Letters Across the Sea by Genevieve Graham (best short novels of all time txt) 📗

battle at Stanley Village. Can you tell us about that Christmas Day?” Ian asked.

Max looked down at his hands. He didn’t say anything, but to me it seemed like he was asking himself permission. Then he nodded at Ian, but I could see the anguish in his eyes. I couldn’t do this to him.

“You know what? I think that’s enough for today,” I said. “That’s a lot for all of us. We don’t have to do it all at once, and I’m sure Max would like to spend some time with his family. Maybe we could meet again tomorrow or Thursday?”

Ian bristled beside me, but gratitude shone in Max’s eyes.

Two days later we met again at the Senator. But this time, we ordered our meals first. Max dug into his soup, swallowing four spoonfuls before Ian and I had even started.

“Hungry?” I asked kindly.

He looked sheepish. “Sometimes I forget nobody’s gonna take it away, I guess.”

“When’s the last time you had a real meal?” Ian asked, his notepad and pen magically appearing.

“The Americans fed us after they rescued us. On the ship. That was swell.”

“We’ve seen photographs of the men after they were liberated,” Ian said. “I gotta say, you look all right. Not exactly robust, but not skeletal.”

I thought about the photographs I’d seen. Men just like Max, with their boney arms hanging like twigs, stripped of muscle, slender and fragile as a child’s. Of the ribs, the clavicles, the hip bones.

“I’ve gained back at least forty pounds in the past six or so weeks. About a week after the emperor surrendered, the Americans started dropping food over our camp. That was a sight to see: huge oil drums floating down on parachutes, filled with peaches, sausages, cigarettes, chocolate, you name it. Every time we opened one it was a surprise. We ate like millionaires for a while. The doctor says I’m almost one hundred forty pounds now.”

The waitress came by to take Max’s empty bowl, and he took the opportunity to order another one.

“And some bread please,” I asked, then turned to Max with a small smile. “You’ve still got a ways to go if you’re thinking of swinging a bat next summer.”

Max gestured to his leg. “I’ll never run bases again.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Max. I shouldn’t have—”

“I’m six foot two,” Max explained to Ian as he lit a cigarette. “In the old days I’d be somewhere around one hundred ninety. I’m lucky, though. Some of the men with me were well under a hundred pounds by the time the Americans got a boat in to get us. Some of them couldn’t hang on. One of the fellows, a tough Italian named Stan Jilani, was real sick. His whole body was riddled with infection. He and I both knew he wasn’t going to make it, but he stuck it out as long as he could. I brought him some chocolate and put a square in his mouth. He told me it never tasted sweeter. He was dead by morning, but I was glad I’d given him that at least. After years of hell, he got to taste a little freedom before he went.”

My mind fell back a decade to when my family had all eyed the last slice of bread on the table, and how my dresses kept getting looser. I knew how hunger felt, but we had always been able to scrape something together when we needed it. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for those men, knowing their bodies were dying, waiting for food they believed would never come. And then, after all those years of waiting, to know help was in sight, but not close enough.

“Did you know about the bombs?” I asked. “When they dropped Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?”

“The Americans told us on the ship going back. We had no idea.”

“Right. That makes sense,” Ian said. “So how did you learn about the surrender?”

Max tapped the ash off his cigarette. “That was a strange day,” he began. “They ordered us out of the mine, and they made us sit in a circle on the ground. They’d attached speakers to the trees, and everyone got real quiet when a Japanese man started talking. We couldn’t catch a word of what he was saying, but the Japs, well, they looked like someone just threw ice water over them. I actually saw a couple of them cry. But one fellow there—one of the nicer guards—came over and nudged me on the arm.”

Max leaned back so the waitress could place the soup and bread before him. He took a couple of bites before speaking again.

“I still remember the look of wonder on that guard’s face. The sheer relief.” A broad smile stretched across Max’s face, the first genuine one I’d seen. “He said to me, ‘War is finished. Canada go home.’ We all stared at him, and he kept saying. ‘You go home.’ It wasn’t until the guards all left that we finally believed him.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, then we were on our own at the camp. We had nowhere else to go. We painted the roofs with the letters PW and hoped the Americans would find us, which they did, within a week. It took them about a month to get ships to a nearby port to pick us up, but by then, the food parcels had changed everything for us.”

“Because they meant freedom,” I said, searching his face.

He took in what I’d said, then he nodded slowly. “Yeah. They meant we were going home. After four years of surviving, we were finally getting the chance to live again.”

Beside me, Ian cleared his throat, ready to ask another question, but I dropped a hand onto his leg to stop him. I knew how much he wanted Max to talk about Christmas Day, and how much I needed to know about Richie, but this wasn’t about us. We couldn’t push him. Max had told us about things that, no