“She’s in over her head, although of course she doesn’t think so. She thinks she’s doing well, surviving, getting in with those she thinks will be helpful.”
“What does she need?”
“It’s not what she needs. They’re asking her for things. Asking her for things that could compromise others.”
“That is dangerous,” Johnnie said simply. “She should watch out, and you too.”
“Yes,” Will said. “We will.”
“It’s almost time for supper,” Johnnie said, standing up. “Our brilliant cooks have invented a new dish that is startlingly good. Banana peel fried in peanut oil. If you close your eyes, it tastes like mushrooms. I can’t get enough of it.”
“Sounds good,” Will said. He was glad to stop talking about Trudy.
There were bad men.
Victor Chen, embracing Reggie Arbogast, both in the Western dress, the blue tropical wool suit, red tie. He had thrown a cocktail party for select Stanley survivors after the release. Not the riffraff, of course, but the doctors and the barristers and the company heads. He commiserated with them about what the war had done to them and their countries and plied them with champagne.
And imagine this. Governor Mark Young returning from his Malaya arrest to the site of his humiliation and that of his country. The war is over. Every effort is made to glorify the triumphant return. An RAF Dakota, escorted by Beaufighters and Corsairs of 721 Squadron. A dramatic landing at Kai Tak. Motorcycle escort back to the Pen, and then the ceremony. Guns, uniforms, pomp. He shakes the hand of community leaders, is welcomed back with speeches. And see Victor Chen there, reading a speech of his own, about Hong Kong’s fortitude and greatness of spirit.
Otsubo, reading documents in the dark, a table lamp illuminating only a small circle on the desk. His lips moving as he reads, Trudy and Dominick sitting next to each other on a bench in the office. They do not talk or look at each other. They wait for his signal.
There were dead men.
Was it his imagination? The sound of a man screaming. Will sat up in bed and tried to listen. The sound of the sea came in through the open window, but he did not hear anything else. A child cried out in his sleep. A mother shushed, drowsy.
In the morning, passing by, he discovered Johnnie gone from his room. The room was ripped apart, although the man was fastidious. The mattress lay half off the bed, sheets hanging off.
They brought Will to the interrogation rooms on the east side.
Johnnie, his eyes open, his shirt ripped and dirty. He lay on the floor of the room, a blanket thrown carelessly over him, with only a stool and a bare electric bulb. They had let Will in to see him, a warning, he supposed.
“He didn’t talk,” they said. “So this.”
“He didn’t know anything,” Will said.
“You say,” they said.
“He didn’t,” Will said.
“Do you?” they asked.
Dominick.
He screamed and begged and wheedled. Was prodded with the tip of a bayonet. His cheek scratched so blood beaded up. Then a pinkie finger broken with a mallet. Then all of the others. A week in the hole.
Denied everything. Confessed to everything.
Scratch the surface of a man. See what appears.
Wan Kee Liang, Trudy’s father.
Dead in his mansion on the Praia Grande, body wasted away, smell of urine soaking the sheets. A neglected corpse, not found for days.
There was a woman, disappeared.
Trudy clattering up the stairs of the gendarmerie headquarters on Des Voeux Road, stomach swollen, about to give birth.
Looking back to blow a kiss to Edwina Storch, who had accompanied her. Her look wistful, not condemning. We are condemned to repeat the past. Trudy’s mother, gone. Trudy, gone.
May 10, 1943
EDWINA STORCH was outside by suspect means, people whispered. She had parlayed a dead Finnish mother into a Free National passport and revoked her English citizenship. Mary Winkle had been corralled and sent to Stanley and Edwina sent her provisions as often as she could.
Spotting her on the street, Trudy went over to say hello. She had always had a soft spot for the idea of Edwina, although she had heard odd stories about her tenure at Glenealy Primary. She had apparently wielded her authority with a bit too much enthusiasm and not enough oversight. There had also been a story about a boy who had ended up in the hospital after a too vigorous disciplinary action, but that had been hushed up. He had been Eurasian, the father an English civil servant, the mother a local Chinese mistress, preferred but not legitimate. He hadn’t returned to the school.
“You’re out too?”
“Yes, thanks to my dear, departed mother. Finland.”
“Any way you can. It’s dreadful everywhere though, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but your relative Victor Chen has been very helpful to me. He has the magic touch and can procure anything!”
Trudy’s face darkened.
“For the right price, I’m sure. I’m glad he’s been helpful to someone.”
“You’re cousins, aren’t you?”
“Not exactly. I’m related to his wife, Melody. She’s in California right now. She’s going to have the baby there.”
Edwina’s eyes flickered down to Trudy’s own swollen belly.
“That works out well, I suppose.” Miss Storch lowered her voice. “Until everything here gets worked out, I mean.”
“Yes, well,” Trudy said. “I suppose it will all work out, won’t it?”
“Of course,” said the headmistress.
“Well,” Trudy said. “I hope I will see you around in this strange new world of ours. I’m just on my way to meet Dominick for lunch.”
“Give him my best,” the old lady said. “Yes, we will all get by.”
Trudy watched Edwina Storch walk away, with an odd look on her lovely face.
May 28, 1953
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON SUN, Will grunted and moved in bed, his sleep disturbed. His head was damp, perspiring in the midday heat. Claire clapped her hands, to see if she could rouse him, but Will just shifted again, whimpered.
She looked at his face, damp with sweat, his mouth moving almost imperceptibly in his sleep, and felt pity for him, for the first time.
“TOUCH ME, ” she says. Her voice is desperate. “I want to feel real again.”
He embraces her, holding her as tightly as he can.
“You don’t know what he made me do,” she says, muffled, into his shoulder. “You don’t know.”
“It’s all right,” he says. “Don’t worry.”
“It’s not all right!” she cries. “It’s not. You don’t know. If you knew, you’d never want to see me again, never touch me again. You could never look at me straight in the face.” She draws back and looks at him, searches his face.
He is quiet. She winces.
“I knew it,” she says. “I knew it. What did I expect?”
“I don’t know what you need from me,” he says.
“This is why I loved you so much,” she says. “Not only because you were so good and you didn’t need anyone and I thought I might be able to make you need me, but because . . .” and she’s crying, this Trudy he’s never seen, this Trudy who’s as fragile as gossamer and doesn’t care who sees it. “Because no one has ever loved me. They loved my money or the way I looked, or even the way I talked, because it made them think I was a certain way. Or my father, he loved me because he had to. My mother loved me but then she left. No one loved me for me, or thought I was more than a good distraction at a party. It’s the tritest thing in the world, isn’t it? But you loved me. You liked the person I was. I really felt that. And it was a revelation to me. But then, after Otsubo and after I asked you to get me the information, I saw that you changed. Or that your feelings changed. You didn’t love me in the same way anymore. I was changed in your eyes. I wasn’t that person you loved no matter what.” She wipes her eyes. They are red and swollen.
“Oh, I must look like a troll,” she says suddenly, the old Trudy surfacing for a moment. “So when that happened”—she takes a deep breath—“when that happened, Will, it all snapped into place.
“I had been playing at being this person I am when I’m with you, and all it took was a few weeks’ separation from you . . .”
“And a war,” he says. He doesn’t know where the words are coming from, where this mechanically speaking person has sprung from.
“Yes, a few weeks’ separation and a few well-equipped, menacing Japanese, and poof, I was back to being the old Trudy, who cared only about herself and her very malleable morals. And it felt right. It felt awful, but it felt right. I’m not who you think I am. I told you that before you left to go to the parade ground, and I wanted you to understand what I was saying. Did you? Did you?”
“I can’t be the one to absolve you, Trudy.”
She slaps him.
His hand goes up to his cheek, like a woman.
“I want to kill you, sometimes,” she says slowly. “You and your so-called morals.”
She turns around and tries to leave. He catches her elbow. “Even that,” she says, “is so false. It’s not worthy of you. Be a man and show what you really feel for me.” She stares at him. He cannot move. “I thought so.”
She turns back to the door.
“Thank you, Will,” she says quietly, with the back of her head to him. “I know where I stand. Thank you for releasing me.”
She has always been too strong for him.
The way we hurt the ones we love.
THE NIGHTMARES. The visions.
Men with their tongues burned, knees crushed, eyes gouged out, piled in heaps on the side of the road to Stanley, mothers covering their children’s eyes.
Girls in rooms with blank faces, torn dresses, bloody chunks of hair torn from their scalps, bruised legs slick with men’s fluids.
A door opened, a girl found tied to a desk, almost mute.
A body, sewn in Hessian, arms crossed, tipped into the sea, making barely a splash as it sinks down into the dark.
Ah Lok brushing Trudy’s hair in front of her dressing table. Methodical strokes, the glossy strands, the sound of bombs outside. Trudy applying lipstick. Her jasmine scent.
Dominick’s refined head, in front of Otsubo’s legs. His eyes meeting Will’s, opening wide in panic, then deadening to gray. He didn’t stop, he just closed his eyes. Will, leaping back instinctively, yet knowing not to slam the door, having the presence of mind to conceal his intrusion.
A baby, born in the middle of the night, given away to an indifferent nurse, never seen by its sedated mother.
A young woman, just back from California, still puffy from childbirth, with empty eyes, arms filled with another’s child.
June 2, 1953
A GOOD EVENING PARTY always gave off a glow. Drinks were refilled quickly, the food was abundant, the servants silent and efficient, and the guests all secure in the knowledge that they had been chosen to attend, that many others had been excluded and might wish to be here in their place.
The Chens’ coronation party gave off such a glow, even as Claire and Martin approached the front door.
Candles set in sand in small pots lit the driveway up to the house. Uniformed men whisked away the cars. Music tinkled in the background; the Chens had hired a string quartet, installed in the foyer, three sweaty Chinese men in dinner jackets and a tiny woman with a violin tucked under her birdlike chin. Their arms sawed back and forth, making the music seem more labor than art.
The hostess at the door, holding a glass of champagne, an apparition in a dress seemingly made out of silver.
“Hello, hello,” trilled Melody. “How lovely to see you all. Scepters for everyone.” She gestured to a bowl filled with wands. “We’re all queen today.”
“You’re so wicked!” rasped a rapier-thin blonde. “Another day, another party. I’ve seen you, what, three times already this week? At the Garden Park, at Maisie’s lunch, and at that little Italian in Causeway Bay? Who were you with, you minx? That was a very handsome man.”
“A cousin, of course.” Melody winked. “Family’s very important to me.”
“What nonsense we all talk!” said the blonde and swept on inside.
Martin and Claire stood together, waiting.
“Claire!” Melody said. “I’m so glad you could come.”
“Thank you so very much for having us,” Martin said. Claire could see he was uncomfortable and she was suddenly irritated with him for it.
“Nice to see you, Melody,” she said. “What a lovely party.”
Martin got them drinks and Claire stood in the living room she had been in so often before. It was alive, different, filled with people talking, laughing, leaning toward one another confidentially.
“I don’t know a soul,” Martin said when he returned. “Makes you wonder why they invited the piano teacher and her husband.”
“Martin!” Claire said. “You don’t need to feel that way.”
But Martin was right. The other guests at the party all knew one another and were not receptive to newcomers. Claire and Martin smiled and sipped their drinks in the corner, wholly ignored.
Martin gave up and went out to the garden to look at the flowers and the view of the harbor. Claire stood by herself for a moment and then went to inspect the photographs on the mantel that she had seen before.
Trudy was still there, in her swimsuit, laughing at the camera.
There was a group of four, talking about their last trip to London, the types with feathered hats and silk suits. Claire listened to their conversation, nursing her drink.
“But it was beastly. Service there is horrible after you’ve been in the Far East. You can’t imagine what they serve you for dinner, cold and awful, and they’re not in the least apologetic about it. The idea of service is dead in England. Grim, grim, grim. Much prefer it here where they take some pride in it.”
“And Poppy’s in London now, isn’t she? I wouldn’t be surprised if she were at Westminster Abbey now.”
“Oh, she’s horrible. I’m sure she’s tried everything to get herself in. I suppose we’ll have to hear about it when she comes back.”
Claire cleared her throat. One of the women, a buxom redhead, glanced over her shoulder, and continued talking.
From her position, Claire could see the two men facing her, and the two women with their backs to her. They were all English. She would have thought the Chens would have invited more locals.
“Is Su May coming today?” the redhead asked the other woman, a younger blonde with a bob. The men left to refresh their drinks.
“I don’t think so. I think she and Melody had a falling out.”
“Really? Do tell!”
“The usual. You know”—the blonde’s voice dropped—“Melody is just impossible these days, so forgetful and rude. I had a lunch for the Garden Club on Thursday, and she didn’t let me know if she was able to come, never showed up, and then never said anything about it! I don’t know what’s going on with her these days.”
“The OBE’s gone to her head!”
Even lower. “Isn’t it funny how the most local people are the most Anglophilic?”
“I know, darling. Look around! We could be in Mayfair!”
“But you know, it’s unusual for locals to host anything at their house. I think this is the first Chinese house I’ve been in since I’ve been here.”
“Victor is good at hedging his bets. He’s having another party tomorrow, for an entirely different crew, but not at his house, at the club, with mah-jongg afterward and everything.”
“His own kind.”
“I don’t know how Melody puts up with that man. He’s the most obvious, venal person Charles has ever dealt with, he says.”
“But, you know, I’ve wondered. They say, opium . . .”
The two women stopped talking as another woman passed by and said hello. They swooped and rustled and p
ecked at one another like birds.
“Lavinia! ”
“Maude!”
“Harriet!”
Claire slipped away.
Later, she found herself talking to Annabel, a frosted champagne-blond American from Atlanta, Georgia, who was in Hong Kong with her husband, Peter, who was with the State Department.
“What’s your story, darlin’? ” Annabel asked. Her eyes were bright with alcohol, her hair in a beehive.
“I am here with my husband, who’s with the Water Department,” Claire said.
“All these departments!” Annabel hooted. “The State! Water! Make sure it’s in the pipes!”
“Er, yes,” Claire said. She never knew how to talk to Americans, who were so informal, or what to say to their odd exclamations.
“And you, what do you do to pass the time? Do you have children?”
“No,” Claire said. “Do you?”
“I have four, all under five. I keep popping them out and Peter’s ready to strangle me. I tell him, I wasn’t the only one involved here, you know? At least here, we have all the amahs. Back home, it’s not like this.”
“Have you been long in Hong Kong?” Claire asked politely.
“Three years. Had Jack here, thank God he was a Cesarean . . .” The woman chattered on and on, buoyed by her own effervescence, and Claire listened, glad to have an excuse to stand quietly and not look awkward.
Martin found her later, waiting by the powder room.
“Hullo,” he said. “Ready to leave soon?”
She nodded.
“I’ll be right out.” She ducked into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She felt as if she were waiting for something to happen.
Later, she heard the redhead and the blonde, Maude and Lavinia, discuss her.
“Who was that woman lurking around?”
“I think I heard Melody say she’s the piano teacher.”
“Really?”
The Piano Teacher Page 26