When they came back inside the dining room, the men helped hold down Reverend Lum so that Betty Harris could finally wrap his wrist. She had run to get her nurse’s kit and had just drawn from an ampoule of morphine and stuck the needle in his forearm, but he was still in terrible agony and thrashing in distress. Luckily the fracture had not broken through the skin or ruptured a vein, and she was able to bind it tightly for now, though she said they would have to get him to a hospital with an experienced orthopedic surgeon and should leave right away. There was a hospital in Mukden, but he would likely have to travel all the way to Peking for proper treatment. Sylvie’s father’s eyes narrowed and he told them what they already suspected: The Japanese soldiers would be occupying the mission.
“For how long?” Mrs. Lum cried.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“This is where we’ve always lived! We have nowhere else to go! We can’t just go someplace else like all of you.”
“I’m sorry, but he wouldn’t say.”
“What are they here for?” Sylvie’s mother asked him.
“He refused to say that, too. But I think it must be about those incidents.” There had been a rash of resistance activity since Christmas, a couple of bombings of Japanese ammunition and fuel depots, and then an assassination of an officer in Changchung.
“We have to get Reverend Lum to the hospital,” Betty reminded everyone. “There’s risk of a blot clot, or even limb loss. We should be leaving right now.”
“We can’t go anywhere,” her husband said angrily. “We’ve all been ordered to remain. We’re prisoners here.”
“But why?” Mrs. Lum cried. “We’re only missionaries. My husband needs a doctor!”
“I’ll try to speak again to the commanding officer,” Sylvie’s father said to her, clasping Mrs. Lum’s hands. “I promise you we’ll get him to a hospital somehow. But for now we have to remove our personal things from our quarters. We must do this right now. I suggest we go to it immediately and then meet back in here. We should be warm enough for the time being, if we stay together and get the stove going.”
The adults hurriedly bundled themselves in their coats and rushed out to gather their things. Sylvie’s mother forbade her to leave the dining room, so she remained alone with Reverend Lum. They had placed chairs in a line so he could lie down and rest. Sylvie sat beside him, holding his good hand to comfort him as her parents had instructed her. His hand was clammy and cold, but at least he was calm now, despite the uneven, makeshift surface of the wooden chairs. Like his wife, he was short and pudgy, and he hardly fit on the narrow width of the seat bottoms. She had to press her leg up against him so he wouldn’t roll off. He was no longer in pain. His eyelids were heavy but he was looking up at her with a gratified expression, as if he were gazing into the face of his own attentive daughter. She wasn’t uncomfortable touching him. The Lums had no children of their own and they were always kind to her, offering her sweets or cakes whenever they were at hand, at least before they started rationing.
“I wish you had not had to see that,” he said. “You were watching, yes?”
She nodded.
“You’re like your parents. Strong and stoic. But you are even more so, I think. Are you sure you’re not a Chinese?”
“Maybe I am,” she said, playing along.
“Truly? Come closer. Let me see your eyes.”
She bent her head down toward him and he examined her as carefully and methodically as a physician might, slowly taking in her brow, her cheekbones, the shape and line of her eyes.
“Perhaps it is true. I see something now that I had not noticed before. Something about the inner part of your eyelids. They are not quite Occidental. They remind me of my niece’s, in fact, the way they make you both look a little sleepy.”
“My mother says that, too,” Sylvie said. “That I always appear tired.”
“But you’re a vigilant girl,” he said. “Always taking everything in. And it is good that you’re not as scared as I am.”
She immediately said she was scared, to try to comfort him.
“No, you’re not,” he said, faintly smiling, his eyes glassy from the drug. “Don’t worry. I don’t feel bad. I have never been much of a hero, that way. I always knew I was never going to be such a man.”
“You stood up to that horrible officer.”
“But see what it’s gotten me. And now what it has brought on the rest of you. On the mission. Perhaps he wouldn’t be forcing us out of our quarters had I simply let him in.”
But they both knew it likely wouldn’t have made a difference, and she didn’t try to say otherwise. The Japanese were becoming more and more brutal as they drove to make permanent their grip on the region. Manchukuo, as the Japanese called it, was now a reality. There were unverified accounts from peasants who had witnessed how they treated the soldiers of the Communists and the Kuomintang and the civilian resistance, rumors of how they tortured and executed their prisoners and innocent villagers. It was all part of what Tom Harris had been warning about, the shift from the years of minor skirmishes between the Chinese factions themselves and then against the occupiers to a steady tightening of Japanese control, of their total dominion over the region and its resources.
Just then the officer who had hurt Reverend Lum pressed up and peered into the window and he instinctively turned away, inadvertently knocking his broken wrist against the seat back. He cried out sharply. The officer made no expression but gazed at Sylvie with a look of mild surprise. The young soldier who was the driver of the car trailed him, shouldering two rucksacks; his face was badly swollen and reddened from a fresh beating, one of his eyes pinched nearly shut. Still, he followed his superior with the dutiful bearing of a porter, only his fur-lined cap slightly askew, and they walked directly to the Binets’ quarters, where her mother and father were trying to get their clothing and few possessions out of the room as quickly as possible. They were going in and out in turn, placing bags and loose shoes and sheets haphazardly out front, directly on the bare ground. The officer didn’t wait for them to finish, simply passing them and stepping in without pause, as if he had been living there always. Her mother glared at him, but her father tugged at her and they filled their arms with as much as they could hold and headed back toward the dining room.
Reverend Lum was crying now, curling up around his injury.
“What can I do?” she said, her heart galloping, racing.
“I don’t know,” he said, wincing, breathing rapidly through his teeth. “Could you give me another dose? Betty left the kit. There it is.”
On the dining table was the wooden box that held the ampoules and needles.
“I don’t know how to do it…”
“You saw Betty, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can, too.”
“I’ll go get Mrs. Harris!”
“All the soldiers are out there!” he gasped. “You must stay here, like your mother told you.”
She filled a syringe and tried to find a place on his arm where she could jab him as Betty Harris had, swiftly and surely. But his wrist was bandaged up and when she tried to remove his coat for a second time he wheezed sharply, his body stiffening against the pull of her hands.
“I’m so sorry, but there’s no place,” she said, his suffering making her heart race. “I don’t know where I should do it.”
“Underneath,” he rasped, tapping the bottom of his coat. “Do it underneath.”
She had to lift up his coat and loosen his belt. He then turned with great effort, freeing his trousers. She pulled out his shirttail and firmly held his bare hip and with her eyes shut jabbed him forcefully with a staccato strike, just as Betty Harris had done, injecting him high on his soft, almost fleshless rump. A thick dark drop of blood welled up around the point and she blotted it with a patch of linen from the kit, pressing it tightly. His body had tensed with the shot but had just as quickly relented, going completely limp, and his m
outh hung open slackly and for a moment she was afraid that she had killed him. She held his hand again, squeezing it to rouse him. Suddenly he exhaled with a visible shudder of his chest and his eyes went dull, and before disappearing again inside himself he whispered, “You did fine, my sweet girl, you did fine.”
THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON and night passed without incident. Dawn was now breaking, and the dining room was frigidly cold, the windows opaque with a frozen haze from their breathing. They had all gathered here as Sylvie’s father suggested and although the stove was kept lit most of the night (if very low, for the officer had his soldiers confiscate most of the mission’s coal, leaving them with a barrel the size of a large garden pot, and they had no idea how long it would have to last them), the fire had died out and no one could bear to stir from beneath the thin blankets. There were just the eight of them now, as the Chinese helper ladies and their children had been allowed to leave at dusk, Jane Binet sending the two orphans off with them. They had spread tablecloths on the rough plank floors about the stove (the chairs became uncomfortable after a while and Tom Harris had already noted they could burn them, if it came to it) and slept in a communal half-circle, only Benjamin Li lying slightly off by himself. The soldiers were bivouacked in their former rooms and in the main classroom on the other side of the wall. For much of the night they could hear them good-naturedly arguing and laughing as they played cards, their youthful voices and the burnt-hay smell of their low-grade cigarettes almost making it seem as if the soldiers and they were snowed in together in some rustic isolated dormitory. Outside, gusts of wind were casting sprays of dirt against the window, knee-high funnels of dust skittering about the empty courtyard. Across the way, in Sylvie’s family’s former sleeping quarters, the officer had spent the night, his driver having hung a tarpaulin over the window to screen the light.
Reverend Lum slept resting his head in his wife’s lap. Mrs. Lum was the only one who had remained sitting up, her back lodged against the inner wall, so that she could comfort her husband by stroking his forehead, his thinning hair. She was sleeping now with her head bowed far forward. Her husband’s wrist had bothered him all night-it had swelled into a purplish mass, the skin shiny from the extreme distention-and so Betty Harris gave him two separate, full doses of morphine. She was careful in the beginning because he had a weak heart, but the pain was so great that she couldn’t refuse him. Yet they all knew the anesthesia was not going to last. Her kit was meant for emergencies, and she estimated that she had only enough to keep him comfortable for the night and perhaps the next morning. Sylvie’s father, through Mrs. Lum, had informed the Japanese officer of this yesterday evening but he flatly refused to let anyone leave; in fact he had come to announce that he would be interviewing them again, this time the women as well, including Sylvie. Her father furiously insisted that the women be left alone, especially Sylvie, and for some reason the officer had finally assented, saying, “Okay, then,” in perfectly accented American English. Francis and Tom Harris were stunned silent for a moment but then barraged him with protestations; yet he would still not explain why he was again conducting the interrogations, and in the middle of their entreaties and arguments he simply walked out.
Tom Harris restarted the coal stove and set a kettle of water on top. Next door they could hear the yawns of soldiers and the tinkle of their mess kits and soon the smells of boiling rice and cigarettes came to them. Sylvie and her mother served tea and some leftover moon cakes for breakfast but no one was much hungry and they were all getting back under their blankets, to wait for the room to warm up, when a large, stoop-shouldered soldier came into the room. He pointed to Tom Harris and barked an order; apparently he was to be the first for reinterrogation. Harris rose slowly enough as to appear defiant. After kissing his wife he left with the soldier, but as the time kept passing Betty grew anxious, sitting against the wall with her knees up to her chin. Sylvie’s mother sat beside Betty and put her arm around the woman’s shoulder, to offer comfort.
Sylvie kept looking at Benjamin Li. His jaw was tensing, and when she tried to smile at him he could only grin tightly back at her. He took out his cigarette case and got up to smoke in the small vestibule that led out to the courtyard. Last night Tom Harris had asked him if he thought they might try to conscript him-many Chinese men had been forcibly enlisted by the Japanese, to fight against the Communists and elements of the Kuomintang or work as labor-but he was confident his passport would shield him. They had no cause to interfere with a British subject, though he had indeed heard of instances of foreign Chinese being conscripted. The idea of his being taken away by them was as horrifying to Sylvie as what had happened to Reverend Lum, and she wanted to tell him now that if the Japanese did try to take him she would attempt anything for him, to prevent it. Of course she knew the idea was pure silliness, but he should know her sentiment at least and she was waiting for a moment in which she could go and speak to him.
As if he sensed her wish, Benjamin caught her eye and she immediately rose and stepped out into the much colder vestibule. The others, resting quietly in the dim room, hardly seemed to notice. He was already smoking and she asked him if she could have one, too. Bright rays of light shot through gaps between the door and jamb and coolly illuminated the small space.
She had not smoked before and he regarded her with his bright eyes but then took out the case. “I should make you ask your parents, but I have a feeling they wouldn’t mind.” He showed her how to tap it, and when he lit it for her she tried to breathe it in as deeply as he did. She coughed terribly at first, and they both laughed. But she soon got accustomed to it, inhaling ever so gently, letting the smoke come out.
“Not bad,” he said.
“I’m almost fourteen,” she said. “When did you start?”
“I guess around your age.”
“You see? And I bet you didn’t have my life.”
“No, I didn’t. I grew up in one place. I didn’t see what you’ve seen. And I certainly wasn’t in a situation like this.”
“But I’m not scared,” she said.
“But you should be,” he told her firmly. “This is a very dangerous situation. Please don’t think anything else.”
She nodded, feeling chastised. They smoked for a while in silence, though the more she smoked the sillier she felt, like a girl playing dress-up. She dropped her cigarette and stamped it out.
“Listen,” he said kindly, his voice relaxed and low. “I wanted to tell you today, during the meal, that I’ve enjoyed our lessons together. You’re an excellent student, so good in fact that you make me think I’m a master teacher.”
“I’m excelling in mathematics, too?”
“Well,” he said, chuckling, “you know what I mean. You should seriously consider studying Classics when you enter university.”
“Maybe I could study in England,” she said. “You could be my instructor then.”
“That would be nice. But I doubt I’ll be able to get back there again.”
“Where will you go, I mean, after here?”
“I had hoped to settle in Shanghai, though it seems the Japanese aim to make everyone’s plans moot. In any case, you’ll require someone who’s twice the scholar I am, for what you’ll be reading.”
“I don’t care,” she said, feeling suddenly that she was losing control, her voice rising. “I don’t care about that at all.”
“Well, you should. By the time you get to university you’ll have equaled and likely surpassed me in your translations. I told your parents as much. They’re very proud of you, you know. Not only because of the Latin.”
“I’m just a burden to them.”
“You shouldn’t ever think that, Sylvie,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. His spectacles glinted with the reflected light. “That’s surely the furthest thing from the truth. If anything, one might say it’s been you who’s been burdened. I wonder if you ever minded being taken all over the world. Always moving around.”
“So
metimes I wish we could live in one place,” she said, though that wasn’t quite true. She never minded their missionary existence, as it was the only life she’d ever known. But until now “one place” had not included a person like Benjamin Li. “I wish we could all stay here.”
“You know that’s impossible now.”
“I know. I just don’t want to be sent off with the Harrises.”
“How I wish that were still an option. You probably should have left last week, when the Japanese first came through. I thought it then and should have told your parents. Really, all of you should have left then.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, but then didn’t offer any more of an answer. She asked him for another cigarette and he gave one to her. As she waited for him to light it she shivered and he leaned in close to her, cuffing his arm about her shoulders but very quickly letting go, like any teacher might.
“I have something for you,” he said. He reached into the pocket of his parka and gave it to her. It was a small brass medal attached to a striped silk band of blue and white.
“What was this for?” Sylvie asked, rubbing its embossed face with her thumb. “Were you a soldier once?”
“Oh, no,” he laughed. “It’s an academic medal, from my high school days. Though it was a military academy. For some reason they gave these out-to make our accomplishments seem heroic, I guess. They gave great big medals for athletics and martial exercises, but I’m afraid this one is merely for Greek and Latin. I want you to have it.”
“I shouldn’t take it.”
“Why not? I wanted to give you something for your Latin prowess, and this is just the thing. It would mean vastly more to me that you had it than my carrying it around. I just found it again this afternoon among my things and I realized I’d eventually just lose it. I’m hoping you’ll keep it safe for me. Then someday you can give it to someone else. Would you do that?”
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