearly a year and a half since we signed up,” he’d ranted. The scotch had loosened his voice, but he didn’t care. He’d been frustrated and quiet about it for months. “Now here we are in Hong Kong, of all places. This wasn’t what we signed up for! Eh, Arnie?”

  Arnie had wholeheartedly agreed, though he’d happily left the vocalizing to Max.

  Today, Arnie and David were out on the streets of Kowloon, enjoying themselves in the sun while Max groaned in his coconut husk mattress. Lesson learned. He’d stick to beer from now on.

  Nobody could have predicted the Royal Rifles would end up in Hong Kong. After spending nine chilly months in Gander building runways and hangars, exercising, and fighting boredom, their regiment had taken a train all the way across the country to Vancouver, picking up more men along the way. Max had won the coin toss with Arnie over the window seat, and he’d spent the trip spellbound, staring out at mountains and frothy rivers, blinking as they dove into pitch-black tunnels, then again as they emerged into blinding sunlight. That journey alone had made enlisting worthwhile, he’d thought at the time.

  Once in Vancouver, they’d been joined by the Winnipeg Grenadiers. The Grenadiers, like the Royal Rifles, had only ever served on garrison duty, but they’d done it in Jamaica and Bermuda while Max and the others had shivered in Newfoundland. Together they formed C Force. Halfway through October, Sergeant Cox told them they’d be shipping out, but it wasn’t until the day after Max, Arnie, David, Richie, and the almost two thousand other men in C Force boarded the Awatea and set out that they were told their destination was Hong Kong. They were stunned by the news. Max didn’t think he’d even thought about Hong Kong in his entire life. If he had, the place had seemed make-believe. An exotic gem from storybooks, certainly not someplace he’d eventually defend.

  “Seems weird to be going to Hong Kong instead of Europe, doesn’t it?” Arnie asked one day, standing at the
Awatea’s rail.

  “I guess I don’t mind,” David replied, the wind riffling through his dark hair. “At least the Pacific will be warmer than the Atlantic. And Hannah will be glad to hear I’m far away from any fighting.”

  Max sighed. “We might as well be on the North Pole. Garrison duty is all we ever seem to do.”

  “Oh cheer up, Max.” Arnie grinned. “It’s a great adventure, you know? I mean, I know we want to get Hitler, but I gotta say, I’d never be able to travel to Hong Kong if not for the war. I’m kind of looking forward it.”

  Max’s gaze passed over the horizon, at the straight black line of water meeting the greyness of the sky. From the corner of his eye he spotted Richie a little way down the deck, and he looked away. Things between them were like the sea right now: calm, despite a lot of murky currents moving beneath. There were too many unanswered questions, too much unfinished business. Ever since Gander, they’d mostly kept their distance from each other, though when they were put on a rotation together, Richie was cordial. When one of his buddies complained that there wouldn’t be a war if it wasn’t for Jews, Richie told him to shut up.

  “It’s not their fault. Hitler’s a madman,” he’d said, then he’d turned to Max with an apologetic nod.

  The gesture had caught Max off guard, and it gave him hope that there might be a chink in the wall between them. At least a possibility to sort things out.

  The Awatea’s first port of call was Honolulu for restocking food and fuel. The harbour was a marvellous site, with the magnificent American fleet of battleships all lined up, floating peacefully at the docks. It seemed ironic to Max that practically the whole world was at war except them. If the U.S. would only join the fight, Max thought, Hitler wouldn’t know what hit him.

  After a second stop, this time in Manila, C Force arrived on November 16 in Kowloon, Hong Kong’s steamy port. They walked down the gangplank in their khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirts to the welcoming strains of a British Army band. Their assignment was to bolster the small, fourteen-thousand-man British garrison against any possible invasion by the Japanese, but they soon discovered that their day-to-day duties consisted mostly of killing time.

  “I don’t even have to shave my own face!” Arnie had laughed, strolling out of the barracks and into the sunshine after their first night, happily slapping his cheeks. Every member of C Force had been assigned a Chinese servant, who was paid twenty-five cents a day to shave the soldiers’ faces, do their laundry, and generally treat the Canadians like kings.

  “Yeah, but you did meet up with that tarantula last night,” David teased. “Oh, the way you shrieked! I could have sworn it was your sister.”

  “I didn’t see you rushing in there to grab that thing,” Arnie replied.

  The Sham Shui Po barracks had been built a decade before as a British Army facility, and its clean, white exterior, surrounded by well-tended parks and gardens actually did feel somewhat like a castle. For the most part, they’d been impressed.

  “You’d think they’d have toilets in the barracks though,” David grumbled. “Those buckets are disgusting.”

  After months of grunt work in Gander, the big, beautiful city of Hong Kong was a welcome break. Toilets aside, to Max and the others, who still remembered the shortages and sacrifices of the Depression, it seemed like a place out of the movies. The air was balmy and warm—nothing like the cold weather everyone at home was experiencing—and when they weren’t wandering through the city, they got to let out tension in other ways. Max and some of the others took the time to play a little baseball, a few of them having packed a mitt just in case.

  At night they were hardly able to see the stars for all the lights of the city. For less than a dollar each, Max, Arnie, David, and the others could eat a feast of rice with tender, savoury toppings of chicken, duck, or fish. Anything to do with shellfish, no matter how delicious it looked, was reluctantly avoided. They might be living in a whole different world over here, but they still had to stick to kosher meals.

  The first few nights, they took in all the sights. They danced with beautiful Chinese women at the Dreamland Dance Hall, drank at various taverns, or went roller-skating at the Roller Dome, which was Max’s favourite. It wasn’t so much the skating that he enjoyed, but watching Arnie battle to stay upright. Max couldn’t remember ever laughing so hard as he and David did on those nights. Arnie laughed as well. He was a good sport.

  Sheltered within the wild city of Hong Kong, the war seemed very far away. But after a week, the dazzle of the city began to wear off, and Max noticed cracks in the veneer. While popular American music rolled out of the many taverns, Hong Kong’s streets overflowed with people in desperate need. Thousands of Chinese refugees flooded in by the day, and Max was haunted by the pleading sounds of orphans crying, “No Mammy, no Daddy, no money! Please, mister!” He did what he could, dropping a few coins into the children’s outstretched hands, but it was never enough.

  His feelings of helplessness only got worse when he thought about why they were here. Not only were they not in Europe, fighting Nazis, C Force was assigned to garrison duty for a fort that would, according to the experts, never be attacked. According to the Brits, even if the Japanese did attack, they only had about five thousand troops gathered across the Chinese border. Those forces, they were told, were weak and had very little artillery support. Their troops were ill-equipped and not used to night fighting—in fact, they avoided it—their aircrafts were basically obsolete, and Japanese pilots were mediocre. There was nothing for Max and the others to worry about, since the Brits stationed outside of Kowloon would make short work of any attempted invasions.

  The Allied forces were so confident in the lack of threat that when C Force first arrived in Hong Kong, they discovered all their military vehicles had been diverted to Manila, on orders from the U.S. government. They didn’t even have a jeep. As for training, all they had done since they’d arrived were two forty-eight-hour manning exercises of designated areas on Hong Kong island, where they set up barbed wire and familiarized themselves with the area as best they could. Max and Arnie had a refresher in their medic training, which they’d first learned back at Fort York in Toronto. But there was little else.

  Right now, Max wished that medic training had included a little more attention paid to hangovers. The headache wasn’t going away.

  He uncovered his eyes, nudged awake by a velvet touch. “Hey there, Gander,” he mumbled.

  Gander was a beautiful, purebred Newfoundland dog, practically the size of a pony. He had been given to the Royal Rifles as a mascot during their stay there, and they’d brought him to Hong Kong with them. Now he stood by Max’s bunk, pressing his soft muzzle against his hand. Gander could strut at the front of the parade with the dignity of a general and resolutely defend his unit against any curious strays, but he also knew just when to ask a lonely, homesick young man for a scratch.

  “You can read my mind, can’t you?”

  Gander thumped his tail against the cot.

  “Mail call!”

  With a groan, Max sat up and watched the young corporal sort through the envelopes in his hand. Gander wandered off, distracted by the smell of food coming in from outside.

  “Dreyfus!” The corporal shuffled through more mail. “Ryan!”

  Down the row, Max saw Richie’s hand reach out from an upper bunk, then the corporal made his way toward Max. After handing him an envelope he moved on, calling, “Stevens! Schwartz!”

  Smiling, Max slid his finger through the envelope in his hand. It was from Hannah—he recognized her handwriting—and was sure to contain sweet stories about his niece and nephews that reminded him how much he was missing of their lives. He’d vowed to himself that when he got home he’d spend more time with them. Be a proper uncle.

  He pulled out her letter, and with it, a newspaper page, which he set aside.

  Dear Max,

  First of all, I would like to announce that the Dreyfus family genes are runnin
g strong in my little family! I wrote to David to warn him: Mama gave Dinah a baseball and a tiny glove a week ago, and you should have seen that little girl’s determination. She reminded me so much of you, scowling at herself every time she couldn’t catch what I tossed. But then she figured out how to watch the ball, not the thrower, and now she is constantly chasing me around, wanting to play. Well, once Jacob saw that, he wanted to join in, and Mama went right out and bought my three-year-old a ball and glove. The glove is so big on him it keeps flopping his hand over, but I do my best to not laugh. Right now I am holding a napping Aaron on my lap while I watch Dinah and Jacob through the window. She kind of lobs it, he waves his glove around, then she runs to grab the ball before he can. Did we start that way, I wonder?

  Max, I’ve included something extra in this letter. I wasn’t sure if I should, but I really wanted you to see. I know you’ll be surprised. You and I haven’t talked about Molly in a long time—

  Max stared at the paper. “Surprised? That’s putting it mildly,” he said quietly. For a long time, any talk of Molly and the Ryans had been basically prohibited in his family. What had changed?

  —and I’m sad to say that she and I rarely see each other these days. I’m so busy with the children, and well, you know. It’s hard to fix some things, isn’t it? Anyway, she’s working for the Star. I bet you’ll be proud to hear that. Enclosed is one of her latest stories. It’s actually from a few weeks ago—do you remember Mr. Rabinowitz? It’s about him!

  I’d love to write more, but little Aaron is awake and crying now—this boy is always hungry. Dinah says hello to her big, brave uncle (she is such a good girl, thank goodness), so hello from her and everyone here. We miss you so much. Stay safe, brother dear. And promise you’ll keep my husband safe. I’m counting on you.

  Love, Hannah

  Max’s fingers trembled a little as he unfolded the sheet of newspaper, and his heart gave a little thump when he saw the name Molly Ryan, in small letters beneath the headline. IRA RABINOWITZ: A PORTRAIT OF TORONTO’S LIVING HISTORY. He ran his fingers over the ink, feeling a rush of affection for her despite all the years between them. The only other time he’d read something of hers was a letter to the editor that she’d written years ago, after the riot.