When We Were Orphans

by Kazuo Ishiguro

  “Mr. Grayson,” I said, “I have no time for these foolish pranks.”

  “I’m sorry,” Grayson said, “I know you wished to see MacDonald. But you see, MacDonald’s domain is protocol. He discharges his duties very well, but his territory doesn’t really extend much further.”

  I sighed with impatience, but before I could speak, Grayson went on:

  “You see, old chap, when you said you wanted MacDonald, I assumed you wanted me. I’m the fellow you need to speak to.”

  I then noticed there was something different about Grayson. His ingratiating air had vanished, and he was watching me steadily over the desk. When he saw understanding dawn in my face, he gestured once more at the chair.

  “Please make yourself comfortable, old chap. And I do apologise for having rather dogged you since your arrival here. But you see, I had to make sure you didn’t do anything to cause a big stink with the other Powers. Now, let me see, I take it you want a meeting with the Yellow Snake.”

  “Yes, Mr. Grayson. I wonder if you can arrange such a thing.”

  “As it happens, we finally got word while you were away. All parties seem happy now to grant your request.” Then leaning forward, he said to me: “So, Mr. Banks. Do you feel you’re closing in?”

  “Yes, Mr. Grayson. At last, I believe I am.”

  SO IT WAS that just after eleven o’clock last night, I found myself travelling by car through the elegant residential areas of the French Concession in the company of two officers from the Chinese secret police. We went down avenues lined with trees, past large houses, some entirely hidden behind high walls and hedges. Then we came through gates heavily guarded by men in gowns and hats, and halted in a gravelled courtyard. A dark house, four or five storeys high, stood before us.

  Inside, the lights were low, and more guards lurked everywhere in the shadows. As I followed my escorts up the central staircase, I gained the impression the house had until recently belonged to a wealthy European, but had now, for some reason, fallen into the hands of the Chinese authorities; I could see crude notices and schedules pinned up on the walls right alongside exquisite works of Western and Chinese art.

  To judge from its decor, the room I was shown into up on the second floor had until recently contained a billiard table. There was now a yawning space in the middle of the room, around which I paced while I waited. After twenty minutes or so, I heard the sound of more cars arriving down in the courtyard, but when I tried to see out of the windows, I found these gave on to the gardens to the side of the house, and I could see nothing at all of the front.

  It was perhaps another half-hour before I was finally fetched. I was escorted up another flight of stairs, then along a corridor past more guards. Then my escorts stopped, and one of them pointed to a door several yards before us. I went the last lap alone, and entered what appeared to be a large study. There was thick carpet beneath my feet, and the walls were almost entirely lined with books. At the far end, where heavy drapes had been drawn across the bay windows, was a desk with a chair on either side of it. A reading lamp on the desk created a warm pool of light, but otherwise much of the room was in shadow. As I stood surveying my surroundings, a figure rose from behind the desk and, stepping carefully around it, gestured back to the chair he had vacated.

  “Why don’t you take this seat, Puffin?” Uncle Philip said to me. “You remember, don’t you? You always loved to sit in my chair behind my desk.”

  CHAPTER 22

  HAD I NOT BEEN EXPECTING to see him, it is perfectly possible I would have failed to recognise Uncle Philip. He had put on weight over the years, so that though he was not stout, his neck had thickened and his cheeks were sagging. His hair was wispy and white. But his eyes were calm and humorous in much the way I remembered.

  I did not smile as I came towards him; nor did I go behind the desk to the chair he had offered. “I’ll sit here,” I said, stopping beside the other chair.

  Uncle Philip shrugged. “Well, it’s not my desk anyway. In fact, I’ve never set foot in this house before. Something to do with you, this place?”

  “I’ve never been here before either. May I suggest we sit down?”

  When we did so, we could see each other clearly for the first time in the light from the desk lamp, and we spent a moment carefully studying one another’s features.

  “You haven’t changed so much, you know, Puffin,” he said. “Easy to see the boy in you, even now.”

  “I’d appreciate you not calling me by that name.”

  “Sorry. Rather cheeky, I admit. So here we are, you managed to track me down. I kept refusing to meet you before. But in the end, I suppose I began to want to see you again. Owe you an explanation or two, I expect. But I wasn’t sure, you see, how you regarded me. Friend or foe, that sort of thing. But then these days I’m not sure about most people on that score. Do you know, they told me to keep this with me just in case?” He produced a little silver pistol and held it up to the light. “Can you believe it? They thought you might wish to attack me.”

  “But I see you brought it along just the same.”

  “Oh, but I carry it everywhere. So many people wanting to do me mischief these days. I didn’t really bring it on your account. One of those men standing out there. Perhaps he’s been bribed to burst in here and stab me. Who can tell? That’s the way it’s been for me, I’m afraid. Ever since this Yellow Snake lark started.”

  “Yes. It would seem you’re much given to treachery.”

  “That’s a bit harsh, if you’re implying what I think you’re implying. As far as the communists are concerned, very well, yes, I’ve turned traitor. Even there, it was never my intention, you know. Chiang’s men got hold of me one day and threatened to torture me. I admit, I didn’t fancy that much, didn’t fancy it one bit. But in the end, they did a far cleverer thing. They tricked me into betraying one of my number. And then, you see, that was that. Because as you’ve seen, no one punishes turncoats more savagely than my old comrades. There was no other way for me to stay alive. I had to depend on the government to protect me from my comrades.”

  “According to my investigations,” I said, “a lot of people have lost their lives through you. And not just those you betrayed. There was a time, a year ago, when you allowed the communists to believe the Yellow Snake was another man. Many of his family members, including three children, were killed in the first wave of reprisals.”

  “I don’t consider myself admirable. I’m a coward, and I’ve known it a long time. But I can hardly be held to account for the Reds’ savagery. They’ve proved themselves every bit as vicious as Chiang Kai-shek ever was, and I’ve no respect left for them. But look here, I don’t expect you came to talk about all this.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “So, Puffin. I’m sorry. Christopher. So. What shall I tell you? Where shall we begin?”

  “My parents. Where are they?”

  “Your father I’m afraid is dead. Has been for many years. I’m sorry.”

  I said nothing and waited. Eventually he said:

  “Tell me, Christopher. What do you believe happened to your father?”

  “Is it any business of yours what I believe? I came here to hear it from you.”

  “Very well. But I was curious to know what you’d worked out for yourself. After all, you’ve made quite a name for yourself for such things.”

  This irritated me, but it occurred to me he would be forthcoming only on his own terms. So in the end, I said: “My conjecture has been that my father made a stand, a courageous stand, against his own employers concerning the profits from the opium trade of those years. In doing so, I supposed he set himself against enormous interests, and was thus removed.”

  Uncle Philip nodded. “I’d supposed you believed something like that. Your mother and I discussed carefully what to have you believe. And it was more or less what you’ve just said. So we were successful. The truth, I’m afraid, Puffin, was much more prosaic. Your father ran off one day with
his mistress. He lived with her in Hong Kong for a year, a woman called Elizabeth Cornwallis. But Hong Kong is awfully stuffy and British, you know. They were a scandal, and in the end they had to rush off to Malacca or some such place. Then he got typhoid and died, in Singapore. That was two years after he left you. I’m sorry, old fellow, it’s hard to hear all this, I know. But brace yourself. Because I’ve a lot more to tell you before the evening’s out.”

  “You say my mother knew? At the time?”

  “Yes. Not at first, mind you. Not for a good month or so. Your father covered his tracks rather well. Your mother only found out because he wrote to her. She and I were the only ones who ever knew the truth.”

  “But the detectives. How on earth did the detectives fail to discover what he’d done?”

  “The detectives?” Uncle Philip let out a laugh. “Those underpaid, overworked flat-feet? They wouldn’t have found an elephant gone missing in Nanking Road.” Then when I remained silent, he said: “She would have told you eventually. But we wanted to protect you. That’s why we had you believe what you did.”

  I had started to feel uncomfortable sitting so close to the desk lamp, but the upright chair did not allow me to sit back. Then after I had maintained my silence another few moments, Uncle Philip said:

  “Let me be fair to your father. It was difficult for him. He always loved your mother, loved her intensely. I’m jolly sure he never stopped loving her right to the end. In some ways, Puffin, that was the trouble. He loved her too much, idealised her. And it was just too much for him, trying to come up to what he saw as her mark. He tried. Oh yes, he tried, and it nearly broke him. He might have just said: ‘Look here, I can only do so much and that’s it, I’m who I am.’ But he adored her. Wanted desperately to make himself good enough for her, and when he found he didn’t have it in him, well, he went off. With someone who didn’t mind him as he was. It’s my belief he just wanted rest. He’d tried so hard for so many years, he just wanted rest. Don’t think so badly of him, Puffin. I don’t believe he ever stopped loving you or your mother.”

  “And my mother? What has become of her?”

  Uncle Philip leant forward on his elbows and tilted back his head slightly. “How much do you know already about her?” he asked.

  The lightness he had earlier contrived to place in his voice had evaporated altogether. He now looked a haunted old man, consumed with self-hatred. He was gazing at me carefully despite his tilted head, and the yellow light from the desk lamp showed white whiskers growing out of his nostrils. From somewhere downstairs, I could hear a phonograph playing Chinese martial music.

  “I’m not trying to annoy you,” he said, when I did not answer. “I don’t want to hear myself talking any more about it than I have to. Come on. How much have you found out?”

  “I was until recently under the impression both my parents were being held captive in Chapei. So you see, I have not been so clever.”

  I waited for him to speak. He remained in his curious posture for a time, then sat back and said:

  “You won’t remember this. But shortly after your father went away, I came to your house to see your mother. And a certain man came also that day. A Chinese gentleman.”

  “You’re referring to the warlord, Wang Ku.”

  “Ah. Then you haven’t been so foolish.”

  “I found out his name. But thereafter, I suspect I’ve been too busy following a false trail.”

  He gave a sigh and cocked his ear. “Listen,” he said. “Kuomintang anthems. They play them to tease me. Wherever they take me, it’s like this. Happens too often to be a coincidence.” Then when I said nothing, he rose to his feet and wandered into the shadows towards the heavy curtains.

  “Your mother,” he said eventually, “was devoted to our campaign. To stop the opium trade into China. Many European companies, including your father’s, were making vast profits importing Indian opium into China and turning millions of Chinese into helpless addicts. In those days, I was one of those central to the campaign. For a long time, our strategy was rather naive. We thought we could shame these companies into giving up their opium profits. We wrote letters, presented them with evidence showing the damage opium was causing to the Chinese people. Yes, you may laugh, we were very naive. But you see, we thought we were dealing with fellow-Christians. Well, eventually we saw we were getting nowhere. We discovered that these people, they not only liked the profits very much, they actually wanted the Chinese to be useless. They liked them to be in chaos, drug-addicted, unable to govern themselves properly. That way, the country could be run virtually like a colony, but with none of the usual obligations. So we changed our tactics. We grew more sophisticated. In those days, just as they do still, the opium shipments came along the Yangtze. Boats had to bring them upriver through bandit country. Without adequate protection, the shipments wouldn’t get much beyond the Yangtze gorges without being marauded. So all these companies, Morganbrook and Byatt, Jardine Matheson, all of them, they used to make deals with the local warlords through whose territories the shipments passed. These warlords were just glorified bandits really, but they had armies, they had the power to see the shipments through. So here was our new strategy. No longer did we plead with the trading companies. We pleaded with the warlords. Appealed to their racial pride. We pointed out it was in their hands to end the profitability of the opium trade, to reverse the one major obstacle to the Chinese taking command of their own fate, their own land. Of course, some were too keen on the payments they received. But we had some converts. Wang Ku was at that time one of the more powerful of these bandit lords. His territory covered several hundred square miles in the north of Hunan. A pretty brutal chap, but sufficiently feared and respected to make him valuable indeed to the trading companies. Now Wang Ku became very sympathetic to our cause. He often came to Shanghai, liked the high life here, and we were able to prevail on him during these visits. Puffin, are you well?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. I’m listening.”

  “Perhaps you should go now, Puffin. You don’t have to hear what I’m about to tell you.”

  “Tell me. I’m listening.”

  “Very well. My feeling is that you should hear it, if you can bear to. Because . . . well, because you must find her. There’s still a chance you can find her.”

  “So my mother is alive?”

  “I’ve no reason to suppose otherwise.”

  “Then tell me. Go on with what you’re saying.”

  He came back to the desk and sat down once more in front of me. “That day Wang Ku came to your house,” he said. “It’s fitting you should remember that day. You’re quite right to suspect it was important. It was the day your mother discovered that Wang Ku’s motives were far from pure. Put simply, he planned to seize the opium shipments himself. Of course, he’d made complicated arrangements, so that it went through three or four other parties, very Chinese that, but in the end, yes, that’s what it amounted to. Most of us already knew this, but your mother didn’t. We’d kept her in the dark, perhaps foolishly, because we sensed she’d not accept it. The rest of us, naturally we had qualms, but we decided to work with Wang nevertheless. Yes, he’d sell the opium to the same people the trading companies did. But the important thing was to stop the imports. To make the trade unprofitable. Unfortunately, that day Wang Ku came to your house he said something that for the first time made clear to your mother the reality of his relationship with us. My guess is she felt foolish. Perhaps she’d suspected it all along, but hadn’t wished to look at it, and was as angry with herself and with me as she was with Wang. In any case, she quite lost her temper, actually struck him. Only lightly, you understand, but her hand did touch his cheek. And of course, she said everything she had to say to his face. I knew then some terrible price would have to be paid. I tried to sort the thing out then and there. I explained to him how your father had just left, that your mother was really upset, I tried to convey all this to him as he left. He smiled and said not to worry, bu
t I worried, oh yes, I worried all right. I knew that what your mother had done couldn’t be undone so easily. I’d have been relieved, I tell you, if all Wang had done in response was stop participating in our plan. But he wanted the opium, he’d already made plenty of arrangements. Besides, he’d been insulted by a foreign woman, and he wanted to put things right.”

  As I leant towards him into the glare of the lamp, an odd feeling came over me that behind my back the darkness had grown and grown, so that now a vast black space had opened up there. Uncle Philip had paused to wipe some sweat from his forehead with the heel of a hand. But now he looked at me intently and continued:

  “I went to see Wang Ku later that day at the Metropole. I did what I could to try and stop the calamity I knew would come. But it was no use. What he told me that afternoon was that far from being angered by your mother, he’d found her spirit—that’s what he called it, her ‘spirit’—highly attractive. So much so that he wished to take her back with him as a concubine, back to Hunan. He proposed to ‘tame’ your mother, as he would a wild mare. Now you must understand, Puffin, the way things were then, in Shanghai, in China, if a man like Wang Ku decided on a course like that, there was little anyone could do to stop him. That’s what you must understand. Nothing at all would have been achieved by asking the police or whoever to guard your mother. That might have slowed things down a little, but that’s all. There was no one who could protect your mother from the intentions of a man like that. But you see, Puffin, my great fear was for you. I wasn’t sure what he intended to do with you, and that’s what I was really pleading for. In the end, we came to an agreement. I would arrange things so that your mother was alone, unguarded, if at that same time I could take you right away from the scene. That’s all I wanted to do. I didn’t want him to take you too. Your mother, that was an inevitability. But for you, there was something to plead for. And that’s what I did.”