by Michael Kaan
Of the seven former students who didn’t attend, two we knew to be dead, one sent his regrets, and four others never responded. As might be expected of a group of men approaching seventy, we had difficulty keeping track of who had died and who was merely absent. One of these was Wing Kwok, who had gone on to become a teacher at Diocesan. He had retired ten years earlier and no one had heard from him since. Two of the school’s current senior students joined us the first evening, but even they had only heard his name.
The two students and the current headmaster, Dr. Pak, gave us a tour of the school. Sometime after the war, new facilities had been put up and the old dormitory converted into classrooms. We walked through them, and I recognized the building from within only because of the entrance and the view from the windows. The entrance still had a distinct smell, not unpleasant, that I used to notice on my clothes when I went home on holidays, a mix of institutional laundry soap and resin, what I think of as the smell of echoing hallways. The grounds seemed much smaller than I had remembered them, and the old banyan tree was gone.
Vincent Lim, one of our group who helped organize the reunion, had surprised us all on the second day by giving us new blazers with the school crest on them. He and his wife handed them out and insisted we wear them. Alice gamely carried my jacket. I looked ridiculous in the blazer, as did most of my old friends. Stumbling into a lineup for a commemorative photograph, we looked like the inmates of some institution that used costumes as therapy, and I and a few others were quick to use the heat as an excuse to remove them by mid-morning.
Over lunch that day, in a Hunan-style restaurant at a shopping mall, the conversation turned back to Wing Kwok. Despite returning to the school a mere five years after graduation and having taught physics there for over three decades, he had kept a low profile among alumni. His retirement was known to only a few of us, thanks to a brief notice in the school bulletin. My memories of him were shadowy: a reserved, gangly youth, the son of a senior police officer who was shot in the early days of the occupation. It was said that the school waived his tuition after the war because of this, though he tried to conceal it. A few others recalled how he had excelled in science and won the physics and math prizes two or three times. Someone said we should go check the honour roll boards in the main hall, but no one could remember where they were or if they had been moved during the renovations.
Vincent Lim drank heavily during the lunch. He kept his school blazer on and sweated despite the blasting air conditioner. He became sentimental and talked about “the missing boys,” a phrase that seemed ever more grotesque as he flushed from the brandy and his lank grey hair stuck to his forehead. He ate rapidly and twice his wife discreetly touched his sleeve to get him to settle down.
Another classmate remembered an old rumour that Wing Kwok’s mother was half Japanese on her mother’s side and her father was a merchant who exported to Japan.
You know, said Vincent, I think I met her once when I went to the Kwoks’ home. She had a little of that rounded face that Japanese women have. She was very quiet.
Who knows, said David Chen. David was sitting next to Vincent. The owner of a large factory, he was a driven and pragmatic man with no interest in reminiscence. He reached over with his chopsticks and picked up a choice piece of goose from right in front of Vincent.
A petty argument erupted between them, with Vincent defending the importance of remembering the old boys and David replying that he was just here to enjoy himself with his friends. Our misery is behind us, he said bluntly.
Everyone else had grown quiet. The tables around us were noisy, but our utensils clinked awkwardly as we picked away at the last of the lunch. We settled the bill quickly and went back to the school. As soon as Alice and I walked back into the main hall, where a display had been put up for our reunion, I inhaled deeply and took in that familiar odour of polish and camphor.
Even now, eighteen years later, I sometimes notice one of those old school scents in something, like a storage trunk full of old clothing, and I can almost see the light slanting through the windows of the dormitory or the dining hall. In the last months of my life, the world outside seems to be nothing more than a jumble of clues, too many to make sense of — street food, garbage, gardens, exhaust, a kitchen, a forest, clothes dried after soaking in river water, and dried blood.
FOUR
December 8, 1941
Nearly two months passed before the next part of my story, though what happened in those months I barely remember. There was a school play, maybe, and I have some recollection of failing a test. But I may be inventing that. When it comes to that period, I feel as though my mind is a cracked pot that has sat in a corner dripping water. A fog seems to have descended on the period just after my mother’s visit, just as one can vividly recall a nightmare but not the moment of falling asleep.
During the first morning class on the eighth of December, there was a sudden commotion. The teacher, Mr. Lee, was late, and in the hall two other teachers ran from room to room, shouting at the students to get out. I was folding a paper airplane against the wall and thinking I would throw it out the window before Mr. Lee arrived, when Mr. Lo burst into the classroom.
“Go back to the dormitory!” He waved us out into the hall as I hid the airplane behind my back.
“Go back and pack your bags quickly and bring them out to the main entrance. You’re all going home. If your families don’t come to get you this morning, someone from the school will drive you.”
We swarmed around him and asked what was wrong. Our delay seemed to terrify him.
“Do as I said!” he shouted. He sounded angry, but looked pale and under-slept. “All of you, get your bags. If you see other boys in the building, tell them the same.”
I needed to find Leuk. I searched up and down the hallway and in every classroom. Other boys were racing past me to the dormitory, where I should have been by now.
As I was leaving for the dormitory, I ran into Mr. Lee.
“Chung-Man, what are you doing? Go get your things!”
“I can’t find Leuk,” I said. The students in the hallway were confused, some of the younger boys were crying, and the senior students were racing them back to the dormitory.
Mr. Lee fixed his eyes on me and took me by the shoulder. “He’s here and he’s heard the message. Don’t worry, just get your things.”
I hesitated again and looked past him down the hall. Then he shouted at me to go. I dropped the paper airplane and ran to the dormitory.
It didn’t take me long to shove all my things into my suitcase. But the stairs were already congested. Boys raced up and down, hauling luggage or running back upstairs to get it, looking for friends or brothers. One boy looked out the window and shouted that he saw cars pulling into the drive.
“Hey, I think your dad is here!” His friend ran over to see, and then other boys crowded around the windows.
“Get away from there!” Mr. Lee’s face ran with sweat in the overcast daylight. “If you’re ready, just go. Don’t worry about your belongings.”
And then it seemed every boy on the floor was panicking down the staircase, unbalanced and clumsy with suitcases and rucksacks. Someone grabbed me by the collar. It was Leuk, and he nodded at me, panting. Between us stood a younger boy of about seven who was holding his hand.
“Meet me at the entrance,” he said and ran downstairs with the boy at his side.
When I got outside, there were already a dozen cars lined up at the entrance, none of them ours. Leuk ran ahead of me with the boy still gripping his hand. He turned to the boy.
“Do you see your parents or your car?”
“I don’t know.” He started to cry.
“Where’s your teacher?” said Leuk.
The boy looked around and pointed to a man near the gates with several other younger boys lined up beside him. Leuk ran over with the boy and talked to the teacher. The teacher shook his head and pointed somewhere towards the school. Leuk said something
and the teacher repeated the gesture, and Leuk started walking back towards me, still with the boy. He was wailing now, clutching his backpack and pulling on Leuk’s arm as if he were ringing a bell. I stared at the boy.
“Who is he?”
Leuk got angry at me. “I don’t know. I found him in the dormitory on the main floor, and he asked me to help him carry his bag.”
I asked the boy what his name was, but he was crying so hard I couldn’t understand him. His jacket was too big for him, and his right sleeve was laced with fresh snot. I forgot for a moment that I also had no idea what was happening. Cars kept piling into the driveway even as others raced out the gates. Then the sound of an explosion roared over the school grounds. It rolled upward from the harbour. The trees around me erupted with sparrows fleeing northward.
Adults who had been walking children to their cars now ran with them over the gravel towards the vehicles. The boys still inside threw their suitcases out the dormitory windows, and I thought with horror of the crush on the staircase. I looked away from the school doors. A car pulled up close to us, and a woman dressed as a maid or governess stepped out of it. She shouted at us. The boy cried out and ran towards her, his backpack swinging from his arm. Leuk ran with him. The woman grabbed the suitcase from my brother, threw it into the back seat, and helped the boy in. The last I saw of them was the woman leaning over and struggling with the handle as the driver swung the car over the gravel towards the gates.
I stood next to Leuk and watched the cars come and go. “Is Chow coming?”
More blasts tore through the air, and planes droned somewhere, far away but coming closer. We stared at the gates. Air sirens began to blare, rising and falling out of time with each other.
What I learned later was that Chow had left the house as soon as the radio announced news of the invasion. He had asked my mother which school to go to first; Wei-Ming was at the one across the valley from ours. Much later he told me he decided to get her first because he knew how brave the boys would be. When I asked my mother, she always looked away and said she didn’t remember everything about that day. Nobody ever told the same story. Perhaps no one remembered.
Fewer cars were arriving now, and only a small group of boys were left. Leuk and I stood with our bags and watched the gate and road. Nobody could tell us what was happening, and I began to think no one would come for us. My skin felt as though it had been immersed in freezing water. I looked at my brother and saw the same thing in his face.
Mr. Lee asked us if our car was coming.
“I don’t know,” said Leuk.
“It’s too late. I’ll take you both. The trams are still running.” He picked up my suitcase and ran with us to the gates. The school was in a normally quiet part of the neighborhood. Now I heard cars tearing down the streets, their tires screaming wildly against the slow, resigned chanting of the sirens.
We ran down the pavement to the tram stop on the main road. I was sweating and my backpack straps were pulling my jacket down. Mr. Lee was ahead of us and kept looking back to make sure we weren’t falling behind. Leuk turned to me and took my hand, pulling me down the slope.
We stood at the stop and waited as if we were going to the races, and I thought we must look absurd standing patiently while the tram stuck to its route. Mr. Lee looked at his watch.
“It comes every five minutes at this time of day. It should be here soon.”
A massive boom rolled over us from the harbour. Someone screamed in a nearby house, and planes droned louder in the distance. Machine guns fired somewhere far off, in long, explosive bursts like cracks tearing open in the earth.
Mr. Lee was pale and wiped his brow with a trembling hand. Just up the road, the tram bell rang lightly. He took some coins from his pocket and picked up our suitcases.
The tram arrived, moving pathetically at its usual steady pace. The driver waved us in while the few other passengers on board watched us anxiously. As the tram trundled down the hill, I watched the trees and buildings pass as I always had. I wanted to tell the driver to hurry up, to tell him we had to get home to our mother. But when I looked at him, he was sweating profusely at the wheel, a look of terror on his face. On the top of a nearby hill, I noticed one of the air-raid sirens, a spindly wooden tower dwarfed by the surrounding trees.
Mr. Lee stayed with us all the way to our stop. Leuk and I shouted our thanks to him and leapt off the tram steps onto the sidewalk. I caught a last glimpse of my teacher through the dirty glass, wiping his brow as the tram rattled forward. We ran up the street and found the gates open, and my mother waiting fearfully at the door.
Wei-Ming was already home. Once we were inside, my mother shut the doors. The house itself was silent as a tomb, and the noise from outside echoed through the halls. Warplanes roared overhead, and I listened to heavy trucks and police cars tearing over the streets. Leuk, Wei-Ming, and I stood close to our mother, motionless at the foot of the stairs.
Higher up the hill, from a wooden tower pinioned to the rock, a siren cast its long, declining cry across the valley.
FIVE
Warships had been closing in on Hong Kong since late November, and lone airplanes had flown over the harbour in the evenings. First they flew very high and were unmarked, but from late November into December they had begun coming lower and displayed the Japanese insignia. The British had reinforced their troops throughout Hong Kong, preparing for an onslaught from both the sea and the mainland. But until the attack on the eighth, everyone still went to work and walked to the market, old men sitting at their tables with teacups and birdcages while their wives chatted. No one seemed to be concerned. It seems to me that people wandered through the days plunged into a thick syrup, complaining about the price of goods or the noise of trucks in the street, gossiping, their mouths and eyes and every other orifice filling up with the cloying ordinariness of life as though wanting to be buried in it.
War is a hammer in its opening act. The invader brings it down and everyone is stunned to see buildings fall, roads blown open to expose the primitive earth beneath their feet. It’s as if people don’t believe their world can be destroyed.
In the second act, a strange, corrupted underlay of normalcy emerges from the broken world. The trees and wind still smell the same, there’s no change in the weather or birdsong. Then suddenly, even when things seem peaceful, the smell of scorched buildings or rotting flesh blows in. Guns fire randomly near and far. Shots ring out and there’s no reply, no ambulance siren, no firing back.
Sometime early in the second act, a few days after our return from school, we were sitting down to the midday meal. My mother was at the head of the table. Sheung was there, but Tang was at the factory, and Yee-Lin was sitting across from Sheung. I was in my usual spot between Leuk and Wei-Ming. The doorbell rang and we froze. Everyone looked at Sheung to get up. He adjusted his seat awkwardly, letting it scrape against the floor. Then Chow ran out of the kitchen. Since the invasion, the servants had taken to eating together in the kitchen at the same time as we ate. He was carrying a flashlight because we had pulled all the curtains shut. In his right hand he held the gun he kept with him at all times now, and he strode to the entrance as Sheung settled back down in his chair.
When Chow returned, the gun was tucked safely in his belt. “Mrs. Leung, there is a family outside asking a favour.”
“Who is it?”
“The Yee family, ma’am. The father was with Mr. Leung’s bank.”
My mother and Sheung looked confused. Embarrassed now that he hadn’t gone to the door, Sheung rose. “What do they want?”
Chow glanced hastily at my mother. “They want to live here.”
Leuk, Wei-Ming, and I turned to our mother. Sheung started to object, but my mother stood and walked out of the dining room with Chow. They returned with a family behind them, a woman, two girls, and a boy.
Mrs. Yee stopped near the head of the table. With porcelain-white fingers she brushed a stray lock from her reddened eyes and ner
vously smoothed her skirt. The three bewildered children with their dusty rucksacks trailed her like the attendants of an exiled queen. As she met our eyes, she looked ashamed and pulled her children close. I knew the boy, Shun-Yau, who was a year behind me at my school. I looked at him, but when he recognized me, he frowned and stared at the floor.
My mother remained standing. Sheung rose from his chair.
“Everyone,” said my mother. “Please welcome Mrs. Yee. She and her children will be staying with us.”
She asked Ah-Tseng to set four more places at the table. We all said hello and Mrs. Yee told her children to introduce themselves. The girls were Shun-Lai, who was sixteen, and Shun-Po, thirteen, then Shun-Yau. He and Shun-Po nodded nervously.
“Thank you for your generosity,” said Mrs. Yee. Chow and Ah-Tseng took the family’s bags upstairs. Mrs. Yee bowed and left quickly with the children to find their rooms.
“Her husband is the manager at the bank where we do all our business,” said Sheung.
“Mr. Yee is dead,” said my mother, looking down at her plate. Leuk clattered his spoon in his bowl. “He was shot three days ago. The Japanese have taken their house and car. They walked here from Wan Chai with just their suitcases.”
I looked up at the wall where a photo of my father hung, still wrapped in black crepe. Ah-Tseng laid out four settings at the end of the table near the large windows, where I was sitting. She put one of the settings next to me, and as she set the last dish down, she leaned over and spoke quietly to me.
“The little boy can sit next to you, Chung-Man.”
The thought of it made me sick.