Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘The captain, the only European on board, was Portuguese and spoke no English, except to introduce himself as Alfredo de Suza and to tell me he came from Angola in Africa. The crew were Chinese, but spoke in the Ningpo dialect I was unable to understand. A plate of food – boiled rice and Chinese vegetables – was silently placed at the door of my tiny cabin at noon each day, and twice a day, in the morning and evening, a jug of water appeared. I remember I used the paraffin in the lantern in my cabin in an attempt to rid my hair of lice, which proved successful but extremely unpleasant, and I must have looked an awful mess.

  ‘We sighted Hong Kong in the late afternoon four days later, and anchored in the harbour. Early in the evening a middle-aged Englishwoman, dressed in a poorly cut woollen checked suit, lisle stockings and sensible black shoes – quite inappropriate for the humid Hong Kong evening – came aboard, having travelled out to the Eastern Star in a motorboat. She introduced herself to me as Sister Bradshaw, and said she had instructions to take me to a private nursing home. She was brusque and efficient and paid the captain a sum of money, counting out several large, white English five-pound notes into his palm. “Come along, dear,” she said, taking my arm as we slowly descended the ship’s ladder to where a Chinese boatman waited in the motorboat to steady me as I came aboard.

  ‘There seemed no point in asking questions, but I did ask Sister Bradshaw in the taxi after we’d come ashore who might have made the arrangements for me. “I haven’t the slightest idea, my dear,” she replied crisply, explaining no further. I had no choice but to trust her as we continued silently on our way.

  ‘I was close to nine months pregnant when I entered the Happy Valley Nursing Home near the Hong Kong racecourse of the same name. That is, nine months from the time I had farewelled Sir Victor “appropriately” before he’d left for Hong Kong and nine months from the time I had been raped by Smallpox “Million Dollar” Yang.

  ‘I was well cared for by the staff of the nursing home, who addressed me scrupulously and without exception as Countess Lenoir-Jourdan despite my asking them to call me by my given name. It soon became apparent that both doctors and nursing staff had been told not to ask any questions by the inestimable Sister Bradshaw, who turned out to be a midwife specially employed to take care of me and who wasn’t a permanent member of the nursing staff. As far as I was concerned she was completely in charge. The other staff soon grew to fear her censorious tongue and to understand that I was a special patient. Only a few days after I arrived at the nursing home, just after two o’clock in the afternoon, to the frequent cheering of the nearby racecourse crowd, I went into labour.’

  Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan paused, reflecting. ‘It isn’t necessary to go into details, but it is important for you to know that a screen was placed halfway across the bed so that I was unable to see the birth take place.’ She laughed. ‘As any woman who has given birth will tell you, it’s not a process where you can assume the role of indifferent observer, but the whole event, excluding the pain, was kept from my observation. After almost twelve hours of labour, at two o’clock in the morning, the baby was born. I was exhausted when the screen was finally removed for me to see Sister Bradshaw holding up my baby, still covered in its birth blood, by the ankles. She slapped its tiny bottom and moments later I heard its first cry.

  ‘“What is it?” I asked.

  ‘“You have a daughter, my dear,” she said in her usual brusque manner and without a smile. She really was a cold fish.

  ‘“No! What is it?” I cried, exhausted.

  ‘“A little girl,” came the answer again. She then instructed, “No more questions, my dear, you have to rest!” Then she turned to the young nurse and instructed her to replace my screen and give me a sleeping pill to allow me to sleep while I was being “seen to”.

  ‘The nurse brought me a glass of water and made me take the pill. I asked again, “What is it?” I simply couldn’t bring myself to say, “Is she Chinese?” The young Chinese nurse giggled. “Girl child, velly pretty,” she said. Then she replaced the screen. The last thing I recall was my legs being removed from the stirrups on either side of the bed.

  ‘I slept fitfully and awoke at about seven in the morning and rang the buzzer beside my bed. A nurse soon appeared and I asked if I might see my baby. “I’ve just come on shift, Countess Lenoir-Jourdan. I’ll go and ask the day sister – Sister Bradshaw has gone home,” she said.

  ‘Nearly half an hour passed and then a doctor entered my room, along with the matron. The doctor carried a pillowcase that obviously contained something. I took one look at them and asked fearfully, “What’s happened?”

  ‘The matron took my hand and the doctor, an older and not terribly pleasant man appropriately surnamed Evinrude who’d attended me during my stay, placed the pillowcase at the end of the bed and said, “I’m afraid it isn’t good news.”

  ‘Before he could say any more, I cried out in a panic again. “What? What’s happened? Is my baby dead?”

  ‘“Your baby has been abducted,” he said. He didn’t wait for my reaction, but continued, “We’ve telephoned Sister Bradshaw but there was no answer. We sent a man around to her address, but the flat she evidently occupied was vacated yesterday and the Chinese caretaker was given no forwarding address.” He cleared his throat. “Because of the special circumstances and instructions we were given when you arrived, we need your permission to call the authorities.”

  ‘“Are you suggesting that I know about this?” I wept, too upset to show how appalled I was at the implied suggestion.

  ‘He simply shrugged. “Our instructions were that under no circumstances are we to alert the authorities that you are in Hong Kong. Nor is the birth of the baby to appear on the hospital register.” Then he added, in a pragmatic voice, “Unwanted babies are not unusual among the rich and famous . . . the aristocracy. We were told to await further instructions after the birth.”

  ‘I was desperately trying to gather my wits together, to stop crying, to think. Tearfully I turned to the matron and asked, “The baby, how did it look? Was it . . . ” I hesitated, “Caucasian?”

  ‘She looked at me sympathetically and put her arm around me. “We don’t know. Your child was under the supervision of Sister Bradshaw, who, I believe, bathed, prepared and wrapped the baby herself. I shall ask one of the night staff when they come in.”

  ‘“The Chinese nurse who gave me the sleeping pill, she said my baby was very pretty – she’ll know,” I choked.

  ‘“We’ll ask her when she comes in tonight,” the matron said, removing her arm and pouring a glass of water from the carafe on the bedside table and handing it to me.

  ‘I gulped down the water, my mind racing, stumbling about and confused. Did I want the child if it was the result of being raped by Smallpox “Million Dollar” Yang? Yes, I did! I answered myself almost immediately. Children aren’t born evil. The abduction – no, I must call it by the real name, kidnapping – was this done to Sir Victor’s instructions? It was obvious, wasn’t it? He must have been responsible for making the arrangements to get me to Hong Kong and into the nursing home. But if so, why would he take my child away from me? I’d signed the document. Surely he wouldn’t have arranged for the child to be killed simply to protect the Sassoon name? If so, why the document? Was it to be used in the event of an inquiry? I simply couldn’t bring myself to believe this was possible. He was a powerful taipan from a rich and famous family, certainly capable of being ruthless, but he was an honourable man and a gentleman. He was rumoured to have had several illegitimate children with Chinese women – a fact he never confirmed nor denied. I couldn’t believe he would murder my child or even allow her to go to some institution for an anonymous adoption. Why would he want to take my child away from me? Nothing made sense. If the hospital brought the authorities in, would I not be arrested and returned to Shanghai to face trial?

  ‘“There is another matter,” the doctor said, whereupon he reached for the pillowcase on the bed, which,
in my panic and despair, I’d forgotten about. “This was left in the newborn . . . in your baby’s crib,” he declared. From the pillowcase he withdrew the persimmon box with the carving of the dragon’s head on the lid. He handed it to me.

  ‘I opened the lid and inside was the blonde plait of hair Madame Peroux had cut from my head when I was sixteen years old. It also contained a note sealed with Big Boss Yu’s chop. I broke the seal and read the Chinese characters.

  The good joss will return in one generation.

  ‘Big Boss Yu had stolen my child, believing she would bring back his luck as her mother had once done.

  ‘“Please, do not call the authorities,” I begged Dr Evinrude.

  ‘Then, turning away with my face buried in the pillow, I wept.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Curse of the Ticking Clocks

  The latest chapter in the story of Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had astounded Jimmy and me. I guess it takes a woman to truly understand what it must mean to lose a child. A child dying at birth is a tragedy one might hope to eventually get over. But to know that somewhere you have a daughter, and not know how she is being cared for or even who fathered her, was too horrendous to contemplate.

  With the communist victory in China in 1949, the Triads had been hunted, arrested, tried and executed – but, of course, only the little fish were caught. The dragonheads escaped – some to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang Government, others to Hong Kong. In 1952 Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had found a mention of the death of Big Ears Du reprinted in the Melbourne Daily News, credited to the Wall Street Journal.

  Noted Tong Leader Dead

  hong kong, june 6

  The notorious Chinese gangster Big Ears Du Yu-sen died in Hong Kong yesterday of natural causes. Born in southern China (date unknown) he reigned as the drug tsar and crime boss of Shanghai until the communist takeover in 1949. In Hong Kong he is believed to have been the leader of the secret Triad society involved in drugs, kidnapping, brothels, gambling dens, murder and extortion. Du Yu-sen was never convicted of any criminal offence in Hong Kong, although at the time of his death a factory believed to be owned by him, and concerned with the manufacture of roulette wheels, was being investigated for money laundering by the Hong Kong Police Department.

  MELBOURNE D AILY N EWS, 6 June 1952

  So Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan knew one of the dragonheads was dead but had no idea of where Big Boss Yu had fled or whether he had been captured and executed by the communists, though the chances of the latter happening were extremely unlikely. Like Big Ears Du, he had probably escaped to Hong Kong. She knew that the two dragonheads had established their organisations in Hong Kong as early as the Japanese attack on Shanghai in 1932. Shanghai had been bombed but the attempt by the Japanese to capture it had been repulsed; nevertheless, the attack had served as a warning. The two gangsters had prudently followed many of the European taipans and made Hong Kong a bolthole, which proved a wise decision.

  Most importantly of all, she didn’t know where her daughter was – or even if she was alive. If still living she would have been seventeen years old when the communists took over. Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan could never return to pre-communist China, as technically she was still an escaped drug smuggler. The communist victory wouldn’t have helped her, either. If she had somehow managed to get to Shanghai before the bamboo curtain came down and westerners could no longer enter China, she would have fared no better. The communist government, who understandably saw opium as the root of all evil, would be almost certain to find her guilty. As she was a known associate of one of the two notorious dragonheads, they would not be overly concerned with the niceties of a proper trial. She would be summarily pronounced guilty by the people’s court and executed, to become a scapegoat for the second time and for an entirely different purpose.

  It was difficult to believe that she’d been caught up in so much suffering and despair – while on the island, she’d always been seen as the somewhat prim and immensely proper English music teacher, librarian and justice of the peace. Now it was 1954 and she was still bound by the same constraints as when she had escaped from Shanghai in 1932 and was unlikely ever to see her daughter or even know which of the two men had fathered her. Somewhere in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan there existed a young woman who was the illegitimate daughter of a Russian countess and an English aristocrat, a man who belonged to one of the world’s richest and most illustrious British families; or, alternatively, there existed the half-caste daughter of a consummately evil Chinese peasant and member of the Triads and Lily No Gin, the stateless White Russian refugee. To make matters worse, there was the terrible thought that Smallpox ‘Million Dollar’ Yang, who had raped her, may have taken the place of Big Ears Du as dragonhead in Hong Kong.

  There were only two possible reasons why Big Boss Yu would have abducted her child. The first was that he believed her presence in his life would bring him good fortune, as her mother’s had done. The second possible explanation for the abduction was that he wished to demonstrate his infinite power over Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan by abducting and killing the result of her disloyalty to him. But she knew how the Chinese mind worked, and the second reason was the less likely. He would see a female child as worthless. By removing her he would not be punishing her mother. A daughter was ‘a waste of rice’, and to leave her with her mother would be seen by him as a far more suitable revenge than abduction. Furthermore, he would have known about the rape, and probably instigated it. The presence of any child to have resulted from such retribution would be a reminder of the bitter experience every day of her life. The Countess concluded that her daughter could only have been kidnapped for superstitious reasons.

  She was also aware that if the child had survived, her life would have been devoid of love. To a Chinese peasant, especially one who had become as rich and powerful as a dragonhead, any female – his own daughter included – would be seen as unworthy of affection. The child would serve only one purpose – to exist as his living talisman. He would see her in the same way as if she were simply an object. If a female child grew up to be plain-faced, she was condemned to a life of drudgery; if pretty, she became a commodity to be sold as a concubine or a prostitute in a sing-song house. If a half-caste, pretty or not, she would be despised and treated worse than a dog. Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan’s daughter’s only chance of survival depended on Big Boss Yu’s profound and all-embracing superstition. If he believed the child to be the source of his good joss, then she would be safe. Which seemed to be what his message – ‘The good joss will return in one generation’ – included in the persimmon dragon box suggested.

  All these details of Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan’s story came to me bit by bit, the result of my usual hunger for even the smallest facts. Whenever an opportunity arose to prise more information I would urge her to continue with the details of her life before she arrived on Queen Island. Sometimes she would simply answer a question and I’d have a sentence or two to store away. It was a bit like attempting to complete a jigsaw puzzle and finding another bit that fitted into the picture.

  There were other occasions when she’d talk of her past to both Jimmy and me at length. Her escape from Hong Kong came to us when she invited us to lunch, ostensibly to discuss some aspect of our partnership. It was a lovely afternoon, and after lunch we sat in her garden looking out to sea, where several fishing boats were returning to the harbour. She casually mentioned how the junks of Victoria Harbour, between Hong Kong and Kowloon, had never ceased to fascinate her, and of course I immediately seized the opportunity. ‘You’ve never told us about the time you spent in Hong Kong.’

  We must have caught her in exactly the right mood, because she said, laughing, ‘Oh, Jack, your wanting to know every detail can be quite irksome at times!’

  ‘Me also, Countess,’ Jimmy added, to encourage her. ‘You in dat nursing home . . .’ but he wasn’t able to complete the sentence. The subject of her lost daughter always proved a delicate one. We knew she felt
guilty that she’d made no effort to find her, even though it was obvious that there was nothing she could do. If she had gone back to Shanghai she would have had no chance of finding the child, and the attempt would almost certainly have cost her her life.

  ‘There’s one thing that puzzles me – that Sister Bradshaw. She just doesn’t make any sense,’ I prompted.

  ‘You’re quite right to be puzzled, Jack. There is an explanation, but some parts of it are decidedly open to conjecture. You’ll understand it better if I begin right after Sister Bradshaw kidnapped my baby and the dragon box was returned to me.’

  She sighed before beginning the next chapter of her tale. ‘I have spent the past twenty-two years agonising over my decision not to report the abduction of my child to the police. I made this decision for a number of reasons, which I’d prefer not to go into, except to say that I was confused and frightened and, I dare say, over the years in Manchuria and China I had been sufficiently indoctrinated in the way the Chinese think to know that the child would never be found. Or if she was found, would certainly be dead.

  ‘From the moment I was woken by the three female guards in Lunghua Prison I had no further say in what happened to me. When Sister Bradshaw appeared on the deck of the Eastern Star, I simply assumed that it was part of the plan to get me to Hong Kong. As you already know, I had no papers, so I wouldn’t have been able to get past customs without questioning and possible detainment. I drew similar conclusions about my arrival at the nursing home – someone was taking care of me, and I was convinced it was John Roberston on behalf of Sir Victor.’

  ‘But why would they then kidnap your baby?’ I asked.

  ‘Exactly – they would have done no such thing. You must remember that almost immediately after I awoke from the effects of the sleeping pill I was confronted by Dr Evinrude and the matron, told of the abduction and presented with the dragon box. I was in no fit state to respond other than in sheer terror to tell them not to call the police. I was given a strong sedative and it would have been at least a day later that my head was sufficiently clear to ask questions.