The Piano Teacher
Page 31
At home, she sometimes wears the black trousers and white tunics—the amah uniform—as night clothes and finds them oddly comfortable. They are made of light cotton and are very inexpensive. The shop owner had assumed she was buying them for her amah and kept asking how tall, gesturing with her hands. Claire held the cloth against her frame and nodded her head. The first day she spent in her flat, she walked down to the local street barber and sat down, much to his surprise, and asked him to cut her hair short all around.
And she knows the streets of the town—Johnston, Harcourt, Connaught—and how to say them in Cantonese. They are like a web of veins emanating out from Central to Repulse Bay, the Peak, Mid-Levels, places she rarely goes now, places filled with English people and the lives they lead. She runs into people she knows now and then, and they always ask how she is doing, in that searching, curious way, and she just nods and says fine, she is doing fine, enjoying the city very much. But are you going home? they ask, and she says no, she has no plans to go home at the moment.
She is talked about less and less. She is becoming a part of some old history that will soon be forgotten, and this suits her well.
Sometimes she is lonely, but she frequents the library at the Auxiliary, taking out three or four books at once. There are so many things to know and learn. She reads about Beethoven, Chinese rice farming, biographies of English prime ministers, and finds comfort in the fact that she will never run out of books. There is also a piano there, and the manageress has told her she can play after hours if she arranges it beforehand. She has been going there in the early evening, when the heat is less, and playing for an hour or so, while the staff cleans up around her. She goes late enough so that all the women she would know have already finished with their tea and gone home to prepare for supper, husbands and children gathering at home, filling the rooms with chatter and noise, so unlike her own.
Martin is still in Hong Kong, as far as she knows. She had stayed at the flat with him for a few days while she was finding her own quarters, a request she had brought up when he had come home, ashen-faced, after the party. He had not said yes but he did not say no. She knew it was more than generous of him. She had poured neat whiskey into two glasses and sipped it with him in silence. She remembered still his posture. He sat heavily at the table, drinking slowly, and fingered the edge of the linen coaster. Yu Ling hovered excitedly near the kitchen door, listening for anything, having already been informed by telephone, before either had arrived home, of the scandalous situation through the lightning-quick amah network.
And he hadn’t had the stomach for questions. He wanted her to volunteer the information but she could not bring herself to talk to him. For the first few days, his cold silence when he returned home was welcome; it was when he began to try to talk to her and understand what had happened that she couldn’t stand it. She slept on the sofa in the living room, and tried to wake before Yu Ling got up, so that she could put away the pillow and the blankets, but too often she had seen the amah’s curious eyes watching her as she woke. She supposes, in Yu Ling’s world, such a situation would be settled with a chopper, and that she and Martin seem bloodless, bizarre to her.
Then Martin: “Were you unhappy?” The first sentence he had spoken to her since that night. He had come into the living room from their bedroom; she had been reading.
And what could she have said? She put down her book and tried to think of the answer. She found the question too prosaic, and hated herself for that.
“I needed to believe there was more to life.” Said simply. The fanciful notion an affront to good values, and she all too aware of it.
“Where did you go?” His second question. He sat down at the dining room table, far from her. He rubbed at his eyes.
She explained. She had walked outside the Chens’ house. It was hot, as usual, and she had no car. So she walked down May Road, the windy, narrow street carved out of the mountain—a snake of a road—until it became Garden Road and she got to Central. By then, she was very hot, so she went into a bakery and drank some cool tea. Her head had been filled with a white noise, similar to when she had fainted outside the Chens’ house earlier. Then, not knowing where to go, she had just continued east, found herself in Wan Chai, and found the commotion and bustle soothing. With so much activity around her, the frenzy inside her had quieted. And she had looked around, and thought, I could live here.
“I think I found myself too apparent in the world, after what happened at the party, and I want to be invisible for a little bit,” she told Martin. “There was too much going on, and I don’t know why I’m a part of it, but I am. And I realize that you must feel the same way, and for that, I apologize.”
He stared at her—this unworldly young woman he had brought over from England—and realized he had no idea who she was.
So, she left as soon as she could. She packed up her belongings and got a taxi while he was at work. She hugged Yu Ling, feeling the amah’s slight frame under her embrace and an unexpected sadness at leaving her, this life. But she was now finally convinced that people got what they expected from life. Martin had never expected to find love, and so, ultimately, he would be all right. She would not be his great disappointment in life, his tragedy. That would come from somewhere else and she realized with relief she was not responsible for even knowing what that might be. She herself hadn’t known what to expect from life, and still didn’t. Her life was, is still, a work in progress.
She supposes that she is becoming a cliché, a woman “gone native,” someone who eschews her own kind. Amelia, her old acquaintance, had come to see her in her flat and could not quite hide the shock at the circumstances she had found Claire in. She had fluttered around the small space, given her a jar of strawberry preserves and some soaps, and never returned. Claire supposes Amelia dined out on the story for several weeks after. This does not bother her in the least.
Last week she had taken a small bag of costly jewelry, scarves, and trinkets and given it to the local secondhand shop. The woman who had taken the items looked befuddled and at a loss as to what to do with them, amid the dusty, inexpensive sweaters and used pots. Claire hadn’t known what else to do with them. As she walked out the door, she felt her mood lift, and she became light.
Now she pauses, looks out the window to the busy streetscape outside. Cars traverse the streets, the red taxis crossing lanes with double-decker trams tethered to their cables, a few men on bicycles. The sky is blue, delineated by the tops of the low buildings with their antennae and rooftop clotheslines. The pungent air from the road rises and enters through her window. A scene she could never have imagined just two years ago.
And a simple knowledge is what sustains her through all of this: that all she needs to do is step out onto that street and she will dissolve into it, be absorbed in its rhythms and become, easily, a part of the world.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank so many people:
My agent, Theresa Park, without whose support and gentle encouragement this novel might still be a jumble of notes on my computer. She has been with me from the first pages of this book.
Abby Koons, Julian Alexander, Rich Green, Sam Edenborough, Nicki Kennedy, and Amanda Cardinale.
Kathryn Court, my wise and elegant editor.
Clare Ferraro for her early and unwavering support.
The amazing team at Viking: Alexis Washam, Carolyn Coleburn, Louise Braverman, Ann Day, Nancy Sheppard, Paul Slovak, Isabel Widdowson, and so many others.
Clare Smith and the wonderful team at Harper Press UK for their enthusiasm and guidance.
Pat Towers, who showed me graciousness, always, while teaching me nuance.
Abigail Thomas, who encouraged me with cake, good judgment, and kind words.
Chang-rae Lee for advice both writerly and practical, always on-point.
Elaina Richardson for the time at Yaddo
For friendship and encouragement, and understanding: Mimi Brown, Deborah Cincotta, Rachael C
ombe, Kate Gellert, Katie Rosman, Sarah Towers, Daphne Uviller.
I read many books about this period in World War II in both the New York Public Library and the Special Collections Library at Hong Kong University. In particular, I learned much about the time from Emily Hahn’s excellent memoir, China to Me, and the colorful Prisoner of the Turnip Heads by George Wright-Nooth with Mark Adkin.
I also spent many hours working in various rooms at the New York Public Library, the New York Society Library, and Hong Kong University Library and thank them for being open to the public and providing space for writers to work.
My mother, father, and brother and his family.
The extended Bae family.
My children, who give me joy every day and put everything in perspective.
And most important, my husband, Joe, who is my best friend, my better half, and who supports me with an unstinting love and generosity that I am grateful for every day.