The Harbour

by Francesca Brill

  This second book, Inside Hong Kong, had been intended as a pressing analysis of political life in Hong Kong during the China crisis, but her inclusion of the birth of Hal had placed her in the harsh spotlight of gossip-mongering, prurient pundits. Once the supposedly shameful story had found its way into the national debate, she and Hal had taken refuge at her parents’ home in Utica. The scandal had broken around her like a tidal wave and when it became clear that the undertow was too strong to resist, she had come out of hiding fired up with a new anger. Who were these people to judge her? How dare they rain contempt on her? What gave them the right to the moral high ground? And the fact that she had not even hinted at her own true suffering gave her the confidence to answer all the finger-pointers. Uninhibited? If only they knew the half of it.

  ‘So, Stevie Steiber, first of all may I congratulate you on being free.’

  ‘You may, of course. Thank you.’ She smiled, charm itself. ‘But let’s not forget freedom is a relative concept.’

  The presenter, having been warned that Stevie could be a tricky interviewee, steeled himself. Without missing a beat, his silky purr of a voice rolled on. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But secondly I’d like to congratulate you on your splendid book. It is of course rather, how shall I put this? Uh – racy. . . .’ His pauses were purposeful, his implication clear. Stevie looked at him without answering. Sensing that silence, that most feared taboo of radio, was threatening to fill the studio he rapidly picked up again.

  ‘I’m sure our listeners would be interested to hear about your experience of being taken into the very bosom of Chinese life. For instance, strange to relate, you were even married to a Chinese man?’

  Raising her eyebrows and ignoring his explicit contempt, Stevie shot back. ‘I suppose you mean you’re curious about sex?’

  Caught out by her bluntness – sex, she had used the word sex, oh my God, and it was only mid-afternoon! – the presenter stuttered live on air for the first time since he had misread a weather report when he was a rookie announcer at a station in Colorado. ‘Well, no, no, I –’

  But Stevie, her eyes glinting with mischief, was not to be stopped. ‘It’s a funny thing, mankind’s fascination with the sexual behaviour of another race. You know, the first thing the Belgians do when they get to the Congo is sprint to the nearest brothel to find out if it’s true what they say about African women.’

  The interviewer made desperate signals to his producer, aware that his glittering career on this flagship New York station was utterly dependent on the good will of the housewives who tuned in, and for whom this conversation was spinning in quite the wrong direction.

  ‘And the first thing you American men do on arrival in Shanghai is ask if what you’ve heard about Chinese girls is true. . . .’

  Now the producer was on his feet behind the glass, gesticulating wildly to shut her up.

  ‘And you know something else? I heard exactly the same stories about the African girls and their sexual prowess as I did about the Chinese girls.’

  The interviewer signalled back at the box, a neck-slitting motion. Hal waved happily at the grimacing man, who had just registered that Miss Steiber had said that word again and that he was surely on his way back to the late-night slot.

  ‘And the funny thing is the Chinese men told me the same stories. Only this time it was about the white people. You’d be pretty pleased to hear how prodigious the Chinese imagine you white men to be.’

  The smile had not left her face. This was the most fun she had had in a long time. A sheen of sweat lay on the interviewer’s fine features as he tried to regain his vocal composure.

  ‘So, Miss Steiber, as we were saying, it was against all the odds that you survived the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.’

  ‘It was. But there are thousands of other people, Chinese people, British, Russians, Americans still trying to survive. And do you know what? The most important thing I have to share with you and your listeners today is that I’m more convinced than ever that there are no victors in war. We can hardly stand on moral high ground, having just unleashed the atom bomb on a civilian population.’

  Alarmed at the mention of news that was still so fresh and contentious, he tried to interrupt, but she was still talking. ‘Do you know what I’ve learned? I’ve learned that courage is an ordinary thing. It belongs to the most surprising people. I’ve seen it. To many listeners here in the States it’s possible that the war seems distant. When we hear the numbers of those murdered in the conflict it sounds like mathematics and not like human beings. Human flesh. Human hearts. Those with loved ones abroad will know what I’m talking about. And now – now there are hundreds of thousands more victims. Just nine days ago women were preparing their children’s meals or clearing up their breakfasts and children were in the first few minutes of their lessons in school, getting out their exercise books and settling down to the day.’ Her voice was low and brimming with passion. Even the interviewer was leaning in closer to her, drawn like a herring on the line. ‘In not one but two terrible blasts their – and our – worst nightmare has come to pass. I’ve witnessed the immorality of warfare and even I would not wish such a fate on the families of the men who caused me such pain.’ The bitter smell of Shigeo constricted her throat and she paused.

  Taking advantage of the moment and unable to bury his natural vindictiveness, the radio man interrupted her. ‘Noble sentiments. But isn’t it a bit rich, Miss Steiber, if I may say so, for you to be making moral judgements? After all, some of our listeners may feel that your own personal morals leave something to be desired.’

  She leaned forward, the fire of battle in her eyes. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  He felt certain he had regained the upper hand. ‘You have a son.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you are not married.’

  ‘That’s right. Do you have a point?’

  The woman was shameless, and feeling the ground shifting under him once again, the interviewer glanced in desperation at his producer, who pointed at the large clock on the back wall and held up two fingers. Two minutes. He turned back to his loathsome guest.

  ‘Did you – uh – did you bring back many interesting recipes for Chinese dishes?’

  But Stevie was not to be thwarted. ‘My private life is none of anybody’s goddamn business and if what you are implying is true, if the people of New York, of this great nation, have even the slightest interest in or opinion about my personal morals I would be very surprised. It is the moral hypocrisy of this country that is disturbing and frankly hard to believe.’

  His voice, when he had recovered, was firm and authoritative, the kind of voice he did best, the one that had guaranteed him his career and the attention of star-struck younger men in the darkened corners of bars. ‘Thank you, Miss Steiber. It’s been most fascinating but regretfully that’s all we have time for today.’

  Stevie pulled off her headphones and made her escape, pulling on the heavy soundproofed door with both hands. It swooshed shut behind her. The interviewer’s voice, smooth as cream, poured through his microphone.

  ‘Next week we’ll be talking to Priscilla James about her cat sanctuary on Long Island.’

  Hal’s small, hot hand was curled in hers. She slowed her pace to match his. Now they were a block clear of the radio station her anger had faded to a familiar background hum. She took some deeper breaths and, though the air caught in her chest, she felt better. What was the rush after all? They had the whole afternoon.

  New York still thrilled her. Two years of it had not dulled her appetite for its energy. At first she had loathed the childish enthusiasm and persistently positive outlook of her compatriots. They seemed like an insult to the life she had lived, the life that was real and vile and stinking and brutal. The American determination to see the sunny side, to believe the best, to assume a bright future, had sickened her. Hiding in her parents’ home, sleeping in the bedroom she had shared with her sisters as a child and waking every
day to the smell of coffee and the sound of birdsong, was so surreal that she had drifted through the formless days as if hallucinating.

  Her family had circled her warily. She may have been the prodigal daughter, but it took much longer than anyone might have anticipated for them all to come to a working understanding of each other’s needs. Her mother’s intolerable piety towards her and Hal filled her with resentment. Stevie could not bear the way her mother wore her new-found open-mindedness so stoically. She would have found it much easier to deal with indignation rather than this self-conscious kindness. In the end they had come to an accommodation. Her mother behaved as if her daughter were a tragic widow not a sinful single mother, and Hal – the ‘poor little mite’ – was a kind of orphan, not a bastard. Stevie kept her irritation out of sight, but she could not bring herself to be grateful, which was what she knew her mother wanted above all else.

  In those first strange months Stevie would sit in the garden under the canopy of the elm tree while the weather was warm. Hours would pass in a daze while Hal was fussed over by his grandmother. Then one day she had started writing again and she had not been able to stop. She was compelled to it. She wrote longhand, unable to bear the sight of the typewriter that had accompanied her through her previous life. And it was only when, nearly a year later, she had come to the end of her story that she was able to emerge blinking into the balmy spring air, a new version of herself.

  The thought that this spasm of writing might become a book had not been the point. When a small, local publishing company had asked to see what she was working on she had given it to them without overly considering the possible outcome. They quietly published Inside Hong Kong and copies were displayed in the bookstore in Utica for a few weeks before being retired to the bookshelves at the back. Nothing could have prepared any of them for the impact it would have. A regional politician somehow got hold of a copy and wrote about it in his column in an upstate New York paper. He cited it as an example of the loss of moral backbone of the American people due to the wastefulness of the war and evidence of the erosion of American principles and so on. This in turn had spiked some interest in the city and, in a sudden explosion of argument, the book was used to draw battle lines between the old and the new, the acceptable and the beyond the pale, the upright and the immoral. In other words, all hell broke loose and Stevie was at the very centre of it.

  Her instinct to hide was rapidly replaced by her determination to stand up and fight and she found that she was already armed and girded. Nothing frightened her now, not even the literary critics of New York. And nothing incensed her more than narrow-minded armchair moralists. She was primed, ready to be engaged in the present and saved from the past.

  Yet she had forgotten none of it. Far from it. There were many phantoms that visited her dreams. The day of her surrender to the prison camp would return regularly; Lily weeping, her thin arms wound around both Stevie and Hal. The pile of cotton and wool garments on the floor where, in her torrent of tears, Lily had thrown the clothes Stevie was leaving her.

  Stevie could hear Lily’s wail, ‘What about me? What am I supposed to do?’ She had actually stamped her foot.

  ‘You’ll be fine, I know you will be. Just think, no more irritating arguments with me and no more stupid nappies.’

  Lily’s crumpled face was more than she could bear. Stevie hugged her but her voice cracked.

  ‘If I get to America I promise I’ll send a ticket for you.’

  Lily sobbed louder.

  ‘Chen will look after you. And anyway this whole thing has got to be over soon, you’ll see.’ Lily nodded, trying to get a grip on her tears.

  Stevie, lightening her voice, gestured towards the carpet of clothes, arms of cardigans lying at broken angles like so many tangled limbs, the colours spilled. ‘It would be a terrible waste if they ended up in Japan along with everything else.’

  Lily had sniffed in agreement and bent down to pick up a particularly coveted grey shot-silk skirt. Stevie had noticed that Lily’s immaculately tended nails were dry and cracking.

  Then there had been the surprisingly polite form-filling in the barracks at Stanley internment camp, almost as if she were checking into a hotel. Albeit an exceptionally bureaucratic one. The acrid smell of the primitive latrines overwhelming the odour of sickness and sharp carbolic. The thin mattress through which she could feel every tired spring of her narrow cot in the long dormitory shed. The faces, knife-edged with hunger and anxiety. And then the almost unrecognisable woman who had fallen to her knees at the sight of Stevie.

  Phyllis had lost almost all of her hair and what was left of it was grey. The strands were pulled back into a scrappy rat’s tail tied with a piece of string. It was the string that stayed most vivid in Stevie’s mind. The contrast with the soignée woman who had leaned so enthusiastically into conversation with Jishang in her perfectly appointed living room, was so stark as to be absurd. Stevie had slipped on to her knees also and held out her hands to her.

  ‘Help me. She’s gone. She’s gone.’ The lament blew through her like the wind. Phyllis was bent over, her forehead scraping the dirt ground. Stevie heard her grief and looked at the piece of string containing those few strands of feeble hair. Margaret had died of malaria in the third week of their internment and Phyllis had lost her grip on her mind. Stevie held her hands, the bones so fragile, like bamboo shoots, and felt that she was touching paper, while Phyllis’ fragmented keening broke over her in waves. It was the echo of Phyllis’ voice, thin and harsh, that woke her in those fresh American nights.

  And then, at last, there was the exchange of prisoners, Americans from the camp for Japanese citizens from the States. The entire event had felt like a dream and none of them had believed it would happen or could have imagined it would go so smoothly. Her fellow Americans were a motley collection, part adventurers and chancers and part members of the establishment. There were shop girls and plumbing engineers as well as bankers and several men and women whose pre-war resources would not have stood up to too much scrutiny.

  Even when they were on the ship, the Asama Maru, and it was leaving Victoria Harbour for the last time, steaming past the islands and the mouth of the Pearl River, Stevie had not been able to take it in. She had held Hal close, a shield against the guilt of abandoning Phyllis and the others. Then there was the strangeness of that first month at sea, when they were free but not yet free, and she walked through the days almost without reflection in a kind of limbo. The wife of the American consul died on board, and a baby was born to one of the women from Stanley before they touched the coast of Africa at Lourenço Marques, the main port and capital of Portuguese Mozambique.

  In the middle of the day, on 22 July 1942, they berthed alongside another ship, the Gripsholm, which was carrying the Japanese internees from America. There were blasts of welcome from the ships as flags were waved and the American sailors cheered. Hal waved back and laughed out loud and Stevie felt numb with relief.

  The next day Stevie, with Hal wrapped firmly against her chest, had stepped on to African soil. The burning concrete of the dock warmed the soles of her feet through the worn leather of her shoes, as they walked away from the rusting hulk of the Asama Maru towards the Gripsholm. They passed a line of smartly dressed Japanese civilian families coming along the dock in the opposite direction. The Americans each had two small suitcases whilst their Japanese counterparts strained under their piles of luggage – including a number of Singer sewing machines and some small refrigerators. They were two human trails of victims of history.

  On board the liner, a feast had been prepared. The Americans fell upon it like vultures, tearing at chicken legs and lamb chops with their fingers. Confronted with such abundance, the constraints of manners proved too burdensome and were jettisoned instantly. There were foods Hal had never seen before, such as olives and celery, and a hysterical cheer went up when the stewards brought in trays laden with turkeys. The sailors watched their new charges with a mixture of aw
e and pity. Stevie herself ate until she was sick. She had to stop herself cramming more and more food into her mouth. It took days to remember that it wasn’t necessary to eat everything that was on the table, that there would be more again later.

  And then they had reached America.

  Her parents had seemed smaller, reduced by the passage of time, but also by something else. A veil of alienation from them and from her sisters obscured the homecoming. She wanted to run from their embrace. She was no longer their daughter, no longer their sibling. She was something new and ugly and knowing. This chasm of misunderstanding was the Grand Canyon between them and though they shouted valiantly across it, only whispers and shadows of meaning made it from one side to the other.

  Hal tugged at Stevie, pulling her towards a pretzel stand and away from her thoughts. He was always hungry. Licking the fat grains of salt from the knot of bread as they walked, he hummed a private tune and Stevie tightened her grip on his hand. She could feel his pulse and it made her happy.

  A little while later they made their way through the chaos of stalls. The streets were slick with waste, dense with people. Here in Chinatown the shouting had a different, shriller quality and the smell of noodles and peppery sauce burned her throat. For a moment she was transported to the corner of that restaurant by Victoria Harbour, memorising the angles of Harry’s face. She yanked Hal’s arm a little too hard and he dropped what was left of the pretzel. She braced herself for his wail but unnervingly he just turned and looked up at her, infinitely patient.