His sister rolled out from under her. But his mother did not move. “Mama!” Cheung put his thumb on her wrist. He choked in a desperate inhale. There was no pulse. He waved his hand beneath her nose. No breath. Water rushed over her grey skin and the wind blew her wet white hair so that it seemed to writhe on the sidewalk. He put his hand over her heart. Nothing. Cheung opened his mouth and released a deep, low bellow of pure unearthly grief.

They decided to walk rather than wait for the next tram, which could take another hour, and off which they might be pushed again. The rain came in torrents as Cheung and Hok-Yee stumbled back toward the Cricket Club. The wind blew tiles off the roofs of buildings, and lifeless signs from their fronts. Cheung carried the body of his old mother down the long route of Hennessey Road, with his sister staggering behind him, struggling to remain upright. She’d long since given up on the umbrella. Debris blew down the street—a scraping piece of steel sheeting, a large tree branch still covered in leaves, the corpse of some unfortunate beaten to death by the Kempeitai last week. The sorrow that had gripped Cheung at the moment of his mother’s death began to change its tenor. With each step he took, grief dripped out of him and anger entered. Wong Nai Chung was his village. He stepped over a fallen tree branch. Hong Kong was his town. He stepped around a wide puddle in the road. All these rampaging usurpers had pushed their way in, first the British, now the Japanese. He scurried past a family of refugees from the mainland huddling in a doorway. They reached pitifully toward him with their skeletal hands. He didn’t look at them until they were safely behind him, and then he glanced back at them with a complicated mix of guilt and horror. He would make the usurpers pay.

The rage became sorrow again. Though his mother’s body was not heavy, the sorrow weighed on his back like a quarry worker’s pole with a basket full of rocks on either end. The wind came harder. His back doubled over. His knees bent and wouldn’t fully straighten again. He staggered forward like an old man.

“Do you want me to carry her for a while?” Hok-Yee said.

“No, Sister, you go on ahead.”

“I’m not going to leave you walking along this deathly road by yourself,’ she said. “Are you sure I can’t carry her? I’m stronger than I look.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I can manage.”

“You don’t look like you’re managing. Don’t be so stubborn.”

“Leave me be,” he said. “I don’t want to have to carry two dead women!” he laughed at his own grim joke, which made him feel just a little lighter.