Though Amanda Hobbes never wrote, apparently not having forgiven me for my indiscretions on the wrong side of the color line, through Jenny Singleton I learned that Trent-Jones, that beautiful brash boy, had been killed, shot down by a Japanese destroyer in the Indian Ocean; that van Oost, the Dutchman who had climbed Kilimanjaro in the first weeks, had put a bullet through his head for no reason anyone knew; that poor stuttering Charlie Fahnstock had been promoted to major; and that to the surprise of all Vice Admiral Lord Braithwaite had proved himself a master strategist, outwitting and outgunning the Japanese in the South China Sea. This last I knew. The Canadian papers were calling him “a second Nelson.”
Beyond these notes from friends, all franked by the military and rubber-stamped PASSED BY CENSOR, were two civilian envelopes. The first came when I was still in London, having been transferred back to RCAF headquarters in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where it was decided, in view of my condition, that I should be honorably discharged as a casualty. As such, I may have been the only pregnant officer to be awarded the War Medal, Class B — wounded.
“Dearest Joan,” it began,
I would not write and make a bad situation all the more painful but for the fact that I have news that will please you.
According to my contacts, which I view as authoritative, your brother, Group Capt. David Levy Ferrin, RCAF, is currently a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese in a work camp in Thailand, quite near Bangkok. My information is that he is, given the circumstances, in reasonably good health. If your brother is indeed as strong a specimen as you believe, and his walking out of Burma goes quite a long way to vouchsafe this, there is every chance he will survive the war to be reunited eventually with you and with your family.
You may contact him through the Red Cross according to the particulars on the enclosed page. Though the Japanese are not particularly gracious regarding information on the status of prisoners, they will allow packages, not least because they are having a devil of a time feeding themselves, to say nothing of their POWs.
I hope you are well, and that you will forgive me for contacting you, but I thought you would like to know. Please do not feel you must respond. I remain,
At once I made up a package — tinned fish, chocolate, tea, soap, toothbrush and toothpowder, razor blades, and — it was close to Passover — a box of matzah, which I found in a shop in the East End, hoping the Japanese might not grab that, either because it was clearly some sort of religious item or because they simply might not recognize it for the bread it was.
The Red Cross itself was not terribly helpful, merely confirming after some time what had been in Abraham’s note. But they did provide a channel for me to send parcels every week while I remained in England, and when I returned to Canada. Of course I never heard from David — the Japanese were uncivilized in that regard — and then after several months the Red Cross admitted they had lost track of him altogether. All over Asia the Japanese were in retreat, and they marched their prisoners with them. Many times it was to tear at me that my success in breaking J8 and thus helping to defeat the Japanese may also have contributed to David’s death. After the war, I learned he had stumbled, sick with malaria and gangrene, on a forced march, and been shot.
The second letter carried no return address, but like the first bore civilian stamps and a Mombasa postmark. I received it in Montreal, one month before the birth.
My dear Miss Ferrin,
You may remember me. I was political adviser to Vice Admiral Lord Braithwaite during his tenure as CO East Africa Command here in Mombasa, which the military called Kilindini Station and which, as you may know, is all but abandoned, the war having moved on.
As have you.
I understand from a certain source that you are safely back in Canada, and gainfully employed (which is rather more than I can say for myself — I long for the day I am back at Oxford!). Furthermore I understand that you are well along in your pregnancy, and I trust that this too is proceeding well.
I hope you will forgive me therefore for my impertinence in suggesting that should the occasion arise, you may wish to contact a person in Montreal with regard to arranging for a certain ceremony which in Swahili is called tohara (alternatively: jando). As I doubt you have reason to keep up your study of this language in Canada, I should say the best translation would be “bris.”
As I never married, and thus have no children (I’m so sorry if this may seem a backhanded insult; I mean no harm), I have no direct experience of arranging a circumcision. Certainly I did not arrange my own.
It is just that I feel a certain paternal pleasure in knowing, especially with the news from Europe, that another little Jew will shortly be coming into the world. Or perhaps it is that because my own life has been compromised — to speak boldly, it has been a lie — I would like to think I have been helpful in setting the child on a better path.
Please find on the enclosed sheet the name of a reliable rabbi and the name of the rabbi in London who suggested him.
I hope you will forgive me for not having been honest with you in Mombasa, but I’m afraid my life has been lived in a different time, under different circumstances.
Please then accept my warmest regards for yourself and the child. Mazel tov!
P.S. If it is a girl, you may wish to contact the same rabbi. I believe it is the tradition to name a girl child in the synagogue, but I am unaware of how this is done. If your child is indeed a girl, I trust she will be as brave and forthright as her mother, whom I will admire until my dying day.
David Abraham Ferrin was born on an unseasonably warm November afternoon in Montreal, and in accordance with Jewish law was circumcised eight days later by the rabbi suggested by Cyril Albright. My university colleagues assumed the David Ferrin I sometimes mentioned was my husband, dead in the war — society, even the raffish society of Montreal academia, in those days frowned on unwed mothers. I never lied; they inferred. My own mum and dad, changed irrevocably since the death of their only son, tired now and worn, deduced that Abraham was the father’s name, and convinced themselves that he too was a casualty of war. I let them all think what they would. I should have liked to name my baby David Cyril. But the Jewish tradition is to name a child for the dead.
THE MAN WHO KISSED STALIN'S WIFE
TO BE SADDENED BY LOSS IS BETTER THAN TO BE SADDENED BY GAIN. In 1935, when my country was cannibalizing itself and the civilized world preparing for war, those who knew better sent me to the South Seas. Armed only with The Collected Marx and Lenin on onionskin, the Nagan revolver which had been presented to me upon acceptance to the Zhukovsky Advanced Aeronautical Academy, and an introduction to an Irishman in Papeete, I sailed out from Vladivostok in a drizzle to arrive at Tahiti still in a fog.