China to Me

by Emily Hahn

  One day Needa cried out to me jovially, in the presence of Tse, “What do you know? Tse’s goin’ to arrest you. You’re implicated, he says, in the Grayburn case!”

  “Ssssh,” said Tse crossly, his face growing red. But I knew, as Needa only guessed, that he had helped turn over those papers, and he had come across the receipt. I waited, thinking things over while I talked to him. Tse always acted anxiously polite to me, trying to impress me for some twisted reason of his own. I talked very politely too, and my mind went racing ahead of me. Had Tse approached Needa for protection money on my behalf? I think so. Had Needa paid him something? I think so. I don’t know.

  As soon as I could get away I ran to my one trusted Japanese friend, Ogura, and told him the whole thing. Ogura looked troubled.

  “You used to be an object of suspicion,” he admitted, “but for some months all question on the subject has been dropped. I have watched the case anxiously. It would be a pity to start more trouble now. Even though you would be declared innocent in the end — for our gendarmes are very just, though you do not believe it — the period of investigation is unpleasant.”

  “I know that,” I said, and waited. He was always slow.

  “Our gendarmes,” he said at last, “employ these low characters for good reasons. However, this sort of extortion is inevitable. I myself would like to prove their crimes against these criminal types, just to show the gendarmes how unwise it is to allow them too much freedom, but I can do very little.”

  “I know that too, Mr. Ogura.”

  “I have a friend in the gendarmerie where this man claims to have his influence,” said Ogura. “I shall make inquiries on the matter. We newspapermen still have a little influence; not much, but a little. Do you think our friend Needa has already given this Tse any money to protect you?”

  “I — I think it likely.”

  “Well … Of course he would not admit it. Do not worry. I will find out and tell you, if you are under suspicion. Do not worry. But in the meantime be careful. Have you spoken to Oda about it?”

  “No. He’s going away so soon, I don’t like to bring it up.” And also, I thought, it would decide him to intern me.

  Months later the kindly Ogura reported that there was no charge against me in the Grayburn case, and no record of the receipt. Tse had probably abstracted it for his own uses. I met Tse again on this matter, but that comes later. Grayburn, tried and found guilty of the trifling charge of smuggling money to Stanley, was given a sentence of three months’ hard labor. This was to be served in full, on top of all the months they consumed investigating him. Halfway through the sentence, in midsummer, the gendarmes without warning delivered his dead body to Lady Grayburn, in Stanley Camp. They said with amazing candor that he had died of beriberi. The most powerful financier in the Far East, chief of the biggest bank, had died of starvation.

  I don’t believe it. First of all, they said it was beriberi, so it couldn’t have been. Second, Lady Grayburn had been sending her husband food in large quantities every week and we have reason to believe that he got it. Third, the body was very much decomposed when it was handed over to the British and the doctors couldn’t make sure of the cause of death. I am inclined to believe what the Chinese said: that he died as an accident after too enthusiastic an “investigation.” It could have been the famous water treatment, which has many forms but in Hong Kong is done this way: a gendarme sits on your stomach and places a large wad of cotton wool over your mouth and nose. On this he drips water until in spite of all threshing and fighting you drown. Then they revive you with artificial respiration and do it again. Your struggles with the man sitting on your stomach are supposed to be very amusing. Grayburn was not young and he had been ill for a long time. The water treatment leaves no marks.

  Grayburn was brave, stubborn, and dignified. As I had reason to know, he was kindly too, although many people would not admit that before the war. I am grateful, and I grieve for him.

  The old nightmare quality had returned to our life. The arrests and investigations and disappearances and rumors sent everyone into a chronic hysteria. The French became convinced that it was the turn of their community next. The Irish felt the same; so did the Portuguese and the Norwegians and the Danes. Chinese told each other not to speak to white people in the street; it was Johnny’s friendship for us, they muttered, which brought calamity on him. For all their fear, though, some of the ratty ones began to look on me with admiring favor, thinking that my immunity proved I was a collaborationist.

  The next phase was when people began to think they were being followed by spies. Sophie was particularly vulnerable to such suggestions; she was scared stiff. The Weills had been questioned several times as to their source of money supplies, and though they told the truth, which was that they kept selling things, they were afraid the gendarmes didn’t believe them.

  One by one I heard from every single community that was still at large in Hong Kong. The gendarmes had warned this one; were following that one; had sent word that the next week would bring investigation of a third one’s activities in regard to parcels for the prisoners. Many of the wretched local inhabitants didn’t dare send food to Stanley any more. “They watch you, and if you send very much they arrest you and ask you why. …”

  At last I tired of all this hole-and-corner panic. Suspense is the only thing I really can’t bear. I did a little investigating on my own and found out interesting facts. The gendarmes had merely instituted a “whispering campaign,” calculated to keep us nervous and easy to handle.

  “Who talked to your sister and told her you had better be careful?” I demanded of Maria, who had been quaking with terror for a week. “It was that little rat — no, he’s a mouse — Da Silva, wasn’t it? Well, do you think Da Silva would dare betray his bosses the gendarmes by warning you on his own hook? No, no. They told him to spread these warnings around.”

  “But why, if they don’t mean it?”

  “To keep you frightened, out of mischief, disinclined to stir up rebellion even if you had had such a notion, which I know you didn’t.”

  “Do you honestly think so?”

  “I know it,” I said firmly, and turned to the Chinese group.

  “Following you? But why? What sort of thing could he find out from following you to market?” I asked Constance Lam. “And you — why do you care if that gendarme scowled at you?” I demanded of Sophie. At length I delivered a compilation of my discoveries.

  “The gendarmes are trying to scare all of us on purpose,” I announced. “It is part of an organized plan to keep us healthily quiet. They do this kind of thing every so often, just as a matter of routine. They pass the word around among their running dogs, the running dogs go out and start whispering, and voilà! — everybody’s afraid to stir up trouble against the gendarmes. It’s cheap and it’s easy and it saves police. See?”

  At any rate, I convinced myself. Proudly I snorted, alone in my room. “Trying to stampede me. Pooh!” But still I winced at every knock on the door.

  Like everything in the Japanese administration, Oda’s departure took a long time to carry through. His relief, that feared and yet eagerly awaited official, was shy about making an appearance, and Oda went from one farewell party to another, winding up his affairs.

  “I have those two trunks of Boxer’s personal effects,” he told me one day, having summoned me to the office. “Is there anything you can use among them?”

  “No, thank you. They would be safer with your successor, I suppose, than with me. But perhaps I’d better look through them.”

  Oda consented to this and I spent an afternoon in the consular flat going through the pathetic little agglomeration of stuff the gendarmes had scorned. I saved a few worthless books — Charles’s real library had been carried away all in one piece, soon after the Japs landed on the island — and I found some family photographs. The rest, scraps of paper with poems written on them, and Japanese prints, and souvenirs of Japan, were better left there
, as I had said. My own life was too uncertain for me to take the trunks home. After doing this job I had a drink with the ex-consul and we talked.

  When he wasn’t enjoying his new-found power Oda was a civilized fellow. He was always civilized with me and we were on honest terms; there was no necessity on my part to conceal my sentiments, which he knew were inimical toward his own people. In the back of his mind was always the conviction that I could be brought round to a sensible philosophy, if only somebody would take the trouble. “She has a grudge against the British,” I think he said to himself. “Even Boxer left her in a bad spot.” Aloud he said, “Do you regret not going in the exchange ship?”

  “Yes and no, Mr. Oda. It was a bad move for the baby.”

  “Why don’t you take back your American nationality? Then you would be able to get money from your government through the Red Cross. As it is, the Swiss Ambassador in Tokyo says you have sacrificed your nationality and he won’t permit you to accept help.”

  “The Swiss Ambassador doesn’t know his law. But I wouldn’t claim to be American anyway. You have overlooked the fact that I would then be interned, Mr. Oda. Or have you?”

  “Mmmmm, yes, that’s true. But I have been thinking. I am going away, and life is growing very — uh — strenuous. If it grows more so, wouldn’t you be better off in Stanley than Somewhere Else?”

  My spine turned chillingly cold. “Is it so bad?”

  “Not yet,” he said, and laughed like a Japanese. “We can wait and see how it goes. … Only remember that the hospitality of Stanley is always open to you if you want it. For the time being, perhaps you had better go on pretending to be Chinese.”

  “Oh, I do,” I assured him earnestly. “Nobody knows I’m not but just you and me.”

  It is difficult to explain how this man, so much hated by many of the prisoners, so dangerously liable to attacks of conceit, still went on being extraordinarily and subtly decent to me. It was Charles again, I suppose, and a sense of honor that most of his compatriots did not possess. There were many differences between him and the other officials. He treated his servants well, and his Indian chauffeur cried when he went away. His successor, the tall, good-looking Hattori, had beautiful British manners and a lot of physical charm, but in his unguarded moments he was a brute to all his servants. It was hard sometimes when I was with Hattori not to show how I felt when he flew off the handle at the amah or the chauffeur. Oda was different; the Ho girls, who worked in his office, were so upset by his departure that they wanted to quit, though other jobs were impossible to get and they depended completely on their salaries. They acted with Oda like handmaidens, in an innocent way, rather than like typists, and the other Japanese looked on sourly at the intimacy Oda achieved with their family group.

  Kathleen, the elder of the two, decided to quit after all and to marry her cousin in Kwangchowwan. Yvonne, the younger sister, was a girl of unbelievable beauty and almost incredible innocence, though she considered herself very sophisticated. Both girls went to fortunetellers all the time, chattered like adolescent magpies, and added a good deal to the gaiety of the Foreign Affairs office. Oda decided to celebrate Kathleen’s fiançailles and his own departure with one of those dinner parties he loved to give. As an adored auntie of the girls, I was invited too. The rest of the people were from the office, just as they had been on the fateful night I slapped the boss.

  “Tonight,” I said to myself as I dragged out the old faded party dress, “I must really be careful and sensible. Tonight I must not drink too much and I certainly must not talk politics. It wouldn’t be fair to those kids; they have to be so careful all the time, what with their jobs and everything.”

  So firm were my resolutions, so good my control, that at nine o’clock I heard my own voice holding forth like this: “The Axis is finished. The Axis is dead. Look how Germany is retreating everywhere: North Africa and then Russia; obviously it’s only a matter of time. You can see that for yourselves, gentlemen.”

  Oda’s spectacled eyes looked calm and reflective. “And what do you think will happen to Japan in that case?” he asked gently. The others on the party were hushed and horrified.

  “Japan? Oh, it’s hopeless, Oda, hopeless. Germany’s let you down and you can’t swing this proposition alone. Mind you, I give you your due; you can fight, all right, and if Germany had held up her end you could have got away with it, but fortunately — ”

  Yvonne giggled nervously. Kathleen’s eyes glowed. Oda just went on probing, calmly and politely. “You are wrong,” he said flatly. He drew himself up and delivered the next speech with what was almost a burlesque of boasting. “Why, Japan’s destiny is assured. She will rule the world, she will conquer everybody. She — ”

  “Nuts!” That unaccountable voice of mine rang out clear and loud.

  Then Oda slapped me. “I thought we had better get evened up before I left,” he explained.

  There were no hard feelings to mar the rest of the going-away party. I could see the justice of that slap. We all laughed heartily.

  It is as well that the unhappy days that followed Wang’s fantastic declaration of war against the Allies were not made worse for me by knowledge of what was happening to Shanghai. Strange as it seems, all this time I had been unaware of my friends’ fate. I had assumed for months that everyone was interned just as our people were, at the same time, but I was wrong. A few leading men were put into clink at that time, but the Japanese stood by the skeleton protocol and left the other whites in their thousands to wander about until Wang joined in the war. Shanghai, one must remember, was not like Hong Kong, a colony formerly under the jurisdiction of Europeans. Shanghai was China, and before 1943 the Nanking clique kept out of the war.

  Of course the foreigners were not really free. Some check was kept on them, but even so it was possible for people to slip out into Free China now and then. Lots of my friends did that: I found out all of this when I met my compatriots at last on the exchange ship. And now, what about my Corin?

  I should have thought that Corin would have had a bad time of it because she had been working for a propaganda broadcast station. And Jacques, who had deserted Havas in disgust when the Havas people embraced the Vichy principles, was certainly in for trouble because he had been loudly in favor of De Gaulle, I thought. I hoped for the best, though, and went on thinking about my own troubles, like all the rest of us sorry mortals. The true story came out in my hearing on the exchange ship, when a friend told me on the crowded deck, and I was sick with dismay.

  Corin and Jacques with a lot of other people attempted to make an escape from Shanghai. The entire party save for Jacques was apprehended in a near-by village. Jacques, fortunately, had gone into town to buy supplies, and they missed him in the roundup. The other members of the party, with Corin, were put into the Shanghai gendarme station known as Bridge House. They were there for some weeks, and everyone said Corin was in fine shape under those conditions, laughing a lot, cheering up her friends, and being very brave indeed.

  In the meantime Jacques found refuge in a Parsee’s house where he was safely hidden until his second escape attempt was successful, much later on. The Parsee had three handsome daughters. When Corin was released from Bridge House, full of excitement at the news that the exchange was actually going to take place and she would be eligible to sail as correspondent of an American news agency, she was greeted with the rumor that Jacques was engaged to be married to the prettiest of his Parsee hostesses.

  Evidently she tried to be very simple and efficient about it all. She told John Alexander, who with his family was confidently awaiting the ship on which the Alexanders would sail as diplomats, that she intended to kill herself. John knew her well and probably thought that he knew what to say.

  “If you do it just now you’ll make the exchange impossible, perhaps,” he said. “The Japanese have closed their lists and they must deliver every one of us safe to the Americans at Lourenço Marques. Think of what it might mean to thousands of people
if you are selfish enough to commit suicide now! You know how touchy the Japs are. I am not arguing with your intention, Corin; your life and death are your own affair. But promise me, at any rate, to wait until the ship has sailed.”

  Corin promised, after an argument. That night she wrote a letter to John saying that she was breaking her promise. He had extracted it, she said, under compulsion, because as he well knew she had been in no position to take a stand against him. Now she could not wait any longer. Her death was due, overdue by many months of anguish. “I can’t bear the torture of living for another five minutes,” wrote Corin in a precise hand. Then she drank a bottle of Lysol and died.

  But the exchange was not, after all, spoiled by this action.

  Chapter 57

  The selwyn-clarkes were disturbed by the news that Colonel Nguchi, their patron and protector, was going away. The whole setup in the government was constantly changing like that; Noma of the gendarmes was the only official who stayed all the way through while I was in Hong Kong, and we should have expected Nguchi’s departure. Probably Selwyn did, but hung on as long as he could and hoped for a miracle. Though Selwyn always had a reputation as an alarmist in his own government, and though I myself had occasion to resent his dramatic presentation of the worst news and his tendency to make gloomy prophecies, he remained tough in his estimation of facts. He was always expecting worse, and so the catastrophe when it arrived usually shocked him less than it did us mere humans. He was no alarmist. He merely foretold calamities which came to pass, and everyone hated him for it.

  I saw him working under the new conditions often and often, when I went into the Health Department offices. One day I turned up there with a needy case which did not come exactly under the heading of volunteer dependent. Rather, this lady was a regular dependent, for her husband was a regular soldier, connected with the Royal Army Medical Corps and now interned at Bowen Road. The wife was Chinese and had not been evacuated with the other soldiers’ wives because she had been so near her confinement. Now, with the new baby and two older children, she was hard up, because she was a northerner without relatives in this strange southern city. She clung to me because I spoke her dialect and she had very little English. After carrying the responsibility for a very short time indeed I realized I couldn’t do it any more and I took it over and dumped it into Selwyn’s lap. I have gone into this detail just to show what sort of thing he was up against in his moments of leisure. All of these people, bewildered and lost and scared and hungry, had nowhere to go but to Selwyn. Though he couldn’t do anything officially, he did manage somehow to help, and all out of that tremendous saintly conviction that it was the duty of England, through Selwyn-Clarke, not to let down her colonials.