Five facts about the pufferfish, also known as the fugu in ... · At the sound of the cough, fear grew in Tomas and his dark eyes blackened. He took his hands out of his pockets and

Pufferfish by Jenni Foley

Commonword Diversity Writing for Children Prize 2014 Shortlisted Entry

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.



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 dark-

eyed 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

1 Truncated version of proclamation published in the Shanghai Herald on 18th February, 1943.



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

Documents

Five facts about the pufferfish, also known as the fugu in ... · At the sound of the cough, fear grew in Tomas and his dark eyes blackened. He took his hands out of his pockets and