The French doors opened and Huang fu stood in the doorway dressed in casual clothes, cheap cotton pants and a clean short-sleeved shirt.
“Are you going?” asked Leah.
Huang fu shook his head. “Breakfast,Tung has made breakfast.”
Leah smiled with relief. It was such a generous thing for Huang fu to remain without being asked. “Mustn’t keep him waiting, then,” she said, as if expecting the pre-war breakfast of stewed tea with milk, toast and perhaps eggs.
Tung, Huang fu and Leah sat at the kitchen table eating the rainwater congee slowly, sucking each spoonful dry. Huang fu shifted in his seat and shovelled in the last mouthful.
“You can’t stay here,” he declared.
“No,” replied Leah, trying not to think about the future. Then it came to her—what the Nazis did when they took over a defeated town. It was possible. She spoke eagerly, willing it so. “The Japs will order me to report to the police and register. That’s the way it was done in Europe.”
“That will not be the Japanese way,” argued Huang fu.
Leah forced a spoonful of congee down her throat. “They don’t want chaos.”
“You are fooling yourself.”
“When I was in Manchukuo, I could move around freely,” she asserted, disturbed by Huang fu’s certainty.
“You were not the defeated enemy,” said Huang, crushing her with searing truth. “Tung and I will go to Central and see what is happening.You must stay here. It’s not safe for women.”
Huang fu’s voice had new authority. In the past, he accepted everything she said and kept his opinions to himself.Welcome to the new order.
Tung, his eyes on his congee, mumbled, “I’m going to my cousin’s. He owns a restaurant. He needs a cook.”
Huang fu protested.
Leah interrupted. “Tung has every right to go where he wants. He will be safer there.”
“It’s not right. Tung has been paid to the end of the year.”
“No, Huang fu. Let him go.”
To show he was grateful, Tung offered to clean up the kitchen before he left.
All three stared at the kitchen. It was a disgrace. The pantry door was open, its shelves bare, and a mountain of discarded tins littered the floor. All the glass jars were lidless and empty and the pots black from cooking on the makeshift brazier Tung had fashioned from the bricks of the garden path. “Let the Japanese do it,” said Leah.
Huang fu banged the table. “No!”
“Yes,” said Leah, “you already told me I won’t be safe. If I’m nothing, then they’ll commandeer the house. They’ll think it’s their right to own the best houses in Hong Kong.”
“They make the rules now,” he agreed, his face brimming with resentment. “Huang fu will find a hiding place for you. The Japs will never find you.”
How vulnerable she must look, sitting here in her bathrobe, unwashed, slurping down rice gruel, unable to protect herself, while a servant, a man who had served her with dignity and C61 resourcefulness she had taken for granted, was willing to put his life at risk and help her. She sat up straighter and met his eyes.
“Macau. I’ll go to Macau,” she declared, as if it were as easy as buying a ticket and sailing away.
“They’ll bomb Macau too,” countered Huang fu.“Hong Kong is better. I know many people in Hong Kong.Triads in Macau.”
“There are triad here too. It is not triads I’m worried about,” said Leah through gritted teeth.
“You stay,” ordered Huang fu.
“I can’t, Huang fu.”
Stricken, he said, “I can’t go to Macau. I must stay here with my family. I will help you get to Macau.”
Leah bowed her head out of respect for Huang fu’s generosity and courage. What secret reserves the man had. Why hadn’t she noticed? “The Japanese might be willing for you to remain here and work.”
“No,” cried Tung. “Huang fu not work for squat ugly monkeys. My uncle in Shanghai, he work for a cook for a Japanese army man. The army man didn’t like Chinese food. He chop off that man’s head. My uncle run away. He’s still not able to eat dumplings. He cry all the time.”
Leah gasped; Huang fu’s face was ashen. Tung crossed his arms and dared Leah to contradict him. The rain began again, pounding on the roof and beating against the windows.
“Did this really happen?” demanded Leah.
“My uncle is an old man. He cry a lot.”
“Yes,” acknowledged Leah. “I expect we all will.”
“I will find someone to take you to Macau, Miss Kolbe,” Huang fu pledged.
“Thank you, Huang fu, from the bottom of my heart,” said Leah softly, her voice mixing with the fall of rain.
Huang fu nodded solemnly.
Truly, Leah thought, the world has shifted on its axis.
TUNG left, grateful for Leah’s gift of a hundred Swiss francs and Huang fu was out, sniffing around the docks for a fisherman willing to take her to Macau. It was so strange to be the only one in the house. Always there were servants, quiet and unassuming, attending to this or that. Now, the house had stopped like a run-down watch. The fans didn’t whirl, the lights didn’t turn on, the telephone was out and water no longer ran from the taps. The house was dying.
There was a sharp rap on the door. Leah froze. It was the end. The Japanese had come and she was alone.
“L-e-a-h. It’s me. Charlotte Cecil.”
Overcome with relief, Leah hurried to the front door. Charlotte and she weren’t friends. In fact, they hardly spoke at all, aside from hello and comments about the weather. To Leah, Charlotte was “the sock woman.” A small, nondescript woman with mousy hair and glasses, Charlotte was out of her depth in the Colony. She had drifted into the Auxiliary out of a desperate need to be seen to be doing something worthy. Delia allowed her to stay because the little grey woman was a ferocious knitter. Every day she sat on a battered chair with skeins of wool and knitted socks. On a good day, she finished two pairs. Delia would sweep in and beam, “Charlotte, my treasure. Good warm socks win battles,” and then sweep out, leaving Charlotte unnerved, but grateful that she had found her niche at last in the rigid social hierarchy of Hong Kong.
Now, an unblinking Charlotte with a determined mouth C63 said, “Some of us are going to look for our husbands.We know where the Volunteer Brigade was posted, near Kowloon.They may be wounded or dead. I must find Harvey. The Japs have taken over the hospitals and thrown out our wounded. Join us. If we’re in a group, the beasts won’t dare touch us.” She was still breathing hard from the climb, her mousy hair pulled back into a tight bun. She was desperation in sandals and knitted socks.
At a loss, Leah could only stare. The woman was raving, despite her calm. She still believed the Japanese would recognise the superiority of white-skinned ladies in ugly purple dresses and allow them to pass. Crazy, going on foot, passing endless Japanese check points. After battle, Japanese soldiers went on drunken rampages of victory; look at Nanking.
“It’s not that simple.We’d have to smuggle the men back through the lines. We’d have to hide them in Chinese squatters’ huts. How would they eat? I don’t have any food. Do you?” she argued, attempting to inject rationality into Charlotte’s lunatic, dangerous plan.
Charlotte screwed up her face as if she might explode. “I might have known,” said Charlotte, icy with rage. “It’s people like you—”
“—Charlotte, it won’t work. It won’t save them.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No,” conceded Leah in a hoarse whisper.
“Coward,” hissed Charlotte. She turned on her heel, her back ramrod straight, and strode down the driveway.
Leah watched Charlotte’s knitted socks disappear. Maybe she was a coward. She was running away, leaving Jonathan behind. She sank to the floor and buried her head in her hands, crying, glad there was no one home to see her despair.
“MR. FONG is adamant,” said Huang fu, sitting on the chintz sofa, looking helpless. �
��He insists. He doesn’t understand banks. Besides, they are closed. He wants gold and jewels.”
Leah nodded and trudged upstairs to return with her jewellery box. She opened the marquetry box and stared at its contents. “I haven’t got much,” she apologised.
She dumped out a thin gold chain, a bracelet of small cut rubies and a necklace of graduated pearls. “Is this enough?”
Huang fu shrugged. “Fong is worried about mines.”
“Take everything. I’ve given up dressing up,” and gave a sour laugh. It was true. She still wore the dirty black Chinese pyjamas.
“But for this man, you must wear good clothes. He must think you are an important person.”
“Can Mr. Fong be trusted?”
“He was the only one willing to go to Macau. I have not met this man before.When you are on his junk, you must open your suitcase and let him see you have no other valuables. I think this would be best. You are paying him well.”
“Is he a pirate?”
“No. Only a greedy fisherman.” Huang fu collected the jewellery into a cloth bag. He sighed heavily. “It is the best I can do. There are such rumours.” He shut his mouth. He was not about to repeat them, even if they were true.
Leah surveyed the living room.Out of sense of loyalty and duty, Huang fu had restored the porcelain, carvings and pictures to their rightful places, a brave, useless gesture. “Take whatever you want from this house. I leave them to you.”
“The Japs steal everything. I’m sorry. It is too dangerous,” said Huang fu, drooping with fatalism. He looked at his watch. “You must hurry and change. My cousin comes at six to take us to the dock.”
Leah fled upstairs. She stripped off the pyjamas and changed into a black suit, sensible shoes, no makeup and a hat with a veil.Adjusting her hat in the mirror, she realised she was dressed for a funeral. On the bedside table was a framed picture of Jonathan in his Volunteer uniform. He looked dashing and capable, but as her fingers traced over the glass, she thought his soft mouth held traces of weakness and she was afraid. She shivered and slipped the photograph into her handbag, snapping it shut.
Midway down the stairs, she paused, overwhelmed by regret. For a moment, she heard her own bright childish laughter as she hurtled down the stairs and Theo’s long dead voice urging her to be careful.How could homesickness start before she even locked the front door?
She felt compelled to return one last time to Theo’s study, now hers. A duck-bottomed Japanese officer would soon be sitting in her desk chair. Well, he’d get a surprise. She cut deep into the ancient cracked leather seat with the letter opener, dug into the stuffing and inserted it point up. It was a stupid, childish act. She didn’t care. She hoped it would puncture the officer’s balls. She slammed the door, leaving old ghosts behind.
HUANG fu’s cousin cut the headlights in the narrow alley leading to Aberdeen harbour,Heung Gong Tsai,Little Fragrant Harbour. All three sat, hardly breathing, listening intently. The quiet was unnerving.Usually, the place was mobbed with street hawkers, and stall holders and reeked of dead fish and sewerage. It still smelled. Aberdeen Harbour was home to the junk people who lived in their own small world, selling their wares, marrying each other, bearing children who never slept on land. Police avoided it. It was the last place anyone would look for a missing European woman.
Huang fu’s cousin remained in the car. Huang fu shut the door with a noiseless click and, despite Leah’s emphatic whispered protestations, carried her suitcase. Their steps echoed in the silence of the deserted street market. Nothing was left, not even the empty boxes usually littering the cobblestones.
A shriek of laughter broke the silence. Leah and Huang fu exchanged looks of fright and froze. In the inky dark, they saw the outline of two laughing Chinese boys carrying a table between them.The boys halted, making a joke about what else they could steal. Huang fu told them to get lost. They should be ashamed of stealing, leave that to the Japanese.The boys hooted their contempt, but left them alone and hurried off, still lugging the table.
Mr. Fong, a flat-faced man in a threadbare singlet and loose trousers, shone a kerosene lantern on them. He nodded at Huang fu and said, “Pay.” Huang fu handed the man the cloth sack. Squatting on his haunches, he bit the gold and scraped at the pearls with dirty fingernails.
“Good,” he said. “You come.”
With a sigh of resignation Huang fu said, “Mr. Fong knows these waters well,” and set the suitcase down.
Leah nodded and embraced Huang fu. She whispered, “I wish you good luck and good fortune.”
Impatient, Mr. Fong picked up the suitcase and trotted off.
“Go, Miss Kolbe. Be safe,” said Huang fu.
Leah had to run to keep up with Fong.Ten feet along, she turned around and saw Huang fu’s shadowy figure sagging under a weight of worry and sadness. She waved and he flapped his hand as if urging her to hurry. She ran on.
7
THE SEAT WAS still wet from the day’s rain; moisture leached through Leah’s skirt. She shifted uneasily, C THE unable to find a dry spot. Fong’s wife held a kerosene lamp to guide the skiff towards the junk. The thin track of light cut a wavy path through the water and illuminated a body, face down, riding a gentle swell. Fong grunted and pushed it out of his path with his pole. The body drifted away, into the dark.
Fong manoeuvred the skiff alongside the junk and motioned Leah to stand on the wet seat. Short, stocky Mrs. Fong reached over, grabbed Leah under the arms and hauled her in like a large fish. Stunned,Leah lay spreadeagled, inhaling the stench of fish, greasy timber and mould. A small boy poked her in the ribs with his bare toes and giggled.
“Hey,” said Leah.
Mrs. Fong yelled at the boy to stay away. As Leah sat up, Fong tossed up her suitcase. It landed with a loud thump, narrowly missing her head.
“Watch it,” cautioned Leah.
Fong grunted in reply as he clambered, monkey-like, up the hull and jumped neatly onto the deck. “We eat,” he declared, as he hovered by Leah’s side. She gagged on his sour smell.
Mrs. Fong lit the brazier. Children came out of the shadows to stare: first a small boy, then his older brother, and finally a scrawny girl. Under their watchful eyes, Leah ate and tried to forget the body in the water. No one talked as they slurped down fish and rice.
After eating, Fong wiped his fingers on his trousers, then cast off. He steered the junk skilfully around a clot of other junks and sampans. Soon, they were in open water.The clouds cleared in the gentle wind and the stars were visible.
Leah pointed at the stars. “Bad?” she asked.
Fong shrugged.
Leah wasn’t certain if the shrug meant there were no Japanese patrol boats on the prowl for escaping Europeans, or it didn’t matter—he’d been paid.
Mrs. Fong clouted her daughter on the ear for trying to touch Leah’s hat. The child roared in pain.
“It’s okay,” said Leah and began to unpin her hat.
Mrs. Fong hit the girl again and shoved her in the direction of the hatch. “Sleep now,” Mrs. Fong ordered Leah.
Leah wondered if Mrs. Fong might hit her too, but she only scowled and disappeared into the hold dragging the youngest boy with her. A few minutes later, Mrs. Fong reappeared with a fetid blanket.When Leah didn’t immediately wrap the filthy thing around her, Mrs. Fong mimed sleep, pillowing her head on her clasped hands and closing her eyes.
“Soon,” promised Leah.
Mrs. Fong grunted and went to consult her husband at the wheel, hissing and whispering in agitation.
Leah thought they were arguing about her. Maybe Mrs. Fong resented putting her children in danger even for a price. Fong growled something, raising his hand as if to strike. Mrs. Fong sprang back with a torrent of abuse in a patois Leah couldn’t understand. Like a squall that had run out of wind, Mrs. Fong abruptly stopped her tirade, shrugged, and walked nimbly over the deck to disappear below.
Leah wrapped the rancid blanket around her. Unable to stand the smel
l, she threw it off and grew cold, her feet icy. She opened her suitcase and Fong swivelled round to look. She found a small flashlight and shuffled her belongings around under Fong’s snake eyes so he could see she had nothing valuable hidden away. She pulled on a coat and socks, then shut the case with a bang.When she looked again,Mr. Fong was staring purposefully at the stars as if plotting his course.
At last she slept. She dreamed of red fish with enormous teeth, emperor fish that pursued her with amazing speed even as she swam faster and faster. She woke in a panic to Fong’s loud snores. He was curled in a heap by the rudder and the anchor line was out. Even colder now, she wrapped the reeking blanket around to stretch out again, wishing and worrying that dawn would come soon.
The day passed achingly slow. She was always in the way. Mrs. Fong shot her dagger looks. She retreated to sit atop her suitcase, barefoot in her good suit with her hat on her head to keep the broiling sun off, her handbag on her lap. The children made a game of stepping inside an invisible boundary line, causing Mrs. Fong to shriek, Get away, every few minutes. Leah developed a headache from the shouting, menacing looks and whispered conversations between the couple. Mr. Fong continually tacked and changed course.When she dared to ask why, he spat out, Mines. She shut up, willing the children to go away, refusing to meet their curious eyes.
By nightfall, they still hadn’t reached Macau. Because of mines and the threat of patrol boats, Mr. Fong refused to sail after nightfall. “They steal,” he declared without irony.
Everyone chewed through another silent fish dinner. Afterwards, the Fong family retreated to their ‘cabin’ below deck and left Leah to the cold, starry night.After a bit of yelling and sounds of heavy slapping,she heard Fong’s loud snores and the junk was quiet.
Deep Night Page 6