To All Appearances a Lady

by Marilyn Bowering

  “How are you feeling?” she asks, between bars of phrasing.

  “How do you think, Fan?” I say. “I feel sick to my stomach. I am worried. I’ve lost feeling in my limbs and face…. How do you think?”

  “Seasick?” she asks, stopping her humming. “After all this time? I’m surprised at you, Robert Lam.” She is paying me scant attention. Something in the pile of papers she’s handling has caught her eye.

  “What is it, Fan?” I lift my head from my pillow and peer over at what’s in her hand.

  “It is a sketch,” she says, holding a small square of rice paper close to her eyes to examine it, then passing it to me. “See for yourself.”

  I lie back down and hold the drawing to the light. It is neatly done, in pencil, and is labelled, “D’Arcy Island.” It bears my mother’s initials in the bottom right-hand corner.

  She has drawn a long, low building against a backdrop of forest. The building is divided into rooms, each with a door at the front leading on to a common veranda. Three steps connect the porch to the ground. The exterior is planking, and the pitched roof is shingled. On the earth in front of this house she has drawn several broken crates, wooden boxes, and a small wicker basket. A pan inclines against the wall of a lean-to attached to the left side of the building.

  “There are no people in it, Fan,” I say. “It’s empty. You’d think she’d have put some people in.”

  “Yes,” says my stepmother, musingly, tapping her long fingernails on the panelling by the porthole and looking out at the shores of Catala Island. “But it’s only a drawing, Robert Lam. It is not the real thing.”

  —

  India turned and saw the building that she later represented in the drawing. But there, as well, in front of the house posts that spaced the long cedar railing, were half a dozen men. She shaded her eyes, as if that could help her understand what she was seeing. For these were not ordinary men. They stood as if frozen; and the features they presented to her, even at a distance of some thirty or so feet, were monstrous.

  A dozen explanations as to who they were came to India’s mind as she stood there, irresolute, wondering how long they had watched her. Were they fishermen, who, due to an accident, had banded together? Was she dreaming because of her hunger? Were they a nightmare version of the men who had abducted her? Whoever they were, if they were men at all, they must have observed her futile attempts to signal a ship and hadn’t thought to assist her: they might have helped her build a fire, for example…. Slowly, so slowly that afterwards she couldn’t understand why it had taken her so much time, she began to connect these silent men, some dressed carefully in trousers, shirt, and waistcoat, plus jacket, others with shirttails hanging out, strings around their waists, and wearing crushed and rain-soiled hats…she began, as if assembling an image made of individual motes of dust picked out by sunlight, to connect these figures with others she’d seen before. On the road to the cemetery at Happy Valley in Hong Kong, begging for money from the passing processions of mourners. Collecting drowning victims from Hong Kong harbour, which they would advertise and sell to relatives for a certain sum of money. And here, in the New World, she’d heard mention of one of these men having been found sleeping beneath a sidewalk in Victoria. Although, as to what had happened to him afterwards, she hadn’t thought to inquire. For these, she finally understood, were lepers. Outside the magic circle of business, of hungry miners and prostituted children, of reform and plans and progress, in which she and others she knew were interested. Outside the magic circle of humanity.

  And so there it was: she had been landed on D’Arcy Island, the lepers’ island, and these were the sufferers who were exiled there. It was the last place on earth she’d have wished to find herself.

  For, like everyone else in Victoria and in the rest of the colony, India had given no thought to the men who had disappeared so quietly, leaving wives and children, parents and friends in China in astonished ignorance as to their whereabouts. Leaving those who had known them on the west coast of Canada with the sad task of removing their names from all remembrance. For once stricken with the disease, they were considered to be dead, or as good as. And once they were taken to the lepers’ island, most usually under extreme protest, all their property was left behind to be absorbed by the government or by their relatives—money, land, books, letters, whatever they had gathered. And no record was kept, either of what was taken from them or of their names or origins. Not even by the Board of Health. For they were Chinese lepers, immigrants. Carriers of the most dreaded disease on earth.

  And so my mother stood and looked at these men and was badly frightened. Not just of contagion, for certainly in Hong Kong, where she had come from, the lepers weren’t isolated, and their presence at the edges of the community hadn’t seemed too worrying, although she knew it was important not to touch them or to share their food or drink. What she was concerned about was what they might do to her. For these were men who saw no change ahead of them but the advance of their disease; these were men with nothing to lose.

  She stepped forward, impelled both by her fear and the imperative need to conceal it, calling out, “Hello! I didn’t see you there at first. I’m afraid I’m lost. Can you tell me where I am?” She smiled charmingly.

  But not one of them answered, and—she could sense it—they were becoming increasingly hostile. They neither beckoned her nearer nor waved her away.

  For what need had they to explain themselves? This was their island. Their world she’d invaded.

  Still, men, even men like these, who in the opinion of the outside world no longer existed, were individuals. They had come from seashores and mountaintops, from farms and cities and villages; from families; from particular genes and environments. They, as individual men, with personal histories, with wives and children and parents and sisters, were unlikely to harm her.

  “No, Robert Lam,” interrupts my stepmother. “At this moment these men are dangerous. You forget that they have seen no one but each other for months. And now India, a woman alone, comes along. What is there to stop them from doing what they like? Why should they not be bitter against those who have removed them so far from their homes? Who is there to report whatever happens to her? And why should they care, Robert Lam, when they have nothing to look forward to but staying where they are, and to death, and when nobody cares about them?

  “You have forgotten, it seems,” she goes on, “what you saw during the war. Did not men who lived together, who fought together, act as one? Did they not do things of which, as themselves, they would have been ashamed? Isn’t that how it was?”

  I cannot answer, for, of course, I have not forgotten at all. I remember the enemy sailors we did not take on board when we came upon them after a sinking, and how one of our men trained a gun on them and fired, although no order was given. And how we did nothing. I remember what happened one day in Freetown, when, convinced of my imminent blindness, I turned my fear and terror on someone else. What Fan says is true, and has long been on my conscience….

  And so…

  And so at the bottom of the steps leading up to the veranda, India stopped. She swallowed several times to subdue the nausea that had risen to her throat. She hadn’t thought of what it would be like up close—the stench of open sores and of rotting flesh. The lepers she had seen in Hong Kong had been seen from a distance.

  “I’m very sorry to bother you,” she said, attempting to smile unconcernedly. “I have come to this island by accident and I only want to return to my home. I’m hoping that you can help me. Perhaps you saw my attempt to signal?”

  The lepers continued to regard her in stony silence.

  “The trouble is,” she went on despite this, “I’ve been walking now since early morning, and I’m hungry and thirsty. I’d be grateful if you could give me something to eat and drink.”

  (“Why does she say this, Fan? She knows she must not eat their food.”

  “She has very good manners, Robert Lam. She is app
ealing to their better natures. Besides, it is only food they’ve touched she must not eat. It does not occur to her that this could be a problem. She is like those ladies long ago in China, missionary ladies who went places that were very dangerous, and yet no one harmed them. It is the strength of innocence, Robert Lam. It does not exist today.”

  “Some of those missionary women were not harmed, Fan. But I know there were others. There were ten nuns, for example. I remember reading that they were raped and murdered. Their breasts were cut off.”

  “I know, I know,” says Fan, “but this does not change my point.”)

  “There is no food for you here, lady,” said one of the lepers, a man whose name she learned later was Sim Lee. “You go away now, please, we do not want you. Go away!” he repeated, gesturing violently.

  India took a step back, but then stood her ground. “I’m afraid you do not understand,” she said. “I have no choice but to ask for your assistance. I need food and water and shelter. I have tried to signal a boat to take me away from here, but no one answers. I have only the clothes I am wearing, I have nothing else at all.”

  A second man, who was called Nap Sing, smiled a grim smile at her as he said, “What is that to us? We have only just returned from burying one of our friends in the bush. The earth from his grave still covers our boots. Any one of us would have preferred to be in his place. Why should it matter to us if you are hungry or thirsty?” He spat and turned his back on her.

  The others, looking from one to the other, nodded their agreement.

  Except for one man, Chou You, who hadn’t been listening. Chou You, who was simple-minded and nervous and who spent his waking hours splitting wood, had noticed what the others hadn’t: that there was a wound on India’s temple, and that she was pale with fatigue, and frightened. Perhaps he half-remembered his mother, or a sister, or a long-ago sweetheart. In any case, he edged down the steps towards my mother. In his arms he cradled the hatchet he took with him everywhere.

  “No, stop!” shouted Sim Lee, when he realized where Chou You was headed. “Chou You, go stand over there,” and he directed his friend to the woodpile.

  Chou You hung his head and obeyed.

  “You see,” said Nap Sing, who had turned at Sum Lee’s shout, “already you are causing us trouble. What do you think would happen to us if you were found here? We would be punished, that is for certain. Lady, please go away, please leave us alone.”

  My mother, beginning to see the situation from the lepers’ perspective, looked at the ground, but stubbornly she said, “What would you have me do? I cannot swim away from your island. I do not want to be here. I was brought here against my will, but if I am to leave, you will have to tell me how.” For, of course, by now India understood why no passing boat would come to her rescue, and why none ever would.

  Nap Sing, who had had to leave his twelve-year-old child behind in Victoria after living there for four years, turned away to enter his room, but returned in a moment with a cup in his hand. “All right then, lady,” he said, dipping the cup into the water bucket on the porch, “I will give you a drink.” He held the cup out to her, regarding her expressionlessly.

  Time stirred and settled. Slowly, India, as if hypnotized, lifted her hand to receive the proffered cup. What would she do with it? There were murmurings from the other lepers who watched—they knew what was risked. How could she take it—but how could she not? For it was, as well as a challenge to her, an invitation to trust.

  But Ah Chee, the youngest of the lepers, who was in the poorest health, had dragged himself along the railing, his face wrung with anguish. “No, miss, please!” he cried out, trying to lower himself down the steps to stop her, “I will show you where to find a drink.”

  Ng Chung, who, like Kong Ching Sing, had not yet spoken, and who had a wife and child in China, reached out to stop Ah Chee. “No,” he said to him, “you rest. I will take her myself. There is a cistern at the back,” he said to my mother. The water there is clean. You can use your hands to drink. Please follow me.”

  —

  On the back of an undated, unstamped letter to the Victoria British Colonist, which I have found among the other papers belonging to my mother, and which I have read sitting up in bed with a cup of tea steaming on the ledge beside me—a cup I have filled only half full, for the Rose at anchor at Rolling Roadstead, an anchorage particularly well titled, continues to rock on the swells—my mother has noted down the names and several details about the men she met on D’Arcy Island.

  Sim Lee keeps his hands always hidden in his pockets. The disease has disfigured his face. He has no eyebrows or eyelashes, his nose is broad, and he has long, thick earlobes. He is fifty-two years of age, with a wife and child in China.

  Kong Ching Sing is partially paralyzed. He has only stumps for hands and feet.

  Chou You is a simpleton. He is forty-three years of age. He has no sense of taste or smell.

  Nap Sing used to live in Victoria. His face is badly affected by leprosy; he has no lips or nose. He is forty-one years old.

  Ah Chee is covered in sores. He is losing his sight and cannot stand without support.

  Ng Chung, who, like Sim Lee, has a family, is thirty-nine years old. The fingers on his hands are contracted and almost useless. When being put onboard the Alert, the steamer that brought him here, he tried to cut his throat.

  I turn the letter right side over and read again what my mother—I would guess within a short time of her arrival at the lepers’ colony—had written but never sent to the public.

  Editor, the Colonist:

  I am appealing to you on behalf of the lepers of D’Arcy Island, who mercilessly and cruelly are placed there out of reach of assistance, cut off from all communication with the outer world. Suffering or dying, not one friend near to soften their distress. When in more or less anguish they are forced away to their destination for life, their ears are ringing with promises of the good time they will have, how well they will be cared for, what plentiness for all, etc., and they are told in case of need merely to hoist the flag and assistance will be rendered promptly. Recently the flag was hoisted as an appeal for help to a dying man. For six long weeks the appeal was made to weather, wind and sky, while the miserable man hourly and anxiously expected the promised assistance and possible relief, which never came. Soon the poor man was dead and buried and no more in need of or dependent on any human or inhuman assistance. Great outcry is made when we occasionally hear of the behaviour of the Chinese to their fellow creatures in similar cases. But the treatment of these unfortunate beings beats every cruelty, because the whole arrangement made for them is a permanently and systematically adopted way of inflicting long sufferings, which should not be allowed in a nation of people calling themselves Christians. What moral right have those responsible for the welfare of the lepers to keep them on an island without proper attention being paid them? No judge dare condemn a man to death through caprice. Therefore should no administration dare to punish with worse than death people in no criminal guilt but stricken with disease. If justice and right were done they should have been taken to a hospital where competent doctors and nurses are in constant attendance.

  Yours, etc.,

   Miss India Thackery

  I put the letter down on the blankets. I like the rocking of the Rose: it reminds me of my younger days, when, as an apprentice, then as an officer, I’d sailed on long voyages. Where the motion of the sea entered the body and soothed the blood, and brought into rhythmic harmony one’s work and one’s thoughts; when the ship was the limit of the world, and within it, you were—at least if an officer—very well looked after. I always regretted our time in port and avoided going ashore. It was like being born, emerging from a perfectly comfortable womb into a cold, hostile climate. Where you were on your own.

  I sigh. There is no one here to take care of me except myself, and I do not actually want to spend the rest of my life below deck, even on this boat I love, the Rose, nor do I wish
to finish my tour of the world at Rolling Roadstead.

  I turn down the blankets and get up.

  —

  From Rolling Roadstead up Esperanza Inlet—the inlet of Hope—to Zeballos Inlet, and down the length of this rocky steepto waterway—too deep for anchorage—to Zeballos settlement. With its government wharf and sawmill and its seaplane anchorage. With its post office, hotel, and hospital. With its old prospectors—for the town was the centre of a west-coast gold rush, until about ten years ago, I think—resting, in the sunshine, between rain showers, on their laurels. And where I find I am not so desperate as I had thought for human contact. A few hours is enough.

  I have a couple of beers at the hotel and a game or two of billiards. The people are friendly enough, but they are not what I want. For the men know each other, and are wary of outsiders, and the women are loud and desperate and ask me what I do to make money. And when I answer that I am a pilot, they ask me to take them away with me. Anywhere. Just away from where they are.

  Islanded. Stranded. Isolated. Exiled. I suppose that’s how they think of it. Out of reach of television and movies. Trapped, with their children. But they are living in paradise, an Eden of wildlife: where deer and cougar and bear and wolves inhabit the forest; and where eagles, ravens, otters, and mink patrol the waterways. And the whales, of course. Always the whales.

  “I married on a whale once,” an Indian woman, who does not want me to take her anywhere, says. I had just bought her table a round of drinks. She winked at me. “My other husband didn’t want to share his woman. So he followed me one night down to the beach, and when the whale came to get me he cut off its dick.” Her friends laugh, and she gets up to play the jukebox. One of the women explains to me kindly, “Don’t mind her, she’s drunk. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. It’s a story she’s telling. Maybe she heard it from her Auntie.”