ON THE FOURTH DAY of the new year, Trudy comes in with a leaflet in her hand.
“They’re collecting people,” she announces, and reads from it.
“ ‘Since the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong on Christmas Day, enemy aliens have been allowed free movement in practically all urban districts of the colony’-very generous of them isn’t it? Then there’s something about generals and army orders, and then it says, ‘All enemy civilians’-that does make you sound dangerous, Will-‘all enemy civilians shall assemble at the Murray Parade Ground on January fifth.’ You are allowed to carry personal effects, and the care of your house is your own personal responsibility. Enemies include British, Americans, Dutch, Panamanians and whoever else has been disagreeable enough to war with our conquerors.” She looks up. “I think I’m off scot-free.”
“Are you?”
“Well, I’m none of those categories, certainly. And I’ve secreted my British passport away somewhere very safe so no one need know about it. And I don’t think a dislike of origami qualifies me as warring with the Japanese. But we’ll have to get you there, I suppose, unless you want to go elsewhere? ” She wrinkles her brow. “ China? Some people are arranging passage.”
“No, I think staying in Hong Kong will be better. They will have to do things in a way that is accountable. If they gather us together, they have to register us and let our governments know, I would imagine.” He shrugs his shoulders. “But we should decide what to do with Ned.”
Over a sparse lunch of rice and salted cabbage, they decide to clean the Canadian up and register him as English.
“Pretend you lost your passport-a fire when a bomb hit your home or something. Your accent is a problem though,” Trudy says. “Do you think the Japanese will notice? ”
“I could pretend to be American,” he says earnestly.
“But we don’t know any Americans to take you under their wing. Better you stick with Will and keep your mouth shut.”
Trudy says again she will not register.
“Angeline, you could go with Will and Ned, since Frederick is English. You’re counted as English, then. You have your marriage certificate somewhere, don’t you? I’ll be fine out here without you. So many family friends have offered to take me in, I won’t be alone.” Trudy strokes her friend’s arm.
“I’ll stay here with you, I think. Don’t you?”
“Why can’t you pretend you’re in government and not go?” Trudy asks Will. “Colonial staff are exempt from the order.”
“Darling,” he says. “There are ways of verifying these things. It would be worse if I lied and were to be found out.”
“But you won’t be allowed to come back, then, do you think? They’re not going to write down your name, give you a pat on the back, and send you on your way?”
“Realistically, they’re going to keep us all in a group. So I assume there will be some sort of collective living for a while, as they figure out what they’re going to do with us. I’ve heard of mass exchanges between governments, so they might exchange us for Japanese who are living in our countries. But it might take a rather long time to get all that sorted out, so we should really have a plan of how to keep in contact.”
After lunch, Will and Trudy go upstairs to pack a suitcase.
“What will you need? A toothbrush.” She hands him a new one. “Tooth powder. Surely those are necessities. A comb-can’t have you looking disheveled. On the other hand, perhaps we don’t want you looking too handsome and getting yourself and all the ladies in trouble.”
“Will you come with me?” he says. This is what he has wanted to ask all morning. The thought of leaving her makes him short of breath. He has seen her every day for months, not gone more than a few hours without smelling her skin, her hair. He finds other women grotesque now-they are too large, too loud, too slow. One afternoon, a short while after he had first arrived in Hong Kong, he and Simonds had sat at their desks and watched, mesmerized, as one is by the mundane, as their office lady, Miss Tsai, boiled water and poured it into a thermos. Miss Tsai was thin and wore metal spectacles. Her shoulders, which she covered with the same gray cardigan every day, were so small they looked as brittle as a bird’s bones. Her hair was cropped short and often shined with grease. Simonds had turned to him-this was before Trudy-and said, “I don’t understand how some find Chinese women attractive. They have no sex, so spindly.” Will wishes Simonds had met Trudy, the languorous slip of her. He had shipped out a little after the time Will had first met Trudy at the party, still professing his desire to find a buxom young Englishwoman with whom to form a family. He’s probably found her by now. But Will suspects he would find his English lass too rosy, too exuberant, next to the rapier-sharp silhouette that is Trudy.
She stops at his question, but only for a moment, then continues packing. “Why on earth would I cage myself up if I had a choice?”
“You don’t know what it’s going to be like out here,” he says. “At least in there, you’ll get three squares a day and a bed.” He cannot bring himself to simply ask her to come to be with him. Instead he sells it like some low-cost holiday.
Finished with his package, she begins to pack some of her own clothes in a suitcase.
“I’d rather take my chances out here,” she says. “You don’t know what it’s going to be like in the camps. The Japs can be brutal. And it will be good for you to have someone on the outside. I’ll come and give you packages and news of the outside. The Lusitano Club is taking all Portuguese, half-breeds like me too, and they have decent sleeping quarters. If things get bad, I’ll just go there. And Dommie will take care of me.”
“We could marry,” he says. “I’ll take care of you better.”
She looks up. He is frightened of her face, willfully blank.
“You don’t know what will happen out here,” he repeats. “At least we will be together.”
She goes on folding her sweaters. Her hands are quick and sure.
“Do you know what the Chinese think of the English?” she says a moment later, as if he hadn’t said anything of importance.
“Not really, but I hope Dominick isn’t representative.”
Trudy laughs.
“Well, a bit, although there’s more to that situation than meets the eye. Don’t be too harsh about him. He has his reasons. But many Chinese think English are rude and arrogant and think so much of their own heritage when ours is so much older and richer. And they’re terribly stingy. I’ve never seen an Englishman pick up the bill for dinner, when even the poorest Chinese would be ashamed to let someone else pay if it were his invitation. It’s odd, don’t you think? I like our way so much better. We Chinese are not stupid. We know that most of the Englishmen here live in a way they could never afford in their own country, and they’re living here like kings because their money happens to buy a lot more of our labor than our own money does. So they think they’re the lords here and we’re the serfs. But it doesn’t change the fact that back at home they could never have the lavish life they have here. They’re living on borrowed money, under assumed identities. You’re not very English, Will. You’re generous to a fault and very gracious and humble. I’m so glad you’re not like most of your countrymen.”
“I say,” he says. “I don’t know if this is the thing we should be talking about. I mean, this is quite a moment, right?”
“I know, I know,” she says impatiently, as if he’s missing the point. “I just meant that a lot of the locals don’t really care what happens to the British. But at the same time, they don’t really care about the Japanese either. Everyone just wants to live their lives, undisturbed, make a little money, make a little love, die with some food in their stomach. That’s all.”
Trudy’s points always take a while to sink in because they’re unexpected, as if spoken from the mouth of a child, and then Will always realizes how very shrewd she is. And how practical. He watches her pack an evening dress and, after a moment’s hesitation, a matching shawl.
“Have you seen my silver evening shoes?” she asks.
“Never knew you had any,” he says. He doesn’t ask why she might think she would need evening clothes in a time of war.
“I always look forward,” Trudy says suddenly. “Never backward. I hate photographs, diaries, clippings. What’s the point? I don’t understand how people can keep diaries-horrid things.” He is surprised at her vehemence.
“I’ve always kept a journal of my travels.”
“That’s different, more of a travelogue, I would think.”
“Well, my impressions, certainly. And the people I meet.”
“I certainly hope I am not in this journal of yours.”
“You would be disappointed,” he says after a pause.
“People can be so loathsome, don’t you think?” she says. “If we aren’t together in the future, please don’t think of me with hatred. Think of me kindly or forget me. I always try to do that. Think with kindness and don’t judge. And know the entire situation.”
“What on earth are you saying? Don’t take such absurd leaps.” He feels like she’s punched him in the stomach, cannot feign the nonchalance, but cannot say too, don’t leave me.
“If you love me, you know exactly who I am.”
“Trudy, you are not this person. You are not.”
“And you are not stupid, my love.” She hands him his bag. “There. All set for your grand adventure.”
At the parade ground, he notes with chagrin that others seem to have brought all of their belongings, stuffed into enormous suitcases that are filled to bursting and tied shut with heavy twine. Some practical joker has brought his golf clubs. There are people sitting on their luggage, drinking from thermoses, looking lost. There are also, curiously, Chinese people with all their belongings tied up in pink and red cloths, slung over their shoulders, squatting in the shade.
Will has money tucked into his trousers, and a few gold rings and bracelets Trudy has forced on him. “Gold is good; people will always take gold,” her voice rings in his ears. He has only his small satchel, with the few essential items she had packed. Ned has some of Frederick ’s clothes Angeline gave him, ill-fitting as they are-the young Canadian bringing out the maternal side of both the women.
Trudy had stopped just long enough for them to get out of the car and to give him a light kiss, and then she had spun away quickly. A good-bye made of nothing. He stands there for a moment, Ned shuffling awkwardly near him, then picks up his bag, feeling slightly embarrassed that the young man has seen their bloodless good-bye. He spots the Trotters, the Arbogasts. He goes over to Hugh Trotter and introduces him to Ned, explaining his situation.
“This is quite bad,” Hugh says, not caring about the travails of the young Canadian. “I hear that over at the bank, they’re burning unsigned notes so they don’t get into the wrong hands.”
“Yes,” Will says. “This is not good at all.”
“You know, two days ago, they declared a new government for Chinese civilians-they’re calling it the Civil Department of the Japanese Army and they’re trying to sort things out, get the gas, water, and electric rolling smoothly again. They want everyone to get back into the flow, open their shops, resume their jobs. All except us, of course. We’re enemy prisoners now.”
“Then why are the Chinese here?” Will looks around at all the locals. “Surely they can’t be registering everyone in the colony.”
“No, it’s a mix-up. The Japanese didn’t realize that the Chinese here regard themselves as British nationals, so a lot of them have shown up, and there’s a lot of confusion as to what to do with them. I think they only want the gweilos, to put it bluntly. I would imagine the Chinese people will go home today.”
Will notices children playing-what are they doing here? They should have been sent away months ago. Hugh follows his gaze.
“Yes, and of course, the children. Damn fools, the parents,” he says. “Sentimental. Didn’t want to send their families away to safety. Like ostriches, they were. I hope the conditions are decent.”
“Well, one hopes, yes.”
“And you heard Millicent Potter went blind from shock?”
“No, I hadn’t heard,” Will said.
“Her child died in her arms, shrapnel from a bomb, and she was holding him, and her husband said all of a sudden she couldn’t see. It comes and goes apparently, but it’s been gone for a while.”
“Awful.”
“And Trudy?” Hugh asks. “I assume she’s not involved in all this?”
“Yes, she’s Portuguese and Chinese, so both good things to be at the moment.”
“It’ll be good to have someone on the outside. She can help you get things and messages. We have our amah and houseboy tailing us at the moment. I’ve given them more money than they’ll see in a lifetime so I hope they don’t run off with it. But what could we do?” Hugh gives a wintry smile. “Ironic, isn’t it? ”
Reggie Arbogast joins them.
“The situation is bad right now. They’re winning in the Philippines and all over Malay and Burma. They’re gaining too much momentum.”
A Japanese soldier rides up on a horse.
“Line! ” he shouts. “One line. No Chinese.”
The crowd hesitates, moves in an amorphous mass, like a jellyfish, Will thinks, if he were watching from the sky. They ripple and lap, an uncertain sea creature.
“One line! No Chinese! ” shouts the soldier again, this time more loudly. He canters the horse around, waving a sword in the air. The Orientals in the mix pick themselves up and move to one side, a gradual sifting of the races.
“It’s like he’s herding us,” Hugh says to Will. “We’re the cattle.”
Will takes account of the clothes he is wearing-a sturdy pair of cotton trousers, two shirts, a sweater, and a jacket. He’s suddenly aware that they might have to last him for a long time. He’s glad he wore a heavy belt. Somehow, he thinks the strong leather and metal will come in useful.
The soldier swings around and leaves. The crowd is silent. A woman sits down on her suitcase and begins to cry. “Buck up,” her husband says. “This is just the beginning.”
They divide them into nationalities and march them in single file. Will watches the Americans walk away, along with the Dutch and the Belgians. The British are made to wait until the end. The Japanese seem to have some special prejudice against them.
They walk for hours, on almost unrecognizable roads with burning piles of rubbish outside charred buildings and the overpowering stench of rotting bodies and human waste. The mothers and children march with the men, babies crying. The roads are lined with locals, silently watching the unlikely spectacle of Western people being led away under the rule of the Oriental. Some spit in their path but most just look. Will sees relief in their faces, relief that they are not the victims, at least this time. There is also pity in some of the older faces. One brave soul in the procession tries to strike up a rendition of “Hail Britannia,” but his melody fades away under the implacable gaze of a soldier who slows his steps until he is menacingly abreast of the singer. And there is the silence again, broken only by the tramping of feet and the heavy breathing of the conquered.
They are herded into the Nam Ping Hotel, which has clearly been used as a brothel in the recent past. The lobby is dingy and smudgy-looking, with peeling red paint and garish gold Chinese characters painted onto signs.
First, they are told to take off all their watches and jewelry and place them into a large sack. Then, a Japanese soldier jerks his gun toward the stairs to indicate they should go up.
The rooms are tiny, and things get ugly, with people rushing to claim their space until they realize that no matter how quick they are, they will have to squeeze four or five into a room. The stucco walls are bubbled with moisture and decay and flakes of ceiling fall down at the slightest tremor. There are iron beds with wafer-thin mattresses and mintoi, the Chinese quilt, with large, copper-colored stains. Large cockroaches scurry around, alarmed at the sudden invasion, and the floor is wet and unpleasant. It is chaos, with people demanding toilet paper, towels, clean water, not knowing that no one is there to supply them. Some don’t seem to realize the days of amahs and chauffeurs are gone. The toilets stop up almost immediately and the hallways are filled with an unspeakable odor. Will and Hugh organize teams to clean. Some refuse, or don’t show up. Will tells the others not to worry, that there will be plenty of work to go around soon, and that everyone will do their share. The Japanese provide no guidance-some look amused at the chaos, and others are simply oblivious, putting their feet up and having Chinese children run errands for them, fetching them beer and cuttlefish.
There is no food the first night. They go to bed hungry, rooms alive with the sound of whimpering children and the labored breath of their parents. Will tucks his hands into his armpits, hears young Ned’s snore-a strange, interrupted, barking sound-and wonders what Trudy is doing.
And so he finds out. Not tooth powder but food. Food is the luxury. The Japanese hand out a watery vat of rice in the evening, with not enough chipped bowls and spoons. There is some putrid boiled meat, a few rotting vegetables swimming in brown water. The first evening, some women refuse to eat it. By the next, everyone takes their share. They find Chinese willing to go fetch food for coins tossed from the balcony, but this is an iffy proposition at best as some disappear with the money, never to be seen again. Those lucky enough to have their amahs or houseboys on their tail throw down money and get fish and vegetables tossed back in return.
There is a lieutenant in charge of the hotel, Ueki, a small man with round glasses and a mustache. He is impossible to read as Will finds out when he is elected to meet with a supervisor about the living conditions and the food. It is an odd meeting, tense and excessively polite.
Ueki has commandeered the hotel manager’s office behind the reception desk and is sitting behind a metal desk with an open bottle of whiskey and a lit cigarette smoldering in an ashtray. Smoke hangs thick in the air, unmoved by the fan that circles slowly overhead.
Will bows because it seems the right thing to do. Ueki inclines his head slightly.
“I have a few issues I’d like to bring to your attention,” Will says.
“Speak,” says the man.
“The toilets need to be cleaned, and we need supplies to clean them with. Can you provide us with some toilet brushes and cleaning powders? Also, a plunger would be helpful.”
“I will see what I can do.”
“And Mrs. Aitken is eight months pregnant and quite uncomfortable. Could we find a bed for her? She’s in a bed with two other people right now. Everyone else is doubled or tripled up as well.” Except the corpulent secretary from Australia who refuses to give up her bed, but that’s another matter.
“Fine.”
Ueki waves off the request, so Will is not sure if he means yes or no.
“And the food…” Will hesitates.
“Yes?”
“The food is inadequate.”
The short lieutenant studies Will.
“Do you want smoke?” He offers a slim silver case, probably freshly looted from some friend of Trudy’s.
Will takes one and leans over so that Ueki can light it.
“Do you know where I learned the English?”
“No, but it’s very good.” Will tells himself he’s not currying favor, not being obsequious, just honest.
“English missionary came to Japan, taught me for three years.”
“There are lots of missionaries doing good works out there,” Will says, it seems to him, idiotically.
“He was good man. For him, I will try to help you.”
Will says thank you, and then sits for a moment before he realizes he has been dismissed. Getting up, he says thank you again.
Nothing ever comes of the meeting.
It is in this unlikely place, this old brothel, that the detainees find themselves pooling information and tales of what had happened in the days prior. Since they have nothing but time, they gather around, exchanging stories, trying to piece together a coherent history of the final, chaotic days before the surrender.
Regina Arbogast, a delicate-faced socialite who arrived at the parade ground in a rickshaw and seven trunks, six of which she was forced to let her servants bring back home, is full of stories of atrocity that happened not to her but to friends of friends of people she knew. She is full of opinions and appropriated outrage.
“The Chinese got the brunt of it really. They’re defenseless, without a proper government to help protect them. They’ve been under our protection for so long, they don’t know what to do. All the girls have been raped, but the Japanese are afraid to touch the English. They know it will come around in the end.”
Regina had been staying at her friend May Gibbons’s house, where they were living in fairly high style until some Chinese gangsters came in and tied them up while they looted the house. She talks incessantly about the jewelry she lost and how she’ll never be able to replace it. Her husband, a successful importer and businessman, finally blows up after she has gone on for a particularly long time.
“For God’s sake, Regina, just shut up and give us some peace. I’ll buy you all the jewels in China after all this is over.”
She looks at her husband balefully and whispers to her friend, Patricia Watson, about how beleaguered she has been and how Reggie has been just impossible throughout. Patricia smiles and looks satisfied. She had, quite by accident, been spared her valuables at the hotel as she had placed them on the floor in front of her, and the Japanese had refused to bend down to pick them up, and had not bothered to ask her to do it.
A young woman, Mary Cox, says her husband was grabbed by Japanese soldiers and made to clean up after bodies had been dragged along the street, shedding body parts like animals. They had to clear all the bodies before they got in the water supply and spread disease. He came home soaked in blood and bits of decaying flesh and wept before falling on the sofa, exhausted. He was gone the next morning. She hasn’t seen him since. She has a two-year-old boy, Tobias, who trails her, one hand always on some part of his mother, the other holding a toy airplane. He hasn’t spoken since Christmas, she says. Another man, gaunt with worry, says he had been walking with his wife down Carnavon Street, and some soldiers had come and seized her. They held him at gunpoint while they took her away. He hasn’t seen her either. “And yet,” he says, “I used to think the Japanese were the most peaceful, serene people, with their cherry blossom paintings and the elaborate tea ceremony. How can they be so brutal?”
“A soldier is only one part of a country,” Hugh says. “Certainly not representative of an entire people. And wartime makes different animals of us all.”
“How can you say that?” Regina Arbogast cries. “They are each one as brutal as the other, as far as I’m concerned. You would never see a British soldier behave the way these animals have behaved to us.”
“You are, of course, right, my dear,” Hugh says, ending the conversation.
The next day, Mickey Wallace comes into the lobby where some of them are sitting listlessly. He is bleeding from the ears, his eyes already starting to swell blue and shut. He had been on the roof, looking down, when some Japanese soldiers saw him. They stormed up to him and beat him bloody because nobody is to look down on the Japanese. Only they are allowed to look down on others. This, their enemies’ peculiar preoccupation with placement and particularly with height, because of their generally smaller stature, becomes ingrained in all of the prisoners until many years after the war is over, when they automatically check who is standing where, on what step or from what position.
And the random cruelty makes them all wary. A soldier, drunk and angry about his gambling losses, strikes a small child on the way to his post. The little boy has a fractured nose and loses three teeth. A higher-up Jap spirits him away with his mother, and they are never seen again. Evidence gone. On his way up the stairs, Will looks down at the alley between the hotel and the adjacent building. He sees a body covered by a blanket, a shock of fair hair, too high up to see who it is. When he goes down, the body is gone. He wonders if he imagined it, knows he did not. Another day Trotter comes to him, says sotto voce, “I wonder if I’m going mad. I was on the balcony having a smoke, and in an alley between buildings, I could have sworn I saw a man beheaded by two others.” His voice trembles but his face is calm. “I saw the spurt of blood, the man falling down from his knees, hands tied behind his back. I could have sworn I saw it.” How can one stand it? “And then I left. I didn’t want to see the cleanup.” How does one stay sane?
There are small insults in addition to the large. A plague of the most enormous mosquitoes Will has ever seen, caused by inadequate drainage. His body is spotted with their bites, red, raised, and angry. When he swats at them, they explode into red bursts of blood, gorged on their many victims. Pests crawl into their thin mattresses, which they try, unsuccessfully, to combat by immersing the iron bed legs in bowls filled with camphor and water. Weevils in the rice. Stinky, warm water they have to hold their noses to drink. The attendant diarrhea that comes from drinking the water, until they gather together some tins and boil it first. Then the burned tongues from drinking the newly sterilized water as fast as it comes off the flame, because they are so thirsty a burned tongue seems small penance.
And then they can look outside the dirty windows to the sight of Japanese soldiers, drunk and vomiting on the sidewalks, being held up by Chinese prostitutes, as they celebrate their victory. Sometimes an unfortunate coolie is dragged in to clean up the mess, but more often it is left to rot in the street. Will thanks God it is not high summer, when the odor would intensify ten times as quickly.
He does not remember what it is like to smell fresh air. Instead, urine, feces, the thick, cloying smell of human waste, clings to the very insides of his nostrils. His skin, his hair, his fingers, they are all infused with the smell of shit, no matter how hard he washes. His hands have known the slick inside of a toilet bowl, trying to get the foul mixture of vomit, urine, and shit to flush through its own thickness. The drainage systems are no match for five hundred rapidly sickening refugees-and that is what they are, regardless of whether they were bankers or barristers before-fed with pest-ridden rice and tainted water. The guards are cruel, save one. He is a young boy dressed in a soldier’s uniform with a wide, placid face, and he smiles constantly, apologetically. He turns down his eyes when his colleagues hit the prisoners or poke at them with their bayonets. He speaks a halting English, but only when there are none of his compatriots nearby.
Trudy never comes, although others’ loved ones find a way to come, leave messages. He finds himself mentioning her to everyone, including her in the conversations, as if the mere incantation of her name will keep her real, keep her alive. Her jasmine scent becomes further and further away, a mere memory; the olfactory sense doesn’t keep well. He shifts constantly in bed, unused to the tight, narrow quarters of a space without a companion, her slight warmth. He is not angry with her, yet. Who knows what is going on outside.
Ned is going mad. The young soldier is far from home, far from any love or comfort he might know, and he has stopped talking and eats very little. His face is wan and swollen. Will tries to get him to move around a bit every day but he withdraws a little more every day.
And yet for most, life settles down amazingly quickly. Human beings tend toward routine. It is as if they have been displaced refugees for months, although it has only been a week. Businessmen shuffle around with undershirts falling out of their trousers, their natty suits packed away. Socialites do the wash alongside schoolteachers and shop proprietors. A black market springs up. As some have a lot of money, Arbogast and Trotter arrange a fund so that everyone will get some food. People contribute what they want and then they arrange to buy Russian black bread for six Hong Kong dollars a half-pound, powdered milk, soybeans, carrots, sometimes butter, which they spread sparingly on their bread and eat slowly, savoring the precious fat in their mouths. Young Chinese boys smuggle in the food, but must get past the Japanese guards, who know what’s going on, but take what they want from the meager supplies. “Tax,” says one every time, laughing at his inane joke. That guard takes almost half.
“I do think,” Trotter’s wife says fretfully to Will, “that it is so spread out that no one gets to enjoy it. Don’t you think it would be a better idea to have a lottery of some sort so that one person could enjoy a full stomach for once?”
Will shrugs. He’s not about to get into it with her. He does note, though, that she is as plump as ever. Some women volunteer to do the cooking-one is Mary, the woman with Tobias, the mute child, who hasn’t seen her husband. She is sweet and quiet, and does not take the opportunity of being in the kitchen to take more food for herself and her son, although Will would not have blamed her if she had. The cook girls, as they call themselves, come up with startling dishes: broccoli black bread sandwiches with oyster sauce, watered-down condensed milk stews with plums bobbing about, eggy greens. They have managed to get a cooker from the outside, and in the evenings, they huddle around the blue flame, where their dinner is cooking.
Surprisingly, it settles into normal. If they steer clear of the guards, they are generally left alone, as the guards are too busy drinking and finding women or things to steal. There are always rumors about where they are to be relocated. Some think they will be repatriated immediately. Others, more realistic, hope for a more comfortable place to wait out the war. But they too think it will be over in a matter of weeks or days.